Upgrade - 633: iPhone Tippy-Top

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 633 for August 18th, 2026. It is Relay's 12th birthday today. Happy Birthday Relay. This episode is brought to you by Ship Aton from Revenue Cat, Scribe, Keeper, and Squarespace. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. Happy birthday to Relay.

Indeed. Happy birthday to my son, who is 22 years old. I always forget that that happens. Happy birthday, Julian. Do you think Julian would like to be called out my name like Jamie does? He's never going to hear it, is he? He probably doesn't care. He's never going to hear it.

Jamie only hears it because she gets paid to hear it. She was just briefly sad because Julian's name was mentioned and not hers. And then immediately then her name was mentioned. So it's fine. That's how it works. You've got to level these things out. I have a Snelltoldw question. One of the classics.

I'm playing the hits today, actually. Summer of fun. It's all hits today. Summer of fun. All segments, all hits. Yep. Marcello. Marcelo asks, what is Jason's favorite tea?

Oh, well, I was just traveling over the weekend and you know, you order tea and they're like, well, we have a selection of tea. What do you want? And a couple of places, they're like, well, we have Earl Grey. We have English breakfast. And I'll be like, but, but, but, basically, black tea is my favorite. English breakfast is my favorite. I have the tea that I buy in a giant packet of loose tea is from the New Mexico tea company, a former sponsor of mine on the incomparable. And I... Play sponsored this show a very long time ago. Yeah.

Yeah, the guy who does that is a big fan. And I like that tea. It's a, I think I'm doing their... I forget what it is now. But it's just black tea. That's what it is. I think I have like an organic asam that I get now. But it's, I mean, in the end, all that matters is I like black tea.

And I drink it. Yeah, Somme breakfast, I think, is what I have now in it, which is organic. And I drink it black. I used to put honey in it. It was a honey delivery mechanism, and I decided, with the advice of my doctor, that perhaps a daily enormous honey shot in the morning was not conducive to a healthy lifestyle. And I just cut it out. And so now it's, and now, what I've discovered now is that when people say, would you like something in your tea and I say no, oftentimes they say, oh, it's like, what's wrong with you? I'm like, I just need the tea. Give me the tea. It's hot caffeine thing into me. I want it. Did you say it was the breakfast tea you have? Yeah, I have the Assam breakfast. Yeah, I found it. Organic. It's going to be on the show notes if people want it.

If you want to drink tea like Jason. My friend David Lour, who I saw this weekend, he has been spending a bunch of time out in Alkirky dealing with some family stuff. And he went into the New Mexico tea company. And he says that the moment he spoke and they heard his voice, they're like, oh, you're from the incumbent. Comparable. Oh, that's so funny.

So, yeah. I would love that. I bet you love that. Yeah, I, uh, you are pretty hardcore with your tea, I think. Just, just pure black tea. That is, that is relatively hardcore. Yeah, just give it to me. Yeah, we just want to say.

Well, it started, so I have a friend who did that. My friend John Seff, who works at Apple now, who worked at Macworld. Um, John and I were the tea drinkers at Macworld, and, um, we both enjoyed having honey in our tea. And so I had honey and he had honey. He had a little honey bear, and I had a little honey bear, a squeeze bottle. And we created what I enjoyed calling the honey sharing accord, which was an agreement that if one of us was out of honey, they could come and use the other person's honey for their tea. Yeah.

Because it was sort of like a nobody should go without honey in their tea. Yeah. And then one, and then all of a sudden he said, my doctor told me I got to get my, I don't know, try glycerides down or whatever it was. And so I don't put honey in my tea anymore. And I remember doing a double take like, what? how? No. And then, you know, but then many years later, I get the same. Wouldn't be me. And no one's thinking my honey. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. But then many years later, I was like, well, John did it. I could probably do it. And I did it. And I don't, I mean, I wouldn't say I don't miss it. Sometimes in the late morning or early afternoon, I will, I will make a cup of tea. And sometimes that's the special cup of tea. And there's some honey in it. But it's a special treat now. That's a treat.

If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, just go to Upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snell Talk. I actually did have an item of follow-up that I've now moved to a segment. So today's episode will actually be all segments because why not do that, you know? Great. It really is oops or segments now because I didn't realize that until I opened the document again. Because I actually wrote most of this document yesterday, because we're recording on Tuesday because you were traveling.

And so I open it up today, added it. a few bits and then realized, oh, it's all segments. And it truly is all segments. And the first one of those, or the second one, I should say, is upstream. Apple has told Deadline that the premiere of Ted Lassos Season 4 drew 296.6 million viewing minutes in the United States on August the 5th and the 4th and 5th per Nielsen data. This makes this Apple TV's biggest ever launch episode. That was the reason that they spoke to Deadline and shared that information because Apple is

actually quite notorious for not sharing information with anyone unless it suits them, which we're not surprised by. I mean, that's PR. That's marketing. That's how it works. You put out the good news. But I even hear that, like, I mean, I hear people talk about this and reference it on podcasts and stuff that they don't even tell the creators of the shows very much of what's

going on, which is actually quite rare. Yeah, exactly. And then Eddie Q told screen ran in a red carpet interview that, quote, I think there's plenty of stories to go on, to go on. show up. So essentially what people are taking this to mean is there will be more seasons of the show, even though a season five renewal has not been announced officially, but we do know that the returning cost signed for three-year deals. So that could have been an optionality, but you never know. Yeah, well, generally that's what it is. I would say in portions. So like when they said

they were going to come back, they probably signed a one-year guarantee, but a three-year deal so that they know that they could make this show in another three-year block, and then they can reassess then. If they want to do even more, they could do that, take some time off. They could do that. And they didn't do a three-year order, but they probably did,

and we've heard this about a lot of Apple shows, a soft order. Sometimes it's, we are ordering two years, but we're not going to talk about it. Sometimes it's, we're not going to order two years, but we're going to order two years of scripts.

So after you're done with year one, don't shut down the writer's room. get the writer's room spun up for a season two, and that's a stalling technique to let them have some initial ratings data, some initial numbers to know whether they really want to go on, and occasionally they may rescind that. But so that's a little bit softer. And then I think there are some shows where they just do one season,

and then they're like, let's just see how it goes. And, you know, severance, I think, was like that. And pluribus, I think, was like that. And as a result, those shows are going to take forever to come back. But I think with Ted Lassow, yeah, my guess is that if they didn't already know they were coming back for season two, they looked at these numbers and said, yeah. Yeah. Or, sorry, season five. Season five, season five, season two of the new era.

So, yeah, it's not too surprising. I think that I can't imagine that Sudecas wouldn't have made that part of the deal. You know, it's like, if you want this so bad and you're going to make me do this, like, I want to do whatever I want to do, the story I want to tell. It is rumored. I was reading about this. The rumor is that Sudecas has another three-season arc to tell with this show. I think that's probably the plan. And I think that they, I mean, Jason Sudecas may have very much been given a, we'll pay you per season.

And also we will pay you a fee if we don't go forward. Yeah, that's a break. That's part of it too. But I think, yeah. But Apple tends to prefer announcing the renewal of a show to happen either, you know, couple weeks after it premieres or right as it's finishing its season they like to do so there's a renewal announcement that ends up being again sort of PR it's drama it's you know they want to they want to place that in the right moment to get people to to talk and to reassure viewers in general it does

feel like they've actually they're it's working now like Apple TV feels like it's working now like I hear their shows mentioned in media where I don't expect it right like obviously I expect you know, everyone in tech to be talking about it. But like the gaming podcast that I talk about, they talk about how much they love severance and Pluribus and Widows Bay and all of these shows. Like it comes up. And so, yeah, you know, I think they've done it now.

I actually just heard, I haven't watched it, but apparently I heard a saying, Dink is very good. The movie that they just released. The, and it's been a while, but last time I heard the stats, of them letting Amazon resell Apple TV Plus into the Amazon channels ecosystem had gone well for them in terms of sort of like unearthing another place where people might say, oh sure, I'll add Apple TV here.

Because I can imagine there are a lot of people who are like, I'm not spending 200 pounds to spend 15 pounds or whatever, right? Like people think that you need an Apple TV for the Apple TV, but then when they see it in their Amazon Prime, it's like, oh, I actually want to watch a bunch of this. Ted Lassau here. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Last week, Apple added a selection of classic movies to Apple TV Plus, which are free for subscribers. These movies differ from territory to territory, but they include stuff like the Martian, Arrival, Lupo, the Proposal, Jurassic Park is on the UK. They're calling this collection great movies available now on Apple TV.

I don't know why they're doing this. I mean, I kind of do, but I also don't. it's such a small amount of movies, and they're not really making that much of a deal about it, and they have so many of their own movies now, why do you think they're doing this? I think it's an experiment. Yeah.

They've done some of this before. This isn't new. Often it's theme-based, and it's around a show or something that they're doing. But I think they are experiment. They got a deal, right? They got some sort of a deal for a package. Yep.

and thought this is I mean either was a throw-in with some other deal and they're like, okay, whatever. But I think they like to experiment and look at the data. It has some interesting knock-on effects too,

by the way, which I think is another thing that they're probably watching, which is if you are browsing the Apple TV thing and you go, oh, what movies do they have? The Martian, oh, let's watch that. Great.

But also a side effect of this is, if you are on your Apple TV app and you search for The Martian, it just says play. Yeah. And so you can capture people just when they are curious about a movie and say, yeah, you can watch that right now and not even think about that it's because of your Apple TV subscription. So I think it's an experiment. I think they, I don't think they're opposed to California. catalog content because it bulks up the service a little bit. I don't think it's a strategy for them yet, but I think that they're looking at data and maybe thinking if a strategy makes sense.

You know, it made me wonder if they should have tried to buy Warner Brothers. Like, I know there are... Maybe they'll get the chance after all, we'll see. This was the other thing that made me wonder, right? Like, I know that they, they had early talks, but did not go to a deal, right? They were one of the people when Zazlov was like, I'm selling this thing. Yeah, they sniffed around it, but it was not. Zazlov's original plan, just to be, while we're in upstream, to be clear, his original

plan was, unless somebody sweeps in and offers us for everything, we're going to split the company in two, and we're going to have the studio over here, and we're going to have the cable TV operations over here. And he, because he felt like they would probably be worth more money separately, and part of that rationale was he knew that the streamers didn't want the cable TV channels. Yeah. So he was going to, he thought Amazon and Apple were more likely to come in. But then Netflix and Paramount Skydance came in and just wanted the whole kitten caboodle.

And so that's that's where they are right now. Although just for people who haven't been paying attention, there's a, there's a lawsuit from a bunch of state attorney generals trying to stop it. That is not going to go to trial until next year. It depends on who you listen to, but a lot of the analysts say that, this may, that either David Ellison of Paramount Skydance is going to have to make some major concessions, which probably might even involve divesting some of the things that he said he wants to buy, or risk the whole deal falling apart. And part of that is that David Zaslav of Warner Brothers instituted this idea called the ticking fee,

which is basically like every day that this deal doesn't close, there's an extra penalty that Paramount Skydance has to pay. and it could become, and that starts this fall. And that could become untenable. And the whole deal could fall apart. Maybe the trial has been set to hurt them, right? So the ticking fee could kick in. Yeah, because it's going to be spring.

So it's going to, the trial won't even start. I think that trial was not necessarily set to hurt them, but to encourage them to make a deal. But right now the California Attorney General, who is leading this case, it seems to be uninterested. He's at least positioned himself as uninterested in making a deal. And then he's, Ellison's threatening to leave California, right? Like that's his, that's his threat back.

It's like, we're going to leave California. That's his next move. And a lot of the analysis there is that he, you know, he's also basically intractable at this point. And somebody's going to have to give here. Yep. Both sides are going to have to give or, because there's a scenario here where Larry Ellison, David Ellison's dad, ends up spending like $10 billion on nothing. Yes, at a time when Oracle stock is going down. Yes. And worse than that, Paramount is then left as a company that is frankly too small to survive. So it's a fascinating kind of thing going on. But yeah, should, could Apple be interested in a studio and a bunch of catalog? I think it absolutely could. I think that what we've seen with Apple TV shows that if they wanted a little more reach and a little more content, they could absolutely do that. And do I think that Apple would be a perfectly decent home for a lot of that?

content, sure, it would be weird, but, you know, Apple TV is weird. Like, I'm always surprised people might not remember, but when we were talking about Apple launching a streaming service, people like, that can't exist. It doesn't make any sense. Apple's making TV shows. They've got like dramas and comedies and people saying bad words on TV and people having, you know, sexual situations. Like, that's not Apple. They're not going to do it. Well, guess what? They hired some guys from Sony and they built a whole thing and they have done it. And they've had movies been nominated and won best picture, and they've won a zillion Emmys. So, like, Apple running a studio is not actually that far-fetched when you consider how far they've come already.

And talents seem to really like working with them, too, because they get... Well, that's the other thing, is, like, the other thing going on with David Ellison, and honestly, with David Zaslav at Warner doing what he did, is they are both seen as being incredibly antagonistic to the creative community. The creative community hates these guys. is not idea. And, you know, it's, part of it is just about money. You know,

Zazlav was canceling projects and, and, but they don't like, and they certainly don't like David Ellison's politics. But I also would say, um, you know, a company like Apple that seems to be committed to quality and happy to spend money.

They like that. They like that a lot. So I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. It seems unlikely, but not impossible. I like,

but like, you know, some pieces of the studio would be good for them, right? IP, the lots, right? Like studio having the space. Some of these parts would be nice. And there's parts they don't want. HBO and all of that catalog and all those creative people.

Like there's something to be said. I'm not surprised that they looked at it. And I wonder if they would look at it again, if it comes back around again. Oh, I think they would. I think they would. Either paramount. But again, it's got to be the pieces. Like Apple doesn't want to buy CBS.

Yep. Apple doesn't want to buy CNN. Right? No. But there are parts of both of those companies that I'm sure Apple would love to buy. The lots, the IP, but not like broadcast or cable TV. And I know I said HBO is a channel, but like the way you structure that deal is the HBO is the, it's all the intellectual property and it's the streaming services. And then the channel is like a thing you licensed for cable.

And it's not a like to the other company maybe even as a, as a, a deal. like it's not, it would not be treated, HBO is not going to be treated as a cable channel. It's not now. Essentially, it's a streaming and intellectual property concern now. This episode is brought to you by Shiperton, the global hackathon for builders launching real apps to real stores competing for big prizes

and showing the world what they shipped. Do you have an idea for an app that you keep meaning to build someday? Well, someday, just got a deadline. Shepa Tern is back, the world's biggest mobile hackathon, brought to you by Revenue Cat. It's simple. You launch a brand new app between August 1st and September 30th and compete for over $1 million in prizes. Plus, get exclusive perks from partners like Replit, One Signal, AdMob and more.

You'll unlock 25 sponsor perks automatically as your app moves from registration to real revenue. And there's over $700,000 in cash prizes. win and your app could land on a billboard in Times Square forever enshrined in app development glory. Join at shippaton.com or click the link in the show notes. That is S-H-I-P-A-T-O-N-S-A-T-O-N-Ship-A-T-T-O-N-T-A-T-T-O-N-T-A-T-T-O-N-T-E-T-R-T-E-L-T. Time to lawyer up, Jason, Snell. Clunk-K-K-L-K-L-L-A-L-L-A-L-R-A-R-V-A-R-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E, who has previously General Counsel, but was planned that she would be retiring this year too, right? So it was

kind of like a staged effect to get to move all the people around that they needed. Gatton is joining the company from American Airlines. Bloomberg reports that he is a Republican, and Apple was specifically looking for someone who could more closely align with the Trump administration, but apparently Apple does believe he can, quote, work constructively with policymakers on both sides of the aisle, and that, quote, Gatton serves on the board of the Faith and Politics Institute, a Washington-based organization founded in 1991 that seeks to promote productive and civil discourse across partisan lines. Sounds like he fits a very specific box. I was going to say, he's Apple's kind of Republican, I guess. Well, this is, look, this is diplomacy, essentially,

If you want to consider Apple its own kind of sovereign state and the U.S. government is a different one. We've talked about Tim Cook, and Tim Cook is still, the implication is very strong, though, of course, Tim Cook is a huge part of this.

You're not going to have somebody reporting. Like, Gatton is going to report to the general counsel, but like, who are we kidding? There's a dot-in-line to Tim. To Tim Cook. That's right. Who's the chairman of the board? You're going to be the chairman of the board,

but we know what he's doing, and this is a part of that. And this is, you know, This is politics 101 here, which is they want somebody who can speak to the people who are in power. I'm surprised it took this long. We're halfway through the Trump administration, are we now? I don't know. It seems so long.

But I feel like, you know, what took them so long here? Like, you need, you want to speak to somebody who can speak to the people in power and ideally speak to the people who might be in power if there are some changes on the congressional side after the elections this fall, that, you know, they need people like this to talk. it's politics. It's kind of dirty, but like this is how it is. And so, and this is a, you know, somebody who's got connections and also seems to have been, maybe what took them so long is somebody who's got connections and also is palatable to the people who work at Apple. Like not, not like the rank and file even, but like the people in the executive, somebody who's going to get it. Somebody who knows, you know, knows that their, their loyalty is to Apple and that they need to be able to speak this language, but they can't just agree with everything that the government does. Like, that's a, it's a diplomatic position is what it is. Yep. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik has advised Apple not to buy any RAM from Chinese manufacturers. Lutnik shared this opinion with the journal directly as part of a tour that Apple was giving a manufacturing facility in Houston. He says the Trump administration is not in favor of that in regards to Chinese RAM. There have to be other solutions to the memory issue, but it's not great American.

companies using Chinese memory. And he told the Wall Street Journal that he has said the same to Apple. What are those other solutions, Howard? Exactly. Yeah, I don't really know what they are. The idea is, like, God, just build it in America. Okay, so that will be done next week, right? That's how long

that takes. So, as we said before, if Apple want to buy RAM from Chinese manufacturers, there is nothing stopping them from doing it other than the ire of US government. The thing that they would need legal approval for specifically. I didn't know this part. Like, you know, in the past you said like, oh, they can do it and they can sell it in China, in Chinese phones,

but the government would just be really mad at them. But there is another part where if they wanted to customize the chips in any way, they have to share proprietary information and that they need legal approval for. Now, I'm not saying that's what Apple wants to do, but it was a part that was interesting. However, CEOO Sabi Khan, Apple CIOO, told the Wall Street Journal, quote, there isn't a lot of customization for memory, meaning we were just going to buy it. And while declining to comment on specific plans, he reiterated that they, quote, have to look at all options.

So even when pressed on the specific issue that Lucknick has clearly shared, Apple is not backing down from this idea, right? Like this is the same thing that Cook said. This, we have to look at all options. Suggests that they're continuing to look at it. So a couple things here. I do believe that there is something the U.S. government could do that they haven't done

that would preclude Apple from using the supplier. Okay. They could class, I think there's a classification they could do that would basically say, this is not a company that American companies can do business with. And they haven't done that. And what has given Apple hesitation is,

technically they could do it. Yeah. But at any point, the U.S. government could say, no, now stop. And that would be, what they want is kind of an assurance

that they can go on. I'm starting to wonder if this is all just a ploy in terms, in the hopes of getting something else out of the U.S. government, right? If this is like a little bit of a head fake, a little bit of a help us,

help us somehow. Yeah, because at first it felt like, oh, they're trying to do some kind of deal, right? Yeah, quit pro quo. To make this work. But now at this point, it's like it now feels like there's you say, there's like a reverse psychology deal going on here.

Because why do they continue to keep pushing it? Yeah, I, well, especially since now we have that reporting that says that actually the Chinese memory manufacturers are also booked up, obviously, because everybody is. So what's going on here? And so now I'm wondering if there's an expected. outcome that Apple is hoping to get here that's favorable for them, that might be something like increased attention. I don't know. We don't know what it is. I'm just spitball in here, but like, what if Apple has tried to lean on company, memory companies to get more factories built, maybe even in the U.S., and that there's been some resistance to that? Right. And I wonder if

one aspect of this is them saying all of this and then going to Howard Lettnick. and Donald Trump and saying, you know, the solution to this is that so-and-so company is resisting, building more American manufacturing for Iran. We've been trying to work with these big manis, and they're just not helping us. And they're not committed to American manufacturing, and they're not going to help us. So can you help us there? Because you can see what kind of a thing. We don't make us go to China for RAM. We don't want to go to China.

But what options do we have? They've really got us in a quandary here. help us out and hope that something shakes out where then there's some saber rattling that happens and then suddenly Micron kind of like drops out of a bush and says, oh yeah, we're going to build a new plant in Nebraska. What are you talking about? It'll be great. Apple's going to, yeah, great.

I do wonder, because I'm not a memory industry analyst, but like there's a lot of, there's probably a lot of politics here involved and that's probably an understatement, but also there's the, I wonder about the mindset of the companies that make memory because it's a little like an oil cartel where like right now they're riding so high that do you want to make more capacity because you can increase your supply and as long as there's demand, you can increase your supply and keep making money. But if you increase your supply too much, then the prices will fall because the demand will be out of balance. And so maybe you want to keep everything. It's the classic, I mean, I mentioned it oil cartel. It's the classic like OPEC has

decided to reduce oil production. And why do they do that? Because it keeps the prices up when they decide to do that. Because if you flood the market with oil, then the price goes down. That's economics one-on-one. So I wonder if that is part of this, too, that the memory companies are actually a little hesitant to, and maybe a little worried about a bubble. Yep. And they're like, well, we don't want to invest three billion dollars in this plant or four billion dollars in this plan. I spend all this money and if the prices go down now we've kind of ended up in a worse situation because we spent all this money and now

the prices go down. I mean that's obviously what they're resistant, right? Right. So if you're Apple and you have a line to the U.S. government and the U.S. government is making life hard for a lot of companies in terms of they want to encourage American manufacturing. Maybe there's a play here where you're like, these guys

don't want to build enough factories in America, lean on them. And we'll put in the money, but you've got to lean on them to commit. do it. Maybe that's a game that's being played here. I don't know. That's just a guess. There has to be a game and I've stopped being able to understand. I thought I really understood it and now I don't know I don't understand it because it's like the part of this story that makes me think there is still a game being played is why is so we can't go in on the record

of the Wall Street Journal. They don't do this, right? It's like when Cook made, I think it was in the journal as well, all the financial times. It was surprised me that he wanted to give this interview and said all the stuff he said. They're trying to get a result and, you know, and it may, it may be as simple as, you know, money from the U.S. government, but I do sometimes I wonder if it's not really money from the U.S. government. It's the U.S. government leading on somebody else to spend money. Yeah. But whatever it is, we'll, you know, we'll, we'll keep an eye. We'll keep an eye on it. But there's, there's a lot going on here. I am coming around to the idea that Apple doesn't actually really want to buy these chips that are not available from this Chinese manufacturer that nobody

wants them to buy chips from, and instead they're kind of making a point to get something else, whatever that is. Speaking of Apple in China, Reuters is reporting that Apple trained a custom AI model for China in collaboration with Alibaba. So previously, they were using models from Chinese companies to power integrations like ChachyPT in iOS. But this, from the reporting that I've read, it feels closer to what they have done with Google in the rest of the world, but for China.

This makes Apple the first foreign company to receive approval from the Chinese government to offer a proprietary model to Chinese users. It's an important market for them and it's the only way they can go in. So this is... This is it. I thought it was interesting.

There isn't much to say about this, but it was interesting to me that... Because we knew that we're going to do something like this, but that detail of they're the first non-Chinese company to be involved. And they're training with Alibaba's model is, yes, very much like the Gemini kind of thing, which is like it's not Gemini. It's using Gemini, they're distilling Gemini basically. And so it may be that how do you make a model that passes muster in China?

And one of the ways you do is you distill it from a model that's officially approved in China. Yep. All right, settle in for this one. Because this is something where I've read a bunch of stuff and I don't. fully understand what's happening. But we're going to do our best. So, in the ongoing fight between Apple and Epic,

Apple have now proposed the structure that they would like for companies that want to offer payments outside of the app store. So this was after Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers ruled that Apple did not willfully comply with her ruling back in April 2025, one of my favorite stories in a long time, because it was just so fantastic the way it all fell apart.

This was what allowed companies like Epic to push users outside of the app store and pay nothing. to Apple in return, right? And then Apple and Epic have been stuck in this limbo where everyone's appealing to courts and no one's getting anywhere. Well, Apple eventually got someone to take their appeal, which is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. They asked Apple to, so they said that Apple should be able to charge a commission for, quote, necessary costs, right? But they said that Apple needs to say what they are. What are the necessary costs? Apple was proposed,

as something that should not surprise anyone. What they would like to charge is 15% for standard apps, which is subject to a 30% in app purchase commission. So if you're subject to the regular 30%, and you want to have payments outside, they want to take 15% of that. They want to take 10% for anybody in the programs like the video partner program,

the news program, the mini-apps partner program, and for subscription renewals, and they want to take 5% for small business apps. That's what they want. However, Apple have said, that necessary costs are essentially zero, but based on expert analysis, it believes that, quote,

large numbers of US developers collectively accounting for the lion's share of App Store revenue will be able to link out profitably under the proposal that they would like. And this would allow them to then recoup compensation for tools and technologies that they provide developers. They're arguing that the necessary costs definition is much too narrow

and are saying it doesn't cost them anything directly, to deliver this stuff, but that's not the argument they are making. This is very funny to me because it's like you've finally got someone to take your appeal, but you're like, but no,

you didn't take it the right way. You didn't do it right. You're doing it wrong. As well as this, Apple has asked Judge Gonzalez-Rogers to order both companies to Epic and Apple to a settlement conference

to reach a resolution. Epic's response to all of this, is essentially saying all they've ever wanted to do is settle it, but do not believe that Apple will settle anything that will create fair competition. They will participate if asked. Sure. So we'll see where it goes next. Yeah.

I mean, I guess you got to admire Apple for just sticking to their story. I'm not sure any of this is necessary costs, right? Which is what they're saying, which is hilarious, really. I love that they still, they can't find an argument. I'll tell you, Apple thinks it's necessary for them to make big profits on this is what they think is necessary. Apple, I really believe that Apple is just like, but what are you talking about? We deserve a big percentage of everything that happens in our platform. It's necessary for us to get that because we say it is.

And again, not a lawyer, but I look at this and I think to myself, this is not going to work. They're playing the same song. and the song, nobody wants to hear this song, and they're still playing this song. I think it is not surprising that they're at the same time as filing their response to this appeal asking for a settlement conference because I don't look, I'm not a lawyer as well

in the same way that Jason's not a RAM analyst. Yes, we are definitely the same level of legal education. But what I've read, because I was reading the settlement to try and kind of get their language, It just, it kind of feels to me that they know they're not going to win this argument, right? Because it's, they have answered it accurately. There are no necessary costs if they are not facilitating the transaction. So if you think about how this case has progressed, Judge Rogers said, you need to, you need to fix this.

But I'm not going to tell you how to fix it. It's a class, it's this classic legal maneuver, which is like, I'm not going to tell you what to do. which on one level is admirable. It's like, I don't know your business like you do. You tell me, now that I've given you the guidelines here, which is that we need to have competition, this needs to be fair on the people who are building apps on your platform, you come up with a solution that solves this.

And Apple came back with its solution that was so laughable that it absolutely did not solve it. And Judge Rogers was like, well, that's so bad you're in contempt. So it's now zero. Right? Like now there's nothing, right? And Apple's like, oh, but that's not fair. And contempt, you know, is it like, just because we didn't like understand is that contempt?

And again, I don't really buy it. But, but you're seeing Apple kind of like going up, going down. And by making this proposal that is, again, not interesting and not, I would say, in line with what Judge Gazzalz Rogers wants. And then also saying, can we talk? Can we, can we talk? it does make me wonder if what Apple's sort of doing is saying

look, tell me what you want. Like, let, what do you want? What do we have to do? It's almost like a settlement conference that's really with the judge and Epic can also be there. Which is like,

because Epic's going to be like nothing. Like, okay. And Apple's like everything. And then they both look at the judge and the judge is like, you guys. And then she'll be like, how about this?

How do people feel about this? And in some ways, it really may be a conversation between Apple and the judge about like, what will she feel fulfilled by? That's like, okay, this is a way to do it. Because I think in the end, Apple knows they, Apple has learned the hard way that no compromise can lead to no money, right? Like, okay, you don't want to compromise and you are not allowed to take anything. That's not good. They don't want that. So I, and I've seen, I think we've seen this in some other parts of the world that.

Apple finally comes around to sort of like, what can we do? What's the least we can do, right? Because the maximalist approach that they've taken is not it. So what do they want to do? It's like what's the least they can do? They should have started there maybe. Like that's a good place to start negotiation is this is the least we could do.

But they started at max. Okay. But at some point you've got to say, okay, let's make a deal. So I think that that's what's going on here is Apple's trying. to find a way to settle. My problem with that is that I don't think Epic is going to ever accept terms that Apple would suggest. So that leaves the judge in the middle. And I think maybe she's going to have to make a ruling about it.

And there is also, the Supreme Court did say they would hear the argument as well. Like I'm not exactly sure why it was appealed to both a Ninth Circuit court and the Supreme Court. like it, I'm not, I don't fully understand why so, that happened. So the, the way it works. Yeah. Is you say, hey, hey, um, you can't go straight to the Supreme Court. Okay. You can try, but you basically can't. And Trump administration tries that. But so basically what they say is, um, we don't like the, the district court ruling. Go to the circuit court. You say, we don't like this. And the circuit court's like, it's fine. You know, like, oh, well, then we have to go to the

Supreme Court. That's, that's your next step. Okay. The Supreme Court, in this case was like, yeah, that's interesting. But the Ninth Circuit also, I think, has their ruling, which is sort of like, well, we could talk about necessary costs. So those things are happening in parallel. And then it ends up, the way the legal system often works is it ends up getting referred back to Judge Rogers, because they don't retry the case.

They just give some instructions about how the judge should rule. So I think we've got two things going on in. parallel, which is a little bit weird. It's almost like three things going on in parallel, right? We've got the Ninth Circuit Court, we've got the Supreme Court, and then we've got the settlement conference now. Well, right, right, which is trying to preempt the rest of it from happening. Because I think the best result, we talked about it a little bit, the best result of the

Supreme Court for Apple is going to be them saying, oh, yeah, she can't, she can't rule you in contempt for something that she didn't give you specific instructions about. so we will refer it back to her to give you specific instructions. I think that's the best they can get is that Judge Rogers will once again tell you what to do, which is not good for Apple, really,

because she's not going to say, you're fine. She's going to say, do better, which is, so it actually feels like all of this kind of converging in the same place, which is they need to make a deal. And they need to step off of their box, step off of their high horse,

and say, okay, what could this, look like where we get our money and you get your money and everybody makes more money and it's more fair and there's more competition but not too much and we all walk away and that's i guess what they'll try to do which we've all been saying that from the beginning it's like apple could avoid a lot of this and if they had been more reasonable with their their dealings but i think apple's counter might be yeah but if you add up what we paid the lawyers and what we ended up getting instead of what we would have proposed, we made more money. Like, right? If it ends up with a plan that's better

than the one they would have been stuck with, then maybe it's worth it for them to go through all of this, just to be obstinate and save some money in the end. It's unfortunate, though. Yep. This episode is brought to you by Scribe. Scaling isn't a headcount problem. It's not a budget problem either.

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Our thanks to Scribe for their support of this show and Reli. It's Rumba Roundup time. Yeah! The beta for Mac OS 26.7 Tahoe accidentally revealed a lot of things. Mac Rumors has a great list where they've been able to work out some products from code names and references, including, there's a lot here. Two home hubs, which they expect is one of a base and one to be mounted on a wall, a new Home Hub mini, a set of home accessories of some kind, some feature sets or sensors. one may be with a camera, so it's like there are smart home stuff.

References to something called Pebble, which has been previously reported as Home OS for the Home Hub, AirPods with cameras. Then there was a separate report that shows a video of someone using them to scan a book with the audio and the video saying

with visual intelligence, your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later. So it's like a help video of some kind. Yeah. And there's also a note that, and it's from the Macromo's article, if hair is covering the AirPods, you receive an alert,

which is to get the most accurate information about things in your environment, make sure your AirPods are not covered. So that's the idea of it. They just say, don't do it. Don't cover them. So we'll probably come back to this. I'll just finish this list. AirPods Pro 4.

All of the 18 lines of iPhones are referenced to their codes. They're just like code names. a series of Macs, including two iMac models, something that they expect to be the M16-14-inch MacBook Pro, three other MacBook Pro models with the expectation that OLED's in there somewhere, a new iPad Mini, and a reference to a headset that's not the Vision Pro. So, so much stuff, which is pretty rough. Hey, Mike, remember when, in 2012 when Tim Cook said Apple was going to double down on secrecy?

I mean, you know. Do you think John Turnus is going to like half up on secrecy? It's not like, is that what's happening here? It's not like they told anyone about it. They just, they just didn't do the stupid thing. Secrecy is like not putting things in the betas, is I think. Maybe, maybe, uh. So you know, you got like loose lips sink ships.

You could have like loose code sink's boats. We can go with that, something like that. We'll get in there somewhere. Okay. It's a, it's, it's, congratulations to Mark German. Yeah. Because we already know about all of these things because Mark German has reported them. But these are all confirming things we already had reported by Mark German, which is a very strong correlation that these things are happening and that they are coming soon.

So, um, the home strategy, clearly. AirPods with cameras, which I, I'm glad at least that we know now what AirPods with cameras is supposed to be for, because. it never really seemed to make a lot of sense to me. The idea that it's, I mean, we'll see how the world views it. We'll see how the world views it and if they think it's like creepy specs or whether Apple will get away with it.

But if you're trying to frame it as visual intelligence and you're not using it to creep, then maybe, but what we'll see. And the hair alert is pretty good too, right? Yeah. Like, you're too hairy. Fix it. I see.

So people will post us on social media, right? I was just looking at the responses, and there are so many people who are like, I don't want cameras, get these cameras out of here, which is how people are going to react to this product. I don't know how they're going to deal with this. I think if you say there's a camera of any kind, I don't think anybody will care enough to learn about exactly how it works and how it doesn't. And so we will see, I guess, how they want to do with that. But yeah, there's a lot of stuff in here. As you say, there's not a lot that we didn't know about.

but it's interesting if it's in 26.7 we would expect a lot of these things are coming relatively soon right? So because why would you need to put them in 0.7? I think a lot of this stuff might be in the iPhone event, really. Yeah. I think the iPhone event may be shaping up to be, you know, home, watch,

iPhone Pro iPhone Fold Yeah I mean because if you think about it they're saving time because they're not going to have all the iPhones

in the September event so there's definitely space within the keynote Well they're taking two out and putting one in so yeah or I guess taking three out

and putting one in yeah so like that you know they potentially have a bit of extra time if they cared about such a thing

I don't expect no two out two out Two out and one in, but yeah, sure. Sure. I don't expect Max, though, right? Like, at this? I can't, I feel like the Macs are completely unhinged from this and they'll be elsewhere

in there. Like, because we don't even know, because of, I mean, unhinged is the wrong word, except as Max are unhinged right now because of the RAM stuff. It's like, what, why are they going to release? Like, we're happy to release these, to announce these Macs. We have no idea when we'll make them. But they'll come eventually, good luck, bye. You know, like, I don't even know what's going on with those, right?

That's a real struggle for them. So I can't envision Mac content at this event. You either do a later event or no event. Now, that feels, that's got strong New York event energy to me. October New York event energy, I would say. Yeah. I feel like, late October, early November, New York, here are some new Macs, bye-bye, that kind of thing.

Yeah, because I feel like if they're going to do the OLED specifically, that's not just going to be a press release, right? They're going to want people to have some kind of. curated experience around that. Well, because it's not just the OLED as a touchscreen, right? It's the rumor. Like, I can't imagine that they just drop a touchscreen or an OLED MacBook Pro who a brand new design in a press release.

Like, I think you're right. It sounds like an event of some description somewhere, one of these like little ones where they have a few different things going on at once, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, I don't know, really interesting. It's all in the detail.

This is the beauty. I know people are like, oh, Mark Grimman, he's spoiling the element of surprise. But, you know, for me, I think, and I think for all of our dear upgradians out there, it's in the details. It's the storytelling. I know I reinforce this every time. But like, for me, always the most interesting thing about an Apple product rollout is the storytelling around the product. Because that's Apple. That's Steve Jobs, secret sauce. And it remains Apple's magic. They build this interesting technology. But, you know, there's a lot of interesting. interesting technology, but like, what's the story about it? How do they intend? Because the story about it is not just a marketing and PR spin. It's how they envision the product. This is why when you look through history of Apple products, you see like, wait a second, the product marketing people are involved in the creation of the products. It's like to a certain, yeah, Phil Schiller helped, you know, create aspects of the iPod, right? It's like, well, yeah, because part of the making of the product is the idea of how it gets used. the story of how it gets used is part of the product. You don't, if you make a product without a story around it,

you've got a product that doesn't have a reason to exist, and they want it to have a reason to exist. So always look at the storytelling. Always look at what they call it, what they price it, what they name it, the examples they give. And that's why I'm excited about these products, is because especially in new categories. I mean, the folding phone is a good example of a new product that's like,

it's not just a folding phone. seen some folding phones, but an iPhone and how does Apple spin it differently? But the home stuff, like, what are they going to say about that? Yeah, I cannot wait to see what they say. Yeah. You mentioned Mark German being the spoiler. If you allow me to do some followout. Okay. It's probably by the end of this week, the next episode of Cortex will be out on Mark is my guest. And I ask him this, I ask him specifically about this. How do you feel about being called the spoiler? So he's, Mark, it's a very interesting conversation that I think listens to this show, especially will appreciate. So you can look out for that in the cortex feed sometime this week.

Speaking of Mark German, who I said to him, you are the star of a segment on Upgrade, which he knows about. He's aware. Mark German reports in Bloomberg that Apple is still on track to release a, quote, glass-centric 20th anniversary phone next year. this report counters an analyst report from Edison Lee at Jeffries who said that the device had been cancelled. According to Mark, this phone is to use glass, quote, on the front and back, and will curve into the sides of a metal band in the middle.

I read this and I was like, I don't understand what you're trying to tell me, right? Like, what is a glass on both sides of a metal band? I've seen that lots of times, right? I don't understand that. So I was looking around a little bit more. According to Mac rumors, they were reporting on Weber Leaker Digital Chat Station,

who gives a little more information, at least, says the two new displays have increased in physical size while retaining the same aspect ratio. The rationale for this is that Apple's borderless four-curved edge design uses a flat 2D display combined of a glass cover, and that takes advantage of the glass. optical refraction and shape to create the visual effect of a display lacking borders. So it's what they're doing with the glass that makes the phone screen look different

more than the fact that it's made of glass. Right. It's curving off the edges. It's falling off the edges. So it feels like it could be an entirely piece of glass, but there is a metal band in the middle, which I think is the source of Edison Lee's report, because Mark, what Mark German said is there was also a model that they were, you know, a design they were trying that would be sort of like all glass on the outside. Yeah. And they couldn't get it right. So they went forward with this design.

And he's like, ah, they failed at their thing. And Mark Herman's like, that was a long time ago. And they have, it was one of the iterations. And they're still going forward with this. But yeah, it's the, it's the almost illusion that the devices, all glass and all screen. And that's what they're going for. And I wonder if it's like this is something I learned from the Apple Watch Because that was one of the one of the Apple Watch models right where they created the like the

They had like a watch face that was kind of made it look like it was going over the sides Because there was one year where they did the kind of refraction thing to make the screen look bigger And there are some other phones that have done stuff like this and to varying degrees And yeah I think I think that's what they're going for here is they want to build something that really gives the sense that I believe has been, I know I said this about the iPhone 10, but I'd say that this is another step along that journey,

which is I'm sure Johnny Ives' initial conception for the iPhone was the ideal iPhone is just a piece of glass that is nothing but screen. And they keep moving toward that idea. And with Johnny Ive, it's like, no home button, okay, no... Charger.

Ultimately, it's like no cutouts for photos for cameras. Yeah. Just screen. And if you need cameras, the cameras are invisible under the screen or whatever. Like nothing else. I think that is their goal. What do you think they're going to call this iPhone? iPhone 20.

Two zero? Yeah. They're not going to do double X, right? No. That was a mistake, I think. Right? I think in hindsight, very quickly, they probably realized that the 10 was a mistake. I don't know.

It's fine. You can get away with it. You can get away with it. But I'm sure that's Elon Musk's favorite iPhone of all time. Oh, my God. That guy. So double X, yeah, I think it seems unlikely that they'll do that. They could, but there's no doubt.

Apple's had a lot of X branding. They haven't a lot of double X branding. I think it's, I think it'll be 20. What about the 20th anniversary iPhone? No. I think it'll be iPhone 20. Or iPhone 20 pro, maybe. We'll see.

Right. They might still do a 20, right? Is there a, what else is there? Is there a 19 pro? Well, there would be a 19. Right? I mean, history suggests yes, right? Because when the iPhone 10 came out, they brought out the 8.

Alongside it. Yeah, but there were no, there were no non-pro iPhones at that point. So you could do the iPhone 20 pro and then in the spring do the iPhone 20. That's just the non-pro. Yeah. Or you could call it the iPhone 20. keeping in mind that this would be, so this fall we're going to have the iPhone 18. So you could next year have the iPhone 20 and the iPhone 19 if you really wanted to, but 19 Pro, but I think it would be confusing.

So if I had to guess right now just on the spur of the moment, I would say, it's probably just iPhone 20 or iPhone 20 Pro. Probably iPhone 20 Pro, in fact, and they just skip 19. Or the 19 Pro is alongside. I don't know. I don't know. Because I could imagine a scenario where they bring out a 19 pro and then a 20 and the 20 is more expensive. And maybe they get rid of the air at that point. I don't know. The 20 is like, it's like on top of the 19. Right.

And then that spring they come out with a 19 and then what? The next year they come out with the 21 and the 21 and they skip? Because you've got to skip numbers. Yeah, you've got to skip them at some point, haven't you? Yeah. But that, I mean, and that is valid that the next year the iPhone 20 becomes the 21 pro. and then the following spring you get an iPhone 21 regular.

Yeah. Trying to work this out is definitely not made any easier by the fact they're splitting the release. Right? It is. It is totally, totally not. But that's my guess.

I guess the other, the other option would be that this is iPhone Ultra if they don't name the folding phone that. And the advantage of that is they get to start the numbering again. Yeah. Yeah.

Because then it's ultra-2. Yeah, I wonder if they call the air, the air too. Or if they just called it the air. I wouldn't be surprised if they just called it the air and they didn't number it. Maybe. Speaking of, actually, Mark reiterates in that report that the plan obviously is still to release the second waves of iPhone line in the spring and notes that the air will indeed get a second camera, better processor, and more battery. Right.

That are going to have a good second crack at that product. Yeah, it does sort of feel like maybe the air will then be subsumed by this. I think so. I think, again, it's like that cursed fourth iPhone. What if you actually just went all the way to the very tippy top? I think people would dig that more than the air, which is like, that's a really interesting phone, but you're losing some stuff. And maybe not gaining enough where like, you know, with the folding phone, you're going to lose some stuff, but you're gaining something quite unique, which is better than just it's. slim, which is lovely. Like the slimmest

night, so the air is amazing, but that is not as good as there's a tablet inside. What about iPhone Tippitop? iPhone Tipitop? They should call it. iPhone Tippetop. Yep. And you could, yeah, I love it. Anyway,

the Wall Street Journal... iPhone 20 Tippetop. There you go. Why not? I mean, they just keep adding names to everything. The Wall Street Journal, it was back again reporting that Apple is in talks to pay publishers to give Siri AI better access to news and current events. According to the journals, some of these figures are reading into the hundreds of millions of dollars over multiple years.

Quote, Apple has published a variable compensation plan with payments made to partner publishers where their content is used, some of the people said. The company has discussed a possible nine-figure budget for the payments. Assumedly, these deals would stop any potential litigation between these publishers and Apple, because many AI companies are seeing this, as well as giving Siri good source information to pull from a point two. Yeah, you want to create a subsystem here that is, if you ask about current events, I have a database of newspapers and other news sources from which I can draw directly and say,

this is what's happening, and then I can spin out links. And you kind of need to have this, right? Because your model is trained on old news. So you need your model to have current events content and, you know, license it from sources and have a good search engine that hits that that gives you content that you're allowed to index and search and recite and maybe even read

content from? I mean, that's good. That's good. You should do that. And you should pay those people who are generating that. I mean, this is essentially a search engine deal where the search engines are paying for the content that they're indexing, which is that not what happened with web search engines back in the day. I like it.

And also hasn't happened with the creation of even Apple's Apple intelligence models where they just scrape the web to begin. Of course. Of course. But this is different in that it's not training a model. Yes. Here what we're saying is it's basically letting Apple's AI query this particular essentially search index for current events content.

And so it's a, it's licensing that index they're going to build a news index, which is great. That's good. I like it. This is, this story is funny to me because it's like some of the Apple news stuff of like, where or where did the Wall Street Journal get this information? who could have told them?

Who could it be? Was it around the water cooler maybe? Someone found this out. And according to the Ilaq, Apple has made the decision earlier this year to start keeping OLAB panels in reserve for a six-week period instead of a four-week period. This appears to be a way for them to make better purchasing decisions when pricing is preferable.

And while this component is not seeing the issues that the RAM and storage are, it is a belief that this is an indication of them trying to do things in their operational pipeline to alleviate some of the overall costs of their products. And so I expect that this is just an example of other things that they are doing, which is like a break from the norm for them for holding on to inventory of anything, but maybe they're doing more fine-grained deals and kind of expanding these timelines on some of their products

to kind of try and get them the best margins they can get overall in actual. If you see some volatility, if you can expand your buying horizon, so you know, you're not holding, you can hold on to those parts for six weeks and not just four weeks. That means that, you know, there's enough volatility there that, I'm sure somebody basically said, did you see this like pointing at a spreadsheet probably? Did you see this? If we went out to, if we went out to six weeks, like there was a really low price and we could have bought six weeks worth of inventory and instead we could only buy four and we knew the price was going to go up. And why do that? And why do you? didn't we buy six weeks worth of inventory here? And they're like, you know, I think, even though I know there's a Tim Cook dogma of like, you know, you don't want to keep a lot of parts on hand and everything is sort of just in time if you are saving money by keeping some more parts on hand in the bins. And they're going to, and they're increasing their use of OLED, right? It's only going up for them.

Yeah. Interesting little vision into how complex these supply chains are, too. This episode is brought to you in part by Keeper. One weak password is like having an open door to all of the stuff you wouldn't want anyone getting access to. Keepa slams that door shut on every account you have with a strong, unique password, like a big lock for each one, so that nothing's left exposed and none of those doors are kept open. Keeper as a password manager that creates strong, unique passwords for all of your accounts and stores them securely in one place and logs you in automatically across all your devices.

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Our thanks to Keeper Security for their support of this show and all of Relay. It's time for the details. So when I wrote the show document yesterday, This started with we're now on beta 5. And now I can say, well, we're now on beta 6. Waiting the day. It makes a difference. Big difference.

There was a three-week wait for beta 5, which is abnormal. I've actually put a link in the show notes to thinky bits. I think is this Will Haynes, I think. They are, yeah, I was correct in that. They've tracked beta releases and actually just iOS releases all the way back from history. How long between each release and a three-year-release. and a three week wait for a beta is very rare for the point of the point O releases.

But that was interesting, but then within less than a week, beta six came along. In beta five, we got some refreshed app icons, British English now being an option in the enhanced voice for Siri, which I'm very happy about.

And a selection of smaller tweaks. There were also some bugs introduced that for me that were fixed in beta six, like I had this really weird, it seemed like quite prevalent. A bug in messages where I couldn't access the top row.

Yeah, can't scroll to the top row unless you scroll down and then back up. So they fixed that. On my iPad, Spotlight no longer showed results. Oh. It only, in the top,

it would show you the top result because that's auto-completed when you search. Yes. But the box below it. And I discovered just how much I rely on Spotlight to launch.

apps. Yes. Because I would type, I wanted to watch the Apple TV app and I type TV and it said, television time. And I love television time, but it's not the Apple TV app. Or what was the other one? There was another one. Home.

I typed in the home app and it was like, oh, you want Home Assistant or, I'm like, no, I want the Apple Home app. And yeah, I could swipe over to App Library and search there. And that's what I did for a week, like a sucker. Yep. But I had something similar in one of the earlier bases. where I would pull down on my iPhone to search and just some of the apps

were just invisible with no name. Oh yeah, no icons or names. So it's like, I guess I'll just press this one. Actually, I really like, I really like that because it's like, which of these invisible icons is most likely to be the top, you know, is the thing I was searching for the top hit or is there something else like it?

And I did a, it was very like, very Google, I'm feeling lucky. Yes, or I'd be like, that's probably it. And tap it. It usually was. But yeah, all the icons seem to be there. Yeah, so I went from some icons are invisible to all icons are invisible. I was like, okay.

All right. I got to use app library search, which I only have one page of apps on my iPad. So the next, so it was swipe over and search instead of pulled down and search. So it wasn't that big a deal. I actually filed, yeah, last week was rough. I filed three different feedbacks last week about bugs that I found. a bug that I used to get in 26 and it's back, or it was back in the last bit.

I don't know if it's in this one. Where the iPad software keyboard, sometimes if you type on a letter that has a bunch of, you know, diacriticals, accents underneath it, it would stick. And so I would be typing and I would keep typing letters, but that letter, none of the other letters would be typed. Yeah.

Because it was stuck. And then it would. sit there doing nothing and then like a second later the little diacritical thing would come up be selected and go down again and i'd get a weird accented character yep and it's like what are you doing it's very funny for a software keyboard to stick right yeah it feels like something right hardware keyboard should do so and that and like literally the only way to get out of that is to restart and because otherwise it just sort of oh it started to stick now we're out of here it's the equivalent of blowing canned air into a physical keyboard so that we'll

see if that bug is gone, but there were definitely several bugs that I filed last week in five. But yeah. So I guess, Mike, we got to get to it. Yeah, all right. So beta six, bug fixes animation tweaks, new icons on wallpapers with macOS, some of the icons matching the icons that they brought to iOS. One of the biggest ones is preview, preview has a really nice new icon. Yeah, and out on board. Preview an F tier icon by per upgrade standards, I believe. Much higher now. In our tier list.

Not that we're de-listing them right now. The classic shot glass icon that previously was there has been replaced. And we now have, out of nowhere, redesigned spotlight window control on Mac OS. So your little traffic lights at the top of your windows, they have now been liquid glassed. Why do you call that spotlight? That's not spotlight. Spotlight is spotlight.

Oh, I meant stoplight. Stoplight. Stoplight, not Spotlight. You see how close they are? Spotlight is totally different. It doesn't even have a way to. It's a different kind of light. But stoplights, red, amber green. Yes. That's what I meant. Good. So I'll put a link in the show notes to Stephen Hackett's article, because Stephen also has all of the historical looks of this.

What do you think? Is this worthy of a drama? Are we in controversy town or not? I don't know why there's any drama here. I mean, there's always drama. If it touch anything on the Mac, Jason, people are going to get mad. All right? I think they look nice. Yeah. I think they're...

I do have a take. Here's my take. There you go. I think the deactivated state is not right. Okay. The deactivated state in some windows, it almost fades to oblivion. I don't like how they look. I wish there was...

I think the deactivated state, I would like to be a little different. I don't know quite what. But like my slack window, the background there is gray. and so it's like gray on gray, and they're like little deformations in the window. On my browser window that's with a white background, they're okay, but I wonder if the deactivated state could be a little bit better,

maybe even a little darker, and maybe even with a little, I don't know, I don't know, but I like it because it is more aqua-y, for those who know the old days, and more liquid glassy, but, you know, in a good way. I think they look nice,

We're exiting the era of flat design. I think they look nice. In a post on Mastodon, Jeff Nado, I would assume, works in design at Apple because of the way they were talking about it. Shows this off with an animation that doesn't exist currently. Where, like, if you press and hold and pull them, they do a little bit of a jiggle.

I hope they ship that. That would be fun. Oh. But overall, I'm a fan. I think this is lovely. I think they look really fun. And I think it makes... This is like a perfect part of Mac OS

to give the liquid glass treatment to, in my opinion. Well, as I think, as Gruber said, like every change that they seem to have made in Golden Gate has been... For the best. Progress. And one way you can do that... Remember the tough compare?

You know, Tahoe is an easy compare. Yep. Right? It's like, well, you know, if we want an OS version that everybody praises every design decision we make, why don't we ship a version where everybody hates the design decisions we made? Because that lowers the bar so low that we can now fix it and get praise for fixing our own disastrous decisions. But here's where we are. That's where we are. So we're about a month away now, I think, from the release of 27 versions.

Yeah. How are we feeling? How are you feeling about them all? I mean, less than a month away, probably. Pretty good. Yeah. I think they're in pretty good shape. I'm, yes, I'm much more concerned about the work I have to do in the next month than I am in.

What are you doing? You're reviewing MacOS, I assume. Yeah, I'm BackOS review, probably an iPadOS review, and I got to finish my update to my photos book. Plus, we've got to lodge Design in California. Have you heard of this new podcast that we're doing? Yeah, design in California. and by the way, all new iPhones. And the iPhone.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot. Actually, one of the things that I like is that the relay fundraising, our live podcast event is not until the end of the process. Yes, it's going to be up to over now. It used to be that like four or five days of my most busiest time of the year was blown out by the podcastathon. And now that's going to happen later in the month. And that is very, very good for me. That decision has not been taken without that exact thing in mind.

it's going to be good for all of us. But yeah, there's a lot going on. I think the betas are good. I mean, I've been using them since the beginning, and I think they're solid. I think the Golden Gate has always, all along been an improvement over everybody who's on Tahoe or not on Tahoe.

Because, you know, if you haven't used Tahoe, you missed all the great features in Tahoe that they added. And now they're here. And they hooked, like one of my favorite Tahoe features is they added a bunch of automation stuff that then broke.

But it's back. It all, it works now. They rehooked, they plug that back. in whatever they did. Yeah, and the iOS has been solid and iPadOS has been solid. I've been pretty happy. I think it's a good solid set of updates. That's my, that's my short review. And so I'm, I, you know, I'm looking forward to it. And I think their trajectory to go back to that grouper point, I think

that it's positive. I think that they are making good decisions. And I think they are not afraid to keep adding incremental improvements over time. And I hope we see that all fall and next winner and spring too is just kind of keep making this stuff nicer as we go. But I think it's pretty good. I have two things for you today about the Bayes. So one, I vibe coded one of those Safari extension things that they have. You know, you can do your describe an extension to route X links to the X counsel service. Oh, that's nice. I like that. I have an app that does that that I use because I I subscribe to a chain newspaper's local site for me that has a lot of links that I get

inbound from another paper in the chain and I'm not logged into the other paper because I subscribe to Paper A and so it takes all the Mercury News links and puts them at the Marin Independent Journal instead because their URL structure is identical. And so I love... So that's a... I'll just mention it

since people like to know it. that is an app called redirect web that is a safari extension that just uses pattern matching redirects so you can build that. But you built your own. Yeah. And when I did it, it said like, oh, you can go and get this app that does it. Like it showed it. Yeah, right. It does do that. But I wanted to see what the process was like. Yeah. And it was so easy. So I did it with, so we use, especially for incomparable, I think a site called Strawpole, which is great. You may have heard Merlin back in the day talked about Doodle a lot. Doodle kind of got junked up with stuff.

It did. It was headed in a direction that I didn't want to go. StrawPull is like a, I think it's like one developer. It's great. I pay for the subscription version, but it's cheap and it's good. However, StrawPole has two modes. It has like schedule meeting and it has like schedule. I forget what the other one is.

but one of them is not what I do because I only ever schedule meeting where you pick a bunch of times, not people, and you say, and then you hand out a link to everybody and say, this is how we schedule incomparable. How do you get a huge panel of people who may or may not be interested in the subject

and may or may not have any common times? How do you schedule a podcast with them? It's bad. We used to do it in an email. It was very bad. A poll. You feel the poll. And like if you're interested in the subject matter, and the only available that are an option are the ones that I'm available for.

Those are the ones I put in there. And then we find a common time with a common group of panelists. If there's like 10 panelists who say yes, I do some producing and pick the panelist, pick the panel I want. Sometimes I don't get to pick. There's only three people who will do it and wear the panel. They have these two different modes. So I vibe coded a Safari extension that hides the tab that offers the other mode because I

always click it. And I'm like, no, not this one. And if I, and if there are other links to that option, it redirects them. So it does two things. It hides that tab. Yep. And if I go to that URL, it just redirects it to the other one because that's the one I want. And it's so great. And I was like, this is what this is for, which is I have a website that does not behave the way I want. So I will make it behave that I want. It's great. I love it. Really good feature. Very nice feature. Yeah, and not tech. I didn't have to say like, find the CSS that does the, I just said, there's, there's this item in the menu bar on this site. Hide it. And it links to this URL. Every time anything links to this URL, link it to this other URL. And it was like, got it chief, done. Amazing. And oh, I went, there was a fix that they did in one of the way that's not I'm very happy about. And I think you've done it in a clever way. So I was frustrated that by combining Spotlight and. Siri into that UI where you pull down.

That autocorrect was then turned off for requests you were making from the home screen, which made it hard to ask Siri questions because you make lots of mistakes. But now,

after you've typed a few characters and it realizes that what you want is to ask Siri, they just turn autocorrect on. It's like you can pay attention as you're typing. You'll see the first few characters

there's no quick type suggestions at the top. And then once it does that thing where it's like Ask Siri, you know, it says like it has that little like icon. You can see that it's going to do that. Then autocorrect gets turned on and your auto correct is done. I thought it was a very clever way dealing with that problem. But then I also wanted to share another excellent Siri AI interaction that I had. So for designing California poster prints, we want to have some nice packaging for people, like strong packaging to send them

with. And when Gray and I did a poster print a few years ago, we did all the packaging. We did all the packaging at home. And Edina did some research into finding like a good strong envelope and like a little like clear poly wallet to put them in, like mail a wallet thing. And then also like a backing board into the envelope. And so we wanted them to arrive safely. And so I was like, right, I want us to have similar stuff that when we do the signing, we can put them in these envelopes and then we'll send them off to the fulfillment company and they will put them in like a bag or whatever and send them, but then we'll feel good, we've done the best we can to protect them. So I said to it, you know, we need to start looking or ordering some of that kind of stuff,

so it can be ready for when we start signing them in September. And she was like, okay, I know we spoke about it somewhere. And she said, why don't you ask your friend to find it for me? That's what she calls Siri A.I. She calls Siri A.I. She calls Siri A. My friend. And I thought to myself, this was in 2021. There's no way it goes back that far. Like, I was just like, I just, like, I just, didn't think it would be able to do it. But I was like, you know what? I'll try. So I asked to look for a conversation between me and Edina in September 2021 to find the, you know, us having this

conversation. And it couldn't find anything. So I broadened it to ask any time in 2021. And it found the email because it wasn't in September. The conversation actually happened in October. Right. So that was like mistake number one for me is I thought the only way it's going to work this out is if I try and be really refined. But no, just 2021 was enough. It found the email that Edina was hoping to find. She was sitting there on her phone trying to find this email searching in the mail app, but it found it immediately. And it had, like she'd sent me a list as I could, there's these options and these options. So there was two different routes. And I didn't remember which one I chose. So I said, can you find an order email that indicates which of these options I chose? And it said, yeah,

here you go, from this company, from his packaging company, here's the options that you chose. And then Adina remembered that she wanted to make an adjustment, like to add something into the package, but couldn't remember the specifics. So I asked, and it said, yes, a week later, I can see that the two of you discussed having a thicker card divider being needed, but it could not find what we chose.

So for whatever reason, maybe I didn't order it or Edina didn't send me the email. But I was... You had that conversation in real. real life instead. Yes, I guess. But it was funny. It was like it showed the text where it said, you said, hmm, we probably need to get the divider. That's right. So it reminded me that you kind of, one, you've got to give this system a shot because I thought it wouldn't be able to do this and it absolutely did it. And also to be prescriptive, but not too prescriptive. And I kind of feel like let the computer be your memory. Like that's what it's supposed to do. So exactly. I was very impressed by this,

by this because it solved something. I don't know how long it would have taken for the two of us to try and find that by searching for different emails in the email app

and it was like immediate. I asked like two questions and it gave me the answer. Very impressive. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Yeah,

I've been pretty impressed with what it does. Again, not perfect, but pretty good, pretty good. It's kind of funny to see Apple's promises

from two years ago actually kind of happen. But yeah. But it's like, you know, I've been saying this and I keep saying this and I'm going to keep saying it. You've got to leave your existing feelings about Syria at the door. Yes. You have to just start again and just keep asking it questions. And I think you'll start getting more answers.

But you've got us, like, even I was reminded again. Like, I thought this would be too complex for the system, but I was wrong. Like something that happened five years ago, it found it immediately. So it has what it needs. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting or scaling a business, Squarespace would give you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. I do really love how Squarespace has all of these tools for people that are running businesses,

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That is Squarespace.com slash upgrade with the offer code upgrade to get 10% of your first purchase and show you support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay. It is time for some Ask Upgrade Questions. Dennis asks, Jason. You mentioned you used the television time app to keep track of the shows that you're watching.

Do you share any of these lists with your wife on her phone? If you do, how do you sync the data between the two of you? If you don't, how is that? Like, do you have any kind of system where you're talking about what's what you're watching? We don't. I'm the keeper of this data that she would probably not care to keep. We did have a moment last night where she said, you know, there's a show that I was wondering if we finished watching. And I don't think we did, but maybe we did.

and she said, did we watch all of season two of the four seasons on Netflix? And I said, I said, no. Well, she didn't say on Netflix because she does know where anything is. But, and I said, no, it's on there.

I haven't gone back to it, but it's on. And I was like, I know it's, I didn't need to look. I'm like, no, we're like halfway through that. We'll get back to that. There's been, there's a big list. But we don't share it. We could.

She's expressed no interest. I think she's not interested in logging our TV viewing, but, and I think, I think there's a good case of, she is happy that her husband, is the one who's going to be a repository. You would take advantage of the fact

that he knows what TV to watch. You know? Yeah, I mean, I take advantage of the fact that you know what TV to watch. Her opinion matters, but she's not going to log stuff. She's not going to log stuff. She doesn't care.

That's my job to do. I have taken that on. So after, yes, after 31 plus years of marriage, we are, that role has been assigned to me. And by me with her approval, really basically because who else is going to do it. I'm going to do it. But I'm still doing

it, which is good. Ryan writes in and says, you know what product would take zero gigabytes of RAM to redesign? The Apple Magic Mouse. What's even the point of having a nerdy hardware guy as CEO if we don't get an updated design within his first 100 days?

If you can make a foldable iPhone, surely you ought to be able to move the charging port on the mouse, right? Okay. this one goes out to all you mouse lovers out there. The Mac is a small percentage of Apple's business. Max with mice attached is a small percentage of Apple's Mac business.

Yeah, but just make one charge of with Mac safe. You know, come on now. I'm sure they'll get around to it. Well, this is it, right? Who's going to get around to it? The safe. John Ternis is your boy. He's going to do it.

He's not going to do it in the first 100. days probably, but like, sure, sure. I'm surprised it's taking this long just because Apple got so much crap for having the charging port on the bottom that I, I, I'm surprised they didn't just do it in embarrassment, but they didn't. But yeah, I mean, it'll, it'll happen. But it's, this, it's low priority. It's just low priority. I honestly, I think it's incredible that they actually still offer a mouse. Yeah. Why? It surprises me to not like Maxcombe with track pads. If you want a mouse, look at our friends Lodgy Tech. Yeah, many mice are available. Well, honestly, I think, oh, let's start a rumor, Mike. Maybe they're just going to not sell mice anymore. I think that is more likely. It's a third-party opportunity.

Yeah, I mean, Logitech-Tac make the best mice. And there are no good track pads out there because as we discovered when I was trying a bunch of third-party iPad track pads before there was, like Apple has spent so much time optimizing their trackpad firmware. Like, it's so much better than any other trackpad out there. And it's integral to their laptops as well. So they're not going to stop making the magic track pad. But the magic mouse, I mean, it's the lowest of priorities for them, obviously. They could just stop. But they probably won't. They'll probably keep it around. It's just going to be the lowest priority ever. Logan says, I have a time tracking question. It's been a while since I heard Mike talk about time

tracking, so I thought he might enjoy the opportunity. Logan, you know me well. I work as a dispatcher and often my job rotates between five or six different tasks in the span of a few minutes. All things are intermingled and happening simultaneously. Would time tracking and having work just be a solid at-work block still be beneficial? I have high hopes it will help me motivate me in my after-work hobbies and aspirations. So I think it would be difficult to track your work granular, right, as Logan mentioned, because you're moving around a bunch. So from me, I'll just tell how I do this, I time track whatever the dominant activity is, because, you know, as I'm working, things are popping in, I don't switch timers if someone sends me a Slack message or whatever,

and I just answer to it and go back. But I have projects. All of my dominant work is projects. Like, this is a podcast editing, cross-forward marketing, podcast recording. I have these as projects. and then I use tags for specific shows. So if I'm doing anything podcast related, I have a tag, which is all my podcast names, and I link them together. I would say that maybe you could try and break it up into a couple of projects possibly.

But if you're pulled around the lot, maybe you can find a dominant activity. But you mentioned one of the reasons you want to do this is for your hobbies. Well, what you could do is you could just track your work time at work. then track your hobbies. So if you were to have something,

let's say you want to play Dungeons and Dragons or you want to do puzzles or whatever, this time tracking can help motivate you in other things you want to do in your life. That's not just work because you have this thing and you can be like, all right, I'm going to press start on the timer and now I'm doing it. It helps me mode shift a lot.

It's like, all right, I'm in this mode now. Like, I'm doing this thing. You're sitting down, you hit the timer, you focus on what you want to do. and then the data that comes from time tracking is the real benefit. So I have found in the many years that I have tracked my time, it is so much more revealing to what you're actually doing than what you think you're doing because we are very bad at estimating time,

especially when we have emotions that go along with the activities. If you're doing something you don't like doing, you always feel like you spend more time than you actually do. so I love that I can then get reports about what I'm doing with my time and it helps me make important decisions when I need to like if you want to see what some of this looks like and kind of how I think about it I did just write about like what it's been like in the last six weeks since the design in California Kickstarter ended kind of how I spent some of my time

and I was able to go in and get an answer and I was like oh okay that is a significant portion of my podcast related time is on this podcast right now which was what I expected, but it was interesting to see how much that percentage was. So I really value that because it can then help you make further decisions. So Logan, give it a go. I recommend the app Timery. That is what I use. Timery requires a subscription to a service called Toggle,

but you can use their free subscription. So go and check that out. It's super good. I'm a big fan to go and check it out. Time tracking, everybody. It's an amazing thing. I appreciated your enthusiast post, and I had the opposite, because I'm on the inside, when you were like, look at what it is.

Anormous percentage of my time on podcast has been designed in California, and my response was, so little? Well, as I'll say, I'll say a few things to you now. So one, I think you should indicate to you how much time I spent on upgrade. Yes, of course. The other is that is 36% of time that didn't exist. Ah. You've created new time.

So this is added time. The 36% of my time that is going on designing California for podcast work, I haven't stopped doing anything. Right. Which I'm sure you can. So like it's actually, I was surprised that I have spent as much time on designing California in the last six weeks that I have on upgrading connected combined.

And again, I say, I am not surprised. Not even a little because I've seen it. I've seen the work. I've seen the sweat. It is a lot of work that only is a lot of work, but a lot of it only needs to be done once, which I'm very happy about.

And I'm keen to see what happens to my time tracking once designed in California is actually just like an ongoing project as opposed to a project and a lot of setup. Steve says, I want to upgrade to a new pro fund this year, but the 18 pro may cost more than I'm willing to pay. I'd like to choose within the 17 pro

an 18 pro, but I'm worried that the prices will go up. So what if I buy a new 17 Pro just days before the announcement and don't open the box? Then after the 18 comes out, I can decide if I keep it or return it. Is this a good idea or not? What are the risks? Well, first risk is if you wait to buy it until the last minute, they might raise the price before then. Yes. I guess that's part of the risk.

Although I feel like you're in the window now. Right? Yeah. What is it? 30 days? Yeah, I guess so. So you could buy it now. Like the next iPhone surely will be unveiled within the next 30 days.

This is a great idea. If you've got a somewhat older phone and you're not sure you want to pay for whatever the 18 Pro is, go buy a 17 Pro if you're within the return window. Get yourself a cosmic orange or whatever you want because all the rumors suggest there won't be an orange phone next year. I love it. And see, you could totally do that. As long as Apple will take it back and you know they'll take it back, you could totally do that speculation. Yep.

Yeah. And Matt asks, has Mike looked into the Fitbit Air as a suitable subscription-free screenless fitness tracker? So we've been talking about it, a bunch on Connected because Stephen has one. Ultimately, for me, I like the fitness app and I want to close my rings. Like, that is part of it.

I really like Apple's fitness app and Apple's products talk to the fitness app. so I want somebody else to do that too. Because again, if they talk to Apple Health, it can do something, but it doesn't do your rings. I did some of this stuff with whoop, and I just didn't like it. I want Apple to make a screenless fitness tracker, and I think we're closer to that possibility

than we've ever been before. If you would like to send in a question of your own for us to answer in a future episode of the show, I think we were talking about this earlier. Next week might be the end of the summer of fun, but we might not know it. It might be. It's possible. The draft might be two weeks away.

If the event is on the eighth or ninth, then we would have to do the draft on the 31st of August, in which case next week would be the end of the summer. So we need to plan a summer of fun something for that. I feel like we haven't had enough fun in this summer. I know. You know why it is, though. Yeah. It's that 36%. Yeah.

We're doing something that's going to be fun for everyone, but you've got to wait. I'll tell you, in addition to the last possibly summer of fun of the season next week, we'll probably, like, drop a zillion episodes of Design in California next week. So that'll be fun for someone, not us, but someone. Not new ones, though, but they're coming real soon. Not new ones, but yeah. We're very focused right now. We'll try to, yeah, it's been a busy summer.

Busy summer all around, I would say. Thanks to all over Kickstarter. You can find, you can send us your feedback. I should say your follow-up and your questions, you'll ask upgrade questions, just no short questions by going to Upgrave feedback.com. Thank you to our members

to support us for UpgradePlus. You can get a longer ad-free version of the show every week by going to GetUpgradeplus.com. You can find us on YouTube by searching for the Upgrade Podcast. I'd like to thank our sponsors of this week's episode. That is Ship A ton from Revenue Cat, Scribe, Keeper, and Squarespace. But most of all, I'd like to thank you for listening.

Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, my curly.