Upgrade - 634: Crime River

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 634 for August 24th, 2026. Today's show is brought to you by Shiperton, Daylight, and Century. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow. Hi, Mike Hurley. It's almost over, but it is still the Summer of Fun! Yep, this is, I mean, this is probably it, right? That probably is probably it now.

Like, Mara, we continue to expect. and as we get closer, expect even more, that next Monday will be the draft. Yeah, I think probably so, right? Like, our best guess is that Apple's event is in two weeks. We don't know, but that's our best guess. I just had the thought, like, you know, me and you are very busy right now. We'll talk about it more next week. But the thought of the draft prep right now feels horrible.

That feels like a really big job to do. amongst all the other big jobs. Funny thing about this time of years, it's a very busy time, but also there's a lot of moving pieces, and we have more this time, because we did that to ourselves again. And I was thinking about it,

like there's so many moving pieces. Also, I'll just throw into the mix that my son is trying to find a place to live in Oregon, and he's trying to move into a house with his friends in Oregon, and his lease is up on September 5th. And Lauren and I just keep, I mean, we are planners. We put things on the calendar weeks or months in advance. And we don't know what we're doing on Labor Day weekend because we may have to go to Oregon and move him.

We may not need to move him if his friends are moving at the same time. We may need to put his stuff in storage if he doesn't have a place to live. We don't know what we're doing Labor Day weekend. And it is very nerve-wracking. I will say this though. The smartest thing that anybody ever decided was to put the Relay FM St. Jude podcastathon at the end of the fundraising cycle instead of the week after the iPhone came out. So thank you to all concerned. Because it sure helps to know that I'm not going to be in Memphis for a week until the end of September.

That's a relief to me. I believe if my memory is serving that it was a conversation me and Stephen had while. standing in the studio during one of the rehearsal days last year. Why are we doing this to ourselves? I was like, we have to do this at different time. Originally it was like, let's piggyback on the excitement of the iPhone and all that. And now it's just like, why are we stomping on this? So anyway, I appreciate that.

It's going to be a busy time. It is also frustrating, yes, as somebody likes to plan to not exactly know when Apple's event is going to happen, even though we have some guesses. We don't know. And so we just have to roll with it. And it's a busy time. and we get through it. I mean, the days still pass

and we still do what we need to do and all of that happens, but it's just a wild ride. And that's one of the reasons we talk about summer fun and sometimes there's not a lot going on although that didn't happen this summer. I also love the summer of fun

because to me it represents, I keep calling it the cruise phase after the OSs are released at WWDC and we're in beta. There's a period of time where like nothing huge happens. There's no new Apple product announcements. We kind of know what's going to come next

and it's not going to come next until September. And I really like that. And that's why I'm sort of like taking basking in the last summer of fun possibly right now because what happens after the summer of fun is that marching band comes in, marching in with the draft music. And then we are working hard for like three months.

So it's, again, I'm just enjoying a last little, the gentle breezes of the summer of fun one last time. I have a snow-talk question for you. Thank you. It's summer-themed. Stephen wrote in and asked, Do Jason use any tech-forward thermometers when cooking or grilling or barbecuing? Or does he use an old-fashioned thermometer? I was actually just grilling last night.

Okay. So great timing. I have a thermopin instant read thermometer, which is my good product recommendation if you do not have one get a thermopen instant read thermometer it's an instant read thermometer you stick it in the meat or whatever yeah and it tells you the temperature i was using my thermopin actually with when i made um my uh lemon marmalade that i made a few months ago because you you want to hit exactly the right temperature basically and then you take it off the heat and i got i nailed it this time because i realized you know i should probably just

stick the instant read in there and do it that way. And that totally worked. I do have a combustion smart thermometer that you basically stick into the meat and then you put it out there. And I like it. It's expensive. And the problem is that I've I've destroyed two of them. Because I think even though they're supposed to survive the heat, I don't know if they are as Eventually the heat will get them. Also, they lose their battery really fast. So you kind of like almost always have to charge them right before you use them. However, I did use it last night.

I charged it right as I put the stakes on and then let it sit there until I flip the stakes. And then I went and got it and stuck it in. And that's really cool because it's got like, it's an instant read, but it's like five or six instant read sensors. So it can detect which one is at the center. at the low point and then give you, you know, an estimate and a readout

and stuff like that. So I use that some, but the truth is, all you really need, the gadget that you really want, and my kids will tell you, they're dead, loves a kitchen gadget,

is the thermopenn instant re-thermometer. That's what you need. It changes the way that we cook. Like, everything we were cooking was overdone until we got the thermopan.

Yeah, because you're like, I don't know, unless you want to cut into it, you're like, I don't know, is this done or not? And it works with, like I said, I used it with a lemon

in Marmalade. It works with just about anything. And you don't have to have the you know, the sensor on the metal sensor that like runs out with a cord that attaches to something on the outside of the oven or something. When you're trying to look through a window. You can literally just, yeah, exactly.

Or hangs off of a rack. You can literally just open it, stick this thing in, look at the temperature, pull it out again, close the door. And, uh, Insereid is the way to go. So, yeah, and Thuripan. They come in fun colors. Mine's green. I have a bunch thermopenn stuff that's green or orange and it's a lot of fun. So,

highly recommend Thermopenn. If you would like to send in a question for us to open a future episode of the show, just go to Upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snelltalk question. We have some follow-up. So Joey wrote in and said, for all of the iPhone screen and size and hand issues you've been talking about and one-handed usage recently, I just want to mention popsockets are a huge deal for this reason. And I would like to give a big endorsement. I would say popsockets better than ever since it's like using MagSafe, right?

So you can just connect them by MagSafe so you can take them off whenever you want to. Popsocket has a new model, which is like very, very, very thin. I don't like it as like an OG like purist of the way that a pop socket should feel in your hand because it has a very different feel. But if your issue is that it adds bulk to the back of your phone, they've created one, which is like super thin now. Okay. I'm going to do a thing that's a very, as people will discover, a very design in California, Jason kind of thing. Yep.

Which is, we're going to take it back a step. Say, for those who do not know, a pop socket is this little thing that used to stick and now mag saves to the back of your phone. And it's flat, but you can go bo boop. And it pops open and you can stick your hand around in between the two sides of it and use it to hold. And it gives you a better kind of hold, different kind of grip on your phone because you're holding your fingers between the pop socket. instead of gripping your hand around the phone itself, right? Yeah, and even for me, even when the pop socket is closed, it just gives me another kind of anchor point on my phone.

Like, I mean, I don't use a case. I don't use them. To be clear, we are covering the entire range of pop socket here from not to yes. I don't understand how people hold on to a phone without a case on it and just are able to hold it. Like, I find it uncomfortable. Like, I really love just having it. having something there.

I have my, like, my thumb on the left side, and I have my four fingers on the right side, and that's my, that's how I got it. That's my grip. Like an animal. Like an animal. Yeah. And also, here's my favorite thing. You could just prop your phone up to watch video. It's so good. And, like, I watch a lot of video,

and I can just pop my phone up there and just, just watch the video. It's a good time. So thank you, thank you, Joey, for just the, it's just a reminder to everybody out there. I mean, Mike never forgot about Pop Sockets, but it's just reminded to everybody out there, who has, this came up because there are a lot of people with mini iPhones who are like, what do I do? And some of them were like, maybe I should just get a big iPhone because then there's no way I'm going to be stretching my hand around it. If you're having iPhone ergonomic problems, the Popsog, especially since they could do MagSafe, so you don't

have to stick it with a sticker to the back and it will work, you know, through, I think through a case or whatever. Like, yeah, give it a look because that is a solution that a lot of people love for ergonomic issues. And I think for a lot of people with the wide phone, it will be even more helpful because I think that phone is going to be odd to hold when it's closed. And so having something to kind of help anchor, I think is going to be really good for people. Yeah, maybe so. I mentioned it last time, but it's out now. My interview with Mark German on Cortex as part of my state of the workflow series is out now, if you want to listen to it.

I got a lot of nice messages about this one from people. Yeah, it was really good, actually. He's been on upgrade. He's been on upgrade a long time ago. Yeah. So yeah, if you want to go here a little bit about how Mark does what he does, you can go and listen to episode 182 of Cortex, where I have Mark on the show.

Nice. The sheriff himself. Jason, you reviewed another new smart home lock. So you had previously had the Akara ultra-wideband lock, and now you have replaced it maybe, or at least for this review, with a new Schlagg. Schlager. I say, I mean, Americans, I think, say Schleg,

it's Shlaga in German, but whatever it is, It's a Shlaga Sense Pro. It's another UWB lock. So it's one of these where if you've got an iPhone or Apple Watch made in the last like, I don't know, five years, they've got UWB in it. Remember the U1 chip? What's it for?

Well, this is one of the things it's for. And it means as you approach your door, it just knows you're there and it unlocks. It's the, I think, the platonic ideal of a smart lock in a lot of ways. So I bought the Akara. Schlaugas sent me this to review. So I didn't have to buy another one. I didn't want to buy another smart lock, but I was curious about this, and I used to have a shlaga encode plus before I got the Akara. And it's good. It's good.

It's design is really nice. It's much more subtle. The Akara is kind of a big black slab on the front of your door. This one is more like a little plate. It's still got a number pad that lights up and that you can put in a code. You can still do NFC, so you can do tap if you have a device that does tap to pay, basically. You can do tap to unlock if you don't have. have UWB.

It's got, the old one, the old ones used to do, like, it had the holes for a nine-volt battery at the bottom of it. So if, like, the battery died and you couldn't get in, you could get a nine-volt battery and stick it there and then it would work, which I thought, like, who carries a nine-fold battery around with them? Now there's just a USBC underneath it. So you can plug in a USB cord. You literally plug in your iPhone and the lock to a USB cord that you keep in your car, let's

say. And that will be emergency power for it. The batteries are last a long time, but that's a nice modern change. Unfortunately, the battery themselves, unlike the Akara is just four AAs. And they don't last as long as the Akara battery. And then you're using AA batteries, which feels really, a rechargeable battery pack just feels like a much nicer setup. Doesn't do fingerprint, doesn't do key. I don't really care.

Some people will like that it doesn't have a keyhole because it's a one less thing. somebody can pick the key, pick the lock. And this one doesn't have that. So that's all nice. It's a good product. My big issue with it is that the Akara UWB lock, which is the first on the market, costs like $260.

And this costs $400. So, yeah, it's a lot more expensive. And it doesn't really feel like you get features, right? Like, if anything, it feels like in some spots it has maybe not all the features, but whether you want them or not, right? Like you say, it doesn't have to fingerprint. I don't know if people want that. But it's a different feature set,

but you really are paying for the look. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I heard from some people who are just like, I don't, you know, this is a company that does locks and Akara is not. And so I trust them more. And it's like, I get it. There are lots of reasons.

Like, I don't, I thought I was going to have an answer here about like, this one's better, this one's worse. And in the end, my answer is, they're both fine and one of them costs way more than the other. And like if you have a satin nickel front door, because they only, the slaga only comes in two colors, black and satin nickel. They used to have more colors. They used to have like a brass or whatever. If it matches the style of your door, it's probably worth it to spend $400.

Mine is like that because it's less obtrusive and it matches my door and the Akara is just a big black blob. It also doesn't look like a keypad lock. Like I don't know what I would think this was if I saw it. But the Akara is very much like welcome to this Airbnb. Exactly. Yeah, this is this is a lot more subtle. It's like a little, it's almost like a little track pad attached to your door. But when you touch it, the numbers come up and you can poke in the little numbers and get in that way. That's a like your dog walker can put in the numbers or your house cleaner or your house sitter. We have a house sitter and she's got her code. And it all works with HomeKit and all of that. So it really is, yeah, I think aesthetics is actually the biggest thing about it. It's just much more slimline attractive. and maybe that matters to you but 400 bucks for some people

it's gonna be like I don't care about that stuff well 260 for the Akara will do you then Yeah Are you gonna stick with the Schlager? I haven't decided yet I actually have an email into them

about like You know we had a swap So they sent me in a different one Because one of them wasn't working right And so I had to take it off And then put another one on So I kind of don't want to do it

But like So I shipped that one back So my question to the period of person now is, you know, do you want this back or not? If they want it back, I'll take it off my door. If they don't want it back, I may leave it on my door at least for a while because honestly, I do not want to spend another two hours after I already just spent two hours swapping locks. But I like the Akara. I would be happy to put the Akara back. I just don't know.

You know, sometimes with vendors, it's very funny. Sometimes they want, like with Apple, it's like this too. Like, companies want stuff above a certain value back, but like below a certain value, they're like, they've already written that product off. There's nothing they can do with it. And they're like, we don't want it back. Just give it away or keep it or whatever. We don't care. And I'm unclear where this $400 lock falls into that.

So I don't know. But I would really like to not take a lock off my door for a little while, even though I've got the Akara and a bag. And I've got all, I got the boxes here. So we'll see what they say. But I like the Akara fine. I just, Lauren agrees. with me though. She's like, this one looks nicer. It does look way nicer. She's not wrong. It looks a lot nicer.

It looks a lot nicer. It's true. It's true. This episode is brought to you by Ship Aton, the global hackathon for builders launching real apps to real stores, competing for big prizes and showing the world exactly what they shipped. Do you have an app idea that you keep meaning to build someday? Well, someday, just got a deadline because Shipton is back. The world's biggest mobile hackathon brought to you by Revenue Cap. It's simple. 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 is 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. I'll spell that for you, though. That is shi p-a-t-t-on.com. That is shippatun.com.

Our thanks to Shipaton from Revenue Cat for their support of this show and all of Relay. It is time to lawyer up, Jason's now. Yehaw! Nope, tongue-tong. It's a country lawyer this time. Oh, wow. Oh, okay.

So what is this? It's like a Western country. Yeah, it's a Western theme, Mike. I'm getting into a Western theme. Lawyer. Okay, so. All right, everybody. Here we go.

Maybe for the last time. Okay. Apple has taken... No, come on, Jason. All right. Let's have faith. Apple has taken another crack at DMA compliance of the App Store.

And it seems like they may have done it this time. Yeah. Get ready, chat. We may have done. it. We've finally, we've finally done it. So the biggest takeaway is they're simplifying things, I would say. There's still complexity, of course, but there is an overall simplification, and it seems like they're focusing on a, I think, more understandable set of rules to get their cuts. Like one of the big things, I could spoil it. The core technology fee still exists,

but only in very specific circumstances, where that was something that was in. incredibly confusing. And it did remind me in doing this, the last proposal that they made, where they introduced the core technology fee, where it was previously called the Core Technology Commission, I think. Yeah, maybe. That version with the... You know what? I think it was originally called the Core Technology fee. Then they changed to Core Technology Commission. That version of their DMA rules never shipped. They never did it.

Like, they were like, it's happening. And they never did it. They never happened. And it because immediately the EU was like, no, stop it. And so they've gone back to the drawing board. They've gone back to the negotiating table. This is where we are. So one of the key things here is that this set of rules that I'm about to talk about,

previously developers had to opt in to these business terms they were called. You could stay on the old ones or go to the new ones. But now, all European developers will be automatically opted into these new terms from October 1st. And that is because if you don't want to take part in alternative at marketplaces or external payments or anything, your situation actually is better than before. So why not roll everyone into it? I think they're able to do that and they've just got these new terms. Where previously you would have had to have made decisions, right?

Like if you had enough downloads, maybe you're going to have to pay fees, you have to do auditing all this kind of stuff, so it made you opt in, but now that's not the case. So the biggest news here is that the standard commission for publishing an app in the app store has been reduced to 26% from 30% if you use Apple's in-app purchase system, and it will continue to be 15% for subscription renewals and for developers in one of their various programs, right? They have like a suite of programs that you can be a part of if you're a special enough developer. They have the small business program, but they also have the mini apps program and the readers app program and the video app program. It'll be 15% for them.

It's 20% for if you want to use alternative payment processing. So you want to remain in the app store, but use payment processing from somewhere else. That's 20%. Or 10% if you're in one of the programs. If you link out to complete purchases, right? So you're, let's say, let's say you're a Kindle, right? and you want to have a link out. You have to pay Apple 15%.

10% if you're in the programs. And now the core technology fee remains as a per install fee of 5% for any sale of digital goods or services for transactions made outside of the app store if you're using an alternative marketplace or web distribution. That's the base.

It's basically a, yeah, you owe Apple 5% for the money you make from your app if it's not in the app store. Yeah. And the other ones, the alternative payment processing, that's if you remain in the app store, but you won't have alternative payment processing.

And then you've got the main ones. So, like, I think the biggest news, oh, sorry, it's the commission now. It's called the Cloud Technology Commission. I wrote Cloud Technology fee in my notes here. It's the Cloud Technology Commission. This, I think the biggest news here is you get a bit of a discount, right? If you're a developer in the EU now,

you go from a 30% to 26%. which is nice, I suppose. Like, I don't think it's huge, but it's a nice thing. One of the things that was always so frustrating to us when looking at this stuff, going back all the way to the beginning of the DMA, was the reporting requirements that Apple would make you do, where they basically wanted you to open the books.

And I was reading in the news about this. I was reading Apple's press release, and then I was reading all the reports. And I'm like, hmm, there's a lot more that you would have to prove to Apple now than you did before. for because we didn't have this like link out requirement and like so like what's going on here how did I know and so I went to the developer website and dug through some of the stuff and I want to

read to you this is a little bit long but I think it's interesting the reporting requirements if you opt in to any of these kind of like alternative systems so for purchases of digital goods or services on the app store that don't use Apple's in-app purchase you're responsible for the collection and remittance of any applicable taxes for sales processed by an alternative payment provider. You're also required to track and send Apple a report of all alternative payment transactions for applicable commission fee calculation and collection purposes. Required reporting includes refunds, corrections, renewals, one-time purchases, and transactions that don't result in a purchase. That's unbelievable, that last one. This report will need to be provided monthly

within 15 days following the end of the calendar month. Please note that Apple has audit rights pursuant to the terms and conditions in the Apple Developer Programme license agreement. This allows Apple to review the accuracy of the developer's record of digital transactions as a result of the entitlement, ensuring the appropriate commission has been paid to Apple.

Failure to pay Apple's commission could result in the offset of proceeds owed to you in other markets, removal of your app from the App Store, or removal from the Apple Developer Program. That part of the end, wild to me. Like, if they think you're not giving them all their money, they'll just take your money. It's just like, we'll take it from somewhere else.

And then lastly, developers who distribute their apps via alternative distribution, including those who operate marketplaces, are responsible for reporting their transactions of digital goods and services to Apple. All transactions subject to the Core Technology Commission must be reported,

including transactions that didn't result in a completed sale. That part of the... that part, you've got to tell us the transactions that didn't report in a sale. I'm a little bit like, why is that your business? They may have analytics that suggest what the volume is. And so you need to say, you know, I don't know, but Apple may know you got 100,000 referrals and you say you only got 80,000 sales. The rest.

To say you also got 20,000 no sales. I was wondering if it was a bit like, hey, you're not doing a good enough job. of converting here. Converting, get your rates up, buddy. That's our money. So, I mean, again, it's like you can do all this stuff, right? So you can do alternative payment processing. You'll get a 6% discount, which, you know, I've heard a lot of people talking about that. I read some from Ben Thompson a little bit, but he was on dithering and his daily update was saying,

you know, about 6%, between 6 to 10% is kind of like the cost of using a credit card provider, which you've considered the fees and also refunds and all. the stuff you lose. So essentially, let's just say that, let's just say for the sake of it at 6% is how much, you know, you would, that's how much that would cost. The difference is 6% between that and using alternative payment processing. And then you have, I would say, quite a big cost on your hand from a bookkeeping perspective, if you're a big enough business, of you would need someone to do this work, provide this documentation to Apple, deal with Apple, they have continued to create a scenario where I think it's just not worth it, right?

To do. It's hard to say. It's really hard to say. Unless you're a massive company, I think. It feels to me, it feels to me like this entire thing is the EU basically saying, forget about it. We've given up, yeah, it feels like that. Forget about it. And more like, give us something that we can use to declare victory, which they

did declare, right? Like, we protected consumers and this is great. Without actually doing much of what they meant to do. Some of these things are good. I still get bugged by the fact that if you want to if you want to offer your app

for external download, you have to prove that you're you have to get done in Bradstreet to verify your business or something. It's gotten a little bit easier, though. So, yeah, but not, but it's still like you, you still got to prove. Like if I, if I wanted to release an app, I would either need to pay for a Dunn-Brad Street audit or pay for an accountant to prove that I was whatever to put up like, literally to put up a free app. Yeah. I would have to do that. So now, there used to be, there was like a bunch of stuff you had to do. Oh yeah, you'd have like a million dollars in the bank and stuff. Yeah. So, but now if you're, if you want to operate an app marketplace or have, um, And I'm on the web. Not a billion.

A million. Just a million euro in the name. We all have that. You've got to meet a moderate financial stability bar as scored by Dun & Bradstreet. Any developer knows that horrific a process that is. A publicly traded or owned by a publicly traded company have received venture funding from an established investment firm. That's my favorite one.

I don't understand that. Have a completed financial audit by a licensed accountant or are a government entity educational institution or nonprofit. So still, there is a bar which should there even be a bar? but there is a bar, but the bar is easier to achieve now than it was before. But I agree with you

that like, kind of having to do any of this feels a little bit ridiculous for just wanting to offer an app on the iPhone. Like, but you've got to get down a brush street if you're a developer anyway,

so if you want to offer it anyway. Yeah, I, um, so that part of it, like, again, I, it all feels like, it's minor concessions. It does feel like,

uh, this is kind of a win for Apple. I also wonder if Apple, is going to now be able to use this and point at it and say, look, the EU is satisfied with this. Why don't we just make this the deal everywhere and get everybody else off their backs or whether that's not going to be allowed? It's still not the same as other places have done, though, right? I think, like, in Japan, they have a completely different set of rules for linking out. I know. That is the one that frustrates me the most. That bugs, that bugs me the most because that is literally the EU apparently saying it's okay.

Steering is fine after all, apparently, right? Unbelievable. The fundamental lack of competitiveness of you use the Kindle example of the fact that Apple can build a bookstore and sell books direct, but Amazon can't because they have to pay their entire profit to Apple for being in the app store. And what Apple says, what Apple basically says is you're using our APIs and the app store itself. And that is worth 15% right there. and so that's what you're going to give us is 15% of every single transaction. I'm like, I mean, that's so super anti-competitive, which I thought was the problem here. Yeah.

Giving, giving, I mean, Apple is happy to give you a discount on stuff in exchange for allowing them to continue to have reduced competition, right? What a deal for Apple. Yeah. I love, I love the fact that the EU has said you can make an app store and not be Apple and that you can, I think, more. important because I hate I hate the alternative app store I'm just going to say it I hate alternative app stores sorry to Riley at old store I mean in it's fine I hate the solution to the app store being a monopoly being other gay keepers yeah I hate it everyone should just be able to down I put their software up for download like a Mac download software here's my app go get

it and pay me and like that is what software always was before the app A lot of software is still like that. I hate that. I hate that even now you need to kind of like confirm that you're a decent whatever in order to do that. But at least you can do that in the EU. So that's something. And for small businesses, there's more opportunity here. It's just this is this is competition, but it's like super managed competition at a level that the goal is to make it.

Apple's goal is to make it as unappealing as possible to compete with Apple. Like, why even bother? Just give up. I'm happy that, I get what you were saying, and I know you're going to agree with me when I say it. I'm happy that alternative app marketplaces exist. I'm unhappy that it is really the only way for a small or independent developer

to put an app on the app store that's not through Apple. That's my point is they're like, oh, you know, there's a middleman taking my money and I want to just go direct to customers and income's epic and they're like good news everybody we've saved you we're the middleman now it's like no i don't want you i don't want a middleman i just want to sell my software so at least that's so that's why i was always frustrated by it it's like great just go get some VC investment and then now now you can offer your yeah yeah step one put a million euros in the bank um which is again not quite what's going on here apparently

so so yeah i i what was it all for, it does feel like the EU just was tired of fighting and it's new people in charge of the EU stuff and they've given up. This isn't their fight. They've given up and it feels like now the EU have given up so

they can say, look what we made them do and really you didn't make them do anything. Yeah. No, that's the give up and declare victory. It's a classic refuge of a lot of politicians. Yeah. It's like, oh, what you gave was 4%. Which look, it is an amount of money that

for some developers in Europe, you just got a 4% raise. Congratulations. That is great news. But it should be more than this. Like, when this all kicked off, I was like, great, there's not going to be a fee anymore.

It's like, no, that is not at all what is happening. I just feel like we did not get to a point here that is in any way satisfying. It can really, it's just been a comming. confusing slog for years to get to, it's a 4% difference and oh, you can link out now, but you've got to pay your taxes to the taxman, you know? Yeah. Ben Thompson did something fun on Shetakery, where in looking at the different kind of percentage tiers the Apple's offering here has created what he believes is this is what Apple thinks their implied value is for each part. of the chain. So I'll just read this. And you can go read it supposedly. It goes into more detail

about how he gets here, but it's understandable. With the fees that they're charging, the commissions that they want to charge, Apple is implying that the value of their APIs is 5% of an app's revenue. App Store distribution is worth 10%. In-app payment is worth 5%. And in-app purchase with their payment processing is 6%. So just being able to use the in-app payment API is worth 5% of your revenue and the payment processing part is worth 6%. I just thought that was an interesting little calculation of like Apple have been asked essentially to come up with a set of numbers.

This is an actual set of numbers they've been asked to come up with and they've come up with them. You know, you're saying they might use this elsewhere. They may try and use this calculation with Judge Gonzales-Roges. Maybe they're like, let's go back to the table now because we've actually, we have some, we have done some work of some description now in another place to try and suggest what the numbers are. And oh, by the way, the EU said this is okay, as you were mentioning. Yeah. So do you agree now, Judge? Yeah. Big Daddy EU says it's fine. It's just this doesn't enable any competition in the end of the whole thing. No, I mean, okay, I don't. I don't. disagree with Apple saying, we provide you with APIs and that the App Store has value. Yeah.

I don't disagree with that. I agree. Yes, of course it does. My biggest issue, and I know what's going on here, because it's about in-app purchases of consumables in games, which are an enormous profit center for everybody in the App Store. But what bugs me about it is the idea that, like, because we provided you with the APIs and because we provided you with the App Store,

we now, you now owe us everything else you do with that app. Like that's all fruits of our tree and therefore everything that happens that's beneficial to you after that is also because of us and you need to give us our cut. And that bugs me and it leads to, see, this is, I am not a lawyer, so I'm very much not a judge. but like the thing I keep coming back to is what about not areas of um of Apple

kneecapping its competitors in fields that it's in. So areas where Apple doesn't have to pay the fee and can build a business model and books is the example, but there are others where I think the personally, not a lawyer, I think the existence of Apple books and the Apple Books store means that

anybody who's selling books via a link out shouldn't have to pay. Because Apple has chosen to compete in that business, I think Apple needs to be restrained from preventing competition. The same for Spotify.

Exactly. Because Apple chooses to compete in that area. Because that's the stuff that really bugs me. I am not as bugged by the things that bug the guy from Epic, right? I'm not

bugged as much by that because I think that there is I understand Apple's argument here to a certain extent but what I don't like is all the ways Apple leverages it to prevent competition that's where it

really goes over the edge to me so that's the stuff that bugs me is if Apple's gonna compete it can't use its claim of value add to bar other entities from

competing with it in areas Apple chooses to compete in. If Apple chooses not to compete in an area, I feel different about it. I really do. But that is, that's the part that it really, really stops me. Because I think it is fair. I think obviously payment processing has value. APIs have value. The App Store certainly has value. We could argue about what that value is. I would argue that the value of the App Store, if you don't spend money on ads, maybe isn't what Apple thinks it is. and that I could argue that app store distribution itself does not have the value that Apple thinks it does. There's no argument. It doesn't anymore. Right.

You're being kind. It used to be a thing. It doesn't mean anything anymore. No, no. This is what my argument would be the implied. So Ben says the implied value of abster distribution is 10% of an app's revenue. Total revenue, not just what you pay for the app. The total ongoing in a purchase subscription revenue of an app is 10% of the app store.

And what I would say to that is, what you said, which is, the truth is the implied value of App Store distribution is almost zero and Apple makes its money because now in order to get noticed, you have to pay for ads in the App Store. So they've devalued the App Store itself by doing that. Now, maybe what they should do is say, we need 10% of your revenue, but you'll get credits for ads

as a part of that. I don't know, something like that. Right? We're going to take 10%, but you can use the first 5%. You said something about APIs, right? Like having a value. Yeah. This is like X code and maintaining and building an entire third part. I agree to a point. Like, I don't believe it is a percentage value of your overall revenue, right?

I agree. And Apple proves it themselves because they maintain APIs on the Mac and do not require that you, right? So like, the thing that is so unbelievable about these arguments is it's as if there are two companies inside Apple. There is one that maintains the open platform and one that maintains the closed platform and they try and forget that the other exists. It's unbelievable. Hey, your guy is out there writing that, you know, the Mac is the model and pointing to that article I wrote. Like Apple has a whole business model that makes sense and they just don't want to use it for lots of reasons. And I get why lots of millions and millions of reasons.

But yeah, it's very silly because in the end, also, let's just say it. Apple benefits greatly from the existence of third-party apps on its platforms. Without third-party apps on Apple's platforms, it would not be much of a platform. Yes. So there is a quid pro quo there. Apple is not building APIs for third-party apps out of the goodness of its heart.

MacOS and iOS are not open-source Linux distributions, right? Like, you can't use them on products that Apple doesn't make, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we mentioned in our Discord that many of us pay $99 a year to be in the Apple Developer Program. That's the one that I always kept coming back to. And I know why they don't want to do it. They don't want to do it because they want everything to be a percentage of revenue because they want to capture revenue. And if you're thinking about small developers, they pay less. Big developers pay more. I keep thinking like the other way they could have approached this is to say for commercial developers, for developers above a certain point, the Apple developer program is either a much larger number. It's $1,000 a year. Or a classic that you'll, if you've ever shopped for software that has an enterprise tier,

they'll be like, would you like $99 a year? Would you like $9.99 a year? Or for our enterprise customers, call us. Yeah. Call us. We can't. If you have to ask what the price is, you can't afford it. Yeah.

And they could do that. They could do it that way, but they've chosen, they don't want to do it that way because that's a, that is a different conversation than saying we just put up a toll booth. and take all your revenue, or, you know, take a percentage of all of your revenue. So they don't want to do that. Anyway, I don't deny that Apple has creates some value here, but there are a lot of these things that bug the crap out of me. And that's just, you know, this is, Apple's opinion of the value it creates in its ecosystem is higher than my opinion of the value it creates in its ecosystem. That's the bottom line.

But the EU is done. The EU just wants this to be over. clearly. They don't want to fight, you know, the old people who were there wanted to fight this. And in today's political climate and whatever, you know, is going on in the EU, the people there now do not want to fight anymore. You know I love conspiracy corner with these things. Shuanna conspiracy corner. Let's do it. This has been resolved, right? Seems to be all of a sudden. Well, Apple and the EU are trying to work together on Syria AI, right? do you think anything could be related? Like why don't you actually, why don't we all come to the table here, come to an agreement,

and then maybe it will help you get this other thing that you're looking for. I think, I don't know if it's necessarily a quick pro quo like that, but I think there is definitely this is a, maybe Apple is more incentivized. Let's all work. I think it's let's all work together. Yeah. There's new leadership at the EU. There's new leadership at Apple.

Yeah. Let's all work together to move forward and find a solution here. let's settle all family business let's move ahead let's find a way to make this work that works for everybody I do think that's going on here I'm not sure it's like

you want the Siri AIS stuff you have to deal with this maybe but like I do think it's part of a larger piece which is let's be friends let's work let's let's find a way and that's and that's politics 101 let's find a way for you

to make it look like you're doing a good job while we get to do our business. Yeah. Yeah. What did they say? The commission welcomes Apple's changes to their business terms, which follow a close dialogue

between the commission and Apple after the commission issued a non-compliance decision. You think they're compliant? There's also a bunch of other bits and bobs for safety, which is not really interesting, I think, but they did some other bits and bobs too. But maybe it's the last time we talk about the DMA on this show. And I think that would be the win

for everyone if we don't have to talk about us anymore. Remember DMA today? That was a segment before it became lawyer up. Yeah. But we had to expand. Everybody else got involved. Yeah. Sorry, let me add them. This episode is brought to you by Daylight.

If you run a business on a Mac, you know the challenges. Your client emails, they're over in one app. Your notes, there's somewhere else and your projects. Who knows? When something falls through the cracks, it's usually because it was in your head or scattered to cross-post-it notes instead of in your systems. That is exactly what daylight was built to solve. For over 20 years, daylight has helped service-based businesses keep their clients, projects, tasks, calendars, and communications connected in one place. Every email, meeting, note, file, and

follow-up becomes part of a complete and ever-growing client history, giving you all of the context that you need to know what happened, what's next, and who needs your attention instantly. And with mail in Daylight, your email lives inside of Daylight alongside the rest of your work, so conversations naturally stay connected to the people, deals and projects that matter. This is built exclusively for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Daylight feels right at home in the Apple ecosystem. If you're ready to spend less time searching for information and more time moving your business forward, visit daylight.com.com and start your free trial. Use the code upgrade FM50 to get 50% off your first year of daylight on any annual plan. That is d-a-y-l-l-I-T-E dot app with the code upgrade FM-50

for 50% of your first year of daylight. The information is in the show notes. Our thanks to daylight for their support of this show and relay. Room around up time. Clunk-clunk. No. Okay, what's the story for this? Clip-Clop. Clip-Clop. Oh, it was a horse? Oh, I thought it was the gavel. That makes sense.

The sheriff's on the way to turn. I guess that's the theme of today's episode of the summer of fun. Wrong sounds. It's all mixed up. Who knows what's going to happen? We have one more sound effect to go today. Who knows what you're going to swap in instead? Not me, that's for sure.

He's got 15 minutes to think of it. Irrespective of the video last week that leaked showing the AirPods of a camera, Mark Goerman is reporting that nothing has changed on the timeline for this product, which is still intended for a 2027 release. I'd share that's a little detail. It sounds like I think he even offered an explanation that it's like there's a branch that was incorrectly brought in for the future product.

This is not imminent. Nice little detail there. Yeah, like in general, somebody asked in power on, I can bring this up, actually, if you give me a second, because I didn't actually include this in my notes today. But if you give me a second to deal with Bloomberg's sign-in process, which I really would.

wished it would just remember, and let me stay signed in, then I can tell you what he said. Yeah, because somebody wrote in and asked, like, how did all these products leak all at the same time? And he says, the release candidate version, which is about as close as you can get to the end of Tahoe 26.7 included references. Sorry, as Apple prepares software updates for launch, it pulls together different development branches containing various features, fixes, and other assets. in this case it appears an internal branch containing material related to an unreleased hardware inadvertently got merged into the public branch destined for the public. In other words,

something that was supposed to remain inside of Apple got tangled up with shipping software. I mean, in this one, even worse than it would be or should have been in just the shipping version of this release because it includes a product that's not even shipping this year. Exactly. Like the idea that Max and iPhones are in Tahoe and 26.27 Tahoe, not wild,

but the fact that there are assets, That's for a product that isn't even going to come out this year. That is the really weird part. And we got more from it too. So there was more spulunking happening over the intervening days. We have some more details on the Home Hub product. Judy Clover at Mac Rumors is reporting on how this device will work with widgets. I feel like we got this one.

I feel like we figured this one out. The idea that you would use, I think you said on this show that running widgets on the Mac. Yeah, was a precursor. Feels like it might be the method that they use where you get your iPhone widgets, not just Mac widgets, your iPhone widgets project onto the Mac. That was a feature that they added.

That that would be a way you could get widgets onto the Home Hub. Yes, that they're projecting from your iPhone to the Home Hub, and that's what Julie Clover says has happened. Yeah, because before that we were like, oh, was it going to be like CarPlay, right? Like, that was like the closest link that people could consider for how a product like this could work. But yeah, so it would essentially be,

pulling widgets from your iPhone. There's not going to be a native app store on this product, which is absolutely the right move. But then it's like if, you know, how is it all going to work? How is it all going to tie together? So Julie says all users in the home will be able to see widgets installed in the home hub,

but content in those widgets will only be visible when the primary linked device is in the home for privacy protection. I don't know what that means. Can I set a timer? Can I see timers? Right.

What about home information? Can I turn on and off lights when the person connected to this device is not there? Like it's, I'm going to be really intrigued to see how it handles a lot of stuff. Well, so I think the idea would be, there will be base functionality that's in the product, including home app essentially and stuff. And then the widgets that you choose that are projected from your phone.

So when you go away, those widgets go away, but the base functionality remains. I think that's the idea. Well, Julie's saying the widgets stay, but you just don't see the content in those widgets. Well, yeah, okay, fine. So the widgets get grayed out and they don't update because you're gone. Who knows?

I mean, and also it's like, I've got to assume you can have more than one person, right? And then how does that work? That's the question. And well, although we've, I mean, they may do voice or face recognition. Where they're like, oh, it's you. You get your widgets now.

Oh, it's you. you get your widgets now. I don't know. We'll see. And also a smart stack will automatically rotate through widgets to show relevant information throughout the day. So interestingly, right, a lot of this sounds very watchOS-o-s, right? Some of this stuff here, I've got a bit of MacOS, bit of watchOS. But then Felipe Esposito over it in Gadget is saying there will be a face gallery

for this device like we have on the Apple Watch, but is running a variant of TVOS. So it's a bit of everything. We've got a bit of Mac. We've got a bit of watch. We've got a bit of TV in this product. like. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, right, because it's the, it's the like home OS. Yeah. Also, Felipe Esposito, like me,

appears to have retired from Macworld. That's interesting. Yes. Yes. I think from 9 to 5 to Macworld to engage it.

Yeah. I believe was the move there. Interesting. Interesting. Well, that's because Macworld retired. It's a freelance budget.

Wamp. I think is what happened there. Did, yeah, is that ask you, you've made the joke and it's just clicked with me. Yeah. Should we congratulate Philippe on their retirement?

We don't see that on the verge. Man, of one of my favorite things. That was so funny. Great run, Jason Snell. Yeah. Put your feet up. Yeah, I can just, I'm not working on anything anymore. No, he's done.

In power on this week, Mark Goerman shared some of what he has been hearing from people at Apple about their experiences with the folding iPhone. This is a fascinating report from Mark. Like, because we're waiting for the, here's what's coming, right? It's literally, I mean, there's kind of nothing new in his newsletter. It's really, I talk to some people who have used it, who shared their impressions of how it feels to use it. Which is a fun thing.

Yeah, it's not invalid, but it's just fascinating that it's not like, here's what's coming next. It's like, hey, I talked to three people who used it and they said it was really cool. I still expect the here's what's coming post is just yet to be. yet to be. Of course. Well, yeah, I mean, he's already reported most of it, but yeah, he'll round it back up and that'll happen. But yeah, he talked to people who use the folding phone, which is great because the only people who've used it are inside Apple. So what did they say? Having spoken to several people have used the upcoming foldable phone, I couldn't be more excited. People who have tried the Apple model like how it fits in a pocket, the feel and durability of the advanced hinge mechanism, and the new iPad-like app layouts that take advantage of the larger internal display. I'm told the foldable iPhone excels as a camera viewfinder, but there is a significant omission. It likes a telephone to a camera.

So, I'm excited, but it's still a mixed bag, because I'm not excited about the things that it will lack, but I am excited about the possibility. Like, what is a, you know, I know what an iPad like app layout is, but I'm intrigued, like, how does it feel to use, like in a phone like this? There's a lot of excitement here.

And I'm happy that Mark is, excited, you know, because maybe it will mean good things for all of us. Yeah. No, it's, it's great because we, we know the people, I mean, I know somebody at Apple who every time there's a new product announcement, they text me and they're like, I've actually been using this for the last year and it's great, right? Because they can't say. They just can't say. So I'm sure that Mark has a lot of people like that who can't say, but said so anyway, because that's, he's Mark German. Speaking of, Mark Goeman also shared that Apple stores are preparing to make some physical interior changes to prepare for a new home product display.

So like, you know, like a display of products. Saying home and display right now is a little confusing because of the products I'm about to talk about. But like physical displays in stores that are going to be changed. This is a quote, the scale of the retail changes suggest something is coming. the long anticipated Home Hub with a display. The plan modifications appear to be too expensive to solely be about routine updates to existing products, like say, like a new HomePod Mini, new TV. It's more than that.

And so he believes that what he's hearing from people who are responsible for dealing with merchandising changes inside of an Apple store, it's suggesting that this is a significant product launch, which makes me really excited that it seems like it's all coming together now, that for realsies this time, we're actually going to get the home pod of the screen this year. Yeah, Apple Home strategy on top of it, right? And that's a longer retail changes.

Like even if they don't announce it all now, German has said that a lot of this stuff is coming and that this is a thing that John Turnus has been, especially behind the idea of pushing more into home products. And so you've got to have a configuration inside Apple retail to show off your home products. Yep. Very, very exciting.

Less exciting. Mark German is reporting that Apple has cut jobs across multiple teams in the company. Around 200 people are impacted by this. There appear to be three key areas of impact, and I'm doing a lot of reading today, but I want to read this in full because it was very confusing to me when I tried to sum it up, so it really is best for me to just read it.

So there are three areas. One of these areas is in the Siri team, and this reshuffling is tied to an upcoming, AI-infused version of the assistant, that we know about Siri AI, which is built on a new technical architecture. That shift requires a change in the necessary expertise, prompting the company to eliminate a small number of existing roles, reallocate resources, and create new positions supporting the updated Siri. To me, this sounds like people that were as part of old Siri or people that were in the Apple Intelligence Siri that were working in a completely

different field that they don't need anymore, they've removed those roles because they they're moving on to people who have different understandings and requirements for handling the architecture they have rather than the one they thought they were going to have. That's the argument is there's a lot of people doing old Siri and now we're in the new Siri era. Also, Apple is laying off employees in its intelligence systems experience, a team within its software engineering organization responsible for some AI features on its devices. The changes reflect an effort to reorganize work on AI power. capabilities. As more

groups bring AI functions to apps, features and services, Apple is realigning teams to match priorities and accelerate development. This sounds like, to me, there were people who were responsible for machine learning stuff, but now they want every team to be responsible for machine learning.

It does sound a little like that. What's interesting about this is this is not a reorg, this is a layoff. So the spin is, well, we have to move, you know, the roles are different. But either that's just the excuse for the layoff or they just think even if they're going to post jobs, they think that a lot of the people that they have on are doing jobs that are not appropriate. And I don't know the different.

The question is like if you were a person working on this team and you're told that your job has been eliminated, is your job like eliminated and goodbye or is it we also posted a bunch of new jobs, you're encouraging. to apply because like they didn't layoffs are not you got transferred to a new job layoffs are like this skill set is not what we need anymore so i don't know mark actually got a statement um from some at apple who basically says it's half and half so we will create new roles as part of this change it will also impact a limited number of existing roles so like some people will get new jobs some people won't and some of the jobs that we're laying people off for those that they just don't exist anymore. They don't exist anymore. Finally, the company is largely shutting down a Vision Pro team focused on gaming for the headset

and reducing the size of a unit responsible for producing the immersive video content. The changes are described to employees as an effort to realign priorities based on how customers are using the device and to better direct resources towards other future products. And also, Mark says that they're essentially going to start relying on outside companies to make content and make even less of it themselves. So on the content point, yeah, the idea here, I think is

spending less money on some of this Vision Pro stuff makes sense because it's not really a product. They were doing a bunch. There was a time when all immersive video was coming from Apple. Also, they do contract with third parties,

but they also made a bunch of stuff themselves. I think now that the Black Magic cameras are out there, I think, maybe it makes sense that Apple doesn't need to kickstart that part, that it's already started, and that there are other ways other than employees to do that. Even if they take that money and spend it on third parties generating content to a certain degree, they don't necessarily need Apple employees to produce immersive content. It's no longer being done with hand-built tools that only are made by Apple. Black Magic has a solution now. People are making stuff.

the gaming one I don't even know what to make of this is there gaming on the I mean I know it works with the Sony hand controllers and I've got a couple of games for it and there are some other games on it the way I choose to read this and I don't know but the way I choose to read this is

at the launch there was kind of this half-hearted effort to do some some games that were part of Apple Arcade and to get some like convince some game designers to do some games on the platform. But like, it doesn't, as long as it's $3,500

bucks, none of it makes any sense. Nor do I see lots of examples of the efforts of the gaming people for the Vision Pro. So like, yeah, it's not a path forward. It's clearly not a path forward. So I just, I'm surprised that there were people working on it at all because there's kind of no story there. There could have been evangelists, right? Yeah. It could have been people attempting to try and get games to join the platform and it wasn't working. Yeah, it's just not, I mean, until they've got a much more affordable product with a better story,

not that you can't play games on the Vision Pro, but it's right now it's just, I mean, there are very few and there's, and you really have to buy the, you really have to buy the Sony controllers to even get there. And like, it's just not viable. It's not going to be viable. there's ever an area where it's not going to be viable for, you know, until they're, like, they do another product, which they're not going to do for years, if ever. It's not going to be viable. It's just not a, it's not an area that they should be focused on. So, makes sense. And finally, Mac Rumors is reporting that according to Leika Ice Universe on Waybo, the 18 Pro Max will exclusively feature a variable aperture lens on the main camera this year. There have

been talks of variable aperture coming to the pro line and it may just be on the pro max because it needs a bigger camera bump or more space inside. If this is the case, the iPhone lineup comparison chart this year is going to be unhinged between all the devices and all their different features. Right. This one has this and this one has that. Yep. This one folds. Yep. This one has touch ID. This one has face ID. It's going to be quite the time. That's one. It's they have to hold a couple phones back for next spring because it's too complex. Too complex.

Too complex. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Century. You get a bug report. The user says something was broken, but you can't reproduce it. So you're digging through logs, checking traces. You have no

idea what they actually saw. Century Session replay fixes this. It gives you a video-like reproduction of exactly what the user experienced. including their clicks, their scrolls, what was loading, what didn't load, all tied to the error in one timeline. You can see the console output, the network calls, even the rage clicks were a user hammered a broken button, and because it's built into Century, the replay is already linked to the error, the trace and the logs are no hunting required, and privacy is on by default.

All sensitive text, the media is masked, so you're never capturing what you shouldn't be. It works on web and mobile, React, NextJS, iOS. Android, Flutter, you name it. Millions of developers use Century, including teams at Anthropic and Disney Plus, and that is very obvious to me why they do with tools like this in your hands. Because, you know, I work with developers.

When a bug comes in, really, you just want to fix it as quickly as possible, and you want to have all the information at your fingertips. I mean, I will say, I am someone who sends bug reports to people. I'm not very good at sending those bug reports. And most users aren't. So being able to actually have the information

you need at your fingertips, it will help you get that bug fixed quickly, which you want to do because you want to make you users happy, but you also want to get back to the fun stuff, building new features, working on new design problems. You don't just want to be fixing bugs all the time, and Century will help you out. Try it for free at S-E-N-T-R-Y.com.

Tell them that we sent you. They have a free dev plan, and listeners of this show can use the code, upgrade 26, to get $100 in Century credits if you're a new user. Our thanks to Century for their support of this show and all of Relay. It is time for some ask upgrade questions. Sometimes you just don't know the answer.

You don't know what to do. Your friends Mike and Jason might have good advice for you. Just ask upgrade. And you'll get what you need. It's ask upgrade. Beautiful. Really good. Live jangling.

Lyrics by me. lyrics by you. Well, this time, music by you. Performed by me. Music by you. Leon asks, how long will it take

before we see the first John Turner's product? What do you think it's going to be? It will be in two weeks. Yeah. I'm sorry. We can talk about like, well,

who really and what and all that, but it's like, first off, he's been doing in charge of hardware for a long time. They're all Turner's products. That's the trick. Right?

And then, and then otherwise, it's like what happens when he's the CEO or his products. I'm sorry. That's just how it is. What happened? Well, I think what people are reacting to is like the story was, right, that the Apple Watch was the first Tim Cook product because it was a major initiative launched under his time. Right. But the challenge there is, is the folding phone, which he was a champion of. But they're like, well, but Tim Cook also, yeah, but these designs, these products have many, parents. It's a big organization.

And it's a game people sometimes play where they're like, oh, that was really more of a Steve Jobs thing. Tim Cook shouldn't take credit for that. If you're asking more broadly like, what is the definitive or, I mean, you have to go beyond like a John Turner's product. It could be the folding phone. It could be the home product initiative. Yeah. It could be something else. I think it's a mixture of that.

I agree. I agree with everything you're saying. And I think it is different to Tim Cook because they will just make... So one of the things that me and Martin Kermann spoke about, we actually spoke about this in the member segment of the Cortex episode, but I will spoil it here even though you should consider it.

It's stuff that he's said before, but we were in a conversational style. He was saying like, the reason... It's the thing we know, but it's happening now because they specifically want the story to be he is the face of the folding iPhone. They lined everything up.

And also he says, you know, the next year, he said he believes is going to be like one of the most exciting times in Apple's history for products. It's like, this has all been lined up to give him the perfect launch pad of CEO. And so it will be that. But then also we're going to, I guarantee we're going to go, wow, Apple's being weird. Look at all these home products. That will excite us. They're also releasing a bunch of esoteric, interesting hardware alongside the, the big blockbuster stuff, right?

We're going to get new MacBook pros. We're going to get the 20th anniversary iPhone next September. There's all this stuff within the first year, as well as maybe they're going to do some home sensors and a camera and a home pod of a screen on it and like the new Apple TV is going to be weird and like it's maybe they're going to do a soundbot, you know, like all this stuff. So we're going to, everyone's going to say, look how exciting hardware is. Now we've got the hardware CEO. This is all planned out.

This is what they wanted to do. So the answer is, it's very. different to Tim Cook, I think, honestly, where we're all like, oh, here we go, Tim Cook, it's the Apple Watch, where John Turner's is like everything because he was been doing it for years. Patrick asks, do you think, this is another one of John Turner's question, we're so close, by the way. Like, it's funny, I was thinking about like, oh, what can we do for Tim Cook retiring? But like, it's going to happen next week and we're going to do the draft. So it's like, bye Tim, I guess.

Do you think Turner's is walking into a tough compare for future quarterly earnings? With price increases and shifting iPhone schedules, could it impact his first quarter being down year over year? I mean, anything could happen. We don't know because the price things are going to change. Although I will remind you that price increases do tend to counteract revenue drops by creating more revenue because the price went up. And they're also going to introduce a really expensive iPhone that I think a lot of people will buy. They are. I don't know. I don't think. think it might happen. I'm not, I mean, first off, I don't know if I care because I'm not an investor, but I, sorry, investors. I think that there are some vagaries of this based on the market and

how weird everything is right now and the memory stuff. If everything else was equal, we could have a conversation about it, but with the price of components and stuff, I feel like we can't even talk about it. It's going to be, you know, it's going to be an interesting ride for him. But I don't, I'm, you know, the downside. I'll tell you. you this, the upside of a tough compare is that the next year, it's not so tough a compare. Yep. You have a great compare. And look, the thing is, from their perspective, again, it's like they have a story to tell, right? Like, if it is down here, well, of course it's down year over year. It's a component pricing, a hundred year flood, et cetera, et cetera. And we moved iPhones

to next year. You know that. And they're going to be able to say it. I'm going to have, you know, the rest of the, the best ever iPhone lineup. It's going to ship next year. And then we're going to have a great Q1, two, or whatever one it ends up being. So, like, they know that to tell this story. Also, his first results are, right, are like, what, October based on,

I mean, I just don't think it's going to be that big a deal. He's going to have some iPhone things and then he's going to have a holiday quarter. I think it'll probably be fine. You're right. They have a story if it's not. Yeah. Mark wrote in,

So can you confirm the status of Apple script and automator in macOS 27? I have some scripts and folder actions that would have been converted to shortcut workflows and automations if Apple scripts and automator are compromised or feeling like they're going away. Everything's fine. Nothing changes. Nothing changes. My automator actions still work. Apple scripts still works.

Shortcuts adds, you know, short scouts has some of the shortcuts automation. stuff broke and then got fixed in the betas. But yeah, it's all just, it's all still there. Nothing. No changes. No changes. Good stuff. Good stuff. This next question is a little bit of longer question, but it's interesting. It comes from Brants. With the previous on and off talk through the years of should Apple build a search engine of their own or not, it occurs to me now with Siri AI and some of the conversations you were having last week about doing deals of publishers, do you think that Apple could potentially one day replace Google or at the very least add Siri AI as one of the default Safari search options, similar to how they have

Bing and Duck, go? Are they building enough plumbing where they could realistically offer their own search engine everywhere they need it? They have a search engine. Yeah. Already. As long as they're getting billions of dollars from Google. No.

Yep. I guess the other thing would be if the world changes in terms of how people use search engines. Because if everything in the Safari search box becomes a query that's like an AI query, then maybe things change and they auto detect that it's a query and suggest Siri as a place to do it. I think what they're assuming is that they're just going to take a lot, that Siri is just going to take a lot of questions that used to go. in the search box and they're going to go to Siri AI instead and that they don't need to put it in the context of the web. Because if you think about it, it makes sense for Google because Google

is a website, right? But like for Apple, those questions don't go in your search box in Safari. They go in Siri, in Spotlight, in that box. So they don't need to put it in your web browser. They're putting it at a higher level. They're putting it a system-wide prompt that you can talk or type to. So in that sense, I think it's probably not necessary. And then also as long as Google is paying, not a thing that's going to happen. But I don't need to. If you're asking like, because search is becoming AI queries. That's the thing.

And so on one level, what my answer would be is this has already happened, but it's not in Safari. It's at the top level. On my Mac, I have this today. I do command space and I type a query out. and it's going to ask Apple's cloud services and be processed by an AI thing and it's going to give me results back. I have been more and more and more

pulling from the dynamic harder than my iPhone and just typing my question into my iPhone rather than go into Google. Yeah, you don't need Safari for that. That is, it's not what Safari is for. And sometimes it's like, I'm doing something on my phone and I have a question. Why would I leave the app that I'm in

open Safari and Google it when now I can just, I could just ask my iPhone, like, from wherever I am. Yeah, exactly. So I think on that level, we're all kind of already there. Yeah. Like the other day, I was reading something that someone had written me about MP3s, and I wanted to, I was trying to date something for myself,

and I wanted to know when Justin Timberlake's Crimea River was released. I got like I see it in my Siri AI search history, and I was able to find out it was in November 2002. But here's the thing that I would like Apple to try and get a bit better at. I don't need all these conversations saved. I want them to do a bit of a better job of like, if I ask a question and get an answer and that's the end of it, it's not a bit of a back and forth and it's just a one-liner,

you can maybe just get rid of that for me. Yeah, not a way. They have the ability to automatically clear out your Siri AI search history, but I don't want to do that. I actually like having some queries in there for a long time. but some stuff I don't need to be kept in forever. Yeah, I think the challenge there is that there is this like, I want to go back to that answer. What was that answer?

And so you don't want to immediately discard those. But you see, something like the question, when did Justin Timberlake release Crimea River? I would just ask that again, wouldn't I? Right? I guess. Although I also, I want to give props for this. The transcription said release crime. River.

Ah. And it worked it out. It's good, man. I got a picture of Justin Timberlake wearing a tuxedo. Oh, man. Crime River. What a classic. Crime River by Justin Timberlake.

This is going to ruin the world tour. The final question today comes from Amar who says, Why is changing the country associated with your Apple ID basically an impossible task? Does Apple never expect its users to move to another country? To do this, Apple wants you to cancel all your subscription, so you lose everything you had in Apple TV, music, app store, and spend every cent in your account.

The current requirements for doing this is basically Apple saying, yeah, it's best if you create a new account. I think the reason for this is pretty simple. Actually, I think it's twofold. One half is Wright's Deals, right? And the other half is the infrastructure that the app store was built on

was iTunes, which was also going back to Wright Steels, and I just think it's just too complicated for them. Everything's too tied into, together and the motion picture association and the recording one said you can't do this. Association of America. Yeah, no, I think that's Apple, you know, Apple could, obviously if this was a larger problem, but there's only so many people who move countries. Yeah. They would deal with it, but instead, the easiest solution is to say make a different account for your new country. Yeah. And I know that stinks, but there are, there are rights issues that are region by region and they have. And they have. have to deal with those. So,

um, I know it stinks, but that's, I don't think Amar wanted an answer here because this feels very much like just a complaint. And that's fine. We get a lot of those. I'd be honest.

This one, this one, I thought it was interesting because I, I, the answer I have, I think is a funny one, right? Which is just,

it's rights deals is the problem. Well, it is. It is. You're, your, your, your subscription is being paid in U.S.

dollars, let's say. And then you're going to an EU country where it's going to be in euro. And like, the, subscription price can be different. The vendor may even be different. It depends on who's selling what in what region.

Like you can't, that's the problem. I think a lot of people don't change. Right. So they, you know, people move from the U.S. to the UK. They keep their U.S.

apps to work and they just keep running it. Yeah. You know, because like a lot of people, even when they move, they still kind of retain a small financial history in the country they're coming from. Like we had this with,

you know, Like she kept her Romanian account for a long time. And eventually we had to do the very arduous process of rebuying all of her apps, redownloading all of her apps because she wanted to kind of get off that. But it's a bit of a nightmare. Yep. If you would like to send us a question of your own or if you have any feedback or follow-up, thank you so much.

Go to UpgradeFeedback.com. I'd like to thank our members who support us for Upgrade Plus. This week we're going to talk about the fact that Jason played Big Walk, which I'm very excited to hear. his thoughts on. If you would like longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week, go to getupgradeplus.com. You can find us on YouTube by searching for the Upgrade podcast. I'd like to thank our sponsors for this week's episode. That is the fine folk over at Century, Ship a ton from Revenue Cat and Daylight. But most of all, I want to thank you for listening.

We'll be back next week. Probably you have a draft. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.