Upgrade - 638: I Stared Directly into the M6

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 638 for September 21st, 2026. Indeed, this episode is brought to you by Claude, Squarespace, Century, and Backblaze. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow. Hi, Mike Hurley. 21st day of September, never was a cloudy day. Good to be here. Indeed. Indeed.

I have a Snell talk question for you. It comes from Omar, who says, with the iOS 27 update, Jason, you're using the tiny home screen a locks green clock or are you using the giant one? I am a giant, I guess, traditionally giant clock clock clock clock clock clocker. Lock lock locker. I was looking at... I'm a big clock locker, big clock locker.

This is super dangerous phrase to just keep saying over and over again. Super dangerous, but we did it because we're professionals. I was playing around with this today and I get the idea behind the small clock. Like I understand why they added it, but I just do not like it compared. to the large one that they have. I agree. Yeah. And also like, you know,

like I set up a new lock screen wallpaper a couple of the days ago. Adina took a really great photo of Sophia. And I was able to pull it down and the time goes behind her head a little bit

and the color of her hair reflects against the clock. And like, who doesn't want to set up a wallpaper like that? Yeah, I love it. I really love it. Although I will,

I will ask again, Apple, I'm putting this out into the world. Let me do the big clock stretching for the other typefaces you have. for the clock. They have a bunch of different options for clock style,

but only one of them can do the, like, pull it down and make it huge. I want to use the New York typeface for the clock instead of the, timeface. They should call it that. They should call it that when it's a clock one, time phase. That's what clock lockers do.

Clocklockers. If you'd like to send that a snow talk question of your own, just go to UpgradeFeedback.com and you can do that. Let's talk about St. Jude. Let's do that. Let's get this business started. Stop the silliness. Stop the serious business. Yeah, like, I've been thinking about, I mean, and a lot of photo reminders past week, because this would usually be the time when the podcastathon would have happened already. But, right, I'm actually getting ready to fly out to Memphis this weekend. So next week's episode of Upgrade, I will be in Memphis recording. And you will still be at home. I will not be. And then we'll be together later in the week. because the podcastathon for 2026 is happening on Friday, October 2nd.

September continues to October this year. What did you call it? The 32nd, 30 second of October? Something like that. 30 second of October, yeah. The podcast of thumb will be the finale of the campaign this year. I'm sorry, 32nd of September. I'm sorry, 32nd of September.

32nd of October is November 1st. That's silly. That's ridiculous. That's just confusing. saying 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. Eastern Time on the Relay YouTube channel. I'll put a link in the show notes because you can go and you can click Remind me. We're going to be hanging out for 12 hours raising money for the kids of St. Jude. It's going to be me and Jason and Stephen Hackett, Kathy Campbell, Casey List, Brad Dowdy. We're all going to be hanging out and having a great time

from the campus streaming live playing games and lots of tons of fun stuff with a really cool theme. this year, which I'm very excited people to see. It's a Western theme. And I've seen some, I've seen some hints of what is being built out. And I'm very excited for everybody to see it. It's going to look like a great time. But why do we do this? We don't just do this for fun. We do this because we are raising money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. I want to talk about some cool stuff that St. Jude is doing. In June 2025, 31 students graduated from the St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The school offers a PhD in biomedical science and MS degrees

in clinical investigations, global child health, biomedical sciences, and as of August 2025, applied biomedical data sciences. The graduate school has now awarded degrees to more than 130 students since 2015, equipping the next generation of leaders in research, medicine, and global health. Because this is part of what St. Jude is all about. It is giving the tools.

to people so they can push forward into the future so we can cure childhood cancer because that is what this whole endeavor is about is about making sure that no kids have cancer, that no kids die in the dawn of life. We do not accept this outcome. Childhood cancer can be defeated and we can do it if we do it together. This September helps St. Jude give kids with cancer more, hope for more tomorrow's. We're inviting you as part of the relay community to help us reach our goal of $700,000 raised for the kids of St. Jude's this September for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. As always, there are multiple ways to support the campaign. Go to St. Jude.org slash relay and make a donation. Your donation can unlock some fun rewards for you. You can, when you make a donation,

make sure you click the blue search employer button on the donation summary page, which is all about gift employer matching. So maybe your company will double your donation. And mark your calendars because the 26 podcast a time is on Friday, October 2nd is the grand finale of the

campaign. We'll be running from 12 to 12 Eastern on Relay's YouTube channel because more cures, more hope, means more tomorrow.

Go to st.u. org slash relay to donate or start a fundraiser today. It's time for some follow-up. Okay.

Will wrote in and said, I wanted to say that the Australian Prime Minister was meeting with Tim Cook this week, not John

Turner, obviously. So it seems Tim is taking the political responsibilities for all countries, not just the US, not just China, everywhere. He's Apple's ambassador to the world, you know, and getting paid $40 million for it. It's what we assumed, right? But it's interesting to see it starting already, right? That he's out there. He's doing this stuff now. He was absent from the iPhone launch, right? Like there were Apple executives around. Tim Cook's not one of them, which is great. He's behind the scenes now and doing the

ambassadorship role that he's now in. Kissing babies. Yep. Which I just think is good, right? That's what we want to see. It's what we expected

and I think it is it's good to see it start playing out already. You'd say it's fast, but this work never stops. It was just Friday he was the CEO. Monday, he's in this role now.

So there you go. I wanted to mention as well. So we were talking a bit about Syria AI and third party apps. this week, last week. I had a few people write in to tell me that Siri AI will apparently learn which third-party apps you like to use

for tasks over time. So essentially right now you have to say like make a task in to-doist or whatever. But I have people right in to tell me that over time it will learn. Now, I accept this. I just don't think this is a good user experience.

Like how do I know that Syria has learned this? Like, you know, if am I a month in of asking for it to add a task to doist and then I just try one day not saying that and see if it works? Like, I don't like the unpredictability. Like I was playing around with this today and like asking questions to get it to show my task list. And if I kept asking the question in the same way, it would show me it with to doist. But if I ask the question slightly differently, it wouldn't. And I assume that it's pulling from the context. it's building inside of the Siri app, right?

It's probably how it does this. But I just don't think that this is the user experience. Like, why can't I assign, like, tasks to apps, like how you can assign names to contacts? Like, you can say, you know, I could say Jason was my brother to Syria, but we've been able to do this for years. And then if I say, call my brother, it knows you're my brother, and it will call you.

So if I, you know, I should be able to say to the system, even just speak it to the system, if anything to do of a calendar always open fantastical. Like I don't think this should just be some, some like I try to insist upon the system. Also, it should be proactive, right? It should say, when you do a to-doist prompt, it should say, you seem to be using to-doist a lot.

Do you want me to just assume that all of your to-does are in to-doist? And if you say yes, then it's like, okay, I'll remember that, right? Like that's part of what this should be. Yeah. I get the feeling that as much as we, We praise Siri AI for being actually functional and useful, that they made a point of focusing on features that are Apple, entirely Apple-based and under Apple's control. Which I'm not opposed as a place to start, but it can't stop there. That's the thing they need is they need to keep going.

and this is one of those clear areas is other apps do exist. They are part of your ecosystem. They're actually part of your advantage. But your system needs... I mean, I complain about this a lot where I use fantastical. And I think you still can't set a default calendar app.

Yeah, I don't think so. There are other defaults that they've added, but they haven't added that one. And it's just like... Come on. Apple needs to accept that the app store is an important part of what they do. And perhaps that means that they need to support this stuff. And I get, I get it. You're trying to ship this thing. But phase two has got to be dealing with third party apps better, including defaults. And that includes in Siri AI. And I would actually go so far as to say if I try to add an event and it says, I can now that to calendar. I'm like, no, no, use fantastical. It should be like, okay, I did it. Do you want me to assume you are using fantastical from now on?

Like, it should know that. Like, I think it is really great that there is a third-party developer story from day one with the new Siri AI, because it would have not been a surprise if there just wasn't one at all, like nothing. It's like, it's great that there is a way to use it. It is absolutely not the best implementation of how they could do this. and I really hope I mean I'd love it before but for iOS 28

round this out and make it a much much better experience I mean I'm gonna say I'm gonna say this is a this is a 27.3 I mean yes this needs to happen this cycle

they need to be better this stuff needs to advance during this cycle and this is one of those areas where I understand because a lot of people would say well of course it's just Apple

they want you to use their products and only their products but no that's not it like this is the whole point here is that Apple strength is its ecosystem and that means the third party apps too. That's part of their advantage here. That's part of their advantage to using on-device intelligence is that your apps are on those devices. So they need to get to that and they need to get to that quickly.

Kevro and to say to continue Siri chats on the Apple Watch invoke Siri while the chat thread is open in the app. You can do this with the digital crown or by saying the trigger phrase. So this was me saying that you couldn't continue a conversation. But you can, but I think, again, this UI is incredibly strange, right? That, like, if you're reading a previous conversation in the Siri app, there is no visual way to suggest that you can continue that conversation. What you have to do is start essentially what would be a new request, and it knows that you're in that conversation,

and then you can ask questions about it and continue it. It's great that that works, but that is a really weird way of doing it. Because it's not how it works in the phone app, right? In the phone app, there is a button to start typing, and there's a button to start talking in the UI of the app. Like, that's what needs to be in the UI of Siri, in the same way that this is how it works when you're sending an I message, right? Like you're sending an I message to someone in the watch app,

but you're reading through it. They then have buttons to continue that conversation. So it's great that it's there. because it was super weird if it wasn't, but again, I think they need to tweak this. I do want to make another random aside. So I just had another great experience a couple of days ago. So just how good Siri is now that it is conversational

and gets information from the web in an efficient way. So I was walking down the street and I was listening to the Acquired podcast. There was an episode about Google. And they were talking about iOS and Android Market Share. And the numbers that they were giving for Android market share just seemed too high to me. And so I was talking to Siri back and forth about kind of like how Android and iOS market share breaks down, how it's changed over time, how it's bigger or not in different markets. And it was just like a great long back and forth that I had with my iPhone while walking. And then I went back to my podcast.

And it's like, I just love that I can have this by just pressing down on a button on my phone on my walking. watch. I don't have to go to another app and get this information. Yeah. There was somebody in, I think, the Six Colors Discord who said that they're, they weren't on a long car trip and they had a similar thing where they were able to ask a bunch of questions and get in and dig into the details with Siri AI. And it just, you know, it worked for almost everything. I think he said that the one thing that they didn't do, and this is a funny use case, that it totally should do is they were driving, they're like in New England. They were driving past like a big lake. And they're like, what lake is this?

And it didn't. Right. Which is funny because you should actually be able to look at Apple Maps and say, is there a lake nearby? And that's, again, it's just a thing that it can't currently do. But, like, it's encouraging. I bet if you said, what lake are mine near, right? Like, it would do that.

But like, what is this? It's probably the system is looking for an image, right? Or for the camera or something like that, you know? But still, a good start, I would say, that people are discovering this and exploring it. And I do think that that's the biggest hurdle Apple has to get over now is people just not being used to, using Siri, but they are a lot of them used to using chatbots. So if you can get, make that connection

and be like, you can treat Siri like a chatbot now, then, um, then this feature opens up for people. A few years ago, we were talking a lot about how GM General Motors work was killing carplay and Android Auto. Yeah, three years ago, they basically declared, we're done with this. We're not going to do phone production in our car. We're a tech company now. We're going to make a better experience, no more car play. Well, car play. Well, car play. and Android Auto are still available on options on several 2027 Cadillac. I'll read a quote here

from, this came from CarBuzz. You quoted on Six Colors. Cadillac is continuing to evolve its infatement strategy across the EV portfolio based on customer feedback while also prioritizing the native in-vehicle experience. A Cadillac representative told Carbuzz.

This just sounds like they gave up on that plan. Yeah, and there's actually since that story, there's been another story. Oh, okay. Where the GMC Sierra and the new 27 Chevy Silverado also have car play. And it's very funny, too. So basically they are, they haven't done a big press release.

This is very much in the unit. It's like Apple saying, hell, you know, we're not going to say, yay, we got rid of the butterfly keyboard. We listened to your complaints. They say, look, we've got this amazing new keyboard that's even better than all previous keyboards, right? So they're not going to, GM's not going to do a press release that says, you're right, we screwed up. CarPlay and Android Auto are important. We're going to bring it back. Instead, they just have brought it back to new models.

And it's like, huh, that's interesting. I thought you said they were going away. They're like, no, no. And they had that classic line. The, um, continue to evolve our strategy. Right. Like, okay, well, that means that you changed your mind. But okay, whatever, press release speak.

It's interesting to me, um, because the way they've seen. spun this is like, we've invented a revolutionary new UI element. So just to back up, back into 2023, one of their assonine complaints about this was, we don't want Apple taking over our interface. Our interface is very important. And everybody was like, what are you talking about? You don't have to take over the whole interface. A lot of cars include CarPlay as an app that appears in a window. It's surrounded by your own Chrome. You can toggle other. controls and then bring car play back. It's not a big deal. Why are you saying we don't want it to take over our whole interface? Well, as a part of this rollout now, three years later, they're like,

we've done a new innovative thing where we're putting it in a window and it doesn't take over our whole interface. I'm like, whatever gets you through the night, GM. Whatever. Whatever you want whatever story you want to tell. Like, yeah, that's how it works. So anyway, it does seem like what the Ford exec said at the time, which was all our people want car play. Everybody who buys a new car wants car play. And keep in mind, the stats for new car buyers are staggering.

You might think, well, you know, not everybody is demanding car play in the world. But when you look at new car buyers, because I would, I would imagine that used car buyers care a lot less about it. You're buying a used car. You are spending less money on a car. But new car buyers want car play. Like 90 plus percent of new car buyers want to connect their smartphone and have it work with their car.

Because our smartphones are our most important technology device and our most personal. They obviously realized this was going to be a huge liability for them. And presumably people inside GM who are like, we could just put it in a window. What is your problem? They finally have gotten over it. So it's a win for consumers because they're going to be able to shop for GM cars and put them in their buying decisions too because GM isn't closing the door on and saying no. If you use an app that are that is not ported to our platform, you can't use our platform.

And, you know, change your podcast app in order to buy a car. And like, people aren't going to do it. They're just not going to do it. So it's good news. This is a rare technology win for consumers. So, you know, good job. And good job to whoever, I mean, getting corporations to change their policies when they come out with a bold statement like that and then have to back it down after three years.

Like, that's not, that doesn't happen every day. So it's pretty impressive. And I just threw this one in here for you. Books have released a couple of new e-readers, weird e-readers that I thought. you might be interested in. So a new version of the Palmer, which is their hand, it's their phone one. Their Android. It's a phone, yeah. I showed it to

you. You saw that for the first time like, what, three years ago at the podcast athon where you're like, what is that thing? I immediately took a selfie with it, I think. Yes, you did. Yeah. It features a new design. It's more kind of like fancy looking design. Support for a stylus. Their

color version has a stylus. Loves that, yeah. This version has a feature Android 16. though, which I'm sure will feel much better than Android 11 and the Palmer 2. I'm sure. The problem with Android and XT. Inc., the weird maker or maker of weird little e-readers, they also announced that they're going to do a larger device that runs Android. And my problem with this, I mean, and you're like, well, that's great because then they can just run the Kindle and Kobo software and you don't have to worry about how you get books on these

things. That's true, but what I've learned over trying all these things out is Android is built for phones and it's built for fast refresh color screens. And getting them to adapt to E-ink is a challenge. Not that it can't be done and it's gotten better over time. And we may get to the point where it's not. But I remain skeptical just because every time I try it,

I end up thinking nobody should do this. But that is also going on. And then, yeah, the... They also made a little one. E-reader news. XT Inc. So XT Inc has a new E-reader that I've got that is still using Crosspoint, which is the open-source firmware that's really, really great.

But this one's got a touchscreen and a little home button touch home button. And most importantly, it's got lighting. So you can read it in the dark. Oh, is this the pro one that you were talking? Yeah, this is the 4-Pro. Okay. You and Dan were talking about this, I think, when he was on. Yeah, the XTNNN4 Pro.

it's pretty great, but they are now also going to do based, I think, on a similar hardware size as that, they're going to do an Android-based one. Bookes is doing a PICO and then XTE Inc. is making a big one.

And Bookes, yeah, Bookes is making a cross-point-based e-reader. Yes. Using an ESP 32. So they're going the other way. So, yeah, everybody's mixing up and everybody's doing weird e-readers.

And we'll see where we'll see where all this goes. But I like it that at least people are trying some stuff because you know, you look at a Kindle or a Kobo and they basically are no different than they were 10 years ago. I mean, yeah, the screens are better

and they're in color or whatever, but they're like, they're kind of the same shapes and sizes that they've always been. And these, I like that these, like the little, the point of that, that 4 Pro from XT Inc is it's $100.

I mean, right? The big problem is, how do you get books on it? because it won't support the Kindle or the Kobo stores. And that's a problem. So Android might be the solution, but it might not be. And the Android versions are not going to cost $100 because you have to use a much more powerful set of tech to run Android than you do to run a little teeny tiny open source ESP 32 E-reader operating system. But it's a fun little corner of the market.

And it's nice when we have this era of tech giants to have these like just super weird, super weird hardware. by an open source project that you sideload using your web browser. I love it. It's very cool. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. Claude is the AI for Problem Solvers. It's the collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight, building a financial model, or strategizing your

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which includes access to the features mentioned in today's episode. That's Claude.comd-A-A-I-S-U-Ugrade. Thanks to Claude for this. support of this show and relay. So you have had a Mac Mini for review, the M6 Mac Mini for a few days now. Surprise, yes. And you wrote an article on Six Colors, and I thought we would go through some of this. And I mean, really, the article that you've written, it's a story about the M6, not really about the Mac Mini.

It is. They did not send me, so they sent Federico, quite rightly, a high-end M5 Ultra Mac studio. Yeah. They sent me a base model M6 Mac Mini, which is fine because that's the new chip. I actually think that it's the one that I would have chosen for myself. Yeah. And the things that Federico's doing, which by the way, Federico's put a great article on MacSories today, of him doing local AI stuff with the M5 Ultra Mac Studio.

And it's amazing. You can kind of see what the local AI capabilities of this chip and this hardware and these so much data that goes over my head, but it made it. some really nice charts too, and the story that he tells is really good. But you're not going to do that stuff, right? Like, that's just not your bag. It's his bag. It's not my thing. I'm not interested in that. He's the right person to write that story. But I am very interested in the fact that this is the M6, which is the start of a new Apple Silicon generation for the Mac and possibly also the end of it. And so that's the most interesting thing about the product. There's not much different.

It is still the tiny one that they introduced with the M4. They upgraded the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. tooth finally to seven and six respectively and two it's two point five gigab internet instead of one i guess as the standard and then ten is configurable the big change is that it costs you know 50% more than the m4 version did when it launched they also upgraded the price it's very expensive they really upgraded that yeah those are in my mind my review is about two things it's about hey mac minnie's fun but um not as fun as it was because it costs way more and the m6 What does it mean? How do we judge it based on where Apple has been up to now with Mac chips? Basically, those are the two stories about this product.

There is a fun. There is, I mean, it's just a bit unnecessary, but a fun thing. Like, you know, you do your charts for performance. You could do on a chart for price. You know, it's like 50% year over year or growth on price. It would be, yeah. Yeah. And if you pull it out, what a funny one?

because I always hear from those people who are like, Killjoys who are very much like, you mentioned a price from the past. You should say how much is in today's dollars. I get that a lot. Oh, right. And I do that voice, not because that can't be a good observation,

but because a lot of times it is, it misunderstands how podcasts work or even how writing works. We're like, you can't mention past prices every time and normalize them for present prices. You just can't.

It's not, you can't. That said, I was tickled to discover that that original 499 Mac Mini, the very first, you know, PowerPC Mac Mini, that was the one that was $499 because the next year they raised it to $5.99. In today's dollars, it's like $840 or something. It's still less than $899. So, uh, nearly adjusted for inflation. Even adjusted for inflation, the new Mac Mini is more expensive. Close. Close.

So let's talk about the M6. So as a reminder, the M6 is the first, actually first two nanometer chip, right? Like they announced this one before the A20 Pro came out in the new iPhone.

So we knew about the M6 first, then the A20 came out, and now the M6 has come out. It's coming out, yeah. And this chip is the first one to get all three core types in the base. That's wild.

We thought they were playing just semantic games and they're like, no, no, we've got a super core and a performance core, and they're different, and they use them in different chips. And they remember, they renamed chips that used to be called performance, but they decided, I think what it ended up happening is those chips were new cores. And they just called them performance cores because that's what they always called the high-end core. And then somebody was like, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to use both kinds of cores and future processors. So you can't call them the same thing. because they're different.

Yep. And maybe that was a marketing decision. Maybe the chip people were like, you misunderstood how this is. I don't know what was going on there. So they retroactively renamed the high end cores in the M5 to super from performance. And we thought, okay, you know, whatever. But it turns out part of what they were thinking is, well, in the M6 generation,

we're going to have all three core types. We're going to have two super's, four performances, and six efficiencies, which is what this chip has. So it's 12 CPU cores, but two of them are designed. They're super. Okay, they're super. They're designed for single-threaded performance at maximum speed. So the idea there is you've got a task and it can't be chopped up into little bits and fed to different CPU cores. It just needs to be done as fast as possible.

Supercores do that. And that's a kind of, I mean, what they're doing here is they're reflecting how computer tasks are organized and structured and trying to build their chips. in a way that's the most efficient for all of these different kinds of jobs. Because there are some jobs that are single-threaded, beefy tasks that just need to be handled. And the super core will crank up and eat power. I mean, they'll probably say, well, no, if they're very efficient, they'll say. But like, relative to other cores, they are happy to crank up to high speed, high power in order to solve this task fast. the performance cores

that are like the ones we're used to, Apple says they're more about multi-threaded tasks. So they're beefy tasks, but they're able to chop them up into more bits. So you've got four of those. So if the task can be chopped up,

the system scheduler will throw those to the performance course and they will do that and they succeed well at that. And then the efficiency cores, a lot of stuff our computers do is just happening in the background and it doesn't need

it isn't like super high priority. It just needs to happen in an efficient way. And the efficiency cores are happy to take that, which is why these computers generally have great battery life if they're laptops and don't use a lot of power is because unless you're running something that's super intense, your computer's just kind of bubbling along in the background. The pricey cores just don't do anything.

They shut off. They're not pulling power. And those super efficient cores just kind of bubble along. And there's six of them. So like you can have a lot of, of like little tasks that are going on. And it's like your computer is, you know, barely using energy because they're so efficient. So that they mix them all together, which is just, it's, it's a first and it's in this low end M6, which is funny that they, that this is where it comes out.

The, uh, the, the first time is in, in the M6. Yeah, that, you know, the inclusion of, of these cores essentially just makes the whole processor efficient, right? Because it is, it's not using what it doesn't need to use for this particular task. You're not trying to push efficiency calls further than they can go. You're not using performance calls or supercores in places that they're not needed. That's their package, right? The idea here, I think, is, like I said, they're profiling what jobs computers do, right? That's part of the job of the Apple Silicon engineers is what is a Mac OS, uh, spread of tasks look like. And the first thing they did is say, there's a bunch of things that are low level and not priority that we can really save energy on. And there are a bunch of tasks that are high priority,

and we should spend the power to do them because that is what makes your computer feel fast. And then obviously, as they moved along, this is the sixth generation of these M-chips. They looked at it and said, on the Mac, at least, there are kind of three. Because I think a lot of times computer people are like, everything needs to be multi-threaded, right?

Like, oh, the dream of the multi-threaded. And the reality is some stuff is just single-threaded. It's just going to be single-threaded for reasons. Maybe it's reasons of the software being inefficient. Maybe it's reasons of the job not being appropriately chunked into threads. It needs to run once. It needs to run fast. And so they do that profiling.

and they're like, all right, I guess maybe we need three different kind of cores. And then you have a system scheduler that's smart that says, you go here, you go that. You get this, you get that, you get this, you get that. And if they can tune all that well, what they get is a, ideally, is a processor that is super fast when it needs to be, whether it's at single core or multi-threaded jobs. But most of the time is not using power, so you get good battery life on your laptops, which are three-quarters of the max that Apple sells.

It's like as you mentioned, right, wouldn't it be great if every piece of software is multi-threaded? And that's a nice idea. Sure. You can't design your chip for something that doesn't exist. And the fact that there is still a lot of software and a lot of processes that require single-core performance, put good single-core chips in the machine to handle that, right? Yeah. I'm going to put on my John Syracusa hat for a moment and say, well, you can. You can design your chips for things that don't exist.

but you shouldn't. Yeah. I think that this is the like... That would be bad. I think my brain tends to move towards business, like... No, I get it. I get it. I get it.

I just... I have my own inner John Syracuse and said, well, you can, Mike. You can do it. You absolutely can, Jason John. You absolutely can do it. Don't do that. But I wouldn't. I wouldn't. No.

I would. So it's really interesting. Again, this is the... Just to be clear. Yeah. This is the low end chip. Yeah. This is the low end.

The M6. This will be in a MacBook Air next year. right? And it's got these three different kinds of cores. Like, it's wild. It's wild. But wait, there's more. 12 GPU cores, each of a neural accelerator. So that is made. Neural accelerators. Not new to the

M series, because the M5 had them. This is the idea that they again, this is a realism thing versus an idealism thing. Where Apple had like the neural engine. They're like, ah, we've got our own neural processor. It's great. People should probably use that for AI jobs.

And the AI world is like, we're just going to use GPUs. Yeah. And like you can be persuasive and say, you should really use, take advantage of the neural engine. It's like, great, great, great. But there's still going to be stuff out there that's just like,

no, this just runs on the GPU. I've seen this with a lot of the AI stuff that I use for like, a lot of the transcription models. I'll be, or, or an audio cleanup model in isotope or something. And you play the game like, what does this?

What does this command do? And sometimes it's, oh, this is on the CPU. And sometimes it's like, oh, this is on the GPU. And like, there's no way to tell how they built it. And so the neural accelerator, which they introduced with the M5, is a way to take GPU cores, Apple's GPU cores,

and make them better for AI tasks in a way that they weren't before. Because some people are going to be running serious AI tasks on GPUs and not on the neural engine. And that's life. And so you should make it better. And so they did. It's new. This is one of the confusing things about the new Mac Mini, right?

It's new in the Mac Mini because the Mac Mini didn't have an M5 before. It had an M4 before. So whether it's a high-end Mac Mini that's got the M5 Pro or it's the low-end Mac Mini that's got the M6, neither of them had the neural accelerators with the GPUs before because they were M-4s before. But it's not actually new to the chip. It's new to the computer. But it's important because, again, it affects

GPU performance especially AI-based GPU performance. And you mentioned the neural engine. This ship has the dual 16 core neural engine where they've essentially just put two of them in there. Yeah, and it's exactly like the A20.

Yeah. So it's obviously just that is the generational thing they decide to do. And it's funny, I assume that this is a relatively low-cost thing for Apple to do. to boost their neural processor power. And again, I don't know whether they're seeing like everybody,

everybody's hungry for more neural engine performance, or if they're just pointing at it and saying, you should really look at the neural engine, it's very powerful. Or if it's even just because some of their competitors talk about NPUs now in their, in their computers a lot, the AI PCs and stuff like that. And this allows them to say, well, now we've got two. 16 core neural engines in addition to our CPU and our GPU. So try that on for size. I don't know what the motivator is here, but given that it's also in the phone chips,

my guess is it was a why not. Like this doesn't have a great deal of cost to us to include this. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're like, oh, it has incredible cost. But like it strikes me as something where they're like, we could do this relatively easily and double our neural engine power. So why don't we do it. So they did it. And it's easier than advancing it or whatever. Right. Like the way to do it right now is just put a second one in rather than making it better. Yeah. Part of the chip game and every time there's a new chip we talk about this. But like part of the chip game here is you can't upgrade every component every time. Right. And if you look at my charts, I went into this a little bit where you can see like this was a good year for GPUs. This was a good year for multi, you know, for multi core performance. And every year is not a

year for GPUs. Every year is not a good year for CPUs because there's a new core design. Like that's not how they do it. It goes in one, two, three, four, five, six. But what it doesn't do is that every, every component got upgraded. Like, they, they do it in, in waves. And so, you know, the neural engine upgrade is not that the neural engine cores are new, because I'm pretty sure they're not. It's that there's twice as many. Like, and that's a great way. A great way, if you've got a year, this is foreshadowing, if you've got a year where your actual upgrade on a particular core type is not particularly interesting,

what you can do is just add more cores. And then you get a speed improvement. Yeah. Which is not cheating. It's just another way to do it. Yeah. I was thinking about this today, right? I was thinking about the CPU.

I was thinking about the GPU, the neural engine. I don't know about you, Jason. I have no idea how these things work. I have absolutely zero idea. I have a vague idea which doesn't help. I have a vague idea which is worse because you realize how little you know about it. It's like, how do they make it?

This is amazing stuff. It's like I don't even, I just have no idea. I have no idea. Look, there's computers, there's like silicon, there's like a wafer. It's in a fab. Fab. I've been in a fab.

I wore a bunny suit in a fab. Did you get the secret in there? I saw the big, the big discs, the big silicon wafers that they, did that help? You know, yeah, that's why I am who I am now, which is somebody who knows exactly how little he knows about chips. So I've come a long way. My time in Fishkill, New York at the IBM fab, really made an impression. It really is just like, it absolutely feels like magic to me. I mean, it kind of is. I'm sure there are people that understand,

but I don't know what plane of existence they're operating on. Mike, these do not appear magically. There are lots of people who understand it. Many of them are at TSM. A bunch of others are in with Johnny Suruji in the lab. They are, you know, very bright people who understand this stuff at a deep level. I did say I'm sure that they are.

I was confident that people do exist. That's good, yes. Yes, yes. Yeah, but it's a little like saying, you know, I'm sure that the earth is round. Well, yeah. And I am sure. Yeah. I am sure. I'm sure. I'm just going to say, though, I bet that not everybody that works on this fully understands it, though. Well, I mean, I think, I think that at some point you're so deep down in that you may only know one portion of it. That's true. It is amazing. This is amazing. And it is one of these areas where Apple has especially excelled. It's pretty incredible that Apple is at this point. So, yeah. Let's talk some numbers.

Let's talk some numbers. So in your testing, the M6 is 11% faster in single core than the M5 and 13% faster in multi-core than the M-5. You didn't seem particularly thrilled with these numbers? These numbers are fine, right? It is average. again, I'm not trying to damn the M6 with faint praise. I'm trying to say that the M6 is exactly in line. I have, in my article, you will see I brought out all the charts.

I've got these charts of like charting M1 to M6 performance in a bunch of different ways. And the line goes up. The trend line goes up. But what happens, like I said a minute ago, is from generation to generation aspects of the generational change are up or up or down from the trend. line, right? Like, you've got your good generations that lift everything and you're not bad, but like your generations were not a lot changes. And that is the bottom line with the M6. It's just not to put too fine a point on it. Single core CPU growth, basically dead average. Multi-core CPU growth, basically dead average. Good, but kind of dead average.

GPU growth on the chip, M5 to M6, dead on average, 24%, which is good. That's like a really, I mean, the truth is Apple Silicon is an era, every year, essentially, you get 10 to 20% better CPUs and 10 to 20 to 30% better GPU in your chip. So every generation of MacBook Air is 15 to 25. depending on how you measure percent faster.

That's great. For those who think back to the Intel era, think back to when you'd wait like two and a half, three years for a new version and it would be 8% faster. This is remarkable. And the pace of progress, that's why I have those charts that go

one, two, three, four, five, six is you can see what has been going on in Apple Silicon. But I also have to say and be clear about it, the M6 is not an outlier. The M6 is. is the usual. And to resolve my foreshadowing,

if you divide the GPU scores on the M6 by the number of GPU cores on the M6, which is 12 instead of 10 on the M5, what you find is that per core, it was not a 24% improvement. it was a 3% improvement, which is a classic

that Apple has done throughout this era, which is if your core doesn't get faster, put in more cores instead. Right? I mean, it works. And again, just to be clear,

your core is, your GPA are cores can't get faster every year. They can't. Because you've also got to do all these other things to the chips. They are not capable of upgrading every single thing every year.

It's just not possible, and they don't try. So, in the end, the M6 generation, if I look at it, is up to par with a dramatically impressive march of M-series processors. But what I can't say is, well, they really killed it with the CPUs this year or whatever. Like, I can't say that. I guess the doubling the neural engine, again, is good. Like, they did a good job.

those neural scores if you look at like GeekBinch AI like they're a lot better because they got if you look at the neural engine scores because they have

twice as many right like okay great what what though and this is my thesis that I think is the it was a weirdest part of my article when I got there because I was like I think I

I think this is what I think here I think I need to say this which is I look at this and I think about Mark Herman's reporting that they killed the M6 Pro and Max and are going straight to M7. And I think if your next chip generation

that you know about as Apple is, according to Mark German, a remarkable improvement in all the things that you're prioritizing, which is on-device AI and graphics-intensive software, which is what Mark German reported. If that presumably

that means your neural engines and your GPUs, especially in M7, are going to blow you away. M6 is just sort of like, it's there. They added more cores, but the GPU didn't actually get better at the core itself. But M7, you look at it and you go, oh boy, this is awesome.

And now that we've seen M6, I can see why you'd kill the rest of the M6 line. I totally do. I see it. Not that it's bad, but that it's not particularly interesting. It's not a leap. It's just a step. and if they've got M7 ready to go next year, and they're thinking like,

wait a second, we're going to release M6 Pro systems and waste our time with them in 27 when we could just wait six months, maybe, nine months, and put out the M7s that are so much better. Like, everything I've seen in the base M6 makes me say,

I understand why they killed the M6, pro and max, if that is the case. Because if they've got, that next generation and it's incredibly impressive, what are we doing here? I would make that decision. I totally understand it.

If that's what's going on, it kind of makes sense. Like, you've got standard pace, chip. We can do another year at standard pace. Maybe we're feeling the pressure of AI. Maybe our only thing, our only card to play on AI is the power of our on device, AI, see Federico's review for more, right?

Well, if that's our card to play right now, because chips are where we're good and AI models is not where we're good. Then taking your next generation that has big leaps and tabling your current generation that doesn't is the most rational thing

you could possibly do. So having stared directly into the M6, I get it. I get it. Your overall feeling, though, I just I've really liked reading this was, let me be clear about the Mac Mini.

I love it. It's amazing. I love the Mac Mini. I mean, that's the thing is I finished writing about the chips. I'm like, okay, this is a Mac Mini review. What do I say? Yeah. And I got out my old Mac Minis.

I've had a Mac Mini since the first one running as a server in my house, basically. And I remember when, like, I literally wrote a blog post called Mac Mini I want to believe. Yeah, I remember. That was like, they're not going to kill it, right? They really shouldn't kill it, right? Like, it fills so many ecological niches that no other Mac fills that you need to have it, right? And so to be where we are now, where they did finally do a redesign of the design, and it's amazing, the two by two, or what, five by five by two thing, it's laughably, we were,

before we started the show, like, I laid the iPhone 18 Pro Max on top of the Mac Mini, and like, it's so much longer than the phone is than the Mac Mini. It's like, it's hilarious. It's like, oh yeah, that thing's really small. But it's a great little product. I'm so glad that it exists. Apple Silicon has given it a new lease on life. I love that the tiny size means it fits in more places. It doesn't just fit into your ecosystem.

It literally fits into wherever you want to tuck it. Yeah. And the only downside is the price. And regarding that, and this is how I end the story, right? Like, regarding that, I think the important thing, thing to me is, at its old price, and thinking of it as an ecological niche filler, you would say, I could just get a Mac Mini to do that and plug it in somewhere in your life. Like people, and I would say more technical people who are more comfortable with this,

do that all the time with, I could stick an ESP 32 here, or I could stick a Raspberry Pi here, right? I could stick a Mac Mini here. If you're a Mac user, this is the advice I gave to you about, like do I want to have a some sort of a NAS and I was like well you might want a Mac because that's why I run a Mac server is I'm just more comfortable

I can do command line stuff but like if I can run an app and then see how it's working like I just know how to use it. I know how to do that. And when but when I understand why they do it. I understand the world we live in now but when you raise the price of that

Mac Mini by 50% it is no longer a why don't I just plug a Mac Mini there. It's just not. It is now a, do I need a new computer? Will this give me an upgrade that would be valuable to me? Especially if you've got like an external display.

You bought a studio display a few years ago. You bought a Mac Mini around then. And the computer's getting along in the teeth, but the display is fine, right? You can look at this and you can make a calculation and say, it's worth it. I could get that base Mac Mini. That would be pretty nice. You could do that. But we have lost something.

There's no doubt about it. We have lost something because that was the most affordable desktop Mac ever made. The M4 Mac Mini by, you know, today's dollars to go back to today's dollars. And that era is over for now. And that's a bummer because it is such a great product. And it was really great when you could just say, why wouldn't I buy a Mac Mini and stick it there? And that was a really nice period of time that's over. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the All-Northy.

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and to show you support. for the show. A thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay. It's iPhone time, Jason. It is. We're not, again, we're not in Memphis. It's like the last few years new iPhone day has been

when we're in Memphis. And so we've gotten together in person and you know, you and me and Stephen and several other people and gotten a look at the new iPhones. And we intelligently moved the podcast of fun back. I I love that we were like, hey, it's the high season for us.

Let's do a telethon right then. But it's nice to not have all those things happening simultaneously. But yeah, I've got, I've got, I've got an 18 Pro Max here that is a review unit from Apple, and I've got an Apple Watch Series 12 here. Okay. And you've got a new iPhone 18 Pro and the new Apple Watch. And a Series 12 ceramic. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Look, I just got this. I was working on the Mac Mini review. I just got this phone on Friday. Or maybe Thursday. And it was busy with the Mac Mini. And all the embargo reviews came out, right?

So I've got to do long-term review where I think about it. So I am wearing the Series 12 and I'm sleeping, you know, using it so that I can do sleep tracking. And I can, like, I'm trying to do, I'm committing to it for a while. Yeah. Before I review it so that I can do something that's more meaningful. because, you know, everybody else, the great thing about embargo review is that you're there at that first moment to weigh in.

The bad thing about embargo review is, and I saw people posting this, it's like, I've been using this iPhone for three days, and here's my complete review. Three days? Like, it's very hard. You're having to make snap decisions about these products to review them that fast.

Well, I don't have that problem here. So I'm taking my time. but I do have one snap judgment that I can render because the great mystery was Jason Snow Snap judgment It is do do colors are update The classic question And we could even call this the MacBook Air

Sky blue question Is it a color How blue is it? Is it actually a color Is it a slight sheen in certain angles? of light that makes it not silver.

And I am happy to report that Apple sent me a Glacier iPhone and I am happy to report that the Glacier iPhone is actually blue. Yeah, it is really notably blue.

You couldn't miss it. It's not for everyone. I know it's not for you. I agree that it is blue. I don't like the blue that it is. Right? I would buy

the glacier. probably. I mean, the black would be tempting. I might just buy the black, but I would be tempted by the blue. Having lived with an orange phone for a year, I would be tempted by the blue because it's not a bright blue, but it's a nice blue, an actual blue color from Apple. So I haven't seen the burgundy. You saw the burgundy? Yeah. Look, I appreciate that color that people like that color. I do not like that color. Like I just don't like the way it looks. Like it's too dark for me. Yeah. It's definitely a color, right? Like it's not like, um, it's not like the way in which the duo is blue is that it's kind of black, but maybe blue, right? Like from the images

that I've seen, this is, this is a reddish purple, right? Like it is burgundy. Yeah. I just don't like that. But I actually, that's fair. That burgundy is. That burgundy. it's not for me. Like that is for a particular type of customer, not the customer the orange was for, right? And I actually appreciate that, right? The orange is a very bold statement for a certain type of customer.

It was not for everyone. The burgundy is the same, and I like that they're probably not the same people. Like, I don't think the tastes align, I think, overlap in that way. And really, you know, like a lot of people that would have liked the orange will probably like the glacier.

It's still not for me. I went with silver for mine. Okay. Which I like the silver. It is not the choice that I want to make. It's the choice that I did make based on the lineup. But it's like, I miss the orange. But the colors, they're just not what I would have wanted really.

You know, like, maybe I would have gone with the glacier if I would have seen it before I ordered. but I didn't see it and feel bad about the fact that I didn't go with it. You know what I mean? Sure. I get it. I get it. Because it's kind of a silvery blue, but it's very light.

I have had the phone since Friday, and I've been using it since Friday. So I think I probably have more to say about the 18 Pro than you do. You probably do. I mean, I have taken some pictures with the Pro Max, but I am not using it as my primary phone because it's too big. And also probably I'm going to be getting a different phone next month. Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course, yeah. So, all right, so I have a few things with it. So I've done, I did the whole transfer. This time, I like to just mix it up. This time I chose ICloud backup as my way to get used to the phone and it was fine. I do have a feeling, another feeling about the setup process, just in general, setting up an iPhone is such a complicated experience. Like, you are jumping through so many hoops. And I'm not even setting up from zero. Like, I'm, I have decided with the duo, I'm going to set it up fresh because I've

not done that in a long time. And I think that that device, it could be interesting to have a different set of apps than what I have on my regular iPhone. I don't know, but I'm going to set that up as a fresh iPhone. Because I also just want to go through that experience. Like, what is it like to start from zero and go through that today? Because now that we have like the indexing, it is yet another thing that is added into the getting a new phone experience. Right. Like, you don't have to do anything about the optimizing search and theory indexing, but it is going to impact your experience of a new phone for a period of time. And I will go back to what I said when we kind of learned this fact that this index does not move from device to device.

I just think Apple needs to work out a way to do it. Like, let me plug the phones into each other and do it that way. Like, work out a way to do this because I just, I don't think that this is going to result in a good experience for people over time. Because I expect that index just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It doesn't get smaller. And so I don't really think it's a great experience. You know, like it's still going. Now, I'm on point two.

I put 27.2 on my iPhone. And I think this might be a new thing for point two, because I didn't remember seeing it before. There's a percentage now. it says I'm 87%. Then that's been going for four days. I'm still not done. And so I'm just not sure that we're doing this the right way.

It's adding another step into the transfer process. But anyway, the dynamic island is smaller. I'm already used to that. I don't notice it anymore. But I do get the long-lasting benefit of the extra live activity space, which I am already enjoying. that you can do up to three, but if you have two, you get a four-sized one and a little one, right? Where before it would just shrink them both down.

So I benefit from that already. I'm experiencing that already and I'm pleased about that. I've been having some, I've been having more face ID failures, but I'm not willing to say that that is necessarily the hardware change. As much as it is with any phone, I've had to do my face ID again, and it may just be getting used to me. Okay. But I have noticed that, that I've had more face ID failures than I expected.

So I'm going to keep an eye on that because I don't... And the face ID sensors are under the screen now. Yeah, and at the left. They're in a different location. I don't know if that makes a difference, right? It might make a difference. You know, like maybe the way I'm holding my phone or where I have my phone placed or whatever, it might be impacting it more.

This is a thing that I think might just be a me thing, and I'm not sure about this yet. I feel like the display is cool. cooler, like more blue. Now, there's a few things about this. One, I could be right. Two, it could be an optical illusion because my phone is silver and not orange. Uh-huh. That, like, I may be getting, like, my eye might be tricked, but it's, I keep noticing

it, though. Like, I keep picking up my phone and I'm like, huh, that looks more blue. And I've checked all my settings. I have true tone turned on. I have night shift turned on the way that I like them. But I'm noticing it, but there's nothing I can do about that. Anyway, this is all. just like nitpicky stuff. I want to talk about photographic styles because this is maybe the

thing that I tried the most. I'll say, I've taken pictures, by the way, with the camera. I don't know, man. And I'm not down on it. It's like I know that my phone is now doing more with the aperture and stuff like that. And that's great. And I'm sure that's going to be good over time. I do not have the eye for that. But I look forward to playing with it more. I've been playing with it a little bit and like changing some of the aperture stuff. And my expectation is of like a lot of camera stuff. It will pay off over the years, but I'm just not that person. And I have no doubt that people are going to make some interesting camera apps that I'll

be able to play around with that will make it a bit more fun and easy for me to understand what I'm doing with the aperture stuff. But it's there. Photographic styles is something I care more about because I've been an advocate for this feature since they introduced it because I really like it. I shoot with a permanent photographic style. I have a slightly tweaked version of the gold style. All of my photos are taken in a photographic style.

You can change this in seconds, by the way, in camera settings. You can have a default, and you can do it there rather than needing to enable it every time or accidentally turn it on or off it, whatever. There's a preserved settings feature, and you can set it up in there, which is how I've done it. And they've added in the photographic styles this time, the texture area, right?

So you can do a few effects, but the one that I've been the most interested in is the film effects and the grain. The thing is you cannot adjust the amount of grain that adds to an image. It is a binary on and off, which is not like a lot of the other photographic style stuff.

They have this new film feature in the texture area. You can turn the film on. It automatically turns the grain on, but you can turn the grain off, keep the film look on. And the film look can be adjusted. So how much of an impact do you want it to have on your image to make it look more or less like a film photo.

But the grain is just a binary thing. And I would like the ability to adjust it a little bit more. I don't always want the maximum amount of grain that it will apply to an image. And Apple said, and I understand it, I've seen it in my testing, that they apply the grain selectively, like the amount that they'll apply. But sometimes I just want a little bit less of it. Like, I've been playing around with the film slider, and I like the film slider to be at around 65 out of 100. That produces the right kind of look to my images, to my tastes. I would like to bring the grain down a little bit with it, but you can't do that. I would like to be able to do that.

The camera app now has loads of buttons, and you can add more buttons. I would like buttons to switch between photographic styles more easily. I would like maybe some presets, right? I don't want to always shoot all of my images with the film photographic style stuff attached to it, like the texture stuff. But I would like to be able to choose to do that rather than having to go back into the image and edit it later on. So why can't I just have put more, if I can put infinite amount of buttons in this thing, now let me have some buttons in it. So I would like that. It's funny to me that the film effects, like all the texture stuff,

you do not see them live in the camera app. They are applied after the image is taken, which is not the way that everything else is with photographic styles. And now you could argue like it's kind of like it's schumorphic in a way, right? Like it's developing the film look, which is the way a film camera would look. But it's less elegant because you don't see the live preview, which is what you get with the rest of photographic styles. So, and additionally, the fact that you have to apply this stuff manually,

because, you know, if you want to add it in, if you don't want to shoot with it all the time like me, I wish you could apply the same photographic style tweaks or selections to multiple images at once. If you have five images that you want to make look like film images, you have to go into each one of them and turn it on, actually I realize now you can do the copy and paste edits which I haven't tried. I know that I don't know if edits some photographic styles.

I don't think they're the same. I don't think a photographic style is necessarily in it. I want to try that actually. I've said that. I haven't tried that because I just realized in this moment. I know that feature because I didn't try it. But I would say that I've been playing with this and I like the way that the texture stuff can make my images look. I would like it if they would explain.

the functionality set to make it a little easier to adapt and apply the texture stuff. To the phone. It's funny. Things you and I have in common, my photographic style is set to gold. And over the weekend, I added film and set it to 45. Oh, okay. Not too far off. So we're not, we're not too far off at all.

Have you tried the grain? Did you try the grain? I have tried it. I think I had it off. Because here's, and again, I am not a fancy photographer, so your mileage may vary. But I looked at all the grain samples and all the reviews. And I thought, that's exactly what I don't like in photos. Yeah.

That grain. Like, you've got this beautiful, continuous tone. And now you've added a bunch of speckles to it. And I guess, I get that it was a limitation of, film and film chemistry and that there's a great nostalgia for it, but I don't think it makes pictures look better. It doesn't make them look better. It makes them look different. So I will just, by the way, real-time follow-ups, copy and pasting edits does apply any photographic style change that you make. Nice. So that's good that I had that thought because I've maybe saved some

follow-up and now I'm happy because I'll do it differently. This is the thing. I would say that like the texture stuff, it adds character to an image. It doesn't make an image better, right? Like, You have actually made the image, quote, unquote, worse. Worse. Like, you have added something that has been taken away because we don't need to do that anymore. And I would say this is true for a lot of the photographic style stuff anyway, like going back to, like, or any photo filters or anything, right? Like, you're making the images worse, but it's to evoke a feeling, right? And like when I look at the images that I'm taking

and I'm looking at the ones where I've added the film grain and the grain and the film effect, they make me feel nostalgic looking at the image, which I think is kind of the point. You know, it's like I get it, right? Like I get why someone wouldn't want it. But that's why I also would like a little bit more control over it because it is a little aggressive the grain.

And I don't think it needs to be as much as it is. and so some tweaking over it would be good. My overall feeling about the 18 Pro, it's similar to what a lot of reviewers have come to the conclusion of this is very much an S upgrade to the phone. I'll say, well, battery life, I've noticed my battery life is better

and that's fantastic, right? It's not a whiz-bang feature, but I love having more battery in my phone. I love that my camera's a little better. I love that my phone is more powerful. Awesome. But yeah, look, I don't know if they chose this to be such a small update year because of the duo, but it is very convenient for them that they have this one of the most exciting iPhones of all time due out four weeks later, right?

Like, this phone is solid. I would not recommend anybody upgrade from the 17 unless you're having battery life constraints in you. If you are a person who is like, oh my God, my phone dies every day. and there is nothing I can do about it, then maybe this is the phone upgrade for you. But outside of that... Even then, if you've had that phone for a year, you should just go and get Apple to put a new battery in it.

But it's like maybe your life... Maybe it's always like this, right? That you are away from a charge of a... You need one hour. You need more battery life. Okay, sure. And there's nothing you can do, right? I don't know who this person is.

Bottom line, we have to make... We have to make an effort to explain why a normal person would update from a 17 to an 18. And I think that's the answer is, this is a great update. It's like all the S updates. Yeah.

Over the years. This mid, this mid cycle sort of like set of nice changes. Um, and I think groupers review of this was really good. Cause one of the points that he made that just every review has to make is, the iteration is the point. Yeah.

Um, sometimes I've done, somebody asked if I was going to do it this year and it's like, it's just a lot of work and it's a mess and I haven't had the time to do it. But like, sometimes I've written reviews that are basically like, What do you get if you're upgrading from X to come to Y? But that's it, right?

Like, this is incrementally better than the 17. You probably shouldn't update to it if you've got a 17. If you've got a 16, you'll get more. If you've got a 15, you'll get even more. If you got a 14, you will really be blown away by it. And that's what the point of this product is, is what are this year's iterations and how do they add? It's a little like my MacOS review where I'm like, also, if you didn't do Tahoe, you're going to get Tahoe. it's got a lot of features in it.

I've heard from people, by the way, who didn't do Tahoe and they've upgraded to Golden Gate and they're like, oh my God, this design is horrible. And I'm like, now now, now, now, now. You don't get to say that. You didn't live through Tahoe so you don't get to judge it. But like from Sequoia to Golden Gate, you're like, what are they doing to the design? I'm like, well, yeah, but it's better than it was last year. So it's a little like that.

Like, there's nothing wrong. this has still got the great aluminum back. I like that the colors are a little closer together on the back instead of being a little different. I know I still love the look. This phone is, the 17-18 is looks-wise one of the best-looking iPhones. Yeah, let me, and I'll say this because the duo's coming next month

and the duo may upset all plans. In fact, I suspect it will upset all plans. Yep. But if the duo didn't exist, I will tell you that, so I get reviewed, units and then I have one that I buy every couple of years. And I bought my orange 17 pro. I would never give up my orange 17 pro for an 18 pro. Never. Because whatever incremental updates it has,

and it does have them, quite honestly, I love my 17 pro and I love that it's in Cosmic Orange. Yeah, me too. And so it just, I don't see it. I just can't see it. Yeah, I'm not traded this one. I'm actually my 17 pro is going to become the camera that I record video with and then I'm going to trade in that 15 pro like that's going to go to that's going to go into duo fun but I'm keeping the 17 because I want to look at that orange every week you know just sit in yeah you will be brought to you by orange I love it let's do that but anyway I love I love it and I will I expect to use it and I actually kind of hope assuming that I'm going to embrace the duo and we just don't know but like I have strong suspicions that I'm going to love the duo what I'm going to love the duo what I'm what I really like is for AT&T to add their number sharing plan. Yeah. Right. And keep my, my 17 pro in orange as well in the rotation because I love it so much.

I really do. But if you're shopping for a new iPhone, first off, they still sell the 17, which is pretty great. The base 17 is there. And it's pretty great. Because remember, it got all these pro features last year. It's a great phone for a not as great as it used to be priced, but still a good price. And if you're a pro-level buyer

and you're coming from two, three, four years ago, it's great. It's just that this is a year where you feel the incrementality of Apple's approach because it's just a little bit better. That's all. This episode is brought to you by Century. You get a bug report.

The user says something was broken. You can't reproduce it. You dig through logs. You check traces. You have no idea what they actually saw. Well, Century's session replay fixes that. It gives you a video-like reproduction of exactly what the user experienced. Clicks, scrolls, what loaded, what didn't, all tied to the error in one timeline.

You can see the console output, the network calls, even the rage clicks where a user hammered a broken button. And because it's built into Century, the replay is already linked to the error, trace, and logs, no hunting required. What an incredible world this sounds like, right? Sometimes it can be so hard to understand what a user experienced. And users, I am one, not always great at explaining the steps that they took that got them to a bug. Because maybe they don't even know. They're just using the app. But they've hit a wall.

If you don't have the information, how are you going to know how to fix it? Some people, it's like, what device are they on? What OS are they on? Those particular things, what route did they take to get there? These can all be contributing factors into why a bug exists. exists. You need all of this information. Centry has it. They can help you get to the root core so much faster, take out that frustration and let you get back to the work that you want to be doing, which is building new features. With Century, privacy is on by default. Sensitive

text and media is masks. You're never capturing what you shouldn't be. It works on web and mobile with React, NextJS, iOS, Android, Flutter, you name it. Millions of developers use Century for reasons like this, including teams at Anthropic and Disney Plus. Try it free at S-E-N-T-R-Y.O and 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 Reli. Now, the Apple Watch, Series 12, you had a Series 11.

You were wearing one every day? I had a 10. Series 10 that I picked up in in Tennessee two years ago. Okay. That was when they went thin for the first time, right? Like the really thin? Yeah, I didn't remember. Did I do it last year or the year before? But it was the year before. It was a 10 when it got thinner, a lot thinner.

That's when I jumped in. So I had a 10, and I'm currently wearing the review unit of the 12. Because like I said earlier, I'm going to commit to it. I'd move my cellular to it because I was going to walk out the door with it, walking the dog. And I'm like, well, no, I need to do this. So I went through the AT&T, like move me to the new device and I did all of that. So, um, so yeah, I'm going to live with this for a while. But I was coming from the 10. So I, I didn't get the kind of like, wow, it's so much thinner now kind of feel. You're, and you're coming from an ultra. So that's a totally different

thing. So for me, it's not, it's not dramatically different in any of those ways. Um, and I'm just, you know, I'm just starting the process of using it. It's, I've gotten, you know, you got to add your, I went to the store last night. And I was like, before I went out the door, I thought, oh, do I have my credit cards on this thing, and I didn't. So I had to add them and sometimes you've got to put in a code and you've got to sync them over from your phone and all of that stuff. So I've been going through that process to get it up and running so that I can live with it because I do use my Apple Watch a lot. And I want to see what the changes and the differences are. Of course, ironically, the biggest thing that's introduced to the series 12 are features that are not in

the 27 update because they are these controversial audio features that are going to wait for another day. Zoe's asked the question, and it might be more helpful for you to answer, because I do have thoughts, but they're different. Do you have a take on Bezlegate? So the Bezels are bigger. Is that Bezlegate,

well, actually, I do have a take. Here's my take. I think Bezlegate as a super giant star is going to go supernova at some point, but probably not in our lifetimes. I don't understand. Wait a second. Do you mean,

you didn't say Beetlejuice? Well, then I don't know what Bezlegate is. So they'd made some changes to the case on the Appwatch series 12 design which has made the bezels appear to be larger because they've kind of extended

the glass around a little bit more there's just the thing people are saying the bezels are bigger haven't noticed any issues with it at all well I'm with Zoe Zoe Zoe said as someone going from series 10 to 12 it's nothing and I agree

it's nothing okay I mean I would say that like the bezels on this are bigger than the ones on like the screen bezels from my Ultra 2 but but the screen is actually bigger on the Series 12 than my Ultra 2 which is incredible and also I benefit from not having all of the stuff around the screen that the Ultra has right like there's just a lot more going on um do you have anything more to say about the App Watch Series 12 or shall I start talking about my feelings about it.

I don't, not yet. Not yet. Tell me, so you went to the ceramic white 12 from the Ultra 2, so it's a big change for you. I'd like to hear about it. So the ceramic white, I love it.

I was excited about it. I was hoping for it, and I love it. It looks wonderful, feels wonderful. The sand sport band that I got with it, I feel as a good pairing. It comes with the ceramic pin,

which I'm really pleased about. this watch is going to be harder to pair with other bands than some of my other watches. Like a white watch, not every band is going to work with that. I have a reasonable collection of bands that I've been accruing over the last decade or whatever. I have a few of the Pride sport bands, which are all white with something, the ones that I have. So they look good. I have the Nike one that has the holes in it. I like that.

I have the one that's the confetti. kind of looking one. That also looks good. I want a watch band that's a little more refined. I really like the magnetic link band. I have the blue leather one. I actually bought a new one before they stopped selling that. And that looks okay, but it's quite dark. They have a new, it's called Wildflower Blue and Camel colors of the Magnetic Link.

That on the website, I think both look good with the ceramic. I have an Apple Store update which is that I did an Apple Watch briefing last week. They give you a briefing before they send you the review units. And in the briefing,

they showed at the end, they're like, oh, and of course we've got accessories and new band colors. And I saw that wildflower blue. And I was like, I want that. Yeah.

So I've got one of those coming today. I need to go to the store. When I picked up I picked up my watch from the store. By the way, I went to the Battersea store this time because it was the only place that had the ceramic available to me. Of course, because it's fancy for fancy people. It was empty.

There was like four people in line ahead of me at 10 o'clock in the morning. I don't know what to say about that. I get the impression that store is always pretty quiet. Anyway, they didn't have the bands out. So my plan is to go back to a store at some point, try and take a look at them next to mine. I think maybe the camel would probably look the best, but I think my favorite color is the wildflower blue.

But anyway, I like that band style a lot, the magnetic link. I don't like that it's fine woven. I just prefer leather. It feels nicer to me to use. But the colors look really good. So I'll probably end up with one of those as like a kind of a more dressy, dressy version. I do have a gold milanese somewhere that I need to see what that would look like,

but I don't think it would look very good. So the Series 12, compared to the old, Ultra 2 as well. Man, this watch is thin. Like, it feels great to wear. Way less noticeable on the wrist. I like the low profile feeling. It keeps catching my eye in a pleasing way. I'm like, oh, look at you. You're so low. And today, it's like we're getting back towards like a sweatshirt weather here in London. It feels so much nicer to wear a thin watch under the cuff of a sweatshirt than the ultra 2, which I just didn't. I had to either have it out or like push the cuff all the way down so it goes to the other side because it was just not wearable. But today it fits nicely underneath the cuff of my sweatshirt. The screen looks massive because it's bigger, which is incredible really, like the case is smaller, but the screen is bigger. The kind of domed look of the series 12 screen is also like pleasing to me. I am still a devout user of the photos watch face.

I think, you know, in general, and this is why Apple shows them this way, if you have one of the more standard watch faces, it does look better in the overall case design because they tend to all be black, right? That it looks like the screen bezel on the screen will just become one, you know? So I expect, I know is a better look. It is a nicer look. But I think one of the true joys of Apple Watch ownership

is the Photos watch face. I think they did such a great job with that a few years ago. I have it set to pick out photos of my wife and my daughter, and I get beautiful, fun, adorable photos all day. And it makes me happy every time I look at my watch. And I believe that two complications is more than enough for most people. Realistically, how much information you need available to you at one time on your wrist is maybe not that much.

I have the weather and I have the date, which is fantastic now, and I can go to my Canada at any point. And I can get to whatever I need from the smart stack, like the combination of the smart stack with those little widget-y glances that you get inside of apps and the photos watch face, I think is the perfect combination for an Apple watch. I'm a big fan of the smart stack. I think that system works really well. And I think that they do a good job of giving me the information that I need. So super good. the comparably tiny digital crown is taking some getting used to. The crown on the ultra is a statement. It's huge. And it has the big crown guard,

you know, like the big that sticks out the side. I'm not missing the crown guard. I'm happy that's gone. And the digital crown being small is also nice. Like it doesn't dig into my wrist anymore. But it's taking some getting used to. Like using, it to scroll, it takes a bit more effort. Like, understandably, the Ultra's digital crown is meant to be easy to use, right? Because you're meant to be able to use it in more challenging scenarios. So I'm getting used to that. The one thing I was really concerned about was battery life, right?

Like the Apple Watch Ultra, it's battery life. That's its whole thing. Turns out it's not so bad if your Apple Watch Ultra is three years old, which of mine was. So I will need to see how this fares over time, of course, but I've had no issues in the past few days. I'm actually keeping surprised at how much battery I have. So it's half past six in the evening as I'm recording this right now. I took my watch off its charger at 8 a.m. this morning.

I have 64% battery life, morning enough for me. I do a daily top-up of my Apple watch, too, actually. I put it on when I shower, and I also put my watch on for a top-up before I go to sleep. So when I get in bed, I put it on, I'll finish reading or watching a video, whatever I'm doing for I go to sleep. And then I'll grab it because I like sleep tracking. That for me is more than enough. On occasion, with my Ultra, I get the thing, hey, you're at 10% and I just give it a top-up charge at my desk or whatever, because I have Apple Watch charges on my desk.

But I think it's not going to be a problem for me because I just don't think it's going to be a problem, but we'll see. I said I wanted to follow up on Siri AI performance because I was feeling like that there was it was very slow right and I was wondering like hey will the series 12 chip make that a better experience and it is more responsive but I was hoping for more out of it so the thing that I have noticed is the things that I'm asking for like setting a timer

it sets that timer quicker like a thing that is happening, I see the timer in the smart stack appear when I ask, and then the Siri UI pops up to show me what it's understood. That was not something that I saw on my Ultra. So I'm thinking that this chip is processing the requests quicker, but the UI is the problem. Like, it just takes too long to load the Siri UI. So I think maybe they need to refine that a little bit, but it's something that I was like set a timer and I can see the timer appear, then the Siri

UI pops up, which is very strange. But like I think, but still in general, the Siri AI experience on the Apple Watch, like it needs to get better. Like, I think. I ranted about this last time, but it does need to get better.

And I don't know, they made a decision to put Siri AI on the Apple Watch and that's fine. Yep. But it's got to go to the phone and that slows everything down. And whatever it's doing on these devices, it is not doing it well enough to grab some simple requests. And as a result, everything is slower. And I'd somebody ask me, like, I'm on like this series, do you recommend people update to watch OS 27? And my response is, no, I don't recommend to anyone update to watch OS 27 if

you rely on lots of Siri things for like timers and stuff on your Apple Watch because it's worse. Just bottom line, this is the place where they failed. And we got to call them out. Like this isn't good enough.

Whoever is working on Siri for watchOS, it needs to be better at simple requests because you're so far behind. And they're cheating with the timers now where it takes so long to process the timer, but they're logging when you made the request and then they back time the timer. So when the timer shows,

You say set a timer for three minutes. The timer finally appears 10 seconds later at 250. So it's like, okay, I guess you did it. But this is a bad sign because it's just spinning and spinning and spinning. I had a thing the other day where I did a normal kind of request. And then it just kept sitting there because there was like noise in the background. I guess like a TV was on or something. And it thought it needed to keep listening.

And as long as that noise was there, it just wouldn't. It took forever for it to finally be like. like, oh, I should process your request. Yeah. That was very frustrating. And then the other bug that I mentioned last time, which is adding things to reminders lists, that doesn't even work on my iPhone in 27, where I try to add to specific reminders list and it can't see them.

And it asks if it wants to create a new one. And sometimes it does create a new one, except those are sometimes invisible and sometimes it creates multiples of those that have, I have like all of these things called shopping list that are lists that are named that have one item in them because it can never see the shopping list. Even the new shopping list it creates, it still can't see it. Maybe Siri AI just likes

the idea of like a paper shopping list, right? We'd have to write a new one every time. So it's like you just get a new shopping list every time. Yeah, each list has one item in it. It's really efficient. And I just I mean, I guess it's a bug and it may just be a 27 bug and not even an Apple Watch bug. But like, bottom line,

there's, like, do I want to update Lauren to 27? The answer is no, because she also uses the grocery list and all I'm going to be doing is breaking our shopping list for her too. Whereas I now have to, if I want to add something to the shopping list, I have to get my phone and

then add an item manually to it, like a monster because Siri is just not, like, I'm not surprised that there are regressions in simple tasks when they are building a new complex voice control system. But like, this is the job. It needs to work right.

If I've got an Apple Watch, like, I appreciate that maybe Siri on my Apple Watch is useful for more than just timers and adding things to a list now. I appreciate that. But I use it for timers in a list. Yeah. And if you broke those, then you failed. So it's a fail. Watch OS 27. Like, I'm sorry to be so harsh, but like, bottom line, rule one, do no harm. Like, they blew it. It's a failure. They need to do better. So I look forward to updates to WatchOS that maybe unbreak WatchOS 27 for people who rely on Siri to do like things that the people who came to rely on the only thing Siri on the watch was good for. How about that? I put in my time with Siri on the watch. Don't ruin the only things that it was good for for

years. I should mention because I said about how I'm seeing this different experience with the timer, right where I can see it being set. I am on WatchOS 27.2. I don't know. know if that is a difference in experience. So like, I don't know. The steps that I can walk through is I press the digital crown, I say set a timer for a minute, I see the timer start, then the Siri UI pops up on top of it to tell me that it's done for some reason. Maybe they're fixing it.

Yeah. That would be great. And I'm on point two because I wanted to try out the health app, which I might mention in a little bit. Okay. You know, obviously this, the series 12 comes with this new kind of like health sensing system. I'm happy to have more frequent heart rate sensing. I'm happy to have what it has.

I can't see the benefits like that because I'm like the readiness and all this kind of stuff. I'm still in the like relearning your body again process. So I look forward to seeing what that's about in the future. And again, like I remain incredibly intrigued to try out these audio intelligence features when they become available. I have no idea what that experience is going to be like. And I'm very intrigued to try it because it's like it's even. going to be good and that's maybe concerning or it's not going to be that good

and we shouldn't have been so there's like a lot of worry about nothing so I'm intrigued to see what that's going to look like. Yeah, it is, the health thing is really interesting to me because it feels very much like this is that story from a few months ago

about how they had this AI, I mean for more than a year I think German talked about like AI health coach that they were going to try to do a new service or something. And then Eddie Q apparently kind of came in and was like no. Feels to me like the new health app is basically that. That this is stuff that they originally kind of baked as a, you know, AI service they're going to provide. And that, I know I talked about this at length on the show before, but it's like, if that's what happened, I really applaud that

decision by Eddie Q or whoever to say, no, we should probably just have the health app be better, right? Maybe we should do that. And that seems to be what this is. Again, funny that it's not in 27 and it's in 272, but still, I look forward to using it, but like you, this is why I've committed to using this review unit Apple Watch is it's got to collect data for a while. Yeah. So let's do that part. And then I'll report back. You'll report back. We'll meet back here in a few weeks. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Backblaze. So when about two weeks before Relay started. I destroyed my laptops. This is going back some time now. We're going back, what, 12 years or something? But I had my MacBook Care and I had Coke and I knocked a Coke into

my laptop care. I destroyed the MacBook Air. It was very concerning. It's terrible time to break a computer. I had a lot going on. The thing that I will never lose from that time is I know I lost files, but I don't know what files I lost when that computer went kaput. I hate that feeling. I still think about it. As soon as I got my new laptop, I installed Backblaze. I was never going to let it happen again. Whatever version of this story is your version, it's exactly the situation that Backblaze Computer Backup is built to solve because Backblaze Computer Backup runs quietly in the background, backing up every file on your Mac or PC plus any external drives

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backblaze.com slash upgrade 30 our thanks to Backblaze for the support of this show and all of Relay. So with multiple reviews and impressions, et cetera, et cetera, today's episode has gone really long. So we're going to try now, Jason, to knock out three segments.

Are you with me? We're going to do Upstream Room Roundup and the details before we get out of here today. So we'll start of Upstream. The Emmy Awards were last week and Apple won big. They won the most Emmys for the second consecutive year

of any studio or streamer. 29 total wins. Widows Bay took home 14 of those, making it the most wins for a comedy series in a single season. Comedy in quotation marks.

Yeah, but comedy is, the comedy category is full of comedies that maybe aren't that funny, right? The bear. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Wittos Bay is funnier than the bear.

I'll say that. Yeah. I think that the Emmys need to work out more categories, honestly. And then more people be able to win more awards, which isn't that the whole frigging point of these things? Yeah. Everybody loves that.

Yeah, that's true. Maybe next year. So the backstory is that the Emmys, this is their last year on network TV, and they're going to move to Amazon Prime Video, I think, next year. And that allows them to make lots of changes to the format. And I hope they do. And maybe they can change the awards, too,

because it is, yeah, things that aren't comedies are winning comedy. And those things are great, but, like, they're not comedies. So what are we doing here? So maybe more categories. You're right. More awards. Everybody's happy.

Pluribus got six. Margo's got money troubles, got three. Slow horses got one. Palm Royale. Palm Reale got three. I love because that show, I'm sorry, the show is so bad. I mean, they won three of the, like, it is a beautiful show. So they won, like, the technical achievement awards, which it absolutely deserves.

It does not deserve anything else. Sorry, Palm Royale. Oh, it won't like costumes and makeup, I see. Because it's a beautiful show. Like as a period show, like, it's really great looking. But that show, I've never seen a TV show go off the rails in the way that that one. Like, it started really interesting. And it just, that first season, it just goes to some weird places.

But like, they weren't the right. Anyway. And then documentary Mr. Scorsese got won award too. The story in Hollywood last week is back to the question of, is Apple the new HBO. That is apparently what everyone's talking about. We're back to that again. So much so that deadline asked HBO boss Casey Blois

what he thought about that is Apple the new HBO. As this is quote, well, I'm very happy because I think that they're very handsome competitors, Zach and Jamie. Look, we've had a very formidable... We've had very formidable competitors going back to Showtime, FX, AMC, Netflix, Amazon. So when Apple, everybody keeps us on our toes,

I think we do our best work. It's a little scary that they're a trillion-dollar company, but we'll continue to do what we do, which is put out the best shows that we can. I mean, I do think that they are actually the new HBO in the sense of what people think HBO was, right? Because what HBO is now is very different to what HBO was, you know, in the like Sopranos,

Sex and the City era. HBO now is different. And they're still making fantastic shows. I don't know if you've watched Lantern. Jason, but man, I'm enjoying that television show. And that is like HBO show, right? Like they have, for sure. It's like a HBO version of a superhero show.

I'm really enjoying it. It is an adult superhero show. That's what it is. It is really, really good. But I think Apple is proving that, like, they can do this, right? Mm-hmm. For sure. They have competitive advantages, but they're not the only deep-pocketed streamer,

and Apple is turning out. Time after time, award-winning critically. I mean, they're critically reviewed very well, not high viewership by and large. But, you know, this is what happened with Severance. Severance was very successful amongst critics. Then it won a bunch of awards. And then the second season went big. And maybe that will happen for Widows Bay.

I think so. John Turnus was at the Emmys and made a bit of a splash when he pulled out the duo on the red carpet, showing reporter from Deadline again, who goes berserk, which is brilliant. John Gruber linked to page 6 Hollywood who remarked on the duo being the talk of the town after the Emmys

saying the new phone is big, the new phone is big news, said one top Hollywood executive who added that they heard at least one star asking Ternus to get him on the list for a phone. Joked the source about who

joked the source about who gets the phones, it's the CEOs. It's like the Eddie Q list of Illuminati. So Q is the guy hooking up everyone. one in Hollywood, right? He's doing the deals.

Case of Blois, you want a phone? You want a new phone? I got one for you. Apple is now including Apple TV and Apple Arcade in ICloud Plus in over 100 countries. This is the booster footprint amongst smaller markets, rather than asking them to pay for more expensive Apple One bundles. This is actually starting at the base 50 gigabyte tier. So this is an incredible deal. Like you get any ICloud plus tier, you get Apple TV and Apple Arcade. some of these markets are also getting Apple Music Select, which is essentially a selection of ad-free radio stations of music. Yeah, and it adds, to be clear, this adds Apple TV in 59 countries

that never had Apple TV before. Yes, but there's something else is going on because I'm not sure if this is a related effort, but Apple TV is now available in Romania. Obviously, I'm aware of this because of my life. It wasn't there before, but they are not part of this scheme. No. They are paying full price for it. So it wasn't available before.

It is now. I mean, part of the reason they have to make it available in the languages. There's some level of language support or if it's dubbing or subtitles. So they're expanding. That's all we know. I've room a roundup time.

We are. Last week, Mark German gave an update on the products he's still expecting to come out this year. In this article, he said that the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro is being tested with MacOS 27.1 scheduled for release in October.

The OLED iPad Mini is also being tested with iOS 27.1. Regarding the Home Hub, Mark says Apple, which had planned to introduce this device at the iPhone Duo event, is now targeting a debut as early as October. But given how many times his product has been delayed, that timeline is likely to be fluid.

The Apple TV and HomePod updates are still due soon, and both updates are basically just to get new processors for Siri AI support, not much more past that. For sure. Yeah, I think there's going to be a big product launch in October. I think that's clear. In his power on newsletter over the weekend, Mark says that the home hub is currently being tested, quote, widely in employees' homes on its way to release. The product checks many of the boxes in terms to the description of an intelligent personal hub.

It has pervasive connectivity through home Wi-Fi, an advanced display, camera, microphones, and easy-to-use interface that looks like a mashup of iOS, TVOS, and watchOS, and syncs with an iPhone for setup and various other tasks. Mark notes that it will authenticate with a facial recognition to give people the correct content for them which he says is happening about a standard face ID level depth sensor which is interesting

maybe maybe that means they'll put the face ID on the Mac eventually who knows? Maybe the iPhone duo in the future I expect that it is not as secure but you can do it in the home because there's a lot that you have to do to get into the home right

Yeah. In this edition, Mark also states that Apple had been working on a smaller Apple pencil for the iPhone duo, but it ran into technical issues during production, so they dropped it in favor of supporting the iPads pencil instead. Yeah, they may want to bring that back. But keep that project going. They need to figure out the Apple pencil and streamline it. They will, but I think it's like, let's not try and do everything, you know? No, I get it. It will work. Let's do that. I get it. Time for the details. iOS 27.2 is now out in beta. The major release in this feature is a lot of things, actually, but the major release is the updated health app. I installed 27.2 for this.

Then I had to change my region back to America again, which I just got on off it. So I had to change my region to America against Siri AI, changed it back to the UK. Now I was to change it back again because it's only going to be in US English to begin. Apple Intelligence. I've been trying to,

it out. I like the design a lot. So like the homepage, it kind of gives you a nice big summary, very visual. It gives you a, you know, when you open it at different times of the day, there's like a little Apple intelligence summary. It tells you something about your day. It's not going as far as I want, though. Like I still want to see them pulling in deep data from across the app, which I don't feel like I'm getting. I feel like it's the same stuff. But we'll see, right? Here's the thing. The new health app, it has a lot of assessments that it wants you to complete. I feel like the new health app is a bit like a homework project.

It wants me to do a bunch of things, which I haven't done yet. Like different cardio assessments and hearing assessments and eating assessments. It wants you to do all of these. So I need to go in and do them. And I'm planning to do them. I just haven't done many of them yet.

And then it will fill out that wheel, you know? There's some that like, you've got that like petal design, right? One of them is like nutrition. Now, I don't use a nutrition app, so that is never going to be filled out for me, right? Because I don't track my food intake on my phone and I don't ever expect to. But I like it.

This is a great step forward for the health app. I need to do more with it, though, and to get the most out of it. But similarly, I'm still waiting from my watch to calibrate to me. And then that will start filling out more of the picture as well. Now, you say, Mike, that's 27.2. Where's 27.1? Well, let me tell you, Upgradients. Oh, boy, were the developers asking,

where's that 27.1? Because point two had nothing about the duo in it. And we were getting to about a fever pitch as the week was going on because Apple was having developer like sessions, like group labs, like presentations for the duo. And like, hey, you've got any questions? But no one was, had I been able to use it at that point.

On Friday, Apple released X code 27.1 to developers. so they could start testing their apps for iPhone Duo. You can go and check it out for yourself. It's been, I don't know about you, I found it fascinating so far to see developers on Mastodon sharing off their early work. Like, this is what I've been playing around, this is where I am so far.

And seeing apps kind of ported to this experience and adapted is only getting me more and more excited for the duo because it just looks fascinating what people are doing so far. So very exciting. Very exciting. I think that's it, Jason. I think we got through it all.

No Ask Upgrade today because this episode has been way too long already. But if you have a question, you would like to send in to us. You can always go to UpgradeFeedback.com. Send in your questions and we'll try to answer them on a future episode. Designed in California this week, this week's episode in our story of Apple trying to replace MacOS. Steve Jobs enters the story. Because an unlikely person makes an unlikely phone call that brings Next into the picture.

This is a fascinating part of this story about just exactly how next comes into the frame. You can get at this week on Designed in California or relay.fm slash designed. I'd like to thank the members who support us here with HuckPray Plus. This week I want to talk a little bit about our upcoming travel. We're going to be together very soon. so I want to talk about that. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up for longer

and free versions of the show each and every week. You can find us on YouTube by searching for the Upgrade podcast. I want to thank our sponsors that is Claude, Squarespace, Century, and Backblaze. Most of all,

I want to thank you for listening. Until next time, take goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.