Upgrade - 640: Moving Through Space

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 640 for October 5th, 2026. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Factor. My name is Mike Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. How are you? I'm good.

We're seeing in a hotel room in Memphis. We're actually too far away from each other to do a high-five, so we have to pretend. We could do it like a little finger. We touch. We touch fingers. Okay. If you watch the video on YouTube, you've got to see that. That was quite a thing.

We are recording together live in Memphis. It's actually Saturday. And that actually leads me into my snort talk question. Jason, how are you feeling today? I'm feeling great. You feel great? I feel great. Wow, look at you.

Yeah. What a show off. I feel terrible. Okay. All right. So we did the podcast with on yesterday. I'm happy you're feeling good. Did you get a good night's sleep?

No. Actually, let's check in on Jason's sleep score. Okay. How's Jason's sleep score? We can just live sleep score checks. 53. Okay. Pretty good.

That's bad. Actually terrible. Low. Very, very poor. Very poor indeed. My sleep score, 78. Ah. Okay.

It says. Great. Well, I didn't sleep a lot. Clearly. I only got about six hours to sleep. Sleep doesn't mean anything for how you feel in the day is what we've learned right now. No. No, I'm on my second diet mountain dew and I'm...

That'll do it. And I'm riding high. That'll do it. Yep. If you'd like to send Dennis Nell Talk to Help us open a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com. we're here in Memphis. We're recording on Saturday.

We're talking about the podcastathon, which was yesterday as we're recording this because all month we've been raising money for St. Jude because we're still in extended September right now. Yes. You actually still have, if you're listening to the show on Monday, or I think maybe a little bit of Tuesday,

there is still time to make a donation to St. Jude. You go to St. Jude.org slash relay. As we are recording right now, two important things have happened. We passed our fundraising goal of $700,000 for the month. Thank you so much to everybody that's made a donation.

We've also passed $5.5 million lifetime raised for the kids to St. Jude. The podcast was a wonderful experience as it always is. We had a lot of fun. We had a great time last night. It's available for you to watch

whenever you want over on YouTube. You can, you know, break it up over many, many, many viewing sessions. Yeah, you could do a binge, 12-hour binge or you could do it watch an hour for 12 days. An hour a day for 12 days.

Is that the recommendation? On the 12th day of relay, the podcastathon gave to me. What did it give at the end? You touch some things in some boxes. That happened at the end. Yeah, something like that. Something like that.

So yeah, at this time... I touch things in boxes. I didn't touch the boxes. I mean, I touched the boxes, but that doesn't. That's not the problem, is it? Yeah, we're just, We're just super thankful that the relay community continues to come out in the force that it does. You know, like me and Stephen were looking at this for many, many, many years in a row.

We've been incredibly consistent with the amount of money that has been raised by this community like over the last many years. And we're just super thankful that you continue to support this organization that means so much to us. So go and check out if you want to make a donation. You may donation anytime. If I campaign is still open, no, you can put it there. And go check out the podcast as on as well. So it's a good time. Good time had by all.

Yes, I think so. Jason, you reviewed Shop Different by Ron Johnson. I did. The Wall Street Journal again. Oh my God, I'm in the presence of a two-time War Street Journal book reviewer. Yeah, I guess they thought my other review was fine, so they asked me to review Ron Johnson's book. Well, obviously, more than fine. Why does it just have to be fine?

What can it be? They thought it was good. Okay. acceptable enough to give me a second assignment. That's better. I think that's what all I mean by that. I'll take that. Yeah, they asked me.

And I read it, I mean, I read it. I feel like I read it like three months ago now. Yeah, I feel like you wrote this review ages ago. I wrote this review a month ago, but I had already, I had to refresh my memory because I'd already read it like three months, two months before that or something like that. So, yeah, Ron Johnson has a book. I think it's out now called Shepard. different where he tells the story, it tells his story, sort of like what led him to Apple.

And then he tells the story about how he and Steve Jobs. And it was very much a kind of collaborative experience because Apple didn't really have a lot of retail experience. And Steve Jobs wanted to do retail stores. And Ron Johnson brought kind of a lot of knowledge to that, that Steve Jobs didn't have. And there's a lot of great Steve Jobs stories in there about John Johnson having ideas and Steve, you know, being really upset that he was like, I don't want to do that that's dumb. And then like Steve would think about it for a little bit. And then he would be like, okay, we're going to do that. The anecdote that I really like is Ron Johnson suggests the name genius bar and the geniuses for the Apple store. And Steve Jobs says that's the stupidest thing I've ever

heard. And like two days later, their general counsel, Apple's general counsel is outside Ron Johnson's door when he gets there in the morning. And he's like, uh-oh, okay, what is this? And And she says to him, what in the world is a genius? Oh. And that's the moment where he was like, oh, I guess Steve decided that was a good name. It's interesting because I actually have never really liked the name, genius. Okay. Well, I guess Steve.

I should chip in, right? Steve agreed with you until he didn't. Yeah. I mean, it works when you have it, but like it's an odd. I think it's very clever and it's memorable. And I think that's the point of it. but it also works it does work like I don't know why it doesn't fit with me

it just feels too much but it obviously does the job it does the job you know what it means yeah and there's a great moment where they've gotten pretty far down the line of what the Apple store is going to be and then Ron Johnson is at a meeting where Steve Jobs is recounting the that they're working on the digital hub strategy so this is going to be 2000-ish

and Ron Johnson goes to goes home and he's like, hmm, this is not what we're setting up in the stores. This idea that the Mac is at the center of all these other devices is not how our stores are laid out at all in the next morning. He's driving. He would drive in the morning on some mornings to the warehouse where they had their like staged Apple store that they were basically working at what an Apple store was going to be like. And Stephen Ron would be there and the retail team would be there. And as they're going out to the warehouse or before they even head out. He says, we got to change what

we're doing. And Steve's like, what are you talking about? He says, Digital Hub strategy. It totally changes what we should be doing. And Steve Jobs is like, God, no, you know, we spend so much time. We can't do this. It's fine the way it is, whatever. And then he kind of yells at him. And then they drive over and the drive is silent. And Ron's like, well, this is awkward. And they get there. and they get everybody together and Steve says, well, Ron here says

that we've got to throw everything away because Digital Hub strategy needs to lead to a complete reorg of what we're planning here. And you know, he's right. So listen to Ron,

good luck, and he walks away. Wow. And it's one of those moments of like Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs did, you know, we talk about this

idea that people don't like to be surprised. And that's a great example of that. Like Steve Jobs, clearly, he was very resistant at when given something new. Like, mm-hmm, I don't know. But it was really, I think, him kind of processing and being cranky, being a cranky guy. Yeah, like your instant reaction is no, I don't want to change, right? Yeah, yeah.

And I think that is natural. Yeah. And you're like, and you want to have maybe apply some skepticism to it. And he knows how much money's been spent on this. I mean, he does, how much work they've done on all of this. But I think one of Steve Jobs' special powers was his ability to look at that and then say, actually, we should do that. And once he gets over the hump, he is the strongest proponent of whatever it is.

So there's a bunch of interesting stuff like that in the book. I think he wears it, Ron Johnson does, about going to JCPenney. I think he felt like he had sort of done everything he needed to do at Apple. and wanted to try. And he's a believer. One thing you get in the book is he's a believer in retail. Like his whole beginning of the book is like, oh,

I love going to department stores and shopping malls. Like, it's just his thing, which is like, I mean, so he got to do his thing. But then he gets this opportunity to go to JCPenney. And what I say in the review,

it's how I end the Wall Street Journal review is basically like, he had defined one of the great retail organizations of the 21st century. And then like he decided, maybe he could, you know... He wants to run the show. He wants to run the show and he wants to revive maybe

what he, in his heart, felt was like a classic department store brand of the 20th century. And I think that that's kind of the challenge there is that he had actually done the thing, which was make the Apple store. And now he's trying to kind of like do this thing that's the past now and is fading away.

And they were very resistant to him, but he admits that it was kind of like a bad situation. And, yeah, I don't know. Also, it's all intertwined with Steve Jobs dying because, like, literally is told Steve Jobs says I'm dying and can you stay until I'm gone?

Don't leave now. Can you stay as long as I'm still here and Ron Johnson? Who's going to be the CEO of J.C. Penny? He's like yes, it stays for six months. So it's very emotional. He talks about saying goodbye to Steve on the day before he died.

There's a lot of that in there too. But yeah, he owns the JCPenny stuff and, you know, and yet I walked away from it sort of thinking like it was kind of in his nature. kind of had to try. But also he was, I think, chasing, this is me, I think chasing an ideal that was already gone, already had been made obsolete.

But he was so idealistic about retail and about department stores and all that that he really wanted to give it a go. And he had enough cachet because of the Apple stores to take on that role. And it just didn't. That's like maybe there's even like an argument that the work he did at the Apple store is part of the reasons that department stores were going away. people who create new experiences that possibly the apartment store anymore.

It was a sign of the times and that something like JCPenney was not going to take off again, maybe. Also struck by how Ron Johnson, he defined a lot of, at least according to the book, but I believe him, defined a lot of what the Apple store was in a way that Steve Jobs

was maybe not thinking big enough, which is an interesting thing to say about Steve Jobs because you always think he thinks big. But I think maybe he didn't think big enough. like Ron Johnson says, this will be your brand. He was like, I don't want to be in shopping malls. And he's like, do you want to reach people who don't know anything about Apple? That's where they are.

In 2000, that is where they were. And, you know, saying the size of the store, he's like, the store needs to be big. It's a representation of your brand. Your brand is, is your brand big? And Steve's like, well, yeah, our brand is big. Is your brand bigger than the gap? Well, yeah, it is. Well, then your stores need to be bigger than the gap, was his argument.

and he sort of had to drag Steve there a little bit. But I believe, I think I mentioned this in the rebu, but I really, really believe that the unstated thing about Apple's revival is the retail stores. That if you think back, Apple's brand was not even bad. It was irrelevant in that era because of the rise of Windows PCs, the Mac was this niche product. The iPod wasn't out yet.

and when it came out, it wasn't on Windows for a couple of years, but at least people who were curious could go into an Apple store and see it. By having that retail presence, by having the Apple brand be reachable by people, it allowed them to sell Macs at iPods and ultimately iPhones. And I think even with the exact same products that they had, I don't think Apple would have been as successful in rehabbing its brand. if they weren't present in for initially American

retail stores in the retail environment and then ultimately worldwide. I think it was a huge part. And Steve Jobs cared a lot about the Apple brand, but you could sort of see that from Ron Johnson's perspective, he wasn't thinking clearly about what retail meant for the Apple brand. And that's part of the journey they take together. Yeah.

Yeah. And you can kind of see why, because it's not like he had something to compare it to. like there wasn't a consumer technology company that was owning and operating their own branded store experience. All the computer stores in that era were either Circuit City or Comp USA, where there was a store within a store for Apple, but it was kind of dusty and nothing. Or they were like computer stores and they were very dusty and not interesting. And that's one of the realizations there is Ron Johnson's like, we want people coming into these stores and not just once every three years. right? We want them coming in

frequent all the time. Whenever they're at the mall you'll pop into the Apple store. Exactly. And that was a real leap. But that is ultimately what they did. So if you can get the book now, they can read your review on the Wall Street Journal and we will have more about this in future episodes of Design in California as well. Yes, we will. This will come up again in the future for us. Yep.

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free trial. When you're ready to, and you can build your whole website on this free trial. And then when you're ready to launch it to the world, use the offer code upgrade to save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com slash upgrade and the offer code upgrade to get 10% of your first purchase and show you support for the show. the Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RELI. So on last week's episode, we had what I thought was a really great aside when we were talking about Apple's progress to making a fitness band, where we questioned why does it take Apple years to get a product to market? Like if they think this is hot, they have the resources

they have, why not rush, why not better structure yourself to deliver products quicker? the next day, Mark Gohmann reported John Turnus's plan to do exactly that. So I'm going to give some information here. We're going to go through it. So John Turnus is indicating to other executives that he wants the company to accelerate product development, broaden the range of products that the company makes, and become a leaner organization that has a much greater focus on engineering. Doesn't this sound like exactly what you would do if you were John Turner?

Like it feels like if you've come from that organization, he is. taking all of the frustrations that he has had, right? Yeah. Or may have had. Comes in and he's like, great. Now it's my turn. You know, we're going to do it the way we're going to do it. So as part of this, the company is considering relying also less on the traditional spring and full release schedules,

releasing more products throughout the year. So focusing less. I'm sure stuff like iPhones, right, will continue to be where they are. I guess we now have these two spots, but not to just focus. everything in that time. I was listening to maybe it was dithering and they were talking about

releasing products in the fall. And like if you release something at that time of year, you're indicating the idea that it's going to be a Christmas product so it has to have a lot of units. So I was thinking, you know, we talk about fitness band. Well, if you can't, you know, it's going to take you time to get it up

and running. Why not just start small? We'll then release it in February. Right. Scale up for the rest of it. rest of the year. You don't have to release every product in the holiday season so you saw millions of them. So it's interesting thought. Turnus also wants to eliminate some middle management positions to aid faster decision making and keep engineers in closer contact with key decision makers directly. There are some reports from Goerman that Turner's has for years felt that Apple was hired too many

people and feels that they do not produce enough to warrant this size of the organization. We were talking about this a little bit before, and I hadn't read the full report. I read it this morning. And you had mentioned that you think that Gohmann's basically got sources in the HR team. And as I was reading through that, I'm like, ah, yeah, I see it. He knows so much about these issues of hiring and layoffs and recruitment. And I think it's, it always sticks out to me because while Bloomberg is a business publication. Yeah.

Sometimes some of the details that German gets feel like they're, I don't know how to say it, they're really like almost what you'd expect in like a tech insider industry newsletter more than what we tend to look for Bloomberg and Mark German for. It's almost like, hey, what's the scuttle bud? Who's hiring and who's getting laid off? And it feels like sports reporting sometimes, right? It's like this key players go into this one in the transfer window. Who are the winners and who are the losers? And I think part of it is just the effect of his sources distorting his reporting a little bit. And again.

Or just being what he has to report. Well, this is what I mean. I don't mean distorted factually. I mean, if you go fishing for Apple News and your job is to find Apple News, which Mark Germans is, and you come back with a big basket of HR transactions, you're going to cover the HR transactions, even though I look at it and think we probably give more emphasis to his reporting on this subject than we would otherwise, because it's coming from him and because of what else he reports, it just feels a little imbalance to me. But yes, so he's in there saying there were layoffs in

this group. And again, I had that thought, which is like, this is the kind of thing you see in the newsletter, the industry newsletter about, oh, group X, a company Y had a layoff, and group B executive went to group C. And I don't always think that the narratives that get built around that make a lot of sense. It's the function of Apple being so secretive, though, that any information is newsworthy. Of course. And so that's why like, yeah, the idea that there were 300 layoffs in the Siri teams, like, you can just report that. It's like, it's not the exact number, but there's, you know, all this layoffs in the series team, there's layoffs in...

Yeah, no. And, and, um, but it just, the emphasis of it like, yeah, I texted you when that came out and I just said, well, if we, if we ever doubted Mark German's sources in the HR department. Yeah, they are. I think you can't read that story and not read it that way. And that's fine, but it just seems weird because it's much better to get the, why is John Turner's motivated to do what he's doing?

Because I think I could argue that there are a bunch of places where Apple is, seems to be really understaffed. Although as an outsider, it may be that it's not efficiently staffed. It may be that the people that it was easy to hire some kinds of staff and not others. And that may be true

because sometimes I do feel like Apple, we talked about this with their software all the time. If you're going to be so ambitious to have all these additional first-party apps, all of these things, we were spending time before we got started trying to set up Final Cut camera. Oh, God.

And we, just as the last time we tried this. An incredible tool that feels like it is built on a house of cards. Yeah. If one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong, we failed to connect a third camera, exactly as we failed to connect it a year ago. And different cameras, to different phones. It's not like it was the same phone each time, right? Different phones.

So that's what, that kind of stuff when we talk about it. I feel like either be ambitious and high. hire staff to behave, like how Apple would do this product or don't do it. But instead, they, a lot of times they, you know, they, we've talked about this a lot. They launch it and then it's almost like they forget it. They retask or it's not enough task to be on it. And they're, there, and the worst, the presence in the market of Apple, um, deters other people from trying to compete with them. And Apple doesn't really try hard enough. And we'll, we'll end up with this kind of like broken middle ground. Um, so there are cases where I would say Apple's hiring

practices are really messed up because they're trying to do too much with too little. However, I think that it's also probably true what Mark German reports here, that you look at some of this stuff and you think, why, I mean, I understand that at some point a few years ago hiring all these people made sense because we thought we were going to do this, but now we're not. So let's not keep them around. If those rules don't make sense, we should. should just say so and be more efficient there. But, and again, I think the flip side of that, as in, and invest in other areas where we actually think it's relevant.

And it also feels like particularly, as well as just like a general reshuffling, which apparently has been doing a lot more of, it seems like Ternus is keen to remove specific functions, like middle management positions. And just like looking at this from a business perspective, right? or from a person's side first, I never want anyone to lose their job. But, of course. I think anyone that's worked in a corporate position, you have, I have.

Everybody feels that there are management functions that get in the way of the work being done. Like, I think it is a very normal feeling. I know I had it when I worked in the corporate world. I see it now in interacting with corporations, you know, companies that we work with. But, like, you can feel that there's someone that's trying to get something done.

there's someone in the middle, and then there's the decision maker. And that person in the middle has their own agenda. They have their own targets they need to hit at the times that they need to hit them, or they're not very good at their job. And that can be a blocker to the work being done. And it often springs from a good impulse, which is I've got somebody who's really good and they need another task and I'm going to delegate some of the work to them as a manager. Oh, we have too many people in this organization.

One person can't manage it. So that person needs four managers to manage the people in the organization. Like, this is very natural, this like shrinking and contracting. He will, you know, Turner's will maybe get rid of a bunch of these people. In five years' time, they'll bring some in again because it got unruly. It's just like a very normal like ebb and flow. Yeah, this happens. We were just talking about this as well, like a couple of days ago.

Like in regards to something, I don't remember what it was, but this idea of like, someone comes in, they have a bunch of ideas. and then they're like, oh, what about this? And then it doesn't work, and a person goes away, new person comes in, here's an idea, you know, and it's very normal. Yeah, this is just a cycle of it. And when I said, when he was coming in, I said, there's going to be natural change because there's some stuff that just remains static

because it's just the way we've always done it. And Tim Cook isn't interested in getting his hands dirty on that stuff. and now here's a new CEO and he's got his list of things that he doesn't like about how Apple has been run for the last five or ten years and he gets to decide now.

I don't know that these are right decisions. I wanted him to clearly be making decisions immediately, right? And these things take a long time to put into effect. But if, you know, we're at this point in and it's like, Margaena Report,

Turner is keeping his hand on the wheel, even key, no change. It's like, okay, is that necessarily the right way to do things? Like, I feel like I wanted to see him shake it up. And so more. Tennis has indicated that Apple must introduce products more quickly and become more experimental to remain competitive in the Apple Intelligence era. Artificial intelligence. Sorry, artificial intelligence. I think we're in the United States. We're supposed to call this something else. Isn't it like super intelligence? intelligence now?

Yes. Because AI is not enough. Machine learning wasn't enough. So we have to call it AI. No, AI's not enough. So we have to call it like super intelligence. To get us closer to AGI. Right?

Because we're going to be upper level now. I, yeah. Anyway, this is, I can't tell you how many people texted this to me. Because we literally talked about it on upgrade last week. Sometimes we have conversations. I has a good conversation. And then something happens like, oh, that was a really good conversation. So, yeah, I said to a couple people like, yeah, you know,

friend of the show, John Turnus, he's out there doing stuff. But I mean, it certainly felt that way to us as observers. It wasn't good enough. If I, and I ran it about this last week and I ran about this about a year ago, but it's that same, the short version of the rant is, if I on the outside can be like, well, wait a second, if it's obvious that Apple needs to do X. And Mark German then reports in Bloomberg,

Apple's working on X, see it in two years, something's wrong. Yeah. See it in two years. is not an answer. And we talked about the iPod, which I know it's a different era, but like the iPod got done from nothing to a shipping product in 11 months. So what are we doing here? And if I were John Turnus, 100% this is one of the things that I would come in with is we need, not every product needs to be like this, but we need to have the skills to fast track a product. If and what better example, talking about Mark Herman says the artificial intelligence era, whether a product. Whether a product. is specifically AI or not, the artificial intelligence era has taught us something, which on a software side, let's take software. Apple has this whole approach, which is like, what we do is we think of what we're going to do for the next year. And then we roll that out in June. And then we ship it in September.

And then the next June, we roll out whatever's going to happen for the next September. and in the artificial intelligence era, you can't do that. Yeah, you can't do it that way. And they got really comfortable and for a while they could afford to do it that way. But you can't. And so if you're going to come in and be the new boss,

whether it's hardware or software, and I would say it's both, you need to say, look, not everything. I'm not saying there's going to be a new iOS version that's like a WWDC drop, but it's every three months, right? Of course it's not. We're not going to do that.

But, like, if there's a crash thing we have to do, we need to be flexible enough to do that. And if there's a crash hardware thing we need to do, we need to have the skills and the capability to do that. And the word experimental here, become more experimental, I think, is also code for saying, let's try some stuff. Yeah. And it doesn't all have to be, because I think they set the bar so high that they're basically like, unless something clears this incredibly high bar, they just don't do it. And it's a mistake. It's a problem. Like this WWDC cycle has been such a perfect example of the speed of the error of technology that we're in.

So when they showed off Siri AI at WWC, it's like, okay, they're chatbots to state of the art. They're doing chatbots. Comes the time that it ships. Now everyone's doing agents, right? So we've got muse dots. Right. Apple doesn't have that. And they may, you know, we know they struggle to get here.

But if you're at Apple, do you say to yourself, we had some agent features? They're not done, but we're working on them. We were planning on showing them in June of 2027 and shipping them in mid-September of 27. And do you look at Muse and say, we're going to be there. Watch for us in September, 27, in a year's time. or do you look at it and say, yeah, we got to fast track that.

We got to get that out. We got to ship that. That's the priority now is to ship our take. If you have one, and if you don't have one, you need to get one. Yeah, get one, but don't say we've been here before. Yeah, yeah. Don't say you've got it when you haven't got it.

Yeah. But it's like, again, I don't know that that is the right. I don't know that's the right call. I do think that this is an interesting product type, right? This like agent, like it's an interesting thing. Yeah. I don't know. I think there's agenic stuff that Apple could do, especially since, again, there are great

advantages that it's on device. I don't want to share all of my personal data with Facebook, right? Like with meta. There is not, I can't think of an, okay, X maybe. You know, but it's close. There's very few companies that I would rank lower on trusting. Did you want to log into your Gmail and access your I message? Exactly.

So, you know, well, I think meta may actually be the worst because I, I, I do not believe X is competent enough to deal with that. And meta might be. Meta we've seen. They're competent enough to deal with huge sets of danger and do stuff with it. They've committed many crimes, yes. So it could be one of those. So this is...

It's just an example of the pace, right? That three months ago, this was a fringe thing, open claw and all this kind of stuff. Now it is mass market, number one in the app store. People want to try this thing. And as an example of the hardware thing, now Metta's like, we're bringing out this little charm where you can talk to your thing. And clearly, but most likely, Open AI's hardware product will use their agent tool. And it's like, well, now they're going to have these products and come up quickly, right?

It's that speed thing. Right. So what are you going to do? There's no way that Mehta was thinking about this charm two years ago. Of course. Because their strategy for AI then was completely. different to where they are now. So it's like,

it's all of this isn't, it's not saying that any of this makes any sense, but as an example of the speed and pace of technology now, you cannot be as slow as Apple has been. Exactly. They're being methodical, thoughtful, and have introduced products in the right way, but we are in a time of threat to their business

because something could undermine them. Right. Right. And again, it doesn't have to be everything. But if you don't have that other gear to shift into, you just can't do it. You need that other gear.

You need that other muscle. You need whatever metaphor you like. You need the capability to choose to pick your spots and say, we got to go on this one. And I think the example that I would give that is the best is if you've been talking internally and I can't believe they haven't been, that more agent-y stuff is where they're going. going. If you look at like the describe a shortcut, extensions, you look at, you look at extensions,

if you look at the, um, all of the, the shortcut action app stuff, it's hard not to think that they've always been sort of thinking the next step is that it is applying models that use all your stuff. Yeah. So you're working on it and you see this. The next step is saying, and having the legitimately, the legitimacy inside Apple to say, this can't go in iOS 28. It's got to go in 273 or 274. And everybody's like, whoa, are you kidding? And you have to be able to say, no, we have to do this. This is important. And if we're incapable of doing this, what's wrong with our organization that we need to fix? Because that's, and that's at the level of the CEO. Or somebody like Craig Federici, if it's a software issue. It's like, if we're not structured in a way that allows us to react like this, how do we restructure?

You do have to ask that fundamental question because you need to be structured. That's a really good way of putting it. If the question isn't like, if we can't do this, what's wrong with us? No, the question is if we can't do this, how do we do this? Yes. It's got to just be action. It's not about like, okay, let's have a review of the organization to work out where the flaws.

No, there's not enough time for that. Like you have to move. And yes, break the idea of the annual operating cycle, operating system cycle. And it's like, I know so many people would say, oh, but for years we said annual releases are too much. Yes, but that was in all of the code as written by humans. And it's not anymore. That's also true. And we know it's not.

So the developers can move at a faster pace. So the operating system should move at a faster pace. And their competition is using those tools and moving. at that pace and you've got to be able to do it. You just have to, you have to be able. Again, not saying everything, but saying you've got to be able to pick key categories and say, we're going to move fast on this one. When one of your biggest technology competitors is an app in your store that has been number

one for weeks that's doing things that your device should do, maybe you need to think about that. And not just a competitor, like a arch enemy. Arch enemy. I'll say more to enemy, but the arch enemy. The absolute inverse of your values, and you are offering that to people, right? Like, you are the conduit for people putting this app on the device. You should be there.

And like, especially when Siri AI's power is in the personal context, which is exactly what the agents are looking for. Right. And you've got it because you're Apple and it's on your device. And people, you have a better story, but you have to implement it. that is the, yeah, I think at the core, that is what we're saying is you need to find a way to be better at this. And I do think it's probably structural, but that's just a guess from the outside. And I do think it's empowering people on the inside to say, okay, if this is important,

how are we going to do this? Considering how much time we've spent talking about agents now, we've gone in a different direction. I've moved our topic order around in the shop. because we're going to talk about the Home Hub, which you think maybe naturally ties in with Turner's moving faster, but we're talking so much about agents. I want to talk about this. Apple is posted to their developer website, an article titled Updates to Full Disc Access in MacOS.

I want to read it real quick. It's quite a short update, but I think it's good to just get the context for it. We give developers powerful APIs to build incredible capabilities into their apps for Apple products, backed by a set of controls designed to protect you. as private data. Four-disc access largely sidesteps these controls in order to allow backup apps to function properly on the Mac. That's funny to say the Mac. Some developers are using full-disc

access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems, including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history without users full knowledge and understanding. For communication apps, this can also compromise the privacy. of the people users are communicating with. Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action. Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access

so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy. Yeah. Now, they, I mean, what's funny here is that they've done a lot. Like, full disk access, they put it in the context here. It's like, look, this was really for backups. Okay. And they added a few years ago this idea that, like, if an app looked inside your photos folder, you got a pop up that said, do you want to let this app look at your photos?

and similar for some other sensitive areas of your system. So it seems to me that what's going to happen here is that Apple's going to say, these agents are using a feature that was not intended for them to take over everything on your system and sort through it. And Apple's like, we're not comfortable with this because this is not granular enough, which I think is fair. enough.

So it's interesting that they feel that they need to do this. But, I mean, the idea that you've got a program running on your system that can just look anywhere and do anything and run. I mean, I've done this with Claude Code sessions where it says, oh, yeah, I, because it went from me approving everything to you put it in auto mode. And then you suddenly have this moment where they're like, yeah, I'm running code. I'm running tests. It's very convenient, right?

but it's like literally it's just running it's just typing things into your terminal now and it could tell you or it could not tell you well and also it's like you know these muse we're talking about muse there are stories and of it going and looking inside of people's messages right history right because what happened is in that one journalist story they didn't granted access to messages but it had full disc access so it just read the messages file yeah So I get what Apple's doing here and I think they need to do it. I also share John Gruber's power user lament, which is basically like, I mean, it's very much like the conversation we had about why Apple security does a bunch of stuff to limit the apps you launch. And I grouse about that all the time.

Like, oh, an unsigned app and I've got to go here and I've got to go over here and all of that. But they did that because people were getting talked into approving those things by fishing attacks. And it was subverting their computers because they were walking them through Apple security process. So Apple made its security process more complex so that it was harder to try to talk people through it. And the result is that if you want to run an app that's not signed and you're a power user, it's a pain now to do that. But I also understand why. And that's what this feels like to me is that... Not dissimilar to a phishing scam sometimes when the chatbot is talking you through

the things that you need to do. Exactly, right? And so I think it's the right thing to do because I think there are even, in fact, I'd say right now that's even sophisticated users are granting too much access to their computer. Well, like I said, I had that moment where I was running something in Claude Code and it suddenly was like, oh yeah, I compiled this thing and I went out on the internet and got this file and brought it back. And I'm like, I know what I'm giving it. access to, but then it does things that I didn't expect it to do. Right. And if you set some trip wires, which it sounds like Apple is going to do, so that the system, instead of just saying, here's what, would you like to use this tool, grant full access? Right. That's basically where we are. Is Apple feels like there is a barrier beyond which there's just one switch, which is full disk access. And it's like, good luck. And Apple's like, we can't do that. We can't full. is too much. And so you create more tripwires where it's like, it's going to do this. Are you okay?

Are you really okay with that? And I think I believe Apple, when they say, ultimately the goal is not to prevent Mac users from doing what they want with their computer. The goal, that's not the goal. The goal is to protect users from people or software doing things on their Mac that they don't understand or intend by warning them that this is a threshold that they're going to cross over. Yeah. That they're going to hit this tripwire. I think that's what's going on here. Yeah, the devil's in the details, though, right?

I mean, you are an, and I would say an advocate for removing some privacy permissions, and it seems like they're about to add a lot more. I know. And it bugs me. And honestly, as a user of something like clog code, if I can't, give a command and let it spin, but instead have to sit there and go, okay, okay, okay, okay, my experience is going to be worse, right? But I also, just as with the signing of apps, also I am willing to grant Apple some degree of latitude because I understand that in certain

circumstances. I am not who they're trying to protect. I am going to be a little bit of a casualty in the sense of a little bit of inconvenience in return for who knows how many users who got talked into installing malware. And, you know, when I talk to those security people, they say they've largely stopped that. They've largely solved that because they've erected enough barriers that's too hard to talk somebody into this now. Well, that's great. Yeah. So we don't know how this is going to end up. And I do wonder if ultimately there will be a switch you can flip as a power user that will let you do this. But my guess is it will be much harder

to do because the goal is not to not let people have power. The goal is to make it behind a barrier that regular people can't be talked into, right? It's the idea of like if somebody calls you on the phone, they can talk you into giving them a code or something that might steal money from the bank, but they probably can't talk you into buying a toy gun and painting it to look like a real gun and then walking into a bank and saying, this is a stick up, right? Somebody's going to, nobody's going to do that. They're going to be like, what are you talking about?

Are you talking me into being a bank? bank robber? I'm not going to do that, right? There's a line beyond which nobody is going to get talked into it or almost nobody. So that seems to me as Apple's job is how do you build a system where if people want to do stuff, they can do it. But it's going to be more inconvenient for us because maybe it has to be because too many people are getting taken for a ride. And this is super dangerous. I mean, make no mistake. Letting a coding agent or another active

agent rifle through everything you do and have on your hard drive and run code seems bad. Yeah. It's all going to be, again, it's like, I find it weird to say like they'll into details. This post

has no detail. It doesn't say what they're going to do, when it's coming, or how it's going to be implemented. Which is interesting to me. It's like, why did they post it now. Like, why are we seeing this now? We've no detail. Yeah. I mean, are they, are they concerned that like something's going to go wrong? I think they're seeing what some of these coding assistants are already doing in terms of, and that story about Mews looking at that person's Jason Aiton's messages file. I think, I think they've been working on this already because

they're concerned about this with the coding agents. And now they feel like, like it's really getting out of hand and they need to get out in front of it, but that's just a guess. And, you know, I hope that there are ways around it. I mean, say something like the photos prompt that pops up, you know, and it's like continue giving full access. Like, that kind of thing is fine. But I don't want every experience that I have with co-work to be throwing up permissions prompts for me. I know. Right. And so like, I just don't know what this is going to look like. And something that's really interesting is so many people. are using the Mac because of this, right?

Right. And so what happens to all those Mac minis in closets that are just connected to codex? Because I feel like Apple knows this is a competitive advantage for them. So I think that's why what they will probably do is erect a barrier that is higher, but there's still a switch back there that you can flip. And it may be, we talked about the idea of doing a developer mode, maybe it's an agent mode, maybe it's something like that.

I'm reminded of like when, for lots of stupid reasons, if you wanted to install audio hijack, you used to have to reboot into the recovery mode and then go to a special security setting and then check to lower your settings and then put in your password and then reset and then reboot and then install and then reboot again. it may be something like that. The problem here is if somebody's motivated enough to use this stuff, this is that kind of nanny state argument, which is like, in the end,

if somebody wants to give meta, unfettered access to everything on their hard drive and the ability to write code and run it, at some point, if it's the Mac, you got to let them, right? You got to let them.

at some point. Yeah. And I will say, because I know people rush to panic about this stuff, thus far on the Mac, Apple's take has been, we will not stop you, but we may make it harder. And I think that's what they're going to go for here, is they're going to try to make that convenient switch for running on a Mac mini in a closet somewhere,

behind something scary enough that most regular people are not going to bother. There was something that I found very funny. John Voorhe's posted about this on Mac Stories, right? So he references how Apple says that full disk access was for backup apps to function on the back.

And I'm just going to read from John says, this is nonsense. Looking at my MacBook Pro, only a handful of apps to which I've granted full disc access or backup apps. Others include, and I'll just skip ahead to the funny ones, PixelMator Pro, test flight, Madden NFL 27 arcade edition, and then obviously like things you'd expect like Hazel and setup. Well, yeah, but I mean, this is the thing, right? Why does Madden have full desk access? And I think the argument would be that it absolutely shouldn't. And maybe

some of this is on Apple for allowing full disc access to get a little out of hand. That is the Apple arcade version of Madden's. I'm sure. Which is, it's just, It's just why. So that's part of the problem. It is, is that. Also, what is it?

Something, I saw somebody mentioned that there's actually some data that now the backup apps can't back it up because it's kept in like an exclave and therefore is not reachable. So you can't back that stuff up. It's impossible. So we'll see what they do. We'll see what they do. But I think,

I think their goal is to find. I think what they've realized is that full disc access became a catch-all and it can't be anymore. It's gotten worse and worse and worse. And so to John's point, his list of full-disc access apps shows why full-disc access

has been broadly defined in a way that probably it shouldn't be. That there should be more granular permissions so that Madden doesn't need full-discay. disc access, right? Like, it shouldn't be necessary. That's happening because... I love that it does, though. That's happening because there's some reason, or either somebody's taking a shortcut, or there's some reason that some file somewhere, but like it shouldn't ever be that way. So maybe they will address this so that full disc access. Because I think what I would say is,

I think Apple always viewed full disc access as a thing they had to do because of backup. And then it got out of hand. That's my, that's my read on that. Yeah. I wonder what the replacement is and how they enforce it. Like, if you don't want Muse on the Mac to have full disc access, but you still want to offer full disc access, how do you stop them? By building barriers that make most people not want to bother, or at the very least,

make them really, really, really, really, really, really sure that they know and approve of what their agent is doing. And I think those are the two options. It's going to have to be intelligent, right? Because you can't get in the way of a backup app. Yeah, I know. But it might mean that to install a backup app now is going to be sort of like to install audio hijack

where you're going to have to do a bunch of steps in order to get that backup app. It's going to be interesting. Yeah. I think it's a somewhat strange decision to publish this with nothing. Yeah. Because it is not,

I don't really think, I mean, maybe I'm not paying attention to the right places. You know, the, I would say somewhat minor controversies of what Muse is accessing right now, right? I don't really think people were saying, oh, Apple.

Like, I don't really think there was fire on them in which they felt they needed to respond to this, but yet they have decided. to do that. And I think of as with these things usually, it's just creating

more questions than answers. I look forward to seeing more. And again, I guess this is between now and WWDC, right?

Like you would assume, right, this is a sooner rather than later thing if they're talking about it just on a Friday or whatever. Yeah,

yeah. No, it'll be a feature. 0.2, 0.3. It'll be, it'll be, it'll be, introduced in there and maybe it's like

optional to begin with but this is a warning and then it'll get enforced at a later one. They do that sort of thing with stuff like this. So yeah, we'll see. Or did, is it that or has, have agents ruined everything for everyone from now on? I don't know. I mean, probably.

Yeah. But, but maybe it'll be worth it in the end. I don't know. This episode is brought to you by factor. Summer's in full swing. You know what that means. That means travel. We're traveling right now. I know when I travel. My eating

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to eat the very good and easy food that's available to me. Wouldn't it be great if there was a healthier option, right? Yeah. Good and easy. It would be. It would be good, Mike. Let me talk about Factor. They make chefcrafted dietitian designed ready to eat meals so you don't have to choose between real food and convenience. With over 175 banned ingredients, every factor meal is designed around what supports a healthier lifestyle and nothing that doesn't. Factor meals are ready in just two minutes and require no prep and no cleanup. So even on the days where your schedule is

completely out of control, eating well is still a good. achievable. Every week you'll find over 100 nutrition, sorry, nutrient dense menu items to choose from, and new options like salmon, burgers, shredded pork, collard greens and more, plus add-ons you'll crave like pumpkin-flavored cheesecake and protein shakes. Ninety-seven percent of users agree that factor meals help them live a healthier lifestyle so you can feel confident that you're doing something good for yourself with each and every meal. Jason, I know the Snell household. still big fans a factor yeah i mean the the you can't argue with the success of the meals coming sometimes and uh them just disappearing out the door yeah because lauren works at the library every day

and you know if we don't have leftovers then what are you doing for lunch and you know we get lots of podcast products in the house that are just like whatever and uh those met with the seal of approval and then we got them for my mom because we were concerned about her nutrition well. So like it, and I can say for myself that yeah, I'm impressed. I think it goes down to the quality of the ingredients, but they taste they taste really good. Yeah. Let's eat real. Head to factom meals com slash upgrade 50 off and use the code upgrade 50 off to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year with supplies, while supplies last until October 31st, 2026. That's the code upgrade 50 off at F-A-C-T-O-R-M-E-A-L-L-S.

Upgrade 50 off at FactorMeals.com. See the website for more details. Our thanks to Factor for their support of this show and all of Relay. New segment time. What's this new segment? Jason. This is a segment brought to you by Mountain Dew. Last year, I opened the Mountain Dew during an ad read and you lost it.

I did. Yeah, I did lose it because I was doing an ad read and I hear. And I also. think you did it accidentally directly into the microphone last time. Yeah. So this time I thought I would wait and use it as a new segment. However, interstitial. The entire time during the ad, I'm seeing out the corner of my eye a man fondling a man found it do. And I had to keep it together. And I did. You did. We should be proud of me. All right. So we're going to go back to talking about new products now. Mark German is reporting

that Apple is getting ready to debut its Home Hub on October 3rd. just a little over a week away. We have more details. Things are a little bit more concrete now. The display will be roughly a six-inch square can be mounted on the wall or on a speaker base. The wall-mounted version needs constant power via USBC. There's no battery.

And it includes the speaker and microphones in the unit. The device itself, in both configurations, will be able to recognize who approaches it or who's speaking. and we use this as the way to give the right answers to questions that are asked and to show information on the screen. It does this by voice detection or facial recognition that's not face ID. So the photos app stuff basically.

You know, like we've all seen this of like Jason's at the front. You don't have a video doorbell, do you? No. So we have a video doorbell. If I ring the doorbell for some reason in my own home, it pops up and says, there's Michael's at the door, right? Like, or like, Adina's at the door. Or in 27, the camera stuff is getting smarter.

And like our home camera or whatever, if it was to be on, it would say, like, Edina is in the living room or something. Like, it's, you can see that they're doing some stuff here. Yeah. And I think that is probably what's going on for this product. Makes sense. But because this is less reliable,

there will be a setting to require a secondary check via an iPhone for performing some actions. So maybe it says, like, you ask for something. It's like, you could say, like, oh, to do this, like maybe, I don't know, send a message, delete a calendar event, get Face ID from your iPhone. I would also hope your Apple Watch could do this. Yeah, this is what I was thinking is,

there are a lot of signals here, right, beyond face recognition. If the iPhone that is connected to that person is in Bluetooth range or a watch that is on, unlocked biometrically. Which makes me think, by the way, the duo and the watch unlock. Is there another little

shooter drop with this maybe at some point? Maybe able to do face ID, facial recognition with the camera, and if you're wearing a watch, it will unlock your phone? Maybe, although if you're wearing the watch. I know, but it really takes that as a fallback. A lot has to fail before the watch on.

At least with the current, iPhones with a face ID, there is a pretty significant step process to go through before the watch and lock actually triggers. And it makes a big deal about it. And I'm, I continue, as you can tell, I'm still in copium. I am continuing to hope for some kind of better experience and just touch ID. But nevertheless, we're going to talk about it right now. Quote from Mark Gorman. Apple envisions customers placing several of these displays. throughout their homes. They could be used to control thermostat,

door locks, and other connected products, as well as for video calls, intercom-style communication, music playback, and viewing slideshows of photos stored in Apple's iCloud service. Of course, they would like us to have several in our homes. I left out until now, Mark's updated description,

and this is actually pretty significantly updated description, of the standalone tabletop version. The hub is about as thick as iPhone, the screen, and its display is surrounded by a quarter-inch black bezel reminiscent of older iPads. It has rounded corners, no sharp edges. The device lacks a battery, so it also has to be plugged in at all times. There's no volume or power button.

The product comes in Apple's standard grey aluminium finish and includes a USBC port for power. The screen sits above a metal round base with multiple rings of perforated speaker holes and connects to it through a polished metal arm. Users can manually tilt the display forward or backwards and the basis of rubberized bottom to help it stay on the table. Are they making an iMac G4?

Maybe. I think it sounds like it, right? Maybe. And wouldn't that be a very interesting way to debut a product like this is a nostalgia hit? Mm-hmm. Very interesting, very interesting, especially when you consider the tabletop robot that Mark German says is coming next year

and isn't a robot. Another product under development is an upgraded version of the Home Hub. It has a larger 9-inch display of a robotic arm that allows the screen to move through space. And time. Through space?

That didn't hit me so much when I read it the first time. Just like, well, I'd just move around. Yeah. Into another dimension. The display on the more advanced model was designed to swivel 360 degrees. So do you remember a really long time ago,

we had a conversation about, I think it was a combination of rumors and a research paper of the device being able to turn at you? Yeah. It's this, right? Yeah. Yeah, this is the idea here is that a future one

would be like that G4I Mac in its animated Pixar version. Moving through space. Moving through space and time. as we all do. As the Home Hub world. Yes. And it makes sense to the display is bigger.

Like that will be your pro version of this thing, right? Like, or whatever it's going to be. Super interesting. The operating system for the Home Hub, so going back to the one that hopefully will be unveiled next week, is a mixture of iPad-like app designs, so kind of making use for the space. With watchOS-style kind of app icon launcher.

It has a lot of widgets in the home screen UI. some clock designs and photo slideshows that are apparently very reminiscent of the new standby mode, show me the iPhone Duo. This is a real like buffet of features going to this product. Yeah. And obviously Syria AI all over the place. Of course. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Why this thing's been delayed for like seven years. No coincidence that probably the work that went into this and the iPhone Duo is standby mode are probably the same or using the same APIs and stuff. because that Apple loves to reuse pieces. And also just this product up and down

is kind of an admission of some stuff of like what they needed their AI experience to be and also that my word do not build another platform. Yeah. We don't need another app store. No. Apparently Apple's going to have versions of its own apps on there. I don't know what that means for third parties,

but I expect widgets. Like, you know, like, how is Spotify on this, right? Like, how are we getting there? How is YouTube on this? Is it just at mirror? Like, this is, there has to be a story there. Right. But I don't think the story is Home Hub OS, Home Hub App Store.

Like, I don't think that's what we're going to get here. It's possible that there's a, since this is rumored to be based on a version of TVOS. I do wonder if maybe the solution to the App Store problem is something weird like a paired app. So follow me here. You say, what about Spotify? Well, if you've got Spotify and your iPhone, I wonder if a developer will be able to generate something that's very like a TVOS app that is... Oh, I can't play. That is in...

Well, and maybe even that is a part of... of the package. That is a binary that gets synced like on an Apple watch gets synced to the device. If you imagine, if we take whatever OS this is out of it and just imagine it's Apple TV, what if apps didn't go on your Apple TV through the App Store app on the Apple TV? What if they want on your Apple TV because your Apple TV is connected to an iPhone? And if the iPhone loads the Spotify app and there's an Apple TV Spotify app, Spotify shows up on your Apple TV, right?

They could do that. That's fairly straightforward. They could do that with this, where there's no app store for it. But there's a developer story. And the developer story is everybody, you know, everybody who connects to this thing is going to have an iPhone. And the iPhone app will be able to extrude something, a widget, maybe even an app, some kind of experience to the device. maybe it's projection like CarPlay or maybe it's like a little watch app that just kind of like goes yeah i know you can open the app store on the watch right but you can also just that was a mistake yeah exactly but but like for the most part what happens is you download the iPhone app and then in the watch app you say put the watch app on this thing they they go together essentially i could see them doing something like that so that for example Spotify or Netflix or Prime Video or whatever,

that's how they would do it. And it wouldn't surprise me if they did that, and it wouldn't surprise me if under the covers, it was basically a TV app. Yeah. Yeah. But what they shouldn't do is make it like a platform where the user is now managing a new set of apps and stuff like that. Like that needs to not happen.

Or making it. even a platform that every developer feels needs to have some kind of thing for. You are, basically, if you don't exist on TVOS, you probably don't need to be here. I think that's probably true. You know, with some basic exceptions, maybe if you're a to-do app.

A to-do app or something. Or a calendar app, you might want to have something, but maybe your widgets enough. Maybe your widget is enough. This is the thing of, like, how much of this app is native stuff, how much of it is projecting from somewhere else? Like, these are the stories we need to know.

But it's clear that, they seem to be making a lot of decisions that mean that if you do something in another place, you probably can do it here as well, right? Like if they kind of look like iPad apps and there's widgets, it's like you're not building this unique experience for this thing. It's not like the Apple Watch, say, where it's different. So an interactive widget would work, a little mini app would work. If it's not there on day one, I suspect that that's where they're going with it.

And that's great. Either way, right, like how they enjoy. it isn't the point. The point is, if you do have a third-party app, you're ultimately going to want to be on there in some form. And they're going to want you there. They are going to want you there. But I don't think it's going to be, here's our new platform, right, a completely new app that's unlike anything you've ever done before. It'll either be like a widget or it'll be like a TV app or it'll be like an iPhone app. And again, my gut feeling is it's either going to project or it's going to be like a little thing that gets synced up to the device.

Future of the home is apps. Oh, God. You said about the App Store on WatchOS. What world were we heading towards that like the watch needed to be really signposted as a standalone device? Why was that? Well, that was a thing we cared about. That was a real weird time. But I think it says something about Apple getting stuck in a rut, right? And I think this is, I think it's telling about Apple's a purpose.

to the App Store in general. And a lot of the, a lot of, this is when I talk about change and about Tim and all these other executives that have been there for so long and them leaving being a good thing, even if they did a good job being a good thing. The Apple Watch, which is a long time ago now, but 12 years ago, but it's a good example of this where the Apple Watch having an app story and an app store is so much about Apple saying, well, obviously our customers has spoken and every device that we ever make should have an App Store. And it shouldn't. But that said, I do use Apple Watch apps. So there being apps is totally fine. It makes a lot of sense. But like, just like this thought that there had to be a browsing experience. Yeah, exactly. And like that was required for it to be considered a standalone device. Right. Like anyone was ever going to be like, I'm just an Apple Watch user. Yeah. Right. Right.

very strange. It's nonsense. And it's still not true 12 years later. They never actually did the last part. Yeah. Right?

Which was that you could just take it out of the box. I think it's just a misconception. I think they... It was just a different part. It was the path that led to... There's an app store for the TV.

There's an app store for IMessage. There's an app store for Vision OS. Exactly. Also, I'll give you... I'll give you a little bit of a hot take here. Love it. Which is... I am not a fan of the...

This would never happen. if Steve Jobs were alive stuff, right? But if there's ever a product that Steve Jobs would have said no to, it was the Apple Watch as it was conceived in 2014 because nobody said no to anything. The Apple Watch was all things to all people. My standard joke about the 2014 Apple Watch launch, which was, by the way, my last day at Macworld, was what doesn't it do? Yeah.

Because it did everything. It had everything. It didn't do any of them well, but it did everything. And that was a mistake. Like, they couldn't pick or they refused to pick or different people, my theory, different people in positions of power couldn't agree on omitting somebody's pet feature. So they put it all in there, including digital touch. And in hindsight, it's like, I mean, in hindsight, we've learned what the Apple Watch is good and bad at. It's a device that gets messages.

It's an iPhone accessory that can run software synced from your iPhone, but probably not very much of it and not too sophisticated. And it syncs back. And you use it for notifications and health and activity. Yeah. Like, and they might have gotten it wrong back then, but they didn't try to simplify. They just did everything. So, but I think it shows you, Apple? got so much success from the app store

that a lot of people in Apple just got real app store brained. Like everything, you know that people talk about like software brain, how people get this kind of like broken view of the world because they think everything is software and it's not. Apple totally got app store brained where the solution to everything was an app store. And the future of TV is apps. It just, it was an app store for iMessage. I know.

Why were they not just apps that could put things, in iMessage. Again. Right. Yeah, it's, I don't know. I can't remember how I felt about it at the time, right?

Whether I thought it was ridiculous or not. I think I was excited about some of the things that it enabled, like the IMessage App Store, but the fact that there's an app, there was an app store for IMessage that you got to, in the IMessage, underneath the keyboard,

there was an app store. There was an app store. You just lift one up with us at App Store. What are we doing? Forget it, Mike, it's Abster Brain. That's just, it's Epster Town. Unbelievable times. No, I mean, you could see it.

In hindsight, it's very clear. Apple just decided to apply an App Store to everything as if that was the answer. And then what happened is, over time, the amount of apps submitted to these app stores got smaller and smaller. And then we got television. Right. Yeah. The future of computing, there are no apps. There are no apps.

So this is the thing that we and all are. upgrading and friends should watch about this Home Hub. Yes. Is what is the app story or perhaps what is the not app story? Because you're going to your point, you're going to want to do things with this thing that are not supported by Apple's apps. So what happens?

But like, again, if it's really an Apple ecosystem play and you can take an iPhone or maybe eventually an iPad, or something, and sync it and sync something to it, a widget, a little app extension, that's all you need. But yeah, this is like a real question of how Apple thinks about a device like this, because I don't think it should have an app story. And the reports are that it doesn't have an app story. But if not, then what?

What is the answer? otherwise. I don't know, but it will be really interesting to see. Well, we're not very far away now. Apparently, it's next week, so that's wild. Baring in mind, we're recording early. I mean, it's very unlikely that before the episode comes out on Monday, that they'll start impacting the media, but just as a note, right? Like, we don't know. Very soon, potentially, and we are recording a couple of days in advance.

Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Designing California. Oh, it's a podcast that we make. This week's episode of Designed in California is the final in our series on Apple's Mac OS crisis. So at this point, Gil Amelio, Steve Jobs, they just need to finalize their deal, announce it to the world that next is going to be joining Apple and become the foundation of the Mac. But is Steve happy? Is he happy, Jason?

What is in the mind of Steve Jobs is so much of what's in this episode. Gil Emilio is trying to pin him down on what his job, what his role is going to be at Apple? Is he going to have a role at all? Gil really wants him to have a role. He knows the press will love it if Steve is around, but what would that role be?

And what is in the mind of Steve? Is Steve, in fact, one of the things we debate. Is Steve plotting all along the downfall of Gil Amelio and to take over his CEO of Apple? Or is Steve not thinking about that? Or is he legitimately conflicted about what's going on? And I don't think

I have theories, but I don't think there's a clear answer. But it's fascinating that like if you believe there's a clear answer to that question, oh, of course Steve was plotting it all along. I think we will convince you otherwise. So this is the final episode. This will be the final episode of this series.

This is a series that we will continue to come back to with our special guest John Syracuse. So because the plan, with John, is to tell the story of OS 10. Of all of it. Yeah. All of it.

We haven't gotten there yet. Nope. We will, though. Maybe next time... Who knows? It is impossible to know. We'll tell more of that story next year. We will continue to tell the story.

When we actually get to OS10, who could tell? There's actually still quite a bit to go. So if we're finishing up that series of John, what's next? Well, next week begins our series on the origins of the iPod. Let's start with the history of the MP3. and the Digital Hub Strategy, then talks about the components, the people, and the decision-making

that leads to the first iPod released 25 years ago. Some amazing moments in that series, including finding the guy who's going to build the iPod on a chairlift in Vale. Yep. And also the magical romantic moment

when Johnny Ive met his very best friend, the color white. Yes. Or one of my favorite moments. The creation of the click wheel. Where the surprise inspiration of all that. Brilliant series that starts

next week. And so you can celebrate the anniversary of this groundbreaking product by listening to Designing California our wonderful podcast. Members of Designing California next Wednesday get all five episodes

in the Origins of iPod series at once. and everyone else will get them rolling out over the next five weeks. I also want to mention people have really been enjoying the show on YouTube as well. It's a great production for YouTube. It's exactly the same as the audio version from an edit perspective. Obviously, it's me and Jason.

We also include some imagery in there. And actually the iPod series, particularly I think, will be nice on YouTube because you actually did some video recording of your original iPhone. I got my original iPod out. at my strong request. Yeah, you ordered me to do that. And I had to go on eBay and find a firewire charger because I could attach it to a computer via firewire, but it doesn't run an iPod mode when it's attached to a computer.

So I had to do that. And I have lost my firewire power adapter. So did that and then shot a bunch of video and shot some pictures. And there's a picture of my box. I saw the box. So the box is in there. It's good stuff. and some file footage and all sorts of other stuff in there.

So people should check it out. And yeah, if you remember, you get all five episodes at once next week. And if not, that's fine, you'll just get them over the next five weeks, starting next week. But only if you go and let check it out. So if you have yet to check out design in California, this is us telling you to do it. Do it. You know, like, maybe you were like, I don't know if I want to hear about the Mac, right? But maybe you want to hear about the iPod.

And I think that once you check out a series of the show, you'd be like, you know what? I would like to hear about that other stuff too because this is really interesting. I think if you listen to the show and enjoy this show, you will enjoy designing California. And we're going to continue to give you many, many reasons, because we're going to be doing many, many series of this show. Oh, yeah. I would hope for a very long time. I hope so. So it's at Relay.fm slash designed.

We can also find us on YouTube. There'll be links in the show notes. It's actually links to all of our platforms over at Relay.fm slash designed. It is time for some ask upgrade questions. Kyle wants to know. What is your favorite Memphis barbecue? I haven't been to them all, but my go-to is central. Yeah.

We're actually going to go-to Central. In a matter of minutes, we're after this show is over, we're going to go to Central Barbecue. Which we're looking forward to. And Jason has a menu hack, which he shared of us all last year, just the good item, the best item on the menu. Well, last year, last year, you know, sometimes you have a meal with a group and somebody orders something and you're like, oh, that was the best one. I got that last year. Yeah. And it was the brisket nachos.

Yeah. Oh, so good. It was so good. I had it after. I had it, I think, the next day. Mm-hmm. So it was a bit much. Yeah.

So this time I'm very much looking forward to getting on the natural training review. But yeah, I've only, no, I haven't only had Central. I have eaten other places. Yeah. It's my favorite. It's great. Yeah. It's great.

Central barbecue. There's several locations here. But that's, you know, that's the one that's hit me the best. I'm sure there are others that I'm sure there are others that I'm, I will have to go to some time. But also, where we tend to stay is right by the downtown central. So it's easy to walk over there. And you can see it.

You can smell it, maybe. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how the wind's blowing. For sure. Mark wants to know, do you think Apple will take the duo format and blow it up to a clamshell-like iPad duo somewhere in the next few years? Anything is possible. Yeah. But I am skeptical.

It makes less sense. Well, this is the thing is, I think, innovating and iterating. on the iPhone makes sense because the most important reason you do a foldable is because you want to carry it in your pocket and then open it up and have it be big and an iPad

like I don't know I mean I could see some utility but it's a lot less of a victory over the dynamics of the device size than it would be if you were you know trying to get a phone that fits in your pocket and also has the biggest screen

possible that's the premise of a foldable device, I think, is exactly that. And I think it breaks down when you start talking about bigger devices, because at that point, I'm not sure it really makes sense. Yep. Eric writes in and says, the light blue and burgundy combo is a go-to color combo this year. I'm seeing it everywhere in fashion and interior design. Do you think that Apple got lucky or specifically picked the colors that seem to be in vogue this year. I don't think luck had anything to do with it. I think so.

I think the people who are making, okay, maybe they were lucky, but I would say I think Apple picks its colors carefully. So I will agree I've seen the burgundy and blue. I think the blue that you see most paired with burgundy is not the blue that Apple. It's not glacier. Yeah, it's a bit more Robin's egg. And we can disagree. And when I ran about the colors are, I'm disagree.

agreeing about Apple's decisions, but I have no doubt when you look at their watch bands and the device colors, that there are a lot of people in Apple that are very concerned about trends in fashion and color and how to reflect those in Apple products. I think the bands and cases are definitely chosen by people who are trying to hit the trends. I don't know. I don't know if you can get that far ahead of an iPhone. Well, I was going to say, I think the devices they're trying to do it, but there's two things. One is they are going to have to make the decision much earlier, and trends can change. And the other is, there are physical constraints on an iPhone.

Because they have to be rugged and they use a particular production process. and that probably affects or an iPhone or a laptop or whatever that product is. The actual color hue that is available is probably limited by the production process of the iPhone 18 Pro let's say.

And so put those two things together and I think it's a tougher thing for them to do but I do think they try. I just think it's harder to do it. If you can do it, you try it. Yeah. And I would say that I don't like the colors this year, but I am not unhappy about it in the strategy.

I wouldn't expect to every year like the colors that they offer. That's not how fashion works. I'm happy that they have continued to have, to continue to make bold color decisions. I think that Burgundy is a bold color decision. I don't like it, but I like that it is. It feels to me as stronger decision as Cosmic Orange is just in a different direction. Sure.

Right? Because it's like that is a big color statement. And I think it's divisive. And I think that's what they should be doing, especially when they offer four. There's four this year, right? So you can get silver or black if that's what you want. Or you can go with one of the color choices. Richard asks, are you at all concerned that Apple may wait an entire year until OS28 to meet.

meaningfully update Siri AI. How would you rate the chances of a major improvement as part of 27.4, for example? So this goes back to what we were talking about earlier with agents, but what about the actual AI experience? I mean, I am concerned. That is the question I am concerned. I would like to believe that they have learned and are going to be capable of updating their models midstream and updating functionality that uses their...

models midstream. But until we see them do it, I'm going to be concerned about it. But like, there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to put a new model under the covers with an OS update. Yeah. And have it be a better model.

If you're working on a better model, the last thing you want to do is get the better model in March and say, well, this is great. We'll ship it in September. Like, you can't do that. You should ship it in March or April. So I am concerned. And then separately, like I said, it's also about the implementation of features that are using those models and not saying, well, we've got a new thing we could do with Siri AI.

Let's not do it until next September. I would like to believe that some of that stuff's going to get fast tracked because they have been behind and they're still catching up. And they may just be catching up forever and they need to move fast. but I'm concerned because, as we said, culturally, there's been a real resistance. Their system isn't built to do it. The resistance to it is not necessarily people. It may be the system. And some people are probably responsible for building that system, but it maybe was built

for a time when the priorities were different. But regardless, the system needs to change. And, you know, we'll see. But I'm concerned. I would say, I think it's possible. I think it's obvious that they need to. I am concerned. Me too.

And Mehear asks, what does smoking Apple II smell like? So, at 10 hours and 25 minutes in the podcast, Atham, there is a timestamp link. We're sitting around playing a game, and there's an Apple II on the desk, which had previously, a little while before it been playing the Oregon Trail. Yeah. Which is a great segment. Yeah. It's a fun thing to be able to play what was. essentially a very thematically appropriate game

from original Apple II hardware. So we're sitting and playing a different game, like a word game. And you'll see, if you look at the Apple II, you will see smoke start to emit from around the power cable. We're all laughing and joking.

And then I go, oh! And point at the computer, because there's smoke coming out of the computer. And the reason I pointed, this doesn't come up in the video. I heard something pop. Yeah. And it took my attention. Stephen's Apple 2, his original Apple 2, which has an original power supply, smoke is pouring

out of the computer. Yeah. You'll see Stephen somewhat gingerly but confidently yank the power cable out of the back of it. We start knocking things on the floor because also Casey's original iPod Nano, which is the lip against the back of it. And then we'll start freaking out and trying to blow the smoke away and cut to a break because unfortunately Stephen's Apple too

bit the dust But it was just the power supply Everything else seems to be fine He bought a new power supply this morning Oh good He took a look at it He said to me today He took it out and shook it

And it sounded like a Maraca So some stuff happened Inside of that power supply So to answer me here It smelled real bad It smelled really bad I mean we did We had to take it

Stephen took it out On the loading dock Yes Because it was still emitting smoke For quite a while. Here's what I would tell you it smelled like. It smelled like old smoke. That's what it smelled like.

Smoke that was old. Like dust and smoke. Yeah. And it was a white smoke. Like it was... Yeah, they did not elect a new pope. No. It did not.

That poor computer. Stephen was... He was upset about it, right? But got over it much quicker than I thought he would have. I think we all diagnosed it as being a power supply issue pretty quickly. Yeah, he's like, I can replace that. I can replace that.

Oh, no, my Apple 2 just call on fire, you know. But it was confined to the power supply. Which is wonderful. Which is this big rectangular part. Like, it's a single part. And it was clear that that's where everything was happening. Yeah. So then he felt okay.

Yeah. But that was, uh, man, I was really worried they were going to evacuate us out of that studio. And I do not know. I'll tell you right now. That would have been the end. I have no doubt that there are lots. the plans. I don't know what they are in that scenario. It turns out that loading dock is the fastest way out of there.

Oh, I know that. I mean, what happens if we have to evacuate the stuff? Oh, yeah. Right? Like, what happens to the stream? Like, I have no doubt that there are, because there are so many professionals that they have, like, oh, this is what we do. We don't plug this computer, that kind of thing. Like that thing they had for like when the queen died, they were like, how do we put this plan into motion? Like, what if it's, you know, Stephen's Apple 2 catches on fire and what happens to the podcast. Because I know that, like, you know, this is where the fire exit is.

I know where it is. And I know that in that scenario, someone's going to take us out of there. But like, what happens to everything else, you know? Luckily, we didn't have to find out. No, it's fine. But I was worried we were about to find out. Yeah. But we didn't.

So you can go and check that out along with the rest of the podcast on it's on YouTube. If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode of the show, or if you have any feedback or follow up, please go to Upgradefeedback.com. I'd like to thank our members to support us for Upgrade Plus. This week, I want to ask you about some new Kindles. Okay. You go to GetUpgradeplus.com and get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week. You can find us on YouTube by searching for Upgrade.

We are sitting across the table from each other today, so you can see that if you like. Thanks to our sponsors, that is Factor and Squarespace for their support of this week's episode. Most of all, thanks to you for listening, and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Touch my finger. We're touching fingers again. Bye. Bye.