Upgrade - 642: iOS is Weird Now

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

From Relay, this is Upgrade. Episode 642 for October 19th, 2026. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Century, Claude, and Planet Money. My name is Mike Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hi, Mike Hurley. How are you? I'm very good. I'm very good. How are you? Doing fine. Great. Doing okay. After the issue with the Snow Talk question last week, I decided to return to form. And Chris writes in and says, Jason. How's the weather today? Oh, nice. It's sunny right now. Very sunny. But cooler. The temperatures have dropped it.

It was warm last week. Cooler now. And it's going to rain later this week. How about you, Mike? Yeah, we're into its, it's sweat or at home time now. Like, we're into that now. So it is, it is cold. It is, it was raining a lot over the weekend.

So, yeah, we're in, I'm fine of it, though. I, like, clothing-wise, this is my favorite. favorite time of the year. Like, I like a sweater, just as like a thing that I wear all the time. I'm wearing my Ted Lasso sweater today that I got at WWDC, like 2023 or something like that. Like when they, there was that one year they just had in the visitor center. They just had a bunch of Ted Lasso merchandise, like Nike Ted Lasso merchandise. So it's a good time for that. We actually just got some breaking news. So let's jump right into follow up. Oh, yeah. Because there's something going on right now, as I can tell from the Discord. But if you would like to send in your

own Snell Talk question for us to answer in a future episode of the show, it's very easy. All you need to do is go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send your question in. So this breaking news, Greg Joswiak just posted a teaser to a saying, can't wait to pro and tell next week. Oh, Jaws. just feel like Joz wrote that himself, you know? Breaking. Breaking. Breaking news. Here. I received moments ago an email

that says pro-intel. Hi, Jason. Hi, Jason. Please join us in person for a special Apple experience in Los Angeles, October 28, 26. Okay. P.T. Okay. So there you go. And I'm not, Marcus, there's in the Sixth Colors Discord, there's a post from Marcus Brownlee showing the same thing.

So the invitations are out for this event next week. All right. So, Jason, you're going to be in L.A., I suppose. Yeah. I suppose I'm going to L.A. Yeah. That seems to be happening. Yeah.

This is an interesting thing to happen just as we start. I mean, because it's like, you know, usually we'd move the episode. Should we just do a draft? Well, we're not going to do that. But next week is the iPhone duo. So moving the episode, it would seem really weird. Doesn't make a lot of sense. Does it?

It doesn't make a lot of sense. I think we're just going to have to deal with it. We'll talk about it, but we will have an episode on Monday for sure. I think so. I think so. Maybe we'll draft a little bit. Maybe we will. Maybe we will. That's something for future us to talk about because right now we do an actual follow-up to deal with. More thoughts on the Apple TV.

So you wrote an article about the $299 Apple TV. Basically in which you said that it used to be. easier to recommend this product than it is right now. Yeah. I wrote a piece, there's an analyst who wrote this piece saying that at 249, the Apple TV was dead. Or 200 to start, whatever, and 249 for the high end and it was dead. And I said, well, that's silly because it's not all about market share and Apple's looking for a very particular market share. Anyway, I wanted to revisit that and say like, bottom line, you know, all TVs come with an app platform. now. And so there used to be the streamer box market involved a lot of low-cost boxes

or sticks that you would attach in order to make your TV be capable of playing streaming services. It's just not true anymore. Everything comes with one. So now the market is people who care enough about streaming to get something better than the crappy

one that comes through TV. And I think that's a much smaller market. I think most people just don't care. The sad truth is most people just don't care about quality. They just take what they're given. And I mean, do I sound bitter? Well, I sound like a Mac user from the 90s.

I learned my lesson very early on with the arrival of Windows 95, especially in the rise of the dominance of Windows PCs, that most people just take what they're given and don't care. And then some people care. And that's a smaller market. So that's the market for streamer boxes now, I would argue, is essentially it's people who actually care and it's much smaller. And I think Apple can play in that market. The problem is they have one product and it's $2.99. And like, I can't even conceive of me recommending to someone I know who is like, I don't really like my, you know, the box is really dumb or whatever. The TV is really dumb. And I'd be like, oh, you should get an Apple TV. It's $300. And like, and the other thing in the people, is basically me saying, it feels to me like there's a missing piece here, that either, for expediency reasons, Apple wasn't going to ship two skews of this thing because they maybe

don't even have the parts for it. And that in the long run, in six months' time, they may make a decontented version of this available that doesn't have Ethernet and doesn't have the microphones and is like a much simplified version of this that's cheaper. Or they've got another product in the works that's a lightweight Apple TV product that will fill that slot because I like there being that slot. I saw there's some commentary over the last week. There was like, oh, this is better. It's cleaner. There's just one product. It's like, are you kidding me? No. No. Cleaner doesn't get you anything. There's no business benefit to it's cleaner. What the business benefit is you've got some people who really want to spend extra money and we'll spend extra

money on Ethernet and far field microphones and stuff like that and storage on device storage for a streamer box, which doesn't make sense. But okay, if you want to be that person, go ahead. But what really makes sense is a lower price that people might actually want to pay to buy your product and get in your ecosystem or get further into your ecosystem in Apple's case. So I feel like there has to be something down there. I think this is one of those cases, or at least I want to believe that this is one of those cases where the stuff didn't line up.

The stuff doesn't line up sometimes and we all look at and go, wow, that's weird. You've got three Apple pencils for sale. Why is that? And the answer is, we know, Apple's like, we know we're going to a place

where it'll make more sense, but we're not there yet. And I would like to believe that some version of that is going on here. That they don't feel fine that their only Apple TV is $299. And of course, I can't believe I have to do this,

but in some of the commentary I've seen the last few weeks about Apple stuff. I feel like I need to remind people, like Apple's never going to tell you things it isn't doing. It's never going to tell you. So Apple's just saying that the Apple TV 4K is great at 299 and isn't it wonderful and not talking about the fact that they don't have a cheaper product is not evidence of anything. Because until the day they have a cheaper product, they're never going to say anything about it. But I would like to believe that they know that this is not ideal.

but this is where they ended up. And I will, to their credit, I will say, if I were launching a brand new Apple TV, I wouldn't launch with a cut down version that didn't have an Ethernet port. Because all those stories would happen is like, oh, Apple got rid of Ethernet on the Apple TV. It's never going to.

So you've got to launch with a full featured product. And if you don't have the capability to launch a cheaper product at the same time, this is what you get. So, I mean, maybe it's not true. Maybe Apple's like, yeah, who cares? $2.99. it's fine, but I would like, based on their track record in this product category, I would like to believe that they'd prefer there be a cheaper product. There just isn't one and that's just how it is. And maybe that will change at some point here in the future. I hope so.

Friend of the show, Glenn Fleischman put together a chart that shows the launch pricing of every Apple TV unit. It's just a funny thing to look at. But it reminded me that there was a, a time in which Apple reduced the price on the Apple TV from $99 to $69? Amazing. The first Apple TV, which is the Mac-based one,

was very expensive. That's the most expensive one. But this is the second most, in modern regular dollars, this is the second most expensive Apple TV model. And we're coming off of the second cheapest

by modern dollars Apple TV model six months ago. So that's, That's why we all feel this way. But it is interesting to see how, I thank Glenn for making the charts. It's good to see. It's a funny chart to see. And also the inflation stuff is always funny that that original Apple TV would be $491 in today's money.

So that was a very expensive product. It was. It was a Mac, essentially. You could run MacOS. I mean, it did kind of run MacOS, but people could make it run MacOS. And it was super hot. And, like, I mean, it was the best they could do at the time. But they flipped over to the, what we think of now as the Apple TV pretty quickly after that.

Yep. Amar wrote in and said, one key difference between the previous Apple TV and the new one, buried in the spec sheet, is support for Dolby Vision. Previous Apple TVs only supported Profile 5 for Dolby Vision. DV8.1 is huge for the home theater community who keep digital remixes of their Blu-ray discs, since Blu-ray discs only support DV8. those people don't

those people don't mind spending $2.99. No, that's why I thought I'd include this. The people who care at least about spending $299 are the ones that are getting a feature that they want. So good luck and good work for everyone. Yep. With the experience now confirmed for next week, I saw this piece on Mac rumors.

Obviously that was related to the fact that we were expecting there to be an event of some kind next week. The expectation now is that there will be product releases. This is coming from, this is coming from Mark Gohmann, actually, but I saw it on Macrumers.

There will be product releases every Friday for the next four Fridays. So the duo on the 23rd, the Home Pub Mini 2 on the 30th, the expected MacBook Pro and maybe iPad Mini on the 6th of November, and then the Home View and Apple TV on the 13th of November.

This is the busiest season. Like I was thinking about this. This is busy season, or at least September is. And I think back to the last time that it felt like this, which was maybe 2020, right? When they split everything up. Rolling Thunder, yeah, exactly. But it was the same amount of stuff as normal, but they just split it up amongst three events. This is three to four events worth of stuff.

Like, it's actually very different. And it is very exciting because the products are very cool, right? like, you know, they're getting the duo and then going into a touchree MacBook Pro a couple of weeks later, a brand new product category with the home view. But man, is it overwhelming right now? It's a lot. There's a lot going on. This is, remember, this is the, you know, Tim Cook, John Turner's transition.

We want John Turnus to start off with a bang with a lot of big product rollouts. This is it. We're in it. Yep. We are in it now. We may talk about this later on in Ask Upgrade a little bit more. Actually, no, I moved the question to right here because what you just said, Chase said, this was originally. A good transition.

Very professional. Under the short-lived John Turner's era, we have seen several products be announced of long lead times to order, such as the iPhone Duo, the Home View, and the new Apple TV. Do you think this is something that will continue with Turner's, or is this just an outlier during this transition time? I don't know.

I think they wanted the Rolling Thunder rollout. I think they wanted to announce everything in advance of Christmas, even if they can't ship it right away, because they want to get everybody's attention. I think Apple is comfortable doing this, especially if it's a product category where they're not going to like, it's not going to be an extended weight and, and they can,

they're not like cannibalizing other product sales. I think it's, I think it's always been a tool in their, in their, in their toolbox. But they're, yeah, I think they're not afraid to do it, is what I would say. I feel like that there's, there's lots of conversation around this point right now, where like, you know, some people are like, look what, look, John Turner's, look how amazing it is he's done all this stuff. And then people are like, no, well, actually, these things have been developed for years, and it was all happening under Tim Cook. And then you see, well, actually, John Turnus was the head of hardware.

My feeling on it is Apple lined everything up the way that they wanted it to appear. They want it to appear like John Turner is doing this. And so essentially, we'll just take it as that, right? That, like, for whatever reason, they wanted it to be that as soon as he took over, the products would just not stop coming for between September. and the end of the year. What does that mean for the future? I don't know, but I feel like this is what they are trying to get across. Like, I haven't even read it yet because there's so much of us stuff to talk about, but he was on that time cover, right? It's like the invention of the year,

the iPhone duo. Like, they want to present this. The idea that John Turner is Mr. product. And like, we're just going to keep on getting them. Like, I think they're trying to signal something. I don't know what it means going forward. There's no way to know yet. Yeah. And this is like, it's CEO transition. It's weird time in terms of availability of chips and stuff, right? That factors into some of these products are particularly ambitious.

That may continue, but it may be, I mean, this was all lined up. I think as part of the CEO transition and kind of like giving him a runway. But I don't think there's any hard and fast rules here. I think Apple's happy to announce things. I think Apple would prefer to announce something and have it shipped the following Friday, right? Like, sure. But I think they're not afraid to change it up if they need to. This episode is brought to you in part by Planet Money.

Every big economic story begins of a question. Questions like, why did prices go up? Or what do robot chefs mean for the restaurant industry? Planet Money helps you find answers by digging into the places and the people at the center of the story, asking the questions that make the economy easier to understand. Listen to Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts. So on Thursday of last week, Meta announced a new open source AI model

called Muse Spark Open. So it's an open source model. They said that they worked closely with Apple on this to make sure it could run really well on the latest Mac Studio with MLX support. MLX is Apple's open source machine learning framework that they've built. It's like a way for open source models

to interface with the computer and run best on metal and all of the stuff that they make. John Voorhees at Mac Stories has more information on this. Basically, it's all very high performing, and some of the testing that was published was done on the 512 gigabyte RAM model that has not shipped, but it's supposed to ship in October,

and October's nearly done. Maybe they're gonna, I don't know, part of this pro event, they might have them there, right? And just kind of like, hey, look at this. There's so much RAM in this bad boy. The reason I'm mentioning all of this is the thing that is understated in what I've said so far but when this was announced Mark Zuckerberg tweeted

Muse Spark Open, Waits Releasing Today runs great on new Mac Studios thanks to work with at John Turnus and Apple to which Turner's replied congrats to the team amazing to run a model of Muse Spark Open's caliber and scale this efficiently right from your desk Mac Studio keeps pushing the boundaries of on-device AI.

And that is true. If you have a glass of water next to you and you're in hell, it's frozen over because the CEO of Meta and the CEO of Apple, they're having hugs on social media. This is all very strange. Do you think it's strange? Like, what is your take on all of this? Well, I think it's okay.

Something we said about changing CEOs is it's always a good time for a reset when you change CEOs. And I think this is a real strange bedfellows kind of thing, but I think this is an example where Apple finds incredible strategic value in the fact that, look, Apple doesn't have a lot of bright lights in terms of AI right now. A lot of things they can point to in like we're killing it on AI.

And like it or not, AI is one of the real hot, issues of the day and a lot of people feel it's the most important issue in tech and that Apple risks seeming much less relevant if they seem like they are a loser when it comes to AI. And the place where Apple is a winner is Apple Silicon kills it for local AI, kills it. And so this announcement allows Apple to show off that those Mac studios especially are amazing for, I mean, the way, the key phrase in this whole thing was, frontier model level AI on a, on a Mac studio, uh, array. Yeah.

That you can't buy yet or that part of, and the cost of fortune, but that doesn't matter, right? Like, it doesn't matter for the people who really care about it necessarily. So strategically, it's incredibly important. And this is somebody who is essentially a partner because they've gotten open weights model. and Apple has been, I mean, honestly, I've been to multiple, you've seen a demo of this. Apple's really proud of that local ML stuff, but they're also using, I mean, they're models that Federico is familiar with, right? But they're not models that, like, the masses are familiar with. They are like, oh.

The first time I'd heard the phrase, Quinn. Quinn was at WWC. It's like, oh, it's running on Quinn, and it does, and it's very impressive. But, like, here comes meta, and they've got an open weights model. model that will also run and that Apple has worked with them because again, it benefits Apple to show that off. And it benefits Apple to say, look, many models including this really good, pretty cutting edge model will run locally. And that's a place where we excel. That's the, I mean, that's it.

That's the whole story. And I don't think there's anybody at Apple. I mean, for people who are like, yeah, but it's, it's Mark Zuckerberg. You know, how could they? I'm like, how could they? I think in the last couple of years, we've seen a lot of Apple executives demonstrate how could they? is not a thing. And I'll point out that this all got posted on X, right?

Like, how could they? It's just, this is how they, this is they. This is for better, for worse, whatever your feelings are. Working with Mark Zuckerberg, posting on X, going to the White House, these are things that Apple, donating lots of money to the Ballroom Project. That's another thing that came out in the last week. These are things that Apple's going to do. You can judge them.

I would say that if you judge it as a big corporation that's trying to make strategic moves, maybe it's a little more understandable in that context. And that goes for making, that goes for doing a joint announcement with Mark Zuckerberg. It's, it is a place where they feel this is their, I was going to say they feel weakness. It's actually the specific place where they don't feel weakness. And so they're going to push it there. Yeah. And so you know, you reference all the ways in which it benefits Apple. The ways in which it benefits metal to work of Apple is they have to have hardware they can show the power of this model on, right? and Apple provides them with that hardware.

So you can see how they get to this point where it seems very obvious for the two of them to want to work together on it. But it is just so fascinating to see the CEOs of these two companies praising each other. Like it's just such a strange thing. I mean, you mentioned it's all happening on X,

not threads, which is the... Yeah. So there's two reasons for this, right? One, John Turnus isn't on threads, which I'm still surprised about, because why not just do it? But also, Mark Zuckerberg puts it on X. And I had read about this that, like, he has been asked, neutral ground. Why are you tweeting, right? You have your own social network. And he says, oh, because I love threads. Threads. Threads is amazing. But the AI conversation is on X. Like, even he says that.

So if you're trying to reach that community, that's, where you're going, like, because that's where that community has decided that it wants to be. But it's, it's just a fascinating exchange to see. And I, and I wonder, is this the beginning of a thawing a little bit between, because these two companies hate each other, like, have hated each other and are constantly trying to undermine the other? I would almost say, think of this as, these are huge companies, right? This is Apple hardware and meta AI making a deal that makes sense. And I think, I mean, this is the lesson here. And the reason I mention all those other things that Apple executives done that some people might not be happy with is a lot of corporate decisions are like, well, yeah, but here it benefits both of us to do this. Why wouldn't we do it?

And you could argue that sometimes Steve Jobs, like Steve Jobs had made it personal in ways that maybe he shouldn't have, but he made it personal. And I think a lot of times in corporate world, they don't do that. They're like, yeah, but it benefits both of us here. This makes sense. It doesn't necessarily mean that they won't disagree on other points,

but here it makes sense for them to work together. And maybe, yes, maybe it is a reset of a way. I mean, look, Mark Zuckerberg is resetting what meta means all the time, right? And what their emphasis is, from Mark Zuckerberg's perspective, be like, oh, Apple, they are bad because they don't like us because of X and Y. But like, he's off to Z or letters beyond Z and his own made-up alphabet. And then like, that's just, you know, he's going to do what is right for him. And that's how that works. Yep.

The other thing I wanted to mention is just how like, obviously this is a, you know, very old. approved messaging, right? Like, everyone's approving each other's messaging. They're launching their coordinate statements. And I just love, I just love the way that everything's written here, because it just, no human would speak this way, right? Like, Muse Spark Open, like, John Turner's amazing to run a model of Muse Spark Opens caliber. Like, you just wouldn't say it that way. You just wouldn't say it, right? But it's like, everyone has to agree. that the product names are in both messages, right? Everyone has to say the approved product names.

And it's just very funny. I just find it very funny. That's right. Yeah, who knows what this means for the future. But these, it's like, you know, we're talking about what is John Turner's Apple, right? We're talking about it from hardware. It's like, is this part of it too? Is this relationship?

Like there have been many, including Penn Thompson, who have argued for years, that these two companies would be better off if they just, weren't to work together. Their incentives align more than they don't. Is this the beginning of something like that? Or is this just a one and done? Who could tell? Or is it in this particular area they actually make sense as partners in another areas, perhaps they don't? And yeah, I mean, meta, the more meta focuses on things that Apple doesn't feel are antithetical to Apple's business, the more positive Apple is going to feel about it too. So it's not necessarily just that this is an area. It may be that meta is leaning on a direction

that's more favorable to Apple and so Apple is more willing to to work with them in that area, which I think that's, I will say, get ready for something because next fall probably

whenever the M, or maybe it's the following spring. But we, Mark German says that the M7 chips are even greater in terms of AI performance. Like, this isn't going away.

Apple, really is going to keep pushing hard on local AI performance for obvious reasons because Apple sells hardware. Apple sells hardware. And if Apple's hardware is really good, and if the world ultimately decides that... Because right now, almost all the AI you do is in the cloud, right? And that's why they're building data centers.

But I have seen in my career many times the shift go from everything's in the cloud to everything's on the client and back to everything's in the cloud and back to everything's in the client. And you can believe that this time is different and maybe it is. I'm not saying it's not. But what I'm saying is historically, you move things into the cloud because it's too hard not to. And then the clients catch up. And then people are like, oh, but I can do this locally. And there's benefits to it being local, including privacy, including convenience. And including cost to a certain degree. And Apple, if we're in a data center future, Apple will deal with it.

They've got their deal with Google. They've got their own data centers. They're presumably trying desperately to scale Siri AI because it's kind of slow because I think they're overwhelmed with user requests. But it greatly benefits Apple if all your AI is happening on your Apple device that you bought Apple from Apple that you spent money on from Apple. So they're going to keep pushing this. This is going to be a huge narrative for Apple for the next, you know, who knows how long,

but for the next while. And it's going to pick up speed with M7 without a doubt. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Squarespace. They are the all-in-one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or you're scaling your whole business. Squarespace would give you everything that you need. to claim your domain, showcase your offerings for a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. You can start an online store with Squarespace, whether you offer services,

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needs with a great platform and back end that Squarespace provide to let him run his business. And you can push it even further, right, with their analytics. You can keep track of stats that matter with intuitive built-in tools that make it super easy for you to review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue from those product sales or bookings or invoices all in one place. Go and check out Squarespace.com slash upgrade and sign up for a free trial today. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code upgrade and you'll save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain.

That is Squarespace.com slash upgrade with the offer code upgrade and you'll get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. a thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of RELA. Let's talk about the Home View again, because there's been a lot of discussion, a lot of thoughts being shared about the Home View since we spoke about it last week. It feels like way longer than a week since we spoke about that. Her old friend, The Home View. When hilariously, it's been less than a week.

To be fair, we've been talking about the Home View for like three years. That's true. That is true. on Ruma Roundup for like three years. Mark Kerman said he first reported about the product in 2023, and he first reported in detail on the product in 2024. But yeah, it's been a while. It's been a while.

I want to start by talking about reading a couple of quotes from Gen Tui's article, The Verge. Gen Tui is the person on smart home, right? Like, if you want to know, but remember when we did a lot of stuff about matter, that all came from Jen's work, that put in all that information together. Jen wrote an article praising the simplicity of the Home View.

So this is how it begins. I'm just going to come out, I'm just going to come right out and say it. I love the approach Apple is taken with the Home View. I think it's the shared, always available household interface that my family might finally use. Is Apple's first smart display, my dream smart home dashboard? No. But it's the right product for the Apple Home at this moment? Absolutely.

So then, you know, Jen goes through a bunch of scenarios where a device like this, she sees making sense. Like having it in a fixed place means you can always do things in an expected way. She says like, you know, sometimes I need to call my daughter and she's at home and her phone's dead. This is always plugged in so you can make that call always come through. And then I found this really interesting. She's saying about having access to like answers to questions and answers to personal information based questions that are close to a communal place like a dinner table where you're otherwise discouraging phone use. That could be super useful.

I thought that was really interesting as a thing. So, yeah, Tobe believes that the simplicity of Home View could allow for her to be able to also go all in on Home Assistant in the background because trying to get everybody to use that would be a nightmare. But this way, she can do all the stuff and it just ties into the home app. I mean, you've heard Stephen Hackett talk about this. I mean, the Home Assistant and Casey too, right? Home Assistant is incredibly complicated.

I've been using it more. I made my pick on Mac Break Weekly last week. The Home Assistant Green, which I actually bought like two years ago, which is like a little box that runs Home Assistant. It's like a, it's a home assistant computer that you just plug in. And that wasn't enough for me to use Home Assistant. But using an LLM that tells me what to do in Home Assistant, that kind of cracked the case because it's so complicated.

But if I have like computer help with a computer, it's usable. And the beauty of Home Assistant in the end is you can export those to Home app, Apple Home. And nobody needs to know that it's complicated behind the scenes. You just control things in the Home App. That's what Stephen does in his house. And what Jen Toey is saying here is it lets you put a nice interface up for your family,

no matter what... Look, this is a great... piece because it, look, okay, I have complicated feelings about the home view. First off, I mean, you and I have been talking about it for a while and have been very excited about this idea of having this kind of a product here. First off, I think a lot of people are getting totally sidetracked by that ad. It's unbelievable the space that it is occupying in people's brains. It's bananas. So first off, I think it's a very effective ad, but I don't think it for the reasons that people are judging the ad. I think it's effective because they've created a

narrative structure in which they can show every feature of the home view. Yeah. Everybody else is like, well, that would never happen. That's very unrealistic. And it's like, folks, of course it is. It's an ad. It's not meant, it's not meant to betray a slice of life of these people's house, the family that drills a hole for the power line in the middle of their kitchen island. No, it's a fantasy. It's an infomercial. But what it is designed to do is somewhat artfully show you every pack, every possible scenario of use of the Home View into a single moment, which would never happen.

But that's what they're trying to do. And I admired the fact that they got to all of them. I mean, yes, I chuckled because never would these things all happen. It's very much like, you know, this knife will cut through a can and then a tomato kind of level of like ridiculous. It's a, yes, the Home View as Ginsu Knife. So it's not meant to be realistic. I'm going to blow everybody's mind out those people aren't actually family, they're actors.

Shut up. Why would you say that? It's not a real family. It's made up. That's not a real house. I don't know, man. I think they look like they knew each other. Oh, but I was so excited about her meeting her boyfriend on the front stoop now. I'm disappointed. Anyway, so I just am impressed because they showed all the things. I think, yes, the reality of it is more of what Gentui is saying,

which is there are places where this fits. that will be nice. It has the opportunity to make your Apple home experience nicer. It has, it's going to surface your photos in a way that is nice. If you're somebody who has Apple photos, it will have other scenarios that will be good to have. And yeah,

personally, I find it very funny where people are like, I don't even know why anyone would want this. I'm certainly not going to buy any of these. Mike, I bought two. Yeah, baby. Let's go.

I bought one, but I think I might end up with another one. I bought a stand for the kitchen because I've been trying to replace the Google and before that Amazon box that we're in there. So I have a little screen in the kitchen. And I bought one to put in my wall because... Okay. I hate my thermostat UI. Okay. I have a bunch of other home stuff.

I hate having to walk people through the thermostat UI. And now I can put a home view right next to it and say, don't you don't touch the thermostat. Just use the home view to control the thermostat. And that allows me behind the scenes to do like, the thermostat's actually being controlled by home assistant if I want to because I am doing that. You need to do like one of those things where like some,

you know, you submit some Airbnbs and they put like a box over the light switch or whatever. Do not touch. Don't touch the light switch. I've honestly thought of moving our thermostat, like, behind a door or something, where it's just like, don't even look at it. It's not even for you.

Don't even think about it. The shame thermostat, you know, like, it's in no way. Yeah, just don't. I mean, it's bad. It's bad. So just forget about that. And let's focus on the home view. How are you going to do the home installation?

Are you going to try and do it? You're going to try and do it? Do you know? I may try to do it, or I may have our good old friend, my electrician, data, Dave may come in and do that one for me. Oh my God. We may bring day to Dave back in. I think you have to bring day to day.

For a quick, quick. He works by the hour, so I might need to have like a second little project for him to do in addition to that for him. Move in the thumbs. Yeah. I mean, maybe. Hide the thumbs that, Dave. But, but yeah, I am. Also, look, let's be honest, it is for the content, right?

I'm going to be able to write about not only installing it, but having one on my wall and having one in my kitchen. Yeah. But I want it. I mean, I want it. Because I want a friendly, this, that's thing. And that's what Jen is getting at in her story. All this home stuff doesn't work if you have to be like, you know, oh, you've got to open your home app. Or you don't, you're not in my Apple Home, but you're my house sitter.

And now, how do you control the thermostat? Like, I need to make it dead simple that there's just a controller on the wall that lets them control the things. And it's going to let me do that. So I'm excited. I'm excited to try it out. I think it could be very cool. And that's why I'm utterly baffled by people who are like, I just don't see the value in this.

It's like there's a lot of value in it. Does it live up to the high standards of the completely artificial TV commercial that they did? Because that was ridiculous and just an infomercial. But does it have a lot of little ecosystem uses? I think so. I think it does. For some people, not for everybody.

But I also think that it potentially can demystify smart home stuff for people who are thinking about smart home stuff, but are really hesitant to do it because it's too fiddly. Because let's face it, it's been too fiddly for a decade. And honestly, for all of the talk in that ad about like, oh, why wouldn't you just do that on your phone? There's some stuff where do it on your phone is a bad answer. Like I said, I don't want to tell my house sitter, adjust the thermostat on your phone. What do I add her to my Apple home? And then she's got to get her phone out if she wants to. wants to turn on the heater. Like, I can't do that to her or a guest who comes to visit. There are lots of contexts where it's much better to just say, here is a panel on the wall,

or here's a little guy who lives on the counter, and it has the security camera, and it's got the thermostat, and it's got the lights, and just to handle it that way. It feels much, again, it's not every scenario. This is a niche product, because all home products are niche products essentially. But I think it's got lots of applications. One of the things that I respect about the Verge is that they allow their individual writers to have their own opinions that differ about the same products. Of course. So, you know, because I don't know if every website does this, but I feel like the Verge really seems to encourage it, right? Like, I think they like their reporters to have very distinct personalities. Yeah.

And have their, and have their takes because that's what, yeah, it's a sign of a, this is one of those things that Nealai does well. It's a sign of a well-run editorial operation, I think. Because I was listening to the Vergecast on Friday, and I genuinely could not believe what I was hearing, where they were talking about the Home View and saying how bad and weird it was that Apple does not have an app store for the Home View. Oh, yeah. And saying that, like, it makes no sense to them. People are going to want apps. Developers will want to put them there. It seems like a great platform for apps, all of this kind of stuff. And to me, to us, we've spoken about this already.

It seems so obvious why they didn't and shouldn't do it. We don't want another app store. No more app stores. No, I think they need, look, I think they need an app story. And I think that the story, not store, I think that Carplay is a nice fallback, but I think it's not good enough. I think the example of recipe apps is a great example. of this, right? Where it's like, what happens if you use paprika or like I use Mela? And the answer is

nothing. You can't do it because it doesn't work with it and it's not a CarPlay app that does audio or video and therefore it doesn't work. I think they need an app story, but maybe the app story is projection from your phone in another way or maybe, I mean, the thing I keep coming up with is you could have a class of phone app maybe. that like an Apple Watch app syncs to HomeView. But all of this, all of this is the route

that I think they're taking, which is the right one, which is don't do anything yet. See if this thing actually takes off if people want it and developers keep asking you. Just like the iPhone. And I'm not saying this is the iPhone,

but it was like proof there's a market for this product before you start demanding developers make apps for it again. And here's an idea. How about you ship the product and have it be out there for a while? If you've got a developer story, why don't you tell it after the product's out there? Yep. And then maybe you approach the developers of, for example, recipe apps and say, okay, we're going to do a program where recipe apps are going to be able to sync to the home view. Here's how it's going to work. Would you like to be a part of it? We'll help you. And then have them do that.

Instead of it being like, hey, here's a new thing you can't buy. And here's the complete developer story. Good luck. Figure it out. Which is what they do. with the iPhone duo, which you can do with an iPhone maybe, but you can't do with a home view. You can't do it of an iPhone. And like they were bringing up like, oh, look how excited developers seem to be for the duo right now.

Like, you know, they want to build. It's like, yes, for an iPhone. They want to make iPhone apps for an iPhone. Like, I don't know if they want to make apps for the home pod thing, you know? It's like it's, I don't, I just, it was a very strange conversation to hear them have.

It's like, I see the point of view, but I just could not agree less. I have a question here from Matthew that's touching on what we're talking about. The HomeVue for me is close to a bite for the kitchen, but I will not replace my kitchen iPad and the HomePod until I can use my recipe app for it, which is Mela. It's an easy buy and replaces two devices, but I don't want two screens in the kitchen, even though the iPad is a great fit beyond recipes. I want to see what the story is for the Home View long term. And then talking about what I'm saying about the Verge and their reporters, they had an article go up. Who was it the road

this I had this year? Dominic Preston writing for the verge. And you wrote about this article. Yeah, it literally, the article, let me set this up. The article is you know who the real victims of the home view are? People who write recipe blogs. Because there's like a view where it drops all the recipe blog stuff away and just shows you the recipe. Which first off,

like every recipe app does that already. Because every recipe blog is a mess, full of ads and lots of preamble and stuff. It's all because of SEO and they're trying to make money by gaming Google so that you'll come to their site and then they do a bunch of ad loads and this is how they make money, which I understand like it's distorted by Google. I get it. But this article was like, won't somebody speak for the people who make the annoying bad websites

that nobody wants to see? They're the real victims here. And I started reading it and I was like, who would say that? And I did the joke, you know, the social media joke, which is like, did a recipe blogger write this article? And the answer is yes, a recipe blogger works for the verge

and does write this article and he said, yes, I actually am the person hurt by this. And it's like, come on, man. Come on, man. Where he's like,

yes. I'm sure this is like a taint in my opinion here. You know, like it. Yeah. But it was, it was just a very funny.

Very funny. And it's a weekend story. Remember, remember what my rule number one of any website that is publishing on the weekend is if they've got staff who's there to publish on the weekend,

It's not their best. And it's not the most focused and analyzed of content because they're just trying to keep the lights on. And this was a real Saturday story, kind of if you ask me. But bizarre. But anyway, yeah, I mean, whereas the rest of us are like, yeah, I don't want to see that garbage. I just want to see their recipe. However, I have all my favorite recipes in an app that can't get on the home view. And yeah, if I'm the developer of a recipe app, the first thing I'm going to do is say,

can I just get a web app real fast? Like, can I get something where you could just like share, you just like air drop a URL to Safari and load my recipe app on a web page? Because HomeView has Safari. But this is the reason that recipe stuff is the reason why I think that HomeView needs a little more of an app story than it's got right now. But it's very clear that the CarPlay thing, it's like, look, this is all we were able to do right now. And again, not necessarily even that they couldn't do more, but they weren't willing to do more yet until the product ships. And like you said, you get a sense of what the customer desire is and what the developer desire is.

But I think the recipe one is a great example where they've obviously tailored this feature for recipes, but they're leaving out the other thing, which is some people actually have stored their recipes. And what happens to those? How do they get those on this device? And I think that remains to be seen. Yeah, I think you made a great case. make a good recipe app, you need to build some kind of web hosting feature for If you can at all possible, just to load it on HomeView so that people can get to their recipes on Home View because I think that, I mean, maybe if you don't care, you don't think

they're going to sell very many of them, but I think having a web view of your recipes, even if it's just literally a read-only view of your recipes, it's not a bad idea to do that if you don't have it. We were talking about this last week and we made an expectation and we now have details that you can run widgets from your iPhone on the HomeView, basically like the Mac does. Yeah. But with one weird, one very weird, like, constraint,

it is only the small size class of widget. It's the only size. And I don't get that at all. I think the HomeView software is going to have some updates. I think it's got to. I think this is a first, I mean, literally I think they, They did what they needed to to ship it and they parked it. And it's been sitting there and we'll see where it goes from here.

So it's just the small one. And it's only on the home screen view and on their modular face. You can have different widgets on there. So good to have. But yes, strange, just a strange thing to set. I don't know. I don't know. Again, I feel like that could evolve over time.

This is a 1.0 product. As long as the hardware's been sitting, it's still, it's a new product and a new category for Apple, and we'll see where they go with it. What's exciting is that there's a lot of potential for them to do stuff to make this a much more interesting product just through software. And they'll get there. I mean, it's got a powerful processor and it's got a lot of RAM.

Like, its limitations are are limitations for, I would say, simplicity's sake more than anything else. And it's a not, you know, it's a new platform, even if they're not branding it, It's a new OS variant that is different. And so they're kind of like dipping their toe in the water with it. It's a 1.0 and they'll learn and I think they'll grow. If the product is to succeed, it will need to progress as well.

And if they've got, we're to Mark German, they've got another, you know, bigger, cooler version of this coming in a year, year and a half. Then investing, if you're going to release that product, you really do need to invest and make use this as an opportunity to make your software better. So when that thing lands, it is much more poised to impress. This version, shipping in 27 or 28, features your favorite robotic arm, large display, 360-degree movement. And a bunch of features that we spoke about a long time ago, like using voice recognition, this is a quote, the machine is designed to identify who's speaking and automatically turn towards that person. Yeah, yeah. And we saw a bunch of like research about moving devices.

and having it feel personal and how you could do that. I am encouraged by the fact that Mark German seems to have stopped using the phrase tabletop robot and has replaced it with robotic arm, which I think is a much more approved, acceptable, accurate phrasing than tabletop robot. Yeah. Put some wheels on it and it runs across your tabletop and we'll talk. But don't do that. Also, I don't want that.

Got a couple of listener questions about the arm of you, too. so here's one from an anonymous question asker. The iPod, iTunes for Windows, iPhone, iPad, they have all offered ways into Apple's ecosystem without requiring another Apple device first. HomeView seems to reverse that. Setup requires an iPhone or iPad, and its defining personalized features

depend on one being present and recently unlocked. Is HomeView primarily about getting existing customers to spend more rather than attracting new ones? If so, do you think that that is a mistake on Apple's part? the iPod was Mac only when it started. Yeah, I think that's why they threw iTunes for Windows straight in. But this is what I'm saying. When it started, it was not.

And the Apple Watch is still this way. So what I would say is HomeView is like Apple Watch. It is designed primarily for people in the iPhone ecosystem and the Apple Home ecosystem, because it's the only place it makes sense. And if it's a hit and people really love it, they will have a consideration about whether they should broaden it. but I think the truth is that if you're in an Apple ecosystem is when this product makes the most sense. So it's really selling it as an additional product

to people already in the ecosystem, which the iPhone is a pretty big ecosystem. So I think that's what they're going for here. I would love it if over time, there's some hints of this now because the iPod is, sorry, the iPad is more of the story here in terms of Apple intelligence requests and stuff. I would like it if in the end

you could use this with, an Apple TV or an iPad and not have to have a phone to set it up because there are some people who are in the Apple ecosystem but have an Android phone and that's a little weird but you know that would be a way you could expand a little bit but I think it's I think they're just being real here this is a an initial product and its appeal is all based on interconnecting with other Apple things and that's no again it's like reversing the strategy like it's no different than the Apple Watch strategy yeah I feel like Apple has so many customers now. I'm not even sure they need to focus on entry points

to the ecosystem. Like, iPhone is the entry point. Yes. You have an incredible business opportunity just serving your existing customer base, right? Like, yeah, that's totally fine, right? And if they continue to find more products that make the ecosystem that you're in even better, that is a great thing on its own because you're just keeping the billions of people you already have hyper-served. I think that makes a lot of sense to me. And Tim asks, HomeView seems to rely on connecting to your iPhone for functionality. The HomePod does something similar with personal requests, but reliability has been spotty for me. Do you think HomeView could do a better job with inter-device communication?

I think it's a new cut at it. I think all of this stuff is going to be a little bit of a new cut at it in terms of recognizing who it is. and then connecting back to the other device. And they've had to do some of this work for Siri AI with like the Apple Watch as well and even with the Homepods and the Apple TV. There's a lot of stuff that has to go back to the phone for personal context.

So will it be better? I don't know, but I think that's what they're trying to do. It's a new cutoff. Yeah. Yeah, it's like I know that my, that Siri on my iPhone does a great job with my personal context questions.

but what happens when that question gets asked on a completely different device that then has to communicate somehow with the device that has the information on it and then it's all going up to the cloud? Like it's a it is a more complicated procedure but is one that I'm sure they built when they were building this new system. Like it was built with this in mind. I mean, this is the reason that this product hasn't come out is because they needed this. this system to be made, right? So I do think it will probably, I do think it is possible that it will be slower than if you ask the question directly on your iPhone, like that, because there is sure, some handoff and some exchange that has to occur, but I am confident that it will work better than, say, the personal context did before, but we'll see. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by

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That is, s-en-tri-y-o and the code Upgrade 26, and you'll get $100 in Century credits if you are a new user. Our thanks to Century for their support of this show and all of Relay. Jason, were you able to pre-order an iPhone duo? Did you collect one of the incredibly rare golden tickets hidden inside of one in every four million boxes of an Apple TV? Did you do it, Jason? I feel like you're setting me up here. I feel like this is a setup. I, well, I mean, the way you phrase it, yes, I did pre-order an iPhone duo.

However, I believe I am a week out. Okay. From launch week. Okay. I have a early November date. Yes. How about you? Yes.

Knowing the answer. October 23rd. I pick it up on Friday. I have my iPhone duo. It's reserved for collection. So my story, I think, is very different to other people's stories. So I had my chosen duo order all prepared, right? like I'm sure all of us do that know how to pre-order things.

You can go into the Apple Store app and do that get ready thing, which I think is fantastic that they have that. It makes this process much easier. So I was sitting there and, you know, the time rolls around. I think it was like one o'clock from me or whatever and nothing. So I false quit the app. Open it in a few minutes past, it's like the app opens up and it's like, hey, do you want to check out?

And it's like, yes, I do want to check out. So I went in. And I would say a comfortable pace. I'm like, okay, I want to go to this store. And it's like, what time do you want? So I check my time and do all of this and check out, you know, have to kind of goad my loins a little bit because I got a one terabyte version of this phone. It's like, here we go, like I'm doing the thing.

Yeah. And then I do what I always do. So I ordered it. And then I go check my unread messages to see about my friends who are also ordering it. Crickets, silence. No one's saying anything. And the reason no one's saying. anything is because everybody else is having a very hard time.

I didn't have trouble. Here's here's the thing. So I am going later this week to Arizona to my mom's got a medical procedure, my very minor medical procedure, but still to the point where I'm going to go down and take her and and be there for a couple of days. And then we've got a family event over the weekend that Lauren's coming down for. so I'm going to be in Arizona. And so I got to the last screen,

but I had to change my shipping address. And in that one screen, my order slipped to November. So I believe if I had done the normal thing and just gone next, next, next, next, I would have gotten it Friday. But I'm not going to be here on Friday. And the question is like,

should I have done that and then changed the shipping order, shipping address? later, maybe I had lots of questions running through my mind at 5.15 a.m. So where is your duo going, the one that you have ordered then? It's coming. Well, it's coming here. Because I saw the date change and so I just put it back to my default. Okay. The problem is, depending on when it lands in that window, I won't be here. So I may have to change it

anyway. We'll see. We'll see. A lot of these things come earlier than you'd expect. right? They sometimes will pop them up a little bit. So maybe that will happen. I don't know. But yeah, so I don't know. It'll be here when it'll be here. It is fascinating because, you know, amongst my extended friend group of Apple enthusiasts and content creators, the hit rate of day one duo is very, very slim. And I do think that maybe I had a little bit better luck because I probably didn't go for the most popular configuration because I went for one terabyte. And I did that because I want to give this

phone the chance to be my iPhone. And my iPhone has half a terabyte of stuff on it because at the moment I like to have all of my photos loaded on my device and that can fit on that. So it's the device configuration that I went with. But it seems like, and I'll read from your link post here for a called Fun with Pre-orders, clearly Apple is struggling with Duo Supply, but there's also obviously a lot of duo demand and curiosity out there. Put them together and you get a device that sold out into next year already. The duo is not going to be the best-selling iPhone of this cycle, not even close, but I still think it will be the best-selling folding phone ever and buy a lot. And yes, right now, I checked this morning, if you want to pre-order a phone, they will be shipping

in late January currently, as the window that they're expecting. Apple have issued a statement on pre-order availability. This is from Bloomberg. The pre-order demand for iPhone Duo has been nothing short of extraordinary. We are working hard to get this revolutionary new product into our customers' hands as quickly as possible, and we will continue accepting orders online. Our teams look forward to welcoming customers at Apple stores worldwide to experience the iPhone Duo an incredible full iPhone lineup for themselves. I almost slipped into that old-time news thing.

Yeah. The pre-order for demand for. iPhone duo has been extraordinary. Well, Bloomberg added themselves, which was a good ad, Apple did not disclose whether inventory would actually be available for customers in store. Then, Harley Charlton at Mac Rumors is reporting that Apple Store employees are being told not to expect stock for walk-in purchases this Friday. Quote, staff have been instructed to discourage customers without pre-orders from coming in expecting to buy the device. that they will be disappointed.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Was this a supply issue? Is it a demand issue, or is it a both issue? Porcad? Porcad no last dose? Yeah, it is both, right? Yeah, I think so.

Apple won't say. Apple knew that they were going to sell out. They knew it because they couldn't make them. And I saw one angry post that was like, how dare Apple do this? Somebody wrote like, this is a failure. Mm-hmm. They blew it. They should have just not, like, I mean, really the argument was like you should have just not shipped it if they could, if it was. And it's like, I don't know, having a highly demand in demand product seems pretty good. And also it's a 1.0 product. So like letting it trickle out there may be fine. Yeah. But we knew they didn't have that many of them. And there were those stories about them having some production issues, which probably reduced the number that they were able to make in time for launch. Yeah. And I would say, my guess is demand is greater than they anticipated to. I bet it's both.

I bet it's both. Because I, when it was announced, there were a lot of people who are like, I don't know, it's expensive, who wants this thing? And it's like, well, lots of people want this thing. That's it. Bottom line, lots of people want this thing. Yeah, I mean, I think we spoke about it at the time that like the thing that was really intriguing to me and also was a signal that this thing was going to be popular was that it became a meme. Like I was seeing like people and brands meaming about the iPhone duo within the days after it launches. And it's like that kind of thing is that's what you want to exist. Because it means now just more people know about this. Like the curiosity factor for the iPhone duo I expect is very high. And curiosity over a couple of weeks will turn to just interest. And like there will be a lot of people who are like, you know what? I think I like my iPhone. This seems really interesting. I like the idea of having an iPad in my pocket. Let me go and check this thing out. And then if you, you know, if you pay attention to technology social media, lots of people have been making really interesting and fun and

like weird little concepts of apps that they could make for this thing. And I think that all of that just continues to, I would say the time in between the duo being announced and now has only really been filled with positivity. Like there's like people that are excited about it. Apple have done a really good job of rolling out influences to come and try this thing over the time, right? They keep kind of having it available for people to come and check out and post about it on social media and stuff like that. And I think that all that has done is actually increase the amount of interest in the device. And yeah, I think the smart take is the one that you have made, which is that this is an issue across all spectrum. They didn't have enough.

they probably weren't going to build enough, then they couldn't build enough, and then the demand was too high. It's probably the way that this has gone. And I don't know what it says for the future. Like maybe now they're like, great, we can now put a lot more money and effort into scaling this thing up because we know we have demand. And also something like this does actually create more demand. Now, I don't believe any company realistically wants to create. a scenario where someone wants to give you money and they can't do that. You know, like people used to say that Nintendo were doing that with the Nintendo Wii, right?

That they were like trying to make it out of stock because it creates this thing of oh, you've got to buy it. Also, Apple, to be clear, Apple will let you place an order. Yeah. You know, Apple has never been the kind that's been like, no, we don't have any. You can't give us your credit card. They're like, no, we'll take it. We'll give you a date.

But what you never want to do, though, when you're selling someone something, is give them the ability to change. their mind, right? Of course. And like if you take the money, you give people a lot of opportunity to change their mind on that order, right? Right, but it's better than what the video game people do, which is they don't, they won't take your money. Yeah. Apple will take your money and then make you wait. And yes, you can cancel, obviously. But they, that's a step up. But you're right. I mean, in the end, you want to, if there's demand, the goal, this is like economics 101, right? Like, the goal is, fulfill all demand. Yeah.

And, you know, I'm not surprised that they struggled with this product because it's new for them and it is ambitious. It reminds me at the Vision Pro. Same thing, right? But the demand wasn't there for the Vision Pro, really, right? So they probably sold a big chunk of the ones that they could make, but it wasn't such a bloodbath because the amount of interest was not there. And like, this is the difference where the interest is absolutely there. And look, it's possible. that beyond, we don't know, and Apple has, Apple at least knows what the pre-orders are.

Yeah. But even Apple doesn't know what is beyond the frontier there, which is, are we selling these to everybody who wants one? And then after that happens, nobody wants one. Mm-hmm. Or does demand keep going on as people get these things and they see them and they're interested in them and they like them? And nobody knows that. So it is possible that everybody who wants an iPhone duo is about to get one. And then that's it.

and no one else will want one. I think that's unlikely, but it's possible. And also, they know how good the product is. Like, meaning good or bad, right? That, like, if they believe, like, genuinely believe they have made a very good, compelling product, then what they should feel is that demand will increase as reviews and word of mouth spread. Right. But have they actually made a really good, compelling product?

There was a report that they had made. they had ordered more of them, I thought I saw, which probably involves some amount of demand forecast as well as some confidence that like people like this and they're going to go they're going to like it. But you're right. I think if you're again, what I was saying before, they're never going to say,

well, it's okay, right? They're going to say this the best because they always are going to say that because it's PR and it's sales. But if they know it's not, that allows them to make a smart business decision to hedge on how many they'd build. Yeah.

And sometimes they're surprised. But yeah, it does feel like they... It's a challenge for Apple because they know the next one is going to be better. Right? They always know that. And they have to just like live in the present, which I think for most of us and most of our listeners, this would be difficult, right? It's always going to be difficult. Like, you're extolling the virtues of the Home View, which has been sitting for two years.

And you've been building the next Home View, which is so much better. and you can't talk about it and you can't act like you just have to put yourself in the mind of two years ago and the Apple people do this. But when it comes to business forecasting, they got to just think about like, how is this product going to be received in the market? It must be really hard to do that.

Like, you know, like when they have to show it off and stuff, I'd be like, hey, look at this thing. Like, you know, the part of the press round. It's like they always seem really excited about these products. It's like, how long have you been using this? You know, like, how long has the iPhone duo been in, John Ternis's office, then he's been using it every day or whatever. They do a good job. They do a good job. So you can currently buy cases for the duo, as is the

usual way. You can. You can have them. And they will arrive with you in your home. Yes. Classic. Interestingly, the silicone case, which is the case that is two halves, it requires adhesive to fit to the device. So this is a thing that, I mean, I've seen this done in a couple of ways. I've seen cases that they kind of snap on and hold with friction. I've seen cases that fit with adhesives. I find this to be

a really interesting choice that they've made here. Do you know what kind of adhesive this is? Do you know if this is like take it on and off and it's still adhesive and it's okay? Or is this like you stick it on and it's never coming off? I don't personally know, no.

And I don't know if any lab analysis of that. I have not, no, because I don't have one. But I have not done any lab analysis. My expectation is it is an adhesive, like maybe one of those kind of like removable and you can stick it back on again

kind of adhesives. That would be my natural assumption. My guess is you can take it on and off, but after a while it won't stick as well. Naturally it will lose its stickiness. Yeah. I just find this to be a weird decision. It's a very weird decision. It's a weird phone with weird accessories. Because even the which surely is magnetically attached.

Because they also make another one that is one part that doesn't have this. So the kickstand case, you don't glue on. But the silicon one you do. Look, they took the guy who came up with fine woven. He's like, I got a great idea. It's called fine glue. You ready? Yeah.

Yeah. Fine adhesive. You got to admire that. guy, though, because he really sticks to his... Thank you. It's great. This is a marker of what is going to be, I think, a thing over the next two, three weeks or whatever is finding all of the interesting things that happen when you're using this phone, because I just think there's going to be a lot of them. And is why I'm really excited, because I don't even know what's coming for me yet. You know? I can.

guarantee people that this is a thing that's going to happen to you, which is you're going to unfold it. Yep. And it's going to be in your hands. Yeah. And remember, the other side of it's got a camera bump on it, but you're going to be looking at the interior screen. Your hands are going to be on it. And you're going to have that moment of like, where's the camera bump back there? Because

you have to make a decision of like as you open it, like, where are your hands and how do you hold it and are you going to turn it and which way would you turn it? And there's going to be a moment where you're like, I don't know where this product is in space, right? Like, I don't know, do I do this? Do I do that? Where do I put my fingers? Where's the touch ID button?

Where do I do all of those things? And you know what? After you use it for a couple of weeks, that'll all fade away, presumably. But, like, in that moment, there's going to be a lot of that, which is like, what, how do I hold the... Because it's like a different shape that people are not used to. And so there's going to be a real, like, human muscle memory kind of... to like, what do I, how do I, and that's going to be, everybody's going to experience that. It's going to be interesting.

Yeah, it's like I was playing around with the iPhone simulator yesterday just to kind of like as you do. What does it look like in here? And as far as I can tell from the simulator, like a thing I hadn't considered, obviously you can do split screen multitasking, but not in portrait. In portrait, it's just one app. Which, like, maybe that's fine. but I never really thought about that.

Like, I just assumed you do two apps like you do on the iPad. Oh, but they'd be breaking, they'd be breaking not across the fold then, right? They'd be breaking against the fold. Against the form particular to the fold. But it's like, if that is the way it ships, it's like...

Okay. Oh, yeah, and Meheer says, it's a good point. In portrait, you can do picture, you can do the split for video, so you can have video on the top, but not on the top. And the app on the bottom.

But why can't I do apps on top of it? You know, it's like an interesting, thing like, or maybe I can, but it doesn't work in the simulate, but whatever it is, it's like, I cannot wait to learn how to use an iPhone again. It's like a whole new way to use an iPhone, and I feel like I really understand how to use an iPhone, and this one doesn't work exactly like the ones that I'm used to. Now, this is uncharted territory for iOS in a lot of ways, which is very, right? And it's like not an iPad. This is iPhone. iOS is weird now on this device. I had the thing, And I'm sure it's easier on the device,

but it doesn't matter if you get used to it, where I was like, where's the button? And it's on the right. It's like, yeah, you gotta find out of, where's the back button? Oh,

this is what I'm saying. Yeah. This is what I'm saying is that, is that spatially you're going to be like, I don't know where anything I can't see. Like, what button do I press and where is it? Where is the camera right now?

Yeah. I don't. And I mean, you're going to have that moment where you're, where your pinky. goes around the edge and is like, oh, I just touch the front of the camera with my finger. That's not good.

And it's going to be because you didn't know it was there because you had a vision about where that camera bump was and you're not holding the phone like that. And that's all going to happen. Look forward to next week's episode where I have many of these questions because where I'm like, oh, I don't know where this is and I don't know where that is. And I'm excited that like, even though I wish you had one immediately, we're going to be talking about this phone for weeks and weeks and weeks because we're both going to be experiencing it at different times.

and then having new experiences, and I'm very, very excited for the end of this week. This episode 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,

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this ad. That is clod.a.ai slash upgrade. Our thanks to Claude for their support of this show and all a relay. Let's finish out with some ask upgrade questions. Would Jason or Mike, I appreciate this, Darren, but this is the Jason. Would Jason consider iPhone Duo as an e-reader?

Between its book-like folding inner screen, the nanotexture display, and a plethora of assistive technologies and shortcuts to toggle those technologies, you can get pretty close to an e-ink device, maybe? Look, maybe. But what I like about e-readers

is that they are unitaskers, and when I'm reading on my e-reader, I'm just reading a book and I'm not getting any put... It's not my phone. I'm not getting push notifications. And yeah, okay, so then you can say, well, you can set it up so that you're not getting notifications when you're

in your reading app and all that. It's like, yeah, I can. I mean, I read on my iPhone if I'm like out of the doctor's office or something where I don't bring my e-reader with me or any other place, although now I've been reading that with that XT. Inc. thing, which is tiny. I've been reading more with that in places like the doctor's office.

You just throw it in the bag, throw it in your pocket. It's easy. But look, I'm interested in every possible way that the iPhone duo could change my approach to reading. I do all my reading in the morning on an iPad and that's where I think I might change and use the iPhone duo but we'll have to see.

I keep seeing when on social media people going to these events or like product imagery and stuff, you see that thing where people they're holding it in the kind of half open state and they're like swiping on it. It's like, oh look, it's a book.

I'm not convinced that that is something that will feel comfortable to hold and use? Like, I'm just not sure, like, is that something that people will actually want to do, that, like, little half-bent thing? I haven't used one, so I don't know, right? But it's like, that is a big question for me.

It's like a thing that it does, and I understand it for, like, where you can prop it up on a table and do things. But, like, the idea of holding it like that to read, I just don't know how that's going to feel. I don't understand why. Yeah, maybe, but it's, it's, you know, Yeah, it feels more novelty than real. Randall says,

do you think the iPhone duo has two Taptic engines? I can't imagine how else taps would be felt across both halves of the display in different orientations, especially with the hinge in the middle. I was thinking about this because I've always been sad that the iPad Mini doesn't have one at all. I thought this was a fascinating question. We obviously don't have the answer to this.

But like, I wonder, you figure it would need to, right? like it unless the taps do conduct across through the hinge could it

like I don't understand enough about how that technology works I don't know I mean what we'll find out like if we feel a tap and it's mostly

coming from the left side or the right side we'll rip one apart and I cannot wait for the tear down of this oh my God I just thought wow that tear down is gonna be bananas

it is going to be bananas they must be terrified right because like yeah well I guess they I'm sure they have a lot of experience tearing down folding phones by now, but I'm just sure they're much more

complicated as like devices to take apart. But yeah, I can't wait to see the tear down of that now. Interesting. As that wrote in it says, I really love my matte display MacBook Pro. Yeah, that's nanotection. Yes, sorry. I'm also excited about the matte screen layer on the duo. Recently, it came out that the matte layer on the duo is replaceable. Considering this, do you think an optional mat layer would be available in a future iPhone. It makes sense to be replaceable on a phone since it would be prone to micro scratches. I don't think so. I think Apple is happy to let that be a third priority opportunity unless it has to be on the device, in which case, iPhone Duo, is it? I can't. If people really like it,

I could imagine a nanotexture option for the iPhone that is like what they do for the iPad, which is different to what they're doing for the iPhone Duo. And, yeah, to what they're doing. I can't imagine them pre-installing a matte screen cover that you can peel off on an iPhone. But you're right. If they really felt like it was going to be awesome, they could offer nanotexture. I don't think they will, but they could do it that way, where it's literally the screen is different, coded differently. Yeah, which is what they do for the iPad Pro, right?

And you can still use your finger on it, which is not what they did for some of the display stuff before. And also the problem is, and the reason that you will be able to have to do a replaceable and notice is because it will be softer. Right. And you cannot have an iPhone exposed with a softer layer on top. It will be destroyed. Like you can do it for a folding phone because when you're putting it in a bag, you're putting it in a pocket, you're closing it. And you are protecting the softer layer. Now, again, like the softness thing, it's not going to be like the plasticy ones on the original folding phones, but it is softer. All of that's gotten better, but it's still prone to damage, which is why Apple, I think, greatly has thought about how they can make it easily and somewhat cheaply replaceable because a significant portion of iPhone Duo customers over the lifetime of their ownership will probably want to replace that layer. So they've made it in such a way that that will be easy enough to do.

Santiago writes in and asks, it seems Apple is stuck with A-series chips for their home devices, even though they have become probably overpowered and definitely overpriced these days for them. It feels crazy that such powerful chips are powering displays, Apple TVs, and the Home View. Do you think Apple would benefit from a new line of chips that sits below the A-series, but above the S-series for these kinds of devices? I think it's a great question. Of course they would benefit, but I think that the effort to create a chip just for those kinds of devices, I think is just beyond the economics of doing chip design. I think Apple's whole schick, and this does not get enough coverage, but it's one of my favorite things about Apple, is how industrious they are at using and reusing all their stuff. How does a company, I know Apple, Apple, huge, but like a company of Apple size

in terms of the people who are working on their hardware and software, how do they have so many different OSs and so many different hardware products? And the answer is they reuse parts. They reuse software and they reuse hardware and it goes down to the chips.

So they have to have an S chip for the watch. They have to have an A chip for the phone. And they have to have an M chip for the Mac. And a H chip for the headphones too. Yeah, I mean, they build those chips that they have to. And then they repurpose them.

And if I don't, I mean, look, if it turned out that there were a slot for something that made sense, they could build a custom chip for it. But I think it's more likely, like, I'll give you an example. I think it's more likely that they look at the next generation of home products and they say, is this an A or an S, right? Can we, could we just have the next? Because they design the chips, right? is there a way for us to design the next watch chip so it also drives a home pod? They will do that. But what they're not going to do is say, let's create the K chips or whatever.

Like they're just not going to do it unless it is just the benefit, the cost of designing a chip like that is big. And then you're not using it very much. And like you don't, it doesn't make sense. So I don't disagree with Santiago's point here that you end up with. with these really weird situations where you've got a product that has to take an A-chip, and Apple's been driving forward with the A-chip, and maybe they've stopped making the old models of chip, and you've got to update,

and the implication here's like that Apple TV and that studio display are awfully overpowered in terms of what's in them in terms of a chip. But the studio displays, I think, a great example, where it's running iOS and it's got an A-chip in it, and you never see it. I've used studio display since the very beginning. I have two of them. You never see it. It's totally irrelevant. Is it overpowered? I mean, yeah, it is. But Apple decided that technically those were the best parts to use or reuse in order to make that product.

So does it lead to weird distortions like that? Yeah. But that's their decision. I think it's unlikely that they'll create a new class of chip, even though they're going to have to deal with this because they've obviously done the math and realized that that doesn't pencil out. I can, you know, maybe if if they thought what was happening now was going to happen multiple years ago, maybe there could have been a reason

that it would work out, right? Sure. If they knew what it cost to create a chip that's got that much RAM on it and then put it in a low-cost device that can't be low-cost anymore, they had anticipated that, it's possible that they would

have done that or done a variant of it that had less RAM or was cheaper. Yes, if they could have forecast what was about to happen. Maybe, maybe. But even then, it might not have been a new chip. It might have just been like a cheaper variant or something. And like, you know, and maybe now they're like, oh, you know, is there something? I'm sure they're always having these conversations, right? Like, I'm sure every time they're like, okay, what chip is going to go in this display?

Someone's like, should we really be putting these? and they work it out and they're like, yes, actually, we should be putting iPhone chips inside of the studio display for the 20% of the power that we need because it just makes sense for us to do. And this floated up in the Discord,

but I think it's worth mentioning, part of Apple's chip deal to do chip manufacturing in the US, like those aren't going to be on the cutting edge nodes that TSM is doing in Taiwan. They're going to be on the older ones. And I do wonder if that's part of their strategy is they're going to be making chips

in the US that are not for the iPhone pro, right? but there are older chips that they seed in other products. And maybe that's it. Because again, in the end, it's like, we design this chip once. And then we make a zillion of them. And now we're making a zillion of them and we're including it in our US chip strategy. They have a lot of areas now where there is a genuine strategy to just keep using old and old and old chips, right? They have entire laptops now that can be powered by these things.

They become cheaper as they go. Yeah. And the more you do. And so that's their strategy is not make a bespoke chip for a product. But part of the, and this part of Johnny Surugi's job, that's really interesting, I think, and a difficult job. And whoever else is a part of it. But it is like a hardware specific thing, which is, so Ternus used to be involved with it too, which is the game plan for an A chip is not just that iPhone. It's all the other products that Apple's going to be making that are on.

its roadmap over years that are going to be part of that. And they are doing the math of how many of these are we making over time. And now with the stuff that's happening in the U.S. that's going to be on the not cutting edge nodes, it's stuff like that, right? It's going to be like, well, we're going to use this A17 for a long time because we're going to use it in all of these other things. And so I will also say a brand new A chip that ships in a brand new iPhone is cutting edge and has expense. But over time, it's cheaper. And over time, it's not on the cutting edge. And so that's part of it, too, is that in two years, if it's in a home product, it's not a cutting edge product anymore. And it's not as expensive as it used to be. And now it is more fitting that

it is in a catalog product, that it's a lower volume, lower price product. And that's part of their calculation, too. I think it's really interesting. And this is one of those cases where, because Apple makes it themselves, they are figuring out how to do that, whereas it's a different scenario if you are buying off of a price list from a chip supplier. Then, you know, if you,

and there are different issues, right? We know what happened with Intel, but like, and with Qualcomm. But there are different issues, but it's the same idea of like, well, for this one, I want this chip off of your menu. And you do have to risk them saying

we can't make enough of those. for you. But instead, Apple has to make those decisions up front and they have a smaller array. They're not producing for a bunch of customers. They're just producing for themselves. So that limits them. So it's worth, it's an interesting question

that is worth thinking about. But I think that what Santiago is getting to is the idea like, it really requires a big reason to build a custom chip because there's enormous, cost in designing a brand new chip. And if you're only using it in a few places, it's not worth it.

Now, maybe Apple is foreseeing a time when there's going to be an array of products. It's enough of them that having a chip that's not quite an A chip would make sense. Maybe that could happen. But so far, that hasn't, nothing has gotten to that threshold. And I think Apple really likes the idea that they can take their old A chips and use it elsewhere. even if they're not purpose built for the product, right? Because that's the other thing Santiago is getting at here is, is an iPhone chip a mismatch for a display?

Totally. Is it a mismatch for home view? I would say a little less so, but sure. And is it a mismatch for the MacBook Neo? I mean, the MacBook Neo kind of exists because of the mismatch there. So it could be positive. It could be negative. I do think that, like, in the end, a normal person who's not one of us

just buys a studio display. My father-in-law doesn't know what chip is inside the studio display or what OS runs it, right? It doesn't matter to him. So, I don't know. It is fascinating to see how they navigate this because they are trying to see the big picture of what hardware they've got and what chips they've got and how they can spread those out. Sometimes I come to my studio and my studio display XDR fan is just like in hyperdrive. And I don't know why it does that. There's just a little piece of information for you.

It's feeling hot. I have to unplug it like from the wall. to get, and then when I plug it back again, it's fine. You'll probably get a software update that fixes that at some point. That happened in the early days of the original studio display. It's like there were two or three software updates and people like, oh, I can't believe it a software update for my display, which happens all the time. But yeah, it's like an iOS update for your display.

And then it stopped and they didn't do it anymore because it was fine. It reached a point of stability and then they just locked it in. We'll see. Design in California this week, we're going to be talking about the digital hub strategy, the story behind it where it came from, what it meant for Apple, what it meant for Steve, and how they nearly failed to add music to the mix, but just in time decided that they needed a music part of the digital.

Steve Jobs, on the record is saying he thought he blew it with regard to digital music, and they had to scramble. And the scramble they did? You can go to Relay.fm slash designed and check out this series, which is our origin of the iPod series. This is really good stuff that I think you can enjoy it. And we actually are getting rave reviews from members who've listened to

the whole thing already. So people... It's true. I appreciate that. In fact, yes, this Friday, the day that the iPhone duo comes out, is the 25th anniversary of the original iPod launch event. So not when it shipped, but when

it was unveiled to the world. Yeah, the iPod has two kind of, like the iPhone, two kind of like pretty significant anniversaries. That are far enough apart from each other, right? So like, it's a couple of weeks in this case, a couple weeks. And as you'll, as you'll find in this series, some momentous things happen in those two weeks. Yeah.

Yeah. That's happened. Uh, you can, uh, go and check that out at relay.com slash design. You can also send us your feedback follow up and questions for this show by going to upgrade feedback.com. I would like to thank our members and supporters of Upgrade Plus who get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week. Uh, you can find this show on YouTube.

by searching for Upgrade Podcast. I would like to thank our sponsors who supported this episode. That is Squarespace, Century, Claude, and Planet Money. And most of all, I would like to thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.