534: The 2024 October Event? Draft
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From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 534 for October 21st, 2024. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Fitbod, and Vitally. And we are facing off in a draft today. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by my competitor and co-host, Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. Just let's play a clean game. Leave it all out on the field. Good luck, gentlemen.

Yeah, this is a weird one because we're just doing a little draft later on in the episode. We'll get to it. There's less to draft now than there was when we spoke last Monday. Yes, there's less to draft. It's true. But we still think something is going to be announced. And so we're going to predict it.

We will start off with a Snell Talk question. It comes from James from the Plus44 who asks, I was a huge fan of Jason's TV Talk Machine podcast with the one and only Tim Goodman, and it helped me discover lots of great shows. I would like to know where does Jason get TV recommendations and reviews from these days? I still have a TV Talk Machine-shaped hole in my life. Love to your mothers. I mean, this is very nice. That was a fun show.

Tim, when Tim stopped being forcibly required by his job to review TV shows, we stopped the podcast. He went off and wrote, he had a development deal with FX for a little while. And now he's back and he's got a sub stack that you can subscribe to. And so I do read that. I read some like Alan Sepinwall is a good source. He's got a, he writes at Rolling Stone and has a sub stack of his own that's free.

I read, you know, I read various, I don't know. I just like kind of look around and I hear what people are talking about and I get recommendations from friends and stuff. But yes, I have missed,

It was really nice to talk every week to somebody who was forced by their job to watch as many TV shows as possible because Tim was really good at saying, oh, this was really good. You should watch this or even the don't bother with this one thing. But also I have so many shows already that I don't feel the need quite so much, but it is really nice to hear from a trusted source that this thing or this other thing is worth watching.

worth a shot. And I will follow this up by just saying my recommendation of the moment that we just discussed last week, it is entirely there. The entire season is available on Apple TV+. It is Vince Vaughn in Bad Monkey. Oh, good. Which is spectacularly good. Oh, this is such good news because I have it to watch. Spectacularly good. It is so good. It has that

Florida noir vibe where it's funny, but also there's a mystery and everything is a little bit shabby and shady and there's scenery and there's again, jokes. And I don't know. It's just, I, I loved it. Plus it's a Bill Lawrence show. So it's also kind of got that vibe. That's like a little bit like the hangout vibe that you get on something like

shrinking which came back which high recommendation for that too i watched the first episode of the second season and it's just as good so i'm very happy about that that show's so good this show is so well written so very good in that show i agree completely so anyway i'll throw i'll throw a bad monkey on the list if you're like i don't know some show about a monkey well there's a monkey in it but

It's not about the monkey at all, really, at this point. I mean, I have only seen half of it. Probably it becomes very monkey-centric later. No, I'm sure it doesn't. But look, it's just part of the vibe, right? Like, there's a guy with a monkey, and there's a lady who does curses, and there's a shady land developer, and there's a...

severed body part that is found and you know it's a thing it's it's great it's very fun and funny so bad monkey high recommendation for me um but yeah it's hard without having it was really nice what i'm saying is it's really nice to know a tv critic because then you can just say hey what what are we watching but um

but I don't have that anymore. Well, for me, that is you, which is funny. You're my person. Nice. I will also make a couple of recommendations. I think we may have spoken about it, but for me and Jason, well, for me at least, I watched it all ages ago because I do have early access to it, which I'm very happy about. Slow Horses. Slow Horses, sure. This season's superb. Superbly good. As always. Really, really, really good.

do you know they just greenlit season six so that five is done and they're doing yet another one i'm like yes do it forever you know just like keep doing it do it forever love it so good characters are fantastic uh the guy who plays uh the main like the lead not gary oldman like the second river river jack loudon is his name i hope so he's he's married to shai uh oh man

shari's ronan's s-a-o-i-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r-s-a-r

And this is like a little asterisk on that whole, like Apple adding TV plus as a channel on prime video. Like this is why I think it's a great move is their catalog is really good. Now they started with nothing and have built a catalog. And at this point, like, even if you, you, you know, if you just never paid any attention, like,

I mean, even for one month, you could watch your fill for $10 for one month with Prime Video buying it as a channel. So I hope these shows find other audiences because they're doing some great work over there.

And Silo's coming back, which is also great. It was actually on that note, too. I saw a promotion for Shrinking Season 2 from the Amazon Prime Video account on Instagram. See? Right? Because now they get to be in the marketing machine for Amazon, which is a big deal for them. So thank you, James. And I guess, in addition to being the world's foremost Kindle podcast, maybe we'll occasionally recommend a TV show for you here. But that's it. Sorry.

Oh, I want to make one final recommendation. Okay. I think people have started to stay away from these shows, but Agatha all along...

on Disney Plus is excellent. It's really good. It's excellent. It's really good. Because the cast is brilliant, and it's weird and fun, and it's spooky. For October, too. It is not a Marvel show in, I would say, any appreciable way, even though it is a... Well, yeah, I know, but it's going to have tie-ins, because it does have tie-ins. It is, in some ways, sort of a direct sequel to WandaVision, which, by the way, is the first and still maybe the best...

of all Marvel TV shows in this run that's been done by Marvel Studios. And it's the same showrunner as WandaVision, which I think is super important. And it is, yeah, it's really good. It's not what you expect. It is...

kind of a character drama with action and uh it's using witchcraft tropes so magic stuff so it's a different vibe than you're going to get from your your uh more superhero-y kind of marvel show yeah i agree high recommendation really really good really good yeah the the first episode is just superb like it's just like superb they did a great job i've enjoyed it a lot and katherine hun is just like

Good supporting cast in that one, too. Aubrey Plaza, I mean, are you kidding me? Aubrey Plaza. Did you see what Aubrey Plaza, the bit that Aubrey Plaza did the other day? She was at the finals of the WNBA in New York. Not Game 5, which they just had, where the New York Liberty won. We were excited by that because one of their players is Sabrina Ionescu, who went to Oregon and is from the Bay Area. So we had a rooting interest in the WNBA. And...

Sabrina did the three-point shootout thing with Steph Curry at the NBA All-Star Game, which I watched a clip of because there was a Vision Pro immersive NBA All-Star Game thing that dropped last Friday. Spectacular, by the way. Like the Super Bowl one

They took their time a little bit. I wish it had been three times as long because I would have liked to watch more of it. It was more like, and this happened, spectacular visuals. And now we move on to this thing that happened, spectacular visuals. Right.

I wish I would have loved to watch the whole three-point contest and the whole Steph versus Sabrina showdown in immersive. It was great. Also, a little sad moment. They're showing these amazing shots of the slam dunk contest and you're courtside. And I was really sad because you're courtside next to Bill Walton, the great basketball player who died about three months after the NBA All-Star game. But he was there and he was cheering and all. And that was pretty awesome. So anyway, Aubrey Plaza.

They showed her on the big screen at the basketball game. And what was she doing? She had a book and she was reading a book. So she was at the finals last night. Because I saw a clip of her today. They went to her. She just double flipping the bird to everyone. Yeah. She's incredible. Amazing. So good. Amazing.

Anyway, thank you to James from the Plus44 for the Sneltalk question. If you'd like to send in a question of your own, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send us a Sneltalk. I have a couple of follow-up items, Jason Snell. First comes from Sam, who says, after listening to the discussion of Submerged...

Do you think there is a future for filmmakers using the immersive recording during feature-length movies, but only in certain scenes? Similar to how Christopher Nolan uses IMAX for specific scenes and then drops back to standard shots. The bulk of the movie could be viewed in a standard way, but then for specific scenes, it could benefit from being in an immersive view and could transition in and then back out again.

I mean, it's possible. It would be a gimmick, but Nolan flipping you into IMAX is also a gimmick. I saw one of the Batman movies that Nolan directed in, I think, Dark Knight in IMAX. And suddenly it's like, oh, now we're in IMAX. Oh, now we're not anymore. So you could do it that way. That would be interesting. I still think that a standalone, an immersive view of

of something that happens in the movie from a different vantage point in immersive might be a more like fun kind of extra. Obviously to do this, Apple's going to have to spend a lot of money because the audience on vision pro is so small that there would be no financial reason for a studio to do it. But if a director like what is it? John M. Chu is like super into the vision pro. He loves it. And it wouldn't surprise me if he's like, Apple, what can we do with my next movie? What can we do with this?

So, I mean, I think people will still experiment whether it's an alternate scene that gets when you watch it on Vision Pro, it gets spliced in or just an alternate scene in Immersive that you can watch as a standalone or something. I definitely think there are going to be some filmmakers who are really into this and looked at Submerged and said,

Like we did like, huh, that's, he had an interesting approach to that. And my favorite thing about submerged and I liked it, but my favorite thing about it is watching really, you can watch a very intelligent, talented director trying to figure out the best approach to use artistically in a different version of a medium that he knows pretty well. I would love to see other people do it. And I'm sure some directors will,

were out there who are like oh man i want to do this too so i i hope we see more of this but you know maybe if there's a director with clout who has a good relationship with apple and they're making a movie and they say look you know we we want to do this immersive thing attached to this movie in some way i'm sure it could happen but we'll we'll just have to see that's a that's a real confluence of events there and it depends on how much apple wants to make it happen

Yeah. It feels like something that they could do for one of their movies, you know, like a, like an Apple TV plus movie. And maybe you could do it as a separate thing or. They also have a really good relationship with Disney. Right. So, you know, you know, if they were willing to take a Disney or Marvel or, you know, or, or Star Wars movie and, um,

put money into a Vision Pro immersive add-on to it, but they got to put the money in it. I mean, that's the bottom line is they got to put the money in if they want it to happen.

An anonymous listener wrote and said, I wanted to respond to your conversation about matter showing Orion from a place of weakness and that Apple hasn't done this for a long time. I think Apple intelligence was Apple showing AI features while they're not ready yet. It's a good example of how Apple is showing its panic a weakness in this area. If they were doing it from strength, they would have introduced it whenever they are almost ready.

Yeah, 100% true. And we also talked about that last week, right? We talked about the fact that Apple very much is selling the iPhone using features that don't exist yet and that you shouldn't buy an iPhone because of features that don't exist yet.

But the conversation last week was really about pre-announcing hardware. And I would say the other difference is that Apple actually, I think, intends to ship Apple intelligence between now and next June. And everything they showed in June at WWDC is something that they intend to ship. And the contrast there is that Meta doesn't plan on shipping Orion at all. They've specifically said they will not ship it. What we have seen...

That will never ship. They showed hardware that will never go to customers and anything like it won't ship for, they said years, they were vague, but it's years. And so for me, that seems like a very different thing than, I mean, like Apple show vision pro and Apple watch months before they shipped, but they did ship exactly in that form. And it was months. This is a product that nobody's ever going to get. And I think that that is, that was my point is, um,

A lot of tech companies like to show off tech demos of things that don't exist. Like they're not, you will never be able to buy this thing. It happens at CES all the time, but you see it with major companies too. Like last week, right? Oh man, right? So let's, anyway, the, I don't have enough time to tell you all the things that are wrong with the strategic direction of that company right now. The, so the thing about this is,

I was pointing out that when was the last time that Apple showed hardware that they didn't intend to ship...

And just did it to show off their technical prowess and where they were going with their research lab. And in that context, I can't remember. You pointed out, I think, the last time they really talked about hardware that didn't exist that they were promising on shipping was that Mac Pro thing, which is legendary. We talk about it to this day, the roundtable where they brought in a bunch of journalists and said, we love the Mac Pro. We're going to make a new one eventually.

No more information. And then it was years before it happened. It's a meme now, but air power too, right? Like here's the thing. Although that, I think Apple, I don't think Apple showed that out of weakness. I think Apple showed that out of confidence that it was going to ship. So I think it's a different issue. They just screwed it up. Yeah. That was not, that was not a, uh, like, Oh, we feel the pressure to put out a air power. So we get better get it out there. Now I'm just saying, I'm coming from this, from the perspective of somebody who in the nineties, the magazine I worked for published a whole feature article about

of prototypes of Macs that never existed. Some of them sort of parts of them got into other products. Like there was a bunch of things that looked sort of like the 20th anniversary Macintosh, but like,

Apple was just like, we're spending all this money on R&D and we're not doing anything with it. What do we do? And the answer is, show the world that we're spending the money. And that was the vibe I got from Meta. I don't think Meta's troubled like Apple of the 90s was troubled. No. By far, because no... That was bad. That was a bad era. But again, they're showing something that doesn't...

ever going to isn't going to ship to customers because they want to send a message that they're on it. And, and that's because they felt like they were being misjudged. So that was the point. It is absolutely true. So I stand by my point, which is Apple. I can't remember the last time Apple carted out a piece of hardware that was like, this will never ship, but, but we'll see in three years for the argument of like, why don't they show their own AR project right now?

But yes, as we said last episode, the Apple intelligence announcement is 100% from a position of weakness. That is Apple getting out ahead and shipping and promoting features that don't even exist yet because they haven't shipped. Like on top of the stuff that's about to come out, they're advertising features that will not arrive until the end of the year or maybe early next year. And they're doing that because they're behind in AI. That is 100% true. And maybe...

may not be good even when they do ship. And may not be good. And the further out they are, which is a point we made last week, the further out they are, the more risk you take that the demo that you saw back in June, that it does this by the time it ships, it's like, well, it doesn't quite do that because we couldn't get that to work. So it does something sort of like that, but not as good. And that is always a danger. And I still think some of the features that we saw will not make it until 19. I don't know what.

But I think this is such a long period of time that they're potentially going to be shipping this stuff. Something is not going to go exactly the way they want, and they would like a little bit more time on it, so they just put it into 19. If I had to guess, I'd say the more likely is that it's an aspect of it, right? So they're like, oh, well, you're going to be able to do Siri control of apps, but they're only Apple apps using App Intents. And then it's going to be like,

it's really only these two apps, right? Something like that where they're like, oh, I thought it was all the Apple apps. I'm like, no, it's just calendar. That's the only one we could do, right? And you're like, okay, fine, whatever. So I think that's going to happen. So it's really interesting times though. And I don't want to ding to meta too much for it because we both agreed that it was a good move on their part. It's just like for Apple to get over that, I think Apple...

Apple doesn't need to prove that it's interested in this, although something that struck me, which I don't think we're going to talk about, but there was a Wall Street Journal. It was like a little profile of Tim Cook. There's not a whole lot in it other than the tidbit. I haven't read it yet, honestly. What struck me about that article is that's the kind of venue that you use. An interview with Tim Cook on Good Morning America or in the Wall Street Journal or something like that, where...

obviously prompted by Apple PR to do this, but that is a great environment for Tim Cook to do a little disclosure that I think might solve some of this, which is you ask Tim Cook about Meta's announcement and Tim Cook says something like, we've had stuff like that in our labs for a couple of years too. And we agree with Meta, it's not ready yet. And at Apple, we don't ship stuff until it's ready to ship. So, you know, I'm glad that they believe in this. We believe in it too. We're here to compete.

But we're not going to talk about products that aren't ready to ship. And that would be a way for the CEO's voice to basically say, we got that too, but we're not going to show it to you. In a way, in an interview or something where it's just like almost tossed off, but it's absolutely strategic for them to just say, look, we know, we got it too. We're working like they are, but we're not going to show it to you.

And I think that it struck me that that's the kind of thing you could do if you want to counter the meta argument is you could just acknowledge that like, great, we've got prototypes too. We'll see on the playing field in a few years. And that would be a way that you could handle it. By the way, the tidbit in the Tim Cook article that was the best is the interviewer asks him,

I love him so much. Yeah.

You know, like that is such great energy. I saw another one, which is like, this is, that is, this is Tim energy right there. I think I saw another where he said his favorite drink was diet Mountain Dew, but he doesn't drink it too much because they don't stock it in. Okay. And it's like, okay, you're the CEO. Okay. So, so I've got a couple. So first off, yes, I like Tim cook. My favorite soda is also diet Mountain Dew. So I look at that. We got that Tim.

But you're the CEO. So one, you could have them stock it. Two, you could just have a person buy Diet Mountain Dew and put it in your receptionist's outer office for your office and have it available to you. You could do it that way. But surely Cafe Max could, unless they've got some sort of weird, did they sign a distribution deal with Coke and so their Pepsi products are not allowed? I don't know what's going on there. But here's a tip for Tim Cook.

you can get diet Mountain Dew, uh, soda stream bottles and just get a little soda stream and make your own diet Mountain Dew. I can do that now. I actually do that now. So, uh, lots of options out there for Tim to, uh, and, and my condolences to Tim on how bad the Auburn Tigers are playing this year. I will just say, I just went to Mac. This is good followup. And they did pick out two things that are, I guess, pertinent to the conversation where, uh,

in regards to the Vision Pro saying that at $3,500, it's not a mass market product. Right now, it's an early adopter product. People who want to have tomorrow's technology today. It's like, yep, that's a great answer. And then also, he's talking about his innovation saying we're perfectly fine with not being first. It takes a long... It takes a while to do it really great. It takes a lot of iteration. You know, so like he's...

winking, right? Like we'd rather come out with the kind of product and the kind of contribution of people versus running to get something out first. If we can do both, that's fantastic. But if we can do one, there's no doubt around here.

Right, right. And that's my point is if they feel like there's some advantage to be gained from saying, yeah, we've got prototype glasses too, and just as Meta found out, they're not good enough for people to buy now, and it'll probably be a few years. He could say that in an analyst call. He could say that in a media interview. And that's all they need to do, right? Like the people are like, oh, maybe Apple should show off. It's like literally all that Tim Cook needs to do is say, yeah,

It's great. And, you know, we're working on it too. We'll see you in a few years. And that's it. So that's fine. A couple more pieces of follow-up. One is that according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple's chief people officer, Carol Surface, is leaving the company after just two years. Deidre O'Brien is taking the responsibility of people back into her role again. This is follow-up because last week when talking about Dan Riccio, you mentioned about Apple's issues of hiring externally.

Yeah. Yeah. That a lot of those people, not all of them. And there are, there are examples of people who've stuck, but actually Gurman mentioned this. Luca Maestri was an external hire and he worked pretty well. And their legal counsel was an external hire. And by all accounts, she's doing great too. Their chief counsel. But, but there are a lot of high profile, especially in the customer facing parts where there are high profile hires that don't go well. And this is essentially the,

You know, just like losing two retail chiefs. Now we've lost the people officer was brought in to replace the person who was moving over to just do retail chiefs.

So, and, and German also pointed out, Deidre O'Brien's going to retire here probably pretty soon. And then what are they going to do? And it's like, she's going to, she's going to be worn down at some point. I mean, this poor woman. This is why I heard, I heard from somebody this week after we had that conversation who basically said, yes, Apple knows this. Apple,

makes every effort to develop their own people on the inside because they know that this is the case. And of course they do. That's why we talked about Dan Riccio is like, that felt very much like part of a concerted strategy to keep the

the brain trust around longer than they would otherwise be around and bring on the new person and give them more of a role just as a great Jaws. We act is now worldwide marketing head, but Phil Schiller still there, right? Because that gives Jaws his opportunity. And presumably he is now having the people step up behind him. Oh, um, he mentioned the, they brought in external, uh,

PR person and they lasted like less than two years. And now Kristen Hugett, who's been there forever and who I used to work with when she was just a PR, you know, person on a product basis is now running their PR. So she's been at Apple a long time. Like there are so many stories of this. So Apple's not a impossible fit for an outside hire, but

But it's very difficult for a high level outside hire to fit in there. So they're doing the right thing, according to the people that I've heard from, which is they know it and they are trying very hard to develop their new talent from their existing employee base, which one is great, because if you're an employee there, what you want to believe is that there's a ladder for you to climb.

Yeah. Instead of them just bringing in a high profile person from the outside. And two, because they got to do it that way because there's nobody coming in from the outside. The latter is the only source of the next executive set. So, yeah, really interesting to write on the follow of that for this to break because I was like, we just talked about that on Upgrade. Perfect timing. Yep.

And as discovered by Sigmund Judge at the Magic Rays of Light podcast, we mentioned about him. He had pointed something out about Ted Lasso season four shooting in London. Well, the British Film and Television Alliance has now published that Ted Lasso season four is in production with filming to occur in both London and the USA. There you go. It's not been announced yet. It's not been confirmed by anybody at Apple or Warner Brothers. And I would say...

I would say I still, one of the reports that we haven't gotten to is, is it Ted Lasso season four in terms of how they market it? Yeah. Or is it going to be like a follow on that's got a different name and maybe they are spending so much money that they're just going to call it Ted Lasso season four. But I'll, I'll, I was watching the last part of the last, I was trying to think like, where did they leave it? And one of the last shots, it's very telling of Ted Lasso season three is,

is Ted's note on the manuscript by Trent Krim that's called The Lasso Way. And his only note is, it shouldn't be named after me. It's not about me. It never was. Something like that. And I thought, at the time, this is how you hand off to a successor show, is say, it shouldn't be called Ted Lasso.

That said, if it's easier to market it as Lasso Season 4 and they can get Jason Sudeikis to be in it a teeny tiny bit, then they'll probably do that. It is Apple's only widely known

name breakthrough hit yeah actually great thought occurs to me great uh time to be on prime video when they if they get ted lasso back for a season four yeah right to drive subs uh in a new place for people who are like oh yeah i've heard about that ted lasso show and you can literally you know sign up and watch the first three seasons and then season four is also there so interesting

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So last week in a press release in the Apple newsroom, Apple unveiled a new iPad mini. It

It features a bunch of small improvements, but the biggest feature, and actually the way that Apple is referring to this product on their website, is the iPad Mini with A17 Pro. It's really weird. Like when you go to compare them, it's like iPad Mini 6th generation, and then that has been replaced by iPad Mini A17 Pro. That's okay. The next one will be 8th generation, and we'll all just start calling it the 7th generation, and no people care. Yes. Also, Mini, Mini, Mini, Mini. Who has all the Mini? Anyway.

Just get that in everybody's heads again. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That's coming up, right? It is. Halloween is Apple results, so I guess in a couple of weeks we'll get to talk about charts. We're going to have to break out the jingle. We have to break it out. I feel like that's the breakout hit. We're going to break out the jingle. That is the hit of the jingle episode. You can look forward to that. We'll bring it back.

maybe. So yeah, A17 Pro. The chip is really the only thing to talk about. There's a lot of little details. I'll put a link in the show notes to your post. There's a host of small things they added to this product. Removed, i.e. all of the saturation from the colors. But they put this chip in. And this chip is weird. We've spoken about it a few times

on the show before because the A17 Pro was on a three nanometer processor TSMC that was a dead end, but Apple kind of committed with them to produce it because they needed the chip for the iPhone. So they did it. And that was also the, I think the M3 too, right? It is this, but they skipped a bunch of devices on the M3 to go probably straight to M4. And it seems like- That's why M4 happened so fast is that M4 is a new chip design already.

on the new process. That is the process TSMC is using going forward instead of being this dead end that is this

first generation three nanometer process. And so Apple has been clearing out the M3 and like, they're going to get it off of all the Macs and they're going to get them all on M4. And then here's a, here's a new product that is using the old process and it seems weird, right? But what is it? Why? Well, first off, this entire product exists for Apple intelligence. That's the, I, it feels very much, they made some other changes to it, but they're so minor. As you said, they desaturated the color.

Um, but they're so minor. Really what's going on here is this is not what everybody who's an iPad mini fan wanted, which is a new iPad mini that's been kind of rethought and upgraded in a lot of ways. It's literally the old iPad mini, but compatible with Apple intelligence because that was the priority was we need to get all of our devices on Apple intelligence. Now it is weird that this is a chip that we basically figure they,

have stopped making or are going to stop making. I have a lot of theories about it. My best guess is that they've, because it's got one fewer GPU than the one in the, in the iPhone last year, last year's iPhone pro. So they've been saving up a bend chips that didn't pass the test for the iPhone because they, a GPO core didn't work.

And maybe they've got excess that they didn't end up needing for the 15 Pro. And so my question is, one, is there literally a big bin of 15 Pro chips somewhere that Apple has? And how many are in there? And is that the total number that Apple thinks that they're going to sell of the iPad mini and the product's entire lifecycle? Yeah.

Or, you know, is it possible that they're still making them because they haven't shut down that production line yet and Apple has some sort of contractual deal and it's going to make some more? But my guess is Apple is going to get a certain number of these chips that Apple says, this is enough for the iPad mini's lifetime. And then they're going to turn off that production line, which means Apple.

I mean, look, the future is promised to no one and nothing lasts forever. So the iPad mini that just got announced will one day be replaced as all products are. But...

What's interesting is the ticking clock might be like really ticking. Like literally we know exactly how many of these we can possibly make before we have to introduce a new model that uses a different chip because, so I don't know how big the bin is and I don't know whether they're planning to go three more years for the next iPad mini. My gut feeling is they probably won't go three years. My gut feeling is this is probably a midstream thing that they did for Apple intelligence and,

and that there's probably a better iPad mini in the works a couple years down the line, maybe. But it's possible that this is, they got three years worth of chips in a bin, and they're going to just...

grind them out but it is wild to think that they've put this this product on a chip that is basically done but they are yeah it's a very peculiar thing to do very peculiar like the a18 which is just sitting right it's just sitting right there like which like realistically the a18 is

non-pro makes more sense for this product here's what i've heard uh several people pointed this out after i posted my story last week which is if they were to use the a18 they would actually have to do a feature regression on the ipad mini because the the sixth generation ipad mini supports usb 3 and the a16 on the iphone does not it only supports usb 2 okay

And if that is the case, that is their choice, is do they want to do a feature regression? But I will also say, is it possible? Because the other story that we've heard about these three-nanometer chips is that they're expensive. They're expensive to make, and they're expensive because they have a lot of failure on them. So there are ones that Apple rejects. And I think their deal with TSMC, I forget whether this was one where they had the ability to reject them at no cost to them and TSMC. Like, look, it's bad business for Apple and TSMC to be on this line anymore. Right.

So I think it must have been a little expediency thing, which is like, we're going to take all of the leftovers from this failed project and use them somewhere. And this is a perfect place to use them because it allows them to do it without spending the money and effort to upgrade lots of internals in order to put an M chip in it, right? Because we heard from an anonymous source, a good anonymous source who pointed out like,

Put an M chip in an iPad mini. There's a lot more that goes into it than an A chip. And it would have been a much more substantial upgrade. They don't want to do that. So it has to be an A chip. And I don't know whether it was something that they came to and they're like, aha, I've got the answer for the iPad mini and Apple intelligence or what. Or if somebody was like made the vice president of A17 Pro bins and was like, what do I do with these things? And they found this. But whatever the reason, like,

It's very Tim Cook, too. Almost as Tim Cook is naming your texting thread with your roommates' roommates is taking a part that you bought that isn't very good in terms of your flagship product in the future. I mean, it's not a bad chip, right? But it's like it's a broken process that you're turning off, but you've got extra parts.

extra parts there's a lot of benefit and you're like let's reuse them like it saves money it saves efficiency and it's probably better for the environment right rather than just like practically free well why would you throw them away yeah they're perfectly functional so but you've got to find a place to put them and here it is right but you take a risk right where like in theory there is a maximum amount of this product that can be sold yeah unless they are continuing to

to produce for tsmc as you mentioned in your original article which would also be really weird but i would expect to at some level of degree apple do get to ask of tms tsmc to do things that they would otherwise not like to do you know yeah exactly exactly also i mean i have a list in my article you can read it uh somebody uh david shop mentioned in our chat that um

Another reason is they need the A18 for iPhone 16, right? I mean, I don't know how much volume they've got of that, but if you're ramping up production of iPhones, the last thing you want to do is divert production of iPhones for iPad minis. I'm sorry, fans of the iPad mini, but even you must see that if you're Apple and it's summer and you're building iPhones for your big fall splash, diverting the number of iPhone 16s you can sell because of the iPad mini is a bad idea. It's a really bad idea. So here we are. You're right. It is...

It's not that the, like I said, all products will be replaced. It's the ticking clock aspect of it, which is they know exactly how many they need to make. But my guess is they also know how many they're going to sell. And if it's a runaway hit, well, you know, they'll move up the introduction of the next iPad mini. But my guess is that they probably got, they're good for a couple of years. That's my guess. Yeah.

So one of the issues of the 6th gen iPad mini was what was called jelly scrolling. So I've mentioned this before in portrait, when you would scroll with the iPad mini, it would sometimes look that like one half of the screen would move at a different speed than the other. It was a small thing, but, but noticeable. Um,

Well, Mac Rumors is reporting on a conversation from the Six Colors Secret podcast where co-host Jason Snell told Dan Moran that it was his understanding that this had been addressed in the new iPad mini.

Yeah. Very funny to have. I mean, shout out to Julie Clover at MacRumors who either listens to the podcast. Thanks for listening. I should look up who at MacRumors is a subscriber or whether there was a tip. Was there a hot tip? Or maybe, you know, you go to their feed and you find out there's like six people listening to it and everyone at MacRumors is...

And so, you know, I can't say Apple says, and I can't quote anybody. I mean, I can't wait for the news story about this to break this conversation here. But, you know, my understanding is just totally separate from that. My understanding is that they did make some changes to the display circuitry. And what's unclear is whether they address this problem or not. But what I would say is if Apple knew that jelly scrolling was a thing, but hadn't acknowledged it, the last thing they would do is acknowledge that they had a flaw in an, in, in, in,

in saying that they fixed it. They would do it in this way, which is to be asked directly about jelly scrolling and reply by saying, well, we did make some changes to the display circuitry. And then you're just left hanging of like, but did it?

solve this? Was it meant to address this? But what they won't say is we fixed that horrible jelly scrolling problem that we had that we've never talked about and never admitted to because then they're going to get sued and all these things. So they just said, oh, we changed the display controller is probably what they might have said. That's my understanding anyway. No Apple says here. Yeah, you understand. It's probably my understanding. Anyway,

Anyway, I would imagine that later this week there will be embargo drops and there will be reviews and stuff and we'll have a better idea of whether jelly scrolling is still a thing. But they changed something. So maybe jelly scrolling is not a thing anymore. But that's really all we know right now. And again, thank you to MacRumors for reminding me that

Even in my members-only podcast for Six Colors, which is an excellent- Which is called the Secret Podcast, right? Which I like the most. I think technically it's just the Six Colors Podcast now. I don't think it's secret anymore. We don't swear anybody to secrecy. I don't think we do it anymore. I think that when we started, it was the Secret Podcast. I've internalized that. We realized that if we want to sell memberships, we should not keep it a secret because people do like listening to that podcast. It's a very nice podcast. People can join Six Colors and listen to it.

Um, and if you join at the higher levels, you get more of it because we do more in a big Q and a every month and all this stuff. Anyway, sell my, I'll sell my other podcast here. Um, but now I need to just remind myself that if there's something that I don't want turned into a story on Mac rumors, I should probably not mention it even on a members only podcast, just a, a lesson for me and other podcasters that just because it's behind a paywall doesn't mean somebody won't go find

and report on it. Sort of like what we do with Mark, Mark, uh, German's Bloomberg stories, which are behind a paywall, but we just talk about them. But I pay for it. I do pay for it too. That's true. Well, I'm sure somebody paid for whatever Julie Clover reported. Maybe Julie Clover herself. I don't know. There are new Kindles.

Led by my favorite, Panos Panay, who was previously at Microsoft running Surface. And he left and went to Amazon and now runs hardware at Amazon. And this was the first Panos kind of product unveiling. And you can see the difference in that they decided to actually have an event and they unveiled an entire range of Kindles, which is not usually how they do things.

They usually do one here or there, but they're like, no, here is a lot of new Kindles. A lot of Kindles. I'll put a link in the show notes to the most recent episode of The Verge cast where they had Panos on. Panos is a great interviewer. I actually got to interview him once, and it was a great time. He's a very, very thoughtful person who really...

You know, and he's a good salesman too, but like you could tell that, you know, he, I don't know. I like the guy. He's got a lot of heart. Anyway, so they have a bunch of products. I'm going to just talk about them real quick and then you can touch on the things that you care about because you're the guy. So we've got the Kindle Color Soft, which is the first color ink Kindle.

The new Kindle Scribe, so they've redesigned it a little bit visually and made some changes. They've put some new software features in there, so you can take your notes with your Kindle Scribe, it's like a pen on an e-ink screen, and they can give you some AI summaries of your handwritten notes. And they've put some new ways to put notes on books, so you can write your notes on a book and it will flow the text around your notes. That's really cool.

Um, they have a new Kindle paper white, which has faster page turns on a larger screen and then a new entry level Kindle. And some of these Kindles have color options on the cases too. Yes. So the big Kindles. Yay. This is the foremost e-reader podcast. So, um,

First thing is they also discontinued their 2018 Kindle Oasis is finally officially dead, which was the last Kindle that had page turn buttons on it. And, you know, every time this comes up, people say, well, I don't need buttons to turn. I just tap the screen. It's fine. I'll just say,

Obviously, for most people, that is the case. I hate it because it makes the ergonomics of holding it for me awkward and I have to shift my finger. So if I get a good grip, it doesn't matter because when I need to turn the page, I need to either use the other hand or I need to shift a finger or whatever to tap or swipe in order to move to the next page. Whereas I can rest my hand holding my e-reader with my thumb or...

on the page turn button and then just kind of sit there and go click, click, click, click without moving my hand. So I prefer page turn buttons. I think that they should be an option. Amazon first thought that they should only be on the very high end and then now they think that they shouldn't exist at all. So I'm disappointed by that. If you like page turn buttons, I think the answer is you should probably buy the Kobo Sage or you could get the Kobo Libra color, but it's...

Not as good a screen as the old Libra 2 was or find a Kobo Libra 2 on eBay or something and just get that. That's what I still use day to day is the last generation. I even bought, Mike, I bought a Kobo Libra 2 case, which I already have one, but it's kind of beat up over the years. And they were putting them on clearance at Kobo.com and I just went and bought another one because I have, basically I'm like, okay, this is the one, this is my...

uh, e-reader I'm going to keep using for the most part is the Kobo, uh, Libra 2. So I might as well, because I noticed on my last trip, like it was really beat up and I was like, oh, it's a shame that they don't make this anymore. But it turns out they still had some cases left in the warehouse. So I bought one anyway. So I'm a little despondent about the, the state of e-readers in the sense that I think page turn buttons are important, but, uh,

A couple of things. I'm really encouraged that Panos Panay is involved in Kindles because it felt like for the longest time, Amazon wasn't really paying attention to Kindles at all and that they didn't have a strategy and they would like do stuff in the background. They did a big software update that I think dramatically improved the usability of the Kindle. I'm generally disappointed in the trend in e-readers. Like I don't, I'm not offended by the idea that people who are reading text on an e-reader is a niche market.

that a lot of people just think phones are fine or iPads are fine, which I don't, but a lot of people do. So it's a very niche product already. So I don't, I'm not offended by the idea that they're trying to find other ways to push this technology, but it seems to be the thing that they've found is using pens and taking notes.

And the problem I have with that is that's not a use case for me. So it's great for others and all that. I had somebody ask me, are you going to review the Kindle scribe? And my answer is what it always is, which is it's too big. It has a pin. That's sort of what it's about. I'm just not interested in that category. It's just not a thing. Above a certain point for people who need to like mark up PDFs and stuff, I think it's kind of a brilliant idea. Although you could also use an iPad, but I've heard positive things about marking up documents on a Kindle.

So I'm not interested in the scribe at all, which leaves us with the color soft and the paper white. Really color soft is now yet. It's coming out in a week. I think it is their first color Kindle. They resisted this for a long time. E ink has been making, uh,

color screens because E-Ink is a company. E-Ink has been making color screens for a while. And like I said, Kobo just did a turnaround and did the color screens. The problem is that the color... And the Remarkable Color 1 too. I know it's not an e-reader, but like... Right. But they're out there, right? And there are issues with them where the DPI is, I think, half the points per inch is half of what it is for the black and white. So your black and white text is crisp, but your color is not that crisp.

But still interesting. The problem is that it also puts a gray cast on the back of the screen that actually reduces readability of text because now it's it's black on kind of speckly gray instead of black on very light gray to white.

Amazon made some sort of claim about how they've got like their color is different and they've got different lighting. And they it it sounds like what they're implying is that they have somehow overcome some of the limitations of the color screen. I'll believe it when I see it. But that I think that's interesting because Kobo just came out with these color versions and discontinued some of their black and white readers like it doesn't matter. It's OK. And I'm not sure I believe them.

So we'll see if that color is better than the color on these other devices. If Amazon is beaten back somehow, I assume they're still using E-Inks technology, but if they, if they've done some things to modify it, like we'll see.

I will throw out there, though, that this is a seven-inch, I think, reader. It's not huge because a lot of people are like, oh, you read comics on it. It's like I've tried to read comics on readers this size. I mean, also, the way I read comics is not available, right? Like Marvel Unlimited is not on Kindle. That's true. That's true. You've got to buy comics on Kindle. If you did Kindle Unlimited, I think you'd get some comics. Anyway, it's not ideal.

However, here's the thing, and I don't know the answer to this question, so I'm just going to put it out there and we'll find out the answer probably in a week, which is,

Kindle is also Comixology. They sell comics. They merged it all into the Kindle store. You can buy individual issues of comics. You can buy trade paperbacks. They use the Comixology technology. It's in the Kindle app on the iPad and on the iPhone. It's called Guided View. I don't read comics this way because I read on a big iPad. But the idea was that Comixology built this thing to make comics readable on iPhones.

You double tap and it will take you. It's built into the metadata of the comic. It'll take you page by page or panel by panel through a comic, which means you're not you don't have to see the whole comic. It will lead you through the individual panels, which are then much larger, which makes it more readable without you having to kind of pan and zoom, which is really bad on an ink screen that doesn't have a high refresh rate.

So my question, and as far as I can tell, they didn't say anything about it. My question is, does the Kindle Colorsoft do guided view for comics? Because if it does, it could be a decent comic reader. And if it doesn't, why doesn't it, right? Because it's literally their technology. So either it's going to be better for comics than any e-reader has ever been, or it's

I don't know what Amazon is even thinking. Or a missed opportunity. Like a severe missed opportunity. It's like, why even own Comixology if you're not going to... Exactly. So we'll see. They specifically call out comics and graphic novels as a thing for this. And the image that they show, it looks good. Like they have a panel from Ms. Marvel. Sure. But am I getting there through guided view? Because I read an issue of Saga on the Kobo website.

And it's just like panning and zooming. Oh, it's so bad. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see. Jury's still out. I ordered one. I'm excited to see it. I will review it, but it's not here yet. I have the paper white.

Okay. It's reminded me of all the reasons why I like physical page turn buttons, but it's good. It looks good. It frustrates me. It also doesn't have a light sensor. So when I'm reading in the daytime, I have to go, I have to swipe down and crank up the brightness. And when I'm meeting it, needing reading at nighttime, I turn it on and it's super bright. And I have to swipe down and crank down the brightness. I'm like, how expensive is that light sensor part? It's in, it's in older Kindles that are, I guess, higher end, like,

I don't know why they left that out. It's a real degradation of the quality of the product. And Paperwhite is not the entry-level Kindle, so I don't know why it does that. But it looks good. The software is good. I'll write a review of it. The use cases for people who... It used to be that Kindle was way worse for people who use libraries than Kobo, especially since Kobo at one point was the same company that did Overdrive, which is libraries. However...

If you have more than one library that you're a member of, Kindle's way better because it uses Amazon's infrastructure to fulfill the books. Whereas Kobo, you log into your library and it only lets you log into one. So that's kind of interesting too. So my gut feeling now is despite all my frustrations, I think the best, if e-readers last forever, you don't need to upgrade them very often.

However, the best general purpose e-reader right now is probably this new Paperwhite. I will write my review and see. I also want to throw out one suggestion to our dear friend Panos Panay, who is obviously listening to the world's greatest e-reader podcast. You heard Mike say nice things about you. If we're not going to do page turn buttons, which again, I think they're really good. How about alternate ways of

of turning a page that don't require you to move your fingers. How about something like at one point they had a pressure sensitive side where if you gave it a squeeze over a certain area, it advanced or how about an accelerometer? You already, you already have one, at least a, an accelerometer because you can do portrait to landscape. But like the other way I was thinking that you could do it is if you get it, if you get it kind of like in your hand and you've got a grip,

What if you use a finger to like tap the back, like do a double tap or something and it advances the page. You could do that maybe. And that wouldn't require a moving part and a button that you have to protect against water ingress and all of that. Just please find something that isn't putting my, moving my finger and putting it on the screen because I would really like that. But anyway, so that is, I'll have more follow-up Mike.

As we go down this path with the new Kindles, very exciting. I look forward to it. Who knows? Maybe one of these days we'll bring back Scott McNulty and we'll just do an e-reader blowout. No promises. No promises. I know. We did that, though. In a very early episode of Upgrade, we just did a whole thing with Scott where we talked about Kindles. And Mike got to make a sandwich. So there we are. I had a good time. I was just listening. Yeah. Just listening to me and Scott talking about Kindles, as you do.

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Oh, I have one last Kindle point. Okay. Thank you to ZMK in the chat for pointing this out. There is a Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. For $40 more, you do get the light sensor. Why? Why? And it's got more storage that you don't really need and support for wireless charging. So I guess if you want to pay $200, you can get the one with the auto. Twice as much as the cheap Kindle. $40 more.

than the paper white standard. They have the signature edition and the signature apparently is a little cheap light sensor. So there you go. Anyway, review to come. Whatever, Amazon, come on. Panos, get in there. Work it out. He's doing it. He's making you pay $40 more for your light. Yeah, I guess so. For a light sensor. That's what he's doing. Great. Yeah. Great.

It's time for a draft. All right. These are the rules, and the rules are slightly different. So if you don't usually pay attention to the rules, these are the rules. Yeah. We don't have a whole rules process. We just kind of talk about it and plan it. But these are our rules. Yes. Five rounds. No, I've already said it wrong. It was originally going to be five. It's more. Seven rounds. Seven rounds. We changed it today. Seven rounds, 14 overall picks.

The winner of the previous draft gets to pick first. That is me, as I am current draft champion. Our items are chosen from a predetermined list of choices, which we have agreed could be verifiable and not ridiculously obvious.

For an item to count, it must either be clearly announced on stage or on a slide during a presentation or viewable on Apple's website if announced via a press release. That is the difference for this drive because we have no idea what's going to happen. If they don't have a pre-announced live stream. Mm-hmm.

We switch into press release mode. Yeah. Or if they don't just publish a video, right? Which is like an event video, I guess it could be either or. I suppose. Which we've seen in the past, but that's rare that they would. It's incredibly unlikely that they would do that. But nevertheless, Stephen Hackett will adjudicate in case of a scoring stalemate between the two of us. But Stephen's currently on leave. So let's say Stephen Hackett will adjudicate. If Stephen is away, who should be our adjudicator?

Zach? Let's put Zach in it. We're going to put Zach in it. I don't know if Zach wants this, but Zach Knox, who makes our scorecards, will adjudicate in case of Stephen's unavailability of adjudication. No partial points are awarded. The points awarded on the episode are final, and they are finalized during the scoring segment. In the case of a tie, there is a tiebreaker question. The loser gets picked of the tiebreaker question.

The winner becomes draft champion and displays the champion pennant. Loser becomes draft challenger and displays the challenger pennant. I am currently displaying my champion pennant as champion. I am currently displaying the challenger pennant as

As challenger, you can watch our YouTube video to see me displaying it right now. I'm holding it. Indeed. There will be an interactive scorecard at Upgrade.cards, which are maintained and managed by Zach Knox. You can buy a t-shirt at any time at the draft. UpgradeYourWardrobe.com if you want that. There's always some t-shirts available. There's a fun Rumor Roundup t-shirt there, too. A couple of Upgrade logo t-shirts and also a draft t-shirt.

t-shirt which you can buy and whenever you want if you would like to celebrate the draft you can go to our Cotton Bureau store and do that there have been five previous drafts held in October Jason has won three of these I have won two of them that's uh

And so far this year, I am winning at two drafts to one. So you have the opportunity to tie up for the year because I doubt there will be another draft. So yeah, of course, like, so the reason we made the tweak this time is we wanted to do the draft because it's fun to draft and we expect there to be some Mac stuff. And we thought it was going to be Mac and iPad, but then obviously Apple just relinquished

released the iPad mini as a press release. So we're still drafting anyway because we wanted to and we said we would so we're doing it but for this one instance and maybe if we ever do this specific kind of thing before where we draft without an announcement.

We'll see how this goes to try and judge it by the newsroom post, which I think the newsroom post and whatever's on Apple's website by the time that we get there, which I honestly, realistically provided that we pick. And so what we've done today is like, we've been very particular in the picks that we are making. And we spoke about this in Upgrade Plus last week. The picks that we are making, they are product. They are not stagecraft. Like we are specifically doing product stuff. And so, yeah, it has to be on Apple's website.

So, um, I'll just point out, we, we thought, I thought about it maybe like a day too late. I thought about us doing this last week, but a little too late for us to prep for it, which would have been great because we would, we would know some of the answers, but not all of them.

And we would have to wait on judging because the iPad was... No, you know what? I think it's better this way because that would have made it really complicated because it's like, do we score the whole draft now? Partial scoring? I don't like that. Going into the part two of the draft? That's in the rules. No partial points. So we have to score the entire draft. It would have been a nightmare. So I'm happy that it's actually gone this way. We dodged a bullet there. Okay. Yeah. All right. All right. So we have seven rounds. I'm going to go first.

The first pick that I'm going to make is that the new Mac Mini has a new industrial design. That's going to be my first pick. Okay, that's good. Now, we had before, just to let you in on it, everybody, one of the things that we debated beforehand was, are these too obvious?

And we decided, you know what? Part of the draft is actually talking about what's going to happen and then what did happen. And so we just expanded our picks a couple so that we can make some picks that are not guaranteed. Not guaranteed. I think nothing here is 100%, right? They could throw us a curveball.

But we wanted to not just sort of like ignore the basic, like we're not picking a new Mac mini as announced. That's I've decided is a hundred percent, but this is at least a little detail. We've heard that it's smaller. What if it's not? Is that your pick? What if it doesn't have a new design? Then you get the pick wrong, but I'm just going to like counter you here with my pick, which is new Mac mini is smaller than ever. Yep. So here's why I think it's actually worthwhile. So,

The Mac Mini has been around for, how long? Let me Google this real quick. A very long time. 2005? Okay. So 20 years, essentially. Something like that. There have been two industrial designs.

for the Mac Mini in its entire 20-year history. And I know this because Stephen stacked them up and showed me them while I was in Memphis. He was like, look, this has not changed. There's the tall one. Yep. And then there's the flatter one, which, as Stephen pointed out, I have conflated with getting rid of the optical drive, but it's not true. No. The flatter one had an optical drive option for a little while, which means that that enclosure that we've been using all of this time was built to fit

an optical drive which is bananas so it doesn't need to be that big so the way i think of it not even just the tall one uh it's the one with the plastic top and then one that was all aluminium um and so right so i do actually think that a new industrial design for the mac mini while we expect it to happen could have happened many times in many times we have we probably picked it many times i know i've written many articles about they should make a smaller mac mini

And I think the answer is they finally, you're like, why make it smaller? We've heard that from people, which is like, but why make it smaller? What's the point? It's a, it's a little desktop. What, why does it need to be smaller? I think the answer is they decided to refresh the enclosure. First off, they're going to save money on like aluminum and stuff. They don't need it to be that big. It's not just, we need to make it smaller. So let's engineer it to be smaller. If you look at what's inside a Mac mini, it's,

It doesn't need to be that big. It's mostly air in there. So... Also, do you know what I say? Have some fun in your life. You know? Also, it's just going to last a big desktop for like a decade more. The Mac Studio exists. Get that. Yeah. I want the exact opposite of the Mac Studio. This...

I want the Mac Mini to be as small as they can make it because why not? I want to stick it to the back of a monitor with Velcro. Like, let me do it, you know? Make a tiny little computer. I think it'd be amazing. Let's do it. I'm excited about this, by the way. We'll talk about it. But, like, I have my mind on this computer being my next computer. And I'm excited about this Mac Mini. That's great. Cool. My second round pick...

is that the new Mac Mini comes with both an M4 and M4 Pro configuration. Oh, yeah. It currently does, right? It currently does. It currently has a standard and a Pro. So I think that's a reasonable pick. And I think that's... I think it's great, right? Again...

Imagine the power in such a little tiny device. Tiny little computer and it has an M4 Pro chip in it. That'd be so great. I'd be really excited about that. The risks here are it doesn't happen this time because they changed the configuration. They changed the enclosure and they can't fit the Pro in there. Or they just don't have an M4 version. They could...

It could get rid of them. It's incredibly unlikely. Or the Pro version could still be in the old size. That's the other possibility. Again, we're going from like 100 down to like 98% to now to 95%. But still, all right. Very excited about that. But I'm going to pick new MacBook Pros.

Okay. I think there will be new MacBook Pros. I think that is also up there. Again, not necessarily the case, right? I think that we have all... I think Mac Mini feels the most certain. MacBook Pro feels the next most certain to me. And so I'm going to pick it. I'm excited about it. This is not a prediction, but I don't think they're going to be very different. I know we've got the Russian leak out there. Like...

They already redesigned these things. All they're doing is bumping the processors up from M3 to M4. Nobody get too excited about it. They will highlight Apple intelligence, but of course the old ones will, all Apple Silicon Macs have Apple intelligence. They will talk about something that is very specific to M4 that was not there in M3. That might be something we haven't heard of involving the Mac that the iPad didn't, the iPad Pro, remember because M4 already exists, but iPad Pro didn't.

They didn't talk about Mac features. And also, we don't know about the M4 Pro and the M4 Max, which presumably will also be introduced and available in MacBook Pros. So there will be some details there that will probably be little chip details that they'll be able to boast on that will be an improvement from the M3 versions of these. But otherwise, they're going to be just, you know, people buy MacBook Pros and we put our latest chip in it. The end.

But that latest chip is, you know, they did it last time too, right? Like it was an important, it's an important enough thing for them that they want to talk about it. Absolutely.

And boast about it. Boast on their silicon prowess. And again, the M4 came out. First off, they didn't get to talk about it in the context of Macs. They only talked about it in the context of the iPads. And second, they didn't get to boast about Pro and Macs configurations, which presumably are coming because why would you launch the MacBook Pro without them? And that's where they can boast about all the stuff they poured into that higher-end model of chip. And we learned last time, last October when they did this, we expected it to be boring

And just like the M2. And what we saw was that the Pro and the Max were diverging from each other and from the base model. That M4 Pro was turning into like... It was, I think, continuing on to being kind of like M4 or M3 in that case, but more. But the Max was not just like M Pro bigger. It was like, no, no, no. It's like...

High end, much higher end than the Pro. So that may happen again. We may be surprised by what they're doing there. So there's some surprise to come. They'll boast on it for sure. All right. My third round pick, I'm going to diverge away from hardware and assume an Apple intelligence demonstration.

And I think for me, I feel like if we're thinking about the potential, what could this event be? It would either be a portion of Apple intelligence demonstration in the video or part of the newsroom post to specifically show features. So like not the product pages, cause that's too easy, I think, but the newsroom post announcing this product to have like, here is the section about Apple intelligence. Here's why I think this is risky. Yeah.

I think it's risky only in that it is a new piece of Mac hardware and every Mac product supports Apple intelligence.

However, the reason I think this is a good pick is, and again, I'm not trying to tell tales out of school here, but Apple gives reviewers materials to refer to about the tech specs and all of that. And I will tell you that ever since Apple Intelligence got announced, every product that Apple has shipped has had a lengthy section in it about Apple Intelligence. Even if it's like, yeah, this is just great.

In the operating system. It's like nope. We're pushing Apple intelligence. We're going to talk about it again. So I think you've got. A pretty good. Chance here. There's a huge chunk. Of the press release. For the iPad mini. That is talking about. Apple intelligence. Including. A bunch of things. That aren't even in 18.1. Like. Yep.

So I actually feel no matter what they ship, there is a part of me that I am most confident that the thing that they will do is show up intelligence. I think it is for them key right now. Why I think this could actually be a video is just another opportunity to show these features. And potentially, if it's an event, to announce when Apple intelligence is shipping.

Yes. Right? Because we've heard it's shipping. That is indeed something somebody could pick in this draft. The 28th. So they could potentially do that as a part of that conversation. Yeah. All right. I am going to bring in the other product that is rumored to be announced here and say new iMac. Okay.

So, yes, there was. So they went from M1 to M3. So it's like, well, why would they go to M4 when they just went from M1 to M3? And the answer is they don't want to make the M3 chips anymore because they're on that process, that old three nanometer process that's expensive and TSMC and Apple don't want to use it anymore. So I think the rumors point to this and I think it makes sense. Mark Gurman has said they want to get all the Macs onto M4. So he says the iMac is coming. I'm going to take him at his word and pick M1.

new iMac. Even though I think of the three products rumored to be in this event or release, it feels to me like the least essential of the three. I would not have picked this this early.

For that reason. I think I could imagine a scenario where we got MacBook Pros and Mac Minis now and the iMac next year. I see your point. But I feel like the iMac to me is a product that I don't understand anymore. I can't fully see...

where it sits for apple so to use to use draft parlance you think this is a reach whereas i actually had it second on my board and i think it's a value at three because i think it's very likely to happen but we'll see i believe it is very likely to happen i'm not sure it is likely to happen this month so i but i don't know it's possible i don't know we'll see it's possible

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All right, so we're into round four of the draft. I'm at the point where I have my list and the list is ranked and I'm moving things around on the list. Ah, yes. You know, like it's that, so like earlier today, I felt so confident about my ordering and now I'm moving it. If we want to be behind the scenes for a moment, I have three documents open here at the same time. Yeah. I have our master list, which I am strikethrowing as picks get picked. I copy everything

Then strike through, and then I paste it in our show document, which is also open. And then I have a little text document off to the right in BBEdit that has my ranked groups of priority. So I have a list of 18 picks that I had pulled out as most likely and then ranked them, and I have those in an Apple Note. And then as you take them away from me, I remove them from my list. I'm going to go now...

Yeah, okay. So my issue at the moment is I have significantly... I have seeded the Mac Mini picks more than anything else. And your concern with that kind of thing is if the product is announced...

I feel confident in getting the items correct. But what if they don't do it? Then you're ruined. But I'm going to do it anyway. Okay. And I'm going to say that the new Mac Mini removes all USB-A ports. All right. I think this is a good pick. Yeah, I think it's done. It could be weird. They're cheap to put back there, but I think they've run out of space for them. Yes. And I just think...

It's over. A time has to come. And like they're gone from the laptops and have been for a long time. Right. But they've been on the mini and the studio. If they're going to, again, like they're redesigning the Mac mini for the next 10 years or whatever. Yeah.

The USB-A ports are not going to be there over the long period of time. And I do think for the vast majority of Mac mini customers, they will be perfectly fine without a USB-A port, I believe. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think for me...

First off, it's cheap to put USB-A on because they don't take up a whole stream. Like you can put like two on and it's like, it's really cheap for them to do it, but that's complexity anyway. And it adds size and you're, you're going to a tiny size. There's not room for USB-A and you wouldn't design it. As you said, you wouldn't design an enclosure that,

with the size of a USB-A port as a constraint, that would be like designing it for an optical drive, right? Like, you don't want to do that if it's going to go in the long haul. So I agree. I think it's time. I think maybe or maybe not they stick around as a couple of extra ports on the back of a Mac Studio, but not on the Mac Mini. It feels like it's over. I agree. I think that's a good pick. I also have that same thought, which is I'm a little concerned

that I've got a couple of iMac picks that I like, but if I pick them and the iMac doesn't ship, that's bad for me, right? So I'm going to pick, oh boy, yeah, everything's riskier now. We're in the risky section now, basically. Yeah. I'm going to say, wow, yeah, they're all tough. I'm going to say Mac Mini starting price is,

remains unchanged this was the pick that i decided to move for this because it's like i do believe this but like that price was set a while ago i don't know

I don't know. I think recently Apple have shown, I mean, I noticed there's a lot of conversation amongst the analysts about the iPhone, that there was surprise that Apple did not increase the starting price. Right. Because of inflation. Yes. I think Apple are in a position where just like,

I think they just shouldn't care about inflation in the same way just because of how much money they make and that there is a benefit on not improving the prices. Yes. This is my rationale here. This is my rationale, which is... And I went to starting price here. Originally, it said...

prices remain the same. I don't think that's necessarily true. Apple has shown an interest in keeping their base price the same. Now, upgrade prices can be big. Also, Apple has big margins. The higher end models might be more expensive. It's possible. Or the build to order options will be more expensive.

But the starting price, it's a good low starting price. I would imagine that even though there's some initial cost in doing a case redesign and all of that, that in the long run, this is probably going to be a cheaper product to make than the old one because it's smaller. You know, they don't have to use as much aluminum, all those things about it. Like I feel like in the end, it's, they want that starting price for the low end model to be good and be the same price that it is now. But,

maybe the other prices even go up. But that seems to be their strategy. It's either keep them all the same or keep the base the same and raise the other ones. So if you want a fancy one, maybe you pay more. But the base one, you don't pay more. Also, I should say, this is unchanged.

They could also be like really aggressive and take it down. But I think they won't do that. I think that in a world without as much inflation as we had in the last couple of years, maybe they would consider something like that. But I think not. So I'm going to cross my fingers, but I'm going to just say status quo for the starting price of the Mac Mini. All right. Round five. I'm going to request something to the judge here.

So we have a pic that says release date given for iOS 18.1. Could we maybe just change this for like release date given for first Apple intelligence features or 0.1 or something, you know, like...

Because they might not specifically talk about 0.1, and that would be my next pick. And they're not going to talk about iOS, right? I mean, I have no idea. They might, right? They might say, along with iOS 18.1, but I think that that might not be necessary. Apparently, the release candidate just came out, Zach is telling us. So release date given for first Apple intelligence features slash 0.1. But we know what we mean here. And again, all sportsmanlike.

Release date given for first Apple intelligence features. Yes, that can be your pick.

You just think it's going to happen? They can't help themselves. They're going to talk about Apple intelligence and they're going to talk about when you're going to first be able to see that. So apparently... With a date. They have been said it's coming next week, but I'm expecting a date. Like, I think that there will be like... Yes, it's coming... January 28th. But I think they're going to say coming out tomorrow, coming out today or whatever. Because I think this event is happening next week. Yes. So if they...

I think you get it if they give a date, if it's a specific date or it's tomorrow or it's Thursday or whatever. Yeah. Or even if they say it came out today. Yeah. They must reference a day in which Apple Intelligence first starts shipping in point one. All right. That would be interesting. Because if it's Tuesday and it ships on Monday, they have to say...

It came out yesterday. Yeah, sure. We'll go with that. We'll go with that. All right. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Interesting choice. All right. Wow. Wow. That may have been a bad pick for me. I'm sticking with it anyway. I'm going to pick... I wrote this wrong in the doc. Okay. So I'm slightly revising it. But basically, I think what I'm going to pick is that some...

M4 Pro or Max models. And it could be the MacBook Pro. It could be the Mac Mini. But some of the Pro or Max models will ship later, will have later ship dates than the M4 models. Which is not really a rumor, but it's a thing that happens sometimes. And we definitely have heard like the M4, they've got them.

But they got to have the Pro and Max chips. And sometimes they'll say these will be available Friday and the ones with the Max will be available later next month or something like that. Also a risky pick, but it happens. It builds on the Russian MacBook Pro scenario, right? Where that was what we were talking about. Is the M4 just ready to go and the other ones aren't? That's the way that it could potentially be, but we don't know. We don't know. All right. So what are we at? Round six now?

Yeah. See, this is why I wanted us to do more rounds is that it puts a little more variability into it than we were so certain with the first one. I'm so excited about the Mac Mini. I'm just going to continue. So like I'm now in the phase of the draft where I don't feel confident anymore. So what I'm deciding to do is to just...

continue talking about the computer that I really want. I'm going to continue talking about the Mac Mini and I'm going to say a Mac Mini has some ports on the front.

I love it. I love it. I hope this happens. It's phrased the way it is because it's possible that the Pro Mac Mini will have ports on the front and the regular Mac Mini won't. It's also possible that they'll both have ports on the front. It's also possible that Apple will say, no, only the Mac Studio is allowed to have ports on the front, although I hope they've gotten over it.

So we'll see. Like, I think where do all the ports go? If you're making a tiny puck of a computer, maybe they can't all go on the back. So I think I'm putting them on the side. That seems unlikely. On the front, seems like a good place for it. And this is like considering that potentially a difference between the M4 and the M4 Pro could be the amount of ports.

that it has. I mean, Apple has shown that, right? That they will mix that stuff up. We see it with the MacBook Pro, for example, right? The MacBook Pro, the Pro and Max models have more ports than the regular M3, and same with the M2, and I think the M1 as well. Nice. Okay, so I'm going to pick... Boy, it's amazing how the Russian leak has gotten in our heads. Yours more, but...

If you're about to pick what I think you're going to pick. Yeah, I know. This is like... Is this... I can't believe I'm going to do this right now, but I'm leaning into it. Is this like Russian interference in the draft? Is that what's happening here? Oh. Somebody's going to have to launch a special committee on this. I know, right? No collusion. Come on. What are you talking about? No collusion. Oh, boy. Yeah, this is tough. But the... So currently...

The MacBook Pro models. Okay, let's start there. Let's start there. Currently, the MacBook Pro models come with a space gray or silver for the 14-inch in the M3. But the Pro or Max have space black, which always seemed weird. Like we've got some extra space gray enclosures that we got to move because it's just, it's literally like it's a little darker if you get the other version, unless you get the silver.

So, yeah, the Russian leak suggests that the base models will get space black instead of space gray or in addition to or who knows. So that's what I'm going to pick is space black comes to the base model MacBook Pro. Yep. That's it. Oh, buddy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. All right. We're in the final pick now. It's rough. It's rough over here. It is.

I was going to make that pick, by the way. Oh, okay. You were talking it down and you were totally going to make it. Oh, 100%. I'll take it. We'll call it the Putin pick. No, let's not. No, let's not do that. There's just some that I just like. They're just not exciting or they're not good. And I need to just choose between those. I know. It's hard.

I'm going to go boring. I've only got a couple here that I like, so yeah. Okay, go for it. Go boring. At least one Mac Mini doesn't have Ethernet.

Whoa, I don't think that's boring at all. Really? I think that's one of the great mysteries. I think that's one of the great mysteries of this is are they going to do an Apple TV thing and just leave the Ethernet off of like the cheap one? I think they will. Yeah. And the iMac is like that too, right? The iMac, the base model, they don't even have the brick with the Ethernet port in it. They just have a standard brick with no port. So there's, I feel like there's a lot of,

evidence that suggests they would do this but i don't think we know genuinely like the pick that is there that i don't want to pick but i think they will do is they will put ethernet on the power adapter like they have to do it right like they did all this engineering it can't have just been for the imac like i can't bring myself to know because it's not gonna have a brick it's gonna have an internal power supply like uh i don't but i don't know

I don't know. Okay. I mean, I think they did this with the Apple TV, right? So that's the precedent here is, and that's why I put it on the list, is they did this with the Apple TV. The base model doesn't have Ethernet. I'm like, okay, I don't want that one. That's what I genuinely, I think you put Ethernet on the pro model.

Because, look, we need to be realistic here, all right? Now, listen to me, listeners. We're all a bunch of nerds, all right? And we want our Ethernet. But come on now. The cheapest Mac, right, which would be the Mac Mini...

People are using Wi-Fi. Like, that's what they're doing, right? Like, we need to be realistic here. We don't need Ethernet on the base Mac Mini. We don't need that. Like, it doesn't need to be there. Like, it really doesn't today. So the way it works on the iMac is the base model, and it's different because it's on the power brick, right? So that's a quick swap. But the base model doesn't have it.

And then you can upgrade the base model to get it or the higher end models get it. So the argument here is what you're saying, which is you can save some money by not offering Ethernet and space. But, you know, some of them have to have it. But you're saving some money and differentiating your low end. Save a little bit of money and you price it a little bit lower.

I'm not sure Ethernet itself costs so much. Right, no, no, no. But it allows you to differentiate from nerds. It's the opposite. It's like, hey, you want Ethernet on your Mac Mini? Give us $100 more.

Yeah, right. Right. Which is so so the nerds. So basically, you're saving costs for the people who are not going to care because they don't use Ethernet. Yeah, never have. Which is and you're making all the nerds pay more like 95% of computer users in the world. And you know what? Like we're all using laptops. You plug it into your non-existent Ethernet port on your laptop. You know, like we realistic here. Yeah.

I don't know who I'm arguing with. I think all the Discord, I think, at the moment is who I'm arguing with. And potentially our entire listener base. I use Ethernet. I have Ethernet plugged into my CalDigit dock that my MacBook Pro is plugged into because I want the fastest internet when I'm working. But at home, when I'm using my MacBook Air, I'm just connected to my internet, like my Wi-Fi, and I'm having a great time. Enjoy yourself. I love it. Wi-Fi is amazing. All right.

I am going to pick something that is another iMac pick. So I am making a risk here. And it's a bummer pick. But I feel like I have to. I feel like I have to. Because one of the things that I remember from when they finally updated the iMac from M1 to M3 was that they changed nothing else about it. And I'm not going to pick that they changed nothing about it other than the chip.

Although I feel that that's probably the most likely scenario. I would love for them to do a pro version. I would love for them to upgrade the webcam, which is really substandard. I would love them to have an adjustable base as an option. I would love for it to come in a different size as an option. There's lots of things I would like. But here's what I'm going to pick, Mike. I'm sorry to end this draft on a down note, but here it is. The new iMac comes in the same colors as before.

Boo. I don't want to get my hopes up. I just don't think they're going to do it. I think they've got like... Actually, no, it's not a bummer pick.

I'm booing, but no, those colors are good. I like those colors. You're right. I like those colors. I do. I do. I just think... Because Apple released the new iPad Mini. No, you're right. You're right. The risk here is that they're all desaturated and boring. The iPad Mini, they had a purple one. They have a new purple one, and it's worse. No. And it's... No. Okay. So the risk here is that we have all the same colors. I'm a little worried about this.

I'm a little worried about this because especially if they change the input devices, they might say, yeah, we're color matching them to the new boring colors now or they're only available in silver or whatever. So I don't know. But I'm going to just go with momentum here, which is that they don't want to change the case anymore.

They make these cases. They're just going to leave the case the way it was and upgrade the internals because it's the iMac. They don't want to upgrade the iMac with every chip generation. They have to do it this time. They're just going to kick the can down the road. Let's leave it all the same. So I'm going to say same, same for the colors. I like the colors. It's true. But also it says something when they're like, yeah, they're the same. We don't know. We're not going to bother. So, yeah.

We're going to end today with a tiebreaker, which is not the way that we usually do things, but I think makes sense for this one. So you get to pick the tiebreaker question. Would you like to let me know what it is? Oh, well, we agree to this. The tiebreaker question is, is it going to be an event or not? Mm-hmm.

Is it going to be an event or a newsroom post? It's that simple, which is like literally, are they going to do a thing where there's either, you know, they will give you a week's warning and say, come and watch our event at 9am Pacific or whatever. Or do they do a thing where they just put a press releases?

So I think that's what I want to pick is, and you said, you said like if they just drop it, but it's a big video that feels like an event, that would probably count too, because that's a, that's basically what you were talking about earlier with the Apple intelligence demo pick. So I'm going to pick that. I'm going to pick that there will be an event or a substantial video presentation, and it won't just be done by newsroom. Now I think this is risky because I think they could vary. You'll sit in the question and picking it.

Yeah. I get to pick it. I thought we agreed it was a vendor newsroom post. The way it usually works, which is fine. You can do this. It's not a problem. We're all off the wall this time. The loser, which is you, gets to pick a tiebreaker question, which you then ask me. This is how we usually do it. Oh, I see. No, that's not what I meant for this. Event runtime over or under, and then I would say over or under. But I'm fine with this. This is no problem for me. Okay. All right. I think it's an event. Okay. Yes, I do too. So...

Okay. So I'm going to take that one. So you get to pick first and I get to pick the tiebreaker. So that's what I pick is it's going to be an event. I think it's risky. I do think it's risky because I can absolutely see a scenario where on, you know, next Monday or Tuesday morning, there's just a raft of press releases about the new mask.

and the new chips and they don't even bother. But I don't know. They bothered last year. They brought everybody to New York for a Halloween thing. This is more of a reason this year, like I think than last year. New chips. I think MacBook Pro is important. A new Mac mini design is important and boasting on the new chip performance is important and flogging Apple intelligence is important. Like as a marketing person on the inside, I would strongly advocate to do this.

Because you have so many points to hit and you get to hit Apple intelligence again, the day or the week that it's launching. So do it right. So that's my, that's my, my take. Yep. I completely agree.

My expectation is that this happens tomorrow. I almost made Will Jason be in New York next week, but I changed it from that. My expectation is tomorrow, so Tuesday, is when they'll send out the thing. And it'll either be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, I reckon, is what will end up happening. But we'll see. We will see. I'm excited. Yeah. Draft.

No Ask Upgrade this week because we're running long, but I'll be back next week. You can send us in your questions at upgradefeedback.com. You can also send us in your feedback and your follow-up there too. If you want to find Jason's work, go to sixcolors.com. You can hear him here on Relay and at theincomparable.com. You can listen to my podcast here on Relay too and check out my work at cortexbrand.com.

Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. You can find video of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We are at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us through Upgrade Plus. We're going to talk this week about some of the things we did not pick in the draft from our shortlists and others.

You can go to getupgradeplus.com. You can sign up and get longer ad-free versions of the show every week. Thank you to our sponsors this week, which was Vitally, Fitbod, and Squarespace. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.