549: (I Don't) Grade for the World
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From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 549. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, FitBud, and DeleteMe. It is February 3rd, 2025. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Hello, Michael Hurley. Hello, older and wiser. One year older and wiser. Happy birthday. Slightly belated to you. I had a birthday. Thank you. Thank you very much. And now we're on the countdown now. We are.

We are paternity countdown. We're on the paternity countdown. By my current estimation, this is my first of last three. I expect that currently, if all goes to plan, February 17th will be my final upgrade before my paternity leave. But who knows? I might not be here next week. We don't know. I've actually got a planned fill-in for you on the 17th, just in case. Yep.

and we'll spring into action the the paternity squad will spring into action if need be however we did on your birthday we did record an episode of upgrade to be released at a later time so so you will return we'll return triumphantly retroactively sort of yeah later it's like that is like a back to the future kind of scenario right like in the in that return in that idea where like i've come back and it's in the future and

Anyway, this is nonsense. I have a Snow Talk question for you that comes from Tom, who wants to know, are you listening to any Severance podcasts or podcasts explaining what is going on in Severance? Are you consuming Severance media? I'm not. Funnily enough, as a person who makes podcasts about media, I've listened to very few podcasts about Severance.

media yeah in part because i don't have time to listen to podcasts i have i i i have soap because i don't have a commute i i become a really great podcast listener when i have like a long car trip or i need to like go down to apple or something like or on a plane i can do some of that but um in my regular life no and also honestly severance i really enjoy it i don't

I just don't see the need. I, I, I don't feel the, sorry to Tom, but like, I feel like I know what's going on in severance. Do you? So yeah. Okay. I feel like I do. I feel like it, I, I get what's going on. I'm enjoying the ride. I think it's really interesting. Um,

I love Severance. I love Severance so much. I love lots of things that I don't listen to podcasts about. Yeah, I don't listen to podcasts about it either. I think actually really because I...

This is just one of those shows where I enjoy the lack of information. Like I enjoy just trying to work out what I think is happening based on what I'm seeing. But I have seen some talk about this and I thought I'd include a link in the show notes. There is an official Severance podcast, which is hosted by Ben Stiller and Adam Scott, which I think is cool. But it's unclear if this is an Apple show. Apple's not on the branding anywhere.

it's Odyssey is the creator but I believe this is pure memory that Apple has worked with this company to produce these kinds of shows but Apple's not listed anywhere on this one but it's there if you want it

Uh, yeah, it's... I've listened to some. Official ones are different, right? Official ones are sort of like, here's what we're thinking of. And I find those sometimes interesting because they have stuff you can't get anywhere else. And sometimes the least interesting because they're the official corporate line about... So it's always going to be happy talk. They're not going to get into theories on the official show because they know how the show goes. They know the answers. And also they're not going to have... Like...

We just did an episode of Vulcan Hello, the podcast I do with Scott McNulty, where we talk about the latest Star Trek episode. And we just did an episode about the Star Trek TV movie, Section 31. And that's a good example where whatever official, whatever they have for that is going to be all happy talk about here's this actor and here's this person. And isn't it great?

And our episode is like, wow, that was terrible. Let's list all the ways that that was a terrible, terrible piece of filmed entertainment. And then we ranked all the Star Trek movies by our preferences as a way to kind of get the stink out afterward. And, you know, an official podcast is going to be all smiles. And so there can be value in that. I have definitely done that, but it's just a different vibe. Yep.

If you'd like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your Snell Talk questions. Let's do a rumor roundup to start this week's episode. Oh, exciting. We've got some big topics today, so we've got to get into those. Yeah, so we're writing out a little early with the herd. Okay, all right. According to Mark Guman...

He's a man made entirely of goo. Mark Guman at Bloomberg. Apple has brought in Kim Vorath to advance. Mark Guman at Bloomberg. That's Bloomberg. Yeah.

I have a new name to say, and I think I was focused on that, as I've not said this name out loud yet. Apple has brought in Kim Vorath to advance Apple intelligence. So I've seen a few reports about Vorath. One came from John Gruber, which I'll also put in the show notes.

Vorath has been at Apple for 36 years and has a history of kind of being dropped in to manage tough projects. They are a person who gets things done. She most recently worked on getting Vision Pro out the door, but has been in charge of project management for many OS releases going back all the way to the original iPhone software group.

John Gruber describes Vorath as effectively, at this time, being seen as Scott Forstall's chief of staff. Gruber also notes, I thought this was interesting, Mark Gurman's reporting notes that the source for this information was a longtime Apple executive and wonders if this may have been a planned sharing of information.

Yeah. Yeah. It seems to me that that's probably the most likely scenario, given how it's identified, that people were okay in this kind of like leaking out this way. They weren't going to make an announcement. And why would they do that? I think the answer is they feel the criticism that the Apple intelligence rollout has been rough and it's slow and that they're trying to send a little bit of a message that they're on it, essentially, and that they're moving people who are very respected out.

at getting things shipped... The fixes. ...into the Apple intelligence process. So I think that's probably what's going on here. I have no idea what to really take from this, like, realistically. Like, I can take from it that, sure, Apple is serious, but, like, what does that mean? People think she's great, and they've prioritized her from working on Vision Pro stuff to working on Apple intelligence stuff. I think that even the most...

enormous fan of the vision pro would probably agree that apple intelligence is where the fire is right now and where it should be um well well i mean like like the fire is burning the house down and they need to fix that's my yes my fire metaphor is more that the fire is uh is where's the fire at apple it's ai it's a problem it's behind it's broken um

And culturally, they need more attention applied to it. So I think that's the idea here. But I don't know anything about this person or her inner workings at Apple other than that she seems to come very highly regarded, which is great. I think Gruber's big contribution was he talked to a bunch of people he knows at Apple who are like, she's amazing. It's like, great. That's great. Because that's the message here, right? Is Apple put one of their stars who seems to be very capable at making things

things run and work and ship on Apple intelligence, which, uh, you know, is, it has been a scramble, right? And so maybe they're also, the message here is that they're getting more serious about, uh,

structuring how they put all of this stuff together. Because one of the criticisms that you and I have had about Apple intelligence is not necessarily the fundamental criticisms about AI in general. It's about Apple rushing their implementations out and making some poor decisions and things are lagging and other things ship, but they don't really work very well. And, you know, more supervision, not to get in the way, but to enable things to be clear and to ship is probably required. Yeah.

Display analyst Ross Young has said that the upcoming iPhone SE 4 will have a notch on the display, not a dynamic island. There have been prior leaks that would suggest it would have an island. So it'd be interesting to see where this lands. I feel like if it has a notch...

That doesn't lend into the conversation that I know that you are a proponent of, of like an iPhone 16E. It's not going to look like that. It's going to look more like an iPhone 14 than an iPhone 16. Because it wouldn't have all the features even in the operating system. I'll just say...

They can call it whatever they want. Sure, they can. No, I agree. If they want to call it part of the 16 line, they'll just do it and it won't matter. I agree this makes it less of an iPhone 16 for sure. I wonder if they've thought about like, well, they probably did when they introduced the Dynamic Island. Like, if you have a notch...

Is there a way to do something that's kind of like the dynamic island? But I think there isn't. And this is a way to save money on an SE is you've got a phone that's got face ID, but it's using the iPhone 10 level notch technology, not the newer dynamic island technology. And that makes sense. And that's probably a, I don't know, like face ID gen one or something like that, right? Whatever is cheapest. Yeah. Yeah.

And also according to Mark Gurman, Apple has cancelled development of AR glasses that were intended to be paired to a Mac. I will read from his report on Bloomberg. The now cancelled product would have looked like normal glasses but include built-in displays and require a connection to a Mac. The company had initially wanted the glasses to pair with an iPhone but it ran into problems over how much processing power the handset could provide. It also affected the iPhone's battery life.

Yeah. I mean, that doesn't tell the story right there. It's not quite how Mark Gurman tells it, but that's the story is we're working on AR glasses. We want an iPhone to drive them. Oh, no, it can't do that. Well, what if we have a Mac drive it?

And then they cancel it. And it's like, well, maybe it worked. Maybe it didn't. But again, glasses that you can use when you're next to a Mac is not a product, right? That's more like... It's bad. That feels very much like we're investigating, can we even do this? And what Gurman says...

doesn't indicate whether they can or can't do it. Because to me, the fact that it requires a connection to a Mac and that they can't use an iPhone, uh,

It is a good sign of like, well, this is not whatever we're doing here. We're not doing it right because nobody is going to buy that product. It's not a real product. If, if it's, if it requires a Mac, like what? No. So, um, I, what I don't know is what this means. Cause what does it mean to cancel development of a product?

Does that mean they aren't going to make those AR glasses or does it mean that it's gotten kicked back out of productization into a more high level research product? Because they went through the sort of like productization of it and went, oh, no, because, again, a lot of this stuff is going to be pretty far off.

Um, or they need to set recalibrate and set their sites differently. I also wonder, Mike, I know this is kind of a weird one, but I also wonder if partly the reason that this is going on is because of the success of the Meta Ray bands and the realization that maybe what they need to do is focus on building a, uh, no, you know, no glasses, no vision related, but, but a different set of glasses that are, are,

like the meta Ray-Bans and that they can't have this thing in development while they have that in development. And they want to retask that team and say, we're going to put off this AR stuff at a high level until the technology is more advanced. But that's just speculation. We don't know. But one of the things that I've noticed is a lot of times people take Mark Gurman's reports and obviously they interpret them to mean whatever they want them to mean.

So there's this, there's definitely a, oh, Apple's decided they're not going to ever make AR glasses.

That's not what's going on here. What's going on here is that Apple had an AR glasses project that couldn't function on a portable compute platform like the iPhone. So they stuck it on a Mac to see if they could get it to work there. And then it got canceled. And we actually don't know even if it could or couldn't work on the Mac, or if they just looked at it and said, what are we even doing here? We have a higher priority somewhere else. We don't know. But if I had to guess, I'd say it's possible that that's what happened is that this thing

is not practical as currently conceived. So they put it on the shelf and that maybe they have a, you know, while they're developing vision OS and they're, they're kind of working in the background on what this future stuff is. Maybe there are some other approaches to AR glasses that are much cut down from this, that they could work on just a speculation on my part. Yeah. This is not the product. This isn't it. Like,

What is that, Ethan? You know what I mean? Like, congrats. While you're sitting in front of a Mac, you can also have a screen in front of your eyes. Like, it's not...

I mean, you kind of see, I mean, here's what I imagine. It's like they tried to get it to work with the iPhone and it was causing problems. So they're like, well, let's just get it to work with a Mac. And like, I see a story there of like, if we could just get it to work with a Mac, maybe by the time that we get this actually ready to be a product, it will be good enough to work with an iPhone because the iPhones would be more powerful and more efficient. You know, like these things go up and down. It's like to get to the iPhone, they made a tablet first and then they went back to the tablet.

This is product design, right? Especially in technology because you know that maybe by... Well, you believe by the time you get to product, the technology is advanced already. But...

For whatever reason, they've decided this isn't the thing because it's clearly not the thing. And as you said, like AR glasses, like AR glasses, they're not the thing because it's too early. Like everyone wants to make this technology, but no one can make it. And so we need to wait. But meta is like, I'm pretty sure Apple could have done a demo of

of something and it, but it would be, it's not realistic. Like it's not happening for years. Yes. And when they do ship, they're going to be incredibly limited and you're going to be able to do that thing where you compare what they ship to what they demoed five years before and a

a lot of that stuff's not going to be there because turns out they couldn't do it because that's what happens when you do a tech demo like that. Cause this is hard. It's hard. Think about it. Think about like Apple's making a $3,500 headset in order to get screens that look good enough for, for, and I'll grant you, it's not just the UI, it's also the pass through, but it's also the UI. And like you start to tick off all of the things that are quick now, make it so that you can see through it.

but there's also an overlay and make it light enough to be look unobtrusively like glasses on your face. And now where does the compute go? Does it go to a phone? Like you can tick through the list. Like our technology in 2025, it's pretty impressive, but that is,

is very, very hard and is going to take time and probably needs more efficient and more powerful mobile processing and better display technology and miniaturization of everything, including battery. Like,

you could tick off the list. And I'm sure that the engineers working on this and all these companies know exactly all of these limitations. So here we are, this is a 2030 category, not a 2020 category. - One of the things in Mark's report is saying that these glasses basically could have worked just like the Mac virtual display, kind of like you plug a Mac into those extra glasses or whatever.

That is not a product category it is worth Apple getting in. Just that. Here's a product. All it is is a monitor for your Mac. That's not it. Because they sell Mac monitors or BioVision Pro. It's not compelling enough as a product for them to make at all. Or buy X-Real glasses at that point. I don't think that there's a real... Yeah, I agree. I think that that's the...

the wrong product. I think the, I think the right thing to do is to make something like meta Ray bands that are augmented reality in the sense that they've got your voice assistant and they tie into your ecosystem and they tie into your camera roll and they do, you know, and they maybe eventually have like a little widget area that you can see something in a dynamic Island, that kind of thing, notification center, that's low resolution. And in the corner of your screen, which is what a lot of these things are going to be in quarter of your vision, um,

maybe over time. And then separately, you want to come at it from the other angle, which is you take the Vision Pro and you try to make it cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and lighter. And then they converge in five, seven, eight years.

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So it is time for the Apple in 2024 Six Colors Report Card. We talk about this every year. This is a project you've been running, I think, for the entire length of Six Colors. But for those that are new to the show, what is the report card? How does it work? And who participates?

The Apple report card. So I invite a bunch of people who I see on social media or who have websites or whatever, blogs, videos to give me their opinions about what Apple has done in the last year, in the previous year. And so I have a survey. I've been sending it out. This is the 10th time I've sent it out.

Wow.

And then I put it together and compile it and we, and make some graphs, you know, and that's, that's what we, that's what we do. And so people can, the goal of the report card is to really sort of say, what's the general feeling, the general drift of sentiment. You could say the vibe in the room is,

among people who pay attention to Apple about how Apple is doing. And while there's nothing definitive about it, right? You can't point it and go, aha, see, Apple is doing badly on the Mac, right? Like you can't do that. It doesn't prove anything. It's just people's opinions. I think it does show that

People are feeling down about this topic or people have been or up. And then you can see now I've got trends for 10 years as well in a lot of these categories. So you can actually get a sense of sort of like, how are people feeling relative to,

eras and like how is the how is the vibe in the room changed over time and then the individual quotes are also very interesting about calling out various things so I feel like it's a useful thing to kind of review what has been going on in a

for the whole year at Apple, big picture. Uh, what are they doing? Right? What are they doing wrong in the eyes of people who focus on Apple? And then you can take what you want from it. Again, you can take validation for your own feelings. Um, you can, uh,

uh, shake your head and show why it's evidence that the, the people in the media and, and the development community and all, I just don't get it. I mean, you can, you can really put whatever you want onto it. Um, it is just a survey of, you know, 50 odd people who filled out the form and, um,

And that's it. I mean, I guess if you're at Apple, you can pay attention to it and decide whether it gives you leverage to make your arguments or whether you can roll your eyes as well. Like everybody can see into it whatever they want to see into it. But I think it's interesting to take an average of sentiment across a large group and see what the general trends are.

So what we like to do on the show is I am very happy to be included in the report card every year. So I have already submitted my scores to you and my comments. So I'll share those, my scores, and maybe touch on some of my comments.

but I always will push you to also give your score because you do not participate in the report card. I do not vote. I do not vote or participate in the survey. And also, for each category, I will read out the summary that you have for each of them too to kind of give an idea for how people are feeling, and then we can talk about how we're feeling. But I will encourage every listener to go and look at the report card and to look at the charts. There are loads of great charts. I think having so many...

years now, it's really interesting to look at them. We'll start with the Mac and there's something that's so interesting. You can see these peaks and valleys in the Mac over time, which I find one of the more interesting charts. I recommend people go look at it. And we'll start with the Mac, which got a 4.2 out of 5 this year. This was the summary. The panel was very positive about the Mac, with many praising Apple's continued hardware advancements in the Apple Silicon era, especially the M4 chip and the redesigned Mac Mini.

The move to 16 gigabytes of RAM as the new baseline for entry-level models was widely welcomed. However, there are lingering concerns about the lack of updates for higher machines like the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. I gave the Mac a four out of five. I think for me right now, just the continued march of Apple Silicon, like I kind of feel like I can't complain. Like honestly, like I just...

Looking back to the years prior to Apple Silicon where things felt really lost, and now every year they're giving us a new chip. And it's like they're continuing to make everything more powerful. I feel like I can't really complain, and I wouldn't want to complain. I think the laptop updates were nice. I welcome the simplification of the MacBook Air line, which I think has been long overdue. But of course, I would say...

For Mac Studio users, I think it would be nice to get a bit more clarity about what's going on with that product. Like, realistically, is there ever going to be a new one? Now, I feel like I know the answer to that, but we have no evidence. And so that's kind of like, you know, I think that would have made it higher than a four for me, but I feel like a four, kind of, I think at the moment, something like four is like my baseline score for the Mac line. So what do you think?

Um, I would give this one, this is an easy one. I think I would give this one four. Um, I would consider five, but I would give it four. I think one of the problems that I have with a lot of, um, people who participate in the survey and they can do what they want. I mean, that's the whole point is there's a lot of like, um, what have you done for me lately? That it's like, well, if Apple didn't release a new thing in this year, it gets a bad score. And it's like, are the things that are there. Okay. Or not. If it's okay.

Who cares? Right. It's like if it's OK, who cares? So I yeah, people talk about the Mac Pro and the Mac Studio. I think we all know what happened there. I think the M3 was a placeholder and the M4 versions of those are reportedly, according to Mark Gurman, especially the Mac Studio, forthcoming. So I'm not worried about it. Also, some people comment that they were disappointed that it was only an M3 MacBook Air in 2024. It's like, well, that's the cycle it's on. There'll be an M4 in a couple of months.

Like, the M3 came out before the M4 was announced. That's just how life works. And Apple doesn't go on the calendar year cycle. So I think it's silly to get so focused on, like, if they didn't do a thing in a particular calendar year, they are therefore bad. Because I think you could... The M4 to M3 MacBook Air or whatever, what's the difference? Like, really? Probably just RAM? Like, what? You know, it's not...

There's nothing. I did not mention the Mac Mini. Obviously, the Mac Mini, super good, incredible computer. I love mine. But I just don't think that that was perfect because it gets so expensive so fast in a way that I think that that ramp is too steep. You make one of those machines powerful and it's basically the price of a Mac studio. And I feel like I would like to see them...

I don't know how, but I'm confident that there is a way to make that. I think one of the things we're talking about, our friend Quinn Nelson from Stancy Labs, who just became a father himself, congratulations Quinn, was saying that you could buy two Mac minis for the price of putting 32 gigabytes of RAM and increasing the storage. If you just doubled the base storage and RAM, it's more expensive than if you bought two of them, which I know is not a thing that you can realistically do, but

The components of building the computer should be more expensive, like should have an inherent cost to them, right? Rather than just the storage and the RAM, like how much of the cost of the product really is the storage and the RAM. So, yeah. Well, they're obviously taking a revenue...

on base models because they want to have their base models perceived as being affordable and then they ramp up the cost. And several people mentioned that that's one of the issues that everybody noticed this year is that upgrading everything costs so much more. I think re-implementing

realistically, I agree. It's true. I think realistically, this is the game Apple's playing because they've decided that they want to hold the line on entry prices, but everywhere else, they're just going to raise the prices or have them be very expensive. And that's where they get, that's where they make their money by the people who care about specs pay more. I think it's a really interesting,

Interesting to look at this one more than any other chart in terms of the annual, because we now have 10 data points. So you can look at it and say, wow, the late 2010s were rough. And they were like, this is the depth of the butterfly keyboard era.

And they have been digging their way out of that. And then you see the 2020 leap for Apple Silicon. And although the scores are down a little bit from the introduction of Apple Silicon in 2020, they still have stayed at a very high level. I agree with that. The only reason that I wouldn't give this a five, honestly, is I feel like on the software side, there are issues, right? Like Apple's

Apple's, the Mac kind of like is sometimes still a laggard when it comes to features. There are things that are just kind of weird on the Mac that are fine on iOS.

And as a grumpy Mac user, I am concerned about the state of affairs of Mac software in general and Apple's commitment to Mac software in particular. But it's a minor. I mean, I could give it five. I just nothing's perfect. Nothing is so perfect. So but this is close. This is really close. The Mac is probably in among the best positions that it has ever been in. Yep.

So let's move on to the iPhone, which scored a 3.7 out of 5. The summary is, feelings about the iPhone lineup were mixed. Many panelists praising the incremental hardware improvements, but expressed disappointment in Apple intelligence and the new camera control feature. The rolling down of previously higher-end features, the action button to the lower-end features,

iPhones five times zoomed to the smaller iPhone Pro were well received. However, frustrations persisted regarding the lack of a smaller phone option. Lackluster color choices for Pro models and software features that feel rushed or unfinished. So it was 3.7 down from 4.1 last year.

uh yeah i went for four this for me is my approach to the report card is i grade for me i don't grade for the world right is how i feel sure and for me this is a great year because i switched from the pro max to the pro phone part of that reason i didn't share at the time was because i wanted a smaller phone for when the baby came so i could use my phone in one hand easier like that was

a big part of my reason for making that change and I adore this phone size. I mean they've made it bigger and they made it a little bit bigger this year and that ended up being the perfect sweet spot for me. I'm a big fan of it. I like the camera control button as a camera launching button.

I don't like taking pictures with the button because there is too much force. But I do do it sometimes. If I have two hands on my phone, I will use the button. If I have one hand on my phone, I would just use the software button. But I really like the get to the camera from anywhere control that I have from the camera control button. And one thing that I did think was interesting this year, it's just like an observation,

It didn't affect my score, but I wanted to share it. It was really interesting to me this year. I think more than any year that I can remember that the kind of broader community conversation was a lot of people considering moving down from the pro phone line to the regular phone line. That would indicate to me that Apple missed the mark on the product mix this year. Okay, so if we look at this from a pure business perspective,

perspective whether they maybe put too many features from the pro phone to the regular phone or they didn't give enough differentiation in the pro phone or whatever it was or maybe it is just purely colors but i don't think that is the full thing because it's been a problem forever

There was so much conversation about people considering moving or actually moving, or maybe in some cases moving back, but hi Federico. But people were thinking more about leaving the pro phone this year, and I think that is exactly the opposite of what Apple wants. So I just found that to be an interesting thing that happened in 2024. Yeah, yeah. It's...

Look, you know, we are in a state where the smartphone, the generic general sort of smartphone is so amazing and yet also pretty boring because the pace of innovation is less. There's still some out there, but it's less. And some of the things that are trying to be innovative are also still kind of impractical. We're seeing more folding phones, but they're not really a breakthrough yet. They're kind of esoteric and expensive, but

Tim Cook gets on his analyst call and says, I couldn't be more excited about the future of the smartphone. There's so much in our pipeline. It's amazing. Take that for what you will, as Mr. iPhone saying that. But I'd probably give this a three. I think the camera control was an interesting idea that was badly implemented. It kind of whiffed on that, which is so fascinating to...

whiff on an iphone feature like surely these are the things that get the most i know attention and it's really to me it just feels like the button is too hard to press which means you use the in my opinion use the wrong part and you put way too many features in the slippy slidey thing like it's very peculiar over engineered yeah yeah and and and i would say they they

I mean, last year they did the action button. This year they do the camera control button, which, you know, remember the rumors were that the action button was going to be touch sensitive and all that, which means the action button, I think, was going to be the camera control button. And then they still added the camera control button, but kept the action button, which is also really interesting. That's fine. I do. I think that things are so quiet now.

When it comes to iPhone evolution, that one of the things they do is try to figure out what their marketing features are, what's their big thing that they're going to sell. And I think these buttons are intended to be things they can promote as being new on iPhones.

And you're saying to yourself, well, well, yeah, but they're spending all their time on Apple intelligence. And I guess what I would say is that wasn't the original plan. The original plan was probably not Apple intelligence. It was probably something like camera control. And then they did Apple intelligence. So maybe that maybe this feature got forced in here. And also remember that this is like their second try because action button was sort of going to be camera control.

I don't know. Anyway, it is the most important Apple product, and iPhones are good. They're very, very good, and there is that danger of being like, we're just bored with something that's so good. But the pace has really, really slowed. And when we commented about the pace slowing five years ago, it has slowed since then. It continues to slow. And perhaps...

in 2025, we will see some really new takes on the iPhone and it will lead us to some interesting places in the back half of this decade. But right now, the iPhone is solid and it's good and, you know,

I would say it's better than it's ever been, and most people don't buy a new iPhone every year. But if we are looking at how Apple has kind of squired the iPhone along here above the waterline where we can see what they're doing, it was kind of an okay year where it continues to be good, but what really is there? The non-Pro phones have the pretty colors. They're still running at 60 hertz display, which is great.

It should be more, right? And the camera control was just a miss. So I don't know, you know, I can't give them a really great score because the stuff that they did try to do, they didn't really execute that well on. Yep, I agree. So the iPad has a 3.5, which is up from a 2.4 last year and is kind of returning the iPad back to the level that it's been on for quite a while.

The summary says,

However, the biggest complaint remains iPadOS, which many feel continues to limit the potential of the hardware. The iPad lineup is also considered confusing, with overlapping models and accessories that make purchasing decisions difficult. Overall, while the hardware continues to impress, Apple's lack of commitment to advancing iPadOS has left many feeling that the iPad is not reaching its full potential. I gave the iPad a 5 out of 5 this year.

Because I have decided it is pointless for me to continue to grade iPad on iPadOS. On what it's not? There's just no point. I have decided to accept what it is and then just do that. I don't grade the Mac or the iPhone on the operating system's potential performance.

what I believe it should potentially be. I don't do this with any other product where I'm like every year saying to myself, oh, but it could be so much more if they just did this. Like I don't,

do that for the other things when I could, right? I could say like, ah, the Mac could be so much more if it also had a touchscreen mode. Like I don't do this for other products. So for me personally, I'm just going to grade it on what it is and in what I would consider realistic like desires from iPadOS because I feel like a lot of people, and I understand it because I used to be one of these people, they're grading iPadOS against macOS.

And I just think at this point, it is clearly pointless to do this because we see what it is. Anyway, so...

I think the M4 iPad Pro is literally everything I could have wanted in an iPad. I absolutely love this iPad. It's incredibly thin, incredibly light, makes it a joy to use. The OLED screen is unbelievable. It's the best quality screen I own anywhere. Sometimes I am annoyed at my television because the iPad screen is so much better. Like it's, I love this thing. I think it is

As good as I could want from an iPad. And so for me, it's a five out of five. Because like, I mean, again, I had not, I, you know, it's been a while for me with the iPad Pro. I've been away from the iPad Pro for a while. And this year I was like treated to all of the great things that iPad Pros can give you, including the better screen technology. You know, like I've been using a mini and before that I hadn't had a mini LED iPad Pro or anything like that. I'd gotten off that train. This one is just, it's perfect for me.

That's great. Yeah, I agree. I think, I mean, look, the iPad was a 2.4 last year and a 3.5 this year. Why? The answer is, it's that one hat, what have you done for me lately argument. No new iPads, well, it was a bad year for the iPad. New iPads, it was a great year for the iPad. And again, I would argue, I mean, that's not how I would view it. I think that you have to limit your like, give me something new or otherwise your product line is a disaster. It's not. I just

I just don't agree. I think that, that they should have released some iPads in 2023, but they, if they introduced like an iPad air in 2023, does that suddenly make it, Oh, what a relief. This was a great year for the iPad or does it not? I don't know. It is, it is. You take a, take a, what you will. The truth is 23. There were no new iPads, 24. There were all new iPads. So great. Uh, the number went back way, way up as it should. Yeah. Um,

I think I'm going to say, I think I'm going to say four here. And my reasoning is not only did Apple make an iPad pro that is spectacular, right? Thin and powerful debuted the M four on it. And that amazing OLED display. It's amazing, right? Great model, but they also basically revised the iPad air and,

And it's every, it's essentially with the exception of face ID, everything that the iPad pro used to be. So they're basically keeping the iPad pro around as the iPad air at a much more affordable price, which is important because the iPad pros are very expensive now, like extremely expensive, almost like at the point where they're a lifestyle product. They're like a luxury car.

And for most people, I don't recommend an iPad Pro anymore because it's just it's too much for what most people are going to use it for. I just I just can't recommend it. But that's good news is they did. They did the thing that Apple arguably should always do, which is push the limits and make this amazing product. That's great.

And make something that's really, really good. That's much more affordable that regular people who don't care about the super cutting edge high end amazingness can get and use and love. And they did that with the iPad air. So, uh, I, I think it is a good year for the iPad in those ways. Um,

Also in the background, I'm going to just say it. I wish they had more of a vision for iPadOS than they do. I actually kind of don't care what the vision is at this point, is what I would say. But I wish that there was a vision for it that wasn't just, it's kind of like iOS, but bigger. It's not really like the Mac.

But it's also just kind of kicking off. Like, why, again, sorry to say this, but like, again, why is it iPadOS? Because it's basically just iOS. Sure. And almost everything other than like Stage Manager or something, like almost everything you can do on iOS, you can do on iPadOS and vice versa. So I don't know. It just, I wish, I wish it could be more than it is. And that makes me sad. So I, again, nothing is so perfect. I'll give it four. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying. I also wish, but I'm just not, like, I just don't want to criticize it anymore. I agree. I understand. It's totally understandable to think that.

All right, so we move on to wearables and Apple Watch. So I think you made some changes this year, kind of like clarified and broke out some stuff. So there's a couple of things here. So the overall score is a 3.6 out of 5, up from a 3.5 out of 5 year over year. The Apple Watch specifically is 3.7, up from 3.4. And we introduced the Vision Pro as a category, which scored a 2.4 out of 5. 2.4. Yeah, a D. Rough.

That's a D. Yeah. The summary. Could be worse. Apple's wearable lineup in 2024 saw strong advancements in AirPods and steady, if uninspired, improvements to the Apple Watch. The new hearing aid features for AirPods Pro 2 was widely celebrated as one of Apple's most impactful innovations. The Apple Watch Series 10 and Ultra 2 updates are seen as incremental, with some frustration over the lack of significant redesigns or an Ultra 3.

However, the Apple Vision Pro dominated the conversation with reactions split between awe at its technical advancements and disappointment over its price, usability, and lack of compelling software. Many view it as an impressive but unfinished first-generation product. While the hardware across Apple's wearables continues to improve, concerns about stagnation in the watch line and the Vision Pro's uncertain future persists.

I went with an overall score of four, an Apple Watch score of four, and a Vision Pro score of three. So I think the Apple Watch one was one of my most interesting ones to score because I just continue to be disappointed with the Apple Watch from a hardware perspective. Making it thinner is lovely, but I want to see a significant design change for the Apple Watch. Like significant is what I want, but I don't know if I'm ever going to get it. But watchOS 11 was my favorite operating system update this year.

The enhancements to the widgets I really liked. The smart stack I really liked. Live activities is great. But the new photo face is one of my favorite things Apple has put in an operating system in as far as I can remember. I adore that every time

I look down at my watch. I get a little moment of joy. So I have like pictures of places we've been to, pictures of my wife. And oh man, I am so excited to get photos of my baby onto this thing. My word, my heart's going to explode. I just, if you've not used the Photos Face, maybe you think you're not a Photos Face person, just try it.

because i didn't think i was a photos face person but this it's so good they've done such a good job they lay them out really well whatever machine learning model they've made to lay these things out is really great and you can have two complications on it now too so uh i i really do recommend it i think it's great and then the vision pro i mean that's just a mixed bag right like the summary said the launch was exciting which is a year now it's like a year yesterday um

The hardware itself is so futuristic and so I think really well done. Vision OS is a very promising operating system which has gotten great advancements throughout the year. They have made it significantly better throughout the year, but the lack of developer support has just meant that the buzz has just disappeared. I think even if you remove Apple Intelligence out of the conversation, I don't think this would have gone any differently. And you can't ignore that.

Yeah. I would say overall, I would say four, although I would actually even consider five. And here's why. The new AirPods are great. They took the old AirPods Pro and made them hearing aids.

The Vision Pro, while not a product most people should buy, is an amazing product. It costs too much, which is why nobody should buy it. It is amazing. The OS is really kind of incredible. It's got huge potential if they work on it. It has a frustrating lack of content and a frustrating lack of apps, and that is on Apple, bottom line. But that all said, I...

I choose not to invent a world where everybody rushed out and bought a Vision Pro because we don't live in that world. That was never going to happen. That was never going to happen. I was looking at my review today of the Vision Pro, and I described it in the first sentence as speculative and impractical. Right? Yeah.

Show me the lie, right? Like that is, it is impractical and it is a speculative product about the future. And I likened it to early days of personal computers where you'd spend $5,000 on a computer because computers are the future and it doesn't do anything.

And that boy, that was true. That was personal computers in the early days. And Vision Pro is like that. The problem is Apple needs to be doing more to get people to try it and experiment with it and think about the future. And they're not. And I wrote that column in Macworld a few weeks ago that I feel like it's because they don't know how to be an upstart and they don't know how to jumpstart a weird product category and get people excited about something that's not going to pay off for a few years. I feel like they've like completely lost that because they've been on top for so long. But that said,

And one other item is missed opportunities, which is they should have had AirPods and glasses, right? They should have had that. They should not have let meta. They have all the pieces for that. And a lack of vision in their product map, they blew it. So I can't give it a five, but I'm going to say overall four. I'm going to say Apple Watch is a five.

And my reason there is that I know it's not for you, but I bought a Series 10. I love it. It is such an enormous update. I love how thin it is. I know it doesn't look any different, but it is very different. I don't doubt that. I know it doesn't interest you, so I'm going to give you the enthusiastic perspective of it, which is it's not for you, but it is for me, and I think it's really great. I'm sorry to the Ultra users who didn't get an Ultra 3 this year. It's great.

In hindsight, the Ultra 2 should not have come out last year. That was kind of weird, right? That was kind of weird. But whatever, there'll be an Ultra 3 this year probably, and it'll be fine. But yes, and watchOS, really, really great update. We were driving to Curling yesterday, Lawrence driving. I'm sitting in the passenger seat, and my watch taps me, and I'm like, what is it? It was a live activity from my phone pushing to my watch and tapping, and I looked at my watch, and it said, Arsenal just scored a goal.

I'm like, oh, that's the stuff. That's exactly what I want. It's a thing I care about. It's on my phone, but my watch is right there. And it takes the live activity widget and it gives me the tap because I'm wearing my watch and I'm not looking at my phone. And it says, here it is. Score update is now 2-1 to the arsenal. I really love that. Scrolling down to see my timer is going, here's this thing, this live activity that's running. I think they are...

They are still picking their way out of the wreckage of the initial conception of the Apple Watch and watch OS 10 years later, which, you know, things change. That's, that's how evolution works, but they are doing it. I would say in the last few years, it feels like they have gotten a much more confident approach to what people want on

on the Apple watch and are building it and are kind of taking the garbage away, or at least putting it on the side and putting some new stuff forward that makes it more usable. Um, and yeah, vision pro I'm going to give the vision pro a four, um, just off cause I'm just making this up as I go along here because of everything I just said, which is, it's actually kind of a brilliant product. It's just not ready for widespread use and

honestly, that's okay because it's so good. It's way too expensive. Nobody should buy one, right? Like, but, but I, my take on the vision pro is not that it's bad. I get, I get a sense from some people's like, Oh, it's a flop. It's so bad. It's like,

It's actually great. It just is overpriced and a 1.0 and, you know, Apple needs to put more effort behind it. I will not give it a five because that's what bothers me is that Apple hasn't

tried to drive developer interest in it by, you know, essentially making an effort and giving more and offering incentives. And they just, and I think it goes to what we'll talk about in a little bit, which is Apple's relationship with developers that continues to degrade. And also the content. I wish they had had a much stronger content plan because I do think that if anybody would buy it for $3,500, it's people who really, really, really want niche content like, uh,

let's say, live theater in an immersive space or live sports in an immersive space. And what we've gotten is a small amount of pre-recorded stuff. So there's more to do there. But I think the Vision Pro as a product, well, as a technology product, I think is a great success. And then as a product in the market, it's a failure. But what could it have been at $3,500? It was always going to be a failure. And that's okay as long as they keep working on it.

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So we move on to HomeKit and Home Automation now. Smart Home category. Yeah, Smart Home. 2.7 down from a 2.8 year over year. Yeah, flat, really. 2.7, 2.7, 2.8, 2.7. It's been in the solid D plus student here.

You love it. You love to see it. Apple's smart home strategies, is the summary, in 2024 continue to frustrate users of many feeling that HomeKit remains unreliable. The home app is unintuitive and Apple has largely neglected the space. While there were minor improvements such as better control center integration and some matter enhancements, the overall sentiment is that Apple has yet to make significant strides.

Many users have resorted to third-party solutions like Home Assistant to achieve better automation and compatibility. The lack of Apple intelligence integration into the HomePod and the continued unreliability of Siri further disappoints users. Some are hopeful that Apple may reinvest in smart home efforts in 2025, possibly with new hardware, but for now, the platform feels stagnant. I find it funny that, like, the Apple intelligence thing being a negative when, like,

i don't know i don't know i know i don't know apple intelligence is terrible why don't we have more of it yeah i'm not okay not not really sure about that so yeah i gave this a three out of five um for me the control center actions and the way that i can customize those it's like exactly what i was looking for from my home um from the home app so i'm very happy about that um

outside of that, there's nothing else. There isn't anything. But as I mentioned, and I do, I have high hopes for a five out of five next year. They just need to give me the device that I want. Yeah, right. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't know what to say here. I totally understand the twos and threes. I mean, honestly, I use it. It works fine for me. I wish it did more. And that's the problem is like,

It doesn't, it's so dumb. Like the Home app isn't good. I think people have, they all mentioned it in their comments, like all of them. Home app isn't good. Matter isn't there. I think Matter actually is going to be a thing and it's coming. I think it's just been a lot harder to get it to roll out than anybody expected. But I do think Matter is going to. None of the parties involved want to bear the burden of this alone, right? Google and Apple and Amazon have decided they don't want an arms race anymore. It's just killing the entire category. I think Matter is going to

eventually come through and be something that it's just means you don't have to worry about it. That said, like Apple side of it, like Apple,

The fact that if you talk to nerds, they start talking to you about Homebridge and Home Assistant says something. And it says that the home stuff in Apple's operating system is just dumb, right? Like, that's the problem is that it doesn't seem to be as smart as it should be, if that makes sense, right? Like, here is a light you can turn on. Okay. But like...

If you try to automate anything beyond about turn it on at sunrise and sunset or turn it on when I come home, it falls apart really fast. Like intelligent automation based on the sensors and devices in your home. It's kind of just not there. So I,

You know, I'll give it a three because I think actually a lot of my home stuff works great and I'm pretty happy with it. And I've settled into a pretty decent routine. That said, Apple needs to do more here. My hope is if we hear all these stories, like you said, about new stuff for the home and a new home kind of renaissance from Apple in the coming year and years, that they will also prioritize some software help to make the home app better.

better so we'll see but but i i'll give it a three because like i said it's not it's not destroying my life it it works and i can rely on it and uh and yeah the control center items are great that i i use those all the time uh the apple tv got a 3.2 up from a three

Summary is, Apple TV remains a solid, reliable streaming device, but 2024 was another year of minimal change, both in hardware and software. While Apple TV Plus continues to receive significant attention from Apple, tvOS and the Apple TV hardware feel stagnant, with no major updates or innovations.

Users appreciate its ad-free, privacy-focused experience compared to competitors, but remain frustrated by the aging UI, lack of major software improvements, and the high price relative to cheaper alternatives like Roku and Fire TV. The few newer features, such as automatic subtitles and an enhanced dialogue feature, were welcomed, but did little to change the overall perception of Apple TVs in maintenance mode rather than active development. And for me, I gave this a 3.

I don't look at content in this part. This is just the box and the operating system. People were very specifically told not to talk about Apple TV Plus in this category. It is not a services question. It is a hardware platform question. Software OS question, not services. So, I mean, I'm torn by this like I am by home. I'd say three, I guess. And this is both of these things can be true.

tv os okay first of all let's talk about the hardware uh minimal change in hardware and software okay let's talk about the hardware apple doesn't need to add any hardware to the apple tv it's fine it's fine what would they even do i mean they will probably put a different processor in it and maybe they'll add a different radio or whatever but like literally it doesn't need to change it's fine it's fine it is so much more powerful than the competitors in this space especially the stuff that's embedded in tvs

And you have to go to the high-end competitors that are actually more aligned with the price of the Apple TV 4K in order to get them to be sort of comparable in that sense. So the hardware is fine. I don't care. The tvOS is perfectly functional, but as especially our friend of the show, Joe Rosensteil, has pointed out on numerous blog posts, and many other people have too, like Apple

What are they doing on the TVO side? It is like it's been abandoned. It really is. Maintenance mode is a good way to phrase it. I'm in the midst of trying these other devices. I've got a Fire TV high-end. I've got a high-end Google TV. I've got a high-end Roku. And I'll just tell you, first off, everybody's right.

Apple is the only box maker that's playing a game where they're not trying to sell you, you know, random commercial products and stuff like that. They market their own stuff, but like it is not the same. Everything else is a zero privacy, full of ads, kind of garbage, garbage can of stuff. Right. And Apple's hardware is better, but like their software stuff that is such a no brainer and has been a no brainer for years. I can't believe Eddie Q.

isn't angrier about the sports and live in general on Apple TV, on tvOS. Like there's so much. One of the fastest growing segments of streaming is fast, is free ad supported TV. It's streams. It's live channels of stuff with ads. And some services have live channels of stuff without ads too.

And Apple should build a live guide, right? That says, these are the sports that are on now. These are the apps you've got that have live channels. And these are the channels that are on. Several of Apple's competitors do this. Apple has done nothing for years. And it's stuff like that that really bothers me, that it feels like this is a product that is better than the competition, even though it's more expensive, because it provides a premium service.

experience in terms of not feeling like you're there's an ad around every corner and that all of your data is being shipped back and and diced up into little bits and sold to the highest bidder that's all true but

But it does feel like there's nobody driving it. There's no captain of the ship. There's no vision for where this thing is supposed to go. And how many years is TVSOS going to go by without a life guide? Because we're there now. Streaming is television now. And people want to watch things streaming live.

Plus they need to bury the hatchet with Netflix and whatever it takes that really hurts their platform. But like the live guide is such an obvious thing and it's just not there. They've added some things around the edges that tend to be things that are on other Apple platforms, but they've also added them to this Apple platform because why not? But like something that's a very Apple TV plus or sorry, very Apple TV specific is

has just not been given any attention. I don't understand it because it's... Here's the thing. For a product that nobody seems to care about at Apple, it's actually surprisingly good. Imagine how much better it could be if anybody showed it any attention, but it really doesn't feel like a product Apple cares about. And it's too bad because I use it every day. It is my entire window into television is the Apple TV product.

And it's actually pretty good, but it could be so much better. So I'll give it a three. It's really like giving, it's giving a student a good grade, but writing, see me on the paper so that you can tell them that you're disappointed that they're not applying themselves better.

Services is 3.5 out of 5, up from a 3.3 over a year over year. The summary is Apple services continues to be a mixed bag in 2024. Apple TV Plus remains a standout, consistently producing high quality content, though its film lineup still lags behind its strong TV series.

Apple Music saw improvements, but frustrations of its macOS client and Siri integration persist. The biggest recurring complaint remains iCloud storage. Apple's 5GB free tier is widely seen as inadequate and outdated. Apple's services ecosystem benefits from deep integration with its hardware, but few of its offerings are considered best in class, and many users feel they pay more for convenience than for excellence. While reliability is improved in areas like iCloud syncing, some Apple

Apple services feel stagnant or focused more on revenue generation than user experience. I gave this a four. I will actually echo. I didn't put this in, but I am reading this. I echo the five gigabyte free tier is terrible. I think I submitted this before I ended up having an issue with my mom's phone and needing to upgrade our storage and stuff. It's just, this is ridiculous. But for me, it's a four out of five just because the content that Apple TV plus produces is,

far exceeds my frustrations with other areas of Apple's services where I have them and I do have far less. I will say, I don't want to bag on the participants. There are things in here that people are mentioning that I literally never think about. Like reliability of iCloud syncing. Is this a thing we're still concerned about in 2024? Yeah.

I think you can see where some people just get attached to certain vibes and will not let them go. And that's just, you gotta just kind of shrug. It's hard. Weird to me. Like to see stuff like this. Yeah, but I just think it's like, it's just like, I remember feeling these things, but like, I don't feel them anymore. Yeah, but it's been so long since I felt any of those. Now, of course, do I have the occasional thing where like a folder sits there just spinning? Sure, but it's not like...

everybody has their own experience. This is odd to me, but yeah, Apple continues to make my favorite TV shows of the year, basically every year. And I just think that that is such a feat that they've managed to produce and like they're able to find, produce and program this content. And so for me, they get a high grade for that. Yeah. I mean, I,

I'll throw in a four. That's fine. Like I think TV plus is great. That's why they talk about it. That's why they talk about TV plus all the time. Like there's so many other things going on in services, but they talk about TV plus all the time because it is their most visible thing. And it is, uh, it has been very successful. I think creatively on the TV side, not so much on the movie side, but on the TV side, it's been really successful. Um,

And yeah, in other areas, like Lauren uses Fitness Plus and likes it. I haven't spent as much time with it, but I've heard from a lot of people who say News Plus is actually good now.

Who knew? Who knew? It's not for me. I have my newsreader instead, but maybe I should look at that. So I've heard more positive things about it. When I had two computers, I was using iCloud syncing for desktop and documents. And you know what? Worked fine. Occasionally there'd be something where I'd be like, why is this file not here? But you know what? That happens on Dropbox too.

Just sometimes. Mostly not. But sometimes it happens. But it happens on other cloud syncing services too. It's fine. And they've done some improvements there. So yeah, I think it's a pretty solid thing. And that's good because it's a huge part of their business now. It's like a quarter of their business. Hardware reliability. 4.6 and has remained a 4.6 and has been in that realm for like five years at this point. 4.5, 4.6.

Summary is Apple's hardware reliability in 2024 remained exceptionally strong with very few complaints or major issues reported. Many panelists noted that they had no significant hardware problems and some praised Apple's consistency in delivering high quality devices year after year. The transition to Apple Silicon has continued to pay off with users appreciating the improved performance and durability compared to older Intel based models.

While a few minor concerns were raised, such as Touch ID inconsistencies and the non-replaceability of certain components, the general consensus is that Apple is in a golden era of hardware reliability. I gave it a 5 out of 5 with zero comment because it just feels like there is no comment to be made, in my opinion, anymore. There has to be some kind of controversy for me for this to change each year. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. I give it a five. Apple's hardware prowess is not in doubt. No. Right? Like they've overcome the worst of it with the butterfly keyboard and things like that. There have been no gates. They're good at this. Yeah. I expect the thin phone, the unfolding phones to be their next potential issue, right? Like form factors that are new to them could be problematic, but we'll see.

But folding phones, I mean, they come with so many new issues that potentially existing iPhone users have not had to consider. And I'll be keen to see how that changes or not as Apple moves into new areas where these things scratch and bend and break. Yeah.

And Apple's operating system and apps. Okay. So this is a new category that's replacing an old category. So it previously was software reliability. Yeah. And I got some feedback that suggested the problem with that is what does that mean? How does it relate to the operating systems? How does it relate to all the apps Apple builds? And I thought, you know what, let's separate them. So instead of it being software reliability,

usability or reliability. I forget even what it was. That's out. I think it was software reliability. It was hardware reliability. Yeah. Or software quality is what it was. Software quality. Hardware reliability and software quality. Anyway, what if we just said...

Tell us your feelings about Apple's OS this year and about Apple's apps this year. And just left it at that. OS and apps. The perfect year to do it, in my opinion, to break this out. The summary was, so yeah, a 3.4 for the OS and a 3.5 for the apps. It's very in line with the previous 3.6, which was for the combined category. The software category. Yeah.

Summary. Apple's software quality in 2024 was a mixed bag. While macOS Sequoia and iOS 18 were mostly stable, long-standing bugs and usability frustrations persist. The biggest controversy was Apple intelligence. Many felt it was overhyped, underdelivered, and introduced new problems while failing to justify the trade-offs.

Some praised minor improvements like notification summaries in the new sports app, but others saw Apple's software design trending toward unnecessary complexity. Many users wish Apple would focus more on stability and polish rather than pushing new features annually. I am honestly super surprised that the OS scored 3.4. This to me feels like

Here's your Apple Intelligence category. I feel like I'm doing a report card on the report card people. Yeah, that's fine. This is where the Apple Intelligence stuff goes. Not in the iPhone category. Yeah, this is where I get...

And this is going to happen when I post this story where we're recording this just before I post it live. Yeah. I'm going to get so many people who are angry with things that are in the report card who are yelling at me about it. And it's like, that's why I don't vote. I, I am just reporting the news. I am not making it like I, I, you can be as mad at the pan at the panel as you want. I am not in there. And I agree with you. Um,

But I think this is the category where you got to hammer them on the bad rollout of Apple intelligence. Yep. Even understanding that they felt the pressure and they needed to do it. And they did. If they had, I think it would have been a real problem if they had come up at WWDC last year and not mentioned AI. Like, whoa, that would, that would have been bad. But the way it's rolled out has been a mess. I would have scored them badly for that. Not as badly as I did score them, which was a two out of five on the operating system. Yeah.

I agree. I gave the apps a four. I don't really have anything to say about the apps. The apps continue to be apps. They did that fun stuff with Final Cut Camera and all of that. The sports app, although it's got some bugs. That is what I expect. I love they're trying it. Every year. They're doing some good stuff with the apps. New apps or new features. You are the app platform. You need to be doing things. And so that's great. They get a four out of five. Great.

And you get a four out of five because none of the apps, these things you're mentioning, they're not my things. But I respect them for what they are, but you're not going to get a five out of me because I can't think of something that they came out with where I was like, this is mine. This is it. Yeah. So my comments on Apple Intelligence, it's a thorn in the side of Apple for the entire year, especially operating systems.

there are features that I like, but overall it's not good enough. And the sentiment is that it's not good enough. I like notification summaries because I accept them for what they are, but they are okay at best. And the fact that we haven't even gotten a full six months on these features and they've had to roll them back again. I mean, honestly, on notification summaries, we've got a couple of months and they had to...

They had to kind of like kneecap them to make them acceptable. And here he goes again. He's going to say the thing he said for the last year, basically. Image Playgrounds was a mistake. They should never have shipped it. It's a bad version of something that wasn't great to begin with. And they did it anyway. And it was a big mistake. Yep. I agree. I think we're in alignment on this one. You would say two for the operating system? Two and four. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, this one, I genuinely can't believe the scores in this category. Like, I don't... I do not understand. I don't understand. And my objections to Apple Intelligence are more about how they were implemented. Like, they slapped some stuff together that's really bad UI. Like, one of the commenters pointed out, like, have you used writing tools? And I have. And they're like...

What is this interface? Like, is this weird floating thing that you can't control? And there are several things like that where it's just like... And it's like inelegant, right? Where the text flashes away and flashes back again. It's like, you didn't even animate this. It's weird. Rushing in AI features is one thing that I understand.

But where you see it, the offense to me is not, oh, it's LLMs, they're bad. The offense to me is the areas where the...

UI is atrocious. Like they, they, and that was my, always my thought about new summaries is LLMs aren't the right way to do new summaries. There are, that is a problem in need of a solution. Tossing an LLM at it was not the solution, but that's what they did. And then in other areas like writing tools, the UI isn't very good. Ironically, Mike, ironically, the best UI work they did in the entirety of Apple intelligence is image playground. Yeah.

which Image Playground, they are trying to figure out how do we build an image builder that is not a chatbot? How do we build a UI on top of this? Like, yes, chatbots are dumb. We don't want chatbots. We want like interfaces for...

for we write like command line. We don't want it. We want like user interfaces where we can tap on stuff and pick stuff and all that. And they did that with image playground. It's not perfect, but like, I love that they tried that. That is like one of the most Apple-y things they did on a feature that I don't like. I do enjoy it for building in Genmoji too. So it's fine. But like some of these other things, yeah, it is. It's my favorite feature. But you know, for some things,

They're not that good. And that's what I want them to do is the whole purpose of Apple intelligence should be to bring powerful Apple intelligence features to users with the extra added care of Apple's commitment to a good user experience. And I didn't feel a lot of that with their initial implementations of Apple intelligence. I mean, I can see what has happened.

I make stuff too. I don't make what Apple makes, but I make stuff, right? Like they make stuff, I make stuff. There are times when I put things out, whether it's, you know, a podcast episode or whatever, you know, like we've done like a special episode. Oh, baby. And I'm like...

I didn't have the time to get this the way that I wanted. Like, you know, there is a, it doesn't sound the way that I wanted, or I wish I would have done a better job with this piece of music or like, you know, we're doing our special stuff. I was like, Oh, I wish I could have got a sound effect in there that I didn't want, but I didn't have the time. I got on the deadline. I got to get it. Yeah. I didn't. Right.

I had a thing come up and I missed an hour of research that I was going to do. And as a result, I don't sound as well informed about the subject. I didn't read that article, which I wanted to read, but life got in the way and I couldn't get it done. And now the episode's off us for it. But what am I going to do? It's got to be done. I get it.

But the same as for me, that I will often get, you know, often people will say like, oh, you missed this or this didn't sound so good or like, great example, the episode we did in Stephen's Podcabin in last September, right?

Me and you were off mic for basically the entire episode. It wasn't good enough. And the thing is, then I'm going to hear about it, right? Like for two weeks or a week, I'm going to hear about like this episode didn't sound good. I'm like, ah, but I tried. Like we were on a timeline. We tried to get together. We were having a good time. And it meant that we weren't focused in the way that we normally are. The episode didn't come together and I'm disappointed. Yeah.

So I know the feeling. And so I expect there are lots of people inside of Apple, they know this. They must know this because what they know is they didn't get the usual 12 to 18 to 24 months to work on their particular feature, right? Because different features are on different timelines. They had like three, six months, right? And so they ended up creating this set of features and they don't work the way that they should. But what are you going to do? But the problem is...

It doesn't work like that. Right? Like, it doesn't work like that. They are what they are. This is what it is. You're going to get criticized because it doesn't matter. You can understand. This is the thing that I definitely see that like, oh, you know, you don't make anything, which is not true. You don't do computers. So why can you complain about it? It's like, well, first off, that's not how it works.

people who, if a movie is targeted at people, human beings, human beings get to say whether they like the movie or not. It doesn't matter that they don't know how to make a movie. That's just how it works. This is how it works. So we can simultaneously understand how under the gun everybody at Apple was in terms of putting in Apple intelligence features and saying that a lot of them just aren't good enough. Both of those things are true. And I can be very understanding about it. I'm sorry, but,

I'm sorry. Please make them better and do better because they're not. A lot of them kind of let down Apple's users and Apple's reputation. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. You've heard me talk on the show about how much of your personal data could be out there on the internet for people to see and to use and how uncomfortable that can make you feel, how uncomfortable it makes me feel. I don't like the idea that my personal information could be out

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So we have developer relations, 2.4 down from three. This is the lowest score since 2015. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a new low in scoring, but it is maybe a new low in just the, it's been going down really since that. That was the moment, 16, 17. That's like when Phil Schiller took over the app store from Eddie Q and kind of like made some policy changes that were intended to be a little more developer friendly and

And, you know, then it plateaued for a little bit, but it is way down, way down. The vibe among the people who have feelings about Apple's relationship with its third-party developers is bad.

Summary. Perceptions about Apple's relationship with developers may have reached a new low in 2024. The company's aggressive responses to regulatory pressure, particularly in the EU with the Digital Markets Act, were widely criticized as hostile, manipulative, and profit-driven rather than user or developer-focused.

The rollout of third-party app stores and alternative payment options was seen as an exercise in malicious compliance designed to discourage participation rather than foster openness. Additionally, Vision Pro's weak app ecosystem highlighted the declining trust developers have in Apple's new platforms. While developers continue to build great apps, the ability to make a sustainable living on Apple's platforms is increasingly uncertain. I gave them a one out of five.

And basically my top line of this is this is one of the worst years that I've seen from Apple in a long time, if not the worst of any time that I've covered them professionally. And it stems to the DMA because they are showing their nastiness.

at its core. These are things that we believe about Apple and have said for many years. Going back to these 2015 times and even throughout the entire time. But their response to legislation that is supposed to make the lives of third-party developers better

is in my case, I think it's ridiculous. Using notarization as a way to stop apps from existing, which has seen them do, terrible. The core technology fee, egregious. Countless more dark spots that we have seen from them this year. And it's not even so much where we are now, it's what their initial plan was.

And they've had to bring it back. So you see that in an ideal world, what they want to do for you is nothing. That's what they want to do. We should never have gotten this far. Now we are here.

I think it's worse and I want them to give more, but I do not think they will now unless they're forced. The whole time you hope, like over time, right? Maybe they'll back down. Maybe this is the year where we get a press release a week before WWDC saying that they're cutting the fee down to 20%. You know, maybe this is the one. You know, I've got a little bit of hope.

But I think with the DMA this year, we have seen that the people making the decisions high up enough at Apple, when given the chance to change, would really prefer not to and would actually like to change worse. That's what we've seen this year.

Yeah, it's rough. I mean, I don't know what I'd give it, maybe a two, but like it's it's bad and everybody can read the quotes and the entire comments by people. But like Craig Hockenberry of the Icon Factory says Apple is blowing it with developers. Mark Arment says the relations remain needlessly strained.

Lots of citing of its approach to regulation. James Thompson said Apple should compete on merit and not threats. Paul Kafasa says they know what's right and refuse to do it because they want to protect every revenue source they have. It's absolutely true. That is the perfect way. Paul's put it in the perfect way, in my opinion. Yeah. I agree.

I know they know. And John Gruber said stagnation is catching up to Apple. More of the same is just making matters worse, which is also true. And I have a section in there about the Vision Pro because here's the thing. A lot of them point this out, and I think it's worth pointing out that one of the reasons there was no developer adoption really to speak of of the Vision Pro is because Apple seems to be approaching it as the way that it happened with the iPad so long ago, which is people just...

love our platforms and love developing for us. And they know that when they develop for our platforms, they're going to make money. We're going to make money. Everybody's going to be happy. And then you get a platform like Vision Pro where they're not going to sell very many of these. It's going to be ages before anybody really makes back their investment on writing software for the Vision Pro. And Apple makes very little effort to

To bring people to the, the vision pro feeling like they don't need to. And it's very clear that they do. And that, that the vision pros lack, like people aren't developing for vision pro because they just love developing for Apple's platforms. And they're having such a great time and there's such a great relationship with Apple that they want to throw in on a new Apple platform, even though it doesn't really make sense financially right now. Cause like,

All of those good vibes that were there for like the Apple watch and the Apple TV in earlier days, the good vibes are gone. And this is where we're left. And that's why you can point at things like vision. It's like, really, why should we treat, treat developers better? And you look at the vision pro and, and one of the things you have to point to is that's why, like, that's why you need to maintain good relationships with your developers. Do you want them to embrace your new platforms? Yeah.

They go together. So, yeah, it's bad. It's bad and it's all Apple's fault. They've chosen this path. They know what they're doing. They know. And people inside Apple know too, but it doesn't matter. The people who have the

uh, the power don't care. They, they, they have other priorities and they've decided. And I, I would argue that yes, making money is a priority. It has to be, I get it, but you make a lot of money and you are harming other aspects of your business by doing this. And that's, that's a classic penny wise pound foolish kind of thing going on. And finally, world impact, which is 3.1 down from a 3.8. Yeah.

Yes. Formerly Apple environmental, social, like it was always the Rorschach test category of like, I always viewed it as being, so I changed it to Apple's impact in the world. Um, it really is. Apple talks a good game about how they want to make the world a better place and leave it better than they found it and do all of these things. And, and this is the fill in the blank. Everybody has a different interpretation of it, but it's the, um,

How do you think Apple's doing in terms of living up to its stated goals and philosophies and all of that?

The summary is,

Tim Cook's $1 million donation to his inauguration sparked outrage and disappointment. Apple's growing reliance on AI raises concerns about its environmental impact and ethical stance, while its business operations in China remain a persistent point of contention. I went with a three here.

Which is just like, I don't know how to score it. So this is how I feel, though. I think carbon neutral products are great. And I am happy that they're able to do this more and more. I think that is like, and that gets you kind of like a baseline because it's like they are putting back into the world what they're taking from it. Like that's the goal. And I think that that is great. So they leave their impact there. But I dropped an Arrested History reference that said the storm clouds are swirling.

Yes, they are. We love a storm cloud here at the Upgrade Program. It goes from AI to legislation and everything else. For me, this is my case as it has been forever. Apple is too big and too complicated to be a pure force for good business.

in the world. And I think if you believed that, you have been fooling yourself for too long. And so that's kind of where I feel on a lot of these things. And I submitted this before the Tim Cook donation, but realistically, I don't think it would have changed my score because it comes back to just

I don't expect different. Should I? Maybe. Would it be great? Yes. But I don't expect different. I want different. I would love different, but I don't expect it. Because again, they're too big and they're too complicated and they're not going to be

a pure force for good and i know this because i've spent years covering this company and watching them become more complicated see my previous right i think it is easier for me to score the developer portion because that just feels easy right it's like yeah they've been bad to developers but here it's like okay i don't like that donation but does that undo the carbon neutrality

I can't say that it does. It's too complicated. This is too big. So it's like, okay, you get a three from me. Like, I don't know what else to do for you. The way I'll put it, and I agree, a three seems about right to me, is Apple is an enormous, publicly held, profit-driven corporation.

They're not a charity. They're not a religion. They're not a nonprofit. They're not a, you know, they're not any of those things. They're essentially a country. A capitalist, profit-driven, investor-driven corporation, global in scope, larger than countries. Do they have ideals that they try to live up to? They do. Do they do a better job

Have they set better goals for themselves and have tried harder to meet those goals than other similar corporations? I believe they do. Does that mean, as you said, are they able to always live up to all aspects of what people would wish they would behave as? No, because they are too big and too complicated.

And are a profit driven corporation, right? That's just what they are. And Tim Cook given a million dollars to the Trump inauguration, like we all know why he did that. You know, he did that. He did that one. So Apple didn't. And two, because he knows that he's going to be navigating Apple through at least four years of an administration that requires gestures of fealty.

to get what they want. And in the end, Tim Cook came up as the CEO of said enormous profit-seeking corporation, cannot cut off his nose to spite his face. He can't. He just can't. And that's just the truth. And people who want to hold him up to higher levels of ideal, I get it. And Tim Cook...

Look, does anybody think Tim Cook was happy to make that donation? I don't think so. But that's how the game is played. We don't have to like the game.

And we could say, well, he should have just taken his ball and gone home. Well, I mean, he could have, but that would have either hurt Apple or they would have replaced him with somebody else who would do the same thing. And I think that's just like you got to take the blinders off a little bit about what Apple really is. And I think that Apple talks a good game and mostly walks a good game, but they're still what they are, which is bad.

giant corporation, giant, you know, giant faceless generator of money for investors. That is, and you know, you can love the products, but never forget that. Yeah, it's like if you...

Find yourself being surprised you have a bad taste in your mouth. Use this as an opportunity to recalibrate your thinking about what they should be. I just feel like I've been down in the trenches for too long. My thinking has been recalibrated a long time ago. That's the thing for me. I've been covering Apple as a subject for so long now that I am legitimately taken aback when I see somebody...

And there was a lot of this after the Tim Cook donation. And I understand it. Oh, no, but just let me finish this. Sorry, sorry. I am taken aback when I see somebody write about that. And it's very clear that they are coming from the perspective of being a fan of the company and thinking about it in these terms like you're a fan of a sports team, which, by the way, same deal. People who own and run the sports teams are also not great. Yeah.

Because it's been so long since I've been that. I've been a fan of the products. I do this because I have used and loved Apple products over the years and continue to do so. But boy, you cover a company, a corporation for long enough. And you, first off, you get to know the people and they're often great people, sometimes not, but often great people who work at that corporation.

But the corporation does what it does. And, you know, you have to very quickly realize that the corporation is a vast money-making machine. And that's what it is. And I think that maybe the last year has helped us

Some people go through that process of saying, oh, right. This is I need to recalibrate how I view Apple and my relationship to Apple, because I don't think you should be a fan of the corporation. I don't think you should be. But you can still love the products and how they impact on your life and want them to be better and be excited when they're good. But that's not you don't have to be a fan of the corporation, because as Mike put it, Apple is too big and too complicated for that at this point.

So just as a quick wrap up to the report card, the biggest swings were the iPad gained 1.1 over its previous year and world impact and developer relations lost 0.7 and 0.6 respectively. They were the biggest swings of the year, but people should go see these charts on Six Colors. They should go to Six Colors and see the charts. Yeah, we'll put a link in the show notes. You can see it all.

As the perfect coder to this discussion, Jason, why don't you play me a little piece of music? Money, money, money, money, who has all the money? It's Apple.

They sure do. They have all the money. Thank you to Lex Freeman, Lex.Games for creating the forever jingle. Now that will be part of the Apple earnings discussion. Who has all the money. The great thing is that these earnings were really boring, which is good because I want to rush through them because this has been a long episode.

Revenue, $124.3 billion, which is up 4% year over year. It is the largest revenue quarter in Apple's history, which is funny. It's a long time record. It's funny to say that and then also say it's boring, but there just aren't as many stories here as there are usually, I feel like. Yeah. I mean, sort of. $36.3 billion in profit. The Mac was at $9 billion, up 16%.

iPad is 8.1% up 15%. The iPhone is at 69. Good to release new iPads. Yeah, it sure is. The iPhone's at 69.1% down 1% year over year. Services is at 26.3% up 14%.

Wearables, home and accessories is 11.7% down 2% year over year. China revenue is down 11% year over year. And I'll give a quote. This is from 9to5Mac. Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC's Steve Kovach that the iPhone sales were stronger in countries where Apple intelligence is available. Currently, the software is only available in a handful of English-speaking countries and it isn't available in China or in Chinese. To me...

That feels like a convenient excuse. Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. Dan, Morin, and I did a live stream afterward, and this came up there, and we were both kind of chuckling. I was like, well, I mean, there are countries that have Apple intelligence rollouts, and you could say that the iPhone sold better there, and then you could ascribe that to being Apple intelligence related. But if what you're really covering up is that you had one market that was bad, which was China, one way to cover it out –

is to say, well, you know, it didn't have Apple intelligence. That's why it was bad. And therefore all the places where we did have Apple intelligence, we did better. I think it's, it's a smokescreen and that, you know, they just are, they had a big miss in China. China's are, China's a really competitive market. I think that, that the era of Apple, um, being, you know, really bullish about its huge place in, in China, I think is over. They are still competitive in China, but

It's going to be the hardest market for them. And that's just going to be it going forward. I think that they'll make money in China, but it's not going to be like it was. They're just, you know, they're fitting into... We've seen this pattern from them. They make money in China when they make a significant change to the phone. That's when you know they're going to make money in China. And do you know what they did this year? They didn't make significant changes to the phone. And if they bring out this...

like the iPhone 17 Air, then maybe we get a folding phone the year after that. They're going to make money in China. Like this is something we have seen time and time again, that like they see the biggest swings there when they have something that people can show as a status object, which seems to be, I think it's important everywhere, but has been said. And so I'm repeating it. I don't know this is true because I do not personally understand Chinese culture, but it is said that

being able to show newness and wealth and change is beneficial there. And so people like to buy those things to show status. I think it's beneficial everywhere, but I think there may be something particular about the Chinese market that magnifies it even more. I've heard that, and so I'll repeat it, but I don't know. I mean, the thing is, uh,

It's up in places. I think it's great in a way for Apple's business that they were able to record the largest revenue quarter with a down year-over-year iPhone, even though it was only down 1%. That does mean that the slack was picked up by the other products, which is...

I mean, that's the whole reason you have a product mix. Yeah. Services, iPad and Mac were both up double digits. They're both up about 15%. And that enabled the 56% of their business this quarter, which was iPhone revenue to be down a little and still sell, set the record, which is great. That's the point. And, and I will say, so calling, calling the China Apple intelligence thing, a smoke screen. I will back that up by saying, I will give them credit.

A lot of people at Wall Street are like freaking out about whenever there's anything that's not like up, like iPhone revenue is not up. Oh, no. I bet if you take China out of the equation, iPhone revenue is up. Right. Like I bet it. I bet it is. Oh, I bet it actually is. I mean, but I don't think it's the AI that did it. I don't think it's AI that did it. No, no, I don't think so. I think it's larger issues. I think it's all the competition they've got in China and there's a lot of it.

And I think there's a general feeling that, that there's more of a desire for things that are Chinese made than there was when Apple was selling a lot of iPhones. China is what their first or second largest market, probably first largest market for like pure revenue. I don't know the answer to that. Right. But like, it's, it's gotta be way up there. Top three will say any of those markets down 11% year over year, you're going to see it in the, in the top line number. You're going to see it. Like if, if Apple was down in America, 11% year over year, you'd see it. It,

it would show, right? Yeah. For the record, Apple's largest market is the Americas, followed by Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Then China...

And then rest of Asia Pacific and Japan. Yeah. That's how they break it out. But it's a major, it is. EMEA is like basically the rest of the world. You know, like it's too big. It is. It is rest of world other than Asia Pacific, Japan. But yes, it is. But just to give you an idea, the China number in revenue is like about, I don't know, $13 billion.

And the EMEA number is like $23 billion, and the Americas number is like $44 billion. But China on its own is like 10% of Apple's overall revenue, which is huge. That is a huge chunk. They're very reliant on it. Any amount that goes down, you lose 11% of 10%, you can see it. It's a lot of money, right? Sure.

Yeah. All right. Well, look, this is what it is. I mean, congratulations to Apple. Honestly, I didn't think this was going to happen. I didn't think they would break records this year, personally, because I just didn't think the iPhone was going to do it. I was right in that regard. The iPhone didn't do it this year. Like, it didn't do the leap. But I did not count for the fact that the Mac and the iPad were going to be so successful. I did not count for that. I am surprised about the Mac getting 16% year over year. Like,

I don't feel like there has been a blockbuster product.

Well, no, M4, MacBook Pros, Mac Mini. Yeah, I mean, those are, I guess it's the accumulation of all of those things, isn't it, that has done that? Mac is still humming along. M3 MacBook Air is going to be a great seller. You put new MacBook Pros out there with the M4, I think that they sold a lot of those and that generates a lot of revenue and a lot of profit because they're more expensive. And then the Mac Mini, I think, kicked off an upgrade cycle as well. But wasn't there M3 MacBook Pros last year?

Yeah. That's what I mean of like, what is it that jumped them 15% more over last year's figures? But like, I guess there was just more stuff. Two things. The Mac Mini and the fact that it's been another year since the Apple Silicon transition. So you're going to get more people to make the transition to a new M4 from like an M1 or M2. If you're a purchaser...

the base models being more attractive would mean that this might be a year. That also helps. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, there you go. Uh, we don't have time for us to upgrade this week because otherwise we will be here until Tuesday. Um, until next Monday. So I hope you've enjoyed this, this big episode. I've actually, I will just say I've really enjoyed this episode of upgrade. Jason, thank you for doing the report card for giving us such a great episode to do. I'm very thankful for it. So thank you for that. Uh,

But you should send in your Ask Upgrade questions. Please go to upgradefeedback.com. I mean, bear in mind, I'm only here for a few more weeks. You've got questions you want to ask me, you've got a closing window and I'm going to be gone for a long time. So go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send those in. Thank you to our members who support us for Upgrade Plus this week. I want to ask you a little bit about how you put the report card together this year because obviously there's a lot that goes into it. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up and support the show and get extra content and no ads.

You can always find us on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast if you'd like to see how we look while we record. We're out there for you. Thank you to our sponsors of this week's episode. That is Delete Me, Fitbod, and Squarespace. But most of all, as always, thank you for listening, and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.