From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 563 for May 12th, 2025. Today's show is brought to you by FitBard, Factor, and Ecamm. My name is Mike Hurley, and I have the pleasure, as always, of being joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason.

Hello, Mike Hurley. It is a pleasure as always to join you. Weather's nice here in London right now. We don't have time for that. Okay, let's get to a Snow Talk question. Comes in from Jerry who wants to know, do events go in your calendar in title case or sentence case? Or are you one of those, I don't know, all lowercase people? Or a chaos person? Um...

Okay, so this is a style guide question, which is great. What a way to start the show. It's a style guide. Well, we just onboarded a new Six Colors writer, Glenn Fleischman, who's going to be writing a help column for us over at Six Colors. You can actually just email glenn at sixcolors.com with your questions, and maybe I'll answer them on the website. I'll put a link in the show notes to the post where you talk all about it.

Yeah. And one of his questions for me was title case related and style guide related. And I had that moment where I was like, OK, honestly, the style guide doesn't exist. And we kind of make it up as we go. And I generally just do it the way that I think I like it. And I probably should come up with a style guide at some point. I ended up doing a Google search to see how we've used it in the past, sort of a retroactive style guide.

And one of the things that I realized is his first post was in title case, which is that you are capitalizing most but not all words in the headline. And for those who don't know, that is a thing that we don't do on Six Colors. We actually do our headlines in down style or sentence case where you only would capitalize the first word and proper names on.

and titles and product names and things like that, but not every word. We live in an era where the President of the United States posts things typed himself and they're randomly capitalized. So... President case. It's... You need a random number generator for that. Anyway, I...

So this is all a thing that most people don't care about, but the people who do care about it care about it a great deal. And a lot of times they're the ones involved in making the thing. You may not even notice it. I also had to admit to Glenn that the Incomparables podcast titles, as Relay's podcast titles, are in title case. But Six Colors is in sentence case. Why? I mean, I have some reasons, but they're not interesting. Does it bother you that you thought of that? Like when you realized this, was there any part of you that was bothered by it?

The truth is, I don't mind TitleCase on podcast episodes because it's the episode of a podcast. On headlines, I always thought it was a little bit much, which is why I decided after years of doing it at Macworld that Six Colors wasn't going to do it. I guess the funny thing, though, is that even though you use TitleCase, the incomparable website publishes all titles in full all caps.

It's true. That's a design. It's a CSS thing, but they're all there in title case and when they show up in your podcast player. When they're in the podcast app, they show up. Yeah. Exactly, which is the most important thing. So two events, Jerry, two events.

Levels, Jerry. Levels, Jerry. There's levels to the text. I'm a pretty random capitalizer when I'm sending things off that don't matter. So when I looked at my calendar today, what I found is that I had some events in all lowercase. I had some events that were in title case and I had some events that were in sentence case. I think generally, if I'm not being lazy with the shift key...

Everything is in sentence case. Let me tell you, actually, I'm going to out Jason Snell here. I'm going to out Jason Snell. I am often quite surprised at how often you write in all lowercase. Like in a show document and stuff. Yep. Very often. Because I don't care. I'm going in and changing it.

Yeah, because I don't care. Because a lot of it is I'm trying to dash something off to get it down and it's not for public consumption and so I don't care. I do that a lot. In fact, my email sign-off, my email signature is generally my name in lowercase. So, yeah, that is a thing.

But that is when I don't care. But I think that if I look at my calendar, actually, some of the title case stuff is technically like the title of a thing. So it is there for a reason, but it's not, again, it's only for me. And so I honestly, I really don't care. I know there are people who know a lot about style, who care about it in all their works.

And then there are people like me who know about it and try to care about it in public-facing things. But for private things, I do not care at all. And as I just detailed, even for the public-facing things, I don't care.

don't care enough. So that's there. Yeah. I am an internalized title caser, especially when it comes for lots of things with events. Like I don't even know I'm doing it, but it happens. Right. So like I like it. I actually tend to over title case some stuff where because there are certain words, I guess like adjoining words where you don't do it. I actually use an app on the Mac called Pop Clip.

which PopClip is an app where you can highlight text and do things with that text.

And it shows up basically like the cut, copy, paste menu above text when you select it like you get on the iPhone. And one of the pop clip things that I do is I can copy the text and a little T appears above it. And if I press that T, it turns it into title case. So I do that for like the podcast titles because Stephen would be really mad if I didn't title case them correctly.

And I don't like it when Steven or anybody goes in and changes anything on my episodes after I post them. So I just try and make sure that that doesn't happen. So no one has to worry about going in and doing that. And so I have that app. But anyway, I also have shared calendars of people who don't do that. So that's upsetting to me when I have events that are in the lowercase, but there's nothing I can do about it because it's not my event. I'm not going to go in and change the title of somebody else's event.

This was a very fun question from Jerry. So thank you for sending this in. If you'd like to send in a question of your own, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in your own Snow Talk question. We were just talking about Six Colors business and Glenn, who's writing the Six Colors. I want to do a follow-out and give a shout-out to a friend of the show, Dan Morin, for his amazing run on Jeopardy last week, which was very fun. Congratulations to Dan.

Yeah, he's now matched Glenn in some ways and surpassed him in others, which is really fun. Oh, interesting. And so we got some Jeopardy champions in the Six Colors area. That's pretty cool. Very cool. And I really enjoyed, one,

uh people who know about Jeopardy appreciating what Dan did to people Americans who do not watch Jeopardy being fascinated to react like I was fascinated to watch them react to what Jeopardy is um

And then three for non-Americans to react to Jeopardy. Because again, it is a very specific thing that I'm so used to. And seeing all of these things like, if he wins, does he come back tomorrow? I was like, yes. It is a really weird quiz show. It's weird. And it's fast. And that's the other thing that people kept saying. It's like the pace is so fast. I'm like, yeah, it is. It's real fast. I have a question. Yes.

Did he does Dan get to keep all that money like the money that you made even though he lost is it like is that Dan's money?

That's Dan's money. Congratulations, Dan. I have it on good authority that before they were supposed to squeal about it, that a person in Dan's family squealed to a friend of Dan's and said, Dan made a lot of money. Dan made a lot of money. I'm very proud of him. He did a good job. But that person's not a Jeopardy fan, so they didn't understand quite how it works. Whereas I knew that he went out there for two taping days and...

And day two, he was at Disneyland, which means that he didn't make it to day two. And that meant he was on on day one. And I know that they tape, again, it's these levels. I know that they tape Monday to Friday on a day. They tape five episodes on a day. And so if Dan was at Disneyland on Tuesday, that meant that he was on, but he didn't get to Monday.

Yeah. He only got through Friday. Right. I didn't know if he won or if he was just out in one. But after he won a couple, which he did, it got to Friday. And I was like, well, he's not winning this one because he went to Disneyland the next day. So I know that about it. But we put it all together. And the answer is yes, he made that money. Amazing. I believe that various governments take it right off the top.

the U.S. and the state of California. And according to Glenn, you then fill out a form if you're not a California resident and say, actually, that's my money. And then they give it back to you.

So, but yeah, that's pretty good. And I am looking forward to how he handles his annual post that he does on his own personal blog about how much money he makes from tech journalism and how much money he makes from book, you know, novel writing and all of that. And now he's got this game, this, you know, one time presumably, who knows, game show income stream. Also, Jeopardy does a post season where they have past championships

come and play again. So he may come back and play again and have a chance to win more money, which is also pretty cool. So I couldn't be prouder. Also, for those who don't know, two years ago, I, I,

I tried out for Jeopardy for the first time using their quiz. A week later, they had me do the retake where they make sure that it's proxy basically so that you weren't cheating. A week later, I had an in-person Zoom audition with a whole bunch of people and they said, okay, for the next year and a half, basically, you just have to wait by the phone and we'll call you if we're interested. And I was like,

I told this to Dan. It was really sad because Dan had been trying to be on Jeopardy for 10 years and he'd never gotten any of those points. And I felt really bad because I thought I was going to just zoom right into Jeopardy contested hood. And Dan was Dan was not. And then what happened is they never called me. They're extenuating circumstances, but also probably they didn't want me. But then Dan just did it. And the same thing happened. Boop, boop, boop. And he got on, which is awesome. So I don't feel I don't feel guilty at all now.

now that Dan is a Jeopardy champion. Yeah. So, yeah. That's so good. So good. It was so fun to watch. Don't ask me how I saw it. Just ways. Screeners. The end of the first episode when he finds out he won, I got tear in my eye. I don't know if I've ever seen a man so happy, to be honest. It was amazing. Congratulations, Dan. We're really proud of you. And I think it's so cool. All right. We've got some follow-up.

Okay, so we've got some questions and some stuff, and obviously there's a big lawyer up segment again today because lots of things have continued to happen in the world of legal proceedings over the last week. But first comes from Matthias who asks, given the last couple of weeks, how do you think Apple will handle the messaging of WWDC this year? Is there anything you think that they should do? So we're like less than a month away at this point.

WWDC is obviously the developers conference. I know. There is typically and has typically been in the past some kind of feel good developer video, that kind of stuff. What do you think is the right way to handle it this year? I think they'll do what they always do, which is the people involved in making WWDC

are people who their job is developer relations. And they're the ones who care about developers. They're the ones who care about developers. So the messaging is going to be the same, which is you're very important to us. It's going to be the same. And I know that Apple is proud enough

That it seems extremely unlikely that we're going to get any kind of profession of guilt for prior bad behavior. Yeah. Do what do I think they should do? Well, the thing is, I don't think they should handle the messaging different.

I think they need to change their policies. And we can talk about that more in Lawyer Up again. We can talk about that elsewhere. But I think this is the problem is Apple has a developer relations team that cares a lot about developers. There are a lot of people in internal Apple generally who care about developers who probably think that developers are being mistreated by policy. But the people handling the policies...

Mm-hmm.

So this is very similar to that, which is there are the people who really care and then there are the people in charge of policy. And of course, people who really care are not holding a fiduciary responsibility for the company, yada, yada, yada. I get the differences. I'm not trying to be naive here, but I do want to say that is there anything I think they should do is change their policies toward developers?

so that their messaging doesn't fall flat. And that's not a messaging problem. It's a policy problem. Yeah, I agree. I think that we should get one of those, which has been in the past, one week before WWDC, press release, interviews, here's how we're approaching. We're changing the rules! Yeah, we're changing the rules in some way. And again, I feel like I'm harshing them, and I don't know how my opinion comes across sometimes. I think they should get, I think Apple should get something, but

but it shouldn't be the 30% is my feeling. It's like the ideal. They should get something and they should also offer more to developers for the right to take that something, I think. But they're appealing right now. And so they're not going to say anything or do anything, right? Because as far as they're still fighting this, they're still fighting City Hall, right? I mean, that's what's happening. The appeal, I don't think that appeal and it has to stay the same have to be the same thing. Like,

I think ultimately what Apple is appealing, or I would assume that they're appealing, is their ability to make their own rules. Because the issue they have right now is their ability to create policy in this area has been taken away from them.

And so they can't really make any changes unless this gets appealed, I would assume. Exactly. So, I mean, there's nothing they can announce that they could enact in the U.S. because they're under a court order to do it the way that they're doing it now in the U.S., which is nothing, essentially.

The only thing would be if they decided that this would if there was a real reversal inside Apple where culturally they're like, oh, we really messed this up. We need to change. We need to change everything we do about this. They could announce that everywhere outside the U.S. or maybe the U.S. and the EU, they had a whole new system of rules that they were putting into place. But again, probably not a month earlier.

Since the court ruling, right? Like it's probably just not going to happen. So, you know, that's what what I think they should do is change the way they walk the walk and that will allow them to talk the talk.

But I do not during the actual presentation itself. Like Apple can do whatever, developer evangelists should do everything that they're going to do and in my opinion should work even harder than ever this year. Sorry it wasn't your fault, but you've got to work hard this year, I think, if you want to try and convince developers that you care about them. What I don't want to see from Apple is one of those feel-good developer videos about like

how great it is to be an Apple developer and how much they care because it will fall big time flat. And I feel like if they do that, they have absolutely missed the mark. Like it is not the time right now to be like, we love our developers, we care about our developers, because even if you do, it's just not going to land and it's going to be taken poorly. So I'll be very intrigued to see what they do.

David writes in and asks and says, where was Apple's corporate and external counsel when they were trying to figure out how to comply with the court order? If they've been part of the discussion, presumably the conversation wouldn't be discoverable either. I get that lots of companies try to hide behind attorney-client privilege, but figuring out how to comply with a court order seems pretty clearly to be on the fair side of why you talk to an attorney for advice. This is a good point. This is a similar point that John Voorhees made on a great episode of App Stories, and

The question that I have that I wonder about is, ultimately, does the counsel serve the CEO? If the CEO decides this is what we're going to do, is it the lawyer to just work it out, even if they can ignore the advice? Corporate counsel, I assume that the way that this works, I think this is a great question, because a lot of people are like, where is the lawyer? Where are the lawyers in all of this? But the thing is,

I'm pretty sure that Apple's high-level strategy meetings don't have the lawyers in them. So what's probably happened is they've asked the lawyers for their opinions. And so that means two things. One, you're a lawyer working for Apple, and Phil Schiller says, I think we need to comply. And there are probably lawyers who are like, well, we can do that. That will eliminate all sorts of risk if we comply fully with this.

And then there are people like Luca Maestri and presumably Tim Cook who are like, but we don't have to, right? Like, this is arguable, right? We could act in this other way and it could be perceived as being. And the lawyer can say, well, I can make the argument that this is perceived as being following the judge's orders. But, you know, also I have to advise you that it's a riskier path because the judge...

If the judge isn't happy, the judge can just do whatever she wants and we have to follow her order because she will find us in contempt. So you're walking a line there. But as a lawyer, I can argue. And again, the corporate counsel could even say, look, we think it's a riskier move. They're not going to say, look, we can see the future. And if you do this, you're in big trouble. They're going to say, look, we think this is a riskier path.

But if you're concerned about the revenue implications here, you can try it. And probably what they did in terms of the final policies that they enabled or that they enacted were probably guided by

the council saying, you need to do this, you need to do this. Because remember, they were abiding by the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law. Well, that is something you look to your corporate council to do is, does this abide by the letter of the judge's ruling? I'm sure, though, somewhere in there, they said, this is a much riskier path. And in the end,

You know, that's Tim Cook's call. That's the, you could, you know, the attorney is going to not say, absolutely not. You just have to give away all this money. Like Phil says, the attorney is going to provide a range of options and what the fallout might be. And in the end, I mean, I don't, I love this question, but in the end, it comes back to the same answer, which is there are people who are making it very clear what the potential fallout of this is.

And Tim Cook chose to push it to the max and take the risk. Yeah, I figure it's like you say, right, that the lawyer can advise, they can go decide, they'll come back and tell the lawyer and then it's the lawyer's job to try and get it past the judge.

Ultimately, yeah, you're going to look at Project Wisconsin or Project Michigan or whatever it is and make sure that it ticks all the boxes in, as we all saw, the least helpful way possible, but that it ticks them so we can argue that we complied with the judge's ruling. And that ends up being the rule, because really how much to comply is a policy decision. It's not a legal decision. You're just using legal advice. But I'm sure somebody said you risk complying.

the judge being unhappy with you and they were okay with that risk. Yep. And here we are. Finally, the great news. I think the studio has been renewed for season two. This show is an absolute triumph. I won't spoil it, but the final episode of the season is incredible. It's just incredible. It feels like Seth Rogen cashed in every favor he possibly had in Hollywood and put together an episode. It's incredible.

astoundingly good. I love this show and I'm so happy that they're bringing it back. Fantastic show.

I was traveling last week, so I have been... I'm now behind. I'm like way behind on everything. And there's more coming too. Murderbot comes out this week on TV+. Yeah, I'm intrigued about that one. Which I'm really looking forward to. I'm intrigued about that one. The stories are so good. Okay. And the trailer suggests that they've gotten the tone right. So I highly... That it's funny. It's a sci-fi...

uh thing that's got action in it but it's also very funny and is about people and specifically about this this uh non-person the murder bot who does not deal well with humans it's great it's so good so i i have high hopes for the tv show i'm also still enjoying your friends and neighbors that's also really good but the thing that i'm interested in here like i find interesting i should say here is it feels like they've got the programming right

We're HBO in this. They're rolling it too. They're HBO in it not only in the quality way but in the fact that Severance ended the same week the studio started. Murderbot is starting the same week the studio is ending. They've got enough content now back after the strikes and all that that they are rolling it out. There's always something to watch on TV+. Yeah. It's really smart. You have concurrent things going on but you

but you feel like you've got... Like the HBO model, right? You know you've got this one show that is going to be really good, so you wait until the current really good show's over, and then you slot it in its place. That's right. It's a risky thing to do, right? Because you're kind of like potentially then holding off the next big hit if this one doesn't land. But if you're confident in it, and you play it out, then great. But yeah, I mean... Yeah, so I think they're doing good right now. I think Severance set them up well, and...

They've capitalized on it. I feel like if you're paying attention to Apple TV Plus right now, you will want to stay subscribed. And that has been their exact problem for the last four years or whatever, right? They have a good show and then people leave. And Severance got people in again. So let's see if they can hold on to it.

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Just a top-level thing. Any more reflections from you about the 30% situation is the best way I can kind of encapsulate this over the last week? Somebody said it should have been called the 30% solution because it's Sherlock Holmes reference. It's very good. It's a sweet solution. You know, it is. It's a really sweet solution. Very sweet. You know, I don't know. It is... We're just in a weird place right now where...

In some ways, this is the culmination of a lot of conversations we've had over years and that this is in some ways I felt weirdly validated by that judge's ruling because I felt that a judge who does not spend her entire career paying attention to Apple and its policies dug into this situation and

And essentially said what we've been saying, which is this isn't the problem here is not you protecting your intellectual property. The problem here is that you refuse to compete and you want to capture everything that happens on your platforms and capture all the revenue out of it, even if you're being hostile to your developer partners and to your users. Because the thing about...

I know it's in our list here, but I'll mention it now. One of the things that happened here is Amazon added a get book button to the Kindle app. And while we're talking about a lot of the conversation, and we're going to have it now, a lot of the conversation is about Apple potentially losing revenue by not having all that stuff captured. But Apple never got any revenue from Amazon for Kindle books. Right.

They never did because it never made sense. It was never something you could do because of the way that the book selling model works. Apple taking its cut literally meant that Amazon lost money on every book sale in the iPhone. So this is actually a really great example of one of the other things that happens here, which is Apple did a consumer hostile thing, made it hard to buy books. The most logical place to buy a book if you're a Kindle reader is in the Kindle app.

And you just couldn't. And why not? Apple policy. And Apple wasn't even making money. Apple was just making it hard on Amazon and Amazon's customers on iOS. It was decreasing the quality of the user experience on the iPhone because it made a blanket policy. We could argue because it started its own bookstore where it didn't need a middleman. So that is, I think, a really great example of how this is more than just Apple policy.

choosing to try and capture as much money as it could. It's also about Apple degrading the user experience in order to keep its policies up. And I would say contrary to what Apple's product philosophy is supposed to be. So that's part of it. The other thought that I've been having, and I want to know if you've got any too, but I'll throw one more out there that I've been having for the last week.

As I listen to lots of people talk about this and write about that, you know, all of that is going on. The one thing that I didn't say last week that I wanted to say here is the 30 percent. Right. Like Apple's argument is, oh, you've treated our intellectual property as worth nothing. And that's why it's an unconstitutional taking. And this should be overturned and all of that.

I would argue that you could say that the $99 developer fee is you recouping your intellectual property and that maybe the answer is you should charge a bigger fee to be an Apple developer and do it that way. Maybe that's a way you could do it because in the old days, it was $1,000 a year to be an Apple developer.

But they lowered it in part because they had this tax that they did on all the transactions, which is great. And maybe that's the answer is that there's a small business and student and nonprofit fee that's or is waived and there's a more expensive thing. I don't think it's going to solve this problem, but I do think it's them recouping their money on their intellectual property and their APIs and all of that. What I kept thinking all week, though, is why 30%?

Why 30%? It's only 30% because Steve Jobs set it at 30% in the early days when everybody looked at the 30% and was like, well, I mean, it is pretty full service and that's not a bad deal. And people didn't really realize kind of like how it went. And because it was set there, they've kept it there. But for a lot of the people who are like, who are saying Apple, and there aren't that many, honestly, which is nice saying, oh, Apple is the victim here. I'll just say the reason that I don't feel like Apple's argument is very strong is

is why 30%? Why not 70%? Why not 80%? Why not 90%? What's stopping Apple from charging whatever it wants? Because there's no competition.

So it's only 30% because they started at 30%. If they started at 50%, it would be 50%. If they started at 80%, it would be 80%. And that's the problem, is that it's not a reasonable amount in any circumstance for them to do this. It's not. And the issue is competition. The issue is competition and the degradation of the user experience. Those are my two kind of things that I've been thinking for the last week. Yeah, I mean, I think we're basically around the same area. I...

I think in general, it's validating because I feel like we have been on this hobby horse for a long time. Yeah, it's nice that a professional agreed with us. Yes, like it just didn't feel right. Like it just didn't feel right, you know. And I've felt very strongly for, you know, where I kind of, I feel very strongly that I sit in these two kind of different camps where I kind of feel that like,

To a degree, businesses should be able to do whatever they want in essence of how they work with other businesses. I feel like you should be able to set your business terms and do what you need to do. But at the same time, I also think that if it comes to harm customers, then you shouldn't be able to do whatever you want. Right?

I feel like it should be businesses, work with businesses, and they just work it out. For example, the idea... I've often felt like... I know that this actually got Google in trouble, so this isn't allowed, but I've often felt that Apple should be free to do whatever deals it wants to do with any developer. I don't think that... Sorry, I don't think every developer should have to be treated equally. I just don't think that's the case. I think Netflix should not be treated the same as...

Right. Like they're they should just shouldn't be treated the same, in my opinion. When you're more successful, you get a little bit of bargaining power. That's what I think. And then it benefits the user. Right. If if you can get a Netflix subscription on the App Store, that is beneficial to the end user.

But the way that things have gone using Amazon as the example, that is not beneficial to the end user because the fact that you can't buy a Kindle book in the Kindle app is just wrong. Like it's not weird. It's not crazy. It's just wrong. You should be able to buy content for the app.

in the app if it's available on the web you can buy a paper book in the Amazon app yeah using in-app purchase using app using Amazon's purchasing system not Apple's purchasing system and it's okay because it's a physical book but

But you can't do that with an e-book because Apple has decided that all digital content should have a cut for Apple. I mean, they could decide a different way. Now, I wanted to mention one thing you said there is, you know, basically sort of staying out of Apple's business in some ways. I think part of the problem here is that there is a smartphone platform duopoly. Yeah. That's part of the problem.

it might be different if Apple was selling a kind of like a cult device with 8% market share and one in control of its platform. Also, it wouldn't, it would probably try harder to be better because it would not be sitting pretty. But that's not the case. We are in a, if you want a smartphone, you're either under Google's rules or Apple's rules, which is not great. And, and I am very open to the argument that if you build a platform that has an open, essentially,

a third party software experience that it's more burdensome on you to allow the third parties to make some choices than, uh, than what Apple is doing here. And I, I am actually very much in the belief that that's true, that like, if you, if you make a widget and you make it all yourself, that's fine. Yeah. But if you're benefiting from bringing in other people to your platform, the rules change. Yeah.

And Apple is that plus so powerful now that I feel like access to their platform is required. I'm on the record as saying I think that they need to use the Mac model and have an app store and then let people not use the app store. I agree with that. Period. Yeah, I mean, I've also said it before, too. I think once you get to a certain size, you lose freedom.

Right. And Apple is so large, you have to lose some of the freedom that I have otherwise believed that a business should have. But I think once you get to a certain point,

where you become intrinsically important for a large swath of society to operate. That's the DMA argument, yeah. You have lost the ability to be able to set any and every rule that you would like to. Here's the thing, right, about this kind of stuff, about my idea of business issues. It's all gray areas. None of this should be set in stone. Everything has to be treated case by case. It differs.

everywhere, always, all the time. None of this stuff is easy, right? And so I just feel like Apple is at the size and at the scale that they're so important that they can't just do whatever they want. And that is how we've ended up in this scenario. So as well as the appeal that Apple have already filed for this entire...

ruling that Judge Gonzalez-Rogers gave them. They have also filed an emergency motion with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to pause the ruling until the appeal process is concluded. So they have appealed it to try and get it overturned, but now they're saying until that appeal is completed, we don't want to abide by these rules and we want to switch things back to how they were. Apple have

I think asked or it's being set that this will be decided before the 28th of May as to whether this will continue and I just I find all this just like just let it go but that's not how it works but there's just a part of it just let it go just let it go but it's not how it works and it can't work that way I understand I'm

I'm not a lawyer and also judges can decide what they want to decide. That's the truth of it. But what I would say is it strikes me that this will be a tougher thing for them to argue because it's punitive about them failing. They've been found in contempt. And so to say, well, we've been in contempt, but don't do this thing we already implemented. Make us unimplemented for a while while we get away with this. I get the feeling that judges will probably not be as positive about the idea of temporarily staying a punitive

punitive decision because of a finding of contempt, right? That seems to be, again, from my little non-lawyer perspective, this is going to be a tougher argument for them. But it only takes... All that needs to happen is that a judge or a panel of judges just need to agree. If you get the right judges and they decide that, then that's what it'll be.

So other apps have done some interesting things. Delta, the emulator app, has now added the ability. Well, they're very prominently featuring their Patreon as the way to support the app. So like this is just in the US. So if I open the app here in the UK, it doesn't have this. It can't have this. But if you go to the app and you go to the main screen, it's like, hey, support our development. Sign up for our Patreon.

They were told by AppReview they still have to include Apple's in-app purchase if they're now going to suggest that people should give them money. So they've added... I just think this is funny. I think the gang over at AltStore, they like to poke at Apple products.

They do. Sometimes they do it better than others and I think this is a great one. They have included under a button that says alternative payment methods another screen. This is at the very bottom of the settings screen of the app. Another screen will pop up which will let you sign up within App Purchase. I think

A thing that they would not have been able to get approved a couple of weeks ago, but I think that AppReview are very nervous right now is my feeling. And basically they have done the bare minimum and it has worked for them, which I think is fantastic. I feel like this is something we mentioned in passing last time, which is my understanding is you still have to offer in that purchase in a bunch of places, but it doesn't say where, so you can put it in that, you know,

in the back of the closet down in the last screen. Well, but here's the thing. What about Kindle, though? Well, Kindle, they're not... I think it's different. But yes, that's the question. I don't know. I don't know the answer. See, here's the thing. I don't think that would have been different, right? That if before this ruling, if Amazon did that, Apple would say, give us our money.

Probably so. But Amazon are getting through because they're Amazon. It may be different because it's a reader app. It's got a different kind of thing and they have an existing storefront on the outside. It's a little bit different and that may be all. Or it may be that app review is in disarray and they're not going to reject anything now. I think they're in disarray. Because I feel like if Amazon would have done this a month ago,

Apple would say, give us our money. Otherwise they would have done it before now, right? Yeah. I feel like that this is... There are, I'm sure, many gray areas, but I just, I feel like, my feeling looking at what's going on right now is that AppReview, I've kind of just been told that like, we need to be so careful here. We need to be so careful. And smaller developers, they're putting up a block, but bigger ones. Yeah, I know you say that, but...

They push back on Delta, right? Well, but they're a smaller developer. I think that they can kind of push on them. I don't know. I really don't know. But here's the thing. I don't know, right? It doesn't seem to make complete sense to me the way that they're going about everything. I should also say...

This ruling is so specific, it doesn't solve everything. Amazon having a link to buy a book that opens Safari to your Amazon screen for that book so that you can buy it and then go back to the Kindle app and get the book is not the ideal situation. No. The ideal situation should be like the Amazon.com app where if you want to buy something, you just buy it and you never leave the app. But that's against the rules. Yeah.

Because that hasn't been made illegal. I mean, there's even a step before that it just opens a Safari View controller window. But they can't do that either. They can't do that either. Even though the best thing to do is, it's like buying something, a physical book on the Amazon app. Right? Where you just press the button. And this is all the residue of...

Apple and the judge like Apple being given some latitude in their policies by the judge, which is why the argument that the judge's ruling has taken away Apple's ability to control and monetize their IAP and whatever. Like that's why I again as a not judge judge would be deeply skeptical of Apple's claims because it seems to me like a lot of Apple's proposals were accepted. Like she didn't say you can't

You have to just let people build code in to charge credit cards. She didn't say that. She just said, you can't, you got to let them go out to the web with whatever link they want. And, and the policy about no, uh, no Safari web view inside the app.

remains right like that that wasn't invalidated so like apple still gets to sort of like control the way you do this they just don't get to uh outlaw you know non-static links and demand that amazon audit you know its books and provide kickbacks to apple we had a lot of discussion last time about what

we're going to do about Fortnite because they've been saying Fortnite's coming back and we were questioning how. What they have done, I think it's either what I said, what I thought, or I was just thinking it, they would use the App Store app

the developer account that they have for distribution of their alternative app store in Europe. So they have a new developer account which they're using for the alternative app store and Fortnite and all the epic game stuff that exists because of the DMA because their old account was gotten rid of, right? It was disabled by Apple as a breach of the terms. So they'd set up a new one. So they have confirmed on Friday that

Fortnite was submitted to the App Store for distribution in the US from the EU account. So as of recording now, we're waiting to see what happens. I want to get a sense from you. Yes or no. Does Apple approve Fortnite? This is going to be one of those questions about whether...

How much in disarray Apple is. And I think this is high profile enough that it's not going to be an app reviewer. It's going to be somebody high up, possibly even Phil Schiller level saying, what are we going to do about this? My gut feeling is that Epic doesn't have a leg to stand on and that the Apple is just going to say, no, we told you you you're in violation of our terms and you're only in the EU. This entity is only able to upload this thing in the EU because of the DMA.

This entity exists because of the DMA in Europe. In the US, you are still under the terms of your old agreement because you are a subsidiary of the company that used this very code to break the agreement. And so we're not going to let you. I think that is the most likely scenario because it's true. If it gets in, that says something about how Apple is reeling from all of these rulings, right? And that it is trying not to

poke the bear but because the okay the the upside of letting this thing in is it's one less controversy and you get a popular game on your platform again it's not bad the downside of this is that you're kind of saying that your ability to keep things out of the app store is lessened

And I don't know if they want to say that. So my gut feeling is that they'll just say no. The judge's ruling says nothing about you being in the App Store. And if they say yes, it suggests that there is a lot of recriminations going on at Apple right now. I think they're going to let it in.

I don't think that it will be an easy decision. I think it will be a decision that they will make because they want to show that they're willing to play ball, right? Because they've gotten in trouble now. And so I think it would show the legal system that they're willing to change, right? And they're willing to be better people than they were before. But I think it will come with a statement, either from Apple or Epic, which is said that

that in any scenario in which the rules change, Epic have to remove the purchase methods that they put in the app. That's where I think it will come down to. If they allow it in, then it will remain like you can buy your V-Bucks on the web,

as long as, like, provided that this remains. That's what I think will happen. There is this weird scenario. I heard someone say this on a podcast as if this was fact, but it's not fact, but it was just an interesting thought exercise, which was the thing that Epic did broke the rules, but as of the rules that currently exist as opposed upon Apple, it's perfectly legal. Now, I'm not saying that that means they should let it in, but that's where it gets awkward. It's like, yeah, they broke rules,

the rules, but this is a different developer account where they're submitting an app, a game, which based on the current rules that have been set forth by the judge is perfectly legal. So is the situation that, I mean, I don't know what the terms say, but if you broke the rules on one account, are you blackballed from ever creating another developer? You are, but they have one though, but they have one.

But they would say, well, this is the thing. This is why it's up to them. It's up to Apple. Because there are lots of excuses they could use. They could say, well, you know, they have a new account and that is a developer in good standing. We've decided to treat it that way. And they are in the EU store and we're going to, this is just for the US store. And like you said, this is only because of the rules in the US. And if those rules change, we expect them to follow or be removed. They could do all of that, right? They could do all of

that so maybe those are all good excuses they could use they could also just say nothing has changed in terms of the fact that the fact is that epic broke our rules and

And it doesn't matter that the rules have changed now. They willfully broke our rules. And so we are not willing to do business with them unless we're legally forced to. The downside of that, like I said, is what if that means they're going to be legally forced to? Because that is bad because then they lose yet another piece of control because of their obstinance. So we'll see. I think that it is in there are lots of ways in which this is in good interest to Apple to have Epic back on the App Store.

Fortnite is the biggest game in the world. That's the number one reason to allow it. It's just that it's a very popular game and you should just get it back on your platforms and just sort of like say, okay, a lot of water under the bridge. They're doing this differently. It's only going to be in the US though. It's not going to be anywhere else. But it's a start.

And analyst firm AppFigures issued a report last week that Apple made $10 billion from U.S. App Store commissions in 2024. I'm usually very hesitant to pay much attention to these kinds of reports because I just don't know how you could actually get that number. But even as an indicator, I just thought it was an interesting thing to consider. AppFigures estimates that $4 billion of this is games. The rest is like app subscriptions.

And it was just a thought, like how much of this would go away under this scenario if it was half, right? Just imagine it's half, which is still a huge number, but $5 billion of profit is quite a lot of money and would show. It is. It is. This is where I, so I looked at some of these numbers and this is where I understand why Apple is behaving this way.

And I think this is important. I can disagree with all the details of what Apple has done policy-wise. But if you look at the numbers, I think you can understand why executives and people in finance are concerned about this. Because if it's true that it's $10 billion in services revenue in 2024... Just from the U.S. From U.S. App Store commissions...

That's a lot of money. Yeah. And you're like, oh, yes, well, but Apple, you know, has so much more revenue that it doesn't matter. Well, think about it this way. That $10 billion is mostly profit, right? Because it's just, they're just skimming off the top. And you can argue, yeah, well, we, you know, amortize the cost of the in-app purchase people and the people working on the frameworks or whatever. But let's just say it's basically profit. They did $200 billion in iPhone revenue last year. And if we ballpark, that's like $75, $80 billion in profit.

Okay, $80 billion in profit is a lot. Don't get me wrong. But put in perspective, it is not like the iPhone is 20, 30, 40 times as profitable as the App Store iPhone.

commissions. It's actually not. It's eight times as profitable, maybe seven times as profitable. Well, when you're thinking about that, you start to think, oh, wow, Apple's most profitable thing is 80, and then this is 10, and we lose half or all of that 10. That really hurts. And it does. There's no doubt about it. But wait, there's more. Because of the Google search thing, which is also in jeopardy,

That's reportedly $20 billion. That's also, I would argue, basically pure profit.

From Google for search revenue. It is. It's pure profit. What are they doing? Look, they will say that Safari... They'll put some percentage of Safari development against it and all that. I'm just saying. Because one developer... I have to say it this way because somebody will say, you know, that's not true. They have developers who work on those features and it's not pure profit. The Notes app is not subsidized from a deal from anybody else, right? It is...

Pure profit by any stretch of the imagination. If you want to say it's not really $30 billion a year, pure profit from the app store and search, it's actually 29.8. Okay. I'm going to round it back up to 30. 30 billion a year. So Apple made $95 billion in total profit last year. 30 billion was from search and US app store commissions. That's bad. Yeah.

And that is why they're worried. And that is why they're behaving the way they are. And we can still say that they're behaving badly. And also, I would say we're not really arguing that they should have nothing. Right? That's not it. The argument is they should compete and that they should make their products better. And they will lose some money, but they won't lose all of it because they have a huge home field advantage. They have so many different ways where they're advantaged. And even in the U.S., where the judge is very angry with them,

They're still allowed to do things like push it into Safari instead of allowing them to build it in the IAP. So they've got lots of advantages there if they want to compete. But you can see why they're worried because if they lose all, which they're not, I mean, even if they're ordered to not do business with Google and take money from Google anymore for search,

Search is valuable and they will make that money back with their own advertising or with another partner or set of partners. They will get that money back.

So it's not going to be $30 billion maybe, but it will be a lot of money. But let's just say it's nothing. They will make money back. Yeah. Well, it won't be $30 billion, but it won't be zero. It will be somewhere in between. But just to put it in perspective, it's a third of their profit is this because it's so profitable. It's basically there's no overhead. This is just free money.

coming in. So that's why they're worried. I get it. I get it. I also think, though, that they protest too much and they say, oh, if 30 billion, we're going to lose it all. It's like, no, you're not. I just don't believe you are. I believe if you work hard and are clever, you will keep a lot of that money. But you're going to have to work more than you do now for it. I know that's hard, but it's 30 billion dollars. You could work for it. But even if you lost it, you still have 65 billion dollars of profit a year.

yeah that is a lot of money like what are you doing with that like you know like what what are you doing with it i would say i would say that that that is one of the toxic things about this this kind of money is you just get used to having this free money coming in and it's like well we can make our 80 bill if we consider the iphone and the app store the same thing which to a certain degree they are um you know it makes an 80 billion dollar profit 90 billion dollars well that's

Way better. So, hooray for us. Why would we ever forego that? Whereas somebody else might argue, you're already making $80 billion a year on iPhones. It's okay to not make $90. It's fine. It's totally... What are you even spending it on? And the truth is, it's not make $80 instead of $90. It's make $85 instead of $90 or $87 instead of $90. It's not...

make 80 instead of 90, but still it's $80 billion in profit. And I get why if you're a CFO, if you're somebody who's interested in keeping wall street happy, having a, a, a whole year where your year over years are way down because you've lost this revenue stream. I get why you hate that. But as an outside observer, I look at that and say, you know, you'll probably be okay. And if you fight and if you work hard and if you compete,

It's not going to go like, because there's a lot of this argument is like, oh, if Apple's ever allowed to compete, they're going to get nothing. It's like, well, in their current policies, if they stay the same, maybe, but that's not going to happen. They're going to compete. And they've got a lot of advantages as the platform owner. So they're still going to make a lot of money from this, even if it's not all of it.

We're talking about the Google thing. Just a couple of things real quick. Eddie Cue took the stand in Google's antitrust case last week and from that came a few pieces of news. I love that guy. He just doesn't care. Incredible. I love him. Cue testified that in April 2025, Apple saw a decline in Google searches in Safari for the first time ever.

This led to Q then mentioning that Apple was looking into AI search as future alternatives. He was indicating that this might be a reason why it was happening and said that they've been in discussion with Complexity, Anthropic and OpenAI as potentially putting them in as search engine partners in the future.

Google stock fell. They did damage control. And, you know, Google had like, oh, overall queries from Apple devices are going up. Devices? Probably partly because, I don't know if you use Google on your iPhone at the moment, but it is just maddening. Every time you do a Google search and like, hey, download our app, and the button to download the app is continue.

so bad like google i know why they're doing it but it's terrible um yep and i feel like it's been well pointed out across the internet that eddie gave this piece of information because he wanted to suggest that apple and the apple google partnership is not as devastating to competition as people think um but nevertheless this is very interesting i think yeah i i

Google slicing it the way they did is fascinating because a lot of people said, okay, well, these can both be true. They all go true. Eddie is shooting from the hip, but he's basically like, look, our Safari referrals. You think Eddie Q is not keenly aware of the growth of Safari referrals to Google given the $20 billion? He's keenly aware of it.

So he says that. And Google's stock goes down. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, it's fine. If, you know, from a certain point of view, it's fine. If you consider all queries on those devices, we weren't down. And it's like, oh, well, that's because you are punishing people to your Google app and people are using, you know, they're using AI, you know, Google and Google Gemini and whatever. And there are other things on the device that are not coming from Safari. And like...

They obfuscated that in a way that I think is probably true. Yes. But it's like, what you're saying is you replaced it with the things that don't make you any money, which is the problem. Yeah. So...

Whereas Eddie Q just cares about the money he gets. Cause you know, the way the deal works is that I believe is basically just, it's like selling like the other, the other month. And I don't know why somebody clicked on a referral link on six colors to Amazon in a product that I was mentioning in passing and then seemed to make a large purchase in the same session. And my Amazon, I got an enormous amount of money for Amazon that month.

It's a little like that, right? It's like, you know, there's no big novelty check for $20 billion that comes to Apple from Google every month or every year. It's every single search is a little bit of money and it adds up. That's how it works. And so Q knows that count and he knows what's going on there. But the thing I want to say about Eddie Q is,

These are not the reason we read these as like calculated Apple pronouncements and they're not quite, and he's not a loose cannon, but what he's doing is in the context of this, uh, this court interaction, uh,

he's saying things in a very specific way. So like when he talks about it going down, what he's saying is it's not a, it's not a sure thing. In fact, there's a trend here because it went down for the first time. He's trying to say, you know, we are in a transition point. And when he talks about other alternatives, he says, well, you know, yeah, it's of

of course we're talking to others because we want to always do that. And we want to offer that. He's not saying we're out of business with Google. He's saying, you know, we are always discussing this with partners. So don't make this seem like it's a, it's a fixed deal. It's always a moving target. And then the key thing is then they're like, well,

you know, about the future. And he says, Hey, it's the tech industry. You know, we had, we had iPods and then, you know, then we had iPhones. We have iPhones now, but it doesn't mean we're going to have them in a decade. And everybody's like, Eddie Q said the iPhone might not exist in a decade. And it's like, well, that's not what he was saying. He was saying things happen in the tech industry and it moves. Life comes at you quick, so to speak. And so, you know, he's making the argument that, um,

That a lot of the classic court rulings in the tech industry happen after it's over. And they're trying to regulate the thing that's already over. And that this is already a moving target. And yes, it is all self-serving. But he's not wrong. I still can't believe that he said that, though. I can't believe that Eddie Q, Apple executive, took the stand and said you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now. It's just like, I'm not saying he's wrong. He's right.

It's a wild thing for it to hear from Apple say in public. It's just like an incredible thing to say. Just in the context of it, it's not that crazy because it's like things move fast. Anything could happen. And it's self-serving. It is completely self-serving if you're the giant in the industry to say any day now we could just be knocked off our perch. But he's not wrong. He's not wrong.

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Rumor roundup time. Yeah. As part of court proceedings a couple of weeks ago, the case that we were just mentioning, Sundar Pichai said that he's hopeful that Gemini will be integrated into the iPhone this year, just like ChatGPT is. A quote from Bloomberg. Pichai said he held a series of conversations with Tim Cook across 2024, and he hopes to have a deal done by the middle of the year. Totally happening for WWDC. Yeah.

It's interesting that this took a year to do, though, because Craig Federighi called Gemini out or Google out on stage at the talk show, and it's taken them this amount of time to get that deal done. Or maybe this was a thing they always thought they would do in the future, but...

I think they always thought they would do it in the future. I think that they've had so much AI stuff going on and going wrong that they at some point probably said, we're not going to even get this in until the next version of iOS. And then I think they all agreed to this and didn't sign anything so that if they were asked in court about it, they could say, well, we're hopeful, but we haven't signed anything yet. And then, you know, they'll sign a thing. And I,

Because this sounds like this is in the bag. The first thing that Sundar did when he left the courtroom that day was complete the DocuSign link that he had sitting in the box. That's right. SP. It's in there now. According to Mark Gurman, Apple has been working with Anthropic to integrate its Claude Sonnet model into Android.

Xcode to create a, quote, vibe coding tool that is being distributed internally. Here's a bit of a follow-up. I don't really understand what vibe coding is. Federico does. We're going to ask him to explain it to me on Connected this week. Great. That'll be good. I have a basic idea of what it is, but I don't really know. But this is a tool that would help developers more easily write and edit code. Code with vibes.

With their own vibes on the side of Xcode. It's unknown at this point if Apple would distribute it out to the public or if it's just going to remain internal. But what I thought was interesting about this is an example of the Craig Federighi mandate that had been said to have occurred inside of Apple that they were considering using things from other AI partners where they can, kind of the removing the not invented here kind of mentality that Apple would have on this.

Yeah, it does make me wonder. There were other reports about that they had that Xcode with the code assistant thing that they actually did show. I saw it. Gruber saw it. John Voorhees saw it. Dan Morin saw it. And that hasn't really shipped. And maybe it won't. It never shipped. If they're doing that. I don't think so. Okay. I don't think it did. So...

It's very interesting that they're like, ah, now we're using Claude and it works a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. And Apple has advantage that the, whatever corpus they've got of, of Swift code, for example, they could work with partners to have that be part of the training set for future applications.

models and then integrate those models which might be a way for them to do it too that's wild you know I just assumed that that came out Swift Assist that's why this this went by me because I would not assume that Swift Assist was AI and Xcode like

To me, Swift Assist sounds like, here's your new way to do table views. Like, you know, like in my mind, it's just like it just flies straight out, right? Like I don't even really pay attention to that. I had just assumed, because this wasn't one of the ones that we were talking about. I guess Apple didn't like actually say, like maybe this wasn't the ones where they were like, oh no, we're just not.

We just ain't going to do that. But it's not there. We're not doing that one. It's not there. And then Mark Gurman reports that internally they're now using Claude instead. I'm like, hmm. Hmm. What does that mean? What does that mean?

There has been, in the last week, what I consider to be a weird flurry of rumors detailing Apple's 2027 product lineup. From multiple sources, everyone's talking about not this year's iPhones, not next year's iPhones, the year after that, 2027. So, the information reported that the 2027 iPhone will be all display with the front camera and face ID being moved to under the screen.

This iPhone will be the 20th anniversary iPhone.

So maybe they're going big on it. You know, I had to thought maybe this week or maybe last week they locked the design for the 27 iPhone. Could be. Maybe that's why this came out. Double X. Double X. Yeah, double X. Oh, God, please no. Maybe is there a different way to make the number like to represent the number 20? Maybe they could go for like Arabic numbers or something, you know, because they did like. Our numbers are the Arabic numbers. Okay. Our numbers are Arabic numbers.

But they do Roman numerals. Double X. Double X is fine. No, because they've done Arabic. They've done Roman numerals. There's another set that's in the Apple Watch, which I now feel silly. Oh, yeah. Well, they're not going to do that because it would still be 20. That's not going to happen. We only do Arabic numerals and Roman numerals here. Okay. Well, anyway. Okay.

The information say that to help Apple get to this 2027 iPhone, the 2026 iPhone 18 Pro models. Next year. Will feature the, well, you know what? Actually, the 2027 iPhone won't be the iPhone 20. Or will it? Remember what they did with the iPhone 10? They're going to do it again. Yeah, I guess. They could, because the iPhone 10 followed the iPhone 8.

Yeah, it did, didn't it? There was no 9. They're going to do it. I'll call in it here. They're going to do it. They're going to do it. That was a quick turn by Mike there. No, you are. And I agree with you. This wasn't my thing. You say that and I agree with you. That the 2026 iPhone 18 Pro will feature under display face ID of a cutout for the selfie camera. And then the next year they get rid of that camera. So.

Then Mark Gurman echoed this in a report on Bloomberg and said that it would be, quote, a mostly glass curved phone. I don't know what curved means. I don't know, man. What is curved? Is it like a banana? What is a curved...

Now, like there's been, you know, some Android phones like Samsung phones have had kind of like a glass and it goes around the edges, you know, like so you can see on the edge of the phone. But like, right. Is that what they're going to do? Is that what a curved phone is?

Or is it more comfortable so it's got kind of like a curve so it's like thicker at the edges? Is it shaped like a peanut? Like it ramps down? I don't know. Like it's got a little... Is it a peanut or a banana? That's our question. It's got like a little waist in the middle? Like what's going on? What are they doing over there? We'll find out. Only two years to wait. Not soon. So as well as this...

We should see a second generation of a foldable phone most likely, but maybe the first one. It's due for debut in 2026, but it should be about 27. Mark Gurman is also expecting Apple's first smart glasses similar to the Meta Ray-Bans. It will be a focus on audio, camera, and Apple intelligence for this product. AirPods to have a camera.

LLM powered Siri and quote a tabletop machine with a robotic arm that would feature an AI system of its own personality. Obviously. Robotic arm. All of this in the great future of 2027. Okay. Great.

Mark Gurman is also reporting that Apple is continuing to push their work on custom chips for their devices in a few new areas. So one chip is for the aforementioned smart glasses because they're going to need something that is quite different for this. They apparently, they're taking the base, the Apple Watch system on a chip is where they would take their base from, which makes sense. But they're also

but they want to make a product that is even more performance efficient and has a greater battery life or would take less battery power because that's going to be quite complicated to get a device to operate all day like that. Especially a device that for many people who will be wearing it, it's not like the Apple Watch. If you take off your glasses to charge, maybe you can't see anymore.

Indeed. Which is more complicated than just, hey, I'm just going to throw my Apple Watch on the charger. It allows them potentially to also come into a market late after Meta's been there for a while with some features that make people say it was worth the wait, even if it isn't worth the wait. You know, building custom silicon that allows them to maybe surpass something that Meta's doing.

in some way. It's like an excuse to say, well, we were late, but look at how awesome we are now. Yeah. I think they should just ship something now, but they don't listen to me. They absolutely should. It would also be controlling the, quote, multiple cameras planned for the glasses. I guess maybe one on each side. I don't know why. I don't know. Then this product is on target for mass production. This chips, I should say, is on target for mass production either the end of this year, sorry, 2026 or early 2027. Yeah.

Depending on the timing for this product, I could imagine them announcing this in the fall of 26, even if they're planning to ship in 27. Risky. But I think of the Apple Watch, right? They did this for the Apple Watch. They announced it in September. It came out in March. Yeah. When you've got a brand new product, you can pre-announce it.

And I just feel like this is a product that would benefit from being the iPhone presentation. Absolutely. And obviously is an iPhone accessory is the way this product is going to run. Yep. 100%. While developing this product, so the one which is essentially the Meta Ray-Ban competitor, Apple still continues to push hard, being led by Tim Cook pushing aggressively to try and develop AR displays for either this product or a future product.

They want to beat Meta to market. Yeah. And I think this is the start of why I like the Vision Pro as a concept is they have learned a lot with the Vision Pro. And it sounds like they're going to keep making Vision Pro. But they're also like the lessons you once you put a screen on these glasses, whenever that is, I think the lessons you learned with the Vision Pro start to come into it.

uh, play where, you know, cause the goal is to learn with the vision pro from that direction and then be able to apply it in a much light, more lightweight kind of way. Um, if you've got sensors, if you're doing gestures, whatever it is that you're doing, how you display information, um, hopefully, you know, that that's the purpose of doing all of this R and D and putting these products out there is that there, there is a place they want to go with this stuff.

that you can't get to right now with modern technology, but they're working to get there. And who else? I mean, who else is doing it? Meta's doing it. That's about it, right? So if you want that future to exist, it's there for the taking if you spend the money. Apple's also developing new chips for the Apple Watch and AirPods for 2021.

controlling cameras in both of these devices by 2027. And then for the Mac, got the M5 coming in 2026 to go in the iPad Pro. The M6 and M7 are in development along with a quote, more advanced Mac chip.

in development. I'm not really sure what that means. Apple's also working on a dedicated AI server chip rather than the Mac chips they're currently using. Sure. Makes sense. Because they're using those customized ones, right? They're building devices that are running the private cloud compute that are using existing Mac chips and they will build a custom server chip instead.

But right now they're just using Mac chips, which have lots of things that they don't need on those servers because they got them. They made them. Yeah. Also, I mean, M5 in 2026, I imagine that we're going to get M5 MacBook Pros in the fall, not in 2026, but.

We'll see. Yeah, I'm currently trying to log into Bloomberg, which is always a thing because you can just never log in. Bloomberg will just never let you stay logged in because I'm wondering when as soon as I read that, I was like, I'm not sure that I wrote that down correctly. I would say, Jason, I really got confused today about what year we're in.

Yeah. He says as early as the end of this year for the M5 to the MacBook Pro and iPad. So it's the rare 2025 report. I meant to say by 2026 because that's that weird like, you know, as early as early as M5 in 2025 before 2026. I failed to log into Bloomberg at the time.

And the Wall Street Journal reported today. Did they make you do the captures? I just didn't. I just gave up. Bloomberg is like, oh, show me bicycles. Click on motorcycles. Show me traffic lights. I'm like, what are you doing? I have a password and a username.

I'm going to set, look, why do these websites make me log in as often as I have to log in? Like, why? It's amazing. Like, I have no problem paying you. I want to pay you. I want to support your work because I, it's at a great expense for me because I use your work to inform my work.

But just remember my login. Please, please remember my login. I know, Bloomberg is the worst at it. I also sometimes get in a space where Bloomberg shows that I'm logged in but won't show me the content. Like I'm logged out, but I am. But it's got Hi Jason at the top. Hi Jason, you're not allowed to see this. No, you can't see this. No, I just, come on. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Apple is considering raising prices of the iPhone this year because of tariffs, but does not want to blame the tariffs.

Here's the thing. The super high tariffs are on hold, right? The 125% tariff got put on hold today. But there are still tariffs. I think a 30% tariff in China. Yeah, but it's 20% plus the 10, though, isn't it? Because the 10 is for everyone. Yeah, I don't know. Here's the thing. The tariff thing is confusing.

But even this thing that was announced today is a 90-day thing. So the situation is no one knows what's going on with tariffs, so you have to think about what you're going to do in a world where they might come back and or in a world that you're paying more than you were before. So Apple is considering...

what they might do in that. But of course, you're not allowed to say it's because of the tariffs, because then the president gets real mad at you. So you have to increase it for like, who knows why? Just stop. We're just increasing it. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the majority of, I

iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max models will still be made in China, with the majority of all other models moving to India. The Indian supply chain is not capable of producing more complex models. This is exactly what me and you were considering would be the case last week when we spoke about it. Exactly.

Because what Tim Cook was actually saying when he said like, oh, you know, obviously in the next quarter, these models are going to be made in India is what these are older phones then. So they're more used to the production. But for the state of the art, they still need to be made in China. Right. And so the more expensive phones will probably get more expensive with the next round. And they're going to say, hey, the new iPhone Pro is amazing. And it starts at $1299.

Instead of $9.99. They're going to try and say it's features, which I just think feels tricky because they haven't done this in previous years. But I guess Apple's just going to hope that everybody knows this is just what the world is and they can just get away with it. But I don't know. I think the question also is, what is that price outside the U.S.? Because it could be lower. So will it be? Will it be $12.99 in the U.S., but not in Great Britain?

Well, what you can do, if you're smart enough, which I hate, but this is happening more, you don't put it up that much in America. You put it up everywhere by a smaller amount, and then overall, you make the money. Yeah, and your margins are less. And if you really want to not upset the American government,

Then you put the price up everywhere, right? You just like price up everywhere. Tariffs, schmarrs, who knows? So now, to be fair, the iPhone 16 Pro right now is from 999 pounds, which is 1299 US dollars. Yep. So you're right. They could totally just leave it where it is in the UK. Yeah.

Because the UK is already very expensive. But I don't think they would do that. I think they will put it up here too. And they would just take the overall increase across the world to kind of bump them up. They could, but they don't necessarily have to. They could go $9.99 in the US and the UK. Or they could say, you're right. Or they could say it's $10.99 in the US only.

and 10.99 in the UK. Something like that too. And then it's the same everywhere. Yeah. I don't know. This is the real question. This is the real question is how will they do this? But you're right. What they don't want to do is be perceived as taking a shot at the administration. That's what they don't want to do. Unbelievably weird. It is. But what else should I expect? But like,

Yeah. I don't need to get into it. It's not important. But it's just like... It's just where we are right now. You do a thing, but you can't talk about why you're doing the thing. But everybody knows. But everybody knows? Yeah. What are we doing? Yeah. What are we doing? Nothing good.

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Let's finish out with some Ask Upgrade questions. Didn't get to do any last week. Gabriel writes in and says, I'm thinking about replacing my old Kindle with a Kobo. Besides reading books, I'd also like to keep up with my RSS feeds. Is this possible, Jason, with Kobo? No. No, it was. No, I, my recommendation. I, it is. It's very frustrating. I wish that they would do something like that. Um,

the only thing that's close to this on the Kobo is that they've got a thing that's integration with what is it? It's one of the relator services. That's not Instapaper. It's the other one. It's, you know, anyway, whatever. It's got integration with one of the relator services. So you can add it's pocket, right? It's pocket. So it, you can go to a webpage and click a link and it'll,

Add it to Pocket, and then you can go on the Kobo to Pocket, and your articles are there. But that's not how I use RSS. And I wish they would do this. There was that great VergeCast interview with the CEO who said that he understood...

that need. And like, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to feed content from the outside into Kobo more directly? He agreed, but I just, I'm not sure it's a priority for them. So what I will say is if you are an e-ink enthusiast who would like something more powerful than a Kindle or a Kobo, you could buy an Android powered e-ink device like the ones from books and

And it's not, it's more work, but there are Android RSS readers that will integrate with the E-Ink in a way where it's decent to read it in E-Ink. Because the big thing, what you want is you don't want to scroll because E-Ink frame rates are bad. So you want it to be able to like honor your page turn button and have that turn the page faster.

It's not great. And I'll tell you, I've got a lot of books readers here and I don't do this. I read my RSS on my iPad every morning because of this. I wish it was better. I really do. I will keep trying. But like you RSS on an e-ink reader, it's just it's an extra step right now. And I wish I wish it weren't. But that's unfortunately where we are right now.

Yoni writes in and says, Mike, as a fellow new dad, I'm struggling to manage all the photos I could take of my son. How are you handling the photos that you take, sharing them with your wife and friends and family? Are you using a shared library or shared iCloud album? What is the Hurley way? I made a shortcut last night, actually, to count how many photos I've taken this year.

Last year, I took like 3,800 photos. This year, I've taken 1,800 photos. So I'm taking lots of photos of my baby. I take photos of my baby all day all the time. What I don't want to do is manage a iCloud website

for a family. I'm not interested in that. So Idina and I, we have a shared photo library for the pic, like we just have a shared photo library. So the pictures that we're both taking, we're both getting, right? And so we both leave sharing on as default for any pictures that we take and we get them that way. That's great for the two of us because that makes sense. Um,

There was like family drama a while ago because of a shared photo library. You know, like someone's, it was just ridiculous. So that moment was like, I don't want to be in this. So we're not doing this. What I did do is I bought my mom an aura frame.

We bought one for Adina's mom too. We bought a two-pack, which is a genius idea, but I want for two family members. And that's how I am mostly giving the photos to the person other than my wife in my life who wants the pictures the most, which is the grandmas. Other members of the family would just send select images one by one.

whatever. I actually think that's fine. I think that like my brothers don't need a constant stream or really want a constant stream of photos in the way that my mom does. And the Aura Frames are super nice. I'd seen them on a bunch of podcasts as ads and I looked it up and I looked up Wirecutter and they're also, you know, as well as being endorsed by many podcasters who've received them, it's also like the Wirecutter pic is now like Aura Frames and

I was very surprised at just how much this digital photo frame looks like a photo frame. Like it just looks like a photo frame. They're super thin. They're really nice looking. And the screens are very nice. They're like matte screens. Like they look really good. And Jason, their app is unbelievably good. You can go into the app and upload whatever you want. It supports live photos, which I just love.

thought was great as like a feature. But my favorite thing is you can go into the photos app, select a bunch of images. They have a share extension to just send them to the frame. And from the share extension, you can choose, do I want it to go to both frames attached to the account, which is both of our mom's frames or just the one that's

super good like i i wish they would sponsor because i loved it like i i was blown away at how good an experience the aura frame was this is the main way i would recommend dealing with this like i my mom appreciates that way more and then i also send her pictures too right so like i will send her pictures that i like but then i'll also upload the aura to the aura frame and like

She just sees them all the time, and she absolutely loves it. And same with, like, Idina's mom. They both love these things, so I really recommend these for gifts for family members because it has been a big hit with the grandparents. Patrick writes in and says, the news that the... I feel like pouring it out for the HomePod hardware thing is

was mostly finished but was waiting on software, is it fair to say that Apple's software division is letting down the hardware division? The same story was rumored to have happened for the Vision Pro, and overall it seemed like Apple hardware is hitting home runs where Apple software can't seem to find the ball, which is quite a mean metaphor, I think, at the end. But it does feel like that's the case, though, right? That Apple is executing on its hardware division

Better than it is on his software. Maybe the company is just set up in such a way that that makes it easier for them to do. I don't know, but there does seem to be something going on. If I were an Apple executive, I would definitely be, especially if I was involved in the hardware side, I would definitely have noticed that the hardware people are just going by leaps and bounds going forward and executing. Yeah.

software is struggling to catch up with them. And I'm starting to wonder like, what's that dynamic? Like, are the hardware people really mad at the software people now? Like, because they should be like they built, apparently they built a whole product because they were, they were told that it was going to hinge on all of this kind of personal Siri control. And,

And they never shipped and the product is ready. That is the most stark example, but I feel like that we've seen this before. They are just the, yes, this is the answer is this is, this sums up this moment in Apple, which is their hardware is,

execution has never been better. And their software execution, I'm not going to say it's never been worse. That's not true. But it is substantially behind the hardware execution. Yeah. I mean, look at the iPad. That's the story of the iPad too, right? It's been the story of the iPad for ages now. Although some of that is policy, right? It's not all like they can't do it. It's that they won't do it. But the net result is that the software has been outpaced by hardware for a while now. And that's where we are. Yep.

John Wright Sinner says, So to expand on this a little bit, tvOS...

You probably don't know. tvOS has profiles you can choose between different users and it will show different apps. It's actually one of the only products Apple makes other than the Mac that has a built-in system for profiles that multiple users can use them.

There is an API called TV User Manager that does this. So Disney could integrate their profile system. You could link your Disney profile with your Apple profile. So as you switch between profiles, it would change the up next queue. The story of tvOS, I mean, lots of Apple's platforms, but tvOS in a nutshell is there are features available, but nobody cares to use them.

I think tvOS actually suffers from this way more than even Division Pro or any other platform of like

There's stuff that can be done, but nobody wants to do them. It's not in anybody's interest to do them, like Netflix in the Up Next queue, for example. It does not serve most of these companies to really take advantage of all of the things that the system offers. This is one of them, and it would be great, right, that you would come and you would turn on your profile and all of your shows are in your Up Next queue. You go to your kids and then all of their shows are in your Up Next queue and things don't cross-pollinate, but that...

I have not seen any examples of companies actually using this API, but it does exist. If you would like to send in a question of your own for us to answer on the show as best we can, go to upgradefeedback.com. You can also send us in your follow-up and questions there too. I would like to thank our members who support us through Upgrade Plus. If you would like longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week, go to getupgradeplus.com.

You can find us on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast. We're there in video glory if you would like that. I'd like to thank Ecamm, Factor, and Fitpod for their support of this week's episode. But as always, most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.