566: The WWDC Keynote Draft 2025
01:34:58 Share

From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 566. It is the WWDC 2025 Draft. Today's show is brought to you by Oracle Squarespace and Delete Me. I am one of your combatants. I am, in fact, the Draft Champion. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by Draft Challenger, Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. Here to fight for draft supremacy once again.

Well, you can at least try. I have a Snow Talk question for you. I said fight for. I didn't say here to get it. I said here to fight for it. Yeah, you could fight. You could try to fight for it. What's the trying? I'm trying. I'm like, you're trying. You're like, well, you could try. I'm like, yeah, I could try. Joshua, who says, do you think Tim Cook will say something to the effect of we love our developers during the WWDC opening? Well, let's see how the draft goes. You think that could be a pick? I mean, it could be. It could be.

Thank you to Joshua for sending that Snell Talk question in. If you'd like to send in a question of your own, go to UpgradeFeedback.com. This actually leads nicely into a hype check. Before we start the draft, I want to do a WWDC hype check with you, Jason. How are you feeling? We're a week away from the keynote. Basically a week and 45 minutes away at the time that we record. How are you feeling about WWDC right now?

It is hard to believe that in a week I will be standing in Apple Park. Or sitting. I guess you'll be standing at this point, right? Yeah, yeah. Because it won't be started yet. We'll probably be standing and chatting. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's going to be interesting. I was reading a piece that Mark Gurman wrote. He wrote his sort of one week out, here's everything that I've reported to spoil everything that's going to happen. Yeah, we'll get to that a little later on. We'll get maybe an upgrade plus. We can talk about that a bit. And one of the things that he mentioned that I hadn't really thought about that I thought was really a good thing to note, which is two years ago was the Vision Pro.

And last year was Apple intelligence. And what he said was unlikely to be as dramatic as the last two. And I thought, you know, that's true. That's, I think that's actually really true this year. That's part of what I'm feeling is it is unlikely to be as dramatic as the last two because the last two were kind of big and interesting for new and weird reasons, but,

And you could also argue that it was a product that wasn't ready to ship and then it shipped eventually and nobody really bought it because it was a very different kind of product and nobody should have bought it. Preview of future technologies, right? And then the other one was a promise to get people to get off their backs about AI that Apple didn't really deliver on. So I could also argue that maybe...

Apple sees this year as an opportunity to kind of go back to what works for it. And I think Gurman made that point too. Like you could, you can say, like we could do the takes now. I feel like we do this every year when we get to this point, which is like, you could do the takes now, which is Apple's going to show off a bunch of stuff that I think it's going to be more comfortable talking about. A OS design that serves their existing kind of like product strategy pretty well. And, and what they're,

going to de-emphasize is the stuff that they're not as strong on. And so the criticism will be Apple's backpedaling on AI or where are they with AI? And they're going to have to deal with that issue. And they're going to have to, you know, they'll contextualize the vision pro as well. Like there's stuff that they got to do, but I do think that part of it is, um, it's going to feel different because it's going to, I think Apple is going to try to put forward some of its strengths as a company. And, um,

Yeah, so I think it's going to be interesting. I don't think it's going to be...

I think it's, you know, I'm viewing this year as a really interesting WWDC year because I am curious how Apple pitches it, which is a very different take than I want to see what Apple's AI strategy is or I want to see what Apple's first headset looks like, right? This is more like, how does Apple, you know,

describe their vision for the design of their operating systems and how does it do damage control about AI and what does it say about what it promises for new features and what it refuses to promise for new features. It's just a really different vibe for me. I think dramatic is an issue. I would...

So the same thing, I would say controversial. I think the last two years were pretty controversial in different ways, right? Vision Pro was controversial because of the price, right? And like, even at the time, like, do we want this? Like, the decisions that Apple made led to lots of dunking and, you know, like with the eyes on the front and stuff. Last year...

I was talking to underscore David Smith today and I was talking about the WBC last year and I remember

how pleased I was that we had to record on Tuesday because I could not even get my head around what I thought about WWDC last year, which is I've never felt that way before, right? Where like, I just couldn't gather my emotions to talk about it. Like I, it was like inconceivable some of the things that I saw, I felt like, right? And like the things that they were showing off.

I don't think we've got that this year. I don't think it's going to be like either of those this year. I think...

I think a redesign, if it is as broad as been suggested, is quite dramatic, but I don't think it is controversial in the same way. That's true. And if that redesign is as big as has been suggested, I'm very excited for this year because I think this is the kind of conversation I would like to be having right now where...

I want to be arguing about the shape of a button more than I want to be arguing about...

executives, right? Like that is just, I was just listening to you. I'm halfway through an episode of Mac Power Users that you were on. Yes. Right. A little follow-up. It's a really good one. Really good so far. I'm enjoying it. I like that Jason Snell guy. I think he's got a future in this business. That was a fun conversation. And, you know, I was reflecting on you saying a thing that me and you have spoken about, right? Which is just like, we don't want to talk about all the things that we talk about, but there is a responsibility to talk about them because the

it is the thing that's going on. I don't feel like it's right to just ignore it, right? But we try and do our best, and this year we've tried more than last year to not get into every, like to get mired in everything, but sometimes you can't avoid it. But I am excited for the next at least three months to be talking about the way that things look and how that will adjust over the beta period. That excites me.

And we should be specific. I mean, what you're not saying is I'm I am really looking forward to praising Apple's design. I think it's more like I'm really looking forward to getting to getting into the reason. One of the things that motivates us to be enthusiastic about technology, which is things like the shape of a button. Yeah.

a design choice in a user interface. These are things that I love to talk about and debate. And you're talking about an aspect of product design and user experience and choices Apple makes that are puzzling. And you try to understand why they made those choices. And the reason is not to maximize their revenue or to avoid legal complications, but it's because they think in a more pure way, it's a good user experience rather

Or and maybe we don't agree like that is to me, that is the core kind of stuff that attracted me to this field and that I enjoy talking about with you. And so it's not just sort of like, oh, let's let's only have a conversation about the things Apple wants us to discuss. That's not it. But it is like give us some material that we can work with. That's a little less soul crushing, please. That would be nice. Thank you.

But I am also interested in the things that they don't show, like they don't talk about. What is their AI story and what does that look like for this time period? What do they show? What don't they show?

Do they touch on developers in any way? Like, what do we hear about from the people that are there? Like, I'm intrigued about it. And like, similarly, it started already. There will be no Apple executives at the talk show this year, breaking like a 10 year span of that occurring. I remember when Phil Schiller came out. There's a funny, quick, funny story about that.

Um, we had recorded connected. Me and Steven were in San Francisco, San Francisco, and Federico wasn't there. I don't, I don't think he'd started joining that year. I think that's the case. Or maybe we'd all recorded. But anyway, Steven was back in the hotel.

And he, you know what? It may have actually been, he was dealing with the edit of Rocket or something. It was either Rocket or Connected. It was a struggle. And he was like, I'll skip the talk show. And I went with a bunch of others and Phil Schiller came out and texted him like, you've got to come here right now. Like I was in the back of the theater because I,

What I had come to realize in the years past is that one of the best things about the talk show at that point is that the bar was open and free. Instead of sitting down, just go stand at the bar and you can just get as many drinks as you want. Even calling it a theater, that was a venue that was basically like a club, so it was basically just flat.

I don't even know if there were seats. There were seats, but it was uncomfortable because of that. They weren't like good seats. Yeah, you could just stand and it was fine. Yeah. Or maybe there weren't seats. Maybe it was standing and it was like another reason to stand at the back. I remember standing. Because you weren't like squashed in with everyone. I actually think you're right. I think it was all standing. So like I used to stand at the back, stand at the bar, have drinks with whoever you want. You can lean on the bar, hang out. You could chat and you're not interrupting the conversation. And listen to Phil. And then Phil Schiller came out and was like, you gotta get to here right now. Oh yeah, it was so funny. Man, that was incredibly exciting.

So that was 2015. That was 2015, yeah. But John put tickets. He's still doing the talk show live this year. Tickets went up. And I think to his credit, and I respect John a lot for this, just said, like, don't expect it because it ain't happening. He asked and they said no. I wondered if you had any thoughts on that.

I mean, this is so similar to I mean, I have been dealing with this for almost 30 years now of working with Apple. Right. And when you're a member of the media and you're working with Apple, right.

I mean, the way I have always approached it is nothing is guaranteed. And I know and I have people who are like, oh, come on, like you're going to Apple Park next week. I'm like, I didn't consider that guaranteed until I got the invitation. And sometimes I have to work for it. Like, you know, there are times that I don't get invited to things and I go to the people I know in PR and I try to make my case and say I'd really like to go. And yes, do I pull out the I've been to basically every Apple event since last

you know, since 1998. I do. But in the end, like they don't, they don't have to let me in. I've had over the course of my career, I have all sorts of different levels of access appear and disappear and reappear. Sometimes it feels punitive. I was, I'll tell you where I'm coming from here is I was surprised that everybody read

John's announcement as punishment for him writing that piece about something being rotten in Cupertino. I mean, sometimes it does. So no, just hear me out here. Sometimes it feels punitive. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's not about you. It's about Apple and what their priorities are. Sometimes it is about you. The problem is you never really know.

And if you're a professional, you just got to roll with it. Do what you need to do to do your job and let Apple do what it wants. I think... Which is what John's doing for sure, right? Yeah, I have had... He's a pro. I have had...

access removed they'll never tell you i have definitely had access removed for reasons that i could intuit that were dumb reasons but in the end like they don't owe me anything so they can do what they want and you just gotta roll with it now others can judge them and i would argue that

That it's probably short-sighted for Apple to forego that venue. I, not as somebody who is just pro John or, but just thinking of it from Apple's perspective, I,

I feel like the talk show live was a place for Apple executives to seem a little more human and to get their story out in a slightly, slightly less controlled way, but still in a pretty friendly and understanding setting. John is a fair interviewer. Like he is. He does a good job. I mean, people say that he should be tougher. And I understand why people say that, but it doesn't work like that. Like you can't, you know, you can't just keep asking questions and not getting answers to them. There's not really much point doing that.

I've enjoyed some of the upgrade interviews we've done with Apple people for the same reason, because I think it humanizes them and it lets you kind of see Apple as a company full of people who care about the products that they're talking about and that they're creating. And I think that benefits Apple. So I would say that it's short-sighted, but again, they have different priorities. You know, people have complained to us about why didn't you ask, you know, Tim and Tom about this or this or that. And just as an aside, I'll say one thing,

of your jobs as the host of upgrade or as the host of the talk show live is to have a conversation that's interesting. And, and there are some interviews that I've seen where people ask a whole bunch of questions that will not get an answer that everybody knew wouldn't get answered. And you end up spending five minutes of your time with this very limited access to

asking questions that get nothing and benefit no one because there's no answer. And I know the other side of it is you still got to ask those questions and sometimes you do, but what you try to do, and I think what John tries to do is ask questions,

about the issues involved in a way that they might actually respond so that you could get something that you can glean about how Apple is thinking about an area. But if you just straight up ask them something you know they're never going to touch, you're wasting everybody's time. And congratulations, you just made your conversation awkward. Like, you know, I did like, now what are we doing here? Yeah, yeah. Now I will, I mean, also it's true, the last few years have been less, um,

I think, than previous years. And I think that, I don't know what caused that, but I know that having Greg Joswiak sitting on stage...

It's basically like the cops are there, right? Like your head of marketing and PR is literally sitting next to you. And if you say anything that's off, even a little, he's going to jump in or give you the side eye. And, you know, that's his job. But I would say, you know, I think that puts the clamps down a little bit. And I'm not saying the whole thing is a setup to get them to talk about stuff that they're not. I'm saying that I think that there's...

Apple gets in these venues and that it's a net positive for them. And for whatever reason, they've decided either that it's not a net positive for them or they're going to punish one of the people who writes about them because he wrote something fair but unfavorable about them. But as John has handled it, and I think as a professional how you have to handle it, is

you're not entitled. Like other people can complain about it, but John's response is okay. I mean, it's their, they, it's their right to say yes or no. And none of us are entitled to any level of access or connection with Apple. And it, you know, Apple does what it wants. So, I mean, it could be as simple as Apple knows the knives are out this year.

And it doesn't think that anything can be gained from taking the blows from anybody in any venue. That's entirely possible that we will see nothing outside of presentations from Apple this year because they know how controversial this is going to be and they just don't see it. Or it could be that somebody in PR has a bee in the bonnet about that one piece from Gruber and they're like, why are we helping him? Get him out. We'll find out, right? We'll see. That happens too. I think it's a short-sighted move. Like, I think...

If you're deciding not to do this because you're upset about the way that the community is upset with you or you're aware of that and you think that's a risk,

don't hide. It's an opportunity to turn it around, isn't it? This is your opportunity to talk to the community. When you do something like this, you're putting the wall up. And I think that that is the exact wrong thing to be doing from my perspective. But of course I would say that, but yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think it's not knowing what they might be very specifically worried about. I would say broadly, I think that's a venue that helps them and doesn't hurt them. And that them not going to it is, uh,

seems like it's actually a net negative for Apple. But again, it's,

they may have some other reason for doing it. Or if it is really just to lash out, it's self-defeating. If they really hate John, they wouldn't invite him to the keynote either. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, I expect that I'll be very close to John Gruber in a week's time, right? Like as we sit down. I think it is what you're saying, where they think that, oh, there's nothing for us to gain here. It's like, I understand why you would think that, but I think it is the wrong approach. Unless...

They've replaced it with something. We just don't know what it is yet. And like maybe they want to talk to someone else. I don't know. And we'll find out how the week goes. We'll find out because they did another interview last year. They did. And that was in the Steve Jobs Theater. Yeah. And so that was on their venue with their invite list. Yeah. They could do that again. And if they do that again, I think that's interesting. That wasn't made publicly available, though, was it?

It wasn't. No. Well, this thing, it was just for the press to see. So, you know, it's possible. My prediction is that they're not going to do any of that, but who knows? All right, let's get to the draft. Okay. These are the rules. Remember, we have a different rule set for WWDC, which was brought in last year. It was a wave of genius by Jason, and here we are.

So for WWDC, there are 14 rounds with 28 overall picks. Yeah, baby. The picks are chosen from a predetermined list of choices, which we have agreed would be verifiable on screen and not ridiculously obvious in our opinion. Each host must draft at least one pick from each of the following categories. Redesign, iOS, iPadOS, VisionOS, and Apple Intelligence slash AI.

Yeah, I went easy here. I thought about doing two from each, but this is the information we have even of guessing what's going to be at this event is it feels very much like

tougher and so i i kind of backed off we do have to spread five picks around and then we also have an other category and like all of the rest of the picks can come from wherever but we got to do one at least about redesign ios ipad vision and ai yeah we have picks that are for mac os watch os stagecraft everything but they're not they're in the other bucket defined picks that we need to make yeah not mandatory the winner of the previous draft gets first pick that is me

For an item to count in scoring, it has to be announced on stage on a slide during the presentation itself.

Stephen Hackett will adjudicate in case of a scoring stalemate. There are no partial points awarded. The points awarded on the episode of final, they will be finalized during the scoring segment of next week's show. In the case of a tie, there is a tiebreaker question. The challenger gets the pick of the tiebreaker question. The champion has to go over, under, or whatever it is we choose for the tiebreaker question, wherever Jason picks.

The winner becomes draft champion, displays the champion pennant. The loser becomes draft challenger and displays the challenger pennant. If you would like your own upgrade draft tee, you can go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com. Today, Jason, I added some new styles of t-shirt and collars.

because I wanted to do that. I also, because I was there, I made a lawyer up t-shirt. So there is now a lawyer up t-shirt if you want that because I wanted it. And so there are more colors in our t-shirts. We should look into the possibility if we have any sort of summer fun themed stuff that we can put on the on-demand store. That might be nice.

nice. That's a good idea. We should look at that. But yeah, we have there's a lawyer up t-shirt, a room around up t-shirt, two upgrade logo t-shirts and a draft t-shirt. Cotton Bureau, who we work with, they have this new premium heavyweight t-shirt, which I love and I wanted some upgrade t-shirts with that t-shirt. So you can go get those. I had some new colors. So upgradeyourwardrobe.com These are all on demand. You can buy them at any time. So go and check them out.

In 2025, there's been just one draft, and it was one that we did, the paternity draft, which I won and continue my challenging reign. Apple did surprising things with the MacBook Air, and therefore you won a draft. Correct. Hey, look, often it's like that. Often that's how it goes. That one was funny because it's literally Apple. That was the reason is Apple did some surprising things to me, to the MacBook Air.

And that was it. And then we waited for you to come back. They did some surprising things to the iPad where they grabbed it when we weren't expecting it. It's true. It's true. We have drafted for WWDC nine times. Jason has won four of those and I have won five of those. Jason, what is the tiebreaker question? The tiebreaker question, as always, is the complete length of the presentation.

From start to finish. This is not the countdown or anything like that, but it's when the video starts that does whatever probably wacky comedy segment they start with and ends when they say goodbye and they have the credits and the credits end. And then that's the end. In past years, last year it was an hour 43. Two years ago it was 206. 2022, it was 148.

2021, it was 146. And Mike, I'm going to make you choose over or under one hour and 46 minutes. Okay. Under. Okay. All right. So this is the thing. There's only been one in the last four years under 146. Yeah. It was last year when they had Apple Intelligence. And the thought is there's less, right? I would be really surprised if...

If it was longer, because of Apple, who knows? But I'm going with under. Under an hour and 46. That's my choice. So, all right, that's our tiebreaker. If you would like to score along with us next week, you can go to upgrade.cards. Thank you to Zoe Knox, who puts together those wonderful interactive scorecards so you can score along with us.

This episode is brought to you in part by Oracle. In business, they say you can have better, cheaper or faster, but you only get to pick two. But what if you could actually have all three at the same time? That's exactly what Coe here, Thomson Reuters and Specialized Bikes

have since they upgraded to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure database, application development, and AI needs, where you can run any workload in a high availability, consistently high performance environment, and spend less than you would with other clouds. How is it faster? OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second.

How is it cheaper? OCI costs up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking. And how is it better? Well, in test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds. This is the cloud built for AI and all of your biggest workloads.

Right now, with zero commitment, try OCI for free. Head to oracle.com slash upgrade. That's oracle.com slash upgrade. A thanks to Oracle for their support of this show and all of Relay. So now begins the WWDC draft. Yeah. All right. What do you think is going to happen, Mike? I know. For my first pick, I'm going to go with Apple renames the new OSs to a calendar year.

That is my first pick. I'm not picking from one of the mandatory categories. This has been one of the big pieces of news in the last week. This is a Mark Gurman joint, as many of the picks will be, I'm sure, Mark Gurman joints. So this is the idea that it will be, I guess, iOS 26 would be the assumption. It would be really weird if they called it iOS 25 because the operating system will only be available for like two or three months before the calendar changes over.

This is fantastic. I'm super happy about this if it happens because I have this year in preparing for things had to Google too often what is the current version of iOS because I just can't remember anymore. You made a great joke that I'm going to steal for you, which is I think on Blue Sky maybe or on Mastodon. You said, I've been waiting for this for iOS 18 years, which I thought was fantastic. I actually originally made that joke in...

our chat between you and me and steven you did you did and then i liked it enough that i recycled it that's when you know it's social media that's what you know it's good i mean i've been saying this for years that they should call the iphones this and maybe they will maybe this is just the beginning of that it's possible this is this is a thing that mark german is very um sure about yeah and i

So the question would be, why do we think this is not obvious? I don't know. This seems pretty big and it's marketing and we have to trust Mark Gurman. In some areas, I do trust him and I think he's probably right here, but I didn't feel certain enough about this to let it completely fall off the draft list. Rumor does not mean obvious. And we've spoken about this before. One of the hardest things to get right is the marketing.

This can change at any point. All they have to do is just change some logos and slides. This is not set by any means, but I think it would be fascinating and I really want it to happen. Yeah, all right. Well, we will see. That was my also first pick. It feels like a good gimme. I don't know why, but... It does, it does, it does. Okay, Mike, I am going to go with a design pick and I am going to pick...

New design features differently shaped icons. Okay. That's all differently shaped icons. Can you just for the sake of conversation and also just to define this bit, differently to what? Like to squares? Yes.

differently to what they currently are, which is the familiar round recs. So we could be talking circles. They could be squares with pointy edges. Cutouts. They could be circles. They could be lots of stuff, right? Yes. I just think differently. And features, by the way, I should also define as not necessarily...

Only that, right? But like that, that is one of the things you can do with the new design. You might even be able to make the icons different shapes, including a familiar shape. But I'm putting this down as they will they will mess with the icon shape. I mean, there's no way really answering this now, but do you have any sense of why they would do this? Like, why do you think they would do this?

Change the look, make it feel fresh, give people options. My gut feeling is it's a customization thing and that you'll be able to do things with icons and that they'll be more flexible for users. And it won't necessarily be that Apple has mandated that all icons be circular or something like that, but that they be, you know, that what we may be hearing about icons being different is more of a, you customize the look to make it how you want to look taken even further.

I kind of feel like maybe a little bit of what macOS used to be like, which is like, hey, you can do whatever you want now. These are just PNGs. However it comes out is how it comes out. Maybe so. That'd be fun. Maybe so. I will say this was not on my short list, this one. Interesting. Because... I feel like that was the strongest signal of all of the design rumors. So that's the one I went with. The reason I didn't pick it is...

It was the same reason that I didn't necessarily think they would do the dark mode changes the way that they did them, but they did do them this way, so I'm probably going to be wrong here too, which is just... I think it can be difficult for Apple to try and mandate to brands what they should do with their brand, but it's

But they did it. Yeah, they did it. So you're probably right. They did it with making every icon green. And people can't see our list of redesign options. Guessing features of a redesign is really hard. Which is good because we haven't seen it. We haven't seen anything yet, which is good. This is literally the one I liked the best of that whole list. And we have to pick one. So there it is. All right. I'm going to pick my redesign one now because we're in it.

because I moved it up so we might as well talk about it. So my redesign pick is that the new design sees floating tab bars in Apple's apps. They tried to do this once, right? For the Safari tab bar. This is the Safari floating tab bar? So like the tab bars at the bottom of an application, you know, when you go like say in music where you're going between like for you and new, like these will now be floating elements that you see UI go behind, right? And they just float on the top. What?

and they're not attached to the sides of the screen anymore. They're kind of just these little things that float on top of the UI, and the UI goes behind them and kind of glassy. They kind of did this on the iPad, but it's not there on the iPhone. On what app? On a bunch of their apps, including music on the iPad. There is a floating tab bar little lozenge thing at the top. Yeah, that's at the bottom on the iPhone. I think...

There are places where they have this little thing, but I think that this is going to be a more significant thing across the system where you see it. You've changed the pic from what it was in the document?

Yeah, new design sees floating tab bars in iPhone apps. Okay. Well, that, you know, okay. I'm still sticking with that. Because they're already in iPad apps. Then it shouldn't have been in the PIC document. Yeah. No, no. I think this is a better, I mean, you specified it. I'm just kind of making it on your specification. We know what this is. Yeah. I think that this is something that they tried to do in a specific way that did not work.

And since there's been lots of designers that have given their interpretation of how this could be done, I think this is going to be a pretty key part of app design, including the standard tools that you see in SwiftUI are all going to look like this. I think this is going to be one of the big things in the redesign. I see what you're saying. I just wanted to specify, obviously...

The iPad stuff is there and it's not new. We're looking for something new involving floating tab bars as a concept. So I think that that's it. We get it. We get what this is. With the iPad thing, though, you don't, I mean, I'm just checking. You don't see the content behind, right? Like it just sits on top. No, I think you do see some content behind as it scrolls up the top. I mean, this is helped by the fact that nobody uses that on iPad. So that didn't work. Other than Apple, but yeah. Yeah, that didn't really work.

Okay, I am going to go with another Mark Gurman rumored feature that I continue to think, you know, again, is not obvious and I'm not sure it's going to happen, but there's going to be a lot of that in this draft because it is the squishiest, weirdest draft I've had in a while, I think. I'm going to choose AI-based power or battery management feature. Is this a category pick for you?

This is my iOS official pick because that's where we slotted it. And the idea here is, as Mark Gurman has reported it, is that Apple is trying to use some new stuff to optimize power and battery management features.

And it's machine learning or AI. You can call it whatever you want. But the idea there is that it's got a new system that allows devices that are running this new OS to last longer or be put in a mode where they last longer and that they will extol the virtues of that. The danger here to me is that they have this feature and they're not going to talk about it until the new iPhones come out this fall. But

But Mark Gurman seems really high on this as a feature. And I kind of like, I like the idea of Apple saying, look what we do for you. We've got a smarter, because right now they've got low power mode, right?

That's it. So this is something that might not even be on by default, but we have a smarter feature that lets you intelligently use less battery life. And maybe they turn it on by default and it's like, seriously, you won't notice it's watching in the background and all of our phones get an extra, you know, whatever percent battery life. So that's the idea there. The potential too is if there is a...

phone coming out this year of a smaller battery in the iPhone Air, this will be a feature that will be really needed for that product if the battery is actually with a lower capacity. So it makes a lot of sense.

Right. But it's a thing you could still talk about now. Absolutely. And make some hay with because it's an AI feature that is actually, I think, Apple's best kind of AI feature, which is a super targeted functionality that is aided by machine learning algorithms. Right. It's what we would have just called a machine learning feature a few years ago. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

I don't think you're having a conversation with the battery. Yeah, they can say AI or ML or whatever they want, but we know what it is. They'll say AI, Jason. They'll say AI. Don't you worry about that. Apple Intelligence is watching your battery. Apple Intelligence is saving you battery life. I am actually now going to make my Apple Intelligence category pick. Okay. And say developers get to use Apple's models in their apps.

So this has been another Mark Gurman joint. I mean, this to me is maybe the best story they could tell at WWDC this year around Apple intelligence to say, hey, developers, all of you out there who we want to impress and get you on board with our technologies this year, you're all trying to find ways to integrate AI in some way. Well, what if we give you a free app

environmentally conscious way of using our on-device models to power simple features of your applications. You know, like...

There are many, like for example, like let's say you use a to-do application and you would like to categorize some, like say like what happens in the Reminders app, right? Like, and Reminders does this on its own using its own machine learning, right? You know, where you have like a shopping list and it can put them into the categories. What if I said you could, as a to-do list application maker, you could now do this thanks to ample intelligence and that can just be inside of your application. Or what if, you know, you make a read it later app

and you would like to add a summary to the top of every article, you can now do that. That's the best example. Yeah, anybody, because, you know, Mail does that now. Like, any app could hand some content to the model and say, give me a summary to put in this view in my app. Like, that's great. And we can talk about the state of Apple's models. I suspect that they've gotten better behind the scenes. Who knows what they're going to ship. But regardless of that, not letting...

app developers have access to it is bad so i think this is a great feature and i hope it happens yep oh boy um it's already getting tough it's already getting oh man this is good this is what we want with the draft chaos you yes we always say this to me like you want a draft where there's not a lot of information beforehand we are yes we've got maybe one or two more picks which could be gleaned from rubas and then we're just in it we're just yeah we're just in it

Yeah. In the spirit of that, I'm going to make my Vision OS pick right now, Mike, which is scrolling with your eyes. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't know, man. Scrolling with your eyes. I don't know, man. I mean, Mark Gurman says it's happening. I don't know what it means. I know he does.

My guess is that it's not as weird as we think it is, but it might be weirder than we think it is. I just, I feel like they're going to have to make some Vision OS announcements and Mark Gurman is pretty on board with this and it will in practice probably not be as big a deal as it seems like it might be. But you got to mention something with Vision OS, right? So I'm going to pick scrolling with your eyes.

Uh, my next pick is going to be my iPad OS pick. Okay. Uh, iPad desktop mode with menu, a more Mac like design. I don't even really think this is going to happen, but if I, if I have to make an iPad OS pick, this is the one I'm going to make. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well that, um, that's a, that was, uh,

probably going to be my pick. And I thought, I don't know how positive I feel about this. This is, look, we've talked about this a lot on this podcast. And in the context of drafts is really where it comes to a head, which is, are you doing this because you want it? Because you think it would be interesting if it happens or because you think it's actually going to happen. And let me tell you, when it's a thing that you've been deep down in for a long time, it becomes very hard to tell. Like, I can't tell

which is why I'm glad you made this pick. I can't tell if I believe that this is going to happen. Mark Gurman has said, he is our premier source for Apple information. Mark Gurman has said that without a doubt, this is going to happen. And I,

I kind of don't believe it only because I've been hurt before and I don't want to be hurt again. Right. So I don't know. I want to believe, I want to believe that we're going to get a Mac desktop or an iPad desktop mode. That's more Mac like, and that has a menu bar. I want to see it. I would be, that would be one of the highlights of WWDC. If we finally got a,

a bunch of things that make us think, oh, make us rethink what Apple thinks the iPad is for. That would be great to talk about, great to think about. Talk about giving us something to talk about. That we love talking about. Yeah, what does the iPad mean now that it has a menu bar? What does that say about Apple's ambitions? That would be amazing. And yet part of me, there's just a little part of me that's just saying, it'll never happen. So I'm glad you picked it.

And I will say, like Zoe has brought this up in the Discord, we've had somebody who's been persistently writing interconnected under the name Not Mark Gurman that has been giving us information about this for ages. And Zoe's like, I want that person to be vindicated. And so do I, because that would be incredible if really we could have been breaking this news in some form for months. Because they reported on this before Mark Gurman did. And we thought it was a joke from this person. Yeah, right, right. But...

we'll find out I would love it I wouldn't love it because then I'm going to end up buying a Magic Keyboard which I don't really want to buy I know but I don't have one because I don't like how big and heavy it makes my iPad I like that my iPad is incredibly thin and light yep but and I know I could use trackpads but you know the experience is going to be best with the Magic Keyboard so I would end up in that spot of course

Well, with you picking that exciting iPad pick, I'm going to then pick a much more boring pick that I think is definitely going to happen, which is a new Apple Pencil-related feature is announced. Is it a Reed calligraphy pen, Mike? It might be. Mark Gurman can't stop talking about the Reed calligraphy pen. But you know what? It's a feature. This is one of those things where...

read calligraphy pen for me is what robotic arm is for you because right yeah what is a read calligraphy pen like I don't know what that thing is that Mark keeps saying but he keeps saying it okay I have a theory by the way and I don't know if this is related to what Apple's thinking or what Mark Gurman's thinking about

about the calligraphy pen that he keeps calling it a Reed calligraphy pen. Because a calligraphy pen is a thing, and there isn't a tool like that in the Apple Pencil. So they could make one, and that would be cool. Yeah, but Reed calligraphy is incredibly specific when it's probably just...

A calligraphy pen. Okay. Here's my wacky, unlikely to be true, where my brain went about this, which is when Steve Jobs was at Reed College, he took a calligraphy class, and that's what taught him about the importance of fonts. And so when I hear Reed calligraphy, I think that's a Steve Jobs reference.

I'm broken that way. Okay. I mean, it does mean like you take a piece of bamboo and you cut it in half. That's not what they mean. No. They mean Steve Jobs. Okay. It's a Steve Jobs salute. Let's just go with it. It's a Steve calligraphy pen. Is that a better answer than read calligraphy pen as a new feature of the iPad? I don't know. Whatever.

All right. I get any new Apple Pencil related feature here, though. I'm putting some chips down on the Apple Pencil, right? Some OS feature that features the Apple Pencil in some way. That's all. But I think it's the read calligraphy pen, if I'm...

Yeah. I guess my thought on this is usually they keep that for when they have new iPads, but we don't expect new iPads this year. They did Math Notes. So they may just do it here. Yeah. That would make sense. If they don't have an iPad thing to show, they might just do it here. But yeah, Math Notes. Love it.

All right. My fifth pick is... In the UK localization, is it called Maths Notes? It's actually not, you know, although it should be. Well, that's because Maths Notes is hard to say. Yeah, because it sucks. That sucks. It's actually Maths Note. Just do one of them. You only get one. Attorney's General? You only get one. You only get one.

Apple announces a partnership with Google for AI features is my fifth pick, where this isn't so much based on a rumor. It's based on something Sundar Pichai said and what Craig Federighi said a year before. Also, a friend of the show, one true John John Voorhees, sent me a link this morning, which I don't completely agree with, but I thought was an interesting take, which I will share here. So there was an article this morning that Samsung is getting ready to sign a deal with Perplexity for some AI features in Google.

their version of Android. But the interesting thing about that is Google and Samsung have a very big partnership with Gemini.

And what John said is, well, what if they've done this because Apple and Google are about to start working more closely together, which I thought was a good take from John Boyes. Which, because I was quite surprised to read this for Plexity News because of just how integrated Google and Samsung are right now.

But potentially Google and Apple are about to start working together again, maybe. I don't know, though. But I at least think we're going to see Gemini get the same treatment that OpenAI get. I think that that is the likely scenario. It's not that Google is all in on this. Because again, that would be... I mean, I know we live in this world now. Like both of the smartphone platforms...

use Gemini, that seems not going to be legal. They all use Google though, right? They all have Google embedded in them in some way. It's all there, right? Yeah, I don't know. But that's a problem that's led to legal issues. I feel like the truth is going to be that Google is going to be... Well, Google as a search is a choice. I think Google being an AI source in the iPhone is a thing that will happen.

I don't think it's going to be like an exclusive where only Google gets access to certain parts of the OS. I think it's going to be that Google will be plugged in like ChatGPT is plugged in, like other partners might be plugged in. And that it's like all comers, right? Anybody can do it. Yeah. Will be the pitch, I think.

There is a potential that like maybe both ChatGPT and Gemini are here, but also they have more access to the system than they do currently. Like, and that this might be like a slow rolling where, hey, any AI provider can contact us and we can look at it. But I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to stick with Apple Intelligence.

And I am going to go with, oh, this is one that I didn't have on my list. I think I overlooked it and I'm going to pick it, which is, I'm switching right as we talk. I'm going to go with AirPods Live Translate. Okay.

which is a feature, again, reported on a lot that it's out there. Everyone does this, too. I think the fact that everybody else does this, the idea that you'll be wearing AirPods and they'll be listening and they'll be translating it in your ears into your language is a thing that, yeah, it's been demoed elsewhere. It's a thing that should be on the AirPods. This is a good time to do it. And also, an AirPods feature announced in beta is awesome. And you know why, Mike?

It's because we'll spend the entire summer having the endless conversations of how you force a software update on AirPods. That's my favorite thing to discuss in the summer is how you force a beta firmware onto AirPods. Just keep tapping. Just turn them off and on and put them in and out and figure it out, and then magic happens. I don't know. Anyway, live translation feature for AirPods.

That's my pick. All right. For those that are keeping track so far, we have both picked from the redesign category. Jason has picked an iOS pick. We've both picked an AI thing. Jason has picked Vision OS and we've both picked iPad OS. So I still have to pick Vision OS and iOS in the category. So you've done all your category picks now, right?

Redesign iOS, iPadOS, VisionOS, AI. I think you've done them all. Yeah, looks like. I have not. And I will say, Jason, what was my plan? Good, good, good. Although my iOS pick was the one that you picked. I was going to pick the AI-based power management figure, but I was trying to push some of them off to later in the game to see if this gameplay pays off for me. We will.

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or you're scaling your business, Squarespace gives you everything that you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow a brand, and get paid all in one place.

It's so easy to get started with Squarespace, and it's one of the reasons that I have used them time and time again over the last 15 years. They have so many fantastic tools to help you get a professional, beautiful website up and running. They have professionally designed award-winning website templates.

So you can go in, you can choose what you want, and you can then customize it to your heart's content. So you're going to have a beautiful website. They also have a new AI-enhanced website building tool that's called Blueprint AI that lets you quickly and easily build a site that is bespoke to your business just by inputting some basic information about your industry and the goals that you want. But it doesn't matter which route you choose, you're going to have a great website at the end of it with no experience required.

You can also offer your services and get paid with Squarespace. From consultations to events and experiences, you can showcase your offerings of a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Think built-in appointment scheduling, email marketing tools, and more. You keep everything cohesive with on-brand invoices and get paid easily with online payments.

One of the other things that I love about Squarespace is how they grow with you. So like over the years that I've used them, the amount of features that they have added are fantastic and they make it in such a way that you could just integrate what you need at the time that you need it. And it's all there for you. It really is a full solution for building just about any website that you could imagine.

Go to squarespace.com slash upgrade. You can sign up for a free trial today and you can see exactly what I mean. Go in, build your site, and when you're happy with it and ready to launch, use the offer code upgrade at checkout and you will get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash upgrade with the offer code upgrade and you will get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay. All right, round six now.

of the draft. Here's a feature that I want to exist. Okay. AI coaching in the health or fitness app. So I have long been frustrated with Apple's health app because it has so much data about me, but does such a terrible job of telling me what to do with that information.

Amen. Like their training load feature.

I don't understand what it is attempting to tell me. What does well above mean? Is that good or is it bad? Yeah. I know what it's trying to do, but it basically is a feature for people who are extremely serious athletes. But it just, I just think that like, it's not, it doesn't, and this is the same as like the trend information. Like they have so much information and they will say to me like, Hey, this has changed over the last 10 weeks.

And I asked myself, is this good? Is this a good change? What is the change? And so I have been for months and months and months wearing a Whoop band. You may have seen it if you watch our video. The Whoop band that I have, I'm not sure about it. Whoop as a company, at least with the version that I have, it seems like the function is focused way more around very athletic people. They actually have a new version, which...

seems to cater a bit more to the person I am where I just want to know about my health and I'm considering changing there's been a bunch of controversy but like whatever

But one of the things they have in the app, like they do do a much better job of saying there's it's like you this happened to you overnight. So you may feel good or bad today. Like they'll tell you that in the morning in the application. And I really like that feature. But they also have an AI chat inside of the app where I can ask it questions about what's going on with me.

And that's fine. Whatever. What I want is Apple to just take all the information it has about me from my Apple Watch and tell me clearly in plain English what it means. And if Apple intelligence has to be the way that I get that, fantastic. Because I just want that information. So I really hope that this is something that they have. Okay. So it's a wish casting pick. Yeah.

But it is out there. It's a feature that has been reported as existing or being worked on. Yeah. That may be a WWDC or may not be. This is a thing that Mark Gurman called AI doctor at one point and people lost their minds, but I don't think it is that. I don't think it is. I think there is an AI doctor and that's a different feature. Yeah. I know because you put it as two picks. I think this is not two features. This is the same feature you get. Yeah.

Okay. I don't think it is, but maybe. I mean, it's a tabletop robot, Mike. You never know. I'll just tell you, I'm going to do to you what you do to me every time, which is I'm going to get really excited about a pick. And then you say, I didn't even have that on my list. Okay. Because I didn't even have that on my list. But, you know, I want it to exist too.

Sometimes you care about a sound subsystem in iPadOS. Sometimes you care about AI coaching. I'm going to make what we have called a meta pick, a stagecraft pick. And it's a gamble, but I don't think they can not do this.

My sixth pick in the draft, I am picking Apple explicitly acknowledges falling short in its AI promises. Pick number six? Wow. Wow. Okay. I don't think they cannot address it. I think they will say, my guess is it'll be something like, we have a bunch of great Apple intelligence announcements. We recognize we haven't shipped some of our features that we promised you last year.

We are confident that we're going to have them shipping this fall.

It might be that simple, but I think they're not. I don't think they can go through the whole presentation not mentioning that they promised features last year and didn't deliver them. I'm not expecting an apology, although an apology would certainly count here. I'm expecting an explicit acknowledgement that they fell short in last year's promises in some way. And it could be, like I said, as simple as we realize we didn't ship these in time for this year, but they're coming in the fall or something like that. Like, they'll put their positive spin on it, but

I don't think they can... And maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think they can pretend...

that everything's fine when they talk about Apple intelligence. I think they need to at least acknowledge that some of the features that they announced were not shipping. And especially because I expect they will mention that they are going to be shipping this fall. So it might be as coy as like, they took a little bit longer than we expected. And everybody who's there watching the video in person will be like tittering, right? Like he, he, he, but, uh, but something, I just, I think they have to, I think they cannot. I, I,

it will not be a surprise to me if they just ignore it. But I, I am going to bet that they can't completely ignore it and they have to at least tip their hat to it. I, I agree with your logic. Uh,

But I don't think I could assume that they would do it. The reason for me why I'm unsure about this, I don't think they can talk about these features again until they can tell you they know they're coming. And I'm not convinced they know they're coming. That's my thing. I...

There is some reporting. I mean, I think they have said and Gurman has said that the goal is to ship those features in the fall. Oh, I'm sure that's the goal. Some of those features in the fall. Jason, the goal was to ship them last fall. I know. I know. I know. But, well, no, the goal was never to ship them last fall. Someone had a goal. The goal was to ship them this spring, and then they failed at it. I think App Intense is a good example where...

That is a feature. I don't know about personal context and knowing your mom is flying in and stuff like that, but I feel like App Intense is a thing that they will probably commit to. If it's just App Intense, I could see that skipping the keynote.

It could be. It could be. But again, I'm just putting down that when they break the seal on Apple Intelligence, they're going to have to acknowledge in the most spinny way possible, acknowledge that they didn't ship all of it. So basically what we're saying is, are they going to flinch? Are they going to flinch? Are they going to wink? Are they going to sweat a little? Or are they going to pretend that everything is great and they did everything right? And we'll see. Here's the thing that I can imagine happening, right? And now Apple Intelligence...

Our customers love the features that we shipped last year and then move on. Right? Like, that's it. And they didn't happen. I can't see it. I can't see it. I can't see that. I hope you're right. Okay. Pick number seven. New features for Genmoji. Okay. What are those new features, Mike? Well, okay. So the pick is new features for Genmoji. That's the pick, right? Yep. Here's what I think. I could imagine that...

are maybe new ways to make them maybe they get kind of more like an image playgrounds you kind of think you can give it a bit more uh direction than you currently get maybe you can choose some styles i could imagine a scenario where they're animated in some way and maybe they do things um may i again don't fully know maybe you would be able to to have a bit more of a construction

construction in the way that you do it. Maybe you can pick two emoji that actually exist and say, "Combine these for me and make it do this." I think Genmoji is maybe the only thing that they made that I can imagine got some traction because of the way that they implemented it. And so I could imagine them pushing that one a little bit further this year.

If they touch any of the existing Apple intelligence features at all, I think Jammoji could be the one that gets some updates. Yeah, I mean, it's a good... I don't know if I've seen anything about this, but I think that it's... No, this is a Mike thinks this. This is where we are in the job. Talking about Apple revising existing Apple intelligence features from last year with improvements that are probably based on model improvements, I think is a good...

I think that that's a good approach. There may very well be things like that that are not really rumored, that Mark Gurman doesn't necessarily have a lot of vision into because they are probably coming from a group that's doing other stuff and he's going to miss things. And I think so Genmoji is a good feature. So having them sort of double down on that and add more features to it and improving it via the model is

I think that's a good guess. I'm specifically saying here, it's not like there are improvements and then that's it. There has to be some new stuff you can do with Gemmoji you can't currently do. That's my pick. Okay. I'm going to pick an incredibly boring pick. Love it. This is my I believe in Mark Gurman pick. This is a feature that is so minor, but I think it's real. I think he can't stop talking about it.

And I think it will be pitched actually in an interesting-ish sort of way. And that is Captive Wi-Fi Sync. Oh, my God. So boring. I know. I know it's so boring. But he won't stop talking about it. And I think this is a feature that is there and that they will say at least in passing. And the idea is it's already really great that your devices and you can share with friends how to log into a Wi-Fi.

password, right? Like you can share that. The idea behind Captive Wi-Fi Sync is if you have to connect to Wi-Fi and then there's a page that comes up and you have to log into that. What this feature will allow you to do is you do that once and all your other devices will be able to do it, which is very interesting. I think especially for Apple TV. So I think this might actually be an Apple TV feature.

But it's also an ecosystem feature. If you do it in one place, it will log you in to the captive portal everywhere, which is a nice bit of functionality. I don't think they're going to do a whole, let's talk about Wi-Fi, captive Wi-Fi sync. But this, Gurman's level of certainty that this is happening leads me to believe that it will be mentioned. This might even be on a slide, but I feel like it's going to happen. So I'm going to put it in my list.

All right. So we're on to pick eight. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to do my iOS pick now. Okay. Which is refinements to the lock screen design in iOS. Is this... I feel like this was literally something that we did last year and it's still here. Yeah. But my thought is...

More refinements. It's a redesign, right? If they're going to do a redesign, we're going to touch the lock screen design. Because the lock screen is good. People like it. They've done a good job over the years of updating it. If they're going to redesign the system, I think the home screen would get some changes. The lock screen should get some changes too. This is my question, which is

If they do a whole redesign of the OS, but the lock screen might look a little different, but functionally isn't any different, you don't get this pick, right? Yeah, you've got to be able to do something different with it than what you can currently do. Right. Because we know what it can do now. Let's imagine here's a thing that they could do that they don't do. Use Apple intelligence in some way to create a lock screen wallpaper for you, right?

That would be a refinement to the lock screen function. Yeah, sure. That doesn't exist right now. Based on your text, whatever. Yeah, I would give you that. That's like, here's what I'll say. It may be an easier way to put this. There has to be something new in the customize area of the lock screen, right? So when you go into the, like, I'm going to the lock screen and I'm going to customize it.

that there's got to be some options there that don't currently exist. Okay, we'll call it new way to customize lock screen design in iOS. From a clearing up perspective, that would better get us where I am. Not like, oh, look, the clock looks different. So I get that one. Yeah, it's a different typeface because it's using the new typeface that's used everywhere or whatever. Like, no, that's not it. That's not it.

That's my iOS pick. I'm not sure if I said that. That's my iOS pick. So I still have a Vision OS pick to do. And then I've done all my five. Okay. I am going to grab something that I wasn't intending to, but I'm inspired by your Genmoji pick. I'm going to pick image playgrounds updated to create much improved images. Yeah. This is literally, surely their image generation model got better, right? Right? Right? Right?

I made an image, playgrounds image a few days ago to troll someone, which is all anyone really could use it for. And I just looked at it and was like, what is going on here? I think it was you. I think I was trolling you specifically. Or Steven, one of the two of you. It's basically all I ever do with it is just send one to our group chat. It's so bad, man. It's just so bad. Yeah. It's so bad. Yeah. My next pick is...

Apple announces a partnership with an AI provider other than Google or OpenAI. I think this is risky, but super intriguing and may happen. I want it to happen. I think I put this in there. Yeah, you did. I think it's a thing that could happen and we really just don't know. Here's what I think this is. This is Anthropic for Xcode.

That's what I think this is because Swift Assist never shipped. It didn't ship and they've not spoken about it. And we have heard that internally they're using Claude in Xcode. So maybe this is something that gets out there. Is that a public facing feature? Right. That's the question. I think you get this pick.

If they mention that in China they're adding somebody else's LLM. Yeah, which they've not done. But I also could imagine that it's not just Google, right? And that like perplexity gets in or somebody else. So that's what I'm going with. Yeah, no, I think that's a good pick. I just don't... Again, I think it's just a coin flip. I think it's probability. I think it could very well happen. I don't know if it will happen. Yeah, there's a pick somewhere else that maybe one of us will make or one of us won't. But...

There is a possibility that they add AI search to Safari. And if they do that, they've got partnerships left right and center at that point. Right. Right. For sure. Okay. I'm going to go back to Vision OS, believe it or not, which I've scrolled with my eyes. Oh, man. I know you're going to take... I'm in trouble. No! This is... I did see where it says spoilers for what I'm about to say, Mike. I am going to say...

at least one, this is a great one, you put it in there, at least one first-party Vision OS app that was previously an iPad app. So to explain this, when Apple shipped the Vision Pro and Vision OS, there are a whole bunch of Apple apps they didn't bother making run on Vision OS. They're like, yeah, it's iPad compatibility layer, that's enough, which is, I think, a real indictment. I mean, I know that it was hard, they had to launch a whole product, but it's a real indictment that some of those apps did not get converted. So,

So what I'm saying is they will mention or show on a slide or whatever that at least one of Apple's apps that's not currently a Vision OS app, native Vision OS app on Vision OS, but is an iPad emulation, will become a native Vision OS app. I left it too long. It was going to be my next pick and it was going to be my Vision OS pick. I left it too long and now I'm in trouble. Now you're in trouble. Because I have to make my Vision OS pick now. You don't.

Or I could keep picking. I mean, I have to pick it now in case you take one of the other two that I think could happen. I have more than two, but like if I don't go for it now, I'm just... This is why we do the mandatory picks. Yeah, I'm making it worse and worse for myself. Okay, so I have two picks that I'm currently trying to decide between. One of them...

is something I think could happen. One of them is something that had been previously rumored but hasn't happened. Mm-hmm.

And I think the reason that it was previously rumored and hasn't happened might be why it still won't happen. Yeah. So let me say about this little list that people can't see, but like on our list of Vision OS, I actually think because we don't know a lot about Vision OS. I think there are a large number of things on this list that could happen, but none of them we're certain will happen. Right. We basically came up with a list with the obvious things you could do to improve Vision OS. Right.

But which ones did they do? We don't know. So on that level, it is a pure kind of informed guessing game that is in the absence of people like Mark Gurman would be what the entire draft was like. So, you know, you take your chance. Here's what I'm going to go with. I'm not going to go with the one that was previously rumored. And I'm going to try and use some logic here. So one of the Vision OS 2 updates included the ability for you to access the home controls and the control center controls with a hand gesture.

Yes. The fact that they added that in tells me that there's been time spent since VisionOS 1 where they've had to rethink how you use the operating system. And they were like, this one's so good, we're going to ship it now. But I don't think that would be the only one. So my VisionOS pick is new hand gestures for controlling VisionOS. Okay. Okay. Hand gestures. That is, yeah, that's the logical, they did it last year. Would they do more of that? Yeah.

So I think it's possible, you know, the longer you use this thing, maybe the more thoughts you have and like maybe there's a different way to do window management with some kind of gesture that they've not thought of until now. So that's what I'm going to go with, something about navigating or using the system in some way with a new gesture. And like, so to put it into context, a gesture is if you hold your hand out and you're

pinch your your your uh if you hold your hand out you get this little circle that appears and if you tap it will take you home if you turn it over um you can then access the control center yeah it gives you the time yeah we can hold you can access control center it's very very clever it's actually a really nice addition uh design yeah it's really good uh i think that's good i think that's a good thing to hope for and i had it on my list

of possibilities. All right. So I've now hit all of my required categories too. Great. I've done with the categories. Great. I've got to say, I think that took longer than last year to get to get all the categories done. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I like it. All right. I'm going to go back to,

Apple intelligence related items. And I mentioned this earlier as a thing that could trigger my explicitly acknowledged as falling short pick. I'm going to mention it here because I think this is a feature that they like and they're going to mention, even though it's more of a developer thing and it'll definitely happen in the State of the Union. I think it will get mentioned in some way on a slide or in a conversation about Apple intelligence, which is app intents. I think app intents are going to be mentioned. Yeah.

And that's my pick is App Intense mentioned. App Intense is really interesting. It is this really aggressive expansion of what you could do with shortcut stuff in third-party apps. They really want to evangelize people on it, not because of shortcuts necessarily, but because that allows Apple Intelligence to also use features of apps. And it's a thing that many third-party developers are like, I don't know if I want to do that. So one of the ways that Apple, you know, one of Apple's priorities needs to be to

encourage and evangelize the use of App Intents. So if it says, oh, we're going to this fall, we're going to do all this expanded App Intents stuff, it's going to be great. That's what I think they're going to do.

This episode is brought to you by Delete.me. Delete.me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. It does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. And it's not just a one-time service. Delete.me is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the internet.

So when I signed up for Delete.me, I was able to tell them exactly the information that I didn't want to exist online anymore. There's some stuff like my work email address, which I do want in some places, but there's personal information that I don't want to exist. And so you're able to go through and put it all in there and they will then go out on the web and they will search all these data brokers, find this information, match it, and then start the removal process.

I just a couple of days ago got my latest report from Delete Me. And I love to be able to see these are the places where we found your information. We've removed it from these services. These ones are in progress. These ones we're checking back on in a certain period of time. I love that they're out there in my corner, constantly checking and getting my data removed from the places that I don't want it to be and I want it to be removed from. But also not getting rid of everything about me, which is fantastic. I have that control.

You can take control of your data too and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me with a special offer for the listeners of this show. You can get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com upgrade20 and use the promo code upgrade20 at checkout. The only way to get that 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com upgrade20 and the promo code upgrade20 at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com upgrade20.

upgrade20 and the code upgrade20. Thanks to Delete Me for their support of this show and all of Relay. So now we're in the home stretch. Yeah, we are. Pick number 11. Yes. Okay, so I'm going to do a redesign. I'm going back to the redesign here. Okay.

One of the ways in which people customize their phones is with their wallpapers. It's like the key indication that you are making of what you want your phone to look like. There's been a lot of conversation about translucency with the design.

and Vision OS, and da-da-da-da-da. And there's a lot of really wild things that people are suggesting for how your apps can look translucent, and it will take the colors from the world. No, I don't think it's taking the colors from the world. I don't even really know if I think it's translucent. What I think is going to happen is that the apps that you use will be able to take colors from your wallpaper and put that into the apps. So you will see like a tint effect

of a color from your wallpaper inside of applications. So it's not necessarily translucent. There might be a bit of that too. I don't know. But my pick is that there will be like certain color tints or hints and things like that taken from your wallpaper in the applications that you use. So if I've got a green background, there's going to be a little subtle kind of green things in my apps. And if I've got a blue background, there's going to be little subtle blue things. Yeah.

That sort of thing. Android has been doing this for years. It's their material design thing. You only see this if you use a Google Pixel, really. But they have a thing where you can customize it, but by default, it will start to show certain controls, widgets, and stuff like that. And inside of applications, it will take the colors of your home wallpaper. Okay.

Well, I'm going to go, this is more stagecraft, but he did it last year. And so I'm going to appeal to consistency on the part of Apple and say that before we get into all the OS details, Tim can't help himself and he's going to plug Apple TV+. This might be a good time to do it because Apple TV has been on a real tear this year. Right? Right? I mean, last year he was just like, before we get started, I want to talk about Apple TV+. It's really awesome. Here's a trailer. And then they just did the rest of the event. It's like,

I mean, do that again, maybe. I don't know if he will or not, but he did it last year and it would not be a bad time to do it. And they're on a roll. So and they did. It was a combination of like stuff that they had done that was really hot and also the new stuff that they were going to be coming out with in the fall. So they had a lot to go with there. And I think it's yeah, I can plug Apple TV plus. Let me just get a clarification point because they might do this. If they show a trailer for the F1 movie and say it's coming to theaters, does this count?

Oh, that is a good question. I would say this doesn't count because the call to action there is go to the movies, not subscribe to Apple TV+. Oh, that is a real question because we know that they're going to really flog F1, right? I feel like if they... I'm going to keep it because what it suggests is if all they do is plug F1, I don't get it. But if they plug a bunch of stuff that they're working on, including F1... Yeah.

Or even he shows an F1 trailer and he says, and of course, all of our great stuff on TV Plus. That's enough. Like, the idea here is that TV Plus as a service gets mentioned in the middle of the developer keynote as a, you know, not as a mention in a slide deep in, but like as Tim saying, you know, so much great stuff. We've won so many awards and the F1 movie is coming. Like, plugs Apple TV Plus is really all I'm going for here. I'm not saying shows a trailer or anything that specific, but like, takes a moment out of the developer keynote to talk about his TV service. But,

if they just show a trailer for the movie and they're like, go to the movies, see the movie, that doesn't count. Then I don't get it. Cool. Then I don't get it. All right. Although, if he says, go see it in the movies and then later it'll be on Apple TV+, I'm going to take it. Yeah, that counts. But I...

If he does that, that's a mistake. If he does that, he has made a mistake. In theaters. See it in theaters. Absolutely. I think that that would be a mistake if he goes, hey, look, go to the movies or just wait. It's like, oh, no, Tim, you've messed up. You've messed up. No one's going to go. All right. Oh, boy.

We're at the point now where I have 13 items and I don't feel confident about any of them. So like I make my own little list, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same. Yeah. My confident items are gone. I had 14 of them. They're all gone. So in Power On this weekend, Mark Gurman spoke about using Apple intelligence to create shortcuts.

Yeah. So I'm going to pick that. Shortcuts can be created with AI assistance. I don't even know what that means. That is interesting because he did this interesting thing, which I think points to his maybe lack of knowledge of exactly what Apple's going to do, where he knows certain features are in the mix for this cycle. And it used to be that...

Features in the mix for this cycle would either be in or out for WWDC. But what Mark Gurman has reported is Apple got so burned last year that they're not going to announce some features that might still be in the cycle, right? That they will announce features that they have a high likelihood of shipping in the fall.

And if there's a feature that might make it in the winter or the spring, I think this is good. They are not going to announce it, but it might still happen later. And this is one of those features where he's like, they're working on this, you know, being able to generate shortcuts from a prompt so that, you know, it's, you know, it's automation with guidance. They're working on that. That might be a feature this year. It's,

He said probably not something they're going to announce, but who knows, right? He doesn't even seem to know. So interesting feature. Yes, for sure. We'll see. Oh, I enjoy analyzing your picks. And then I turn around and I have to make picks. Yeah, it's fun to just talk about other people. Then you're on the hook, you know? I am going to say, so here's the thing. There is all this talk about how there's going to be an Apple game app.

And we put in a couple of things that are the names of it. Although I'm not convinced that either of those is actually the name of it. I have a wild theory about what they're going to do. That isn't one of our choices.

Should I tell you that now? Should I do that now? Yeah. I mean, is this... Are you actually making a pick or you just want to talk about something? I am making a game pick. I'm making a game-related pick. Okay. So the rumor is Apple's going to do a whole new app about games. And it's basically what used to be in Game Center when it was an app, but also other stuff. Like the...

for whatever reason. It's not just Apple Arcade on the Mac. They're going to be like things that are outside and it's games. It's not just things that are in Apple Arcade. It'll be things that are out of Apple Arcade. And what's it going to be called was one of the things that we had in our picks. And there's Apple, it'll be called Apple Games. And I put in, it'll be called Game Center, which is a name they already use. I think that those are both quite possible. But it occurred to me this morning that

that the other way they could go is they could call it Apple Arcade. Oh, yeah. And rename the service Apple Arcade Plus. Oh, Jason, that's genius. Right? That's really good. Because I...

We were talking about it on Connected last week, and I said Apple Games. And I thought to myself, Apple Arcade's a great name, but they already use it. I didn't think about, yes, like the TV. There is Apple TV and Apple TV+. TV+, News+, is inside Apple News. So you create Apple Arcade and say now our service inside the Arcade app is called Arcade+. Unless, Jason, they make it Apple Games and Apple Games+. Yeah.

They could also do that. Now, that all said, I am not confident in any of those. So I'm going to pick something slightly different, which is they are going to announce whatever this thing is. And as a part of that, a game developer is heard from. Oh, okay. So someone's going to be like, oh, I love...

I love Apple games. Okay. I, we were so happy to make our game for Apple or make our Apple has done so many great things for game developers. That's, that's my conceptual pick here is that maybe it'll be in a different context altogether, but this is what's motivating. It is. We will, there will be somebody who is not an Apple person who will be seen in perhaps a montage, uh,

That is a developer at the developer conference who is a game developer who has something to say, is heard from, like not is just seen, but that we hear them say something. And, you know, again, this is like a classic game demo on stage kind of pick, right?

pick but I just feel like there's a lot here I'm not comfortable at least in round 12 to put that down for what the name is but I am comfortable that there's going to be a game something so that's my that's my proxy is a game developers heard from all right we're in the final two picks now maybe they're maybe they're crying for help Mike I don't know help stop but heard from is all I know the content is unclear

All right. I'm going to make a pick. Good. It's a draft. It's helpful. Do it. iPad windows can be moved around freely. Okay. Well, the whiff of desperation in here. Okay. Let's be clear here. iPad windows can be moved around freely. Yeah. What you mean is currently...

Even though you can move windows around a little more freely than you could before, there are still cases where the windowing sort of like pushes them into various locations. You can't fully overlap them in the way that you might on Mac OS. There's still an element of snapping and all of this kind of stuff. So what you're saying is they will show or talk about free movement of windows as a feature in the keynote. Yeah.

One of the reasons that I think that this could happen is Vision OS has no problem with this. I know, right? You can do this no problem on Vision OS. So Apple is not completely against the idea of overlapping windows because they have created a platform since they created Stage Manager on iPad where you can do this. So let's just get it done.

If anything, it would be easier to handle this on iPadOS and on VisionOS because on iPadOS, you have the dock right there. You can click on the dock and you bring the windows up. On VisionOS, you have to find them. You have to go find them. So let's just get it done. Okay. Sounds good. I remember when I said I wasn't super confident in any of those game names. Yeah. I'm just going to pick that it's called Apple Games. Yeah.

So you had this great idea and you're just not doing it? Well, we don't, I mean, can I add a pic right now? To call it Apple Arcade? Yeah, sure. Because it's great. Okay. Let's do it. Because now it'll be hilarious to me if it's called Apple Games. I'll be super happy. Oh, man. I'll be super happy. Yeah.

Yeah, but no, my idea is so wacky that I think I have to pick it. I think it's a great idea. I think you need to pick it because it's a good idea, and if it's right, you need those being right points. Here's the thing is, Apple Games, my argument for Apple Games is that arcade is cutesy, and it feels like arcade games in its old style, whereas games is super straight. But also, the reason I think they'll call it Apple Games is because this is the way that music is.

TV, news, games. That's why I think they'll call it Apple Games. I'm going to keep it as Apple Games. I'm not going to pick Apple Arcade. If it's called Apple Arcade, I'll be so happy. That's fine. If it's called Apple Arcade and they rename the service to Arcade Plus, I will take a victory lap, even though I didn't pick it. You will get a first in upgrade. I'll steal this from a kind of funny game show now. You'll get a tip of the cap. That's what you'll get. You'll get the first ever tip of the cap for that pick in the draw. I demand credit.

Final pick. Final pick. Oh, this is rough. Do I want to make another VisionOS pick? Like, this is where all my VisionOS picks are now. How much time are they going to spend on VisionOS, really? You know? Like, that's the question. I mean, that's really complicated, right? Because, like, VisionOS is the platform where they could make the most change because it's newest. But, like, what? For the 50,000 people that are using it with any regularity? Like...

How much time are they really going to... There are things that they might do to Vision OS that they just don't talk about in the keynote, but that they actually put in Vision OS 26, which is hilarious as a thought that we'll go from 2 to 26. Stalling. It's fine. He's stalling. Yeah, he is. But you know what? If they do it, they'll put it on the Bento slide, so I'm just going to do it. Dream pick. Here it is. They need to do it. Support for VR hand controllers. Yay!

I hope that happens. You should actually turn this into a games platform. It's a third-party API for hand controllers. Even if you can't work with PlayStation for whatever reason, even though PlayStation desperately need to get rid of their stock of the PSVR 2,

You should have, as you said, an API so people could just make these things and we can all have a good time playing Beat Saber or whatever fake Beat Saber we'll get on Vision Pro. Jason, I turned on my Vision Pro last week. I have not turned it on since the baby was born. And I was trying out the Bono Immersive movie. I'll put a link in the show notes.

Technically very impressive. I'm not a huge U2 fan, so it wasn't for me. But this is great because it is like an actual feature-length thing which includes lots of immersive content. And even when they're just showing things on a screen, they have immersive things that are happening. It is really good. It's just not necessarily my kind of thing. But I turned it on and I went to the App Store.

And the what's new still includes what if. It's not a great scene in the Vision OS app store. It's not. There's not a lot going on. It's real quiet. But if you have a Vision Pro, like we always say, whenever Apple adds anything immersive, you should always at least check it out. And this one is yet another interpretation of an interesting thing that you can do with immersive video content. Like,

Okay, they've done another one. But can we get any of them to do? Frequently, the answer to that seems to be no, but we can keep seeing new interesting ways in which someone could produce content like this. A friend of the show who shall remain nameless wrote in, sent me a picture at a used tech and book store where a Vision Pro is for sale for $16.99. That's a deal. What's your final pick? Interesting.

An AI company representative is heard from. I'm doing more heard from pics, more stagecraft pics. The idea here is that as part of some partnership somewhere, we will get in the video somebody from one of these sterling companies

new tech Titan AI companies talking about something about their AI and working with Apple. So the idea here is there's a thing from Sam Altman, there's a thing from Sundar Pichai or some other person at Google or somebody at perplexity or, or whatever, whatever, just that as part of their new, we're going to be more open. We've added partners, all of that, that somebody from the outside is,

I mean, honestly, lends a little credibility to Apple's AI story. It's StageCraft, right? Like they could choose to do it or not. And so it really is. But I'm left with StageCraft picks at this point. So I'm going to go back to the StageCraft. They didn't do it last time with OpenAI. But I see where you're coming from of like now if they want to make themselves look like they're the place for partnerships. Maybe now's the time. Yeah.

All right, that's the draft. We're done. Upgrade.cards is where you can follow along. Oh, man. Let's talk something about real quick. So last year in Upgrade Plus, we created the California Bear Trophy. California Bear Trophy, well, let's guess the name.

And we were going to do it again because last year we tied because the rules were not well thought out and we ended up tying. So we were going to do this year the California Bear Trophy again. The problem is... We've tightened up rules. The problem is Mark Gurman has recommended, as Seth said, it's going to be Mac OS Tahoe, which was one of my picks from last year.

I think I went with Lake Tahoe, but I went with Tahoe because it's one of the only places I knew about. Plus, because I thought, I said, because I thought they could do, you know, interesting, you've got like summer and winter as you're kind of like, you know, your wallpaper looks because you've got like the skiing, but you've also got the

I believe that it's good in summer and winter there. Anyway. It is, yes. So we have that now. So we're going to continue with the California Bear Trophy, but with a new game, which we will work out during Upgrade Plus. Yes, that's right. Yeah, that's right. We'll cover what we didn't pick, what we wish we'd picked, and the California Bear Trophy will be contended.

in Upgrade Plus. In a new game. Jason's been working on something and we'll find out what that is. Go to getupgradeplus.com. You can sign up. You can get this extra content. We have extra content each and every week for listeners of the show along with no ad breaks if you subscribe to Upgrade Plus. Thank you to everybody that does that. If you'd like to send us in your feedback, follow-up and questions, go to upgradefeedback.com.

Thank you to our members who support us each and every week with Upgrade Plus. You can find this show on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcast. I would like to thank Delete Me, Squarespace, and Oracle for the support of this show. So next week...

As is usual with the WWDC post-keynote episode, we will record as soon as we can after the keynote and get the episode out as soon as we can for you all. As also it always is. We're not entirely sure of when everything's going to be going out, but we are confident this year that we will have an episode on Monday. Right? That's the plan? That's...

That's the plan. Something could go wrong, but the plan now is to fairly soon post-keynote do an episode upgrade. If anything changes, we post on the social media so you can find us on your social platform of choice. And if you're wondering, hey, where's the show? If there's a delay, we will post about it. But the plan is to get an episode recorded on Monday and released on Friday.

Monday in the US. It will definitely be Tuesday in the UK. I feel confident about that part. It will be Tuesday in the UK. And we'll be clear that Adina is going to have some extra childcare next week. Because coming. That's grandma. So Mike's not going to be a deadbeat. We're not making Mike be a deadbeat dad. It's all in the works. Not entirely. I won't be there. That's what grandparents are for though. But grandma will be.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. Don't forget you can buy a t-shirt by going to upgradeyourwardrobe.com. There's a link in the show notes if you want to buy yourself a fun draft t-shirt. And you can celebrate the draft next time it happens, which, I mean, may be another three months from now, so you've got some time on your hands. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week. Say goodbye, Jason. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.