iPod Revival and Music Ownership

Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome to the Macro Podcast. My name is Michael Simon, and I am joined by Jason Cross. Good morning. And our producer, Roman Loyola. Oh hi there . This is episode number nine hundred and eighty three . And today we're gonna mostly talk about Apple Watch. I don't know how we're gonna fill up an hour, but we we we'll we'll'll try. I know. It's never been a problem before. We've got WWDC coming. Uh we'll talk about watch OS, rumors about the series twelve, I guess. I don't even know if there are any, but we'll we'll talk about that that new fit that air thing and the kind of screenless health band revolution that's happening and you know whatever else we can do to fill up a half hour. But you know, Apple Watch is that's kinda why we want to talk about it, because Apple Watch is like Apple's most like unexciting, stagnant, quietly doing not much, but still selling quite a bit every quarter , so we'll we'll talk about all that. Um we'll we'll also talk about iOS 26.5 that came out this week. And then this week in Apple History, and we'll close with our comment corner. Speaking of comments, you can contact us through Blue Sky Facebook Threads, search for Macro, look for the Blue Mouse logo, send us an email to podcast at macro.com , comment under a video, a story, a no well, you can't do that yet. Uh uh a video, a post, you know, just get us your thoughts, and we'll talk about them on a future show . Okay, so this week, so we're we're recording this on Tuesday, May 12th, so yesterday, Apple dropped its um latest round of iPad OS, Mac OS, uh iOS, everything else OS uh 26.5 , whichich it's probably right, Jason, it's probably the last one we get. I I say definitely the last one we get before uh iOS 27 is or the 27 updates are revealed. All the previous years, there's a dot six in like late June or July. Right. And it's bug fixes and stuff. In fact, they usually don't even the the the normal cadences you get your you get the update goes out to everyone and then the beta for the next one starts the next day or a day later. But at this time of year, it doesn't. The the beta we're not gonna get the twenty six dot six beta until after W W D C. The the pub oh. The the beta at all like the developer beta or anything like that's not out and it probably won't be out till after W DC. So you're talking about twenty six point six six won't be out until okay. The beta won't even be out. Right, right, right. Like the beta normally would start right now and it's not. Right, or sometime this week. Yeah, I looked it up um so a year ago we got a year ago today, not yesterday, we got eighteen point five, Mac OS fifteen point five. That was back when Apple was still doing their screw renumbering system. Right. So like they're like they're right on schedule with these releases. And then there was a dot six in is it late June? Yeah, yeah, June uh something. It didn't matter till like June twenty ninth. So yeah, but there's it's it's that's usually the last regular one and it's like it's like bug fixes and stuff. It's not a few and then you're right, the next one , which would be point seven, didn't come out till September when IOS twenty six came out. Yeah, and that's all security and bug fixes stuff. And sometimes they have to release one to support some new accessory. Yeah, so like this is the last one of note. Like we'll write about them. We'll last one of those. And it was a pretty good one . We got RC S encryption finally. It's been what two years that we've been waiting for. So they came out with that. I don't I don't have it in front of me, but uh RCS came out a couple of years ago. Uh sixteen, I was sixteen, seventeen, I don't remember. But it was a little while ago and it was notably missing any form of encryption. And people kind of called out Apple on that and they're like, well listen, that's not our fault. Like we'll do it when when they do it. So they worked with the the standards people in Google. Yeah, it was the problem is it wasn't part of the standard and there was encryption as an uh between Android phones there was an encryption there was encryption, but that was a an extension Google wrote that just worked on you know uh basically or anybody using the Google chat app, not it was it was app based, right? But it's so yeah, Apple's line was always, well, as soon as they build encryption into the RCS standard, right, and it's standardized, you know, and not just their extension. And so they've been working with the uh whatever the body is the RCS standard. They've been doing that. And it's finally out. It's a beta, it requires carrier support in most of the US, most of the main US carriers su pport it. Um and like all all the the big three, but mostly MVP. Verizon AT and T T Mobile. I think it's still in beta for them too, but they are for everyone. Actively working on it, yeah. Yeah. Some of the small MVNOs may not support it. Right. And um and internationally it's spotty the carrier. So there'll be it'll be rolling out more as over time. Right. Um yeah, probably by the end of this year, maybe September, like it'll be uh out of beta and it'll be And it's you know, it's a it's a pretty big deal um forever before this, you know, with the green bubbles and the blue bubbles. But more importantly, it was less secure when you talk to Android people where you know you saw that green that green bubble, you didn't message stuff, but you also it also meant like those messages could be intercepted, which you know maybe they are, maybe they aren't but but they're they're not inherently secure. Now they are. Or they will be, which is, you know, it's a big deal. Like iMessage, you know, it kinda isn't what it was in the sense that it used to be the thing that you can do the tapbacks and get the typing indic ators and like you can do all that now. And and on top of all that, it's um it's secure when you're talking to Android people. It's still green and you know they still point out that hey you're not talking to an Apple person, but um it there it's pretty much on the same level, which is which is which is great. Yeah. Most of the iMessage stuff has to do with other more advanced things like sending you know, voice memos and uh replying in threads and all those other kinds of things. There's a lot of things. That's only iMessage, yeah. Or like editing something. Right. You can only edit iPhone to iPhone, I think when you go in there and like fix a typo or something. I'm pretty sure. Yep. Also scheduling messages is iMessage only. Yeah, so there there's still some cool stuff. But um you know it's good. Like sometimes Apple's forced to do this stuff, and this is one of the better ones that they've been forced to do. Yeah, can you imagine just being stuck on regular SMS with its short limits and and especially trying to send a photo that was the worst is because certain carriers had really small limits for how much how big a an image file could be and you would get this really garbage little video that's like you couldn't see anything you couldn't make out anything it's just blocks of blurriness yeah yeah so it's a lot better now yeah um also new there's a new wallpaper which normally like so around this time every year, Apple comes out with their Pride Rainbow uh wallpaper, which is nice. But this year's wallpaper is is really cool. It's super customizable and it like kind of like animates and and and moves and um you know it's it's one of those things that you should try check it out you don't have to be like in two rainbow colors like there's all different colors that you can combine it 's it's it's Do the little thing where you swipe to get different tones and stuff like that. You it it cycles through different color gradient things and stuff, so you can get cool cool effects. Yeah. And it's one of the like it's like kind of like a dynamic thing where as you move your phone, like it moves and it it's it's kind of really nice. Yeah it's cool. Um what else? The other big one is suggested places in maps. Oh right. This is uh Jason's gonna go off on a tangent for a couple minutes. No, uh we already did this one. But so just in places in maps, so which is been Google Maps has done this forever. You just just sort of based on your history and your search history and stuff like that, it just suggests locations to you and time of day and stuff. Um and some of those suggested places will be ads. They're t they're starting ads and maps. So some of those and some of your search results will be ads. We don't know what those look like yet. Right. They're accepting ads, ad orders from people, but they haven't rolled out. They're probably not going to roll out 'til probably you probably won't see them in your maps until like June or July. Yeahah,, ye yeah. So we don't know what they look like. Probably similar to the app the app store where they'll be like slightly shaded and have a little tiny ad thing next to them. Yeah, since since they appear as pins on your map, we don't know how to pin will look different. On Google Maps, they use a square block instead of the round ones for ads. And then when you tap on it, there's that tiny little sponsored text. And it'll be something like that. It'll it'll have some different pin and it'll it'll let you know Yeah, I mean Apple has been kind of quiet about that they did announce it. They did talk about it in a in a like a like an overall press release, but you know they're not gonna spotlight it. I don't think most people are gonna care or really even notice or really even like it'll just be there one day and they'll it'll be like they were always there. Like it's not we're so used to seeing ads in everything we we we view . It is. It's um I when they first announced this, and it'll pop up the first time you open maps after you update to twenty six point five, a little card will pop up telling you, hey, there's gonna be ads , right? But they don't tell you what they look like. Um the uh when they announced this, people online were like, well, I guess I'll use Google Maps then. I'm just like, Google Maps is full of ads. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. They're already full ads. So or maybe the the idea was like, hey, if I'm gonna see ads anyways, I might as well use what I think is a better mapping. Uh yeah, I mean Apple Maps has come a long way. I use it almost almost exclusively over Google. In fact, I think the layout's a little better. The the and the whatever the drawing of the maps is is way better. But um I like it you know, it was a punchline about ten years ago. But it's it's it's definitely um definitely here in the US it's really good. Yeah, yeah. Um on the phone. Um if I'm looking up something on a web browser on my computer, I usually just go to Google Maps. I don't think i there is Apple Maps on the web. It's not as robust. Yep . Um I use the Mac app. It's it's it's pretty good. But more often than that, I'm I'm on my iPhone anyway . Um so yeah, and then a couple other things. Um e like easier pairing when uh hooking your magic accessories up to an iPhone or iP ad. There's some improvements for switching from iPhone to Android, but or vice versa. But uh those are the three main things. Um it's a pretty good update as far as late cycle IO S updates go. And um, you know, of course, also like couple dozen security things and bug fixes and you know a lot, man. 52 security updates. Yeah, I wonder. Do you think Apple's using the so there's there's been a lot of talk about how people are using AI to spot these bugs and get them out quicker because AI can do things that humans can't when it comes to like navigating large rows of of text and do you think they're Apple's using AI at all to uh kind of spot that? They definitely are. Um they they definitely are. There's so uh anthropic, the people who make Claude. Yep. They have uh their next the they have different tiers of the thing. They have Sonnet, which is like the little super small fast AI. There's Opus , which is their main one, like you log into the web and you're chatting and that one's Opus and stuff and there's one above that. Um the the highest tier one is something called mythos . It has not been released because it is apparently so good at reading and analyzing code and everything that it can find all these security bugs that have been around for a long time and have been missed by security researchers and programmers and and everything for in some cases , a really long time . And so they have a thing called Project Glasswing, where they're working together with a handful of companies, Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, et cetera. People who make the big operating systems, Linux Foundation, thr and people who make networking gear and everything, to give them access to mythos and a whole bunch of millions of dollars worth of free tokens for to use it and stuff to find and fix security flaws before they release anything this powerful. Because compared to what's out there now, the the c laude programming stuff that's out there now, it is apparently on a completely different level. Like the benchmarks and stuff, like it's way, way better. And especially at kind of looking at large big groups of code and how code interacts with each other and to find bugs and flaws and security things and stuff like that. So Apple's one of the project last wing companies. I don't know if these particular updates are because of that, but they're certainly the last, I don't know, three or four iOS releases have had a lot of security updates. Like a lot . So it's pretty wild how it's wild. They're finding bugs and code that were like twenty years old and have been missed all this time. Yeah, yeah. Like it's crazy how like the iOS twenty six has been out for seven months or whatever, and that's built on you know a prior thing, and there's still like probably countless books in in it still. Like you're never going to, like there's never gonna be a perfect operating system or app. It's huge. It's hard to it's it's kinda hard to understand just how big iOS is, like in terms of how much code there is, because there's also all these frameworks for developers to use and everything. And iOS kind of includes a certain set of apps. Like you can remove them and everything, but they come built in with the operating system and so they have that. They have their own web browser rendering technology and stuff. So that's web kit they have to update and everything. And that's i yeah, it's a lot. Yeah . So yeah, go get that if you haven't already . Um along with the updates, Watch OS twenty six, you see Roman, this is my uh transition that I learned from you. Um Watch OS twenty six point five also Al came out this week. Um, it includes two specific, very specific bug fixes just for Apple Watch people that let me let on I gotta get the article. The first one is an issue where messages on Apple Watch may use SMS instead of iMessage when paired with a dual SIM iPhone. That's oddly specific. And the other one is an issue where the work out out audio alerts could fail to play if the i if an uh if an iPhone was not nearby. So if you've experienced either one of those, this update will fix it along with the security stuff, along with the new uh wallpaper. It's it's not as cool on Apple Watch, but um it's it's still nice. And yeah, it's a watch face on Apple Watch. And uh bug fixes, uh other bug fixes, I assume. Um all the other Um so yeah. That's probably the last Apple Watch update until W W D C where we'll get a U a look at watch OS twenty seven. I f I I I assume we'll start. Well, I already I already started. We'll start with uh watch OS . So there's like not really much in the way of rumors because there's probably not really much in the way of an update. Like it'll be much like Watch OS twenty six, which was much like Watch OS, what was it, twelve or eleven, whatever we had before. Right. Like it's been a while since there was an update to the Apple Watch that was exciting or even interesting. Yeah, the hardware isn't really expected to get much uh it's sort of every year we hear like next year they're gonna really change the Apple Watch. They're like gonna change the way like the the actual way it looks and stuff. And then that year comes along and they go, oh no, it's not happening this year. Maybe next year. Um I don't think watch OS itself is meant to have a whole lot of changes, just some tweaks to the UI and stuff like some little things. The bigger change is for Apple Watch people is going to be on the iOS side because Apple's health app is supposed to get pretty significant updates. And that's all fed from the sensors in your Apple Watch and everything. But it's not really Watch OS. It's just that's on the iPhone. And health kit and the health app and all that stuff is supposed to get some pretty big updates. So it's like it's an update for Apple Watch users, but it's not really Watch OS getting back. It's yeah, I mean every iPhone. I kinda you know, we watched the watch OS section and I kinda think like like last year, I think it was last year we got that workout buddy and I was just thinking like no one's gonna use this. Like there's just no one. Maybe not no one, but very few people. It's on by default. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's on by default, and all it is is when you start certain workouts, a AI voice says like great job working out for the third time this week. Right. You know, you've closed your ring every day for the last 30 days, or you something , right? You know? And it's like, okay. Glad you spent time on that. I don't care. Like I don't I honestly don't know what so all right, well Apple Intelligence the workout buddy thing isn't Apple Intelligence, but Apple Intelligence on thech W couldat be it I mean it's it's kind of it's I guess it's AI based. But like the whole Apple Intelligence thing and and the new Siri, like I wonder where or if the Apple Watch kind of fits into that because that's the thing that's you know, we've seen these AI pins and pendants and like the Apple Watch is the thing that's always with you if you remember to put it on, which I often don't. But if you do remember, that's the quickest and easiest way to to access Siri if you don't have AirPods. And it could be like the the tool that gets people to use AI or Apple Intelligence, you know, throughout the day. More so than even than an iPhone that's that's usually in your pocket or a bag or something. Yeah. If there's a problem with with using Siri on your Apple Watch, it's that anything the reply Uh if there's a problem, it's that it always then wants to show you something on your iPhone or it wants to tell you a reply that your little watch is gonna be like yelling out loud to you while you're on the bus. Like you still need an output that isn't the watch, right? Um I think what uh if there's any Apple intelligence angle, it's that the health app is gonna get over, they're gonna move more rapidly to change the health app to to lean into this new age of like AI coaching and AI health and fitness stuff that everybody else is doing. Um and they're Apple's pretty far behind on it. Like the health app and the fitness app really the fitness app is mostly like I mean it track it it's w you can see your tracked workouts there, but it's it's videos. It's like it's fitness plus yeah. Yeah, but the fitness app on your like iPhone. Oh, yeah, it all it is is just like a log of your stuff you've recorded. It's it doesn't do any and then the health app doesn't really it's not proactively sort of saying, well, you got a really good night's sleep. You should do this. It's not, it's behind the rest of the industry on like AI health coaching stuff. So I think that's where Apple Intelligence and Apple Watch are going to fit in, but it's not gonna be something necessarily you do on your little watch screen. It's gonna be like you wear your watch and then you do this on your phone . Yeah. Um do you think Do you think this the ser so the new series is supposed to come out finally? I like we'd be we'd be shocked if it didn't. Will the will the series that's that's on our iPhone be the same on the watch because right now it's not. Like it could do things that like the phone could do things that the watch can't. It it it it's not as smart. It's not as aware. Right. Across all of the devices or will the chip and the ram and and the the the the the fact that the watch isn't as powerful as the phone uh come into play do you think there it's i it'll be interesting because the news series it's too big for to to run all entirely on your device. Like a lot of stuff you might ask it to do is going to be cloud powered. And certainly your watch could do that as long as it's got a network connection. But just like your phone, there needs to be some tiny bit of the model that says, oh, this is a they're just asking to start a timer. Like I don't need to hit the cloud for that. So you need to have something smart enough to parse what you just asked and say, oh I can handle that on device and do something simple. And Apple Watch especially needs that because if it's a device where, hey, I left my phone at home and I went for a run, you know, it's it it's more likely to just be offline than your your iPhone is. Even though it has it has you could keep I wonder how many of those Apple sell like the percentage is probably twenty to eighty percent if if even that high. You know, most people are getting the Wi Fi one and are probably going to be able to most people probably get the Wi-Fi one. I think a lot of people who get the cellular one don't then go pay for a cellular plan. So it's not like on. Yeah, yeah. They just got the the the best model or whatever. Uh or they got a ultra, which always has it. So yeah, it's like it's it's more likely that your watch will be offline. So it's gonna have to have some little AI model that does things like start timers and set alarms or reminders or whatever. The things it can do on your watch. I use it for reminders all the time. I use it for the the reminder I use it for is my shopping list. I remember something all the time, like while I'm in the kitchen and I just talk to my wrist and I use it for timers when I'm cooking because it's handy to have it on my wrist. Yeah. And they made that new gesture where you just you you turn your watch out and back aga in. You don't have to touch anything to stop a timer. Right. And when my hands are messy with like food and I got a knife in my hand and all that other stuff, I can just stop the timer that way . So So I think all those things will still work, but I don't think it's gonna the the real question is like you said, like the real smart intelligence stuff, is it going to use your phone's internet connection to contact the cloud and do the cloud Siri stuff, the really smart stuff. Could is there enough is there enough space on Apple Watch to download? I feel like do desn it't have like a thirty two or sixty four gigabyte hard drive on that thing? Like I I think they could probably put that stuff. I just don't know if they if they if they would and then it would still be you know only based on the case. Well the new series the New Siri like the new Siri will have obviously plenty of on-device stuff, but but also stuff in the cloud that's hundreds of gigabytes. Like it's it's not even and it's RAM re quirement. It needs to keep stuff in RAM to process all this stuff. So and that's the real crunch for Apple Watch. Right. So it yeah, it's not a I don't think it's a matter of necessarily is it storage. I just don't think it has the processing power or the RAM to do fancy AI LLM stuff on its own. And and all the stuff Apple's building, AirPods with cameras and pendants and stuff like that, they're meant to just send data to your iPhone and your iPhone handles it. Either on device or it contacts the cloud, you know, Apple's private cloud compute, whatever. So I would think Apple's moving the Apple Watch to be the same way. Right. It's just gonna be like it's like a Bluetooth speaker for your phone using Siri, right? Yeah. I mean there's probably like health AI . So like right now, like Apple intelligence is completely absent or mostly absent from the Apple Watch, but it it appears as though this next round of updates, uh uh to twenty-seven updates will be heavily into I know it's been like Apple Tendles has been for two years now, but this is the one where they're really going to integrate everything into Apple Intelligence. We got the new Azeri, all these every all the devices now have AQX RAM except for like one or like one or two. So like they all can run it and like this is the one where all these features are going to start to integrate. Maybe the watch is just like health and fitness. Like they cut out all the other stuff. And they just kind of focus on like what writing tools is for email. Health something will be for Apple Watch. And they can really kind of dive into it. But even that I don't think will run on the watch. Right. That all runs on your phone. Yeah. Right. It's those models are too big. It's too much battery drain. Why would they even do that? They it's just gonna send all the sensor data to your phone. Your phone will process all that. Okay . Um are we expecting anything new design wise? I don't think so. It's like we were saying, like, you know, it's everybody's we're kind of stuck in this. I think it needs it. Let me put it another way. I I think I want it. Like I'm I'm I'm tired of the disabled Apple Watch. I want them to do something new and exciting . But they're the only game in town. They've got no incentive to innovate. Yeah. No, there is they're just crushing everybody. So and there's not even really like a close competitor when it comes to that, like a s like a like a higher end smartwatch like there's nothing out there. I know Google makes one and Samsung makes one. But in fact , what other people are leaning into now are is are these screenless watches. Um test is not even watches, yeah. These fitness based or not even a watch, right? It's a band. You use the whoop whoop, is that what it is, right? Whoop? Yeah. And um for people who are seeing Oh yeah. So Goose showing it now and it literally it looks like a like a like a like a bracelet. Like a Yep. There's no LED screen. There's no LED indicator on it. It's just uh like a bracelet. It's literally a fabricy band you bring it wear on your wrist. Um and Google just announced their Fitbit ace. Which yeah. The Google Fitbit Air, which is very similar. It's actually very much like this except narrower even. But it's just a fabric y band that you wear. And I find it I think what's happening here is Apple fell behind on AI health stuff. Like what Whoop does and and the Fitbit Air and all these other things do, and there's third party apps for Apple Watch that do this, is they take all that all that sensor data from you know the band , they process it in the cloud almost exclusively. But then they get and they give you health insights. They say, oh, your your your heart rate variability is low today, you didn't recover you didn't get very good sleep, you should take it easy today. Is it like instant or do they kinda collect it and then deliver it like in the morning and night and afternoons at certain times of the day. No, it's uh so the way Whoop works anyway. The Fitbit one's not out yet. The way the Whoop one works is the device sends its data to your phone over Bluetooth every couple of minutes. It's basically buffering up some and it sends it every couple of minutes. That all gets sent to the cloud and process ed and it comes back. So if you finish a workout, it's like 10, 15 seconds before that workout, it'll just say like processing and then it'll update. So it's just a it's fully the whoop thing. It requires a subscription. There's no offline anything. And it it does it all in the cloud. But you can it's never the data is never more than like 30 minutes old. Like it or at most, it's probably thirty seconds old. Like it's all it's all processed in the cloud, but it's continuous. What if you if if you run out if you go in for a run or whatever and you don't have your phone with you? Is there any feedback whatsoever on the device or are you just you're it's just collecting data but you don't know it's doing anything? Nothing. Nothing. So not even like a haptic. There there is a haptic vibration thing, but it's not part of any kind of workout okay. Uh situation. It like you can you can in the app like set an alarm to wake you up. Okay. I think they use it as part of sleep, but it doesn't, it has no speaker and it has no microphone and it has no screen and has no any of these. So it'll vibrate on your wrist. I think it buzzes when it's about out of battery or something. You know, I don't remember. But it's really just meant to be a dumb thing that you put on and you wear 24/7 all the time. And that's part of the magic of how it works, is that you're just never taking it off. It's waterproof at all that I think Yeah, and even the charger is a thing that slides on the top. Oh. And it's a it's like a little battery pack. Let me grab it real quick. Okay . Um I remember back in the video. Before Apple Watch, I used to have the uh I think Nike well and I know I I know it was Nike. I think it was called Fuel Fuel Band or something. And it w it that did have like a like a dot matrix screen, but it sounds very similar to this type of thing. So so this is the battery uh pack. So this is how you have to charge you charge the battery package. You literally slide that on and it it takes about an hour, and then you just slide it off.. That's cool And it's so it's this and this this has a USB C you charges separately. So you literally never have to take this thing off. You could never take it off. It the battery lasts, they say up to ten days. I've never gotten that but a week. Yeah. And then you once a week you put this bulky thing on there for an hour. And then you take it off. You can you could never take it off. You could wear it in the shower and swim with it and whatever. And you get a lot of the same metrics that you get from Apple Watch. Yeah, you get everything. They do make a version that has the the ECG you like ta to hold the side or something. Um this isn't that version. Um but other than that, like yeah, it gives you the same it's it's heart rate and motion sensing and and ultimater and stuff like that. Like all that stuff. I don't know if it does Altimeter. It it presents the data totally differently than Apple Watch does. Like and and stuff. And there's no like I said, no screen or anything. But I think this is a c deliberate effort from all all the competitors because like we said, nobody's close to Apple Watch. Like nobody the other smartwatches are failing. Like they're just they just don't sell numbers at all. Samsung, Google, Google d has they made their own watch, then they called it Fitbit, then they did you know, they're all over the place with this there. So they've kind of given up and said, Why don't we instead of competing with Apple Watch, let's just make some have your watch, an Apple Watch, or you could have a dumb watch and have all your fitness stuff through this band. And this band, if we take off the screen and all that other stuff, it can be super light and super comfortable, way easier to sleep with. That's one of the benefits of these things. They're so light. They're way easier to sleep with. The battery life lasts a really, really long time . And then just wear whatever watch you want to tell the time. Right. Or wear an Apple Watch if you want notifications and talking to Siri and all that other stuff. So having these like, I don't want to call them dumb fitness bands, because they're not dumb. Right. But they have no screenshot. No speakers.. Yeah Screenless, speakerless, micless, just it's just a fitness band . And then all the advancements are essentially cloud processing of your fitness data and how it presents those things to you. Yeah. Um the uh and they've Google's changing their they they're taking over the Fitbit app and changing the app to Google Health. Which yeah. That that hasn't happened yet. It's happening later this month, but it'll be an update to the Fitbit app. So there's like they're getting rid of the Google Fit app and changing Fitbit to Google Health and it's like this whole thing. It's the the typical Google every year we kill product and launch a new one and combine a product. Somewhat similar but a little bit different, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The uh Fitbit Air costs a hundred bucks or ninety-nine dollars. The the whoop thing that you use is significantly more expensive in the sense that you don't pay for the hardware, but you pay for a subscription for X number of years and then you keep paying for as long as you keep the device. Uh yeah, so the way it works is the way the Google one works is it's a hundred bucks for the band, but the band doesn't do very much unless you also subscribe to Google Health Plus, which is ten bucks a month. Right. That's that'll give you all the cloud processing of all your data and everything. Other if without that, I think it barely basically gives you like steps and your heart rate. Like it doesn't okay. It doesn't give you health insights. So you're paying $10, you need a $10 a month subscription. Whoop has a $10 or $15 a month subscription. I think it's $15 a month. But when you buy the band, you get a year free. Okay. Or another way to think of that is if you buy a year worth of the service, you get the band free. Because that's basically what it costs, right? And then so starting in year two, you have to pay monthly for the service because it's all cloud all b all these fitness bands, they're fully cloud processing. They don't want to waste any battery life, and it lets them update frequently. They're update on the just in the cloud instantly. Right . Would you which which would you I don't even know how to ask the question. Because I mean a hundred bucks if you just want s relatively simple down I'm just I I I I can't find like what it does exactly. But is it w I guess is the Whoop band does it do things categorically different than the Fitbit where you would recommend people buy this whoop one because it's more advanced and does things differently or like did they just get did they just get like stomped by the Fitbit error? Like their whole business model was it just Oh it it's it's hard to know because the Google one's not out yet. Right. Like they announced it, but no body has it, nobody's tried it. They haven't updated the app yet to the new app and stuff. All that stuff's coming later this month. Um they seem very similar in what they do. They basically both sort of different UI and everything, but they seem to do operate on the same principle of we're going to measure basically your how well you slept, which the Apple Watch can do, but it the way it does sleep data, it doesn't kind of it kind they kind of give you a sleep score now. But like we're gonna look at heart rate variability, how long you slept, how well you slept, all that stuff to see how well you recovered. And then we're gonna look at how much strain you put on yourself through working out, walking, running, going for a run, whatever it is, and we're going to , you know, put those two ends together, you know, to say like, this is a day you should take it easy. This is a great day to go work out. And then they provide extra AI layers on top of that. Like, would you like me to to to you know come up with a workout routine for you or you know stuff like that you know or whatever it is or make suggestions about these sorts of things um and then you can put in health goals like I want to lose five pounds, I want to train for a marathon, whatever it is you want to do, and then it will uh adjust its recommendations to go for that. Would the part of this nobody's done is the is the the the sort of food part. Like there's a lot of calorie tracking apps that are separate and stuff, but but that's what all these health things really need is they really didn't need to know what you eat and drink. And then they when then they can put all that together, they could really get you in shape. Right . Um it seems as though Whoop is kind of primed for someone else to take over them, like Garmin or like they could have a hard time competing at the ninety nine dollar price point that Google's offering that doesn't require a subscription. They they're gonna have a tough time. So I wonder Yeah, they may have to change their financial approach. Because right now you can get them in a Best Buy or something. You can just go into a big box store and buy one for $300 and it's the whole first year of subscription free. They may have to do a a version where the hardware is dirt cheap, but you start paying you get one month free and then you start paying right away . Um yeah, they c they could do something like that. Do you think Apple would go this route ? Ever? There there's been talk that there they were. Um they so they reorganized the the fitness, uh the health and the fitness apps were part of a reorg and they're under Eddie Q now or something like that. And there was a quote in the German piece or something like that about how he thinks they need to move faster to compete with um some of these new products like Whoop, like that was one of the ones that they called out of like, hey, they're they're doing all this really new stuff that's that's giving people better insights and we're stuck in the past. And Apple has been working on a really big, really involved health AI coach. And apparently, according to the the rumors, they've pared that down some so they can get out simpler stuff faster. So I'm I'm expecting some sorts of health updates as the the Apple Watch section of the WWE is DC keynote is going to be focused on um like some of these new health updates. And I think Apple's itching to have another subscription service. Sure. They want a health plus service, right? And they and then what they have now is not gonna cut it. I think they want to combine that and fitness plus . But people don't want to pay for workout videos. Like that they've anyone who wants to, they've already got that. They need to do more. Yeah. Would they come out with a screenless watch? Like is is screenless like the future of like fitness stuff? I think it's the future for everyone who's not Apple. Like Apple already sells so many Apple wat ches that their route to killing the screenless the devices is oh we can do all that too. Like the then the only thing they've got over them is battery life, which God bless it, everyone's had better battery life than Apple all along anyway. So but if it can finally do all of that stuff really well, then they can kill these fitness bands. But they've they're already like the number one watch in the world. Everybody buys this watch. Yeah, yeah. It's kinda it you know, they own Fitbit now, obviously they bought them a few years ago. And it's it's funny. Like this is kind of like back to like the Fitbit basics. If you remember that early band was just a band with a couple of lights and people bought it because at the time there was no real like easy way to measure steps and stuff without putting on like a like a pedometer or something. And it was it was a novel, cool thing. And then that evolved into screens and notifications and everything else. And as you said, like Apple came along and blew everybody out of the water. Um you know FIPA tried to keep up and they just couldn't Google the same thing. And this you know, there's a lot of people who And then there's the ring. What's the ring? U-Uria? Aura Aura or something? Our uh O-U-R That's the other one that's just, you know, I don't think Apple's gonna make a ring, but I think from the app side, they sell you on a monthly service. There's a lot of cloud processing, they do a whole lot of like AI health stuff. Yeah. Uh especially based upon again this concept of like, well, how long are you resting and recovering? And then how much activity are you doing? And Apple's like, close your rings, stand up 10 times a day and stuff, and it's it's we they've got to get past that. And how that I know that buy an Apple Watch, the reason why they buy it is for the health stuff. So I I'll talk to my parents again. Like like my mom bought one last year because her doctor was confirmed qu was concerned about um uh AFIP. So the doctor said, Hey, go get yourself an Apple Watch and leave put it on and it'll tell you. Like it'll give you a warning if it's acting up. And that's what you did. And I think a lot of people are doing it. I don't even know if the screen I I I I like I guess you it's nice to look at so that woo There's a tiny LED light in the corner under the side that is for that is exists to light up when your battery's low. Okay. Yeah I think still want at least to see a watch face and to to wear a watch than a fit. Yeah, I think the idea of these fitness bands is y you have your watch. Apple watch, regular watch, have a watch and then just get all your fitness stuff with this other thing. Right. So yeah, I think Apple will keep making watches. I don't think they're gonna make a ring. I don't think they're gonna make a fitness band. I think they're gonna make AirPods and a pendant and stuff like that. But I think Apple Watch will continue to be a watch. But I do think there's gonna be a big evolution of all the health integration with Apple Watch. They're gonna change it a lot from what the health app is today or the fitness app. Who knows where it's gonna live. Yeah. Well stay tuned because in less than a month we'll get at least a look at the first part of that stuff. Um I'm sure the health app will be a major part of um WWDC and the AI stuff and whatever else they got. So stay tuned. Alright, Roman. I have written down iTunes stuff and for the life of me I have no idea what that means. So this is about so it's Apple history and um it just so happened that around this time over the years, various iTunes Store stuff happened. So instead of calling them out one by one in the segment, we thought we would put them together in one segment or show. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the first is uh the app the iTun Store opened on April twenty-eighth , twenty uh two thousand and three, so twenty-three years ago. Uh I'll put out these dates and then we 'll just talk about them afterwards. Also please please continue to try to do the math in it uh off the topic. Yeah. And then about two years later on May 9th, 2005 , so 21 years ago, uh the iTunes Store started offering music videos as uh album bonus content. Um then the third date is that three years after that, on May 1st, 2008 , the iTunes stores started to sell movies. So the movies would come out the same time as on on iTunes at the same time as like the DVD would come out. Yeah. So um so some three uh hallmark dates of the iTunes Store. It's funny to think about the iTunes Story because I guess I don't really think of the iTunes Store now. I think of Apple Music. Right. And Apple TV. Right. Right. It's not even really a thing. It's kind of a like it it morphed into you know by the time the iTunes store like was closed so to speak it was so big and there was so much going on like you like it it makes more sense to break it into music and into TV and into movies so you can you know, 'cause you you're not looking for movies and TV, you're looking for one or the other. So it makes sense to have it. And I think podcasts were in there too for a while. Like it was just too much. So you know it definitely makes makes sense makes more sense now. But back in oh three when that music store s uh opened like in my life, that was a big freaking deal because I had I don't know thousands of CDs that I would rip, you know, the rip mix burn campaign, the iPod, the fireware. Like, you know, we all did that. And the iTunes store, you know, I and I had Nap I use Napster and LimeWire and all that stuff too. But this was like you press a button and the song's there. It's high quality. It was incredible. If you like the all the proper metadata, like all those times you would Napster something and it we didn't have the track number or it had weird stuff in the album name and you had to go grab them all in the street stuff . Yeah, it was uh you paid for it instead of it being free , but it was reasonable and it was you know, wasn't like more expensive than a C D and it was just as good. Just as good as ripping your C And you could buy a song if you didn't want the whole record. And if you didn't want the whole thing, you could buy a song. Yep. If I had the Apple music uh subscription when I was 14. I can't even imagine how much money I would have saved. Like, it's incredible how this has all advanced. My son was born in 2020 , and he doesn't know a world. Like CDs are like ancient CDs are what A-Tracks were to me growing up. This is all reminding me of there's a there's a new game that just came out called Mixtape that is it's it's like a twenty dollar game and it's practically not a game. Like there's not a lot of interactivity, but it's really all about like these people who the high school kids and in the nineties, two thousand , you know, era, the C D era, who are it's their they know it's their last night together at high school before they, you know, all split up and go their separate ways. And it's set together to a music soundtrack with chapters for each song and stuff like that. You would really people our age would really dig it and kids today don't understand it. Like they don't understand the whole idea of like you said what what is what is it? Yeah. It's called mixtape. Yeah, I think it's on PlayStation Xbox and PC. Oh it's trouble playing of uh of like a tabletop game. Like a board game. No, no. It's a it's a yep. It's a slick um video game. A lot of love obviously went into it. And for people like us, it just hits every nostalgic emotional note about not just the time period , but this whole idea of like setting a soundtrack to your life and uh I don't want to get too off okay bass from from the iTunes store. But but the the streaming era sort of killed that. Like Yeah, but it also was an evolution of that. You know, like the like you know, one led to the like CDs led to the iMac and the Rip Mixburn campaign, which led to the iTunes Store, which led to Spotify and and subscriptions. Yeah, and then they had to buy Beats to get a streaming service, and then that became Apple Music, and then you know. Steve Jobs doesn't get enough credit for the iTunes Store or the iTunes evolution, because I mean it just completely groundbreaking and helped the iPod and then the iPhone and everything else. But like it, you know, what an idea and what an execution that whole concept was. Just fant astic. Yeah. It's not like there was no other place to buy music in a in a singular sort of store or digital music player, but it was on a different level., yeah It really was on a different level, just in terms of like ease of use and being a good service. And that's rightly he kind of understood that that's what this is about. Like the music itself is a commodity, there's places to buy it in different formats and different ways. It has to be you're you're providing a service. You're paying for I'm making this easy. Like I am making this like delightful and easy to do. Yeah. And you know, there's a whole like flashpoint now of like what you own and what you don't own. Like you know like I have a whole digital library of movies, hundreds of them probably. At any given moment Apple can just decide to just take one Right. Or the right. Right. And vinyl is making a comeback and they still make DVDs and stuff. But man, there's nothing there's nothing like sitting down on a Saturday night in front of my Apple TV and saying, Let's rent this and pressing a button and boom, there it is. It's it's awesome . It reminded me when when Roman said that like the the iTunes store opened like in 2003. It reminded me of that era. Right? That was kind of around the tail end of the era when Apple had the best movie trailer site. Do you remember that? It it it only recently got they only got rid of it recently. And the one that they're it wasn't the best for for a while. But like this was before YouTube and before everything went on YouTube. But like you could get a really high quality movie trailers at Apple app on a website for this. It was some reason. That trailers app was amazing. And they they kept them up for like a year. Like it was this huge library of trailers, fantastic. And now it was like a website. And I think you could access it within the store as well. But this was before they even sold movies and everything. For some reason, before they even sold movies or TV shows. Yeah. And now it's like it was a what a time. Right. But yeah, that app and up until recently it was it was an app on Apple TV and it was still really good. Like they and now it's Yeah, it was a section in in the Apple TV, right? Yeah, well , I think it was a whole it was an a I don't know when they got rid of it, two years ago or so, but there was like a trailers app once Apple TV launched. That was the same thing. It was, you know, hundreds of trailers and high quality that played instantly. And um yeah, now it's now it stinks. But uh yeah, those those were the days. Uh just in case for reference, people, um Apple Music launched on June thirtieth, twenty fifteen. Right. So that was that horrible presentation. It it was a WWDC and they they was like a one more thing and it was like twenty minutes long. And it's like, what do we do? Like, why is it so long? Like it's just that there was nothing about it that was special, unique. It was just, you know, they put another service. But that thing was it was I rem I I should go back and look, but I think it was like fifteen or twenty minutes long of just Eddie Q going on and on and on and on and on or whoever it was . Uh shall we move on to comment corner? Yeah. The first email comes from Reese M, who says, uh problem in real time at home when it comes to the AirPods. My wife's coworker is convinced that the AirPods 4 are better than the AirPods Pro 3 because of the numbering scheme. That's interesting. She said her coworker wanted the language translation of the AirPods four, which I had to scratch my head for a second because they are available on the AirPods Pro three. And two, I think. Are they on the two? Yes. I think they are. The live translation stuff? Yeah, we we often complain on on this show about Apple's naming scheme. It has to be AirPods that have active noise cancellation. Right. So the two , the three, and not all the fours, just the four if you buy the four with A and C. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Um and the new Macs. The the old Macs didn't it had a H1 and it didn't do it. Right. The new Macs does it. Yeah, Apple, we've talked about this before. They get into such they paint themselves into such bizarre corners with the with the numbering because like some have it, some don't, some are wrong. Then they they'll reset like remember the iPad Air like reset from three to to zero. Like it's a I can see why this one's a particular problem because they're both AirPods and it's one number off. It's not like Apple Watch where like it's Ultra 2 but Apple Watch 12. Imagine if it was Ultra 10 and Apple Watch eleven on the same year and you didn't right? So I can see why. It's confusing. Yeah. Uh our next email comes from John F. and he had a he had a lengthy email about the uh CEO transition uh with a lot of good points in it. Uh he made this one particular point. The executives running Apple have a fiduciary obligation to grow revenue and profit, if Apple could double in size over the next five years without shipping a single new product, that's the choice they'd be obligated to make. The same logic applies to the pricing decisions you rightly call outrageous on memory and storage upgrades. If that price maximizes profit, they're legally obligated to charge it. It's worth keeping that frame in mind when grading them on quote new products, unquote or quote fair pricing unquote . What you know essentially his his the sum right the T L D R is, you know, the uh CEOs have an obligation to make money for the company. But I I think there there are different ways to approach it, right? So you know Tim Cook's way has been basically is going to be different or let me rephrase that. John Turnus' way could possibly very much be different from what Tim Cook's way is. So Tim Cook's did it by, you know, optimizing supply chains and uh uh evolving the current product line and stuff like that. John we're in an era now where John Turnus is probably gonna have to come out with some new products uh to grow Apple's market, you know, mm to continue to Apple's growth, revenue growth. So I mean that that that guy's way smarter than me, but the is he's saying that like so we always look at the Tim Cook era as he Tim Cook just didn't have the the creative eye that Steve Jobs had. He's saying that Steve that Tim Cook purposefully said this is the best way to grow Apple rather than these are the products that I'm green lighting or whatever you want to say. I think he's saying that any CEO is obligated to grow revenue and profit, you know, and the way they approach it. Th there are multiple ways to approach it and Tim Cook play to his strength. Okay, yeah sure. I think that's that's one way to to phrase it. Trevor Burrus There's a common misconception about fiduciary responsibil ities of the executives of publicly traded companies, where they think that it is their legal responsibility to maximize shareholder value. And there have been some court cases about this in the past. Um uh there's a what's the famous one involves I think Ford and Jebby or something like that. I can't I can't remember. Um it's a little bit misconstrued. The the legal fiduciary responsibility they have is not to self-deal, is not to maximize, is not to m enrich themselves over the company. Um but they do have a a uh a responsibility to the shareholders, a legal responsibility, but it doesn't necessarily mean you have to do what is maximally profitable right now. Okay. There is absolutely every legal right and reasonable thing to say , hey, the value of our brand or customer loyalty or whatever has a value to it. So we will do something that makes us less money right now, but it makes our customers really happy and loyal, and it's better for the business in the long run. There's it is 100% legally sound in every way. There's no obligation for a CEO to go, nope, we have to do the more the we have to do the more profitable thing. Like that's a common misconception. It's commonly mentioned and that that case I wish I could remember it off the top of my head. It it involves Ford and GM or something like that Do I need to say that uh we I should just make a disclaimer that we are not law attorneys Nor is it a financial podcast or or Right. So it was a Dodge versus Ford thing. The Michigan Supreme Court held that Ford was not acting in the interests of its shareholders, but rather in the interests of its employees and customers and that the it resulted in a principle called shareholder privacy, where it's like the the the shareholders have to be your uh the the reason you if you have a publicly run company with shareholders, then you 're supposed to run it for their benefit, not for the benefit of your employees, for example. Right. Okay. But that has often been like I said, misread to believe to to read as you have to do what is maximally profitable right now . You can and are you are absolutely legally one hundred percent and clear to say, no, no, long term, it's much better for our company, and that includes our shareholders, to make less money now and get more satisfied customers who are going to buy our next product or grow our services business by making less money on upfront on these things. You know, the whole razors and blades thing where we're gonna sell this thing cheap and make more money in the long run selling the disposable parts or whatever. So So yeah, the whole shareholder primacy thing has been off and misconstrued. He d there's there's nothing in Apple's there's no legal requirement for Apple to like make the most profit uh in a ram crisis. They they can it's a totally sound corporate strategy to say, hey, we have an advantage over some other companies to gain new customers by taking the hit right now and getting them into our ecosystem. And that's better for us in the long run. And that's totally fine. He may not choose to do that , but there's, you know, they don't have a fiduciary Well why don't I wrap it up with something a little more lighthearted? Sorry. Everybody go look up Dodge versus Ford. I really appreciate it. I really do actually. So that um last email actually kind of ties into the iTunes uh history. Uh from Lewis L. He wrote My friend who is twenty seven informed me that a lot of people in his generation are tired of paying for streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music. They want to own their own music and not rent their albums I own three forty gigabyte iPods and a four gigabyte nano . He encouraged me to hand on to them because they are worth a lot. You have any of you heard of this iPod revival? I don't think the iPod you don't own that either. I mean that's all digital. That could be wiped out in a second. But uh sure. I mean everything makes a comeback. iPods like if you go on eBay like they're they they sell and kids you know I don't know twenty-seventh a kid but you know younger people they yeah they they they like that kind of quaint technology , but one C D one is more than a subscription to a month for Apple Music. So good luck making it, you know, being uh uh buying physical physical media and having it be cheaper than Apple Music or Spotify. Yeah and it's really hard to it's not as portable. It's not, you know. There's that too. What's happening is what's happening is people are starting to get in the vinyl for their home thing. You know? And that includes sort of a younger generation and everything. And in fact, that's making a a weirdly big comeback. Like it's like it's like taking off for some reason. And you you know you're not gonna take that with you. I don't know if that makes you get rid of your Spotify account. I will say that Like what do you do when you leave the house? As as someone who curated a music collection for for a long time when I was, you know, growing up, the fact that if I stop paying Apple for Apple music and like Like half of my library is just gone. Like all these things that I downloaded and all the things that I listen to and I I I don't know what they've been. It's been years now. Like you know, I I have my my my library is now a combination of both Apple Music stuff and my own stuff. And if I don't pay, it's gone. And that's you know, it's upsetting and it's it's it it it sucks. But on the alternative, had I bought all that stuff, I'd be broke. So like you gotta meet somewhere in the middle. Um you know, do you or your are you and your friends really into like iPods or anything like that, retro music tech? Uh my oldest son said he doesn't know anybody who's into that. My youngest son said that he he has a few friends who are really into analog like vinyl and cassette tapes. Cassette tapes aren't even making a comeback. Um which seems odd to me, because that's you know so uh yeah he says he has some friends who are really into it. Uh the well the other thing too, I you so the iPod trend thing has gotten some media coverage. The thing I find odd about the iPod trend thing is that you can load your own music on your phone. Right. You know, so it's not as simple. It's not as simple, but you could you could rip you could rip your C Ds and put it on your phone just like you would an iPod. So you don't necessarily need an iPod. Yeah, but the iPod's cool because you you press play and it starts going. Right. So I that's my point. There's an so there's a whole other thing going on with that. It's like a trend culture thing than just uh a way to play music. Do you know what I mean? Right. It's like a hip uh gadget thing. My son's uh fourteen and like he gets all his music from like TikTok and like YouTube shorts. Like some song will be on the radio when I'm driving 'em somewhere and it'll be like, Oh yeah, I I heard that eight months ago in some real, you know. Like that's that's how they discover music, rap more so than you know, Apple music or um or the radio. So I' m I'm I don't that's not where I get my music from. But that that that's how these generations work. You know, we got I got music differently than my dad got music and now my son you know that's just kind of how it goes. But music does seem to be we we're way off. My god a wee off on a tangent here. But but like me the the whole music in general is is changed so much. Like just the way it's it's it's delivered This game that just came out. It fits right into everything we're talking about. And I think you got you you guys, because you're my age and you remember collecting CDs and all that stuff, you would really like it. All right. My my son has PlayStation. I could probably uh use use . Yeah, it's I think it's twenty bucks too. It's 'cause it's like a relatively short, you know thing. Yeah. Um who is the guy who wrote about the financial stuff? Because I don't I don't want it to sound like we're making fun of them. Please send us more emails. Jason got it, but I did not like I said he wrote a lengthy email about our you know in response to our podcast. I'm sure it was. um uh banal emails because i i can't i can't follow that stuff anyway. And I do want to look up Ford versus Dodge because I'm confused as to why Dodge was involved. I have like a whole afternoon of reading to do . All right, that does it for this episode of this podcast. Um, episode number nine hundred and eighty-three. Thank you, Jason . Thank you. Thank you, Roman. Thank you. And thanks to you, the audience, especially um John F for tuning in. You can subscribe to the Macro Podcast and the Podcast app on Spotify, which um I I is this something I'm supposed to say all the time, Roman, that it now has video because I wrote that in and now I'm just gonna keep saying it forever. Spotify that was for a couple weeks at least, yeah. So yeah. Uh uh Spotify which now has video and um on YouTube at the Macworld Podcast channel or through any other place that you can listen to these things. Um any comments or questions? No fiduciary stuff please. God take us through blue sky facebook threads search for macro look for the blue mouse logo send us an email at podcast at macroll.com um comment under a a a a post and uh get us your thoughts and join us in the what did i do here? Jo Joy No that's not right. God damn it. I try I swear to God, before the show, I go through this end thing and I try to get this . It's one stupid sentence that I get wrong every week. So I this week I wrote join us in the macro podcast next episode of the I ri I I I I This is me practicing and it's completely I I must have moved my mouse and grabbed a word or something and moved it. As we talk about the the uh as we talk about the latest in the world of Apple. See you next time . I swear to God.