transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:08] From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 612 for April 20th, 2026. Today's show is brought to you by Delete Me, Squarespace, Steam Clock and Nerd Wallet. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.

Speaker 2:
[00:23] Woo, it's 420, Myke. You think people in Cupertino are blazing it today?

Speaker 1:
[00:29] I think they might be. All right, so let's set some context. It's 10 p.m. on Monday night. I am at home. This is the first home podcast recording I've done because Tim Cook has just announced that he is stepping down as CEO of Apple. So here's the thing. We recorded an entire episode of Upgrade that we will still play for you today. It's a really fun episode, but there was no way we could let this moment happen without being here to talk about it.

Speaker 2:
[00:59] Exactly. We would have preferred it an hour earlier or 24 hours later.

Speaker 1:
[01:05] Yes, because then I see. Well, yeah, actually, either of those would have been great, but here we are. Jason, could you read from Tim's community letter that he posted to apple.com?

Speaker 2:
[01:17] Yeah. So it's really interesting. Apple posted a community letter from Tim and two items which we'll get to that are in the newsroom. Tim, there's some very nice personal stuff in the letter about how much he thinks this is the best job in the world and all those things. But to get to the core of it here, he says, Today we announced I'm taking the next step in my journey at Apple. Over the coming months, I will be transitioning to a new role, leaving the CEO job behind in September and becoming Apple's executive chairman. A new person will be stepping into what I know in my heart is the best job in the world. That leader is John Ternus, a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the last 25 years building the Apple products our users love so much, obsessed with every detail, focused on every possible way we can make something better, bolder, more beautiful and more meaningful. He is the perfect person for the job. John cares so much about who we are at Apple, what we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity. I'm so proud to call him Apple's next CEO. The company will reach such incredible heights under his leadership, and you will feel his impact in every bit of delight and discovery that grows out of the products and services to come. I can't wait for you to get to know him like I do. This is not goodbye, but at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you.

Speaker 1:
[02:33] So before we talk about the details, what a beautiful way to introduce John Ternus as a CEO. Like Tim understood the assignment, did the job.

Speaker 2:
[02:43] Yeah, he starts by saying how great the job is and how he appreciates hearing from people every day in his e-mail and all of that. And then pivots to saying, I can't wait for you to get to know John like I do. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[02:56] Yeah, which is lovely. I mean, and this is exactly what we thought it was going to be. This is going back to the Financial Times. So I have here, I've been keeping some notes about this because I've been preparing for this. I guess the funny thing is a few months ago, I received, we received some tips that something was going down and I thought it was going to be this, but it ended up being an all hands meeting for something completely different. So I started keeping some notes. And so on the who was right, the Financial Times was right. As soon as early 2026, Mark Gurman said he would be shocked if Cook left before mid-26. So I think in the who got this right in the end, Financial Times. I also think that there is some other news today, which is that Johnny Sruji is stepping up to a new role called Chief Hardware Officer, which I'm sure that you would agree with me here. This feels like Mark Gurman being completely correct about Sruji threatening to leave when this information was probably shared of executives.

Speaker 2:
[03:56] Yeah, there's so much for us to talk about here. Sruji, yes, I think that report that Sruji was like, is he leaving, is he staying? And we said so at the time. When you start having executives moving around, it makes everybody say, well, wait a second, you mean I'm going to report to the guy who I consider my peer, or maybe I'm more important than him, John Ternus, instead of Tim? What does that mean? And they really want to keep Johnny Sruji. And I think at the time I even said, this is where you say, yeah, he's going to be the new CEO, but we'll give you a new title too, and we want to make sure you stay. And of course, what he said was, no, no, I love it here and I'm going to stay. But I think this is what was leading to that kind of report was this sort of thing. And if you, and so they made him, they made a new title for him, Chief Hardware Officer, which, you know, John Ternus was the SVP of hardware, right? So you can't have a Chief Hardware Officer, a CHO, if you've also got an SVP of hardware, but you don't anymore, because he's going to be the CEO. And it gets him in the C-suite, which was probably part of the deal. I think we even talked about it back then, shows how much they care about him. And I'm not saying this is like, sure, give him some stuff, give him some candy to make him happy. No, this is show your actual legitimate appreciation for Johnny Sruji by moving him into the C-suite, giving him a title. Because when Tim is leaving, if you're Johnny Sruji or somebody at that level, you might say, well, what does this mean for me? And is this a good fit or, you know, or should I go somewhere else if I'm not appropriately appreciated? Which is not to say he necessarily wanted to be CEO. I don't think that's necessarily true, but he might have, but that he wanted to, like, what does this mean for me? If Tim is leaving, what does this mean for me? And, you know, am I going to be comfortable in my role in this new world at Apple? And so that's what happened with Johnny. I have some, there's board shenanigans to talk about as well.

Speaker 1:
[06:07] I love them. Let's do it.

Speaker 2:
[06:08] So, it's this, Tim Cook's leaving a CEO is effective September 1st.

Speaker 1:
[06:16] So the Discord is pointing out that technically means both the Financial Times and Goldman are correct, but I still think the Financial Times had this more correct remark in the end.

Speaker 2:
[06:25] Financial Times said as early as, which gives them infinity of time after the beginning of the year. I think they were not as right as they led people to believe because they suggested it was more imminent than it is. And I also think that Mark Gurman obviously said it wasn't going to happen by mid-year and it did. So, I think they were both a little bit right and a little bit wrong, which is I know the most unsatisfying thing, which is to say...

Speaker 1:
[06:49] But to back it up further, Mark has had this right the whole way along, who it was going to be and getting the Sruji thing. You know, this is...

Speaker 2:
[06:57] Mark Gurman got this years ago and has known this was coming. And in fact, it feels very much like an Apple product launch where it's a big deal, but also we knew all the details already. Both of those things are true.

Speaker 1:
[07:14] Also, I just want to touch on what you were saying about the Chief Hardware Officer role for Sruji. I mean, I said this at the time and I stand by it now and I hope this is the change. That Apple should have more C-suite roles than it does. Like, there should be a Chief Hardware Officer, there should be a Chief Software Officer and a Chief Design Officer. I think that they should exist. It doesn't make sense to me why you'd have people like Federighi not in a C-suite position at this point. Like, I hope that they start to shuffle things around and I expect it's going to become a little more awkward now because why Johnny? Why not everybody else? And like, I don't know what the conversations are there and like maybe this is a thing that will happen later. And it made sense to talk about Sruji today because obviously there is now a vacuum left by Ternus moving. And so, yeah, it's super interesting, like the way that they've chosen to do this. Before we dig into some of the board shenanigans, I did just want to mention Jason, where were you when you found out that Tim Cook was stepping down as the CEO?

Speaker 2:
[08:17] I was sitting in Studio B, in the back room in my house, working on some other projects for the afternoon, just taking a different change of pace, go to a different place, work on some other stuff. And then I saw the red alert from... It was actually full credit, must credit, our editor, Jim Metzendorf, posting the Mark Gurman tweet.

Speaker 1:
[08:43] Oh, really?

Speaker 2:
[08:44] Yes. It was almost as if Jim was like, do I need to re-edit Upgrade today? And the answer is yes. Hi, Jim.

Speaker 1:
[08:52] Yes, sorry, Jim.

Speaker 2:
[08:52] You do. What about you?

Speaker 1:
[08:55] So Sophia's a little bit under the weather, and she was struggling to go to sleep. So it's like 9.30 and I'm just finally getting her down. And so I took my phone out of my pocket to mark that she'd finally fallen asleep. And I had lots and lots and lots of text messages. And then I freaked out because it's like, what am I going to do? So yeah, I'm in like Adina's home office recording right now. And I may be a little quiet than normal because there is a sleeping baby. So I apologize for that. But there was no way we weren't going to do this.

Speaker 2:
[09:26] Babies know their parents' voices and they don't mind, I think.

Speaker 1:
[09:31] I hope so.

Speaker 2:
[09:31] My experience was that like at a sporting event, the opposite is also true, a sporting event, like the whole crowd would scream and nobody would care. And then I would scream and my kids would be like, what, what, what? And it's like, because they were tuned in to me. But you're at home. And anyway, so yeah, I do want to credit Mark Gurman. I think he got the gist of this right way in advance, which means it is like an Apple product launch where it's a big deal, but also we already knew, which I'm sure they hate it. In fact, there is a line in the press release that says, this transition, which was approved unanimously by the board of directors, follows a thoughtful long-term succession planning process, which pat yourself on the back on that, sure. But also, yes, we know it was long-term because we've known about your process. Thanks to the Mark Gurman leaks especially for quite a while now. But the board has to be involved. This is the board hires the CEO. So this is obviously Cook and the board have been working on this for a long time, probably about as long as we've known about it. And it's effective September 1st. What Tim Cook is doing is becoming executive chairman, which is, I believe, not a current job. I believe there is a non-executive chairman, which is Arthur Levinson, who was the guy who is aging out of the board. And they change the rules to say, no, no, it's important. He can stay, which they can do because it's just board rules. So Arthur Levinson is going to become lead independent director, so not working at Apple, and he's going to take that role on. John Ternus is going to join the board of directors as CEO, and Tim becomes executive chairman, which is a different, interesting job that we all suspected. I think this wasn't reported as much as just everybody figured that might be a thing that he would do. And there is a key phrase in the press release about Tim Cook's role that fits with our expectation for what was going to happen, and I'll read it to you now. As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policy makers around the world.

Speaker 1:
[11:48] There you go. I mean, so I was gonna ask why now? I mean, it's not a question we can answer. Maybe this was just the time.

Speaker 2:
[12:00] My guess is that they pegged it 10 days before their quarterly earnings, so that they can get this out there before they go quiet and let everything settle before they talk to the financial press next week.

Speaker 1:
[12:13] I meant more in the broader context.

Speaker 2:
[12:15] Oh, okay.

Speaker 1:
[12:16] Like why April 2026? Like, do you have any... I mean, I know there's no way of knowing. The fact that Tim is setting up another role would suggest that he's very fit and healthy to do so.

Speaker 2:
[12:30] I think they had a plan for 2026. I think this is what the Financial Times got right, which is they had a transition plan for 2026. I think our speculation that it would come after they had their blockbuster quarter, it's actually, it is further after that, but before their next quarter. We know like John Ternus introducing the MacBook Neo at the event in New York was part of this transition plan. And we thought so at the time, but it's very clear now that that was what was going on. It's like, let's get John out there, high profile in advance of this. And I would imagine that they had a plan of like, we're going to announce it here, and then there's going to be this, and then Tim is going to go and transition later, and they're going to spread it out a little and give everybody on Wall Street plenty of warning and time to communicate it, and perhaps even John Ternus will join the call on next week. And this is all about that.

Speaker 1:
[13:35] I mean, he absolutely will, right? And then you get WWDC, right? Where they'll probably do some stuff together. And then I would expect the iPhone, that's a Ternus production.

Speaker 2:
[13:46] Because Tim will be out of there. He'll be in the boardroom.

Speaker 1:
[13:51] There's something to say about timing, and I feel like, well, if this year is going to be a really interesting iPhone year with the folding iPhone, maybe that feels like a good time to kind of have that transition. And then before next year with the 20th anniversary iPhone, which is what Mark Gurman has rumored will occur, if they really do feel confident about their product roadmap, this is a very good time to have this happen, right? Like if they feel like the next few years, from a pure product perspective, will be financially good, do it now. Like if you think you have a very good pipeline, which they keep talking about, if you do it now, you mitigate any unsettled feelings that might occur over the next couple of years, because as with any transition.

Speaker 2:
[14:43] Yeah, there's going to be change. Change is weird. And I keep coming back to this, which is Tim Cook didn't get to have a smooth CEO transition. He did a bunch of acting while Steve Jobs was sick. And then when Steve did the executive chairman transition, he was dying and too ill, and then he died. And I am 100% guaranteeing you that Tim Cook's goal in all of this is to give John Ternus every opportunity that Tim Cook didn't get because of what happened with Steve. And that's what's going on here is give him the runway, give him the time and the product pipeline, and presumably multiple years of prep before this announcement even came out, and be around as executive chairman after the fact, take some of the ugly stuff like the political stuff off of his plate so that he doesn't have to deal with that right out of the gate and he can focus on the stuff that is not going to attract that kind of attention. That was the plan all along, and I do think that that comes not just from the board, although I'm sure it does, but from Tim Cook wanting it to be like, this is how you do it. In some ways, maybe a last act by Tim Cook is, I want to do a good transition. I mean, obviously Steve Jobs, it was out of everybody's hands, right? It's one of those things like nobody had the control. It just is how it happens sometimes. But Tim was like, I don't have to have that happen this time. Let's do this the right way, and that's what they're executing right now.

Speaker 1:
[16:23] And I guess this actually reflects on Apple as a company now, that like, you know, I pulled some stats on this a while ago, just preparing for this kind of thing to happen. And something that I know is the company's revenue doubled from 2011 to 2020. So kind of, you know, from Cook taking over to 2020, that's how much bigger Apple became as a company during that time period. If you're this big, you can't mess this up. Like you have to have this done properly with time, and you want to settle everything. Because Apple's too big to just kind of like bounce around into a succession plan, and it just happened, right? Like you say, like this has to be considered, thought out, well executed down to every last minute detail. Because they are too important now, they're too big. You can't just like... And look, anything can happen, right? As we've said before, Tim Cook could have been hit by a bus six months ago, but they would have had a plan for that. Now you've got everything settled in the exact way that you want, you do it properly. And it's like this, right? Like set it up so that Tim can manage all of the current government leaders he has to manage for a few more years. And then maybe people start to turn over, and then Ternus starts to take those relationships because they're new relationships. There is, you know, you don't just be like, all right, good luck everybody.

Speaker 2:
[17:57] Tim Apple is still there. And in fact, I think that will be the messages. Don't worry, just call me. I'm Tim Apple. I'm in your contacts as Tim Apple. Just call Tim Apple if you need stuff.

Speaker 1:
[18:09] This is the way it should be. Like these things are relationship based. Why would you, you know, it would be wild to do it any other way, no matter who the president is.

Speaker 2:
[18:18] Let the new CEO have some time to work on the other aspects of the job. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Going back to Johnny Sruji for a minute.

Speaker 1:
[18:31] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[18:33] I just, so he, Apple bought his company and it was the foundation for what everything Apple has done in their chip design. And basically we would say now he's the father of Apple Silicon, basically. I, at the time when there was that rumor of like, is he shaky? Is he going? What's going on? Like, it became clear if it was not crystal clear before how important Johnny Sruji is to Apple, because their chip strategy is such a huge part of their hardware advantage. And they've spread it out. So now it's everything they make is Apple Silicon, right? It used to be like, well, the iPhone, which is the most important product they make, now it's everything. So we'll see what happens here, but this, to me, looks really like Apple's priorities are in the right place. They know they need to keep Johnny Sruji. They want to keep him happy. They want to give him whatever he wants, essentially, so that he stays, because he's a huge asset for them, and they don't want him walking out the door. I also have to wonder if another one of these things that we didn't quite see, but we could guess about is, this is my theory, but I'm just going to throw it out there again, did Alan Dye leave because they were not going to rush to protect him like they did Johnny Sruji? Not directly, not like, oh, you're treating Johnny this way, but more like this obviously shook every aspect of the senior leadership at Apple, the idea that Tim was leaving. And my theory when Alan Dye left was not that he wasn't liked because all the reports say he was liked, but maybe he wasn't liked quite as much as he wished he was. Whereas Johnny Sruji clearly was like, we got to keep this guy.

Speaker 1:
[20:25] I said it at the time and I still think it's, I think even more so it's the case now. I think Dye asked to be Chief Design Officer, and I think he was told no. And I think that was like, well, fine. And then he's out the door. And because I expect, as you're right, like everybody started to get told about it at the same time, because those stories, the Alan Dye story and the Johnny Sruji story, I think they're in the same week. So that would suggest that there were a lot of these conversations happening at the same time.

Speaker 2:
[20:53] There was this whole thing going on toward the end of the year, right? So John Ternus, haven't talked a lot about him. I've talked to him a couple of times. So that's great. I get to play it now. John Ternus at least could see my face and come up with a name. So that's awesome. Because Tim Cook doesn't know who I am. But John Ternus does. So that's great. Hi, John.

Speaker 1:
[21:19] I have a selfie with each of them taken in the same year, I think.

Speaker 2:
[21:23] Very nice. Very nice.

Speaker 1:
[21:23] Not bad.

Speaker 2:
[21:24] So here's a Cook. Cook said, John Ternus is the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He's a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as Executive Chairman. Now, here's John Ternus in the same press release saying, I'm profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry his mission forward. Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs, get that imprint in there, and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another. I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come. And I'm so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us. I am humbled to step in this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century. And as Apple PR points out, Ternus joined Apple's product design team in 2001, became VP of Hardware Engineering in 2013. He joined the executive team in 2021 as SVP of Hardware Engineering, and has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of products at Apple across every category, including iPad and AirPods, and many generations of iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch. So basically, here are his credentials. But I think most importantly, for those of us who watch Apple, first off, you don't get a new CEO at Apple who hasn't been not just on the exec team for five years, but a VP for 13 years and an employee for 25 years. This is how Apple works. It's why it had to be him, because there are not that many people who have risen. He's risen to this point because of who he is, and you don't bring in somebody from the outside.

Speaker 1:
[23:30] No, absolutely not. I mean, the history of them doing that with other positions has not gone very well, right? Like historically, even in Tim Cook's tenure, the people that he brought in from outside to fill executive positions, I don't know if any of them remained, or at least lasted for very long.

Speaker 2:
[23:49] I don't know. Not so much.

Speaker 1:
[23:54] To be John Ternus in this moment must be a very surreal experience.

Speaker 2:
[24:00] Got to be, right?

Speaker 1:
[24:02] What a mantle to be taking.

Speaker 2:
[24:05] I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[24:08] It's a mantle that has been held by many people, but only remembered for a few.

Speaker 2:
[24:13] Mike Scott, nobody remembers. John Scully, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelio, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, John Ternus?

Speaker 1:
[24:24] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[24:25] I think that's it in September. Not yet. Don't put new curtains in the office yet. Tim's still in there. So what else? I noticed something in the press release that I thought was interesting because it's Apple PR, Apple Newsroom, Apple Marketing, trying to place Tim Cook in context. And I think that says something. And this is the part that I wanted to quote. Apple services has been a major focus area of Cook's. And during his tenure, the category has grown to become a more than $100 billion business, the equivalent of a Fortune 40 company. Cook was also instrumental in creating the wearables category at Apple, which now includes the world's most popular watch and headphones, and which has served as the foundation for Apple's remarkable impact on the health and safety of users. Under Cook's leadership, Apple also transitioned to Apple Design Silicon, enabling the company to own more of its primary technology and deliver industry-leading gains in power efficiency and performance. So you can see it's sort of like this is their version of the quick bio of Tim, which is services, growth, wearables, and really when you think about it, health and safety, especially the wearables category. This is your Apple Watch or iPhone saved your life kind of stuff. And then Apple Silicon and saying he helped enable that with Johnny Scrooge, obviously. I mean, not a real surprise, but it is interesting to see this is the rare opportunity where Apple is putting Tim Cook's era in its own context, which is a weird thing to think about, but up till now, there was no reason to put Tim in context, but now we need to put Tim in context and this is how they've chosen to do it, which is, again, we could all write that paragraph and it would be very similar in terms of what his things are that we would focus on as being kind of legacy of Tim Cook's era.

Speaker 1:
[26:30] Yeah, I mean, it's a good summary, but I actually don't think it's completely fair. Like, I think that it's odd to me that they do not talk about continued stewardship and development of their key platforms. The iPhone's not in here, but it's not like just because he didn't create, he wasn't the CEO when they created the first one, that that means he doesn't get credit for all of the ones that came after.

Speaker 2:
[26:54] Yeah, and he's got, I mean, there's a first paragraph there that talks about new categories and products and services and expanding existing product lines, and it mentions Vision Pro and it mentions Apple Pay and all of that. And I mean, they tried to be comprehensive. I just thought it was really interesting that they specifically called out services here because that absolutely, I mean, for those who don't remember, this has been going on a while, there was a moment in the mid to late 2010s when they basically said, we're going to grow services a lot, really soon. Watch us grow it. It's going to double in the next three years or whatever. And it doubled in less than that, and it's continued to grow since then. And that was very clearly a major initiative under Cook. And we can debate the good or bad of it, right? Like I would argue that Apple services focus has overheated to the point where it's harming some of the product quality, right? I think it's...

Speaker 1:
[27:50] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[27:51] I think I would definitely say that. I think that maybe they've gotten the mixture wrong there. Not that it isn't wrong to generate more money out of all your iPhone customers, but that maybe they make some decisions that I wish that there was more thought put into what that meant for the user experience. But there's no denying, like that was a huge aspect to the expansion here. There's also no denying a thing that we are going to talk about again later in this episode in the stuff we already recorded, that part of this is also like the iPhone 6 coming out, and with a larger phones and more options, that was a rocket ship of iPhone growth. And like just the growth that started with the iPhone 6 in 2014, completely transformed what Apple was going to be just because of the money, the size, the scope. It completely changed the company in a very short amount of time in some ways, because the iPhone, which had been doing really well, suddenly was just out of control growth. It just enormous growth, and that changed everything about Apple and how it operated and how it saw itself and the whole thing.

Speaker 1:
[29:01] Yeah, it's like, you know, as you say, they talk about instrumental and expanding existing product lines, etc., etc. I do feel like I've just finished reading Apple in China at the exact correct time for me right now, if I wasn't going to have read it immediately, because I think the thing that cannot be denied is Apple is only able to be as big as it is because Tim Cook's operational skill and the way that he's crafted this company to be this operational powerhouse enables them to sell the amount of products that they do, because without someone who of his skill, who was able to put the right people in the right places, they just wouldn't be able to sell all the products. Like it needed someone who was able to manage the operations, manage the political climate, manage working with China, to get to the point that they could be as big as they are. Like services, sure, but most likely his actual long lasting legacy was the operations apparatus that Cook put in place at Apple.

Speaker 2:
[30:02] Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, it was, Tim Cook's legacy goes back to when he was COO. It goes back to all of the manufacturing stuff in China and how so much of what Apple's been able to do has been enabled by their ability to build systems to build what they want instead of using. That's the great, I mean, that's the great thing that I learned from Apple in China is I knew it like to a certain degree, but I didn't realize it was so much that literally Apple would say, we want to build this thing and any other company that said that they would be told you can't. That's not how it works. Apple would just say, we're going to do this. I guess we're going to figure out a way to manufacture what Apple wants. Then everybody else in the world gets to use that technique to build their own smartphones or whatever. That is Tim Cook stuff. That is all Tim Cook stuff. That is a huge legacy of Tim Cook is just Apple. Also, I remember when Apple, I mean, Apple used to have swollen inventory. They would have thousands of computers that were in a channel that they couldn't get rid of. And that if they come out with a new model, they would have to write those off because nobody was ever going to buy them. And like Tim Cook, the impression I get is that Tim Cook was one of those people who came in and was like, uh-uh, we're not going to do it this way. We're going to be ruthlessly efficient in ways that has benefited Apple. There's a complex legacy there because they were also enabling Chinese manufacturing capability. And, you know, you could argue that in some cases, they made Apple a lot more prone to danger because they were reducing the diversity of their supply chain and all these other things. It's complicated. But like also, there's no doubt about it that I get the sense that Apple's whole manufacturing thing was just really badly run and that Tim Cook was one of the leaders who got it into shape.

Speaker 1:
[32:05] It's like going into the very long term. Maybe there are some decisions that were made that end up not being the right ones to have been made, right? But in the intervening time from Cook to now, I mean, they're a company that's been able to grow to the scale and size that they're at because they were able to produce. And also innovate. It's not just, can we make 100 million of these? Can we make them to the quality level that we're making them? That has been incredibly important and has needed the investment and the setup and everything that they've had to develop in China and elsewhere now.

Speaker 2:
[32:44] Yeah. So to sum up, Tim Cook's going to end up being CEO of Apple for about 15 years, because he started in August of 2011. So it'll be 15 years and a handful of days. And he's going to be leaving Apple maybe on top, honestly, after especially their all-time record quarter that they just had, and with the Mac sales presumably going to be interesting with MacBook Neo. And John Ternus, they know what's in the pipeline, so he knows what he's going to be introducing. And yeah, we will have plenty of time to consider John Ternus, to consider the legacy of Tim Cook. This is a first draft because literally we just found out about it, which is why Myke is recording a podcast very near his child. But we couldn't, again, if we had already dropped the episode, what would we do? But we didn't.

Speaker 1:
[33:43] So we had to put something in. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[33:44] So we'll have much more about this.

Speaker 1:
[33:46] Next week we will.

Speaker 2:
[33:47] Next week. And here's the deal, dear Upgrade listeners. Not only did you get more than half an hour of us talking about this, breaking news right now, but now you got a couple hours of evergreen fun with your friends past Myke and Jason, talking about 50 selected randomly, somewhat products from Apple's 50 years in the rest of this episode. And I think you will enjoy it. You don't have to listen to it right now. You can listen to it whenever, because it's not unlike this part, it's not going to grow old. But we hope you enjoy it as much as we did, recording it in a more innocent time when Tim Cook was the CEO of Apple.

Speaker 1:
[34:33] We are finishing our Apple at 50 programming on this week's show with a big old draft. We are doing the Apple at 50 draft. We are going to be picking 25 items each amounting to 50 total picks. And we are picking a set of products made by Apple or Apple Computer Inc. These will be physical products only. We are not picking software. We are not picking components or entire product lines. This must be a specific model. These rules we came to an agreement on during Upgrade Plus last week.

Speaker 2:
[35:14] Last week.

Speaker 1:
[35:15] There will be no concepts. These must have actually been released products, but we will not be picking the launch navigator here.

Speaker 2:
[35:22] Or air power.

Speaker 1:
[35:23] Oh, I forgot about air power. I mean, is air power a concept? I mean, I think they thought it was a thing.

Speaker 2:
[35:29] Yeah, but it was never actually released. Indeed.

Speaker 1:
[35:32] So it doesn't count. We will be choosing these items based on our own defined criteria. There is not a defined criteria ranking, like significance, importance or favorite. This is based on personal vibes. This is not a pre-agreed list, like many of our other drafts. The picks that we will be making will be a surprise to each other. Jason and I have both amassed our own individual lists, and we will be taking turns to pick them. In the show notes, don't do this until the end, but in the show notes, there is a poll where you as the Upgradians will get to decide who has the best list. Jason, I have a Snell talk question for you.

Speaker 2:
[36:13] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[36:13] What was your personal methodology for the list?

Speaker 2:
[36:18] I chose products I like.

Speaker 1:
[36:20] Products you like? Okay.

Speaker 2:
[36:22] Yeah, with maybe one exception, but what I didn't do is I didn't choose bad products or dumb products. I chose some weird products, but the weird products tend to be products that are weird. I like them because they're weird. I like them. But I didn't make this like an anti-draft or some eclectic, like good vibes. I'm going for good vibes. What about you? What was your methodology?

Speaker 1:
[36:48] It is a combination of things that I think should be on this list, but mostly ranked with things that were important to me. My list is of things I think should be on here. I have ranked them in such a way of personal importance with some exceptions, and also some stuff that's for the fun, that I think should be included in a list, even if maybe they don't deserve it. I might not get to those though, right? Because some of those are more towards the bottom. And so in Upgrade Plus today, we will most likely be dragging out some of the things that we didn't pick.

Speaker 2:
[37:26] I have 60 items on my list and I only get to pick 25. So that's going to be a problem.

Speaker 1:
[37:30] I have 44.

Speaker 2:
[37:32] Yeah. So that's going to be... Well, we'll see. Also, I love the idea that you have ranked them, because I have not.

Speaker 1:
[37:38] So I thought about not ranking. So I have an Apple Note. My Apple Note is at the top of this note is a table, and I broke it down into the product categories, and then picked my favorites from the product categories, right? And that was how I was going to go into this episode. And then it felt too complicated, so then I ranked them. The ranking is not going to stick though, but in all of my drafts, whenever we draft, I rank them, and then I start moving things around. I just, if I didn't do some level of ranking, the reason I had to do it because I knew I was going to forget something if I didn't try and do some kind of ranking, and then I would feel bad. By the way, in Upgrade Plus as well, we gave a Google form for Upgradians to send in their things that they didn't want us to forget. Did you choose literally any of the things? Because I'll tell you right now, I didn't choose, I think, anything that was in that list.

Speaker 2:
[38:33] You know, I did, I was, I'll put it this way, I was reminded of products by that list. I think in one case, I smiled because I already had at least one. I mean, there were several, but there was one that I thought was esoteric, and somebody mentioned it. And I was like, yes, they see me. They see that I've already got that. And then there was one where I thought, oh, that reminds me, I'm gonna put a different product on my list, which is pretty funny.

Speaker 1:
[39:00] That's good. I think that's what it did for me. I think that list reminded me of entire product categories that I could consider. But there wasn't anything where I was like, oh, I should add that one thing to my list. But it was a helpful thing to have, and I'm happy that we did that. So I think considering, so this is an exhibition game. The pennant is not on the line here. I think is what we decided. This is for fun. But because you are the reigning defending draft champion, I think you should get first pick.

Speaker 2:
[39:31] Oh, well, that's very kind of you. I didn't assume that. Well, in that case, with the first pick in the Apple 50 draft, I have to do it, I thought about this a lot. I thought about like, what does it mean? And I'm gonna go with what is absolutely the most important product, not the product that without which, the app, that Apple wouldn't have stayed in business, right? Because you would have to dial that all the way back to the Apple II. It's the original iPhone.

Speaker 1:
[39:58] Okay. This was my number one. When you were teeing that up, I was wondering if you were going to say the Mac?

Speaker 2:
[40:04] No. No, in fact, I have, John Syracuse should cover his ears, because I have the Mac 128 as groundbreaking as it was. It was really not that good. And then they had to fix it later that year with a better version of it. So I'm going to say right now, I'm not going to pick the Mac 128. There are better Macs to pick than that one, even though it was historically vitally important. But the original iPhone, it changed what Apple is completely. And it changed what the world is and how people in the world use technology and live their lives. And it was only the first and it didn't sell as well as subsequent models, it was the beginning. I also think that it's got some remarkable characteristics, right? Like my Jeopardy anecdote was about picking it up and holding it for the first time, right? And when I was expected to have coherent thoughts and ask questions. And I couldn't because even though Retina didn't come until the iPhone 4, the iPhone screen was higher resolution than a Mac. And it's in your hand and you're touching, you're putting your finger down and things are reacting. It was in that I completely remembered that moment. It was transformative. It was like, oh, yeah. Okay. This is what this like it was clear to me. Clear. And it's still a pretty cool design for all of the limitations that they had to build into it. Because because of the limitations of building this thing, I see what Johnny Ive is going for. He couldn't get all of the way there, but I actually think it looks pretty cool. Even still, given all of that, that was a first generation model, but certainly cooler than the next two where they're like, whatever, plastic. And not until the iPhone 4 did they end up with a better design. But the first iPhone, yeah, for many reasons, it's my number one.

Speaker 1:
[42:04] Yeah. I think that there are, and you've kind of already mentioned one, and I think there are many categories where the original is not the one you pick, right? From a category. But the original iPhone is maybe as good as a product could ever be being the first. It was incomparable. Like nothing came close. It was, there was nothing like it.

Speaker 2:
[42:29] And one of the things that at least the way I've been approaching my list is if you're picking a later product, you have to pick, you're not encompassing.

Speaker 1:
[42:37] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[42:38] In my mind, you're not encompassing the entire product line and picking a representative product. You need to say why that one. And so I did seriously consider the iPhone 4. I wrote a whole thing last week on Mac world about the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 is amazing and will be picked in this draft.

Speaker 1:
[42:53] Oh, absolutely it will be.

Speaker 2:
[42:54] If not soon, then eventually, because it's amazing in so many ways. But I'm not going to sweep all of the greatness of the iPhone into the iPhone 4, because that's not how this works, I think. So original iPhone for this one. But you're right. I'm not picking the original Mac. I'm not going to pick the original iPod. I'm not going to pick the Apple 1 or the Apple 2. Like first versions are not always very good.

Speaker 1:
[43:21] But this one was. I mean, look, this will age, but I do. I don't think there will ever be a more consequential consumer tech product than the iPhone. Like for what a product is released, and then the world changes. Like I'm not sure that's ever going to happen again, because I don't think it ever happened before. Like personal computers, incredible. But one singular product from one company made that much change.

Speaker 2:
[43:49] As somebody who spent his entire professional life talking about technology, is a real head scratcher to realize that all of that time I spent in my career focusing on computers before the iPhone came out, was just a prelude. That the whole personal computer industry was really just a set up because we couldn't get smartphones yet. And that the smartphone was essentially the destination. Now maybe we will go further, and maybe there will be some kind of earth shattering product in the next 20 years that will completely transform society. I wouldn't bet on it.

Speaker 1:
[44:20] I think anything that comes along, it will be like, oh yeah, it's kind of like a phone or it's kind of like this. But the iPhone was just like, oh, it's not like the other products. It's not like the products it's competing against. It just wasn't. Like it was as much competing against them in that it could make phone calls and it went in your pocket. And that's basically where it ended. It was just maybe the best thing ever.

Speaker 2:
[44:45] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[44:46] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[44:47] What do you have?

Speaker 1:
[44:49] So that was my number one. So now I'm going to go with what is my number two, but we're very happy to be number one, the iPod Mini. All right. The iPod Mini, like we spoke about this in our origin stories, is the iPod Mini is like the most, it is the Apple product I have such, I'd like the highest emotion for because it's the one that brought me in and brought me in this journey. And I think the iPod Mini is a very significant product in the success that it brought Apple. Like, you know, I think to get to the iPhone, we needed the iPod Mini because it was the product that I think really exploded the iPod line, and the explosion of the iPod line brought Apple back to where they are, or where they were able to be, to be able to get to the point that they could produce a product like the iPhone. Like I think the iPod Mini is like, that is why it's important to me. But I just think it was, it was really emblematic of what was attractive about Apple at that time, in that it was fun and cool, right? Like the design was so weird. It was like, you know, it was like a little rectangle, but it had really rounded sides, and it came in a whole range of colors, and it had the white click wheel and the color, like, you know, the LED colored screen, not a color screen, right? But it's like blue, right? And it just, it had this feel to it, and it was young and fresh, and all the advertising was so good, like, to me, it's just such an incredible product, and I love it, and I still have my iPod Mini to this day. Yeah, I think it's just a fantastic product and deserves to be high on this list.

Speaker 2:
[46:31] I get it, and I get your personal connection to it, and I'm not running your pic down by saying this, but I didn't have it on my list.

Speaker 1:
[46:39] I'm not surprised, and I know that there are lots of people that are really upset that I picked this.

Speaker 2:
[46:43] But I think you're right. I think you are making a perfectly valid decision. I know how much it means to you. And I think there is a real strong argument to be made that that's the iPod that really kind of like made the iPod explode. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[46:54] I mean, this is the thing. I had my first two pics was the, this is the pic for you and then the pic for me. You picked my for you pic, and now I'm picking my for me pic. In the iPod Mini.

Speaker 2:
[47:05] Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm going to go number two with the most influential computer that Apple has ever released, or at least in the last 20 years. It's the second generation MacBook Air.

Speaker 1:
[47:31] And this was mine. Oh, wait, hang on, what are we talking about here?

Speaker 2:
[47:35] The 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs, which generates were they the second or the third? Not the bad one with the flip down door.

Speaker 1:
[47:41] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[47:43] 2011, I believe, MacBook Air? Yeah. 2011, yeah, that one. That one, because that was when they got it right. The first MacBook Air we don't want to really talk about, I had it, it was bad, it shut down a core in the afternoon when the sun came in my window. But with the 11 and 13-inch MacBook Airs that they released in 2011, they got it right. And literally every laptop made since then is aiding the MacBook Air, period. Like, they created Ultrabooks as a category so they didn't have to say Windows laptops that are kind of like the MacBook Air. But I mean, and the MacBook Pro, even the MacBook Pro is like the MacBook Air now. It's not, because the MacBook Air has evolved too, but they're closer than they used to be. And like, everything has been informed by that MacBook Air design. It was, it's the most important, it's the defining Mac of, you know, from the 2010s to now, the last 15 years. And I think it's one of the most definitive Macs of all time.

Speaker 1:
[48:45] So this was actually my third pick, and specifically I was going to pick the 11 inch because I had the 11 inch MacBook Air and I adored that computer. Like, it was so fantastic to have a computer that was as capable as it was at that time in that form factor. Oh, it was probably the 11 inch MacBook Air. I know you're a super fan of the 11 inch MacBook Air as well.

Speaker 2:
[49:12] It was a great time.

Speaker 1:
[49:13] That was wonderful.

Speaker 2:
[49:13] Absolutely. So I guess it's the late 2010 MacBook Air is technically what it is. That's the winner. That's the one. So everybody knows what I'm talking about. Anyway, yeah, that was the date. It was late. I was there. I mean, that's the funny thing is like, what year was that? But I remember going to that event and walking away with the MacBook Air because everybody got to walk away with one. And that 11 inch model was, I mean, yes, when I think of it, I think of the 11 inch model because that was my main computer for the next, you know, six years or whatever was an 11 inch Air. But just amazing and definitive, like change, change. I mean, talk about changing the game, like how the iPhone changed the world. In terms of computers and laptops, the MacBook Air changed everything.

Speaker 1:
[50:01] I'm going to stick on this vibe and I'm going to pick my favorite Mac ever, which is the M2 MacBook Air.

Speaker 2:
[50:09] You know, this is on my list. Good job. This is absolutely on my list.

Speaker 1:
[50:15] This laptop, I think is basically perfect. And so like, you know, I'm starting with the M2 because that's the one that I have. But obviously, if you get the M3, the M4, is there an M5 of this?

Speaker 2:
[50:26] There is an M5. Yeah, they all have it. They all have it. It's the new, it's the current design language where it's got the flat, it's not the wedge, it's got the flat top and bottom and the rounded sides. And I remember again, I remember getting this, seeing it at the event and then getting my review unit and just saying like, oh boy, this is so good. Like, and I, again, as a MacBook Air wedge partisan all the way back to, as we've just determined, late 2010, I get that your wife has a great fondness for that wedge design and all of that. I totally get it. But for me, as somebody who also had great fondness for that, when the M2 Air came, I thought, oh.

Speaker 1:
[51:09] This is the one.

Speaker 2:
[51:11] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:11] Because this is the computer that Apple Silicon enables on that side, right? Like Apple Silicon kind of enables computers on both ends of the scale, right? You can have something incredibly powerful because of how powerful these chips can be and how power efficient they are. But you can also have something incredibly thin and light with no fan that is plenty powerful and incredibly battery efficient because of what these chips enable. Like we've all said it many times, the M2 MacBook Air is what they wanted to make when they made the Tormach MacBook, right? Like that is the product you would want to make, and it turns out they were able to make it many years later when they actually went to Apple Silicon. And it's like, the M1 MacBook Air, as great as it was, it's like, oh, we're going to take this design and put this chip in it, wonderful. But what if we started from zero and the zero we're starting is that we place it around the capabilities of Apple Silicon chips and you create this computer. And to me, it's like, it is the most awesome combination. Like, I love my M2 MacBook Air, and it will be, I will be very sad when I replace it with the Touchscreen MacBook Pro because I really want a Touchscreen Mac. And so, but as soon as they put a Touchscreen back on their MacBook Air, I'm going right back. I can't go right back.

Speaker 2:
[52:33] I can't put reviews on that one. I think that is a conversation for another time, but I think that's a product that it's going to, a lot of it's going to be in the details of how they do that.

Speaker 1:
[52:42] Oh, I know.

Speaker 2:
[52:43] All right, for my third pick, I'm going to finally leave the 21st century. I'm going to go back in time, and I'm going to make a pick here that is the product that I think you could argue allowed the Mac to flourish and succeed. It's also going to be our first accessory slash peripheral in the draft, but I feel so strongly about this that the Macs of that era were okay to good to great. But what made the secret sauce that made the Macs succeed in the 80s and survive in the 90s is the Laser Rider.

Speaker 1:
[53:26] Wow, wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[53:30] Come to school. Time for a history lesson, Myke Hurley.

Speaker 1:
[53:33] Please, please.

Speaker 2:
[53:33] The Laser Rider, which integrated Adobe's Postscript technology and allowed Macs to become desktop publishing engines and create content at printed quality right out of a computer, completely changed the game. It's what made the publishing industry embrace the Mac. It led to many other models, and you could upgrade it to a Laser Rider 2 by putting it in a different logic board. They improved it in a bunch of ways, but the Laser Rider, it really did change the fortunes of Apple, the Mac, and Adobe, and the publishing industry completely. This is how desktop publishing came to be, is this product. It was kind of accidental in some ways. It was part of the Mac Office, which was this initiative that is mostly remembered now for the Lemmings commercial that was so bad. Parts of the Mac Office never shipped like the file server that they couldn't ever ship, but the LaserWriter didn't need the rest of the Mac Office. It just needed itself. It is an all-timer. And so I'm going to take a high pick on the LaserWriter because I think it is that important.

Speaker 1:
[54:43] I feel like you probably picked this one now because it's important to you, not because you thought you were going to lose it otherwise?

Speaker 2:
[54:51] Because I think it deserves to be this high, but definitely not strategically because I know you're not going to pick it. But you know what? I'm giving it to you because I wasn't going to pick the iPod Mini. Here we are.

Speaker 1:
[55:02] There you go. Well, congratulations, LaserWriter.

Speaker 2:
[55:05] LaserWriter.

Speaker 1:
[55:07] I'm going to pick now what I consider to be one of the most important iPhones ever shipped, and it's not the one you're thinking of. I'm going to pick the iPhone 6 Plus.

Speaker 2:
[55:19] Okay. I see what you're doing here.

Speaker 1:
[55:21] This was the first big iPhone.

Speaker 2:
[55:23] Mike, it's iPhone Math.

Speaker 1:
[55:24] It's iPhone Math. iPhone Math makes the list. iPhone Math. That is an incredible deep cut where from a translation.

Speaker 2:
[55:33] Somebody mistranslated the plus and they translated because it was presumably in China and in a language that was not English, and somebody interpreted that plus as being math. And so they said, the new phone, the larger phone will be called the iPhone Math.

Speaker 1:
[55:47] And we will have to deal with that for a little while.

Speaker 2:
[55:50] Amazing. I love it.

Speaker 1:
[55:52] The iPhone 6 Plus was the first big iPhone. Yes. And while necessary, I think while maybe big iPhone was not super popular at that point, it obviously set trajectory to where we are now, where all of the iPhones are massive, where all of the iPhones now, all phones are bigger than the iPhone 6 Plus, right?

Speaker 2:
[56:11] Yeah. This is the response to Samsung having success with the Galaxy Note and realizing, because Samsung just released a bunch of stuff and was like, well, let's see what happens. And everybody was like, yes, I want a giant phone. And Apple, which had been so skeptical and had built iOS around these fixed sizes that they had to very rapidly say, no, make your apps be able to expand to different sizes because they realized that they had left this opening and they had to fill it. And the truth is, a lot of us out there can grouse about big phones versus small phones, but the market spoke. The market spoke. People want big phones. I know some people want small phones, but almost everybody wants a bigger phone with more stuff on it. So that iPhone 6 Plus, you could also, I love my financial charts and all of that. This is when Apple and the iPhone exploded in terms of revenue, was this product. And they never came down.

Speaker 1:
[57:07] Yeah, this was a part of why I picked this. It is also the point when the iPhone became serious. Like at this point, like the reason that we are here where we are now with the iPhone was the iPhone 6 line. You know, it's the thing that we spoke about on this show many times. This is also when we launched the show was the iPhone 6, right? That was true. Episode 1 of Upgrade was the iPhone 6.

Speaker 2:
[57:30] My review of the iPhone 6, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[57:32] And it was at that point where all charts became meaningless. And then Apple was digging itself out of a hole for a few years because they solved so many that there was this blip. Now it came down and then went back up. And then, you know, it's like, as you have done many times, which you kind of normalize those charts, you see it's just a linear progression. I did just look it up. The iPhone 6 Plus had a 5.5 inch display. The iPhone 17e has a 6.1 inch display. And obviously, the phone was physically larger because we were dealing with bezels and a home button and all that kind of stuff then. But it's a funny thing. I just think, you know, and also the iPhone 6 design language, I think over time, we got very tired of it because Apple did not change anything for many years. But at the time, it felt very new, great in hand, right? Very thin and rounded. Like it had a very nice different feeling to the phones that come before it. So yeah, the iPhone 6 Plus for me.

Speaker 2:
[58:34] Great choice. Fantastic choice. Not on my list, but I knew you would pick it, so it's fine. I am going to go with another Mac. And it's tough because I want to kind of like paint a picture here. I want to pick some, a good selection of Macs. Here's my, we're going back in time again. Here's a, this is going to be a historic pick. And I have a little story about why. It's the PowerBook, I'm going to say the 170, although we could really just say PowerBook first generation and it counts the 100, the 140 and the 170, all of which came out basically the same time. So they did the Mac portable and it was a disaster. And this is the earliest days of laptops. And there weren't a lot of laptops out there and laptops were underpowered, but the power you could get by bringing your computer with you and not by taking like a classic shaped Mac and putting it in a bag and lugging it around, like literally, this was actually part of Steve Jobs' original conception for the Mac. He was like, he had a whole like phrase. He was like Mac in a book by 1986. Like he really wanted them to have this laptop, essentially what we think of now as a laptop. And the short version of the story is all laptops at this time did not look like laptops do today. This is, you want to talk about a change the world moment. This is a change the world product because there was an engineer who was messing around with like little drawings and cut up pieces of paper, and then eventually a foam core model that he brought to a meeting. And he said, what if we took the keyboard and the keyboard at every laptop at that point was at the front of the control surface. What if we pushed it back? That gets us palm rest and a place for at that point, a track ball to move the mouse. And the reason that they had to do this, the reason Apple is the one that came up with this concept was because PC laptops are in DOS. They didn't need pointers. Max, you could not operate without a pointer. You had to have a mouse. So how would you do that? And so he had this idea of like, the keyboard doesn't come all the way up to the front, you push it back, you got a place to put your palms, your wrists, and you've got a pointing spot. And that, after this, every laptop looked like that. Literally every laptop looked like that. Also for people who do not remember that far, for people who are not the olds, I'll just say the PowerBook was a sensation. This was in many ways the first Mac to actually like get people talking. And it was expensive, these were expensive, but like there was the one I like to cite is that there's a New Yorker article about how tech, or not tech, an entertainment mogul, Barry Diller, used to do his power lunches in Hollywood with his PowerBook on the table. It was like a power move to have his computer with him at all times. And not only did it make the laptop a key part of Apple's entire Mac product line going forward, they never went back, but it redefined the entire market. So PowerBook, first generation.

Speaker 1:
[61:45] It's iconic, the look of this thing. Again, I remember seeing these in my life. Like my uncle had one and it was like, such a cool-looking thing.

Speaker 2:
[61:55] I had a PowerBook 160, the second generation, and I loved that thing so much. It was awesome.

Speaker 1:
[62:01] I was thinking now, the pick that I'm going to make now, I feel like I'm picking everything that's modern. But the pick that I'm about to make was released 16 years ago, so I don't think it's as modern as I think. This is the iPad, the original iPad. At the time, it felt like the next big thing from Apple, and for a while, it was. The iPad was an unbelievable success when it first shipped. Things changed over time with the iPad and its trajectory, but it started something new. It wasn't just a big iPhone, it did do different things. Apps were made differently for it. There was a whole wave of apps that had HD in the name because they had a different UI and people sold them separately. And it was an extra points for the presentation from Steve Jobs. It was another classic in a very different way that the original iPhone presentation was a classic. This was much more relaxed and that actually worked for the presentation. But also, if you were around at the time or paying attention at the time, the $499 price tag was an absolute mic drop from Apple. Everybody thought this thing was going to be like $1,000 or whatever, because we all knew a tablet was coming, and it was just about what it was going to be. But $499 for this thing was incredible. And yeah, it was a real time when the iPad came out, and I hold that time special.

Speaker 2:
[63:31] I have it on my list too. It's actually, if you haven't held one recently, it's actually kind of great. Obviously the iPad has evolved so much since then, but that hardware design is amazing. It really was, and at the time, just blew me away.

Speaker 1:
[63:50] So clever. It had the bump right in the back, so they could make it thin at the edges. It was a very clever design.

Speaker 2:
[63:56] So you could hold in your hand, and it feels like a magical future tablet thingy. And then obviously defined what these things were going to be at that point. Okay, I have one more in our top 10, our collective top 10. And I am going to go with a computer that I bought and love. And you know how much I love it, Mike, because it took up a lot of time in the podcast-a-thon last fall. I'm going to pick the Apple IIe here. Need to Represent the Apple II, wrote a long article on The Verge a few weeks ago about why the Apple II is the product that established Apple as a company. The Apple IIe was the best iteration of the Apple II. Sorry, fans of other Apple IIs, it was the best one. It sort of solved all the problems of the 2 and 2 Plus line and then they iterated on it with the 2C and the 2GS. But I think the 2e was just straight down the middle, the core great Apple II. And they couldn't kill it. They tried. They tried it with Elisa. They tried it with the Apple III. They tried it with the original Mac. The Apple II was Apple's best selling computer for a very long time. And they were still in use in classrooms in the late 80s and early 90s. Like, they were still out there and had a bunch of great games and educational software and all sorts of other things. Expansion cards. So you could do all sorts of different stuff with it. That was Woz saying, we're gonna have a bunch of expansion slots in this thing, even though Steve Jobs didn't want them. Yeah, just I think it's a definitive Apple product, and they sold a huge number of them, and it's the thing that built Apple as a corporation, really, is the Apple II in general, and the Apple IIe as the kind of like the final, ultimate example of that product line. So Apple IIe had upper and lower case, Mike. Upper and lower case.

Speaker 1:
[65:56] Big time.

Speaker 2:
[65:57] Yeah. You could always tell back in the days of the... At the time, the keyboard didn't seem so bad. It was a mechanical keyboard now.

Speaker 1:
[66:07] When I...

Speaker 2:
[66:08] In hindsight, it's terrible.

Speaker 1:
[66:08] I hadn't touched one until last year, and...

Speaker 2:
[66:11] In hindsight, it's not good. No, no, no. No, no. I have fond memories of it, and then I was typing on it, on Stephen's Apple IIe, and I was like, ooh, boy, this is not so great.

Speaker 1:
[66:19] It's like there's marshmallows under there.

Speaker 2:
[66:20] But on computer bulletin boards back in that day, because we didn't have the internet yet, you could always tell who had an Apple II Plus, because they typed in all caps.

Speaker 1:
[66:28] Whoa.

Speaker 2:
[66:30] So Apple IIe, let's hear it for the... It was a lowercase e. It really was. And that's one of the reasons why.

Speaker 1:
[66:37] As I'm going through my list, I feel like I am building something that wasn't necessarily intentional, but I'm here anyway, so now I'm just leaning into it. My last pick in the top 10 is the iPod Nano, the first-generation iPod Nano. Again, there is part product, part strategy that I find so interesting about this product. One, it looked stunning. It's incredibly thin, thin to the point that Apple has only recently made a product thinner than it. It looked so good, where it was essentially a small version of the regular iPod rather than the mini, which was its own design. It had the black or white color with the clear acrylic on top and then the stainless steel on the other side. And it looked amazing. It looked even better when it got all banged up. That was one of the iPods that just looked fantastic because it got banged up, because that one got banged up in every direction.

Speaker 2:
[67:38] It did. Yeah, very scratched.

Speaker 1:
[67:40] The, you know, ever wonder what this pocket is for? Presentation moment, right? When Charles pulls it out of a little coin pocket in his jeans. But also just the boldness of the strategy, that the iPod Mini was the best selling iPod. And instead of doing an iPod Mini 2, they replaced it with the iPod Nano. And then the iPod Nano then got many revisions. From my perspective, none of them as good as the original. From all of the things that I loved about the iPod Nano, I don't think there was ever an iPod Nano that was better than the first iPod Nano. I was not really an iPod Nano person, I think for this reason. As the product went along and became more vibrant and colorful and took on various forms, for me, none of them were ever as good as the original iPod Nano. I love the iPod Nano.

Speaker 2:
[68:30] Also for the people, the nitpickers out there, there were two generations of iPod Mini. There was an iPod Mini too.

Speaker 1:
[68:36] Yeah, but was it though?

Speaker 2:
[68:38] Yeah. In the next year, they came out with an updated version of it with different colors.

Speaker 1:
[68:42] Okay. Yeah, but colors is not-

Speaker 2:
[68:43] But it's basically the same. Yeah. And then they killed it.

Speaker 1:
[68:45] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[68:45] And it was their best selling product and then they killed it famously, which is why the Nano is so interesting.

Speaker 1:
[68:49] Thank you for the clarification. But from my perspective, it's like, they didn't do for the iPod Mini that they did for basically all of the other iPods, where it's like we're going to keep iterating on this product and making it different. So yeah, for me, the iPod Nano was amazing. 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 everybody vulnerable. Sadly, it's easier than ever to find personal information about people online. And nobody wants their address, phone number and family members names hanging out on the internet. With Delete Me, you can protect your personal privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. The New York Times Wirecutter has named Delete Me their top pick for data removal services. And I, Myke Hurley, am a very happy customer of Delete Me. I was able to give them all of the information that I wanted to be removed from the internet, which is not everything about me. I have professional information I want there to be, but not personal information. And then I have Delete Me sending me reports periodically and they go through, hey, look, we've removed your information from this place and this place and this place, and we're monitoring this one, and we're sending requests to this one. I love it. It feels like they're in my corner, working for me and removing the information that I want removed. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now, with a special discount for listeners of this show, you can get 20 percent 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 percent off is to go to joindeleteme.com/upgrade20 and use the code Upgrade20 at checkout. One last time, that is joindeleteme.com/upgrade20 with the code Upgrade20. Thanks to Delete Me for the support of this show and Relay. So we're into like the second set here, picks 11 to 20.

Speaker 2:
[70:51] Yeah, I'm doing some tiering now in my list.

Speaker 1:
[70:54] That's probably helpful at this point.

Speaker 2:
[70:56] Kind of on deck. What's on deck for me that I could pick soon? I am going, you've been doing a lot of iPods. I love iPods. So I'm going to jump in to the iPod. And I'm going to pick, the question here is like, I'm going to do the classic iPod. And I think I wanted to be the fourth generation iPod. So this is, so the first generation, first two were FireWire port on the top. And then they moved, and then they had the third generation, which was the one with the four horizontal touch buttons that was the worst iPod of all time. And then there was, then they came back, they brought it back to the click wheel design.

Speaker 1:
[71:46] Was this the iPod Photo?

Speaker 2:
[71:49] No, the iPod Photo was next, maybe. This is the iPod fourth generation or the iPod click wheel, where they bought the click wheel back. And that is, yeah, it all gets messed up. Yeah, the iPod Photo came a few months later, but I'm not picking that. I'm picking the fourth gen iPod, because I want the best kind of classic before it started getting a whole bunch of stuff added to an iPod. And I think the iPod fourth generation is that one, because the third one was bad. And the first two, like, I have a lot of fondness for the first one. I have one. It has a moving wheel. The wheel actually moves. And it's got the buttons around the ring. And then they changed the wheel to be like a capacitive wheel, but you still have the buttons around it. And they did the four touch buttons that are so bad. And then in this one, it's a click wheel for the first time. So you've got a non-moving wheel, but you can move your finger over it to rotate. And if you click at the edges of the wheel, that's how you do your controls. There is no ring of buttons around them. I feel like this is kind of like the home of, like, the definitive classic iPod is right here. So that's why I want to pick it. Because the iPod, very important to Apple's history. I was a, what we call iPod classic, big iPod user the whole time. I never used an iPod mini or an iPod nano. I always had the big iPod. Because I had lots and lots of music, and I wanted all that music, and then later podcasts that I would sync to it. And so I got to go with the fourth generation iPod. That's my iPod of choice.

Speaker 1:
[73:26] Yeah, because this ClickWheel design, it debuted on the mini first, and then a few months later came to the classic, which is now, I guess, known as the classic.

Speaker 2:
[73:35] Yeah, and replacing that four horizontal button doesn't make such a mistake.

Speaker 1:
[73:39] Terrible, really ugly. Steven loves them, and I don't understand it. I feel like there's just some weird nostalgia there for him.

Speaker 2:
[73:46] Yeah, that's what it is.

Speaker 1:
[73:47] Because that is, I think, the ugliest of all of the iPods. It's not a look of that one. I'm not a fan of those buttons either anyway, like the little touch buttons. Not great for that. All right, so, okay. Yeah. I'm looking at, I mean, this is the thing where I have this tearing in my list. And I'm like, I just don't know. But there's some stuff here. I know I'm gonna get to it eventually. So I'm just gonna pick this now. I'm gonna go for the iPhone X.

Speaker 2:
[74:19] High on my list. You kind of got jumped right in ahead of me there. iPhone X, great choice.

Speaker 1:
[74:25] It's, you know, this was, I think, somewhat similar to the original iPhone. And it was a product that felt like it was from the future at the moment that it arrived.

Speaker 2:
[74:39] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[74:40] And, you know, that was, again, similar to the original iPhone, shown in the fact of how expensive it was compared to competition, right? But the original iPhone, it wasn't a high value, but it was a value you had to pay on top of a contract. You know, like it was an expensive phone compared to what was going on at the time. And the iPhone X was $1,000, I think, was the starting price for the iPhone X.

Speaker 2:
[75:04] Impossible, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[75:05] Which, and, you know, it was obvious that it was so expensive and considered to be a luxury item because they also released another iPhone alongside it, right? They released the 8, and that was the expectation of like, hey, we're going to put this out there because we know we're not going to get everyone onto the 10. But again, obviously the 10 did so well and then continued from there because people could see it, like, yeah, I want that, right? And really what was the two big things for the iPhone 10 was a full screen, removing the button and we're doing Face ID. Like unbelievable technology at that point, and the things that they were doing to make all of that work. The iPhone 10 was incredible, like it was an incredible time. And I really hope that next year, we get a similar for the 20.

Speaker 2:
[75:56] First OLED iPhone too.

Speaker 1:
[75:57] It was, yes, it was the first OLED iPhone. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[76:01] Yeah. The iPhone 10 to me is kind of an archetype. It's Apple doing what Apple does, which is they built a product that feels like the future. And they did it by, they pushed the technology. It's a bunch of new technology in there. It was more expensive. I think that was part of the strategy, was to push the price up. I say this a lot, but like the iPhone 10 ushered in an era where Apple has continued to explore how much they can charge for an iPhone before people say no. And they haven't found that answer yet.

Speaker 1:
[76:34] Yeah. That was probably a very exciting time for them.

Speaker 2:
[76:37] Yeah. Like, oh my God, they bought the thousand dollar phone. Well, what if it was, and now we hear thousand dollar phone. We're like, yeah, okay. So, but like at the time, it was a huge deal.

Speaker 1:
[76:46] Well, this year, we will probably pass 2000, right? With the fault.

Speaker 2:
[76:50] It is the defining iPhone of this era, of the last almost 10 years, is it set us on the course that we're still on in terms of iPhone design. Super important phone. Had a high on my list. Completely agree. And now, for something completely different. I'm going to go back to the Mac now, and I'm going to pick the best Mac design of all time, which is the iMac G4.

Speaker 1:
[77:30] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[77:34] The float, like, there was a little period where they could make a computer with a floating flat screen, and actually take advantage of the fact that we have these flat screens, when you think of how big the iMac G3 is. And we left this period very quickly because screens kept getting bigger, and they couldn't make an arm where it was practical to have a giant screen on that little arm. They moved to the iMac G5 design, which is essentially the design of every iMac since then. But in this little shining moment, they got to build this thing with an incredible Chrome arm. It is the Sunflower iMac. It is, yeah, I think it's the best, one of the very best pieces of industrial design Apple has ever done. And it is the best Mac design of all time. Now, as a computer, it was fine. Like it was better than the iMac G3. But really, what's amazing is that it has that Apple feels like the future thing going on there. And the fact that they put that ridiculous amount of engineering effort into not just the Chrome arm itself, but also the cabling required to get all the stuff up into the display through that arm so that they could suspend the arm up and then fit all the whole computer into that half volleyball that was sitting at the base. Just an amazing bit of engineering all around, but the best industrial design. So iMac G4.

Speaker 1:
[78:57] It was almost like the product was an advertisement for Apple. I remember there was a department store close to where I lived as a kid. And they had the iMac G4. They just had it out there for years, way after it was sold. And people were always playing with it because it was just like, what is this thing? It looked like the most expensive computer you could ever imagine because of how beautiful it was. I've moved up something in my list because I think it feels right to pick it here, and that's the iMac G3. Okay. The story of the iMac G3 is well known. It really was the beginning of one of the greatest partnerships in technology of Jobs and Ive. This was their product that they started on together and really pushed into becoming something. It was so beautiful. There was nothing like it. Nothing existed like the iMac G3, and after it, nothing has existed like it since, really. Obviously, with the exception of the iBook, right? But technology has never again looked like this. It's just an incredible computer. I remember I did work experience as a kid. It was arranged for my school, and I was working at an Internet learning facility for schools that didn't have computers. So schools could come and use computers, and it was all iMac G3s. And so I spent a week updating all of these iMac G3s to a version of Mac OS X, like whatever it was at the time. And it was just an incredible week. I just got to use all of these iMac G3s, and I just had a wonderful time with it, just like playing around these computers for a week. That was the most time I spent on a G3. I didn't have one, and it was an absolute delight, because those computers were delightful.

Speaker 2:
[80:56] They were huge, and obviously all the stories about it, saving Apple's bacon and allowing it to have its turnaround, and they were so definitive, and everybody knew it, and everybody talked about it, and the look of them made a difference. And it, again, was one of those things where everybody, all the other computer companies tried to ape it, and they kind of couldn't. I mean, they failed to do it. It was very much a message that only Apple could do this. And the Apple in China book puts that into detail. In many ways, nobody else could make it, because even Apple couldn't make it. They had to figure out how to make it.

Speaker 1:
[81:30] Apple in China is great for both the G3 and the G4. The story of those two computers and the details that McGee got were really, really, really good.

Speaker 2:
[81:38] Yeah. So I love the iPad, and I haven't picked an iPad product yet, which is a little bit weird. I'm going to get weirder, though, Myke. I'm going to get weirder. I'm going to pick the second-generation Apple Pencil.

Speaker 1:
[81:55] Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[81:58] The Apple Pencil.

Speaker 1:
[81:59] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[81:59] It is, in some ways, it defines now the iPad. It is the Apple device that you can use to draw and to take notes. It makes the iPad have more powers than other Apple devices have. And the second-generation one is also brilliant. I know we've talked about it on this show before, because if you're holding it, I'm holding one in my hand right now. You might as well be holding a block of wood. Like it doesn't feel like technology. The tip screws off, but like, it doesn't have a little, the first-generation one has a little plastic cap that you pop off, and there's like a little lightning nubbin that you have to weirdly stick somewhere in order to get. No, this one is magnetic attach, inductive charge. There's no interface to it. It's a piece of hardware that feels like nothing, like a pencil. And so that part of it is brilliant. And then what you can accomplish with it is amazing. And as somebody who doesn't really draw or like to hand write things, I fell in love with it too because I could use it to edit podcasts using FairWrite and I had that moment where I thought, oh, this input device is better at this than the other traditional input devices that I might use, including even just my fingers on an iPad. And I think it is a transformative, I really believe that the iPad is in many ways defined by the accessories you attach to it. It is that kind of product. It is this kind of core that you then choose how you want to use it. And I think the Apple Pencil is a fantastic accessory that defines the product to this day.

Speaker 1:
[83:38] I've moved a product up my list because I consider justice is needed. It's the first generation Apple Pencil.

Speaker 2:
[83:47] Oh no!

Speaker 1:
[83:50] Look, I understand why people laughed at the design, right? That they're like, oh, it's got this little cap on it and there's a lightning port. But I have always appreciated the practicality of that charger because ultimately, you needed to be able to charge this product with the device that you used it on. And Apple ended up solving that in a very great way with the second generation. But the first generation did the job, right? Like it did the job. If they didn't have another way to do it, this was the way to do it. There was absolutely a way to do this, which it did not look like that, and they were going to make you plug in a cable into that thing or something like that, right? Or they were going to make you use an inductive charger, and it would have been really annoying because you would have needed another cable with you. But the product was, and they engineered it in such a way that you could plug it in for a very short time and get use out of it. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was like you could plug it in for a minute and use it for half an hour or something like that. They were very focused on making that quick. But all of that, people focus on so much, but ultimately, it was the Apple Pencil, right? Like all of the things that you love in the second generation was in the first generation, right? Like in that, it was, it's the best that we've ever had this kind of technology of a pencil input onto a screen. All of the work Apple did to make the latency so low that it felt natural. And it was, for me at the time, was such a blessing because you could also use it for controlling the iPad Pro. And I was dealing with some bad RSI. Well, it worked and then it took it away and it worked back again. But it was really wonderful for being able to control the iPad interface as well as drawing on it. And so perfect no, but absolutely got the job done.

Speaker 2:
[85:48] That's fair. That's fair. Okay. Well, two Apple pencils go here. In quick succession, a quick run on Apple pencils. I guess I'm going to have to pick the Apple Pencil Pro now, just to know I'm not going to do that. Well, people who've listened this far know that we are picking things in totally wacky ways and for wacky reasons. I have been watching, I've been writing about the Mac since 1993. I've been a Mac user since 1990. I've been an Apple user since the 80s. I have seen a lot. And one of the frustrations I have with, like The Verge did their 50 list, which was after we had thought about doing this, by the way. We weren't inspired by The Verge. We were like, ah, they did it. Let's put ours off for a while so people aren't totally sick of it, and then we'll still do this. There, you know, people who have only been paying attention to Apple for 10 or 15 years might kind of lose perspective about some of the history, which is why I picked the Apple IIe, and it's why I picked the Laser Rider. And so when I say this, I want people to take into account the fact that I am considering the grand sweep of Apple's 50 year history. When I say, if you can make a Mac laptop for $599, it's one of the top 50 products of all time for Apple. And that's why I pick the MacBook Neo.

Speaker 1:
[87:07] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[87:09] Wow. Did I do it? Did I do a number on you there?

Speaker 1:
[87:13] When we started this episode today, I was like, I don't think we're gonna pick the MacBook Neo.

Speaker 2:
[87:20] Yeah, baby.

Speaker 1:
[87:21] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[87:23] Yeah, the MacBook Neo. I mean, they made a full functional laptop for $599. It's selling well, it works, it's good, it's cute. And I think personally, and this may be a pic later, that the moment when they put out the Mac Mini for $499 was also an incredible moment for the Mac to have that. And then the next year, they're like, how about $599? But they had it there for a moment. And I think Steve Jobs, he had that little glint in his eyes, like, oh yeah, we did it, right? Like that expensive Mac. You can get this thing and bring your own keyboard and display and mouse, but you can get a Mac. And then Map of Neo, it's the same thing. I was standing there at that warehouse in New York City where they had this event, surrounded by very smart, knowledgeable people who watch Apple, and nobody believed that it would be anywhere close to $599 or $699. Nobody, they're all like, it's $799, right? Maybe it's $700, but probably $799. No, it's $599, and it's fully functional, and it's a triumph of Apple Silicon, and it's a perfectly good little laptop for that price, and it potentially will upset the entire Windows laptop market. And I think it's a milestone. So here it is.

Speaker 1:
[88:36] Yeah, it's reminiscent of the iPad, right? What I was saying earlier, like nobody thought it was going to be the price that it was, and the fact that it was all of that computer for that price is kind of unfathomable. I love it. All right. My next pick, I feel like it has to be on the list, and I feel like it has to be in the top 20. I'm picking the Mac, the 128K. I don't have a ton to say about this computer. It is, but it is iconic, and it will always be iconic.

Speaker 2:
[89:00] It is iconic.

Speaker 1:
[89:01] And for me, it kind of doesn't matter what its capability was. It doesn't matter how good it was. It doesn't matter how good other products that came after it were. Look at that thing. You know, just look at them.

Speaker 2:
[89:12] I know it changed everything. I was steering away from it because it's a good pick. It was underpowered. They had to put out the Fat Mac, the 512, later that year, because the lack of memory, the fact that it didn't have hard drive or a second internal floppy, what made it very hard to use, it didn't sell very well because of that. They had a lot of problems with the Mac product line. But you cannot argue with the fact that this is the product that changed what computers would be. This is the start of it. This is what happened. And it was because of Steve Jobs and that incredible creative team of people, many of whom basically burned out after this and were like, we're done. But this product is a triumph. Yeah, no doubt about it. No doubt about it. It's an all-timer.

Speaker 1:
[90:04] All right, this will be your 10th pick, right? This will be 19.

Speaker 2:
[90:09] Nineteen, 19. I am going to come back to the modern era, and I'm going to say a product that I was deeply skeptical of, because I like products the way I like them, and that this was doing something different. And it has proven to be one of my favorite Apple products of all time. I'm going to pick a very particular model of it, which is the first-generation AirPods Pro.

Speaker 1:
[90:37] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[90:39] But I want to break the seal on the AirPods here, because I think they're amazing. And I want to take you back to an era where a lot of people like me said, oh, Apple's headphones are garbage. They used to include headphones with everything, like those little white earbuds. They would include those with iPhone and with the iPod and stuff. And for me, it was just not even unwrap it, just like straight in the drawer, forget about it, who cares? Because I thought they were bad. I didn't like how they looked. I didn't like how they fit in my ears. I didn't like how they sounded. Put in my snazzy in-ear headphones that sound really good. And so when the rumor came that Apple was going to do wireless headphones, I'm like, whatever. And they have replaced my in-ear headphones for almost everything I do, except for podcasts at this point. They are so good. So I love the AirPods in general, and I think the way they executed on them, the fact that lots of people love the AirPods now, they really have become a hit product. But those first AirPods Pro that added the noise cancellation, it's like, how could you even do that on things that aren't big? I had written it off. The only way to do noise cancellation for me, because I don't like the big cans on my ears, would be the in-ear where it cancels the noise. It doesn't cancel it, it just blocks it. But these things actually cancel it, and they work, and they work really well, and they've only gotten better over time. AirPods Pro, I think they're really great.

Speaker 1:
[92:07] Yeah, my 10th round pick is the AirPods Pro 2.

Speaker 2:
[92:12] You're a fast follower, Myke Hurley.

Speaker 1:
[92:13] Yeah, fast follower, yeah. For all of the reasons you mentioned, but the adjustments that the second version got, really, to me, made them sing. So obviously, like all of them, improvements to sound, improvements to noise cancellation. But the swiping to change volume was amazing.

Speaker 2:
[92:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[92:33] Because that was one of the things that was very frustrating about AirPods and AirPods Pro is you couldn't change volume with them. That felt like a step back from having their little inline with the clicker. It has U1 in the case, so much easier to find the AirPods Pro, which is important, and MagSafe charging. So you don't have to plug them in anymore. So the little magnetic will sit on the case. I don't remember if the Apple Pro 2 could charge on the Apple Watch, but I think so. I think so, right? And so yeah, that was very clever too, that you have multiple ways of charging that product, which is super nice. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or scaling a business, Squarespace will give you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. With Squarespace, you can make the most of their Blueprint AI system, which is their new website building platform, which will let you quickly and easily build a site bespoke to your business. You just input some basic information about your industry and the goals that you want for your site, and they will make a set of recommendations to you. But I have always used and have always loved Squarespace for their professionally designed award-winning templates. So you can go in and just choose one based on what you want your website to look like. It doesn't matter how you get started. No matter what system you want to use from Squarespace, you're always going to have beautiful design options with complete control with no experience required. So easy to go in and tweak things to your heart's content, and you get to see those changes happening live on your site. Also with Squarespace, you can manage content like videos really easily. You can upload content, organize libraries to showcase your videos, your photos on beautiful pages, and you can even sell access to a video library by adding a paywall to that content, which is perfect for online courses, tutorials and premium workshops. Go and build your own website today by going to squarespace.com/upgrade and sign up for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, you can use the offer code upgrade and it will get you 10 percent of your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com/upgrade and the offer code upgrade for 10 percent of your first purchase and show you support for the show. A thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay. All right. Pick number 21.

Speaker 2:
[94:56] All right. Number 21. I'm going to go with, because I said I love the iPad and I don't think I picked an iPad, I just picked an Apple Pencil. I'm going to need an iPad to use with it. Maybe some compatibility issues, we'll work it out. The iPad I'm going to pick. So iPad is tough. I had the first iPad on my list. Then it gets weird. There was the iPad II, which is fine. And then they went Retina, but there was the bad Retina. And then they went Retina with a good Retina. There's a lot going on there. I'm going to go the other direction. I'm going to pick what I think is in some ways the pinnacle of iPad design. Despite the recency bias, it might, it answers the question, what happens if you took all creative pursuits and crushed them in a hydraulic press until they just oozed out color? It's the M4 iPad Pro, the ultra thin iPad Pro with the tandem OLED display gorgeousness. It is the ultimate iPad. And I think in some ways, when I hold it in my hands with no case on it, I am still baffled about how that product exists. It's so great. And this is the iPad that I use every day, is one of these. I think I have an M5 now, but like whatever, they're the same. It was introduced in the M4 iPad Pro. It is incredible. So the display, the processor, love everything that goes along with it. It's an amazing product.

Speaker 1:
[96:30] Yeah, this is, you know, I've probably said this at least two more times in today's episode. This was the iPad that brought me back to the iPad again in a big way. The M4 is just incredible. I love the 11 inch especially, but both of them are wonderful, but it's just such a great display, such a great form factor. It really is brilliant, such a brilliant machine. I'm also going to pick an iPad Mini. I'm going to pick the iPad Mini 2. So this product was quite marvelous.

Speaker 2:
[97:04] This is on my list, Mike. This is the right iPad Mini to pick, and it was on my list.

Speaker 1:
[97:09] What made this iPad Mini so special? So two things. One, it had a written display.

Speaker 2:
[97:14] Yeah, that's number one. I remember getting this and being like, oh, here we go.

Speaker 1:
[97:21] But the thing that was so striking was that it had essentially the same internals as the iPad Air. And so the conversation at the time was, all you need to do is just choose what size do you want. Do you want the big one or the little one? And you're going to get the same experience from like a power and performance perspective. But the iPad Mini too was unbelievably good. Such a great iPad. At that time, it was the best iPad to pick, of all of them, I think. And yeah, I loved it. Loved the iPad Mini.

Speaker 2:
[98:01] Great choice. While we're on iPads, again, I made the case that what is an iPad if it's not for its accessories. And for what this represents, I'm going to put it here, which is the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. In a kind of a dark time, this was a shining beacon because this is the moment where Apple said, the iPad can have a pointer, it's got a trackpad on it. And I thought about picking, and we may get there, the original iPad Pro, which came with the keyboard, but the keyboard didn't have a pointing device and it had sort of double fold over and wasn't great. Whereas this one, it's got the cantilever design, it turns your iPad into a laptop. It's got a good keyboard, not the kind of membrane keyboard of that previous smart keyboard. And it's got the trackpad. And that means you've got a pointer on screen, and it really changes the game. And I liked using my iPad Pro a lot before, but this is the moment where I stop taking my laptop outside. Like literally, it was just the iPad in the keyboard case. If I wanted to go somewhere and do some writing, that was it. It was all over when they came out with the Magic. Now, they've improved it since, but I will stick with the original one. You know, it had limitations. It didn't have the function row that is nice to have. But still, just for the transformational moment and the fact that they backed it up with the software features inside to give you a full-on pointer, not the kind of weird accessibility pointer that you could kind of use, but like a full-on supported by Apple pointer on iPad OS. I just loved it. Fantastic moment.

Speaker 1:
[99:46] I'm putting a link in the show notes to the video that you put on your YouTube channel, which was like it was the first video Apple made, right? In the COVID era.

Speaker 2:
[99:56] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[99:57] At the time felt so weird, but I was just watching it then. I mean, like, oh, no, I know what this is. Like, it doesn't feel weird watching it now because it's like, oh, they all look like this. But at the time, it felt very strange to have Craig Federighi on his own in an office talking about the cursor. I'm not I'm not surprised that we've gotten to like into the 20s without picking an Apple watch.

Speaker 2:
[100:22] I'm not either. I struggled to pick an Apple watch. Right. So I have a couple on my list, but I did struggle with this.

Speaker 1:
[100:29] So did I. But there was, I thought if I was going to pick one, the one that I would pick is the Apple watch series four.

Speaker 2:
[100:37] Oh, okay.

Speaker 1:
[100:38] This is this was the first and I think maybe only significant redesign of the Apple watch, like where it actually started to look quite different. They made the case a little bigger and the screen much bigger. And so like this was like, we finally got what is essentially an edge to edge display on the Apple watch. It wasn't kind of like just stuck in like a little square, a little rectangle inside of a bigger rectangle. We got the corner complications and all that stuff. But the other thing for me is it had the gold stainless option, which is in my opinion, the best looking Apple watch Apple's ever made, the gold stainless one. So the Apple watch series four, I think it was also always on display as well, which is a big deal for the Apple watch because it finally made the Apple watch a watch that you could see the time on all the time, which is not a thing that you could do beforehand. Because if you were looking down at the desk and you didn't raise your hand, well, that your watch was black and it didn't do anything. So I think the Apple watch series four set up a lot of what the Apple watch came, always on the series five. Sorry, it wasn't series four. Thank you to the discord for correcting me. Nevertheless, still love the way that the series four looked. It was a good looking Apple watch.

Speaker 2:
[101:50] All right. Well, I'll give you always on even though that was the next model.

Speaker 1:
[101:54] It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2:
[101:54] I struggle with this too. I think I decided that if I was going to pick an Apple watch series, I would pick the 10. Just because it got super thin then. And I think that, and with the big screen, but I struggle with that too. I'm going to go a completely different direction and pick the greatest of all classic Macs, the Mac SE30. I didn't have one. I had a Mac SE. But if you talk to John Seracusa, Adam Anks, John Gruber, they'll all tell you that the SE30 is the best. One of the reasons it's the best is because it had expandability and it had a 68030 processor, so it was as fast as a Mac II, but in a compact case. And although the internal display was black and white, you could put in a color card and stick a big external color monitor on it, and do all sorts of other stuff with it. It had internal hard drive, which was huge because you don't want to be using floppy drives and swapping disks and all of that. It was overpowered and lasted forever because it was so overpowered. It was really a standout Mac. And if you mistook it for a Mac SE, I'll just say the difference between the 68000 processor and the SE and the 68030 and the SE 30, you do like a couple of clicks on an SE 30 and you realized, oh, this isn't an SE. It's like not even close. It was so fast and powerful. And talk to anybody who was a hardcore Mac user around then, and they will extol the virtues of it. Plus, it was still on the classic Mac form factor, and you can just pick it up and carry it around with you.

Speaker 1:
[103:28] So our list is having less overlap at this point than I thought it may. So I'm starting to move some things up that I'm worried. Otherwise, won't get picked. And there's things that I just want to include on this list.

Speaker 2:
[103:42] We'll see, because if you pick them and I say I had it on my list, then you'll know that you...

Speaker 1:
[103:46] I know. But I still want to get there.

Speaker 2:
[103:48] You underestimated me. Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 1:
[103:50] The MacBook, the polycarbonate one. For me, the white one, but it also came in white and black.

Speaker 2:
[103:56] I had the black MacBook on my list.

Speaker 1:
[103:57] Yeah. I loved this computer. Now, I am talking about the original. In looking stuff up today, I had forgotten that they brought it back in 2009. They brought it back again. Again, completely I had forgotten that they had one version of this, the MacBook that was a unibody aluminium computer. I completely, 2008, had completely forgotten about that. And then that became the MacBook Pro.

Speaker 2:
[104:28] It is the 2006 polycarbonate MacBook.

Speaker 1:
[104:31] 2006 one, for all of its faults, the cracking, the yellowing, doesn't matter. This computer was so cool. I loved it. It was the entry level Mac for a long time. This was one of the Macs where there were all these pictures of lectures, right? And all of the students had Apple logos on their computers and it was MacBooks. Everybody had the MacBook. The polycarbonate MacBook was a great computer. It was the second Mac I ever owned of my own. And it was great. I loved it. It had all of the IO that I wanted. The screen was great for at the time. I was a big fan of this computer. It looked good. It felt great. The keyboard was really fun and different. It was a great computer.

Speaker 2:
[105:16] Very nice. I said earlier that it would get picked in this draft, and I'm going to pick it now. It's the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4, first off, it's got the design that I think was definitive in the 4 and 5 generation and then came back. And the modern iPhones still are using a variant of the same design. It's that flat sides design.

Speaker 1:
[105:39] The gloss sandwich kind of look.

Speaker 2:
[105:41] I love it. I think it looks so good. I think it is the best iPhone design. I wrote a piece about this, like I said, at Macworld last week. It's the one that was found in a bar. It's the one that had Antenna Gate. It's the one where they announced that it came in black or white, and then the white one didn't ship for 10 months.

Speaker 1:
[105:58] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[106:00] It's the first Retina iPhone. It's the first Verizon CDMA iPhone. So it broke the AT&T exclusivity in the US. It is not only a good looking, impressive phone on its own, but it's also, if an iPhone were a person, this iPhone would be a hot mess. And I love that about it too, that it's just all the scandals, all the disasters, the fact that they couldn't make a white iPhone until it was almost out of date already. Like, I just, amazing. What an amazing product.

Speaker 1:
[106:37] The iPhone 4 is a problematic fave. That's what the iPhone 4 is.

Speaker 2:
[106:41] The iPhone 4 is like the real Housewives of Cupertino kind of product. It is a mess. It is just like, it's so impressive. And then, and you're like, oh, this resume is very impressive. And then you get the background check and you're like, oh no.

Speaker 1:
[106:59] But it's so beautiful.

Speaker 2:
[107:02] Yeah, but it's, oh my God, but the retina, have you seen the retina? It's like you're dedicated.

Speaker 1:
[107:05] Oh, I can change him. I can change him. I'll put a bumper on him. I can change him.

Speaker 2:
[107:10] But you can have a bumper if you want, whatever.

Speaker 1:
[107:14] I'm going to pick the iPod Video.

Speaker 2:
[107:18] There it is.

Speaker 1:
[107:19] A video iPod, baby.

Speaker 2:
[107:21] Nobody needs an iPod with video.

Speaker 1:
[107:23] Yeah, except you do because you can watch The Office on it.

Speaker 2:
[107:27] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[107:28] Everything you love about the big white iPod of a wider screen. And this was the last one before it went aluminium and they killed the design, in my opinion. This was the last good looking, in my opinion, iPod Classic. Love the iPod Video.

Speaker 2:
[107:44] Yeah, it's great. It's great. I did watch some stuff on it, I have to admit. In fact, for years, maybe, I mean, I don't know how many years, but I mostly because I thought it was funny, I synced Citizen Kane to my iPod Video, because I liked the idea that I could watch Citizen Kane in the way that Orson Welles intended it on a very tiny screen while I was riding the bus.

Speaker 1:
[108:09] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[108:10] It's a great choice. It's a great choice. I have one more iPod, and I'm going to mention it now.

Speaker 1:
[108:19] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[108:21] I think it's another one of these great wacky ideas. That is, it turns out to be an incredible bit of design collaboration and software collaboration. I'm going to pick the second generation iPod Shuffle. Oh. It's one of my favorite iPod designs of all time.

Speaker 1:
[108:40] This is just the wheel, right?

Speaker 2:
[108:42] It's a clip.

Speaker 1:
[108:43] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[108:44] So it's a clip, and you clip it to your clothing. And there's a little wheel with next and previous, up and down, and play pause. And it's super tiny, and you just plug your headphones into it. And for years, this was my lawnmower iPod. Because, and you could, no display, so you could have it shuffle through a playlist. In later versions, there were some ways to key off certain things and kick in this playlist or whatever. But it had a little, it had a little slider for like, if you wanted to shuffle or not. And that was about it. It was, but it was so simple. Again, a little like the Apple Pencil. It felt like just like a solid object. It was not like, where is the computer here? And it's like, it's an appliance. It's a very simple appliance. I think it's a brilliant thing. And the clip, man, what a breakthrough. What a great idea. Whoever in the design team had that idea of like, why don't we literally, so they had made, and it's on my list and I might pick it. It may happen. They had made a remote for the iPod. And this was a wired remote. And I had a backpack that my iPod went in. And then the wired remote came out of the backpack and I clipped it to my backpack strap.

Speaker 1:
[109:57] And you could get the shorter headphones, couldn't you too? So your cable wasn't super long as well.

Speaker 2:
[110:03] Yeah. And that's like, if you want to carry your iPod in your backpack, but you want to play pause next, all of that, how do you do it? And so they built this accessory that let you do that. And I have to think that whoever designed that accessory said, you know, what if we made that and it was the whole iPod? And that's the iPod Shuffle, second gen. They ended up replacing it with one that had no buttons on it, and that was like, whoops, too far. And then they went back. The last iPod Shuffle actually was, again, this design. I just think it's a brilliant design and a brilliant moment to think, if we make this thing a clip, people could clip it to whatever, because it's obviously a personal object. Clip it somewhere on your body and then that's it. And then there's no iPod in your pocket hanging, you know, pulling down your pocket or whatever, like your bag, it's just on you. And it's just a piece, a thing you wear. I love it.

Speaker 1:
[110:56] A product that has had a renaissance in recent years. People buying these and using them as MP3 players, but they're also like a little fashion accessory because you can get them in little collars, put them in your hair and stuff like that. They've kind of like a little hair clip, clip it to a hairband. I've seen a lot of that. That's happening again. I wasn't going to do this, but I'm going to pick another iPod now. And this is not the last iPod I even have on my list. I can't be stopped. The first generation iPod Touch.

Speaker 2:
[111:28] It's the first taste of iOS outside of the US., right?

Speaker 1:
[111:31] If you were not in America, this was how you got iPhone OS. And because the iPod Touch came out at the same time everywhere, the iPhone didn't, and we had to wait to the following year here in the UK. With, I think, the second launch market, we had to wait to get the iPhone. But I got the iPod Touch as soon as it came out. I actually, I remember I was in London on a work training event the day before the iPod Touch came out. And I was walking past the Regent Street store and they had them in the window, which went in and bought one, the day before they went on sale. I have no idea why that happened. I got an iPod Touch one day before, I guess I was supposed to. I have no idea what, it was like right at the end of the day. So maybe they were setting up for the next day, but they sold me one. The iPod, and the iPod Touch was great for that because it was, I mean, it's also super thin, right? Like way thinner than the iPhone, because it didn't need to do so much. And I'm sure it was less powerful in certain ways, but I was in love with this thing because I got to play with a version of what I was going to get later. Like I remember I went on a family trip. We went to Spain for a week. And I have a vivid memory of spending hours on this holiday, updating my contacts list in the Contacts app, because I just wanted to spend time with that iPod Touch. Great time.

Speaker 2:
[112:54] Amazing.

Speaker 1:
[112:57] This episode is brought to you by SteamClock. A lot of mobile apps are mediocre. They're not broken, they're just okay. But you notice the difference the moment that you use something good. And SteamClock software builds mobile apps for companies that care about taste. They're a design and development studio based in Vancouver, Canada, and they have been shipping IOS and Android apps over 15 years. Their clients are growing tech companies that care about mobile, but don't have that in-house team that's going to build something great. SteamClock works with companies to level up their apps so they can go from it's holding us back to it's pulling its weight. Some of their clients discovered the hard way that vibe coding your way to the app store is not a viable product strategy. What makes SteamClock worth calling isn't just that they execute well, it's that they'll help you figure out the right approach and give you an honest read on your situation before you commit to anything. SteamClock's clients have had their apps downloaded over 10 million times, and they've helped five of their clients through acquisitions. If you're building something and you need a mobile team that cares as much as you do, SteamClock is where to start. Visit steamclock.com/upgrade to get in touch. That is steamclock.com/upgrade. Our thanks to SteamClock for their support of this show and all of Relay. So we are at draft pick 31 now. We have passed halfway, and it's down to you, Jason Snell.

Speaker 2:
[114:29] Unbelievable.

Speaker 1:
[114:30] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[114:34] You earlier on decided to stand up for the moment where Apple realized that Samsung was onto something and the iPhone 6 Plus came out and we began walking down the path of large phones.

Speaker 1:
[114:51] Oh, I see where this is going.

Speaker 2:
[114:53] I would like to salute the great beloved dearly departed. iPhone 12 mini. Okay. I love it.

Speaker 1:
[115:03] I would say just departed, you know.

Speaker 2:
[115:05] Dearly departed. I love it. I know lots of people out there are clinging to them or just now replacing them. I love it. There is something about it. Now, do I love using it? Like I loved it in my pocket. Did I love it out of my pocket as much? No, no, because it was really cramped and it was very clearly like nobody was even testing software. It's like there would be things that you couldn't really touch sometimes in apps because it's not ideal. But like I loved how light it was and how small it was in my pocket. That's the thing I loved about the iPhone 12 mini and the 13 mini. I wish, I got to be honest, I wish they still made it, but I understand why they don't make it anymore. And I had a moment of real kind of self clarity when I was using the iPhone Air. And I thought to myself, I actually like the iPhone Air screen better than the iPhone 17 Pro screen because it's bigger. I thought, oh, I betrayed myself, right? But what I liked about the iPhone Air is that it was light and thin, but the screen part was like, yeah, yeah, I have a big screen. I actually do like the big screen better. So, you know, what they need is some sort of foldable thing that's small and then gets bigger or something. I don't know. But I want to pour one out for the iPhone 12 mini. Great phone that a lot of people really, really love because not everybody wants a big phone.

Speaker 1:
[116:32] Sure, I guess. The iMac Pro.

Speaker 2:
[116:38] Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:
[116:41] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[116:42] Wow, pour one out again. Old friends, ghosts of old friends are visiting us now, Myke.

Speaker 1:
[116:49] We'll say this is like the match up of the one and don'ts, even though I don't think the 12 mini.

Speaker 2:
[116:55] There was a 13 mini, but I was going to just say, I was going to say which generation of iMac Pro wasn't Myke. There was only ever one.

Speaker 1:
[117:03] It is incredible that there was only one. They never updated it. But I think it was a testament to the fact that this machine was so good and such a beast. It didn't need to be updated during its entire lifetime. I think anybody that bought one and then eventually moved to an Apple silicon computer or some description, they never left that iMac Pro feeling like, oh, this thing's done. That machine was amazing and it was a sad day to let it go. Like, what a computer. You know, again, we spoke about it so many times on the show. It's from a different time, right? Like, it was on a path that we never saw where that path was going to go.

Speaker 2:
[117:49] It's from a parallel universe that Apple, by the time it came out, Apple had already decided not to go down that path.

Speaker 1:
[117:55] But it was great. Just a great computer.

Speaker 2:
[117:57] Great computer.

Speaker 1:
[117:58] It came in black. Well, essentially, what was black?

Speaker 2:
[118:00] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[118:01] Fantastic.

Speaker 2:
[118:02] I've got one right here. It still works.

Speaker 1:
[118:04] Love mine. Love mine.

Speaker 2:
[118:05] Yeah. All right. I'm going to go more modern now. And I know that again, just like picking the MacBook Neo, you're like, recency bias. And like, is it really? I think this one's going to stand the test of time because of the design. And I'm going to pick it. You can't really buy it, but I'm going to pick it. I'm going to pick the M4 Mac Mini.

Speaker 1:
[118:29] This is on my list too.

Speaker 2:
[118:31] Teeny, tiny mini. I love the Mac Mini. I almost picked the 499 original model here. But like, for years, we kind of looked at the Mac Mini and thought, are they going to keep it around? And are they ever going to design it to be smaller because it doesn't need to be big? And remember those early Apple Silicon Mac Minis, where you could open it up and be like, you could put more Mac Minis inside here. Like, there's just nothing in there. They were just using the aluminum tooling from the previous Intel models. And they finally did make the teeny, tiny Mac Mini. And it's so small and so adorable, and yet with Apple Silicon so powerful, I think it's an all-timer. I really do. I think that it's a very special computer.

Speaker 1:
[119:13] You can fit a whole Prochip in this bad boy, right? And that's what I have. And this machine, I mean, I honestly forget that I don't have a Mac Studio.

Speaker 2:
[119:24] Mike is pointing at his computer, which you probably can't see because it's so small you couldn't see it anyway.

Speaker 1:
[119:28] I have mine in one of those little, the Spigen case that makes it look like the Tangerine iMac G3 styling. Good times. Nice. Good times.

Speaker 2:
[119:38] Cute.

Speaker 1:
[119:38] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[119:38] It's, I just, we waited so long, but they did it. You know, they made this incredibly tiny Mac Mini. It's just so impressive. I just, I think it is the Mac Mini, after all that time living up to its name in a way that it couldn't before.

Speaker 1:
[119:52] Yep.

Speaker 2:
[119:53] And so powerful at the same time. Just amazing. If you have a Mac Mini, you need something to operate the cursor with. So I am picking the Magic Trackpad.

Speaker 1:
[120:05] Oh, you, you sniped me good.

Speaker 2:
[120:41] The haptics and all of that stuff, so you can click it anywhere. It's just the ultimate accessory for using a pointer. I think every desk deserves one, if you use a mouse. I use a mouse, I use the MX, whatever it's called now, I don't even know where. MX Master 3S, I've got on this desk, I have the four on the other one. But I still have a Magic Trackpad because the gestures are so good. The zooming, the going between spaces, mission control, all that stuff, like unbeatable Magic Trackpad, that's where it's at.

Speaker 1:
[121:14] Plus, with most Mac users using laptops, at least some of the time, having the continuity of gestures is super important. I always used, for many years, I used a trackball because I really liked, and it actually, I felt like it was healthier for me to have kind of like bigger gestures instead of like gripping a mouse and moving it around. And so when they came out with the Magic Trackpad, it just was, it was revolutionary for me because it allowed me to solve, because the trackballs were all kind of like fading away and I was stockpiling trackballs that were usable. And then I started using the Magic Trackpad and the modern version with the haptics and the rechargeable battery, and it'll run on a wired connection or wireless, like it's the best.

Speaker 2:
[122:03] I had one, I forgot about the one where you would like unscrew the little coin thing and put the double A's inside. I completely forgot about that.

Speaker 1:
[122:11] Yeah. And that was more diving board kind of thing. No, this is the one. And it's been, we've had it so long now that it feels like forever, but it's an all-timer. It really is.

Speaker 2:
[122:20] If you put Touch ID on this thing, I will make it number one the next time I do this draft.

Speaker 1:
[122:24] No kidding.

Speaker 2:
[122:25] All right? That is my promise to you.

Speaker 1:
[122:27] No kidding. All right. Well, what am I going to do here? I've got, I'm feeling like I'm running out, right? I only have eight choices left. I'm going to, okay, I'm going to go a little bit wacky, but when the Apple Watch came out in 2015, after it was introduced in 2014, and when it was introduced and we started having it, we talked about it. One of the parts of the conversation was skepticism about the watch bands. And one of the things that I find very funny is that we still have them. Like we still have them. All of the watch, you get a watch band from the original Apple Watch and you could put it on a modern Apple Watch and it would work, which is hilarious. But the number one eye roll I remember from 2014, was when Apple and Johnny Eye tried to sell us this cockamamie story about how this stupid, plastic rubber watch band that they designed was somehow a good design and not just a cheap fallback for people to make the Apple Watch cheaper if you didn't want to opt for a metal or leather band. And it was the word, Mike, the word was fluoroelastomer.

Speaker 2:
[123:52] Oh, if you didn't say it, I was going to say it. That word is committed to memory for me.

Speaker 1:
[123:57] Fluoroelastomer band. And we're all like, Oh boy, Apple's new watches come in by default with a cheap crappy band. And that's why I'm going to pick an all time underdog great product. The sport band.

Speaker 2:
[124:15] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[124:16] The sport band, which I heaped so much scorn on, is great.

Speaker 2:
[124:23] Yes, it's the GOAT.

Speaker 1:
[124:24] It's so good. The material is good. It holds up. It comes in colors. It's got the closure where you slide it and then pop in the little round nub.

Speaker 2:
[124:36] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[124:38] It's so good. So I have been very critical of Johnny Ive in a lot of ways, but I'm going to say Johnny and his design team, whoever came up with this, whoever built this, whoever decided on the fluoroelastomer material, all that, it's great. It legitimately is great. It's maybe my favorite thing about the Apple Watch. It's amazing.

Speaker 2:
[124:58] Good job. I was so worried when they introduced the solo loop that they were going to get rid of this sport band, because I don't like the solo loop. I don't find that to be a very comfortable product. I actually had forgotten until I was just on the website right now. It's not made of the same material, solo loop. It is a silicon rubber, rather than fluoroelastomer. It still says on the Apple website today, fluoroelastomer. But I'm so happy that they kept it, because I agree with you. That design, that is an iconic design, right? The sport band.

Speaker 1:
[125:33] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[125:34] And it's to this day.

Speaker 1:
[125:36] And it could have been the cheap, fallback, lousy rubber. So many watches that I bought over the years, you get the band and you're like, it's this plastic band, it's so bad. And I thought that that was what the sport band would be, and it's not. I really, really like, and I bought a bunch of different bands.

Speaker 2:
[125:58] The Nike ones are great too.

Speaker 1:
[126:00] Yeah, the Nike ones are great. The sport band, it's just a great design. It's a great design.

Speaker 2:
[126:06] Vision Pro. I'm picking the Vision Pro.

Speaker 1:
[126:09] All right. I had it on my list.

Speaker 2:
[126:13] Yeah. Look, I get it, right? I get it. But it is genuinely one of the best computing experiences I've ever had.

Speaker 1:
[126:22] The Vision Pro is one of the best pieces of hardware Apple has made, and the operating system that runs it is incredibly impressive as well. And if you disconnect that from the fact that it doesn't really have any software or any content, and nobody's really supporting it, and it costs four times as much as it should, and just appreciate this amazing piece of hardware, it is an amazing piece of hardware.

Speaker 2:
[126:45] It's incredible. You summed up the exact three points, which I was saying, like it is a device that is chock full of wonder, but limited in all the wrong ways, right? As you said, developer support, all of the weird edge cases of using it, and the price, they hold it back. But every time I use the Vision Pro, which unfortunately is less and less these days, I can't help but marvel at the way that it works, that it actually feels like it's reading your mind at a certain point because you become so comfortable with it.

Speaker 1:
[127:16] Every time I put it on, I want to find reasons to keep wearing it. The problem is that I struggle to find reasons to put it on or keep wearing it. That's the challenge, right? Is it just doesn't have, there's nothing in there. But the technology, every time I use it, it is magical. I cannot believe it when I'm using it. It really is incredible. And if you look at the hardware, if you hold it and look at it, what a kind of incredible piece of hardware it is. So yeah, I hear you.

Speaker 2:
[127:44] Yeah, I think it deserves to be there.

Speaker 1:
[127:47] I hear you. It was on my list. I am going to pick the... Well, I'm down to my quirk. I want to leave my quirkiest picks. Okay, here's what I'm going to do. We're going to go back into the old school. There's a whole story about this.

Speaker 2:
[128:14] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[128:16] One of the ways that the Apple II was a failure originally was because in order to put programs, to save or load programs or data, you had to have a cassette tape and then press load or save and then press play or play and record on a cassette audio cassette tape basically. And it would save like onto the tape. It was incredibly slow and linear, right? So like there wasn't random access, it was just a tape, so it was linear. And they knew they needed like a floppy disk drive, and they found a floppy disk drive from a company, I think it was Shugart, and it was too expensive, and there's no way that they could do it. And was looked at the board of the Shugart thing and said, because this is the most typical Was thing ever, he was like, there's 22 chips on here, I could do this in two chips. And Steve Jobs, and he may be the most Steve Jobs thing ever, said, what if, it's a Shugart was like, could I not buy the whole disk drive? Could I just buy like the mechanism and not the whole disk drive that you're selling and get a deal? And they're like, I mean, I guess, sure. And so Apple bought this mechanism and then Was built a controller around it that made the floppy disk for the Apple 2, which was a game changer because now you could stick in a floppy disk and boot it up and load programs almost instantaneously and save data. And it completely changed the game and enabled everything that came after it. And it was, if you talk to people who know, it is WASA's most impressive perhaps bit of electrical engineering, the Disk 2. And so I'm going to pick the Apple Disk 2, WASA's miracle product.

Speaker 2:
[130:04] Wow. I don't really know what to say about this one.

Speaker 1:
[130:07] Sounds like a good pick, Jason. I love it. And more storage picks in the future, please. Thank you so much. You should say, yes, why didn't you pick the insider or the CIDR hard drive, which was an actual Apple hard drive?

Speaker 2:
[130:20] Why didn't you pick that?

Speaker 1:
[130:21] Yeah, I don't know, because I picked the Disk 2 instead.

Speaker 2:
[130:24] I am picking the MagSafe charger for the Mac. Hey. I don't think it really matters which one, which of the generations. I mean, there was a bad generation, but you should pick your favorite of either.

Speaker 1:
[130:38] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[130:38] No more yanking your Mac off the table when you kick the cable. Like it's a simple thing, but it was so amazing. The little status light, you got an extra port on your Mac because it wasn't going to be a USB-C port when they brought it back again.

Speaker 1:
[130:50] I like how you basically picked a feature by picking the accessory that goes with the feature.

Speaker 2:
[130:56] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[130:56] Sneaky.

Speaker 2:
[130:58] I know the rules.

Speaker 1:
[130:59] It's a good one.

Speaker 2:
[131:00] I don't really have a lot to say about it, but it's a great piece of technology. Like it's such a good little thing to have, and I'm so happy that it's back with us after its demise for a while.

Speaker 1:
[131:12] Okay. I'm going to pick the iPad SmartFolio.

Speaker 2:
[131:18] Okay. Remind me which one this was.

Speaker 1:
[131:21] Well, I'm picking the modern Attach-As-Magnetically on the back, and then you've got a little flap that you open and close because this is how I use my iPad most of the time, and I really love it. You can trace its lineage back to the, what, the iPad 2 Smart Cover?

Speaker 2:
[131:39] This was in the list a couple of times from the Upgradients. Yeah, and I was, I was like, that was the closest one for me adding, because that was, I mean, it was the first Smart Folio, right? Where it's like the cover that was also the stand, but also it was like, it was so lightweight that it didn't have a back. That was really nice.

Speaker 1:
[132:00] Yeah, the first one didn't have a back, but it did have like metal magnet clips for the side.

Speaker 2:
[132:06] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[132:07] But I had to pick one, and the modern one that's got the magnet, uses the magnets on the back to create the back plane, and then you've got the front that you flip open. I'm going to pick that one.

Speaker 2:
[132:18] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[132:19] But really, I just want to recognize all of these. This is one of the sets of accessories that I will not use an iPad without one of these. It's a game changer. Having the ability to prop it up, having the ability to have the screen be covered, auto-sleeps and auto-wakes. So that's what I'm trying to get at here. The current one is very light and thin and pleasant. I never really loved those metal things on the sides, but that's what you had to do if you wanted to be single-sided. Finally, they just decided to make it double-sided. But either way, I think it's just a great accessory, and it's a must-have for the iPad, and that's how I use my iPad most of the time.

Speaker 2:
[133:00] Do you remember the original case for the first one? It was impossible to get it out.

Speaker 1:
[133:04] With all the flaps.

Speaker 2:
[133:05] It was so hard to get it out.

Speaker 1:
[133:07] It was. It was. All the flaps and everything to get it in and out of that thing. Yeah, not the best.

Speaker 2:
[133:15] For pick number 40, I'm going for the iPhone 12 Pro or Pro Max. It doesn't matter. Because the things that I'm picking it for, this was the return to flat sides, which we were desperate for by this point.

Speaker 1:
[133:31] This is the iPhone 4 design coming back.

Speaker 2:
[133:34] Stainless steel gold. It's so beautiful. There was a time when I had stainless steel gold Apple Watch and iPhone, and I was so happy. It was, they matched so well. It was such a good looking iPhone. 5G, which I know was a joke at the time.

Speaker 1:
[133:54] 5G.

Speaker 2:
[133:55] But it's good that they added it, right? Like it is good to have the extra speed. Now, the millimeter wave jury is still out, but the actual going from 4G to 5G, great. 5G, 5G, 5G.

Speaker 1:
[134:06] 5G.

Speaker 2:
[134:07] MagSafe. This was when MagSafe, my favorite, came to the iPhone. To me, this made wireless charging worth it. I wasn't a big wireless charging fan before MagSafe. And also, when I was looking this up on Wikipedia today, I was reminded that this was the first iPhone where the base storage went from 64 to 128.

Speaker 1:
[134:28] Pretty nice.

Speaker 2:
[134:28] Nice little thing to know about.

Speaker 1:
[134:31] Pretty nice.

Speaker 2:
[134:33] This episode is brought to you by Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. Running a small business is tough, and when it's time to get a loan, it can feel impossible to find a lender that you can actually trust. Big banks say no, and then the Internet is full of sketchy offers with sky-high rates and fine print that you can barely read. It's super confusing out there for small businesses. Whether you need help covering payroll, managing cash flow or investing in growth, you deserve better, and it should be simple. You don't want to take up a bunch of your time when you're already so busy running your small business. That's why you should check out the Small Business Marketplace Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. It's a free, easy-to-use platform that lets you compare real financing offers from trusted lenders all in one place. You just do one application, and they're realistic about small businesses. You don't need perfect credit to get started. There's no spam, no bait and switch, just personalized options that fit your business needs, and it's just a soft credit check upfront, so it doesn't impact your credit score. So you can check which loan is going to fit you best without taking a hit. It's free for you to use, and remember they're not a lender, so you can trust them to help you get paired up with the right solution. That's what Fundera is all about. I am constantly thinking of ways to make ambitious projects at Cortex Brand, here at Relay as well. And often one of the hardest things to know is finding funding, and you want the available cash flow to begin a project, to know that you've got it available to you, and this is a great option for looking at getting new projects off the ground and getting the lay of the land for what's available. And here's the best part, for a limited time, when you visit nerdwallet.com/upgrade and fill out the no obligation form, you'll get the VIP treatment. You'll be talking with a real person who knows the ins and outs of small business lending, so you can get that additional help. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com/upgrade to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc NMLS ID number 1240038. Our thanks to Fundera, powered by Nerd Wallet for their support of this show and all of Relay. We are going in to the final 10 picks of the Upgrade at 50, Draft Jason. Pick number 41 is yours. What do you got?

Speaker 1:
[136:56] We talked earlier about how difficult it was to pick Apple Watches. There's one Apple Watch that is not that difficult to pick, and so I'm going to pick it, which is the Apple Watch Ultra.

Speaker 2:
[137:07] Oh, okay.

Speaker 1:
[137:10] I just, that they did this iteration, it looks really interesting. It appeals to people for whom the Apple Watch standard does not appeal. They allowed to, it allowed the product outline to grow, which I think is one of the hallmarks of Tim Cook's era, is you don't need to replace Product A with Product B. You could just sell both and appeal to a broader selection of people, which is, I mean, with the iPhone, that always made sense because, you know, they've sold so many iPhones and so many people, the only people left who have not bought an iPhone, you know, what are the reasons and how do we reach those people? I think the Apple Watch Ultra was a little bit like that as well. I love how it looks. I don't have one because I don't really want to watch that big, but I love how it looks. I think it's a nice addition to the product line. And I think in many ways, it is the most standout of all the Apple watches because the series line is just sort of doing its thing, but it's not that different from all the way back in the beginning, whereas the Ultra really stood out. So I'm going to pick the Apple Watch Ultra.

Speaker 2:
[138:13] My pick is going to be the M1 MacBook Pro. So this was one of the first Apple silicon computers, right? And as one of the three, I mean, you can kind of, you know, there was what the Air, the Mini and the Pro. I'd forgotten that the M1 MacBook Pro still had the touch bar. That's fun. I'd forgotten about that completely.

Speaker 1:
[138:36] That's fun, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[138:36] That's just like a fun addition, you know, if you try it out. But as you think, you know, I could have picked the Air or the MacBook Pro here. I wanted to pick the MacBook Pro. The battery life, the performance, this machine showed us the possibility of the M chips. You know, like we, I think, everybody was surprised at just how capable these computers were, what you could get for the power efficiency. It's unbelievable. And it converted a lot of people, myself included, back to the Mac full time again, because it was like, well, now I have all of the power efficiency of an iPad with all of the software that I could ever want. Yeah, M1 MacBook Pro, great.

Speaker 1:
[139:23] All right, very nice. I'm going to go next with the... We can't pick colors, but I'm going to pick the iPhone 17 Pro.

Speaker 2:
[139:35] Oh, okay.

Speaker 1:
[139:38] I think that the aluminum back shell design is very impressive. A variant on the idea of the metal sides is extending it all the way to the back in that new manufacturing technique.

Speaker 2:
[139:51] I love the two-tone part, the little glass part in the middle, I think is a nice detail.

Speaker 1:
[139:56] It's got the cosmic orange, if you choose to have it in orange. It solves the heat issues that were in the previous model. The cameras are great. Like, there's a lot to love about the iPhone 17 Pro. I think it is going to be my favorite of the sort of like post-iPhone 10 iPhones. Certainly to date, it is my favorite. I think that they did a really great job with it. I could have also picked the 17 here, just because they brought so many Pro features down into the 17, that's impressive. But with the orange and the aluminum shell, I think I got to pick the 17 Pro.

Speaker 2:
[140:32] I'm going to go with the Apple TV 4K Second Generation.

Speaker 1:
[140:37] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[140:38] This was the one where it came with the good remote. It wasn't the weird remote.

Speaker 1:
[140:44] The original Siri remote?

Speaker 2:
[140:45] Yeah, we got rid of that. Just look, the Apple TV is the best option, right? Like if you, for having any kind of box connected to your TV, it just absolutely is the best option. The remote is a good one. I felt like the Apple TV deserved to be on here, because it is an Apple product that I use every day and don't really think about it. But I appreciate it. I appreciate the features that it has. I like that it's got a thread radio in it, so it can act as like a hub for my smart home stuff. I appreciate that it's got EARC and the HDMI 2.1 stuff, so I can very easily have my Sonos system attached to it. I really like the Apple TV 4K. It does exactly what I need it to do. It doesn't get in my way. And the remote is good.

Speaker 1:
[141:35] Okay. Sounds good. With my next pick, I am going to pick the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID.

Speaker 2:
[141:46] Wow. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[141:48] Where Apple brought Touch ID to the Mac, and it's a good keyboard, the Magic Keyboard. But the Touch ID means you can also just tear it apart and use that Touch ID sensor anywhere that you want. But that they did it, and that I'm especially thinking about the fact that they did it for the iMacs and they made all the color-matched keyboards, which is totally unnecessary, and I love that they did that. But good keyboard with adding Touch ID on the Mac, which I think is a real big plus. I want to shout it out. And it was either this or maybe the extended keyboard too, which I don't have as much fondness for as a bunch of people I know do. But like, this is a Mac keyboard that I think is good and adds that important feature so the people who are not using a laptop can do the Touch ID unlock. So I like it. And the colors on the iMac didn't hurt, didn't hurt.

Speaker 2:
[142:43] Oh man, I have a list of stuff.

Speaker 1:
[142:48] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[142:49] I've got to pick three final things and I'm just not sure what's, what is the right stuff to pick from here. I'm pleased that my list isn't as long as yours.

Speaker 1:
[143:00] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[143:01] I'm going to go. I mean, we've spoken about this product line a lot, but I think that the OG deserves a shout out and that is the AirPods, just the original AirPods.

Speaker 1:
[143:10] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[143:11] That design seemed so ridiculous at first.

Speaker 1:
[143:14] Those stems are real long.

Speaker 2:
[143:16] The real long stems. It's like, I'm not sure about these, but very quickly, the convenience of no wires made you forget all about how ridiculous they looked. And they eventually ended up becoming iconic in their own way, right? They became incredibly popular. Not immediately. It was like, I think it might have been towards the second gen or whatever, and they just absolutely took off as a product. But it didn't take very long for you to accept the downsides of that product, because the convenience level was so high. I'm going with the AirPods.

Speaker 1:
[143:55] All right. We talked about the iMac Pro being part of a parallel universe. I have another product from a parallel universe. Steve Jobs came back to Apple and he killed a lot of products. And one of the products that he killed was actually getting a little bit of traction. And there's lots of reasons that they needed to kill it. And I get it. It had a Johnny Ive design.

Speaker 2:
[144:21] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[144:22] It was really potentially the start of something interesting. And you could even maybe see the genesis of something like the iPad and the iPad in a keyboard in this product. It's one of a kind. And it's not its fault that it was part of a failing product category that was championed by John Scully and that Steve Jobs was more than happy to kill. And with all due honor to the Newton MessagePad 2000, I'm going to pick the e-mate.

Speaker 2:
[145:00] Oh, I absolutely thought you were going to go for the Newton. Were you sent me up here?

Speaker 1:
[145:04] No, the e-mate, which was the Newton laptop.

Speaker 2:
[145:08] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[145:10] And amazing design, weird plastic stuff. It's Johnny Ive doing weird plastic design stuff. It was designed for education. It had a pen so that you could do the Newton stuff, but it also had a keyboard. Really interesting product. And again, I think just wrong place, wrong time. So yeah, the e-mate 300, I guess, technically. But like it was a really interesting product. Like what could we do if we built a laptop based on this super lightweight operating system instead of the Mac? And I don't know, there's a world where that leads places. And I'm certain that it was, even though it made sense to kill all of those things, boy, what an interesting product that had to get thrown out when they shut down the Newton.

Speaker 2:
[146:05] We had these in my school for any kids that broke their hand or wrist. And so they could continue to do their work without being able to write, so they would type on them. There you go. That was my experience with the e-mate. The green translucent thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[146:21] Yeah. Because it's Johnny Ive. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[146:23] My penultimate pick. I don't think this is going to win me a lot of points, but it means something to me. The iPhone 3G.

Speaker 1:
[146:33] Oh.

Speaker 2:
[146:34] For two things that it had. GPS and 3G. Made a massive difference to the iPhone experience. So, I mean, the GPS, I got mine before I went on holiday to Paris the next day. And it was like my first kind of like trip with a partner, kind of as an adult, which is the two of us. So, being able to navigate around the city using GPS was really helpful. And I was very grateful for that. But the 3G connectivity was a huge deal for just general usability of the iPhone, that like it could load all the data you needed significantly faster than the connection that was in the original. And while not unique to this device, but important alongside was the App Store. So I think the App Store launched the day before the iPhone 3G. And obviously it was a bit more capable than the original. So, you know, it gets a little, it gets a rub there, but not bonus points as such. But yeah, I'm going with the iPhone 3G. Even though the design, not so great. I at least appreciated that they embraced the plastic and just went with it. And it was nice to hold, at least.

Speaker 1:
[147:49] All right, I reached my last pick.

Speaker 2:
[147:51] And how hard is it?

Speaker 1:
[147:51] And for this pick, we're going to take you back to 2004, back to an event that I attended and that you have picked the primary product for, from that event, the iPod Photo.

Speaker 2:
[148:02] Oh, okay.

Speaker 1:
[148:04] At that event, California Theater in San Jose, Bono and the Edge were there to unveil the U2 Special Edition iPod.

Speaker 2:
[148:14] What a weird iPod. That's just a weird product.

Speaker 1:
[148:17] I mean, it's just an iPod in red and black. The colors of U2, I guess, colors of that album.

Speaker 2:
[148:22] But it's like, why didn't they do more of that? Why was it just U2 that got that?

Speaker 1:
[148:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there was another product introduced there, Myke. Another Apple product, hardware product, was introduced there. One that doesn't get talked about enough, especially for a product specifically referred to on stage by Steve Jobs as a revolutionary new product. I'm picking iPod socks, Myke.

Speaker 2:
[148:50] Oh, that's not what I thought you were going for.

Speaker 1:
[148:52] You can't stop me. Are you getting it yet? Are you getting it? These are socks, and you put your iPod in them, and they were real. We thought he was kidding, but they were real, and they sold them, and you could put your iPod in a sock. And so with my final selection for Apple at 50, I choose one of Steve Jobs' less beloved, revolutionary new products, the iPod socks, which did 100 percent of what they were promised to do, which is be a sock around your iPod.

Speaker 2:
[149:17] I thought this was going to be the iPod Hi-Fi. When was the iPod Hi-Fi? Because that was on my list.

Speaker 1:
[149:21] Oh man, that was a different event.

Speaker 2:
[149:22] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[149:23] I did not have that on my list. I had it on my list.

Speaker 2:
[149:26] I had it on my list in honor of you, because you had and used one for so long. I don't know if you still do.

Speaker 1:
[149:31] I don't use it anymore. I have a couple of Sonos speakers, but it's still around. It's still back. It's right back behind me now.

Speaker 2:
[149:36] I was considering the iPhone Pocket here as my final pick.

Speaker 1:
[149:41] Ah, yeah. See, we were thinking on the same lines, I think.

Speaker 2:
[149:45] But I'm going to pick something that is true to my heart. I love this thing. I have one behind me sitting next to my iPod Mini.

Speaker 1:
[149:52] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[149:54] The original iPod Shuffle.

Speaker 1:
[149:57] Okay. So the stick of gum.

Speaker 2:
[149:59] Stick of gum. It had a lanyard.

Speaker 1:
[150:02] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[150:03] Amazing.

Speaker 1:
[150:03] That did.

Speaker 2:
[150:04] And like the Apple Pencil, had a USB port under the cap.

Speaker 1:
[150:09] Yep.

Speaker 2:
[150:09] But what was so great for someone in school at this time, is you could kind of partition this thing and use it as a USB stick. And so I had some music and also my coursework for school on my iPod Shuffle. Good times. Like you could put documents on it. It was great. I loved it. I'm so, I have my original iPod Shuffle, and it's dead and like it's unreliable at this point, which is so sad because I would love to see what files I had on that thing. And the packaging was so great too. It was like green packaging and it was like, you opened it up and it was like suspended in the plastic. iPod Shuffle first gen is the last product.

Speaker 1:
[150:49] Yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun product. Like I said, I like the second generation one better, but it was a very fun little product. Nice idea.

Speaker 2:
[150:57] So Upgradians, there is a link in the show notes for called Who Had The Best Draft List, and you can go in and vote. But I think for the ease of voting, we're each going to list now our picks. So Jason, can you very quickly run down your list of 25?

Speaker 1:
[151:16] Sure. I picked the original iPhone, the late 2010 MacBook Air, the Laser Rider, the first generation PowerBook, the Apple IIe, the fourth generation iPod, the iMac G4, the second generation Apple Pencil, MacBook Neo, AirPods Pro, the iPad Pro M4, Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, Macintosh SE30, iPhone 4, iPod Shuffle, second generation, Apple Watch Ultra, iPhone 17 Pro, Magic Keyboard for Mac with Touch ID, Emate 300 and iPod Socks.

Speaker 2:
[151:49] And I picked the iPod Mini, the M2 MacBook Air, the iPhone 6 Plus, the original iPad, the original iPod Nano, the iPhone 10, the iMac G3, the first generation Apple Pencil, the Mac 128K, AirPods Pro 2, iPad Mini 2, the Apple Watch Series 4, the Polycarbonate MacBook from 2006, the iPod Video, the first generation iPod Touch, the iMac Pro, the Magic Trackpad 2, Vision Pro, the MagSafe charger for Mac, iPhone 12 Pro, M1 MacBook Pro, Apple TV 4K second generation, the first generation AirPods, the iPhone 3G, and the iPod Shuffle. So you can find in the show notes a link to vote, and we'll reveal the results next week as to who had the best draft list of the two of us. Sure.

Speaker 1:
[152:46] But they're both good and it's all just in fun.

Speaker 2:
[152:48] Yeah, they're all good. They're all good. They're all good lists.

Speaker 1:
[152:50] They're all good lists. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[152:52] They're all good lists. Thank you so much for listening to this special episode of Upgrade. If you would like to send us in your feedback, which I'm sure you have some, you can go to upgradefeedback.com.

Speaker 1:
[153:04] I can't believe we didn't list.

Speaker 2:
[153:06] Thank you to our members who support us for Upgrade Plus. This week, we're going to maybe touch on some things we didn't pick and have some very important follow-up of a discovery that I made by searching through some DMs.

Speaker 1:
[153:19] Real forensics happening in Myke's chat, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[153:22] You can find a video version of this show by going to YouTube and searching for the Upgrade podcast. I would like to thank our sponsors of this week's episode. That is the fine people over at Fundera, SteamClock, Squarespace, and DeleteMe. But most of all, I would like to thank you for listening, and we'll be back next week for a regular episode of Upgrade. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Speaker 1:
[153:44] Goodbye, Myke Hurley.