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333: New Year, Same Old Prediction

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 333. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:15   Squarespace and TextExpander from Smile. Happy New

00:00:19   Year! My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by

00:00:22   Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hello, Myke Hurley. It's good to be here in a new year.

00:00:27   Good to be here. Good to start my year because, as we all know, I start my week, my work week,

00:00:35   with Upgrade on Monday morning. What do you do for the rest of Monday? You work on Upgrade.

00:00:41   I work on Upgrade. That's the first thing I do on a Monday and then I do other things and then

00:00:45   work day 1B begins and that's this. And that's this.

00:00:50   Now. That's right now. Right. Well, and I start my work week, which means now I have started my work

00:00:55   year. And hello to all the listeners out there who are starting their

00:00:58   listening year with us. This is the official opening. I don't know what I'm saying.

00:01:03   Of the Upgrade listening year. This is why we have #SnellTalkQuestions

00:01:06   so we can avoid what the hat just happened there. And this week's comes from Jared.

00:01:11   Jared wants to know, "Jason, for non-embargued articles, so articles that do not require being

00:01:17   published at a certain time, do you post as soon as you're ready, as soon as something's finished,

00:01:22   or do you schedule all of your articles for specific times?"

00:01:25   Very inside baseball question, Jared. Thank you. It varies. I would say generally I post them as

00:01:37   soon as they're ready. The exceptions would be if it's something that I think needs another set

00:01:45   of eyes, in which case I'll ask maybe Dan to look at it before I post it for a longer piece.

00:01:51   Or if it's outside of what I consider good posting time. So if I finish it and it's sort of like,

00:02:02   this doesn't even happen as much. Generally, I just post it. Sometimes I'll say, "Well,

00:02:06   I wrote this and it's late in the day and there's no reason to post it now that it's evening and

00:02:12   nobody's paying attention anywhere to the east of me and I'll schedule it for the morning."

00:02:17   But generally, I just think, "Well, why don't I just post it now and then it shows up in everybody's

00:02:21   feeds when they get up in the morning anyway?" It used to be at IDG, we targeted a lot of stuff

00:02:28   for the peak traffic time, which was I think 11 a.m. Pacific to Eastern, which is every day when

00:02:35   traffic peaked. And I don't know why that that was the time, but I guess it was the time when we had

00:02:40   the most people around the world that were reading. Anyway, it was like, "Let's catch the most traffic

00:02:46   there." I'm not really playing that game at Six Colors and I never really have. So I generally

00:02:51   just auto-post stuff. The other thing would be if there were already a couple of things that had just

00:02:56   gone up on the site, I might push it back an hour or two or even to the next day, figuring,

00:03:01   "I don't need to do two posts in one day. I can do this next post the next day," or something

00:03:07   like that. But it's pretty rare. Generally, when it goes up, it's not that I've written it right

00:03:13   then necessarily, but I finished it right then and then I just press post. That's generally how

00:03:19   I do it. I need that instant gratification. For podcasts, I pretty much, with very rare

00:03:25   exceptions, just post them as soon as they're done. So as soon as I'm edited, it goes up.

00:03:30   I think the only podcast that I may be slightly different is maybe Cortex because the editing is

00:03:37   different, where I edit and then I pass it over to Gray and he edits and we just choose the day

00:03:43   that we're going to publish it on, which is not normal, but it's because it's a very different

00:03:50   way of doing things. And then I try and publish them somewhere between 12 and 3 my time because

00:03:58   it hits a lot of time zones. Yeah, and for me, I have a bunch of podcasts that are

00:04:06   have a very specific release day and time. And those, obviously, I'm not working up to the moment

00:04:12   and then posting them live. Those all get scheduled in advance. So Robot or Not is scheduled

00:04:16   in advance, and Total Party Kill, and Incomparable Game Show, and all that's scheduled in advance.

00:04:21   But Incomparable, unless I work on it well in advance, which sometimes happens where I get

00:04:27   somebody else to edit it for me or I edit it in advance. But if it's like Saturday or Sunday and

00:04:32   I'm just editing that week's episode and posting it, I just post it when I'm done. There's no

00:04:39   deadline day to hit there. But we just did come out of a period in the holiday period where a lot

00:04:45   of us were doing things in advance in order to clear out some time in our schedules to not be

00:04:50   working on podcasts. And that's another case where you kind of, I kind of delight in going into the

00:04:55   Incomparable CMS and seeing all the stuff that's been queued up in advance, just because it's kind

00:05:00   of fun. It's like, look at all those episodes that are all ready to go. But generally, especially for

00:05:05   articles, but generally it's sort of like, well, I did it now. Here it is. There's no holding bin or

00:05:11   anything like that.

00:05:12   Tony didn't remind me in the chat room that I've always done this with analog as well.

00:05:15   We publish analogs on Sundays, but our editor Jim always does them way before, but I just always

00:05:21   publish a show on Sundays. So that's just one that I'll just do. But I don't say, I'm not, I don't,

00:05:28   I think I spoke about this before. Like you just mentioned with the Incomparable CMS, you have it

00:05:33   in Six Color CMS. We have a timed posting mechanism. So you can say like, Hey, post it this

00:05:38   time. I never do it. I never, I never, I never use it. I like to do it myself. I like to just press the button.

00:05:43   I, uh, I used that for all of the 20 max for 2020 and double because there were two versions of them

00:05:49   for member and non-member. And so I did use that feature and there's always a little bit of like,

00:05:54   is this really going to work? Because the way it's worded is you set it, you set the status to

00:05:58   published, but it's in the future. And you're like, is this really going to publish it or just

00:06:02   publish it in the future? And it publishes it in the future. It works. It's a perfectly good thing.

00:06:06   I did it 40 times. It works fine. Um, but, uh, I did use that feature and that was, that was kind

00:06:11   of fun. Again, it was fun to, to be like the previous week, like, yeah, it's early on in the

00:06:17   process. It was sort of like, I got three episodes loaded up. I could walk away. It was great.

00:06:22   Thank you so much to Jared for that great question. If you would like to send in a

00:06:25   question to help us start the show, you can just send a tweet with the hashtag snow talk

00:06:29   or use question Mark snow talk in the relay FM members discord, and you can help us open an

00:06:34   episode of the show. You mentioned 20 max for 2020. I just wanted to follow up that it is now

00:06:40   done 20 max for 2020. It was Jason's wonderful series, which has taken like 22, 23 weeks to

00:06:46   complete. Um, because I think you took a couple of weeks off of a holidays, right? So you have,

00:06:51   yeah, I had two weeks to give, so we broke between 11 and 10 and between six and five. Yeah.

00:06:57   A list of 20 notable Macintosh computers. Uh, there'll be a link in the show notes to the

00:07:02   podcast version of it, which you can also, and there's also articles and videos and that kind

00:07:07   of stuff that are linked from that page as well. If you haven't checked it out, it's very worth

00:07:11   checking out. It's a great series and congratulations for having completed it. Jason,

00:07:14   you got there. It's nice to be done. And now I now begins the process of like,

00:07:19   what do I do with all that time? How about nothing for awhile? Like just, just relax.

00:07:24   Well, not a big project, but you know, I, I get, I get some time back that I kind of lost

00:07:29   once we got into the teeth of it. Um, and, and it became basically every week it got a little

00:07:36   bit more intense until the last four or five weeks. It was, it was most of what I did during

00:07:41   the week was just getting the next week done. So I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pick

00:07:45   up another project and announce it this week or something like that. That's not going to happen,

00:07:49   but I do have this time back that I have to decide how to spend. And, and that's part of,

00:07:54   um, being an independent kind of worker is you have to figure out where to, where to spend your

00:07:58   time. And it's one of the reasons I did all those charts at the beginning of last year is I just

00:08:01   decided I wanted a little bit of structure. And so I said, I'm going to do a little, a chart post

00:08:05   every Friday. And I did that up until the, uh, 20 max project kind of launched. And then I,

00:08:11   I didn't do it anymore because I was busy. So I I'm, that's my next thing. I'm going to probably

00:08:17   write a final, like what was on the cutting room floor kind of piece to wrap it up this week.

00:08:25   Because I feel like I've got a bunch of other kind of loose ends that I can, I can tie up. And,

00:08:30   and there's one other follow-up somebody made a very interesting point on Twitter about the

00:08:35   contents of my list that I'm not going to, I'm not going to relay here other than to say that I think

00:08:39   that there's probably a piece to be written about that in specific that might be separate. But, um,

00:08:45   the podcast project is, is finished. Although, as I say, at the end of the podcast project,

00:08:49   uh, you know, the lesson we've all learned, which is keep podcasts, you listen to keep their feeds

00:08:54   in your podcast player. Cause sometimes they come back and if I do another project like this again,

00:09:00   I'll just stick it in that same feed. So you can, you can keep it, keep it there kicking around.

00:09:05   And I did do a lot of interviews. I'm not sure those interviews are

00:09:08   releasable, but I'll consider that too. There might be bonuses and stuff down the road. So,

00:09:13   but it's a fun project. I hope people enjoy it in whatever form they enjoyed it, video or audio or,

00:09:17   or written word. I want to thank everybody who sent us some great messages about the

00:09:22   Upgradies last week. I just wanted to mention in case you hadn't checked it out, upgradees.com has

00:09:26   been updated with all of the winners. Um, I could imagine a lot of people wouldn't have gone to the

00:09:31   website cause you don't want to get spoiled, but if you want to see the hall of fame and every single

00:09:36   winner of all of the Upgradies awards, you can go to upgradees.com and thank you to Zach Knox for

00:09:41   the work that's acted and help them put that together. So I have some headlines for you in

00:09:46   Upstream. Upstream is where we take a look at what's going on in the world of streaming media

00:09:51   and how it intersects with technology companies today. Warner Brothers, Jason, have announced

00:09:56   that they are planning six new DC Universe movies a year, starting in 2022. I think Warner Brothers

00:10:04   got the memo. Uh, four of these movies are planned to be in theaters. Two will be exclusive to HBO

00:10:10   Max. They are also working on TV spinoffs of their properties for HBO Max from the movies.

00:10:18   It's a little different. So one of the things that I find fascinating here is where Marvel has

00:10:21   succeeded and where DC has succeeded because the DC superhero stuff has actually been quite

00:10:28   successful on television on, especially, you know, on commercial television in the U S on the, the,

00:10:34   the CW network primarily, which is a joint venture of CBS and Warner Brothers. So it makes sense that

00:10:40   Warner Brothers would have their characters there. And they had Arrow, which is now off the air,

00:10:44   but they had Arrow, which ran for like seven years or something and the flash. And they have a whole

00:10:48   bunch of other black lightning and, and, uh, and star girl. And there's a whole bunch of DC heroes

00:10:53   that have been very successful. There's a, there's a Superman show coming. There's Supergirl,

00:10:58   like there's lots and lots of, Gotham was on, on Fox actually, but yes. And they did a,

00:11:06   they did a, uh, uh, a Pennyworth, which was about the early days of Alfred, the Butler,

00:11:11   when he worked in the, like the secret service and military in, in the UK. And that was a stars

00:11:18   series. So they've had a bunch of TV projects, kind of some of them directly connected the ones

00:11:25   produced by Greg Berlanti and airing on the CW and a bunch of other ones that are sort of around.

00:11:29   So that's a way where they've been very successful and that Marvel's kind of not like Marvel's tried

00:11:35   a bunch of stuff and they had their whole TV thing, which they've now folded where they were

00:11:39   producing stuff for Netflix and also for cable and stuff like that. Um, what's interesting is then

00:11:45   that Marvel has, has what we're about to see this month is going to be when it starts, we're going

00:11:49   to see the, the WandaVision series, which is the first TV series to be done by Marvel, uh, studios.

00:11:57   So that's the movie people did not do the previous series, but are doing the, uh, forthcoming series

00:12:03   on Disney plus that's all from the same group, Kevin Feige's group that does all the Marvel

00:12:07   movies that everybody loves, not the separate, uh, TV group. So that's an interesting challenge

00:12:13   from Marvel. That's I'd say similar to the star Wars challenge, which is, um, can they

00:12:18   successfully kind of add this Disney plus streaming series product line? Because while there have been

00:12:24   Marvel shows before they were not, uh, generally that successful and those people, uh, aren't making

00:12:31   shows for them anymore. It's now back in the hands of the money, the money people, the people who

00:12:35   generated all those expensive and popular movies, DC's challenge is very different where they've

00:12:40   got the successful TV shows. So this announcement is more focused on movies, even though like two of

00:12:45   them are going to be direct to streaming movies, which is kind of an interesting idea. And then

00:12:49   the way they framed it is they're going to do TV spinoffs, like you said, from the movies that

00:12:54   they're generating. So like they're viewing this six movies a year thing as, which is lots, a lot

00:13:00   of movies as, as, as film releases, you know, that will also spin off, um, series. And I have some

00:13:11   questions. One of my questions is, are these two non-theatrical HBO max direct DC movies,

00:13:21   are they movies? Are they pilots? Are they like TV specials? Like, yeah, well, that's what I'm

00:13:29   saying is, I mean, whether it be in them, but is it going to be like, we want, cause they,

00:13:34   they've suggested it's going to be like, well, let's look at every movie we make. We're going

00:13:37   to look at the ancillary characters and decide if there's a TV show to be made about them,

00:13:41   which is a weird decision to make, but I get what they're, I get what they're saying there,

00:13:45   but I do wonder if these two HBO max movies that they're talking about, are they really movies?

00:13:50   Is it more like a pilot for a series? Is it, uh, something that they do, they get to the point

00:13:58   where they're making them and then realize that they've got a cut that's four hours long and that

00:14:02   they'd be better off releasing it as a two part, three part, four part series on HBO max, rather

00:14:08   than as a movie. I think, I think there's some stuff to watch here about exactly what the right

00:14:15   thing is, what people want to see. Cause, um, I'm curious, honestly, I'm really curious. Like

00:14:21   do people, do they get the most bang out of their buck to make an HBO max original movie that's two

00:14:29   hours long and say this month, this new movie is out. It features this DC comics character. Yay.

00:14:34   Or would they be better off spending that same amount of money and doing a six hour

00:14:40   mini series featuring that character and say for the next six weeks, this new series on HBO max

00:14:45   about this character. And I don't know, I don't know whether people feel overwhelmed by TV series,

00:14:50   streaming TV series and they're like, just give me two hours and let me walk away. Maybe they do.

00:14:55   So I'm fascinated because, you know, again, Marvel and DC essentially in the same business

00:15:00   have had very different fortunes with different kinds of content. And it's one of those rare

00:15:07   cases where if you're just kind of interested in the creative and business aspects of the

00:15:11   entertainment industry, um, it's, it's really interesting to compare and contrast what their

00:15:16   strategies are. And there are a lot of unanswered questions about how people are going to want to

00:15:21   subscribe to services and watch original content, uh, in the future. So let's, I I'm, I'm fascinated

00:15:28   ultimately, obviously everybody at Warner wants the DC stuff to be as successful as the Marvel

00:15:35   stuff, because it hasn't been, uh, at least in the film, you know, any net amount of money that they

00:15:39   make Marvel has made a lot and DC has not, especially, but who knows going forward, not even

00:15:45   just the money. Cause some of the, some of the stuff they've done has done really well, but critically

00:15:48   most of their movies have actually not done well since they've been trying to turn it into a thing.

00:15:54   Right. Really the original wonder woman. And then you could argue that there, there,

00:15:57   there been a couple others that have also been well received. Yeah. I've actually heard, um,

00:16:02   some great things about the Harley Quinn movie. Monty Ashley recommended it on the incomparable

00:16:07   year in review show, which we just put out, which is really funny. And you should listen to it.

00:16:11   Is that the birds of prey one? Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's it. The birds of prey.

00:16:16   And I've seen it on some 10 best lists for movie critics too, for, for 2020. So, um, they, they

00:16:22   have some, but it's not been like the Marvel stuff where it's just like set them up and knock them

00:16:25   down. Every single one is profitable and, and generally well thought of. And, um, so yeah,

00:16:31   anyway, they're there, they have a new plan. Yeah. One quirk is that, uh, Warner brothers are

00:16:39   not going to have one timeline like Marvel does. So they may create different shows and movies in

00:16:47   different timelines from each other. Right. So they've got like, they've got a movie in

00:16:51   production with Robert Pattinson as the Batman and a movie in production that will have as a,

00:16:57   as a supporting character, Ben Affleck as Batman. So, uh, but, but that's interesting,

00:17:04   except Marvel's next set of movies is all about embracing the multiverse. So Marvel's basically

00:17:13   doing the same thing, which is, it's a lot easier if we can have parallel universes and we can tell

00:17:17   different stories without having them all linked up. So yeah, I don't actually, I don't want to

00:17:22   spoil it, but in case people don't know, right, like for media blackout and all that, but yes.

00:17:26   And also Marvel have that what if series, which is entirely just speculative. That's an animated

00:17:33   series. It's entirely speculative too. But I think the key is like, even though Marvel

00:17:38   are starting to experiment in that space now, um, they have up until this point, you know,

00:17:44   everything's been interconnected. Right. And the way they're doing it is they're, they're actually

00:17:48   doing movies and TV series that sort of like push into this multiverse concept. Um, and really you

00:17:54   could argue that the time travel in, uh, Avengers end game is what broke the seal on that for Marvel.

00:18:01   And that's still acknowledging even that they're connected, right? If you do the multiverse thing,

00:18:07   but that's, that doesn't seem to be what one is doing. It seems like it's not, maybe they will

00:18:11   at some point acknowledge some of that if it suits them, but more they're like with Joker,

00:18:16   they're just feeling free to tell stories. And I gotta say, I prefer that approach. Um, there is a,

00:18:21   there's a great deal of benefit to doing what Marvel did and rolling everything together.

00:18:26   But I think creatively you shouldn't not make a movie because it doesn't line up with your

00:18:31   other movies. Right. There is, there's advantage in lining up all your movies and connecting them

00:18:36   together there. And Marvel has shown that, right. There's a lot of advantage in that,

00:18:39   but I wouldn't shy away from making that super weird Batman movie. Yeah. Just because you can't

00:18:47   figure out how it connects to the rest of the universe, because if it's a great movie,

00:18:51   you should make it. And I think that was the argument that they made about Joker was that

00:18:54   this is a movie that we want to make and it's going to be great. And, um, and, uh, I haven't

00:18:59   seen it, so I don't know, but, uh, it was not connected to anything and that was fine.

00:19:03   Yeah. I would suggest that maybe Disney should look into that approach for Star Wars.

00:19:08   Different. It's interesting. It's a galaxy. Well, I think the, the, some of the Star Wars stuff

00:19:16   that's coming up, it seems to, seems to not be set in the same time as the Mandalorian, but this has

00:19:22   been the argument for a long time. I think, um, when people look at Star Wars is you have a whole

00:19:26   galaxy and apparently thousands of years of history. So not everything needs to take place

00:19:31   in the same 15 years with the same set of interrelated characters. Yeah. That's kind of

00:19:36   more what I mean, right? It's just like you have this infinite span, but everybody bumps into each

00:19:42   other. They're apparently developing apologies for the Star Wars nerdery. I'm not the person to be

00:19:47   doing this, but they're apparently developing a, uh, high Republic series, which is like basically

00:19:52   the, like a thousand years before the Star Wars movies, back when the, it was still a galaxy with

00:19:58   lots of good and bad people in it, but the center think, think Star Trek, actually, it was more like

00:20:03   a center force that was mostly positive. That was the Republic and then stories in that world. And

00:20:09   Star Wars has the freedom to do that. It would be nice to see them explore that as well. The,

00:20:13   you know, tell some different stories, not everything needs to be the same 20 people

00:20:17   who are all interrelated in every single thing. Amazon has bought the podcast network and

00:20:23   production company. Wondery, the deal is suggested to total $300 million. Wondery will technically

00:20:30   now be a part of Amazon music, which there is a podcast offering for Amazon music kind of

00:20:36   reminiscent of how Google started when Google podcasts was originally part of Google play music

00:20:42   or Spotify. Right. So Spotify is doing silly me. That's a better example. Um, this is different to

00:20:48   Audible's podcast offering because why not? Right. Like, yeah, sure. This has different offerings.

00:20:53   Um, Amazon has said that Wondery shows will be available through quote, a variety of providers,

00:20:59   but they hope this acquisition will quote, accelerate the growth and evolution of podcasts

00:21:04   by bringing creators, hosts, and immersive experiences to even more listeners across the

00:21:08   globe. Uh, I wanted to include that cause it's like the most ridiculous quote. It's like, it doesn't,

00:21:12   this acquisition doesn't do that. You're not bringing Wondery shows to more people. Now it's

00:21:16   a part of Amazon. Like it already had all the people, right? Wondery shows. We have access to

00:21:24   Amazon's little known and little used podcasts. And if maybe they mean like, like Amazon echoes,

00:21:29   I don't know. It's, it's, there's corporate, there's synergy. Yeah, I guess. But you could

00:21:34   listen to all these shows through various echo skills. Anyway, you don't understand, Myke,

00:21:39   this is providing some synergy where we're getting the, uh, the, uh, the leveraged, uh,

00:21:44   innovation of Amazon is combined with the immersive expansiveness of Wondery into a leveraged

00:21:52   expansiveness. This was gonna happen. Wondery has been rumored to be shopping itself around for a

00:21:58   while. The founder is leaving and then Lopez is leaving, which is intriguing. It's not typically

00:22:04   what you see, um, in situations like this, but that was reported by, I think the Wall Street

00:22:08   Journal. Uh, there is like a whole separate story of Lopez being incriminated in some FIFA

00:22:15   allegations of, is it bribery or match fixing or something, which is like a whole other thing,

00:22:21   which is going on on the side, uh, which is a really weird story, which Wondery could probably

00:22:28   make an interesting show about at some point. Cause that's the kind of shows they make. Wondery

00:22:32   is intriguing because they've been selling the rights to their properties to companies,

00:22:38   to make TV shows about them. So I know Apple's bought a couple. So there is a hashtag synergy

00:22:44   in, uh, this because Amazon could take the rights to all the popular shows. And as you say,

00:22:49   put them on Prime Video. Yeah. You could argue that maybe this is a $300 cheap, $300 investment

00:22:55   in, um, develop 300 million. Oh, sorry. I would buy it for $300. Oh man. It's a, it's a cheap $300

00:23:06   million investment in, uh, development for Amazon Prime Video, except this is the except part,

00:23:13   except technically it's part of Amazon music. And I have one of those thoughts, which is,

00:23:17   are they going to get, I think Jen Salke is the executive who's in charge of Prime Video. Like

00:23:24   if I were in her shoes, I would say, um, I want to be connected to what they're developing. Right.

00:23:31   Because yes, you, you would start to think that a lot of this stuff would be, um, essentially being

00:23:37   developing, developing shows for Amazon Prime Video, but I don't know. I don't know how Amazon

00:23:42   is structured. Maybe they don't view it that way. And they're like, no, it's totally independent and

00:23:45   we'll see who wants our shows Prime Video. Uh, I don't know. It's fascinating.

00:23:50   But you know, I, I, this is a, it's a big price, but Wondery are very, they are genuinely very

00:23:56   successful. So, you know, if they launch a show, it goes to number one, like any show that they

00:24:02   launch goes to number one. Um, it's a lot of shows about murder, uh, which I'm not super into.

00:24:08   Yeah. I was going to say it's a, there's a, there's the show where a cop murders people.

00:24:11   There's a show where a cop gets murdered. There's a show where a cop investigates a doctor who

00:24:15   murders people. There's a show about a cop who investigates a doctor who gets murdered.

00:24:20   There's a show about a doctor who investigates a cop.

00:24:22   Okay. Okay. Okay. My theory is actually that they may have struggled through the pandemic.

00:24:27   There was a lot of data that suggested, uh, from the industry places that I was looking at,

00:24:33   that showed that, um, listenership of these types of shows went down, which makes sense. This is all

00:24:39   very dark and dreary. Plus they, these are the most mainstream shows and more mainstream type

00:24:46   offerings. We're actually seeing, uh, reductions in listenership due to, uh, commute differences

00:24:52   and stuff. Um, I would like to thank technology podcast audiences for not changing their habits.

00:24:57   You're the best. And that's why we love you. It was kind of funny. So like I had subscribed to

00:25:01   one industry thing and it would show charts, right. Of all the different categories that

00:25:05   they were tracking and technology just continued. If anything, it went up. It was like, you know,

00:25:12   technology podcast listeners love their podcasts, right. And other types of shows are more like,

00:25:18   I will listen to this because sports saw the biggest drop by the way, cause there were no

00:25:24   sports. So that was rough. But anyway, it's an interesting deal. Someone was going to pick them

00:25:29   up. Uh, and I guess it was just highest bidder. Like the rumor was Apple was looking at them.

00:25:32   Spotify surely were as well, but it ended up being Amazon.

00:25:38   According to the wall street journal, Roku is looking to buy all of Quibi's content.

00:25:42   Yay. Why not? Right. And they get it. The funny thing about this deal is if it, if it does go

00:25:50   through, they'll get the rights, which is different. So like they will just own it.

00:25:53   It's not licensing, but it makes sense because there is no more Quibi. So right. They'll have

00:25:58   all this content. There might be some IP in there. I think I saw a quote from someone suggesting that

00:26:04   like this stuff might be more interesting if it's free. I'm like, yeah, okay. Maybe people

00:26:09   will check it out. I don't know. We can watch the golden arm thing. I, my thought about it was

00:26:15   always that there's a bunch of content out there that was professionally produced that a lot of

00:26:19   people didn't see because it was on Quibi. And therefore surely it has some value, right? It's

00:26:24   not going to just vanish forever. Surely it has some value and somebody will pay enough. I mean,

00:26:31   somebody's got to buy it. Presumably they've got creditors and stuff like somebody's going to buy

00:26:35   it. So if it's Roku, then so be it. But that, that stuff will get out there and we'll all get to see

00:26:39   that, uh, you know, the horror show about the different States of like the first, whatever,

00:26:45   10 States, U S States, but not the rest. Star, which is, uh, Disney pluses, Hulu,

00:26:53   et cetera, is launching on February the 23rd in the UK. I got an email about it while I was

00:26:58   writing upstream today. Um, they explicitly mentioned parental controls in this email,

00:27:03   which I thought was really funny because it's, it's, you know, stuff like family guy, um, 24,

00:27:08   all that kind of stuff. So it's, it's not just stuff that Fox made. It's also stuff that was

00:27:15   on Hulu as well. So I'm intrigued to see what the full content offering will be, but it's coming,

00:27:21   uh, on February 23rd in the UK. I don't know about elsewhere, but this is just what I

00:27:25   received in my inbox today. Yeah, no, it's good. You're going to get a chance to see

00:27:29   there's a lot of stuff that is not, uh, widely available because it's, uh, in this separate

00:27:37   stream that's stuff that came from Fox and yeah. Oh yeah. That I otherwise wouldn't have gotten. So

00:27:42   I'm excited to check in it, checking out what's what's available. Yeah. Report back on that to

00:27:46   upstream. This episode of upgrade is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move for

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00:29:36   make your next website. So it is a new year and you do a thing like many people do and you make

00:29:44   predictions. You write Mac wall columns every year where I just saw you publish these, you

00:29:49   had your 2021 predictions, but also you published an article, which I really appreciate that you do

00:29:54   this, where you grade yourself for your predictions of 2020. It's true and let me give you a little

00:29:59   peek behind the curtain there, which is when you write, I write 40 Mac world columns a year.

00:30:07   So that's 40 unique takes on what's going on in the Apple world for a thousand words-ish.

00:30:17   Almost every week. I skip one week a month.

00:30:19   And I've been doing this now, Myke, guess what? I've been doing this for almost six years.

00:30:27   Yep. That Mac world column is coming up six years in a couple months. So when you get an

00:30:36   idea for something you can repeat every year and it takes three columns to do it all, you do it.

00:30:43   You grab hold of that because that's the ideas I don't have to have.

00:30:47   And so it's the iPhone and iPad predictions, the Mac predictions, and then grading my previous year

00:30:53   predictions, which is only fair. It's kind of fun to see what I got right and what I got wrong.

00:30:59   And my predictions are mixed in with WishCasting and knowing what the rumors say, it's not

00:31:05   necessarily the fairest kind of set of predictions because it's a combination of what I would expect.

00:31:13   As an observer, what we know from the rumor mill and also what I want to see,

00:31:20   and it's all kind of swirled in there together.

00:31:22   And again, it's nice and calm, gentlemanly. There's no

00:31:27   random point scoring assigned. But I wanted to go through-

00:31:31   Right. It's very much in the spirit of upgrade.

00:31:34   Because I think it's fun to look back on where we thought we were going to be.

00:31:37   Yeah.

00:31:37   And it was very fun to me to read through. I actually ended up going through and reading

00:31:41   the old prediction articles instead of just reading your grading, because I wanted to

00:31:45   make sure there weren't any real clunkers that you didn't-

00:31:48   Yeah. Make sure that I didn't steer away from the ones that were really bad. Yeah, sure. That's smart.

00:31:52   I linked to them all. Readers can always check up on me. And in fact, you can keep clicking back

00:31:59   and you'll eventually get to the beginning of time when I did my first prediction about the universe.

00:32:03   So in the Mac column, new laptop keyboards or more Macs, something that you predicted

00:32:10   at the beginning of 2020, and you were definitely right there.

00:32:13   Yeah. Although I expressed some skepticism. I was despairing about the MacBook Air. I thought Apple

00:32:21   cared so little about the MacBook Air that it might not even bother updating the keyboard

00:32:25   on that one. Because a year ago, there was a real question about whether Apple felt it had

00:32:29   fixed the problem with the butterfly keyboard and that it might reserve the magic keyboard for the

00:32:37   pro models, which turned out to be not true, which I guess now in hindsight, they didn't think it

00:32:41   fixed it. It was a temporary fix while they immediately replaced all of the keyboards and

00:32:47   all of the models. So the MacBook Air, well, I mean, I really missed on the MacBook Air because

00:32:51   I was despairing that the MacBook Air would get much of Apple's attention. And instead,

00:32:55   not only did it get the keyboard, but it got updated twice in 2020.

00:32:57   Yeah, it's two significant updates in 2020. I think it got more than that. I think there might

00:33:02   have been two versions of the fixed keyboard one. I think they did another. But like, yeah,

00:33:07   you were like, "Oh, the MacBook Air is dead." And then they did, they not only changed the

00:33:12   keyboard over and basically created a new version of the product with the retina screen,

00:33:17   they then made it one of the best Macs ever made at the end of the year.

00:33:21   Yeah. I just, I figured that since in 2018, they did the retina MacBook Air. I figured that they

00:33:26   would think, "Well, it's good enough now. We can sort of leave it here for a little while."

00:33:32   Until the arm transition, maybe. But they didn't. They updated it with that new keyboard right away.

00:33:38   So what am I thinking of then? Didn't they make a new version of the product itself? Or was that

00:33:44   in 2018? Am I conflaying it with something else? The retina version was in 2018, and then they

00:33:48   speed bumped that in '19. And then they did another one in '20 with the keyboard. And then they did

00:33:56   the M1. So there was a lot more than you would think from the Air. So I missed on that. I

00:34:01   mentioned it as a strong possibility that the Air would get the new keyboard, but you can see it in

00:34:06   my article. I just sort of despair about it. I'm like, "Eh, I don't know. I think this is too much

00:34:11   wish-casting, too much wishful thinking that they would clear that keyboard out." I just really felt

00:34:15   like Apple was going to continue inflicting that keyboard on us for more time. Because keep in mind,

00:34:20   that was where they had announced a laptop with the good keyboard, and all other laptops still

00:34:24   had the bad keyboard. And we were all sort of saying, "Well, why did you do that? Why did you

00:34:29   just do the one?" But early on in 2020, they swept away the other ones. - One prediction that you

00:34:39   made, which looking back, I'm so surprised that you made it. You were right, but I don't think

00:34:43   many people would have agreed with you at the beginning of 2020 that there would not be a 14-inch

00:34:49   MacBook Pro in 2020 like there was the 16-inch in 2019. One, I'm surprised that Apple didn't do this

00:34:57   still. And I am surprised that you made that prediction. That was bold. - Yeah, I don't even

00:35:04   know what I was thinking then. Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking. - Because all of the

00:35:08   stars aligned to suggest that that was going to happen. The 16-inch had been updated, they

00:35:13   hadn't touched the 13. It seemed like it was obvious that they were going to do it, but they

00:35:17   didn't. - I feel like this is a combination of things here. One is, it's like a version of my

00:35:29   argument about Apple pricing, where you take the price you want it to be and then increase it and

00:35:34   then round it up and that's the actual Apple price. I feel like a little bit like that,

00:35:38   like if you expect Apple to do everything, you're going to be disappointed because they aren't going

00:35:43   to do everything. And the fact that they did the 16 but didn't change the 13, I thought maybe sent

00:35:51   a little bit of a message. And then also my rationale there was also the big laptop getting

00:35:57   bigger makes more sense than the small laptop getting bigger. And we may yet see that for,

00:36:02   I think I may have predicted it, the 14-inch MacBook Air coming now that we've got the MacBook Air

00:36:08   where it is the 14-inch Pro could be coming. But part of my rationale there was that if you look

00:36:14   at the iPad Pro, they did different things for the different models based on their size. And

00:36:25   they made, they reduced the bezels on the big one. I don't know. So I put all that in the blender and

00:36:32   I just thought they're going to disappoint us about a 14-inch MacBook Pro and I was right. So

00:36:36   some of it is just, you get a feeling and you get a little lucky. There's always going to be a

00:36:44   product that everybody anticipates that Apple doesn't actually ship. And I felt like that

00:36:48   14-inch MacBook Pro was prime for being the disappointment. And it turned out it was,

00:36:52   I did get that one. - Well, you were disappointed in the inverse with your

00:36:56   prediction of a new iMac design. - Yeah, well, this is like the ARM transition,

00:37:03   something that I have predicted multiple years in a row and it hasn't happened yet.

00:37:07   And the lesson there is just keep on predicting it. - And there was a quite robust new iMac.

00:37:11   - But there was not a new iMac design. And the new iMac design, you and I talked about a new

00:37:16   iMac design in '19. - I was right here with you, Jason. This is the thing that I would also

00:37:24   continue to predict every year forever because it seems so obvious. - Right? Because that design has

00:37:29   been there so long and it feels like it's so obvious that they would do it. And we may yet

00:37:35   get that new iMac design, but not in 2020, that didn't happen. - More stable macOS focused on

00:37:45   improving existing features. - Well. - I think this was the, again, I think everyone would agree

00:37:52   with you, but I think this was the biggest, at least in this column, miss, right? Because if

00:37:58   there was one thing macOS was not this year, it was just a, "Hey, we're gonna fix existing issues."

00:38:05   - So I'm gonna split the difference here and say, I actually stand by my opinion that I mentioned

00:38:13   in my review of Big Sur, which is Catalina was the bad cop, Big Sur is the good cop. Big Sur broke a

00:38:21   lot less than Catalina did. Big Sur has some changes in it, it had some issues, but I hear

00:38:28   people talking about going to Big Sur. People were talking about not upgrading to Catalina for a very

00:38:34   long time. So in that way, I would say, and I also think this summer's beta period was a lot less

00:38:39   traumatic than the beta period was in '19. I think the '20 beta period was better. That said,

00:38:49   even though I think technically it was less weird, they had this whole other layer on top of it,

00:38:57   which was this incredibly ambitious redesign of the operating system, and I certainly didn't see

00:39:02   that coming. - Yeah, I mean, nobody did. Like, no one was, "Oh yeah, they're gonna completely

00:39:11   re-open the design, and that's gonna be that." Anyway, you did reference Catalyst a bit. You

00:39:20   suggested there would be improvements to Catalyst, which is definitely a case. - Yeah, that was a

00:39:23   tough one. - But you said that there'd be no improvements to Apple's Catalyst apps, and I

00:39:28   just wonder what you think about that, 'cause I think there were some, and they did brand new ones.

00:39:33   - That's the big one to me, is not that there were dramatic improvements, they did fix the

00:39:39   data input on the Home app and stuff, but the messages being the best example, and maps,

00:39:46   like they got Catalyst better enough that the new Catalyst apps they did are, I would say,

00:39:52   Mac class in a way that the previous Catalyst apps weren't. - Yeah, again, I will reference this.

00:39:58   I've had people try and tell me all of the things that was bad about messages on Big Sur. I think

00:40:03   after I mentioned this on last week's episode, I still stand by. - I mentioned it. - We both spoke

00:40:08   about it, but I still stand by the points that we made, which is, I don't think you could tell

00:40:12   most of the time. - What we did not say last week is that messages on Big Sur is flawless,

00:40:21   but, and I stand by this, it is vastly superior to what we had on Catalina. That old Messages app

00:40:29   that didn't support all these features and was super buggy and bad, like, do not try to sell me

00:40:37   that Messages on Catalina was some refined app that was part of the golden age of the Mac,

00:40:44   and now it's been thrown in the bin and we get this lousy version. No, the old version of Messages

00:40:49   was bad and they didn't fix it for years. - And it had been bad for a long time, it wasn't just bad.

00:40:53   - I cannot tell you how many times I typed a message to the wrong person because I clicked

00:40:58   on a person, began to type, and it just changed to another tab, like, so bad. And although Messages

00:41:07   on Big Sur is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, is it better than what we had on

00:41:14   Catalina? Yeah, yeah, it is, by a lot. - And obviously you made the prediction that you

00:41:19   would be making forever and finally you got it, the ARM transition would begin. - Yeah, that's

00:41:24   right, you keep it, if something's inevitable and you keep predicting it, eventually you'll be right.

00:41:28   - But, but, in your Predictions article, you reference a lot a low-end laptop, which never

00:41:36   existed, which didn't exist, but again, we were talking about this low-end laptop until like a

00:41:41   week before they announced it. - Okay, so I'm gonna push back a little bit because low-end laptop and

00:41:45   not specifying, I think, meant I was open to the 12-inch MacBook, but it was possible it was the

00:41:51   MacBook Air. Turns out they also did the MacBook Pro and a Mac Mini, so, okay. - But like, we were

00:41:57   talking about the return, we, I think it was a pick in the draft for that event was that they would

00:42:03   bring back the MacBook. Like, it was definitely something we thought was going to be the case.

00:42:07   - But part of the prediction game is being vague enough that you can get a lot of possibilities

00:42:12   and accrue them to you, and I think the idea there was that ARM processors are really good in

00:42:17   laptops, especially if you can't ramp them up in terms of the processor power, you can start on the

00:42:23   low-end. And so I would argue that the MacBook Air choice, the M1 MacBook Air qualifies because it's

00:42:32   Apple's low-end laptop. However, they also did a MacBook Pro, so, yeah. - And I personally still

00:42:40   think it's possible that something could occupy the MacBook space again. I don't think that's gone

00:42:45   forever. - I do too. There are a lot of people who are very quick to say that Apple's never gonna do,

00:42:50   never gonna bring back the 12-inch MacBook. I would, I think there's still a possibility.

00:42:55   Like, why not do, Apple is so obsessed with thin and light laptops, and although the MacBook Air is

00:43:01   beloved, we know that you can make a thinner, lighter laptop because we've seen the 12-inch

00:43:07   MacBook. And imagine an M1 12-inch MacBook for Pete's sake. That would be great. So, and they

00:43:13   already have the design more or less, they gotta just fix the keyboard. So, I don't know, I think

00:43:17   it's still possible. It may not happen, but I think it's still possible. - So your iPhone iPad

00:43:23   picks, you said that the iPhones would not be exciting and there would be no redesign. And I

00:43:28   just wonder what you think about that, 'cause redesign means many things. So do you feel like

00:43:34   what they did is more than you were expecting from a design perspective? - Yes, absolutely. I thought

00:43:38   that this would be a, I thought 2020 would be a year where they would just let it ride and push.

00:43:43   The pace of change on the iPhone was so great, where they put in the 10 and then they experimented

00:43:50   with the 10R, and then, you know, they were doing all this stuff and I thought they would not,

00:43:57   they would bypass this year in terms of making it a visual refresh, because they were making so many

00:44:04   models. The rumors were already out at that point that they would be making multiple models. So I

00:44:09   didn't think that they could do that and do a complete refresh at the same time and totally

00:44:14   missed it because they absolutely did. And I'm glad they did, but yeah, I got that one completely

00:44:20   wrong. - So while you did accurately predict that there would be an iPhone SE with new internals in

00:44:27   the case of the 8, you thought that that meant there would be no small iPhone, new small iPhone.

00:44:32   - Yeah, alas, they did five phones in one year. Go figure that. - And you did think they would.

00:44:39   - They did five phones in one year and four of them have a completely new, well, recycled from

00:44:43   the five, but completely new design on the exterior, like in a pandemic, which I didn't

00:44:48   know about when I wrote that. - If you did, that would have been really mean to not share that.

00:44:52   - That would be a heck of a prediction. It is a, I think, a testament to just how impressive Apple's

00:45:00   iPhone machinery is, that they did five new iPhones, did a refreshed visual design,

00:45:07   and did it during, in the circumstances that we were in in 2020. - Yeah, obviously I've been,

00:45:14   like all of us, reflecting on the year a lot, been doing a lot of stuff that looks back on the year.

00:45:18   I think we will in history, like further down the line, look back at 2020 as one of Apple's best

00:45:24   years in history, because take the pandemic away, they had an amazing year product-wise, right?

00:45:31   The iPhones, they did five of them. I think they're really great. They've definitely made a lot

00:45:37   of people feel happy. Stuff in the middle is like an S year or whatever, but then everything we saw

00:45:43   about the M1 Max, right, and how that's potentially going to change the future of computing again,

00:45:48   because of the capabilities there. But then when you add the pandemic in and they manage to do all

00:45:54   of it, it's kind of astounding really, what they managed to pull off. The iPhone line you predicted

00:46:01   would be the 12, the 12 Max, the 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max. - Yeah, so I thought that they would take,

00:46:07   on the cheaper side, they would make a big phone and a small phone, where the small phone is the

00:46:13   same size, right? Just like the top of the line. I thought they would just do Pro and Pro Max and

00:46:20   12 and 12 Max. And that's not what happened. - Yeah, so there was no 12 Max. That's the product

00:46:27   that's missing, right, which is a bigger iPhone 12, which is the same size as the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

00:46:33   - Right, shows you there's more room for more iPhones in the future too, because I think that

00:46:37   they could make a lower cost two camera, kind of like the iPhone 11 bigger model, and have that in

00:46:46   their product line too. - Yeah, because I mean, it is weird that if you want a bigger phone,

00:46:52   you have to get the most expensive phone, and that doesn't necessarily track. It doesn't have to be

00:46:57   that one. And you predicted that the phones would start at 649, which they kind of do. - Kind of, I

00:47:04   got that. I didn't know that the mini would be what it was, but I did figure there'd be some

00:47:07   aggressiveness in price. It's in the ballpark. - On the iPad, you predicted a smart keyboard

00:47:17   with more traditional keys and cursor support. So bravo to you, I guess. - And let me tell you,

00:47:22   that was a real wish-casting kind of choice. It's like, I really want this to happen,

00:47:25   but it totally happened. - It felt obvious to me and you, right, as bridge keyboard users.

00:47:30   But the rumor that came out about this product, so the information had a report about it,

00:47:37   that came out like two or three weeks before the magic keyboard for iPad came out. So like,

00:47:45   there was only a rumor of this product for a very short period of time. - Yep. - But you called it

00:47:52   earlier than everyone because it was something that we both desperately wanted to exist. - I'll

00:47:57   take the win on this. I think, so they added the accessibility cursor support in 2019, right?

00:48:06   So that's out there and we're thinking, oh, 2020, fall 2020, we'll get a cursor maybe.

00:48:14   And that's the part that I didn't predict correctly because it happened in the spring.

00:48:18   They did it midstream as part of the iOS 13 development cycle. So I missed that one a little

00:48:28   bit, but I'm going to take the win that we got the product that was kind of my wish-casting product.

00:48:32   It actually came true. We did not get an SD card slot on iPad Pro, though. - No, we didn't get that.

00:48:39   On iOS and iPadOS, you suggested slowdown for stability, upgrades to shortcuts, improvements

00:48:45   to Safari. - I just mailed that one in, didn't I? I mean, aren't there always? - But like, yeah,

00:48:51   I mean, but the things that they did do were not on the face of it huge. - Yeah, no. - Right.

00:48:58   - I think that's true. And I think after the tumultuous summer of '19 that the iOS development

00:49:08   in the summer of '20 was a little bit calmer too. So I didn't have a lot of big predictions to make

00:49:15   there. I find that predicting iOS or really OS features in general very hard because the truth is

00:49:22   yeah, we've left the era where there are obvious gaping holes in the feature set. So it ends up

00:49:28   being a menu of a thousand different things that they could do and they pick 40 or 20 or whatever

00:49:33   they pick. And they literally, how do you predict that? Because that's entirely based on the whims

00:49:41   of the people at Apple to decide what they think would make a great feature or dovetails with some

00:49:47   hardware. So I find it very hard to predict some of the specific stuff where they're like, oh,

00:49:53   this time we're gonna do, finally we're gonna do multi-user FaceTime, right? When they did that.

00:49:57   And I was like, okay, you couldn't have done that literally at any point in the last eight years,

00:50:01   but I guess it's the year now. Like very hard to predict that kind of stuff. - Yeah. But I would

00:50:08   say you did pretty well, Jason. You're proud of yourself there, I think. - I think I did okay.

00:50:13   It was better than I thought. That smart keyboard with, yeah, with three keys and stuff. That one

00:50:21   was a, whew, dream come true. But yeah, it's okay. And again, finally the ARM transition,

00:50:29   you pick it long enough, eventually it'll be true. - This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by

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00:52:04   of this show and Real AFM. So you also made a selection of predictions for 2021. And I've

00:52:13   broke down and pulled out a couple of those from your articles. And we'll start with the Mac. And

00:52:18   you're doubling down on new iMac. Here it comes again. Why not? I mean, it's a new year.

00:52:24   Yeah, new year, new, same old prediction. Like if not now, then when? I guess. There are rumors

00:52:30   to suggest this actually might happen this time, but I just will reference everything that I've

00:52:36   previously said on the subject over the entire run of Upgrade, which is the iMac design has not

00:52:42   appreciably changed in a very long time. We're coming up on a decade. And really, if you'll

00:52:50   think about it, since 2007, but then it got a little bit thinner a few years later, but really

00:52:55   it is done looking face on right at the screen. Very little has changed. I mean, all of this time.

00:53:02   And then they released a whole new product based on it that, except for the color, also looks exactly

00:53:08   the same. The iMac Pro. Exactly. So I feel like if you look at like the bezels are a good example.

00:53:15   Like think about the MacBook Air and like the MacBook Air had those huge bezels and like modern

00:53:20   computers, we have done a lot to shrink. The display technology allows us to shrink the bezels

00:53:26   to make a smaller, either a bigger screen in the same space or a smaller space outside the screen.

00:53:34   And so the whole device just contracts a little bit. That's what a modern computer looks like.

00:53:37   The iMac has this enormous bezel and then the enormous chin below it. I like the size of an

00:53:42   Apple watch. They're massive. Exactly. Every TV that I own has a tiny bezel now. So like it,

00:53:51   it seems clear to me that Apple needs to refresh the iMac. It is, it is literally based on design

00:54:00   decisions made in the early 2010s. So it's got, if not now, then when? And the rumors about a new

00:54:09   design of a new M1 or at least Apple Silicon iMac make me see this scenario, which is they're going

00:54:16   to get rid of the smaller, the 21.5 inch iMac, and they're going to replace it with something that's

00:54:21   got a larger display, but also with the shrunken in bezels. Maybe they're going to do the other

00:54:26   things that they could do in that design. Like upgrade the camera. Could we maybe see

00:54:29   a face ID kind of thing at that point? Face ID I would love and they should do because you're

00:54:36   never going to get touch ID on an iMac. It's too weird. So I hope that they do face ID. They really

00:54:42   should, but they cannot be let off if they do not upgrade the cameras in all of their new designs.

00:54:48   Now, like, no, there's no way out of this. Now you barely got away with it with the laptops.

00:54:54   Their only excuse with the other ones is that it's literally the same design.

00:54:57   If you're going to design a new iMac, that's going to take you through the 2020s. I think it's got to

00:55:02   have that sensor stack from iOS on it, right? With a does face ID. It's got to have that.

00:55:08   Why would you not do that? A much better forward facing camera and sensors so you can do face ID.

00:55:14   You've got your whole Apple Silicon technology there. You roll in a Mac OS update that supports

00:55:19   face ID. Like it makes so much sense to do that. And then, you know, there are lots of rumors about

00:55:26   the display technology improving and it'll be interesting to see how they approach

00:55:29   cooling since they're going to have Apple Silicon. And so therefore their cooling

00:55:33   needs are probably less than they were under Intel. And what does that mean?

00:55:38   And then I guess the other prediction there is that, although I think the easiest bet is that

00:55:46   it's going to be familiar in some other ways, it's still going to be on a foot and sit on a desk,

00:55:53   that I would hope that they would consider some other approaches, including the famous,

00:55:57   you know, Microsoft Surface Studio kind of thing where you might have a-

00:56:01   But that's supposing there's a touch screen.

00:56:03   Not necessarily, because it could be Apple Pencil and no touch. That's actually a possibility.

00:56:09   Oh, yeah.

00:56:10   They would allow Apple Pencil support, but not conventional touch. And they would pitch it as

00:56:15   being this thing that is really about like for artists and all of that. Whether that's in a

00:56:18   different iMac or they don't bother to do that, or whether there's maybe, maybe it's going to be

00:56:22   like the Pro Display XDR and there's like the standard stand. And then there's like the special

00:56:26   stand that does pivoting and things like that. I don't know. I have a hard time. I mean, I think

00:56:32   officially my prediction is that they're not going to do that. And they're just going to do it. You

00:56:37   know, they'll change things about the iMac, but they'll still be sitting on a foot on a desk.

00:56:42   Because although I think I would, because I would really love for them to do something more radical,

00:56:48   Apple generally doesn't do more radical. It's not, Apple has a profound conservatism in their

00:56:54   product design, especially on the Mac. You also predict that the iMac Pro is no more.

00:57:00   I think we've been talking about this for a while, but I think it's a good one to just put the stake

00:57:04   in the ground for. That was a one and done. Yeah. I mean, they could, what we said was it's a

00:57:08   marketing decision. They could, they could say that there's an iMac Pro or a Pro model of the iMac.

00:57:13   They could do that. But in the end, the distinction of the iMac Pro was it had Xeon processors. It was

00:57:20   going to be the replacement for the Mac Pro, which is no longer going to be replaced. And that they'd

00:57:24   be better off just waiting and doing high-end iMacs with more power and making those available. And

00:57:30   you can just call them iMacs. You don't need to call them iMac Pro. If they wanted to, they could

00:57:34   take the lower level iMac and call it iMac and then bring out a big iMac and call it iMac Pro.

00:57:40   And then they wouldn't have to use the size of the display to differentiate them. And if they wanted

00:57:46   to do that, they could, but again, that's a marketing decision. I don't think it changes

00:57:49   the computer at all. And I don't think there's going to be a third completely discrete iMac

00:57:53   with completely different internals that's the iMac Pro. I just think that that time has passed.

00:57:58   Do they brand a high-end iMac as an iMac Pro? I think not, but they could if they wanted to,

00:58:05   but it won't be a substantially different computer. I don't think that's going to happen.

00:58:10   >> It's basically the way to tell it is, are Apple making an iMac that's supposed to be the

00:58:14   fastest computer that they make? Because that's what the iMac Pro was supposed to be. And that's

00:58:19   not going to be the case because the Mac Pro exists. >> Yeah, exactly right. >> On the MacBook Pro,

00:58:25   Apple Silicon in both, which seems obvious, but now you're making the 14-inch prediction.

00:58:32   >> Yeah, I am. Why? I don't know. It's Apple Silicon. It seems like it's time. I got over

00:58:39   my disappointment of last year where they're like, "They're not going to give it to you yet."

00:58:42   And it's like, "Okay, now they're going to give it to you." Like, this seems like I'm torn on this

00:58:46   one. I think that the rumors are so strong that I think we have to go with it. But my guess is that

00:58:52   they're going to try very hard to not make the laptop actually much larger, and it's going to be

00:58:56   like with the 16. Really, the goal here is to put a new screen in that'll be slightly larger,

00:59:00   so they'll be able to call it a 14 instead of a 13, but that in reality, it's going to be...

00:59:05   The biggest benefit that it's going to have is that it will differentiate itself from the 13,

00:59:12   so we won't have two separate 13-inch MacBook Pros, because that's dumb. Two-port and four-port.

00:59:20   So on that level, they're differentiating between the high-end 13 and the low-end 13. By making that

00:59:27   high-end 13 a 14, now we have a little bit clearer differentiation between product A, product B,

00:59:33   and product C. And that makes sense, and you do it when you go to Apple Silicon. Makes sense.

00:59:39   How or why is there might not be that much difference between the Air and this?

00:59:46   One of the great questions of 2021 that we're all going to be pondering this year

00:59:53   is what's the next phase for Apple Silicon's rollout? Because I could argue that the new

01:00:01   low-end iMac uses an M1, right? That's enough. An M1 iMac is fine. A M1 four-port 14-inch MacBook Pro,

01:00:14   you could do it, but I think I have a question of, is there an interim step

01:00:20   where there's a variant of the chip that's faster than the M1 we've seen now?

01:00:27   Or does Apple hold off on releasing every high-end Mac model until the fall when they do an M2? And

01:00:37   the M2 is the more high test processor for the high-end systems. And if I had to guess,

01:00:44   I think I made this prediction. If I had to guess, I would say I'm going to bet on us being

01:00:50   disappointed again, which is any Macs in the first half of the year that you see are going to be

01:00:54   using that same M1 that we've already seen. And that if you want the higher-end, faster Apple

01:01:01   Silicon Macs that everybody's sort of like, "Well, if this isn't fast enough for you, just wait,"

01:01:05   I think they're going to make us wait until the fall, and then there'll be M2 Macs, and the M2 Macs

01:01:09   will be faster than the M1 Macs. And I don't think they're going to take the M2 Macs or the M2s and

01:01:14   stuff them in the MacBook Air, right? I don't think that's going to happen. I think the MacBook Air is

01:01:20   just going to have the M1 for a little while. Could be wrong, but you know, that's part of

01:01:23   predicting. So that's my gut feeling is that if you get something in the early part of the year,

01:01:28   it's just, I mean, just the M1 is amazing, but it's just going to be an M1. And then they're

01:01:34   saving themselves for that next chip that's got more power that they can stick further up in the

01:01:40   product line. You also predicted incremental Mac OS updates again this year. I feel like this year

01:01:47   you're probably going to be right. I feel like... What else are they going to do? And a new display.

01:01:54   - I did it. Okay, display. Sorry, this isn't the Accidental Tech Podcast, which is a podcast

01:02:04   largely about Apple's display strategy. But I will say this, I was at the event where Apple said

01:02:14   to Nielle from The Verge that I was there, I was like two feet away from him when this happened,

01:02:21   I think. They're like, "We're out of the display business." Right? Like they said it.

01:02:25   Because they had, you know, other third-party displays everywhere.

01:02:28   And then they did the Pro Display XDR. It's like, "Well, that's interesting."

01:02:34   I look at our little Apple nerd market and ponder Apple's overall marketing strategy, which is

01:02:46   like iPhone cases, right? Why does Apple make iPhone cases? Anybody can make an iPhone case.

01:02:53   The answer is because Apples are more expensive and they throw off profit. And a lot of people

01:02:58   just buy the Apple case when they buy the Apple stuff because it's from Apple and it's in the

01:03:03   Apple store online or in person. And so they just buy it and it's more money for Apple.

01:03:08   Like all of these accessories that Apple makes for its products, they make them not because there

01:03:14   isn't a robust accessory market, but because some people will pay the premium price to get the Apple

01:03:19   product for convenience or for the brand or whatever the reason is. That's why Apple makes

01:03:24   these products. I have a hard time looking at the monitor market, which is not well-served right now

01:03:33   for external monitors, for things like that Mac Mini or for the new laptops that they put out.

01:03:38   It's very difficult to find anything that's really very good. It's a very weird state where Apple's

01:03:44   sort of missing. The monitor market is not really well aligned with Apple. And Apple has had these

01:03:51   great displays on the iMac and they just have not made a standalone display. So I roll those things

01:03:57   together. I consider that there are also rumors out there about a new like mini Mac Pro coming

01:04:04   down the road in a year or two. And the reaction people have to the M1 Macs and not being able to

01:04:11   hook them up to a really great monitor and Apple working on some new monitor technology

01:04:19   to put in some of their Macs. That is not something we've seen before.

01:04:24   And I just roll this all together and I think, I feel like maybe it's all like,

01:04:28   why would they not do it? Now we said this before and they didn't do it, but it feels like you're

01:04:32   gonna create an Apple monitor. It's gonna work with all of your products. It's gonna be to your

01:04:39   standards. You're gonna charge a premium for it. So it's gonna be a very profitable product.

01:04:46   And you can sell one to like everybody who buys a Mac mini and a lot of people who buy laptops.

01:04:53   I don't know. I feel like it's worth making the prediction because there are so many reasons

01:05:00   that Apple should do it. If I were at Apple, I'd say, let's do it. If I were at Apple,

01:05:05   I would point at this market and say, do you understand, especially if we're strategizing

01:05:12   to make another Mac Pro model at some point here, do you understand how much profit... Let's

01:05:18   estimate how many of those are gonna buy the Apple display along with it and what's our profit on

01:05:22   each one. And we're giving away money to LG here. Don't do it. And they're not gonna buy the XDR.

01:05:29   They're not gonna buy the XDR. Not everybody is crazy enough to buy the $5,000 monitor.

01:05:39   So I don't know too many people that own that monitor now. Yeah. And it doesn't make sense.

01:05:43   I get it. It's beautiful. I get it. But it's a $5,000, $6,000 monitor. No. I really don't

01:05:49   think that I understand why people don't like the LG monitors. I have the LG

01:05:53   Ergo one I was talking about recently. I love it. It's great. I don't know. I don't know what

01:05:59   I'm not seeing. Well, so they could be better. And I've got a 4K ultra fine here and the USB

01:06:08   and Thunderbolt ports on the back just go out sometimes and you have to unplug the monitor and

01:06:12   plug it back in. I mean, it's just, it's not great, but it's one of those things where

01:06:15   there's no, like, it's been years now and it's not like everybody who's really into Apple products has

01:06:23   focused on a monitor and said, yeah, this is the one to get. There's like one. It also is telling,

01:06:28   right? That it's not like everybody else in the monitor market went, ooh, all these Mac people

01:06:33   want a good monitor. We'll make one and we'll make some money by selling it to them. That also

01:06:38   kind of hasn't happened. Right. So this seems like a good place for Apple to be in there and

01:06:42   basically say, this is largely like the LG monitor, but we did some Apple stuff and it's $600 more

01:06:49   and sell a bunch of them and make a lot of money. So that's, you know, that's, that's my prediction.

01:06:55   It's, it's definitely mixed in with a little bit of wish casting, but I am a believer that Tim

01:07:00   Cook's Apple does not in the end want to leave all that money on the table. I mean, I have assumed

01:07:07   like all of us that they will do it. Uh, it seems obvious. They just haven't. They just haven't.

01:07:12   iPhone and iPad on the iPhone, you predict they will go to the 13 numbers is something

01:07:18   we've spoken about before. 13 is unlucky in some cultures. Um, but maybe they're just going to do

01:07:24   it. They did iOS 13, so there was no problem there. Uh, same design with new colors, possibly

01:07:31   a smaller notch. Uh, the new camera sensor stabilization to appear in a smaller phone and touch

01:07:37   ID coming back. Yeah, this is just, you know, it's a synthesis of some of the rumors we've seen and

01:07:43   what I think seems realistic. Um, I'm once again saying they're not going to change the, the shape

01:07:49   of it. I think they changed the shape of it. So they're going to vary it. There'll be new colors.

01:07:52   They'll do that. The smaller notch. There are some rumors about that. That, that is, I think one of

01:07:58   the places where there is a real hardware benefit to be gained. We've largely had that same true

01:08:04   depth, uh, sensor stack since the 10. And this might be a place where like, where what's the next

01:08:10   generation one that's just way smaller and that makes that notch almost invisible. There's some

01:08:15   rumors to that effect. I think that makes sense, right? I have to think that Apple knows the notch

01:08:22   isn't great. Like we've all gotten used to it, but like they don't want it there. That's, it's like a

01:08:26   little imperfection in their beautiful thing. Like they don't want it there. So they're not every

01:08:30   year going to make it a little bit smaller, but I would not be surprised if there is a true depth

01:08:34   two that is dramatically smaller, maybe not non-existent, but close to it that allows them to

01:08:42   reclaim that kind of most of the perfect display from the notch part. Um, and then I think I'm just

01:08:50   betting on the idea now that the pro max is going to get some features that we don't see elsewhere,

01:08:54   and then they will slowly trickle down. So like the sensor stabilization is a good example of that,

01:08:59   that, you know, they'll, it'll be in the pro max and the next year it'll be in the pro,

01:09:03   something like that. I think that's not unreasonable. And I do think that, um, they will

01:09:08   have the time to get that touch ID sensor in at least at least some models, if not all models,

01:09:13   the face ID for people who are wearing masks. Yes. This is the question. Do you think there will be a,

01:09:19   a, uh, touch ID sensor in the iPad or do you think they're going to go to an under screen?

01:09:25   Then the iPad. So the one that's in, I mean, I mean on the iPhone, right? So

01:09:32   the, on the iPhone, the touch, I think it's going to be like, like the iPad thing. Yeah.

01:09:37   My bet is that it'll be in the button because the button is already technology Apple has designed

01:09:49   and it frees them up to not have to be limited in what they do on their display and under their

01:09:55   display in order to do a sensor. Cause I think that there's probably, I, this is just a guess,

01:10:00   but, but if they've already got the button, you can use the button and then you don't have this

01:10:05   mandatory. Cause like, think back to like, uh, like 3d touch, right? There are things you have

01:10:09   to do to engineer on the display in order to do this mandatory feature. Well, if you don't have

01:10:15   to do that, that frees you up to not have that technology attached to your display in that area.

01:10:20   So that's just, I mean, they invented the button, right? They did the button, they got the button.

01:10:25   Use the button. I agree with what you're saying completely. My only pitch for the under screen

01:10:29   one, like if they can get it to work and get it to work in a way they're happy with the story for why

01:10:35   it's there, is it easier to tell, which is like, look how amazing this is. Right. Which is, I know

01:10:41   other companies have been doing it, but whatever it is Apple will do, be like, Oh, we, we brought

01:10:45   touch ID back because we worked out this incredible new technology. Right? Like it's not a button like

01:10:51   you've seen in other places. Look at this, it's under the screen, you know, you just, you just put

01:10:56   your thumb on the screen and you're ready to go. Right. And it would be great if they could do that,

01:11:00   but I understand, I understand completely what you're saying. If it was the only authentication

01:11:05   method, I think I might agree with you, but I think they're going to soft pedal this as,

01:11:09   and if you're in a situation where face ID doesn't work, like when you're wearing a mask,

01:11:13   just touch the button and like do it like that, where it's like, it's really a secondary

01:11:17   authentication method. It's a fallback it's for when you're in the grocery store wearing a mask.

01:11:21   And, and, and there's a question like, well, what about mask wearing? Do you really build an iPhone

01:11:26   for mask wearing when we've already sort of had the pandemic and hopefully it will be done by

01:11:30   then. And I would say there are lots of places where mask wearing is common. I think there will

01:11:33   be more of them now after this era. So, but it was already an issue in Asia where there were people

01:11:42   wearing masks. And I would also say all the other people who didn't like face ID because there are,

01:11:46   you know, they've got, I don't know what other, other things obscuring their face,

01:11:50   but they can reach out with their finger. Like there are reasons to do a secondary authentication.

01:11:53   So I think they'll do it, but because it's secondary, I think that they won't need to

01:11:57   make a big deal out of it and say, look at this shiny, whizzy new way we did touch ID

01:12:01   under the screen. That's my guess. **S

01:12:02   >> For the iPad better performance than the 2020 iPad and display improvements.

01:12:13   **Tiffany. Yeah. I mean, the rumors are out there that they're going to do some new

01:12:17   display tech on the iPad and the iPad, you know, Apple's got OLED in all of their iPhones,

01:12:22   but OLED on an iPad has proven, I think to be very expensive and difficult. And there are rumors that

01:12:28   they're trying some new, very, you know, these, these new led technologies that make for better

01:12:34   contrast without it being like full on OLED. And that seems like a direction for the iPad,

01:12:40   right? For the iPad pro like improved display is a, is a pro feature that makes sense and better

01:12:47   performance. Sure. I fully expect that it's easy to make predictions like this, but they didn't do

01:12:52   it last time. So this time I'm going to say essentially the M1, the iPad version of the M1,

01:12:57   which will be the A14X in an iPad pro and it'll do M1 basically performance. And think about that.

01:13:03   That'll be, uh, pretty amazing. **Ezra Kleinman**

01:13:06   The iOS and iPadOS, the new home screen stuff. So widgets on the home screen, app library.

01:13:11   **Tiffany. They'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. They'll do an iPad version of that at

01:13:15   least an iPad take on it. It'll probably be different from the iPhone, but something that's

01:13:18   more expansive than what they did this year. **Ezra Kleinman**

01:13:21   Uh, that there will be, uh, some work to be done on the cross platformness of iOS apps.

01:13:27   **Beserat Debebe** Yeah. I right. I think, I think that that's one

01:13:31   of the things that they're pushing forward there is they want to really build up this iPad to Mac

01:13:36   flow. And so more that they can do there is possible. We had a question in, in the, uh,

01:13:42   in the chat room about iPad pro price increase. I think we mentioned this on a previous show.

01:13:46   I didn't predict it in my column, which although I probably should have is like, yes,

01:13:50   I do. I think the existence of the iPad air with a lot of those pro features probably means that

01:13:54   the iPad pro is going to be more expensive. **Ezra Kleinman** I just remembered one thing

01:13:58   that I just wanted to just say for the record sake. Uh, I think that the iPhone will get a

01:14:03   higher, higher refresh rate display. I think that would be one of the things that it gets.

01:14:06   **Beserat Debebe** I thought about making that prediction. I don't think I did. Um,

01:14:10   I do think that it's very possible, especially on the pro models, promotion on the, on the pro.

01:14:15   Sure. And also, uh, that there will likely be a smaller year over year, uh, for user

01:14:23   features for iOS. I think that that, that seems like a, a pretty, pretty solid pick as well.

01:14:28   **Beserat Debebe** Yeah. I just, they've got a lot going on right now and they rolled out a bunch of

01:14:33   stuff and, and maybe this is also wish casting, but I feel like this would be a really good year

01:14:38   for Apple to spend its, its development cycles, fixing bugs, tightening integration, improving

01:14:46   the technologies that it's trying to push along, whether it's catalyst or Swift UI, getting, you

01:14:53   know, whatever they need to do for new Apple Silicon max, which ends up being software features

01:14:58   that get pulled out of what we think of as the traditional software cycle, because they're

01:15:02   coupled to hardware instead of being coupled to the annual release. But it's still, it's still

01:15:07   work, right? It's still work for them to do that stuff. And there's going to be a lot of that.

01:15:11   There are going to be a lot of new Apple Silicon max. So I feel like across their platforms, this

01:15:16   would be a really good year to like focus in on some of the details and get everything kind of

01:15:21   like moving along and not like, I just don't think they need a bombshell release. I feel like they've

01:15:27   had a couple of really dramatic years and it would be good for them to calm it down a little bit.

01:15:32   I do think that the main feature of iOS 15 will be more user customization features.

01:15:42   Yeah, I think that that's a good pick.

01:15:43   And I think that that can be simple, right? Like in what is required of developers and of Apple.

01:15:49   In theory, I mean, to do stuff like that.

01:15:53   I've been meaning to write a column about this and maybe I will at some point, depends on what ideas

01:15:58   I have for my Mac world columns, the idea that, um, well, I did write a version of this actually

01:16:04   for Mac world last year, which is, um, there are ways for Apple to do it, a user customization that

01:16:09   are not giving people as much control as they want, which is a very Apple thing to do where they

01:16:13   could do things like have themes where, you know, we knew, uh, themes that are available that let

01:16:21   you choose your color theme and they offer like five different themes. And they basically tell

01:16:27   all developers, if you want to support this, make five different icons. These are the themes. These

01:16:31   are the colors go, right? So it's not like free form. You can have any color and you can have,

01:16:36   it's more like, no, Apple has prescribed the ways you can personalize your phone,

01:16:39   choose your personalization among these five options, which is again, not actually

01:16:44   personalization, but, uh, I wouldn't put it past them to be regimented like that rather than having

01:16:51   it be completely free form. But I think you're right. They're going to take the lesson from

01:16:54   the, what, what spurred development of, uh, or adoption of iOS 14.

01:16:59   So, uh, you made your predictions. Uh, Ming Chi Kuo has made his, this is an article that came out,

01:17:05   uh, just yeah, but he's, he's not basing it on, uh, nonsense. He's basing it on his actual sources

01:17:11   in the supply chain. Super quick article, really like the things that actually came out. Um,

01:17:16   but I think they are worth mentioning. Uh, so AirTags still on track for 2021. I say on track,

01:17:24   on deck is probably a better phrase because I mean, the track of that product is gosh knows what

01:17:29   yeah. If you've been predicting AirTags for a few years, you might get it right. Eventually

01:17:33   Apple's first quote AR device completely unspecified, but saying they'll have one.

01:17:39   Now, what I wanted to do is something that came up when we did our year review for connected,

01:17:44   which was that Ming Chi Kuo had a report in January. And one of the things that Kuo reported

01:17:49   was that Apple would make a charging mat, which everyone thought was air power, but ended up being

01:17:55   MagSafe. Right. I wanted to mention that as a way of like Apple's first AR device could be something,

01:18:01   but not glasses. Yeah. So I have, I have a theory, which is that this is an AR developer kit

01:18:18   for WWDC. Everybody knows Apple's going to do an AR product. Everybody knows it, but one way,

01:18:26   cause you're like, how are they going to do an AR device? And do they really want to sell a

01:18:29   consumer device? That's kind of clunky and not ready to go. Or do they really have an AR AR

01:18:34   glasses ready to go? Maybe they do. But I do think that because he's so unspecific here,

01:18:40   that one possibility is that registered Apple developers can sign up to spend, I don't know what

01:18:46   amount of money to get a developer kit for AR that is very much like their developer kit for

01:18:55   Apple Silicon, which is, it's not the final tech that will be used in the product, but it will let

01:19:01   you start developing AR experiences for when Apple does. And they might even say, you know,

01:19:07   it's a great way to do AR development for the iPhone, but really everybody knows what it is,

01:19:12   which is there is an AR product coming, but this isn't it. And that would be a big step for Apple

01:19:19   in the sense that it would be acknowledging that it's doing an AR product. But I feel like they

01:19:23   have basically already done that since Tim Cook talks up AR and says it's an area of intense

01:19:27   interest, et cetera, et cetera. And that might be a way for them to dip their toe in the water here

01:19:33   a little bit, but who knows, maybe it's just a cardboard frame for your iPhone.

01:19:37   - Oh, that would be so sad. I completely agree with you that I think they've got to start. I

01:19:46   mean, and they've started, like there was stuff from WWDC even this year, right? Of like that map

01:19:50   thing where you could, you know, Apple's got to start, I think. I don't think that they should,

01:19:54   their first entry into AR should be something you strap to your face, right? Like, and we've been

01:20:00   seeing them do more and more, but I think they've got to still do little things first before going

01:20:05   that heavy. Like, I like the idea personally that they'll have some device that you'll use at home

01:20:11   that's different, right? Like more like a VR headset than an AR headset, honestly,

01:20:18   like an Oculus Quest, because I just think it's a big jump from there being nothing to me supposed

01:20:25   to wear an iPhone on my face all the time, right? It's a lot. - So I got an Oculus Quest. I think I

01:20:32   mentioned that in the upgradees, Quest 2. And it has an AR mode, which is black and white,

01:20:39   but it's brilliant. It's brilliant, especially as somebody who used the PSVR, which doesn't have

01:20:43   that and it's not good. You double, you can, there's a feature you turn on, you double tap

01:20:48   on the side and you can see, or if you leave the like AR area, it toggles into this mode. It's

01:20:53   using cameras on the device to show you what's around you. And, you know, Apple has the technology

01:21:01   to build that product, right? Apple could build that product today that is based on the iPhone.

01:21:06   It's got iPhone cameras. It's got all the sensors that are needed. Many, if not most of which are

01:21:14   already in the iPhone. So Apple making an AR headset like the Oculus Quest that's based on

01:21:21   all their iPhone tech and runs iPhone apps so that you can do VR games, but also you can put it in an

01:21:27   AR mode where you're seeing the world through the iPhone camera, which is pretty good and an overlay

01:21:34   on top of it, which is not technically, I guess, is that AR if it's a VR headset with, that's piping

01:21:43   in reality and then overlaying it, I would say it's arguable. I'm sure there's a name for it

01:21:49   that in VR and AR circles, but it's like AR inside VR, but it's cool to add. Okay. Mediated reality.

01:21:58   Mixed reality. Okay. So it's mixed reality where it's taking reality and mixing it with VR and then

01:22:04   putting it in front of you. So Microsoft's HoloLens was technically a mixed reality.

01:22:08   All right. So you're not seeing like the world with an overlay. You're seeing a VR view of the

01:22:14   world with an overlay. Apple could do that, right? Like Apple could have done that years ago. Is that

01:22:20   a product Apple wants to do? I don't know, but I look at the Oculus Quest and I think,

01:22:24   maybe they could do that. Like they could, if they wanted to, if they thought the software was there,

01:22:29   if they thought the tech was good, they could absolutely make a product like that because

01:22:33   they've got all the pieces. And that would be weird. I mean, you wouldn't want to wear that

01:22:39   around like the world, but you could wear it in your house and sometimes be in VR mode and

01:22:45   sometimes be in AR mode. That could also be the developer kit, right? Like you could argue whether

01:22:51   if you didn't want that to be a consumer product, you could be, you know, it's like, well, the

01:22:56   developer kits just for in the house, but we'll do a lightweight one eventually. Cause most people

01:23:03   do not want to strap an iPhone headset thing to their face, which is what these VR headsets are.

01:23:09   So I think it's really interesting because I didn't think there'd be any AR stuff in 2021.

01:23:15   This feels, the AR still feels like something that I can't believe Apple is actually going to do,

01:23:20   but I think they're going to do it. So maybe it is this year. That would be, um, that'd be

01:23:25   interesting. That'd be fun. Yeah. Well, we're going to talk about this a lot, probably over

01:23:29   the last couple of years, but like this is like, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it.

01:23:34   They've got to tiptoe into this because the potential risk on humanity for us having

01:23:41   computers in front of our eyes all the time, I think is really, really high. Like I, I

01:23:47   get quite nervous about that thought. So if they're going to do this and they want it to work,

01:23:53   I think it's got to be very slow, very slow. A listener, a listener in the chat says that, uh,

01:23:59   that XR is, uh, is also a term that is thrown around for this mixed reality. It's the most

01:24:08   extreme, but it's good. That's uh, yeah. I'm fascinated by it. Again, my first,

01:24:12   my first moment with that on the quest two, I was like, Oh, this is great. Cause it's like

01:24:17   that moment where you're like, it was almost an apple like moment. I have to say where,

01:24:22   where you step outside of where you're supposed to be. And suddenly you see the world while you're

01:24:26   wearing your VR headset. And I was like, Oh, like, this is so good. Right? So you're not going to

01:24:31   trip over the dog when you're on your way to get the thing that you need to get and then step back

01:24:36   into the, into the play area. Like it's super smart. So if you did that at a high quality,

01:24:41   I think that would be really good. So anyway, uh, quote also thinks new AirPods. I mean,

01:24:47   that seems fair, right? Like some updates to the line. Yes. Never, never bet again. I see. I,

01:24:54   this is, this is what I need to do next year to get a fourth column out of this

01:24:58   is add in add in predictions for the other stuff because I just didn't predict any of these things.

01:25:04   You have no Apple watch prediction. No, no. I just have not bothered with that,

01:25:10   but I might need to roll them in because again, nobody ever, um, went broke, uh, betting on

01:25:17   more AirPods from Apple. It's just such a successful category for them that, that they will,

01:25:23   I don't know what it will be. I don't, I don't care what it will be. They will do more of them

01:25:28   because it's a, it's a hit for them. AirPods are a hit for them in all of their forms. So whether

01:25:33   it's new brand new fourth product in the line, or it's just updates to the individual ones,

01:25:37   they're going to keep pushing on AirPods bank it. And then something we've spoken about in this

01:25:42   episode and quote was mentioned a bunch of times more Apple Silicon, max, obviously first devices

01:25:47   with many led that almost seems obviously at this point. Yeah, I think so. It's just a matter of

01:25:52   when and the details, right? It's always, it's always what the details are. And that's the,

01:25:57   if I had a number one thing that I'm looking forward to in 2021 from Apple, it's what the

01:26:01   Apple Silicon Mac rollout strategy is for everything that we've already said on this episode.

01:26:07   When do the chips change? What do they chip change to the chips change soon or do they not?

01:26:13   And we just get more M1 max, which will feel to some people like a disappointment, which is wrong

01:26:20   because the M1 max are amazing. And if you could get an M1 Mac and an iMac, you'd be very,

01:26:26   very happy. I think I would buy one. So yeah. Um, when, when did the chips change? When do the

01:26:33   different models roll out and what models don't we see and how do the models change? Like all

01:26:37   that's wrapped up in the max in 2021, but like it's, it's this era of mystery that we've not

01:26:41   had with the Mac before, where it's pretty much just like what iteration will happen on existing

01:26:48   models. And it's a little more, uh, and we also knew like the Intel roadmap and stuff like that.

01:26:52   Now it's just, it's all this mystery of what Apple will do. So it's going to be fun.

01:26:59   This episode of upgrade is brought to you by the Upgradients who are Upgrade Plus members.

01:27:03   Well and us, I guess. Uh, if you no longer want to hear ads on this show, whilst also getting

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01:28:24   Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up for our $5 a month or $50 a year plan. So that's

01:28:31   getupgradeplus.com. Thank you so much if you sign up. Let's finish off today's episode with

01:28:37   some #AskUpgrade questions. JD asks, "Do you have Bootcamp installed on your Intel Macs?"

01:28:45   Yes, I do. I have. I don't think I've ever done it. I have Windows 10 installed on my

01:28:54   iMac. And the idea there is there have been some games. It's been a while since I've booted into

01:28:59   it, honestly. But there are some games that I have played that are Windows only. And so I have

01:29:04   booted into Bootcamp for them. It's essentially a game thing and I don't use it very often. But like

01:29:09   I played Life is Strange in there at one point for the incomparable. And every now and then there's

01:29:14   a game that somebody recommends to me and it sounds pretty good, but it's only on Windows or

01:29:18   it's Windows in a console I don't have. And I'm not going to miss doing it when if I do go to

01:29:26   Apple Silicon on the desktop here at some point and it's not compatible. I'm not going to miss

01:29:33   it too much, but I do have it and occasionally we'll go there. Josh asks, "Do you think Apple

01:29:41   will take cues from the iPad and iPhone line with the Mac and keep older M1 Macs around when they

01:29:47   eventually update them to the M2?" So like for example you can still buy say the iPhone 11? Can

01:29:57   you still buy the 11? There are old iPhones that you can still buy, right? Yes. Could you imagine

01:30:02   that Apple will keep then say like the current MacBook Air around when it updates to a different

01:30:08   MacBook Air processor? Here's what I will say. I don't think Apple is going to make two MacBook

01:30:15   Airs. Probably? Well, probably. We don't know. This is part of the great mystery. I do think what

01:30:22   will happen to answer the first part of this I think, which is I do think Apple's going to roll

01:30:26   out M2 that's not going to go to the M1 low-end systems, right? So you're going to end up with

01:30:32   Macs with M2 and Macs with M1. I don't think everything's going to get the M2. I think like

01:30:36   the MacBook Air that got the M1 is going to sit there for a while and then eventually it'll get

01:30:43   an update and will it get an update to the M2 or will it get an update to like an M1X or something

01:30:47   like that. But I think Apple is going to be able to like target their different chips and sort of

01:30:52   bring them along as the product line advances, but they're going to target different parts of the

01:30:56   product line with different versions of the chips, especially at the beginning here. Rather than

01:31:00   having here's the M2 and there's eight variations of it that go in these eight systems, it'll be

01:31:04   more like here's the M2 and these Macs have the M2 and these other Macs still have the M1 and

01:31:09   we're done. Would they make an M1, an M2 let's say or whatever MacBook Air and still sell the M1

01:31:19   MacBook Air? I want to say no, but my only hesitation is it's possible that that would

01:31:27   be a way that they could make a more expensive and less expensive version of the Air and differentiate

01:31:34   them or some other product too, whatever you want to put in there. I'm just using the Air as an

01:31:38   example. I think it's possible because you're going to start, I would say with Intel, Apple

01:31:47   sells different models with different chips and different speeds and now it's supplying its own

01:31:54   chips. So is it possible that the base MacBook Air stays on the M1 but there is a higher-end

01:32:02   configuration that uses a faster processor? And we look at it and say, oh basically there's still

01:32:08   selling the old one and now there's also a new one but it starts at $1299. Or the new one is $1099

01:32:16   but the old one is $899. I think those are all possible. I do think that they may experiment

01:32:22   with that, especially when they're trying to push the prices down and create more differentiation

01:32:28   because they don't have Intel with a supplier where they can get a whole bunch of different

01:32:32   variations of Intel processors and use those to vary their product line. They got to vary it

01:32:36   themselves if they choose to vary their product line and that would be one way they could do it.

01:32:42   So I think they might experiment with that and it might be confusing. And we might end up having to

01:32:49   say like, well there are two MacBook Airs now. There's the 2020 M1 MacBook Air which is now $899

01:32:56   but there's also the 2021 M2 MacBook Air but that's the high-end configuration. It's messy

01:33:04   but in the end if Apple just says like there are two MacBook Airs, low-end high-end,

01:33:08   they don't need to specify. The nerds will know but they don't necessarily. There's the M1 version

01:33:13   and then there's the for more money there's a more expensive faster M2 version. Take your pick.

01:33:19   They could do that. So I don't know. I don't know. They got lots of options here. It's what

01:33:25   they want to do and that's what I'm looking forward to in 2021.

01:33:29   Ryan asks, "When using a trackpad do you use natural or unnatural scrolling?"

01:33:34   Oh man. This again, I feel like this is a question from like five years ago.

01:33:39   Yeah we get asked these things every now and then. We got to open the words.

01:33:42   Back up. Well just so as a recap, at some point Apple changed the direction of scrolling in MacOS

01:33:50   and they made the new version natural which is hilarious.

01:33:55   The name makes sense. It makes sense.

01:33:58   It does but it's also hilarious because they in that moment redefined how all

01:34:02   scrolling on the Mac had worked from time immemorial to be unnatural.

01:34:05   And if you weren't willing to change you were unnatural. Yeah that's the funny thing.

01:34:09   Right and what the difference is is a metaphor because it's are you

01:34:15   touching the item on the screen and moving it downward when you scroll your fingers downward

01:34:24   or are you moving the interface of the screen when you move your fingers downward

01:34:33   which means the content flows upward.

01:34:35   The answer is I use natural scrolling. I changed immediately. I use a trackpad so it really makes

01:34:45   sense for the trackpad because it's the same gesture as an iOS which is why they changed it.

01:34:49   And there's a hilarious bug in web views in iOS and iPadOS that I find on the magic keyboard often

01:34:56   where I'll open a web view inside an app and I'll start to scroll and it does the scrolling backward

01:35:01   and it makes me laugh every time but it's there. I'm like oh it's unnatural scrolling is happening

01:35:08   now and it makes me ill. So no I embraced natural scrolling immediately and have never looked back.

01:35:15   Sorry to John Syracuse. I don't know how anyone could use the old version of scrolling now. It

01:35:21   just it seems so logical to me with the iOS devices I mean they do work in that natural

01:35:27   way because it makes sense. You would just get used to it being one way. Having two different

01:35:33   ways to scroll now is weird to me. Well the idea was that you were scrolling this is why they

01:35:38   changed it but the idea was you're scrolling the interface you're scrolling the scroll bar

01:35:42   and you move the scroll bar up by moving like again it made sense in the context

01:35:50   but it doesn't make sense when Apple changes all interfaces to be basically direct interaction.

01:35:56   Think of moving the piece of paper that is your web page or your Google doc or whatever. Once you

01:36:03   do that which you have to do for something like an iPhone once you start thinking of it that way

01:36:08   you flipped it around and that's the predominant interface approach today so you got to do it. But

01:36:14   I feel for all the unnatural scrollers out there I really do. By the way we didn't mention this

01:36:20   and follow we we I don't think we heard from a pinky a pinky unlocker but we heard from we heard

01:36:28   from people with various unusual fingers. Maybe there was one pinky unlocker. I think we got at

01:36:32   least one pinky on but they had a reason for why they used their pinky to unlock face. Oh no

01:36:38   this this I want to I want to oh yeah let me let me give you the details here because now I remember

01:36:42   but we heard from one pinky unlocker somebody uses their pinky finger to unlock their their touch id

01:36:46   on their mac and the reason given was if I'm if I'm robbed or compelled by bad people to unlock my

01:36:55   mac oh that one I nobody expects the pinky and so I'll try it with the other fingers and it won't

01:37:03   work and then they can't compel me to to log in it'll lock they lock up and go to a password

01:37:08   that was that was the excuse given by the pinky unlocker. I didn't have the energy to give my

01:37:13   response to this but now I'm going to give it here on the show if that's the situation you found

01:37:18   yourself in you have more problems than oh yeah if the computer can be unlocked or not. I know I know

01:37:25   but we did hear from some some index some ring finger unlockers and a thumb unlocker and yeah

01:37:30   you know I this is the diversity of the human experience thank you all for for doing that but um

01:37:37   but one pinky unlocker and I'm not sure I believe that person but anyway just some follow-up some

01:37:43   quick pinky unlocking follow-up while we're talking about. Final question before we wrap up today's

01:37:48   show. Barry asks on the heels of your conversations of RSS apps during the upgradees what RSS services

01:37:54   do you use to drive these apps and why? So I resisted for a very long time but I recently

01:38:02   bought a feed bin subscription. I don't want a web interface all these things are basically like web

01:38:08   interfaces for RSS which I don't want I used it newswire. I also primarily just use it on my

01:38:16   ipad so I don't really need syncing although every now and then if I open it on my mac I was

01:38:21   disappointed because you know it doesn't sync and I've added some subscriptions on my ipad and they

01:38:25   don't come to the mac. I what I really want is for them to just add an iCloud sync for my

01:38:31   subscriptions for net newswire and that would solve the problem. The reason I signed up for

01:38:36   this service at all the reason I signed up for feedbin was I wanted to use their email gateway

01:38:45   because I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters and I don't want to really read them in my email

01:38:50   client in the morning I want to read them with all my other articles in the RSS feed and they do that

01:38:55   and so that's that I'm using that's a good feature so all of those newsletters that I subscribe to

01:39:01   now pop in as feeds in net newswire thanks to feedbin. Yeah I've been meaning to do that.

01:39:07   I use feedbin too because when I wanted a service I asked all my friends what they used and they all

01:39:12   told me they used feedbin so I signed up for feedbin. Yep pretty much everyone I asked used it

01:39:20   and so that was what I went with because I was using something called inoreader before

01:39:24   and what I don't like about inoreader is after a certain period of time they just mark an article

01:39:31   as read on your behalf and I did not like that so I went with feedbin instead. If you would like

01:39:38   to send in a question for a future episode of the show just send in a tweet with the hashtag

01:39:43   askupgrade or you can use question mark askupgrade in the relayfm members discord. I would like to

01:39:50   thank smile and squarespace for the support of this episode and also for our members you can

01:39:55   sign up at getupgradeplus.com thank you so much for your support if you do that. If you want to

01:40:01   find Jason online you can go to sixcolors.com and he is @jsnell j s n e double l. Jason hosts many

01:40:08   shows at the incomparable and here on relayfm as well as do I. You can find many shows if you go to

01:40:14   relay.fm/shows not just stuff that me and Jason produce but we have many fine programs here at

01:40:19   relayfm that you may enjoy a new one to add to your queue in 2021. I am @imike and we'll be back

01:40:27   next time until then say goodbye Jason Snow goodbye Myke Early