00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade Episode 288. Today's show is brought to you by DoorDash, Pingdom, and Previs Pro.
00:00:30 ◼ ► So thank you, Doug, for doing that. But that isn't Doug's question. Doug's question is,
00:00:34 ◼ ► "Jason, do you have any digital spring cleaning routines? My current plan is to go through my photo
00:00:38 ◼ ► library and clean out nonsense photos." Well, the short version of his "no," I don't have a spring
00:00:46 ◼ ► cleaning ritual for digital things. I do try sometimes to clean things, like physically clean
00:00:53 ◼ ► things in my house and pick things up and stuff. But I do have a cleaning robot that does all my
00:01:01 ◼ ► cleaning for me, sort of, all year round. Which is, yep, exactly. So I am a latecomer to Hazel by
00:01:11 ◼ ► NoodleSoft, which is a great Mac utility. But I did get into it last year and I wrote a post about
00:01:18 ◼ ► it on Six Colors that we can link to. And I have started to use Hazel in a bunch of different places
00:01:25 ◼ ► to do a bunch of different tasks. So like my article on Six Colors is about how I use it on my
00:01:30 ◼ ► server where my, because I'm a Mac mini with a giant, you know, raid array attached to it.
00:01:35 ◼ ► And that's where all my podcast archives go. And Hazel is running on that Mac mini and it's
00:01:41 ◼ ► patrolling. And it, for certain podcasts that are timely, that are not archival in any way,
00:01:56 ◼ ► in case I need to pull it back out of the archive for an anniversary show or an end of year show,
00:02:01 ◼ ► it waits, I think, a month and then it compresses it all. So it takes up less disk space. And then
00:02:10 ◼ ► it's basically in an archive at that point. I can get it if I need it, but it's doing that.
00:02:16 ◼ ► On my Mac, I actually have it running. I have a folder that all my current working writing
00:02:21 ◼ ► documents are in called Stories. It's on Dropbox. Yeah, I thought so. And then I've got a Stories
00:02:28 ◼ ► archive. And Hazel, again, looks at that folder and says, if this file is older than whatever,
00:02:47 ◼ ► - I'm interested by this Stories folder thing. What if you started something and then you just
00:02:55 ◼ ► - Eventually, eventually after whatever a month or something, it would move to the archive. And
00:03:00 ◼ ► that happens occasionally where I start something and I want to retrieve it, but that's why the
00:03:03 ◼ ► archive exists. Stories archive is literally just a different folder. So I don't, mostly because like,
00:03:09 ◼ ► if I'm on Dropbox, if I'm loading something from a cloud service, I don't want a folder with a
00:03:24 ◼ ► - Honestly, for me, it's mostly about navigation. It's about syncing and about the fact that
00:03:29 ◼ ► sometimes, especially on iOS, the sort is wrong and you end up, it's sorted by the wrong thing,
00:03:36 ◼ ► or it's sort of backward of the right thing. So like the oldest is at the top. And that's,
00:03:40 ◼ ► when nonsense like that happens, it's a lot easier if there's only 12 things in there than if there
00:03:45 ◼ ► are a hundred. So it's mostly about that, about just like not having the list be too long,
00:03:50 ◼ ► rather than any kind of like mental overhead. But this is my long way of saying that my really,
00:03:56 ◼ ► my biggest bit of digital spring cleaning, so to speak, is that I decided to wire up a lot of
00:04:00 ◼ ► my maintenance tasks to Hazel on my Mac so that I don't have to do them. I just have the robot
00:04:10 ◼ ► that's a really good, yeah, Hazel is a very interesting application. I have it do a couple
00:04:15 ◼ ► of things for me, nothing too much. I just move some, it clears out like download folders,
00:04:24 ◼ ► - I've got that too, where it takes stuff that's been, also things in my trash. If I don't empty
00:04:30 ◼ ► the trash after a certain point, if something's been sitting in the trash for a week or two weeks
00:04:34 ◼ ► or whatever, it just deletes it and says, forget, it's gone. - Yeah, which is nice. It's just a nice
00:04:39 ◼ ► thing to have. It's especially useful if you have like a connected machine, like a machine that's
00:04:44 ◼ ► just like connected to a network, it can do a bunch of interesting stuff there, like moving
00:04:47 ◼ ► things from place to place. You put something in a folder and it triggers an action to be occurred to
00:04:52 ◼ ► it. It's very powerful. - I've thought about building more of that stuff and I might someday,
00:04:57 ◼ ► but the idea here as with any, and this is user automation, even if you don't write any scripts,
00:05:04 ◼ ► the great thing about user automation is if there's a dumb repetitive task and you could
00:05:11 ◼ ► pretty easily codify what the rules are, it's much better to have like an automated system do
00:05:17 ◼ ► it for you so your brain never has to deal with it. And Hazel is actually a great way for Mac users
00:05:22 ◼ ► to do that if you're acting especially on files. Sometimes you have to think of the logic of it,
00:05:27 ◼ ► you'd be like, "What is my reasoning here?" But once you figure it out, it's really great
00:05:32 ◼ ► because you figure out the rule, it takes you a couple of minutes, and then you never, ever think
00:05:36 ◼ ► about that thing again. It's pretty great. - Until it breaks. - Until it breaks. That can happen.
00:05:41 ◼ ► It's a computer. Computers ruin everything. - I did just realize one of mine is broken,
00:05:45 ◼ ► which is it's not Hazel's fault. So I have had for years Dropbox automatically look at my camera
00:05:53 ◼ ► role through the Dropbox iOS app whenever I open it and just upload photos to the camera uploads
00:05:58 ◼ ► folder. And then I have Hazel scripts looking at that, taking those photos, and then just sorting
00:06:04 ◼ ► them by date and putting them in their own folders in just a Dropbox. I just have a very large
00:06:09 ◼ ► Dropbox folder with tons of photos in it organized by year or month. I've had this going for years
00:06:15 ◼ ► just as a tertiary backup. I have my photos backed up in multiple places. This is just one of them.
00:06:22 ◼ ► But I have now just realized, as we were talking about this, that I never turned on camera uploads
00:06:29 ◼ ► when I got my new iPhone. So since September, none of these photos have backed up. So I now
00:06:35 ◼ ► need to turn that on, manually make sure those photos are in there, and turn all the scripts
00:06:40 ◼ ► back on again. - I have a script that broke that is a Dr. Drang, the internet's favorite...
00:06:47 ◼ ► - Snowman. - Snowman, yes. He wrote... So he flies a lot out of Midway Airport, which is in Chicago,
00:06:53 ◼ ► which is a Southwest Airlines airport. And I fly a lot of Southwest out of San Francisco and Oakland.
00:06:58 ◼ ► And he wrote a script that's great because Southwest, you have to check in 24 hours before
00:07:03 ◼ ► to get your seat assignment... Well, not seat assignment, your line assignment. And so the
00:07:07 ◼ ► faster you check in, if you check in right 24 hours before, you'll get to board the plane faster.
00:07:12 ◼ ► Whereas if you don't pay attention and you check in 18 hours before or whatever, you will be at
00:07:16 ◼ ► the end of the line and you might not get a place to put your bag. So you really have to do it 24
00:07:23 ◼ ► hours before. And I love Southwest Airlines because I've just, I mean, I've internalized all of it.
00:07:26 ◼ ► Dr. Drang points out that the calendar scripts that you download from, or calendar files you
00:07:32 ◼ ► download from Southwest are not as informative as they should be. And so he wrote a script
00:07:55 ◼ ► one for 24 hours in advance and one for 24 hours and 15 minutes in advance. It's great.
00:08:01 ◼ ► I mean, it's brilliant because he rewrote the ICS file that you download from southwest.com
00:08:20 ◼ ► when I had it set to download, when it downloads an ICS file, the way Dr. Drang set it up is,
00:08:27 ◼ ► and the ICS file contains the string Southwest Airlines, which it does, then run the script
00:08:34 ◼ ► and then add it to the calendar. And that broke. And it turns out, I think it broke because
00:08:40 ◼ ► Fantastical 3 has a quick look plugin for ICS files. And it seems to make the ability to look
00:08:54 ◼ ► but this is my guess. So now, if you say it contains the inside of the file contains this
00:09:04 ◼ ► And so it stopped working. But for that, one of the nice things about the way Safari is set up
00:09:11 ◼ ► in OS X is Apple's system is tracking what site you downloaded files from so that they can warn
00:09:18 ◼ ► you. They can say, this is a file downloaded from southwestairlines.com or southwest.com.
00:09:28 ◼ ► if it's an ICS file and the place it was downloaded from is southwest.com, then run the script.
00:09:34 ◼ ► And it does it. And it's like magic because you click the button and the file comes down. It gets
00:09:39 ◼ ► rewritten by Dr. Drang's script and my calendar app pops up and says, what calendar would you
00:09:43 ◼ ► like to add this to? And then it's got there with all the alarms and everything. It's pretty awesome.
00:09:47 ◼ ► So that's just an example. Like these things can be super complicated or super simple. And yes,
00:09:53 ◼ ► the more complicated they are, the more likely they are to break, but I still recommend it.
00:10:00 ◼ ► people's spring cleaning routines is to make sure that their automations are still working.
00:10:04 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer> Yeah. Yeah. And I was going to say, I was going to say, take, if you're,
00:10:07 ◼ ► if you're a spring cleaning aficionado, maybe take a minute to think, are there repetitive tasks that
00:10:12 ◼ ► I do that I hate that could easily be automated in some way on the iPad or on the iPhone or on the
00:10:24 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer> Yeah. I mean, you can use shortcuts. Hazel's a great example where it's
00:10:28 ◼ ► not automator. It's not Apple script. It's not a Pearl script. It's not, you know, it's,
00:10:32 ◼ ► it's none of those things. It's a nice Mac app that will help you. And Keyboard Maestro is a
00:10:38 ◼ ► nice Mac app that will help you. And yes, shortcuts on iOS can help you too. So maybe that's part of
00:10:43 ◼ ► your spring cleaning ritual is can I automate this? **Sebastian> Spring into automation. That's
00:10:53 ◼ ► **Sebastian> That's spring of automation, summer of fun. What was it? Fall of discontent? Fall of
00:10:58 ◼ ► no content or something like that. I think that was what we were going for. Thank you so much to
00:11:03 ◼ ► Doug for sending that question in. You can always send in questions to help us start the show with
00:11:07 ◼ ► the hashtag Snell Talk. Jason, we've mentioned on a previous episode that we would talk about if we
00:11:12 ◼ ► found Apple Arcade games that we thought were particularly good. Now I have one here. This
00:11:17 ◼ ► doesn't mean that there hasn't been any good ones since the last time. What it does mean is I have
00:11:20 ◼ ► not been playing as many iOS games as I would like over the last few months. But when Crossy Road
00:11:26 ◼ ► Castle appeared, I immediately checked it out because I love the original Crossy Road. And I
00:11:31 ◼ ► was really keen to see what a follow-up game from these developers would be on Apple Arcade because
00:11:38 ◼ ► the obvious continuation is like diving deeper into free-to-play mechanics, right? Like in the
00:11:44 ◼ ► IAP stuff, but if it's on Apple Arcade, they're not going to have that. So I was really keen to
00:11:48 ◼ ► see what this game was. And it is very, very different to Crossy Road. So it has a lot of
00:11:55 ◼ ► visual things and some ideas in, you know, you can collect different characters and stuff, but
00:12:00 ◼ ► is effectively like a room/dungeon running, solving platform game. So yeah, it's got more in common
00:12:07 ◼ ► with a classic Mario game than it does with Frogger. And I typically do not enjoy games
00:12:13 ◼ ► where you have like fake buttons, like left, right, and jump, but the mechanics are so simple
00:12:19 ◼ ► and it seems like the recognition of your movements is really refined very well. So I like
00:12:24 ◼ ► it. And also it's lots of evolving mechanics. You're only ever doing one thing for a very short
00:12:30 ◼ ► period of time. You get through a room, you go to a new room, a new puzzle to solve, and they're using
00:12:35 ◼ ► different ways of traversing the environment. It's a fun game. I really enjoy it. So you should try
00:12:41 ◼ ► this one if you haven't. I have also played this game a lot and it's great, fun. And it hits the
00:12:47 ◼ ► spot in terms of it being like a good casual game where I can play it a little bit and have fun and
00:12:52 ◼ ► then set it aside and I'm not committing to a lot of time and it provides, you know, action and it
00:12:58 ◼ ► starts out easy and then it gets progressively harder and you have to solve the puzzles and
00:13:01 ◼ ► learn the new mechanics. And yeah, if you're an Apple Arcade person, give it a shot. And it's got
00:13:07 ◼ ► a multiplayer mode and it's got a controller mode and I haven't tried any of those. I think those
00:13:10 ◼ ► would actually be a lot of fun, but I've just been using touch controls on my iPad because that's
00:13:14 ◼ ► primarily how I play games and it's a lot of fun. Yeah, I've been playing on my iPhone because that's
00:13:20 ◼ ► how if I'm going to play an iOS game, it tends to be there. So yeah, this is a great addition. If you
00:13:24 ◼ ► haven't checked it out already, you should. I want to talk about the touch on the smart keyboard
00:13:28 ◼ ► again from last week's episode. We had a question from Myke that maybe we didn't completely talk
00:13:35 ◼ ► about. I know I didn't mention my feelings on it about whether we would run a function row on a
00:13:40 ◼ ► smart keyboard. I know that you mentioned it because you replied to Myke on Twitter and said so,
00:13:46 ◼ ► but we didn't really get into depth of it. And what I kind of wanted to know is what functions
00:13:52 ◼ ► would you actually want on a smart keyboard, like an iPad focused keyboard? The truth about the
00:13:59 ◼ ► function row is that the way Apple, because the wrong thing to do is to say, well, the function
00:14:05 ◼ ► row is dumb because it's F1, F4, F8, whatever. People don't use that. But Apple already threw
00:14:10 ◼ ► that out and redefined it. And the function row on Apple devices means something completely different.
00:14:15 ◼ ► It's brightness adjustment and it's screen brightness adjustment and potentially backlighting
00:14:22 ◼ ► adjustment, especially if there was a backlit keyboard. The media controls are there, right?
00:14:36 ◼ ► So for me, I use on other keyboards on the iPad, I use it to adjust screen brightness and do media
00:14:42 ◼ ► control all the time. Now, we also know that in the next version of iOS or iPadOS 13, among the
00:14:49 ◼ ► new keyboard commands are these ability to bind keys to different functions. I cannot wait to bind
00:14:56 ◼ ► the escape key on every keyboard that I connect to my iPad to home. That's gonna be so good.
00:15:03 ◼ ► Imagine being able to potentially bind those function keys to other things too. So you could
00:15:11 ◼ ► fire off scripts or do other commands or things from there. So I think that's where it's going
00:15:14 ◼ ► and that's why I want the function keys. But the primary reason is for brightness and media
00:15:24 ◼ ► sliding down to get control center to make it a little bit brighter or a little bit darker
00:15:29 ◼ ► is really annoying. And on my Mac, I can do that on the keyboard and I do all my media controls on
00:15:33 ◼ ► the keyboard and I can't. It's frustrating that I can't do that on the smart keyboard. So I feel
00:15:38 ◼ ► like it's a real missing thing that Apple could address. They could get away with doing it via
00:15:44 ◼ ► other keyboard shortcuts if they made it that you could assign system-wide keyboard shortcuts of any
00:15:50 ◼ ► kind. But I think it's a more likely scenario that they'd have a little tiny function row up there
00:15:54 ◼ ► with controls, device controls on it. I would, the types of controls I always want to see like home,
00:16:02 ◼ ► to be able to access multitasking is good. I would like to be able to bring up the emoji keyboard,
00:16:10 ◼ ► stuff like that would be, I would really like. So those are the types of things that I would love
00:16:15 ◼ ► to see on an iPad focused function row, because I don't think all of the same really apply. And I
00:16:24 ◼ ► like that on the bridge keyboard, they have like a home button and stuff like that and they bring
00:16:28 ◼ ► up the keyboard. Yeah, lock button. Yeah, and a dictation button, if that's something that you
00:16:31 ◼ ► want. Like they're all useful things where you can add different functions. What about, I mean,
00:16:41 ◼ ► bar on a product like this? We had somebody write into us about that. Like, I don't think that Apple
00:16:49 ◼ ► I don't know. I mean, I feel like the touch bar is Apple trying to bring iPad technology to
00:16:57 ◼ ► the Mac. And so I'm not sure it really makes any sense on the iPad. Also technically, right? Like,
00:17:06 ◼ ► I think the amount of power draws is probably not something that could be done with the smart
00:17:11 ◼ ► connector. And I think that the thickness and the weight of it, like it's going to make it a super
00:17:16 ◼ ► thick, heavy thing. One way I thought it could be done, I don't think I'm going to do this, but like
00:17:20 ◼ ► E Ink could be a way to make it maybe a cheaper and lighter and easier to use touch bar. But at
00:17:27 ◼ ► that point, why even bother? But it could be a way. Yeah, I do this. Remember back to the Mac,
00:17:32 ◼ ► this would be like back to the iPad. It's like we built this thing to make iPad things on a Mac,
00:17:37 ◼ ► and now we're bringing it back to the iPad where it's just a thing again. I don't know. I don't
00:17:43 ◼ ► know. I just think technically it's not possible right now. It's an interesting question I had
00:17:47 ◼ ► never considered, which is what about a touch bar? But it's like, I can't see it because I think it
00:17:51 ◼ ► would require some massive re-engineering and I'm not quite sure it would make sense and it would
00:17:55 ◼ ► make it a much heavier kind of product. And does Apple want to go down that route of making a
00:18:02 ◼ ► bridge style keyboard that basically turns your iPad into a full-on laptop, including the weight?
00:18:07 ◼ ► My gut feeling is no, that they want to still keep it kind of light so that people will walk
00:18:12 ◼ ► around with the iPad with this keyboard. By the way, before we move on, I have to mention
00:18:17 ◼ ► another amazing piece of feedback we got, which is I made a joke last week about how maybe the
00:18:23 ◼ ► solution to backlighting on the smart keyboard pro on the new iPad Pro could be front lighting,
00:18:30 ◼ ► where there'd be like a spotlight on the iPad Pro that would shine down on the keyboard so you could
00:18:35 ◼ ► see your fingers. This really happened. Apparently, I think the ThinkPad, the old IBM ThinkPad at one
00:18:43 ◼ ► point had this feature where they would put a little light down on the keyboard so you could
00:18:49 ◼ ► see it. So I was just kidding, but somebody actually thought that was a good idea once.
00:18:55 ◼ ► This episode is brought to you in part by Previs Pro. If you make films or create videos,
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00:20:22 ◼ ► now. Our thanks to Previs Pro for their support of this show and all of Relay FM. Alright Jason Snell,
00:20:28 ◼ ► I wanted to tell you about the App Store review guidelines. I know that they're your favorite
00:20:32 ◼ ► thing. I know you love poring over the App Store review guidelines, but there's a couple of changes
00:20:36 ◼ ► that I wanted to mention. One of them, which is kind of follow up, is that you remember we were
00:20:40 ◼ ► talking about sign in with Apple and we hadn't seen it very much. Well the deadline has been set,
00:20:46 ◼ ► sign in with Apple must be featured and implemented by April 30th. That's the deadline and I don't
00:20:52 ◼ ► know about you, but I've been seeing it more and more recently. I noticed it on the Dropbox app,
00:20:56 ◼ ► I've noticed it in Creative Cloud, so developers are implementing sign in with Apple now,
00:21:02 ◼ ► which is fun. I mean even setting up an Android phone, it's fun to see it there, right? So if you
00:21:07 ◼ ► download Dropbox for Android, there is a sign in with Apple button because they have to offer that,
00:21:17 ◼ ► information is. So that was kind of a funny thing to see. But another thing is Apple have clarified,
00:21:22 ◼ ► I think finally, how advertising can be used in push notifications. So this is what the
00:21:28 ◼ ► new guidelines say, "Push notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing
00:21:33 ◼ ► purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed
00:21:39 ◼ ► in your app's UI and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such
00:21:44 ◼ ► messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges." So previously,
00:21:50 ◼ ► this wording kind of said that the practice was not allowed at all, that you could not use push
00:21:54 ◼ ► notifications for marketing. And we've seen over time, this is kind of like a meme on Twitter of
00:21:59 ◼ ► not only companies breaking this rule, but Apple themselves, right? Just like, here's a push
00:22:04 ◼ ► notification about Apple TV, here's a push notification about the credit card stuff. So
00:22:09 ◼ ► you would expect now, I think now that they've refined this, that maybe they will be enforcing
00:22:14 ◼ ► these rules. So companies that are sending them without opt in or without a way to opt out would
00:22:20 ◼ ► be good. So there you go. That's just something I wanted to mention. I think it's important.
00:22:31 ◼ ► I also had one piece of upstream follow up for you, Jason. So on last episode, I said that the
00:22:37 ◼ ► Simpsons were not confirmed to come to Disney Plus, but it turns out now they are. This is
00:22:42 ◼ ► fascinating. So on March 3rd, so I think it was the day after our episode, Sky and Disney announced
00:22:48 ◼ ► a deal that would allow Sky to sell and display Disney Plus on their SkyCube box. It's like their
00:22:53 ◼ ► set-top box, which is a bit of an omnibox, right? You can get Netflix on it and stuff like that,
00:22:58 ◼ ► like it has apps. You still have to pay, but you pay through Sky and I think Sky take a cut
00:23:04 ◼ ► is my assumption. But Disney and Sky came to this arrangement. The deal also gave Sky the quote,
00:23:12 ◼ ► "first pay window rights to a bunch of upcoming 20th century films." So they would get it before
00:23:16 ◼ ► any other service, right? Before it would then go to Disney Plus, presumably. The very next day,
00:23:22 ◼ ► Disney announced that Simpsons would be a part of Disney Plus. So obviously as part of this deal,
00:23:28 ◼ ► Disney were like, "Look, we're going to give you all of this, but we want to share the Simpsons
00:23:31 ◼ ► rights now." And so I assume that's what's happened because now Disney Plus have confirmed
00:23:37 ◼ ► that all of the Simpsons will be on the service. So I think that's great because there's a lot of
00:23:43 ◼ ► content. That's a lot of content for Disney Plus. And I think if a territory doesn't have something
00:23:50 ◼ ► as big as the 300 episodes of The Simpsons, it makes it less of a good deal. To know that,
00:23:59 ◼ ► like, "Oh, this great content is available in other markets, but we can't get it, but we're
00:24:03 ◼ ► still paying the same amount of money." That would have been frustrating. So I'm pleased to see that.
00:24:08 ◼ ► So it was just a funny way that it all unfolded. It's one of those things that seem to be behind
00:24:31 ◼ ► world events bleed into technology, but it is bleeding in in a big way. And there's a lot of
00:24:38 ◼ ► interesting things coming out of it, so let's talk about it. So since our last episode, Jason,
00:24:42 ◼ ► Google have officially canceled Google I/O. This was set for May. Google had already announced it.
00:24:50 ◼ ► People have already been in the lottery. They bought their tickets. Google is refunding the
00:24:55 ◼ ► tickets, and anybody who won a ticket in the lottery automatically gets entered in for the
00:25:00 ◼ ► next year. Yeah, I think they can even choose. I think they can choose, like, 21, 22, or 23.
00:25:04 ◼ ► If you can't do next year, you could defer it even further. Which is even better. I didn't know that
00:25:10 ◼ ► part, but that's even better. Google haven't been completely clear yet what their plans are going to
00:25:14 ◼ ► be for I/O. I think it's clear to assume what they're going to be. Probably exactly the same
00:25:20 ◼ ► as what we expect Apple's will be. That they will do a media, well, possibly media invited event
00:25:26 ◼ ► where they should do their keynote, and they'll do that somewhere else, probably at their headquarters.
00:25:37 ◼ ► the same as they would have anyway, but it will all be made without anybody in an audience.
00:25:44 ◼ ► That's that. Apple pulled out South by Southwest. Apple were going to be showing off trailers and
00:25:51 ◼ ► stuff with new content coming to Apple TV+. Then South by Southwest was canceled. It wasn't because
00:25:58 ◼ ► of that. You can't fire us. We quit. Yeah, the whole thing got canceled. But yeah, Apple had
00:26:05 ◼ ► already, along with a lot of people. The way this generally works is that these events that have
00:26:09 ◼ ► multiple participants, the participants all start dropping out and then it gets canceled or
00:26:15 ◼ ► postponed. Sometimes we're going to be asking the question a lot over the next few months about
00:26:20 ◼ ► when is a cancellation, when is a postponement, what is the difference? Because some of these,
00:26:26 ◼ ► like the Comic-Con in Seattle got postponed till summer, which is great, except you try to imagine
00:26:33 ◼ ► how are they going to find all the hotel rooms and the conference center space in the summer,
00:26:38 ◼ ► if they can even have it then. And it's a question of is a postponement a soft cancellation?
00:26:50 ◼ ► No, I think so. And the fact is we don't really know how this is going to go, but yeah,
00:26:55 ◼ ► I think that some of it is softens the blow. We're just going to postpone. Gives them the option to
00:27:00 ◼ ► fully cancel it later, but lets them keep their options open. Santa Clara County in California,
00:27:05 ◼ ► which is a county that includes San Jose, which is particularly, and also Cupertino and everywhere,
00:27:12 ◼ ► has urged technology companies to consider canceling any large-scale events. They have not,
00:27:17 ◼ ► as some people are kind of claiming, said you cannot do this. They are saying we would prefer
00:27:29 ◼ ► little increment toward the cancellation of WWDC, and something that we have been talking about for
00:27:37 ◼ ► a while. And I think, not only do I have a hard time believing that they would have WWDC now,
00:27:47 ◼ ► but I assume they've already decided not to have it. And it's all about coming out with the
00:27:52 ◼ ► strongest announcement of what the replacement for it, if there is one, is going to look like,
00:27:58 ◼ ► rather than it being, you know, I don't think that we haven't heard from Apple because they're
00:28:01 ◼ ► debating it. I suspect Apple has decided not to do it, and is trying to figure out how to go out
00:28:07 ◼ ► with a message of what the new thing will be like. Because how can you, your county is saying,
00:28:13 ◼ ► don't do this. So I don't know how you can say, no, what we would like to do is fly in from all
00:28:19 ◼ ► over the world, thousands of people, and then have them in close quarters in Santa Clara, and
00:28:27 ◼ ► have our most important platform building employees also in that building, and they'll all
00:28:34 ◼ ► like bump into each other and stuff, and then we'll all go back. Seems like a bad idea. Seems like a
00:28:39 ◼ ► really bad idea. Seems like a really bad idea at all, doesn't it? Then John Prosser, the YouTube
00:28:44 ◼ ► channel Front Page Tech, claims that they have an internal source at Apple stating there will not be
00:28:49 ◼ ► a media event for products in March. Prosser's kind of, I've been seeing him around recently
00:28:56 ◼ ► with lots of sources and stuff that seems to be turning out true. I'll take this. He also
00:29:00 ◼ ► published a memo, which was also obtained by Bloomberg, from Tim Cook to Apple employees
00:29:06 ◼ ► urging them to work at home where possible this coming week. The idea of a no media event for
00:29:14 ◼ ► products in March doesn't mean no products in March, but we also don't know. They could just
00:29:19 ◼ ► release products, they could do briefings if they wanted to, but again, it is not wild to
00:29:30 ◼ ► for practical reasons and for public relations reasons. You don't want to be seen assembling
00:29:38 ◼ ► hundreds of people. And as we discussed last week, Apple can do product rollouts without events.
00:29:45 ◼ ► They don't need the events. We saw it with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. They can do small scale
00:29:50 ◼ ► briefings with people and with journalists in controlled environments, one-on-one, one-on-two,
00:29:58 ◼ ► a group of 10, group of five. They can do those things where they can kind of have more control
00:30:04 ◼ ► over it and not have the big public environment. And those groups are much smaller, right? It's not
00:30:09 ◼ ► every single person from that giant theater met in a small group. It's a much smaller group of
00:30:15 ◼ ► people who actually get those conversations to happen and roll out the products that way.
00:30:21 ◼ ► They absolutely can do that. And this is sort of what my gut feeling was a few weeks ago is that
00:30:33 ◼ ► And everything gets taken back a notch in terms of human interaction because that's where we are
00:30:39 ◼ ► right now. Which is the right way to go. And in the same way that Apple is, along with many
00:30:45 ◼ ► tech companies telling their people to work at home where they can, they're guaranteeing people
00:30:51 ◼ ► that work in situations that can't be worked from home. If you maybe work on site for some reason
00:30:58 ◼ ► and you cannot do the work that you do from home, Apple is guaranteeing the hourly rates for those
00:31:04 ◼ ► people, which I think is the right thing to do. Some Apple retail stores are canceling events and
00:31:10 ◼ ► removing a portion of their seats to discourage people hanging around. Yeah, I heard from people
00:31:14 ◼ ► who work at Apple retail that their approach is evolving even if they're not closing stores.
00:31:22 ◼ ► They're canceling high profile events and field trips and all of this stuff. They're not doing
00:31:31 ◼ ► that stuff. They're scaling everything back. And it sounds like the retail stores, you know,
00:31:40 ◼ ► they have those seats, they have chairs, and they have those little cubes, those little wood cubes.
00:31:45 ◼ ► It sounds like they've all been instructed to take about half of those out of the store.
00:31:54 ◼ ► because they want to kind of reduce the load of concern of potential threat in the Apple store.
00:32:03 ◼ ► This is not a time for big congregations, including at Apple retail. So I think we'll see more of this
00:32:08 ◼ ► even if they stay open. The idea that, you know, we're gonna phase out events for a while. We're
00:32:14 ◼ ► gonna phase out seating areas so that we're not encouraging town squares or whatever. Like,
00:32:20 ◼ ► we don't really want you hanging about in large groups. We want you to kind of come in and then
00:32:27 ◼ ► Matt Fingert (guest): And look, something we can't comprehend right now, and we really can't,
00:32:31 ◼ ► is how this is going to impact technology and Apple's products over the next year. Every day,
00:32:36 ◼ ► I'm seeing different reports from analysts about whether there is or isn't delays on products.
00:32:40 ◼ ► Right now, people are saying, "Oh, it's going to be delayed for months." And other people are
00:32:44 ◼ ► saying, "Apple got it all done." So it is just not possible for us to see, but we will as time
00:32:52 ◼ ► Eric Michael (guest): We literally don't know if that March event postponement is because it's
00:32:56 ◼ ► an event or because they can't get the products. We don't, or both, right? It's probably both.
00:33:01 ◼ ► Matt Fingert (guest): The only one we don't know for sure is the iPhone. When does the iPhone come
00:33:05 ◼ ► out? Then we'll know if Apple was here, because everything else, we don't know. But you know
00:33:09 ◼ ► there's an iPhone in September, but if the iPhone comes out in October, then we'll see, "Ah, okay,
00:33:47 ◼ ► Eric Michael (guest): Okay, good. Mini-LED, by the way, this is not the micro-LED that has been
00:33:54 ◼ ► talked about, that's almost like OLED, as a competitor for OLED. Mini-LED, and we'll link,
00:34:01 ◼ ► Sina did a nice explainer about it, but mini-LED is smaller banks of LED backlighting. Any screen
00:34:07 ◼ ► that does LED, you've got the screen, and then you've got light behind it shining through it.
00:34:11 ◼ ► And on TVs, you can have this sort of like active backlighting where these dimming zones,
00:34:17 ◼ ► like if it's darker, they get darker, and if it's brighter, they get brighter. And it's a way to,
00:34:21 ◼ ► since you can't control every single pixel, like OLED or micro-LED, to get more dynamic range.
00:34:28 ◼ ► So like I've got an active dimming TV, and it's not, it's HDR, but it's not an OLED. And as a
00:34:37 ◼ ► result, it's, and sometimes you can see it, it's dimming zones of the screen. Well, mini-LED,
00:34:43 ◼ ► those zones are a lot smaller. The way it's described by the the CNET explainer is that
00:34:48 ◼ ► if you took the screen off and just saw the mini-LED display behind it, what you would see is
00:34:54 ◼ ► like a super low resolution black and white version of the picture, if that makes sense. So,
00:35:06 ◼ ► which means that the darker parts get darker and the lighter parts get lighter, and you end up with
00:35:11 ◼ ► a more refined backlighting scheme that gets you a better quality picture, and the brighter stuff
00:35:17 ◼ ► seems brighter, and the darker stuff seems darker, and you get better dynamic range. So
00:35:21 ◼ ► mini-LED, just to be clear, it is a more advanced and precise active backlighting system,
00:35:28 ◼ ► not an OLED-like thing where every pixel is controlling its own light. That's micro-LED
00:35:35 ◼ ► or OLED. So the products that we'll be getting this technology, because clearly this is something
00:35:41 ◼ ► that Apple is looking to roll out to everything, it would appear. So over the next two years,
00:35:46 ◼ ► 12.9-inch iPad Pro, 10.2-inch iPad, 16-inch MacBook Pro, the 14.1-inch MacBook Pro, which
00:35:53 ◼ ► is a product that doesn't currently exist, and 7.9-inch iPad Mini sometime in 2020, and 27-inch
00:36:01 ◼ ► iMac Pro in Q4 2020. Is that a new iMac Pro I hear? Yes, believe it or not, the product is not
00:36:14 ◼ ► Qo did not give dates for any other of the products in this report, but I guess there's
00:36:20 ◼ ► some logic you can apply here. Like, one, you would not expect the first iPad to get this technology
00:36:26 ◼ ► to be the iPad Mini. That would seem peculiar, unless they radically redesigned the iPad Mini
00:36:34 ◼ ► and made it like a new big thing. But the 12.9-inch iPad has been rumored to be getting a
00:36:40 ◼ ► second update after the first update, if that ever comes. So it could be then, in September. And I
00:36:48 ◼ ► guess you would also expect to see a 14-inch MacBook earlier than, like, the end of the year?
00:36:56 ◼ ► Yeah, what's unclear here is, are there other device generations before the Mini LED technology?
00:37:02 ◼ ► Because obviously Min-Chi-Kuo's source here is a Mini LED manufacturer or component manufacturer.
00:37:09 ◼ ► So he can say, "Oh, there's going to be a 14.1-inch MacBook Pro with Mini LED." And we're like,
00:37:15 ◼ ► "Oh, there isn't one of those now, that's interesting." There could still be a 14.1-inch
00:37:25 ◼ ► Mm-hmm. So there's a lot of interesting things here. I think really, the thing that I like the
00:37:31 ◼ ► most about this report is the iPad Mini and the iMac Pro. Because I like the idea of the iPad Mini
00:37:40 ◼ ► continuing. I like the idea of the iPad Mini getting new technology, because it means we
00:37:45 ◼ ► could see a redesigned iPad Mini, which could be a very interesting product, right? An iPad Mini with
00:37:51 ◼ ► Face ID and super thin bezels, that's like a little pocket computer. I like the thought of
00:37:57 ◼ ► that product. And also the fact that the iMac Pro is going to continue is interesting. It would be
00:38:06 ◼ ► funny in a way for me, because if that is, I don't think we'll see probably any change to the iMac
00:38:11 ◼ ► Pro until then, maybe. That would be funny because of just how long it would have been around for.
00:38:22 ◼ ► Yep. That's not surprising to me at all. If he had said 2021, I would have been like, wow,
00:38:27 ◼ ► that's... But Q4 2020, so it's a three-year cycle for it. And in the meantime, they built the Mac
00:38:34 ◼ ► Pro. I don't think that's unrealistic. And I would hope that it would keep getting updates every
00:38:41 ◼ ► couple of years from now on if they're going to keep it around, which I think they should.
00:38:47 ◼ ► I don't know if we've ever given our full case for the iMac Pro, but I think it's embedded in our
00:38:51 ◼ ► discussion of the Mac Pro over the last few years, which is the Mac Pro is an extreme product. The
00:38:56 ◼ ► iMac Pro is less extreme and has a lot going for it, unless you need the expansion stuff. But for
00:39:01 ◼ ► most users, even the iMac is pretty powerful. The iMac Pro is a great buy if you don't need
00:39:07 ◼ ► that internal stuff, if you don't need cards and internal storage and all the other stuff that the
00:39:12 ◼ ► Mac Pro gives you, you just need processor power. The iMac Pro is pretty great and I love mine.
00:39:22 ◼ ► I mean, I don't want to pay and I can't really afford the Mac Pro that I would want, honestly.
00:39:28 ◼ ► But the iMac Pro gives me all of the power that I need in a form factor that I want because I also
00:39:34 ◼ ► don't need to buy a monitor. It makes it a great machine. It makes it the Pro machine that we want
00:39:42 ◼ ► it makes it the Pro machine that we would have bought, right? Like a Mac Pro in this kind of
00:39:47 ◼ ► price range is the product we would have had if the iMac Pro didn't exist. So it's kind of perfect
00:39:52 ◼ ► for that. So I am also very pleased to see that it is continuing to persist as a product in Apple's
00:39:59 ◼ ► Yeah, for sure. No, this is fascinating stuff. The 12.9 inch iPad Pro, there's a question like,
00:40:12 ◼ ► David ELLIS That would make sense if they are going to do a second revision in one year,
00:40:17 ◼ ► which is not out of the ordinary, like it's not unheard of, that they may just do it to one of
00:40:29 ◼ ► Tim Cynova It could also be that what they're planning on rolling out is this, right? Because
00:40:33 ◼ ► it's between now and the end of 2021. Maybe their first mini LED product is the iPad Pro 12.9.
00:40:40 ◼ ► And it gets that now and the 11 doesn't. And they say, you know, because I think it's not terrible
00:40:46 ◼ ► for Apple to say the bigger iPad Pro has some things that the smaller iPad Pro doesn't, right?
00:40:51 ◼ ► Like a little bit of differentiation. Right now they're identical. A little bit of differentiation
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00:42:50 ◼ ► during our show as well. So we have a lot of stuff to talk about here today. Breaking news.
00:42:56 ◼ ► Breaking news. We have a few different stories. We're going to cover them all. First up is iOS 14
00:43:07 ◼ ► Wow. Yeah, so this is the big one. And this is something we theorized about when we were talking
00:43:16 ◼ ► about the rumors of a trackpad on those keyboards that they might build in, you know, text cursor
00:43:22 ◼ ► support or the assisted touch support or some combination thereof now. But then iOS 14 had
00:43:30 ◼ ► better figure it out, right? Like put it together in one way. And this leaked code that they say is
00:43:38 ◼ ► from iOS 14 suggests that Apple is going to, if you've got a connected pointing device,
00:43:53 ◼ ► virtual cursor. With the hand or the pointer, like the real ones. Yeah, the cursor will actually
00:43:58 ◼ ► change based on context like it does on the Mac and then it will submarine, it will disappear
00:44:09 ◼ ► you won't ever see it. But if you do have a pointing device attached, you'll see it when
00:44:13 ◼ ► you're moving it and then you'll stop. Or if you decided you want to change over to touch,
00:44:17 ◼ ► right? So like your mouse is attached but you want to start using it. Well, the cursor doesn't need
00:44:22 ◼ ► to be there at that point. Exactly. So this is big. The report claims that there are two smart
00:44:29 ◼ ► keyboards in development. Maybe one has the touch bar, Jason. One doesn't. I'm kidding. But as a
00:44:38 ◼ ► quote from the article, the presence of new smart keyboard models in these gestures heavily suggests
00:44:42 ◼ ► that the keyboard accessory will feature a standard laptop-like trackpad. Yeah, there's
00:44:46 ◼ ► even tap to click apparently as one of the options here. Although, another quote, although we could
00:44:51 ◼ ► not find information of the physical shape of the new accessories, the code findings imply
00:44:55 ◼ ► a standard laptop-like design of the keyboard above and large trackpad below. Now, my question
00:45:00 ◼ ► on this really is it kind of is basically what we were talking about last time. I would expect
00:45:06 ◼ ► and hope that there is an iOS 13 stepping stone. Well, you can't release a trackpad that doesn't do
00:45:13 ◼ ► anything. Exactly. So there has to be something. And my guess is either it will be some quick
00:45:20 ◼ ► refinements to assistive touch or it will be that text editing only thing. I really think the most
00:45:26 ◼ ► likely scenario is that out of the box, it'll do text editing and then you can turn on assistive
00:45:30 ◼ ► touch. And that's how they'll sell it. And then in a later OS release, iOS 14, they will have
00:45:38 ◼ ► more proper cursor support and it gives every developer the chance to think about that for next
00:45:43 ◼ ► time. Do you think that there's any chance that when Apple release this product that they would
00:45:48 ◼ ► say, "We are working on more"? I think there is a chance. I think there is a chance that they will
00:45:55 ◼ ► release this and say, "Here's how it works. Text editing, you can turn on this other feature." And
00:46:01 ◼ ► then it's coily saying something like, "You can expect to see more of this in the future," or,
00:46:07 ◼ ► "We're working on other great innovations in terms of cursor support on iOS. Stay tuned for that."
00:46:12 ◼ ► Wouldn't it seem that this is one of those situations where the hardware team got ahead
00:46:16 ◼ ► of the software team? Exactly. And so that's one of those things where you can't sync these things
00:46:21 ◼ ► up and everybody knows there's going to be a next version of iPad OS. So for them to say,
00:46:26 ◼ ► "We got more in store, so this is just the beginning," why not say that? They don't even
00:46:33 ◼ ► need to disclose what it is. They can keep that secrecy. But it lets Apple say, "We're just getting
00:46:46 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly. So I'm excited. I'm genuinely so excited. This is exactly what I wanted.
00:46:51 ◼ ► Yeah, I know. I kind of don't believe it. Is this a trick, Myke? Are they playing a trick on us?
00:47:05 ◼ ► They're tricking us. They're telling us everything we want to hear. And then there'll be a yoink
00:47:10 ◼ ► moment at some point when we realize that it's all a lie and there is no trackpad and there is
00:47:15 ◼ ► no cursor. It feels like that a little bit. Like this is almost too good to be true, but apparently
00:47:21 ◼ ► it is true. So that's too good. We have a couple of stories about the Apple Watch. So first up,
00:47:26 ◼ ► the Apple Watch health sensors. There seem to be some new ones on the way. So Zach is reporting
00:47:32 ◼ ► that according to code of an unreleased version of iOS 14, the same one, which we didn't mention,
00:47:41 ◼ ► Who knows how it was attained, but that's what is being reported. That there are two new sensor
00:47:47 ◼ ► capabilities for Apple Watch coming. One of them is blood oxygen levels. So this basically just
00:47:52 ◼ ► monitors the amount of oxygen in your blood. Between 95 and 100% is considered healthy.
00:47:57 ◼ ► Blood oxygen levels below 80% could lead to risks. It's possible, I guess, that this sensor would
00:48:03 ◼ ► require new hardware. Like it would need to be a different sensor. I don't know, but I assume so.
00:48:08 ◼ ► You would think it would, although what I've heard is that the hardware on some Apple Watches has
00:48:15 ◼ ► been able to do this for a long time, but it hasn't been allowed. It hasn't been regulated
00:48:21 ◼ ► and they haven't built it in. I assume this would be on a new Apple Watch, but it's possible that it
00:48:27 ◼ ► could not be. And if you've ever had the little thing like clipped to your finger where they just,
00:48:31 ◼ ► I mean, it doesn't, you can do this through skin like now, but it's these big plastic things that
00:48:36 ◼ ► go on the tip of your finger and then they look at your blood oxygen level because it's shining a
00:48:40 ◼ ► really bright light basically looking at the blood under your skin. So it's a thing that it's another
00:48:49 ◼ ► data point that could be added to health data and logged and alerts could pop up and stuff like that
00:48:57 ◼ ► for sure. And there's also some improvements coming to the ECG function on the Apple Watch.
00:49:03 ◼ ► So currently series four and five Apple Watches are not very good. They have inconclusive readings
00:49:09 ◼ ► when a heart rate is between 100 and 120 beats per minute, but this is going to be taken care of and
00:49:14 ◼ ► fixed. I'm assuming this will just be like a software update and previous watches will benefit
00:49:19 ◼ ► from this because it seems more like a missing feature or bug than anything else. Unless it's
00:49:24 ◼ ► a hardware issue that it's just bad at that and the new ones will be better at that. I don't know.
00:49:35 ◼ ► tracking in one report and then doubles down on it in another report. So there will be links in
00:49:40 ◼ ► the show notes for all of these reports. So you can go and read them because as is always more
00:49:44 ◼ ► details in these things that we are getting to. So sleep tracking is going to be coming to the Apple
00:49:49 ◼ ► Watch. We've heard this for a long time, but sleep goals that you could set inside of the app,
00:49:56 ◼ ► recommendations for getting better sleep, except the health app will say, "Hey, why don't you think
00:50:00 ◼ ► about this?" And as is usual with this stuff, the more data you can give to it from different areas,
00:50:06 ◼ ► the better kind of information it can give back to you. But sleep tracking has seemed like an
00:50:11 ◼ ► obvious feature for the Apple Watch for a long time and it seems like it's going to be coming
00:50:15 ◼ ► at least with watchOS 7. Maybe it needs a new Apple Watch. I don't think so, but we'll see.
00:50:23 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't think so. This is one of those where I feel fairly confident that in the end,
00:50:27 ◼ ► you can use this with any Apple Watch, but you're going to need to make sure it's charged.
00:50:31 ◼ ► And I had it where my Apple Watch was not on the charger overnight one time, and I got through
00:50:37 ◼ ► mid-afternoon the next day before it said, "I'm at 10% battery and I'm going to die very soon."
00:50:52 ◼ ► I just think that we are already there with a lot of these watches. So it should work as long as you
00:50:58 ◼ ► find some time to charge it. And I would like to think that if you were somebody using this
00:51:03 ◼ ► feature that maybe the Apple Watch could pop up and be like, "Hey, you should charge me if you
00:51:07 ◼ ► want to do sleep tracking tonight." That kind of thing I think would be kind of nice, maybe in the
00:51:11 ◼ ► middle of the afternoon. So like, "Oh, I'm not going to last. It would be great if you could
00:51:15 ◼ ► give me some juice." As you would expect, a new version of watchOS will bring new watch faces.
00:51:26 ◼ ► This is a very complex thing to explain, but you will have seen this on some watches where you have
00:51:34 ◼ ► that dial around the outside that sometimes can be moved. It makes that little clicking sound.
00:51:39 ◼ ► It's a thing for measuring speed and distance. Yeah, I would say this is very much a skeuomorphism
00:51:46 ◼ ► feature where this is a way to measure things that digital watches are great at showing you in lots
00:51:55 ◼ ► of different ways, data. But analog watches, watches, you know, old school watches with hands,
00:52:01 ◼ ► they had to come up with a way to do it. And it sounds like the tech emitter is basically that
00:52:04 ◼ ► way of doing it. And they're going to do a tech emitter on the Infograph Pro watch face, which is,
00:52:10 ◼ ► it's just funny. But I think it makes sense that this is a watch concept. So why would you not have
00:52:15 ◼ ► it available? It's the same reason that there are hands and a sweeping second hand on the Apple
00:52:20 ◼ ► watch is because it's a kind of classic thing that feels like a watch and it's an analog way to
00:52:25 ◼ ► display the data. And I would hope that they use this in some fun ways, right? Like it's a computer,
00:52:31 ◼ ► like do cool stuff with it. A photo album watch face, which I think is a good idea. You can
00:52:36 ◼ ► currently set images as a watch face, but this would actually be a photo album, so it would
00:52:40 ◼ ► scroll through. It includes shared albums, which is cute, right? So you could have like a little family
00:52:46 ◼ ► shared album and a watch face and you could all put your images into it and the watch face could
00:52:50 ◼ ► change. We do this with our Echo Show and it's very nice. So I think that's a cool idea. And this
00:52:56 ◼ ► is an interesting one, the kid Apple watch mode. So you'll be able to activate a second Apple watch
00:53:03 ◼ ► without a phone. It kind of feels like an MDM type thing, like the mobile device management
00:53:07 ◼ ► type stuff, because it would be a watch that's managed by another device or managed by the phone.
00:53:13 ◼ ► You can set what apps and services you want to be installed on it, including a school time mode,
00:53:24 ◼ ► let me ask you, Jason, do you think that this would bring different hardware in any way?
00:53:30 ◼ ► No, I think this is just being able to, like I've got a kid, honestly, I think that the way that
00:53:38 ◼ ► this works the best is I've got a kid and I don't want to give them a phone, but I would get them
00:53:43 ◼ ► an Apple watch cellular even. And that way they can call for help, they can call me, I can see
00:53:49 ◼ ► where they are, all of those things without having to have a paired Apple watch. And I expect Apple
00:53:55 ◼ ► know that people are doing this, right? Yeah, and I think people want, this is a good example where
00:54:00 ◼ ► there's a lot of cases where you give a kid a phone because you need to keep them in touch and
00:54:04 ◼ ► you want to see where they are, but you really don't want them to have a phone. They're maybe
00:54:10 ◼ ► too young to have a phone, you don't think that you want that, but you could get them an Apple watch
00:54:14 ◼ ► and then they're reachable in case of emergencies, you can send them texts, all of those things,
00:54:22 ◼ ► and all they are is they just have to keep wearing their watch and you can see where they are and all
00:54:25 ◼ ► of those things. So I think it's an interesting idea that you have to make happen so it isn't like
00:54:30 ◼ ► the premise of the Apple watch was originally, which is that your watches are all attached to
00:54:36 ◼ ► your iPhone and they're your watches and you don't want that. If you want to give one of these to the
00:54:40 ◼ ► kid, you want it to be a different number, you don't want them to see your texts, right? You
00:54:43 ◼ ► want to be able to text them and that, so it sounds like they're, this is all part of this
00:54:48 ◼ ► larger trend toward making the watch be more standalone and not completely reliant on a
00:54:54 ◼ ► specific iPhone. And this is actually kind of an interesting first step that eventually this would
00:55:00 ◼ ► be for anyone who wants to buy an Apple watch, but it's just another step along the way where there's
00:55:07 ◼ ► this idea that you can kind of spin off an extra watch for things like for kids and then, you know,
00:55:13 ◼ ► school time, like FaceTime, having the ability to do parental controls on the watch and limit like
00:55:18 ◼ ► what they can do when they're at school is a natural thing to fit into this too. And then
00:55:24 ◼ ► there's one last report from Zach. I expect there will be more this week, by the way, like we've had
00:55:30 ◼ ► a lot in the last 24 hours. I reckon that this will be another one. Oh, Benjamin Mayo published
00:55:37 ◼ ► the iPad article, by the way, the cursor article. We may have mis-credited that, so I will now
00:55:42 ◼ ► reflect. I will change my set on that in case, but yeah, I expect there's going to be a lot more at
00:55:47 ◼ ► 9 to 5 Mac over the next coming days because they're good like that. But this one is about
00:55:52 ◼ ► over-ear AirPods, which is something we've spoken about for a while on the show. Zach in the chat
00:55:57 ◼ ► room says yes to that. So... Head pods. Head pods. So they've discovered icons in this leaked code,
00:56:10 ◼ ► I do wonder if that's colors or if it's night mode, like dark mode. So that's my question,
00:56:17 ◼ ► right? Do they actually have a white one and a black one or do they have two colors of one icon?
00:56:22 ◼ ► We're not sure. We'll see. Yeah, but why would you show black headphones if they don't exist?
00:56:28 ◼ ► Well, what I mean is if you turned your UI from light to dark... Anyway. Right. But yeah, anyway.
00:56:36 ◼ ► But anyway. Okay. I would love it if we would see these colors on other AirPods, not just on the
00:56:42 ◼ ► over-ear ones. Maybe that's something that Apple will do. 9 to 5 are saying definitively that these
00:56:47 ◼ ► are not Beats headphones. They're classified in the code as AirPods. There isn't really any more
00:56:52 ◼ ► information except for the fact that this is iconography, which would seem to indicate that
00:56:56 ◼ ► they exist. I wonder about this charging. Here I can like probably lightning, right, would charge
00:57:03 ◼ ► these products. Not something you'd put in a battery case, I can't imagine. No, it could be
00:57:07 ◼ ► USB-C. I could see that too. Yep. Depending on what cables you think you've got at hand,
00:57:12 ◼ ► the Sony over-ear headphones that I bought last year are USB-C charging and a lot of those are
00:57:18 ◼ ► going that way. And I don't know if your Apple... I mean, you could do lightning because that's what
00:57:23 ◼ ► the AirPods case is, is lightning. But I could see it also being USB-C. Whew. What an afternoon
00:57:36 ◼ ► Mysterious... Again, I have to say what is going on at Apple that there's code that is allegedly
00:57:44 ◼ ► from iOS 14 that has been floating around since December. I love the information, but if I'm at
00:57:51 ◼ ► Apple, I'm like, "What is happening? Why is this happening?" Well, I don't know. Something's
00:57:55 ◼ ► leaking. Something's gotten somewhere it shouldn't be, right? Like that's kind of what's going on
00:57:59 ◼ ► here is something has gotten out. Zach does confirm in the chat room that dark mode changes the widget
00:58:04 ◼ ► panel color, maintaining the glyph color. So black and white, it would seem to be. Thank you for that
00:58:08 ◼ ► clarification. Whew. Very interesting stuff. Should we do some Ask Upgrade to finish out?
00:58:14 ◼ ► I think we should. All right. Today's episode is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds.
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00:59:34 ◼ ► Time for some #AskUpgrade questions. And Sean asks, "Would you be interested in a much larger
00:59:49 ◼ ► Um, I keep thinking about how Apple could at some point make a Surface Studio style product. That's
00:59:56 ◼ ► the big kind of, it's like a Surface iMac and you can pivot it down. It's on like an easel so you
01:00:02 ◼ ► can kind of, you can put it down or it's easel style. It goes down, it goes back up. You can
01:00:08 ◼ ► have it with a keyboard and mouse. You can take it down and use the, use a stylus on it. So you
01:00:13 ◼ ► could use the Apple pencil on it and touch it. But then lift it up and have it be more like a
01:00:17 ◼ ► traditional computer thing. I keep thinking like a 4K iPad kind of concept could be pretty cool.
01:00:22 ◼ ► Let me tell you, if iPadOS has the ability to do cursors and external devices like natively on the
01:00:29 ◼ ► system, at that point, there's no reason why you couldn't not only hook up an iPad to an external
01:00:35 ◼ ► display, but build a device like this that is both keyboard and trackpad, let's say, or keyboard and
01:00:43 ◼ ► mouse, and touch with the pencil so that you've got an even bigger Surface for things like,
01:00:48 ◼ ► especially for artists, but for anybody who has the ability to do both. But the ergonomics are
01:00:53 ◼ ► super important if you have a big device like that because it's probably too big to handle
01:00:57 ◼ ► comfortably, but you could do something like what Microsoft has experimented with that Surface
01:01:02 ◼ ► Studio where it can be both a traditional computer and kind of come down and then be something that
01:01:06 ◼ ► you work on. So yeah, I'm kind of intrigued by that, but they have to get all these other
01:01:12 ◼ ► pieces in place first and it sounds like maybe they're doing that. I would love it. I mean,
01:01:17 ◼ ► I'm using my iPad like it's just a monitor now more and more. Like all of the work I've done on
01:01:28 ◼ ► That's how I'm using my iPad. Honestly, over the last two weeks, that is the vast majority
01:01:36 ◼ ► of time with my 12.9 inch iPad Pro. That's how I'm using it. So I would love to see a bigger screen
01:01:43 ◼ ► like so then I could do that even more if I wanted to. The operating system makes as much sense and
01:01:48 ◼ ► works for me in just the ways that I want, whether I'm using my hands or other devices.
01:01:53 ◼ ► And I'm super pleased that Apple is starting to agree with this, right? So I would love to see
01:01:58 ◼ ► a bigger iPad to allow me even more flexibility in those modes whilst then also still being able
01:02:03 ◼ ► to grab the thing and draw on it. Francois asks, "I've heard that photos and iCloud can downgrade
01:02:10 ◼ ► image resolution when shared via messages or via shared albums. Is this true? What should I do
01:02:16 ◼ ► about it?" So I wrote a book that talks about some of this. So you could buy my book. It's called
01:02:24 ◼ ► Take Control of Photos and you can get it at takecontrolbooks.com. Indeed. Thank you. Thank
01:02:30 ◼ ► you announcer. This is complicated because there are different scenarios where it gets down resed
01:02:36 ◼ ► and where it doesn't. I think shared, so shared albums have a maximum photo size. So if you just
01:02:43 ◼ ► do a shared album, you will not give, be giving people the full res images. I think if you send
01:02:51 ◼ ► individual images in iMessage, you know, in messages that you will get the full size file,
01:02:57 ◼ ► I think, but I'm not 100% on that one. The one I am 100% on is there's a feature, if you're on iOS,
01:03:05 ◼ ► there's a feature called a share iCloud link, I think is what it's called. And what it will do is
01:03:12 ◼ ► it will, instead of sending photos, it sends a link to an iCloud repository of the photos that you
01:03:20 ◼ ► sent. And depending on what device you want, it does different things, you're on, it does different
01:03:24 ◼ ► things like on an iPhone or an iPad, it will offer to just automatically put those in your library.
01:03:29 ◼ ► And if you say yes, it gets them all in your library at full resolution. But you can also opt
01:03:34 ◼ ► and on some devices like on the web, you can see them and it gives you the option of just downloading
01:03:39 ◼ ► the files and like a zip archive. And those are the full resolution files. So the iCloud link
01:03:44 ◼ ► method of sharing things is the one where you're basically guaranteed to get full quality.
01:03:50 ◼ ► He tried to email in some places, they'll give you options. It's kind of a mess. But I think
01:03:57 ◼ ► I'm positive about this because I think Apple is going in a direction where they really want to
01:04:01 ◼ ► sort of use the iCloud link as the concept here. Because it means that if you're using another,
01:04:08 ◼ ► if it's another photo person, photos person who's got iCloud photo library, no data essentially
01:04:14 ◼ ► transfers. It all happens up in the cloud. Like you send this link and they go, yes, I would like
01:04:20 ◼ ► those photos and they just pop into your library and you didn't have to download 40 photos. They
01:04:26 ◼ ► just happen on the server and suddenly they appear in your library. That's pretty great because if
01:04:33 ◼ ► you've ever sent a big photo in messages or a couple of photos and then watched as the progress
01:04:37 ◼ ► bar very slowly went along as you're trying to get this giant set of photos on a cell signal or
01:04:44 ◼ ► something like that, it's not great. But I think it's less clear than it should be. But I think
01:04:49 ◼ ► that Apple is pushing in that direction where they realize, so I don't recommend anybody use
01:04:52 ◼ ► a shared album, honestly, because you're not getting the full quality. Eric says, do you think
01:04:58 ◼ ► Apple will ever sell the new Mac Pro silver and black Magic Keyboard, Mouse and Trackpad separately?
01:05:03 ◼ ► I'd love to get them to match my non-Pro silver iMac. So they did the iMac Pro stuff, right? The
01:05:09 ◼ ► black with space gray. So I would imagine at some point they will get the silver and black
01:05:17 ◼ ► as well just because if you're making them, why not sell more of them for people who want them?
01:05:23 ◼ ► So, you know, it's got this initial cache, but if the iMac Pro stuff is any indication,
01:05:28 ◼ ► they will eventually sell it to everyone. I would think they would. I don't really like the look of
01:05:32 ◼ ► those myself. The two-ton, the silver and black. It doesn't work for me. I'm a big fan of that, but
01:05:38 ◼ ► it's got a keypad on it, so I'm not interested. John says, with all your recent keyboard adventures,
01:05:46 ◼ ► my come assuming, and mostly using US layouts, how are you managing the switch from British?
01:05:52 ◼ ► So the keyboards that I have ordered all have British layouts. That's typically what I do,
01:05:56 ◼ ► but I don't struggle with the US layout anyway. Like I do have and have had many keyboards or
01:06:01 ◼ ► laptops that have the US layout. My MacBook Pro right now has the US layout on it. It just takes
01:06:06 ◼ ► me a minute to get used to the return key shape change, but that's it. Everything else is mostly
01:06:10 ◼ ► fine, but with iOS it's actually really manageable anyway because you can specify what language your
01:06:16 ◼ ► keyboard's in in the keyboard preferences. So even if I was switching from a British keyboard
01:06:22 ◼ ► and an American keyboard, the system will recognize the key presses correctly. It's very clever like
01:06:27 ◼ ► that. Yeah, so you can say I'm using British. I'm writing in British. I'm writing in English or
01:06:34 ◼ ► American English. Andrew says, it seems as if Apple Notes has been doing basic OCR and scan notes for
01:06:41 ◼ ► a while. Is it possible to extract the OCR text? I don't think it is, right? It's doing recognition,
01:06:48 ◼ ► but that's it. I've also found the recognition to not be that great, but there are shortcuts that
01:06:52 ◼ ► can help you, and I'll include a link to the MaxLori shortcuts archive because they have
01:06:56 ◼ ► some OCR shortcuts in there if you want to grab them on iOS. Yeah, when we talk about OCR,
01:07:00 ◼ ► there are two different kinds of OCR. There's an OCR that gets you text that tries very hard to get
01:07:05 ◼ ► you clear text of whatever it's reading off of an image, and then there's the one that is there to
01:07:11 ◼ ► make it searchable, and they're different. Like that one is the goal is to do a text index that's
01:07:18 ◼ ► searchable, and when you think about it, OCR is looking at each word and making guesses based on
01:07:26 ◼ ► context about what the word is by looking at the image, and it's got a percent likelihood score.
01:07:33 ◼ ► Like this is 80 percent the word that, but sometimes it has a harder time, and it'll say,
01:07:40 ◼ ► "This is, you know, 40 percent it's this word, 40 percent it's this word," and in a OCR for reading,
01:07:48 ◼ ► it has to pick one, and so it picks one. OCR for indexing, what it does is they're both in there.
01:07:59 ◼ ► but if you've ever done this, if you have OCR text in your in Apple Notes, which does this,
01:08:05 ◼ ► you do a search. If you search for a word, it'll show you that word. Sometimes if you search for
01:08:12 ◼ ► another word it could be, it will come, it will pop up, and you'll be like, "Well, that's not
01:08:18 ◼ ► that word." It's like, "No, but it's a word it could have been." So like it's trying to be as
01:08:22 ◼ ► broad as possible. Like this could be this or that or they, and if you're building OCR for search,
01:08:28 ◼ ► you put all of them in there. And that way if you search for a phrase, it's more likely to find it,
01:08:34 ◼ ► because one of those is probably the answer, but it doesn't lead for readability. So the Apple
01:08:46 ◼ ► question for a future episode, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade. Thank you to
01:08:50 ◼ ► everybody that does that, we'd love to get some more. So if you have any questions you want us
01:08:54 ◼ ► to answer, just send out a tweet, #askupgrade, and they may be included in a future episode.
01:08:59 ◼ ► If you want to find Jason online, he is @jsno, J-S-N-E-L-L, and he writes at sixcolors.com,
01:09:14 ◼ ► the people at Pingdom, DoorDash, and Previz Pro. You could go check them out, help support the