PodSearch

Upgrade

213: The California Environment

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is episode 213 of Upgrade. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:14   Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom, Casper, and Hello. Hi, Jason.

00:00:19   213 Los Angeles area code. Excellent. Hello, we're basking in the sun in LA now.

00:00:27   If all we're going to do is area codes for Jason's number fact.

00:00:31   No, 212 is also a 212 degrees Fahrenheit that's boiling. That's not just New York.

00:00:36   Okay.

00:00:37   Somebody's going to run in here and tell me that there's actually some incredible

00:00:41   significance to the number 213 that I don't know, but I don't know it.

00:00:47   Can't know all the numbers, Jason.

00:00:48   Did you know that every number has a Wikipedia page? This would be great for your podcast you

00:00:53   do with Stephen Hackett, "Ungenius" where you look at Wikipedia pages. I want to read to you

00:00:57   the Wikipedia page for the number 213. 213 is the number following 212 and preceding 214.

00:01:03   Jason Snell, nobody cares about this.

00:01:07   Nobody cares about this.

00:01:08   I don't even care.

00:01:10   So we are going to go straight into our lovely segment known as Snell Talk. Jason,

00:01:17   our Snell Talk question this week comes from Mark. Mark wants to know,

00:01:22   do you still read magazines?

00:01:23   This is an easy one. No, I don't. I don't. I read some newspapers through their apps and I read

00:01:36   things on the internet that are on web pages, but I don't have any print magazine subscriptions

00:01:42   or digital magazine subscriptions and I don't read anything that is in that format. So nope.

00:01:50   I got Entertainment Weekly for a long time and then I switched over to a digital sub of that

00:01:55   and I stopped reading that. You can tell when you're done with a magazine when your subscription

00:01:59   lapses and you don't notice. That's a telling sign. So no, I don't read magazines anymore.

00:02:05   Like everybody else.

00:02:07   Would you say that you have primarily transitioned to related web pages for that content? It's not

00:02:13   like you're fed up with the content. You just get it in other ways now.

00:02:17   Oh sure. And I was never a heavy magazine. People will be shocked to know as somebody who worked in

00:02:22   a magazine, I was never a heavy magazine reader. I never really believed in the future of magazines.

00:02:27   I mean, I used to read Sports Illustrated and then I canceled that at one point. And then I

00:02:34   still had Entertainment Weekly, but I never had like a stack of magazines that I read

00:02:38   or anything like that. That was never the case. And then you're on the internet and there's stuff

00:02:43   on the internet. And so you read that stuff instead. And like everybody else, I was, you know,

00:02:47   I feel like our audience, we were probably ahead of the curve there where we realized that we could

00:02:52   read that stuff in other forms instead. If you would like to send in a question to open up the

00:02:58   show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag Snail Talk. It can be about literally anything that you

00:03:03   would like to hear Jason's opinion on as we have covered many, many topics and areas on Snail Talk.

00:03:09   Thank you to Mark for today's submission. Jason, I believe that there is some Snail Watch follow-up.

00:03:16   Well, so guess what? It is the endless tale, the age-old tale of pre-ordering something and being

00:03:27   put in the waiting list. And we talked about this, that the Apple has two separate chains,

00:03:36   basically like logistics chains, supply chains, whatever you want to call it,

00:03:39   piles of products. There's a pile of product that you order on their website. And there's the pile

00:03:44   of product that goes to stores because they want people to be able to pick up an Apple Watch or an

00:03:51   iPhone in a store when it comes out, right? What they don't want is to have every watch and every

00:03:57   phone they make be put in a waiting list for everybody who ordered them on the first night.

00:04:03   Because what happens then is that somebody hears the iPhone is out and they go into the store.

00:04:08   And for weeks, there are no iPhones in the stores because they're all spoken for online orders.

00:04:13   They don't want that. That's not good. It may not be fair, but I know why they do it.

00:04:20   So I ordered, I woke up the morning after the pre-orders and I put in an order for my wife's

00:04:26   Level 4 Paladin D&D character. I don't know. It's Monday morning. Apple Watch Series 4.

00:04:38   It said, "Great. We are happy to take your money. You'll get it sometime in October,

00:04:44   probably late October." And I thought, "All right. Well, whatever." I didn't want to stay up till

00:04:50   midnight and this is what it's gotten me. And they're freely available in Apple stores.

00:04:56   So Friday, I just went on to the old apple.com and it said, "Yeah, sure. This is in stock at

00:05:04   your local Apple store at Corte Madera." I placed an order for the afternoon, finished my work for

00:05:09   the morning and then went up there and walked in, showed them the little barcode. The guy came from

00:05:18   the back with the box and I walked out and that was it. And I canceled my other order. So it's

00:05:24   just weird. This is part of the thing that all of us need to know, which is if you're unhappy with

00:05:30   your Apple pre-order and it looks like you have really fallen into the backlog where your order's

00:05:36   not being prepared and it's a few weeks out, you should absolutely start either going to your local

00:05:42   Apple store if it's not too much trouble or looking at your local Apple store, if you have one,

00:05:48   on the website and see if they've got availability because they do. They almost certainly do.

00:05:54   You may have to be diligent. You may have to check carefully, but just because you're waiting

00:06:00   for your online order, that online order is there because they are siphoning large numbers of these

00:06:08   devices to put them in their retail stores because they want people to be able to walk into a real

00:06:12   retail store and buy an iPhone or an Apple watch. In any event, we got it. So instead of waiting

00:06:19   another two plus weeks for my wife's new Apple watch, because she has series zero, we went in

00:06:25   there and now she has the level four Paladin Apple watch fighter with magic. - Is she happy with her

00:06:34   decision? - Yeah, I think so. She was really frustrated because the battery was getting pretty

00:06:40   poor on the old one because it was a series zero and or what would it be a level zero, level zero

00:06:48   org. So the new one, it's lighter. She had the stainless before this is the aluminum. So it's

00:06:56   lighter. It feels thinner. It's got the bigger screen and it's got battery. It's responsive.

00:07:04   The series zero UI is pretty pokey. This one's very responsive. It's got series support. It's

00:07:11   night and day from the series zero. And I'm hearing from a lot of people who really just

00:07:17   stuck it out with series zero. They were willing to buy an Apple watch, but they didn't really

00:07:20   want to keep buying them every couple of years who have found maybe this is going to be the pattern

00:07:26   for the Apple watch going forward. Maybe it's like a three-ish year buying cycle for those.

00:07:32   Who knows? But I did hear from a lot of people. I think the combination of the new bigger screen

00:07:38   and the fact that watch OS 5 won't run on the series zero pushed a lot of people off the series

00:07:43   zero to the series four. - So macOS Mojave is now out to the public. It's out to the world.

00:07:50   And I had a couple of dark mode tips and tricks to share with the world. A few of them came directly

00:07:56   from Six Colors. One came from an Upgrading. Upgrading, Andrew wrote in to recommend a Safari

00:08:02   extension, which is called dark mode for Safari that tries to force dark mode on websites.

00:08:07   Andrew said it can be a bit ugly in places, but is a potential option if it's something that you

00:08:13   want to do. I mean, there's screenshots for the app. It's available in the Mac App Store.

00:08:17   It shows Wikipedia, for example, which is a really good one to show off. Because that is just the

00:08:25   most piercing white that a webpage can be. And the screenshots show it's like they basically try and

00:08:31   make it all dark on the back and obviously invert the text so the text is white. So again,

00:08:37   it's not necessarily going to make everything look pretty, but it is going to do a decent job

00:08:44   of trying to calm down some of the kind of harshest offenders, I guess. So your mileage

00:08:50   will vary on this one, but for a $2 extension for Safari, it might provide you with some benefit.

00:08:59   And then I saw a post, I think this was Dan's post on Six Colors, about there is an app which is

00:09:08   called Night Owl, which will allow you to automate switching from light mode to dark mode, which is

00:09:15   something that Apple should have included in Mac OS, but didn't for reasons unknown.

00:09:22   There is a little menu bar app that can allow you to do that. And then another one that you pointed

00:09:29   out, which was Haze Over, which is a very clever little utility. So for applications that are white

00:09:35   in nature, like Finder or maybe you've got a lot of white space or maybe, I don't know, like a web

00:09:43   page, right? So you use your own web page in the screenshot, which I kind of like a lot. Haze Over

00:09:50   will make those applications kind of dim out when they're in the background, so they don't try and

00:09:55   drag your attention away from screen. So it's not quite the same in the sense that, right,

00:10:00   if it's in the foreground, it's going to be blinding and white, but it does at least mean

00:10:04   that if it's not in the foreground, it can fade away a little bit more. And people even not using

00:10:09   dark mode might like it. It's an interesting idea. I'm not using it, but I kind of like the idea that

00:10:14   if you don't want to have like everything running in full screen mode, but you want everything in

00:10:20   the background to be a little less distracting, especially if you're in dark mode though, and it's

00:10:24   light, a very light window, you can use Haze Over and it lets you set sort of per app or per window

00:10:31   how dim those things get in the back versus your foreground window.

00:10:36   Yeah, so these are just sort of like utilities to help, I guess, make the Mojave experience

00:10:41   nicer for people. I have not yet upgraded to Mojave. I will at some point, but, you know,

00:10:47   I just never rush with my production machine. I don't want to introduce problems that I'm not

00:10:52   currently having. And you always run that risk, I think, with kind of like production machines.

00:10:58   But it seems that everybody that I know that's running Mojave and you were talking about last

00:11:02   week seems to be having a pretty good experience so far. So it is available for you.

00:11:07   Don't be afraid, Myke.

00:11:08   I'm going to be, I'm just being cautious.

00:11:11   All right. Okay.

00:11:12   You know, I am in no rush. I'm in no particular rush. Jason, I have one piece of upstream news

00:11:18   for you this week. Disney has sold its 39% stake in Sky to Comcast. Disney made $15 billion out of

00:11:29   this deal, which means that Comcast has now kind of been wholly successful in their takeover of

00:11:35   the European broadcaster Sky. So while this means that Disney has lost the potential of a distribution

00:11:41   arm into Europe, right, very, very powerful one, they have gained a ton of cash that they can

00:11:46   probably put into investing in their upcoming streaming platforms. Obviously, Disney made this,

00:11:55   they got this stake when they bought Fox, right? So that's how they got that 39% stake.

00:12:00   And they were being a little bit coy about it at the time, right, kind of making it sound like it

00:12:05   was something that they really wanted to keep, but was probably always very likely that it would end

00:12:09   up being something that they sold, especially with Comcast not getting Fox. So they moved to Sky as

00:12:15   their second bet. And Peter Kafka has said that he believes that this, this sell, that like this

00:12:24   Disney being willing to let go of this probably means that they will end up picking up all of Hulu.

00:12:29   - Yeah, this feels to me, and I don't know if this is true or not, but it feels to me when they were

00:12:36   vying, when Universal or Comcast and Disney were vying for the Fox stuff, somebody floated this

00:12:43   theory that this would all get resolved, where they would make essentially a gentleman's agreement

00:12:51   to carve up the spoils of this. And so it would not surprise me at all if the deal was,

00:12:58   you're going to let us buy Fox. We're going to sell you our, we're going to let you buy Sky and

00:13:04   we're going to sell you our stake in Sky. You're going to sell us your stake in Hulu. And then the

00:13:09   deal is done and we'll walk away and not be in business with each other, right? Like we'll take

00:13:15   these businesses, you take those businesses. And then we're now, you know, now we're just

00:13:19   competitors and we're not co-owning joint ventures with one another basically. And it looks like that

00:13:26   may exactly happen. - Yeah, I was reading in the Wall Street Journal article about this,

00:13:32   there was a potential benefit for Disney that if they kept Sky, they could have basically rescinded

00:13:38   on all of the distribution deals for Disney content, right? So then they could have put

00:13:44   them on their streaming services, right? So they could have changed all those deals if they would

00:13:48   have kept Sky, which is kind of like, that was like one of the only reasons that people thought,

00:13:52   oh, they might want to keep it at least for that for a while, right? They're like,

00:13:55   let's just undo all of these. Like we would like all the Marvel movies back, please. Thank you very

00:14:00   much. But it makes way more sense for them to try and tie up something like Hulu for what their

00:14:08   future plans are. And plus the cash. I mean, Disney has been spending a lot of money recently.

00:14:13   A little bit more cash coming back is definitely not going to hurt. Probably not that Disney's

00:14:18   hurting for money specifically, but. - No, it's more about, I think more about control, right?

00:14:23   Yeah, sure. They get their money back and they're losing that stake, but they are ending up with,

00:14:27   you know, they get all of Fox, Comcast gets all of Sky, they get all of Hulu. Hulu is very useful

00:14:33   for them because although they've announced these other services, there is this question of what

00:14:38   Disney does with the content that's more adult in nature, like the stuff they bought from Fox

00:14:43   and the FX networks. And Hulu has always been the most logical place for that kind of stuff to go

00:14:50   as Hulu's or as Disney's streaming service that's more of, you know, more adult targeted

00:14:58   than their other ones. And so perhaps that's what will end up happening.

00:15:03   - Just a super like pie in the sky type question. Do you think that they would keep the name the

00:15:09   same? Do you think it would still be called Hulu? Do you think that it has brand recognition?

00:15:14   - In the US it does. I mean, it is not an international brand by any means,

00:15:18   but it, and that would be one of their challenges would be to roll it out internationally. But

00:15:22   I think it has some name recognition and it's got content. And I don't know why they wouldn't do

00:15:26   that unless they think that there's some other brand that they already own that would work with

00:15:32   it. I don't think there is. In fact, I think you could argue that given what I've witnessed is

00:15:39   that the Fox brand is so politically charged now because of Fox News in the US that

00:15:46   walking away from that, walking away from a brand that is going to turn off half the audience is

00:15:54   probably a good idea. So I think they'll probably downplay the Fox brand and the Hulu brand has

00:16:01   existed. It is a streaming service. Even if it changes into a very different kind of streaming

00:16:06   service with very different kind of content, I would imagine over time what's going to happen

00:16:09   is that all of the non-Disney content on there will go away, right? That everybody else will be

00:16:15   like, "Well, we're out of here. We're not going to use this as our sort of like streaming equivalent

00:16:20   for broadcast TV to show you stuff after the fact." Everybody wants their own. Everybody wants to own

00:16:27   their own. So Hulu will just end up being a vehicle for Disney. I think that makes sense.

00:16:33   Because it's existing, they've got an existing catalog, why not?

00:16:37   You know, even putting the political issue aside, the 20th Century Fox branding is of no real use to

00:16:44   Disney, right? Because it's not necessarily, it's not in really any way a stronger brand than

00:16:50   Disney's own brand that they would use in movies and TV. The only limitation is, again, that there

00:16:56   may be things, this is like what we were talking about Apple and its streaming service. There is

00:17:00   this issue of there are, like in the '80s, Disney created Touchstone pictures and the whole idea

00:17:06   there was that they wanted to wrap more adult content in a brand name that was not Disney,

00:17:11   right? So having a useful brand or brands around that you can put content in so you aren't releasing

00:17:18   an R-rated movie with a Disney banner in front of it, that's going to be the value of having Fox.

00:17:24   20th or 21st, depending, because there's different pieces of them with different century names,

00:17:29   but like Fox would be a way that you could wrap more adult fare out of Disney and that may be what

00:17:35   they end up doing. Or they just completely create something new, right? Like there is nothing

00:17:39   stopping them creating another new brand, right? Which is neither. It's true, but they've got,

00:17:44   you know, they've got existing brands that they can use and so, you know, rather than rebranding,

00:17:49   that's obviously a question that they've had. If they haven't already decided, they will decide

00:17:53   at some point, but I think that's such a historic brand as a film studio that keeping it around in

00:18:00   some form is probably what they'll do for, again, for film releases. They'll probably define it a

00:18:08   certain way. I think that's their challenge is what is a Disney product? What is a Fox product?

00:18:13   What goes on a Disney service? What goes on a Hulu? Those rules, what are the rules? Because

00:18:22   you don't want it to be random. You want all of these things to mean something because otherwise

00:18:28   if they have no definition, they're totally meaningless. Like I always think about how

00:18:31   every now and then you'll hear some promo somewhere for a new album from a music artist

00:18:38   and they'll say the label it's on and you're like, that is meaningless. In almost every case,

00:18:43   it's meaningless. It's just a corporation put this out and it doesn't mean anything to consumers.

00:18:49   There are cases though where those brands are clearly defined and then you're like,

00:18:56   oh, it's one of those. You want that for your products. You want Hulu to mean something.

00:19:02   One of the challenges right now is that it is just an empty bag that TV shows get stuffed in

00:19:07   and they need to do original content like "Handmaid's Tale" and some of the other stuff.

00:19:12   I've been watching a lot of Hulu actually the last few weeks. That helps define it and that's

00:19:18   important like the way that John Landgraf who's the executive in charge of the FX networks,

00:19:23   the cable networks, FX and FXX which is a real, that's their comedy network. They split it in

00:19:29   sort of two. They've done a really good job of defining what that kind of content is.

00:19:34   So I think there's a great value in that and that's what brands are good for. Brands are good

00:19:38   to be labels that let a consumer go, oh, I get it. That's one of those. We talk about Apple and

00:19:46   all their marketing decisions and structural decisions about iPhone names and things like

00:19:51   that especially. This is another one of those cases where this is really important decision

00:19:58   making that gets done and that's why they presumably pay those Disney executives a lot of money.

00:20:02   - This episode of Upgrade is brought to you in part by Hello. We move from Hulu to Hello.

00:20:10   Hello, make insanely comfortable buckwheat pillows.

00:20:14   You may have never tried a buckwheat pillow. If you haven't, buckwheat pillows are very,

00:20:19   very different to regular fluffy pillows. They offer significantly more support because they

00:20:25   don't collapse under the weight of your head like a traditional pillow does. You can kind of,

00:20:30   so like what the Hello pillows are filled with is buckwheat hulls. Now, if you don't know what that

00:20:37   is, I think the easiest way to try and describe it is it almost feels a little bit like a beanbag,

00:20:43   but a little bit softer than a beanbag, right? Like it's not as harsh, but that's kind of the

00:20:48   easiest way that I can think to describe it. Hello pillows will stay cool and dry compared to feather

00:20:54   or foam pillows and buckwheat breathes better. So like air can pass through it more easily. So

00:20:59   it doesn't get warm and humid. There is no need to flip to the cool side of the pillow when you

00:21:04   have a Hello pillow, because it's always cool. And it's also because of the way that you fill it,

00:21:10   because of the way that the pillows are filled, you can actually remove or add more filling to

00:21:15   adjust the pillow to be the exact size that you want. Buckwheat pillows have been very popular

00:21:20   in Japan for many, many years, and they are considered a luxury pillow in lots of hotels

00:21:25   and stuff. And I have been sleeping on one since June and absolutely, I'm converted. I love it. I

00:21:33   love my Hello pillow. It again is very different, but I am a person who's always liked firmer

00:21:37   pillows anyway. And this is the most supportive pillow I have ever tried anywhere. Like I am at

00:21:45   that point now that when I travel and I'm in hotels and I'm on soft pillows, it just doesn't

00:21:50   feel right to me. I really, really love my Hello pillow. I am a big proponent of it. I find it very,

00:21:56   very comfortable. And it's just it's just an all round great experience. Hello pillows are made in

00:22:02   the USA with quality construction and materials. The certified organic cotton case is cut and sewn

00:22:08   for durability. And the buckwheat is grown and milled in the US as well. So I'm hoping that by

00:22:13   now you're at least curious to try one of these things out. And I really think you should try it.

00:22:17   If you're at all thinking, I would like a different pillow. This is one that you should get because you

00:22:22   can sleep on it for 60 nights. And if it isn't right for you, you can send it back and you'll

00:22:26   get a full refund. So go to Hello pillow.com/upgrade right now to get your own buckwheat pillow.

00:22:32   That is H-U-L-L-O-P-I-L-L-O-W. Hello pillow.com/upgrade. If you buy more than one,

00:22:40   they have a special discount for upgrade listeners. You get up to $20 off depending on the size that

00:22:44   you opt for. They have fast free shipping of every order and 1% of all profits are donated to the

00:22:50   Nature Conservancy. So give it a try if you love it, you keep it. If you don't, you just send it

00:22:54   back. But I bet you'll love it. Go to Hello pillow.com/upgrade right now. Our thanks to Hello

00:22:59   for their support of this show and Relay FM. So Jason, there have been some rumors recently

00:23:08   about what the next iPad Pros are going to be about and also some data mining by the wizards

00:23:15   at 9to5Mac and Steve Transtmith. So our good friends, good friends of the show, Guillermo

00:23:21   Rambo and Steve Transtmith have been doing their great, great valuable work digging around in iOS

00:23:26   12.1 because there's beyotz out for that and have been for like a week or two. So I want to look at

00:23:32   a couple of different things as a way to try and unpack a little bit about what we may be expecting

00:23:39   probably later on this month as to what the new iPad Pros are going to look like. So

00:23:44   there's a few things here. iOS 12.1 offers the support for Memoji syncing over iCloud. Now,

00:23:51   why would you want that, Jason? Why would you want to say- Thinking face emoji. Your Memoji over

00:23:57   iCloud. Probably because you will have it on another device and people tend not to, I think,

00:24:03   really own two iPhones. So you need a separate product that has the TrueDepth camera. Aha,

00:24:10   you may say be saying to yourself out there, probably to an iPad, right? So you can sync

00:24:14   your Memoji between your iPad and your iPhone, which is a good feature. It's a feature I would

00:24:19   definitely want. I did note actually, I was pretty proud and pleased, I should say, I didn't note

00:24:25   this last week, that my iCloud restore included my Memoji. It wasn't necessarily something I

00:24:32   thought would be excluded, but was happy to see when it was included, right? That in my iCloud

00:24:37   backup was my Memoji. So pleased about that. But yes, so that I think we can, again, if you had any

00:24:44   doubts about there being a TrueDepth Face ID camera system in the iPad Pro, this is a pretty

00:24:51   good indication that there will be one. Yeah. But there is a big question that remains about how it's

00:24:58   going to work because Face ID in the iPhone 10 does not seem to offer any advancement in using

00:25:08   Face ID in other angles, right? It was not added in 12. It was not added in the new phones.

00:25:16   And Steve Trout Smith found evidence of landscape orientation support for Face ID in iOS 12.1.

00:25:23   He says that it is his understanding that landscape Face ID would require a realignment

00:25:29   of the front facing sensors so you won't see it on existing hardware. So it seems that

00:25:37   this is only really becoming a little more complicated. So what it seems like that there

00:25:42   will be landscape Face ID on the iPad. Now, does that mean one camera? Does it mean two cameras?

00:25:50   Like it doesn't seem that like this is something they can just add in software. This is like a

00:25:55   physical change to hardware. So the doors are back wide open again, because we were very,

00:26:02   very confident that it would be one camera, software is going to fix it because that seemed

00:26:06   like the logical thing, right? I wouldn't say very, I was very confident. Like there is this

00:26:13   question about, cause you think about the bezels and it being kind of bezel-less and you think

00:26:18   about like, would there be two notches on an iPad pro? That seems kind of weird, right? But at the

00:26:23   same time you, if the bezels are almost gone and you're holding an iPad in one orientation,

00:26:30   and that's where the camera is, your hands over it, which means that like literally in one

00:26:33   orientation, you can't use the front facing camera, which is not really the case now.

00:26:38   And, or at least it's not as bad as it would be here. So I think, I think there's a case to be

00:26:45   made that if you're going to consider the iPad, a two orientation device that you're going to need

00:26:51   two, two sensors, two cameras, and then have them alter, you know, which one you use is altered

00:26:58   based on the orientation of the device. I feel like, so I feel like either they're going to have,

00:27:04   I mean, yes, either they're going to have a magic new face ID. That's got a different kind of set

00:27:10   of sensors and can work in either orientation, or you've got a, two sets of sensors, or you have

00:27:18   Apple picking a primary orientation for the iPad and saying that other orientations are not as

00:27:23   important. Which is interesting, right? Because I think that some people use the iPad mostly

00:27:32   vertically and others use it mostly horizontally. Although I would argue that horizontal is the one

00:27:37   that has always made the most sense, especially since Apple started including the keyboard with

00:27:43   it and considering it more of a pro, you know, on the iPad pro a pro product, I feel like history is

00:27:50   pushing the iPad pro toward horizontal orientation. But if you look, you know, every iOS device up to

00:27:56   now is a primary vertical. The Apple shows up when you start up in its upright vertical, the logo on

00:28:02   the back is vertical, um, orientation. So, uh, what does this mean? Does this mean that this new iPad

00:28:10   pro is going to be a horizontal orientation unabashedly, unashamedly horizontal as the primary

00:28:16   orientation? Or are they going to stick a bunch of cameras all over it? What do you think?

00:28:20   So here's my question, and I don't know the answer to this.

00:28:25   No, actually I'm looking on Apple's website now, so I do have the answer.

00:28:31   I think the way that I've been thinking about this, right, is two cameras. But it's not a camera,

00:28:39   right? Like you won't have two cameras on an iPad if they had two sets of sensors.

00:28:46   You just have one camera, one camera, two sets of two sensors, because face ID requires an

00:28:52   infrared camera, a flat illuminator and a dot projector. So they don't need two camera systems.

00:28:58   Because basically the way that I'm thinking about this right now, looking at looking at what we've

00:29:03   seen so far, looking at what Steve has uncovered is that there will be two sets of sensors on the

00:29:09   iPad. So it will only work in two fixed orientations where you won't be able to use it upside down to

00:29:14   get face ID, but you'll be able to use it in one portrait and one landscape. That's how it seems

00:29:18   like it's going to be to me. So I would expect that we will see one full camera system in the

00:29:25   way that it's always been, instead of as a front facing camera on the iPad, and then a second face

00:29:29   ID set of sensors. So the infrared, the flat illuminator and the dot projector, because it

00:29:34   feels like two cameras is wasteful, right? Like you don't need two complete camera units. And the

00:29:42   other thing is they've got to stop this thing from costing a lot more money. And two whole sets of

00:29:48   that system feels like it'd be pretty expensive. Unless there's a brand new version of this system

00:29:54   that, that Steve Trout and Smith said, you know, the existing hardware won't do this, but there

00:30:00   could be a new sensor block that is more advanced and that will work in multiple orientations.

00:30:06   That's also possible is that it's just a way fancier re you know, re-engineered version of it,

00:30:13   but you're right. They may also scatter the sensors around or duplicate some of the sensors,

00:30:17   keep one camera, but have extra sensors in order to do that. I think it would be a mistake on

00:30:24   Apple's part for them to lock the iPad into one orientation. As much as I use my iPad almost

00:30:31   entirely horizontally. I, I know people who don't, and I think it would be really weird

00:30:38   and a failure, honestly, it would be a usability failure failure if Apple had said, uh, you're

00:30:45   holding it wrong in one orientation, if you're trying to unlock your device, especially since

00:30:49   it's the only way other than putting in a password to unlock your device. That's not cool. Yeah. I

00:30:53   mean, I feel confident that at least landscape right. Will, will be the primary way that they're

00:30:59   going to support it because they've now there's like, there's code to suggest that landscape

00:31:04   no exists, right? Doesn't for the iPhone. But like, I I'm kind of feeling that there will be

00:31:08   like two, you can have like with the Apple logo, if it's the way it is right now pointing up,

00:31:14   or if you take that and turn it left, like the upside down might not work anymore. Right? So if

00:31:19   you have like the lightning port on the bottom, sorry, the lightning port on the top, that

00:31:23   wouldn't scan it. Or, you know, you know what I mean? Like there's going to be like, it'd be one

00:31:28   portrait on one landscape could be because these, these, these, uh, this doesn't work upside down

00:31:34   and there's nothing to suggest upside down support. And I think honestly, I would be fine with that

00:31:40   because I only use my iPad. Like I'm just me personally, I use it in two orientations. Like I

00:31:45   use the home button on the bottom and the home button on the right. That's just how I do it.

00:31:48   That's how I've always done it. And that works for me so that I wouldn't notice too much of a

00:31:53   problem there. I don't think. And I very, very rarely pick up my iPad in a way that is like,

00:31:59   not the way I expect, if you know what I mean? Like I'm very rare, like, Oh, my iPad's upside

00:32:03   down. Like that doesn't happen to me. This I'm sure this happens to other people, but I think

00:32:07   with the iPad pro it's typically got something attached to it. Right? Like I think a lot of

00:32:13   people use it that way. This it's in some configuration that it would be hard to get

00:32:18   it upside down because like there's the keyboard there or the cases there or whatever. So

00:32:23   I think that like I had kind of resigned myself to thinking that software would fix this and that

00:32:27   it would, you know, one sensor, all orientations. But I'm now less inclined to think that, which

00:32:34   makes the whole thing a little bit more interesting to me again, because it's like, well, okay, how

00:32:39   are you going to solve this problem? How do you set it up? How do you intend it to be used? And

00:32:42   how do you tell a story about it? But wait, wait, there's more. There is, um,

00:32:49   there are a few things going on right now, which seem to suggest that there may be more than just

00:32:56   a lightning port on the next iPad pro. So when talking about landscape face ID in a, in a tweet

00:33:05   thread, uh, Steve Trouton Smith also noted the iOS 12.1 seemed to be checking on whether an external

00:33:12   display was connected to the iPad and in the iOS, uh, simulator in the beta versions of the

00:33:20   simulator. It also now supports virtualized 4k displays. Now you cannot do this with the current

00:33:28   lightning to HDMI adapter. 4k is too much for it. So what is going on here? Yeah. And there's some

00:33:37   speculation that what you have to do right now, uh, the, I, the device itself doesn't need to do

00:33:42   all the work because that, uh, lightning HDMI adapter is able to do it's cause it's got a chip

00:33:48   in it, right? It's doing some of the work, but that if you're doing a direct USB-C connection,

00:33:54   then the device has to do the work to drive it. So there, there are a couple of things here that

00:34:01   suggest, and again, what we're not saying is, Oh, this new iPad pro, uh, Apple is going to sell a

00:34:06   touch screen 4k thing that you can dock it to. And that would be cool. But I think more likely,

00:34:11   this is just the idea that if Apple adds USB-C to the iPad pro, there's a bunch of stuff that

00:34:16   they have to add to the software so that the device can directly drive the external devices

00:34:22   that are plugged in and external displays to do via, you know, mirroring presumably is one of those

00:34:30   things. And this kind of marries up with a Ming-Chi Kuo report, um, from before the last Apple event

00:34:36   where Kuo speculated that, or at least mentioned that the new iPad pro could feature USB-C. And

00:34:43   at the time it was like, do they mean on the device or did it mean a USB-C adapter in the box?

00:34:48   And it was really confusing. It was, it's not clear to try and work out what Kuo had heard or

00:34:53   what Kuo was reporting. So I guess this kind of asks a second question, right? So not just about

00:35:00   the face ID stuff about USB-C, do you, does it seem likely to you that Apple would put USB-C on

00:35:06   the iPad pro or is it seeming more likely based upon these little tidbits that are coming out at

00:35:11   the moment? I mean, you and I talk about the iPad a lot here. We both are enthusiastic users of the

00:35:17   iPad. You know, I know you talk about it with Federico and connected, like, um, so I am of two

00:35:23   minds about all this stuff because there's the stuff that I think of as an enthusiastic iPad user,

00:35:29   iPad pro user. And, you know, in that way, I want to push Apple, right? I, I, and I think you do,

00:35:35   and I think Federico does, and lots of people who use the iPad pro want to push Apple and say,

00:35:39   part of the beauty of creating the iPad pro as a product separate from the iPad is that you can push

00:35:47   it into other places, into more computery places. It can be your device that you are pushing iOS

00:35:55   into places where traditionally only, uh, computers have gone, but now, now this thing

00:36:01   can go there. And I think I said on a show, it might've even been like a year ago, but I know I

00:36:07   said on this, on, on this podcast before, like the iPad pros, a computer at some point, shouldn't it

00:36:13   have a USB port, like instead of a lightning port that, that maybe, and will it happen this year?

00:36:20   I don't know. But like, if you think about where Apple's going with the iPad pro,

00:36:24   of course, it should be primarily a horizontal orientation, uh, because of the keyboard support,

00:36:31   of course, it should have a USB-C port on it because it is a pro device and it's attaching

00:36:37   to all of these things using these, all these various lightning adapters. Like,

00:36:42   is there a reason why the iPad needs to have lightning just because the iPhone

00:36:46   does, it's not like iPhone junior anymore. It's it's its own thing. And it needs to be able to

00:36:50   diverge from the iPhone in places where it makes sense because of what it is kind of becoming as a

00:36:55   pro product. So do I think Apple would add USB-C to the iPad pro? Yes. I don't have any idea whether

00:37:04   this is the time to do it, but I think it makes a lot of sense if they were to choose to do it.

00:37:09   I am going to be frustrated if they add a USB port to this thing and it still has such limited

00:37:17   support for external devices as iOS currently does. And this is the thing that I've railed

00:37:22   about again and again, which is, you know, you can't, you can't read off of, uh, uh, files off of

00:37:28   an attached SD card or a USB hard drive and copy them onto your iPad. You can't do it. It's not

00:37:34   possible. It'll, it'll see pictures and movies, but that's it. It like everything else. It just

00:37:40   doesn't understand what it's seeing. And that is not very computer-like because sometimes when you

00:37:45   have a computer, somebody hands you a thumb drive with a presentation on it and you need to get that

00:37:50   off. And right now the iPad is incapable of seeing that presentation on the thumb drive that somebody

00:37:55   hands you in a hotel, hotel lobby or, uh, on an airplane or wherever, someplace where you can't

00:38:01   just say, can you put this in the cloud instead and share that file with me so I can download it?

00:38:05   Um, so yeah, I, I hope they do it, but I hope that includes more than just a sort of external

00:38:11   monitor support, but a bunch of other, uh, better peripheral support in iOS 12.1.

00:38:18   Paul Why would you want external monitor support for an iPad?

00:38:21   Chris Well, I mean, you do presentations, there's presentations and stuff where people are,

00:38:27   are, are pushing out to an external display. Um, you know, I would love, I, I think all of us,

00:38:34   we've talked about like that theoretical, like, um, uh, what is it? Surface studio kind of thing.

00:38:39   Like what would a big iOS device be like? And, you know, I think about, about this and I think,

00:38:45   wouldn't it be amazing if Apple made a 4k touch screen display that you could buy and attach an

00:38:52   iPad to, and then it would be a giant iPad. But at the same time, I think at that point,

00:38:56   why don't you just make it a giant iPad? Like why, why require an iPad to attach to it? Why not just

00:39:02   put the whole brains inside that screen and not worry about it? So I think it's just, I think

00:39:06   it's just external display support at higher resolutions so that if you're attaching to a

00:39:09   projector or, uh, you know, an external display or something to do a presentation or anything like

00:39:15   that, um, I think that would be, that's, that's most likely what it is. I would love it for it

00:39:20   to be more than that, but that's my guess is it's just that. Paul I mean, what I want is, uh,

00:39:26   display support and a trackpad and, uh, go to town. That's, that's what I want. I mean,

00:39:32   and I know that this is one of those things that a lot of people can't understand and it does sound

00:39:35   peculiar. Like, well, what's wrong with you just sit in front of a Mac. Um, but I, you know, I like

00:39:40   iOS as my environment. It's, it's comfortable for me. I understand it way more than I understand the

00:39:45   Mac. I feel like an iPad power user. I do not feel like a Mac power user. Um, and so I would

00:39:51   love to be able to have a more, uh, ergonomically focused environment where I could have an iPad

00:39:58   running that I could also pick up and take out on the go with me. It's almost like the Nintendo

00:40:02   switch, but for my computer, because the Nintendo switch is my on the go device and I plug it into

00:40:09   a dock and it's on my TV. And something else, again, not anything I actually think will happen

00:40:14   this fall, but something that could happen in the, in, in the next couple of years is the idea

00:40:18   that iOS may become more capable of supporting external pointing devices. And so the, the, the

00:40:25   problem with external devices right now on iOS is that they're essentially just mirrors or their

00:40:29   outputs for like a presentation. Um, if you could use a keyboard and a track pad or something with

00:40:40   an iPad, you could then use an external display, you know, you could attach it and have it be a

00:40:47   second display or have it be your primary display. Um, we talk about. If you're building apps that

00:40:53   run on iOS and on the Mac, that means they support a menu bar and keyboard shortcuts and pointing

00:40:58   devices at that point, iOS could also support those in certain contexts, not in all contexts

00:41:03   by any means, but could you, could, could we envision a scenario where an app that's built

00:41:08   to run on iOS or the Mac, when you plug in an iPad or an iPhone for that matter, but let's say

00:41:14   you plug in an iPad pro to an external device and in the context of the giant external screen,

00:41:20   it says, well, you want to use it on here. I'll give you a menu bar and I'll give you a cursor

00:41:26   and I will, you know, support your keyboard shortcuts because now I'm on a giant non-touch

00:41:31   display. And so we need a different input mechanism. They could, they could totally go

00:41:35   that way if they wanted to. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, but that is a

00:41:38   direction that they could go in. I mean, it feels like everything here, you know, whilst a lot of it

00:41:43   being theoretical just in this discussion, you know, you couple that with stuff like the

00:41:48   marzipan apps and, you know, you're, you're moving towards a thing, right? There's like,

00:41:52   there's like a thing, there's a road you can take. Um, and that continues to be something of

00:41:57   great interest to me, seeing how this sort of stuff starts to play out and maybe we'll start

00:42:02   to see some more kind of seeds being sown, uh, with the next iPads. Like if they do get USB-C,

00:42:08   I'm not too confident about that personally, but I would like it. Um, I don't, I'm, I'm not convinced

00:42:14   it will happen, but they do go that route. Like that would be very exciting to me because it,

00:42:19   it shows continued further, uh, focus on improving the iPad platform. You know, like that's like in

00:42:28   a year when you don't get any software, if you see it make another big change to the hardware, like

00:42:32   not just from design, but from like really thinking about what it can do, that is, that is

00:42:36   really exciting to me. Yeah. And in the long run, I do think Apple's goal is that Apple's devices

00:42:42   are part of a unified Apple platform in terms of apps. And the idea there is if you have an iPad

00:42:48   and you attach it to some other stuff, it lets you do your Apple apps stuff, right? And, and if you

00:42:54   have a Mac, it lets you do your Apple app stuff too. So they want that experience to be similar,

00:43:01   even if the device, the base device is very different. And, uh, it is an interesting question

00:43:08   too. If they do a big hardware revision of the iPad pro this year, and iOS 13 adds a whole bunch

00:43:15   of new iPad features. I would imagine that these devices will support all of those new features.

00:43:24   So this is an interesting case too, where there might be a few things that they put into 12,

00:43:28   one just to enable so that the device can ship and make sense. But, um, these devices may also be in

00:43:35   line for a major update, like an improvement that is really intending to use the features that are

00:43:41   introduced. Like if they introduce USB-C, maybe there's a base functionality that exists in 12.1

00:43:47   when they ship, but presumably for the iPad features in iOS 13, the would be conceived of

00:43:56   as, you know, being for these devices, basically, if that makes sense.

00:44:00   All right. Today's show is also brought to you in part by our friends over at Pingdom.

00:44:07   Pingdom are amazing because they help keep your sites and the sites that you love online. They

00:44:11   will monitor your website so you don't have to giving you real time feedback. So you know

00:44:15   exactly what's going on at all times, because look, the internet is an amazing place, but stuff

00:44:21   breaks all the time. Just as the websites that Pingdom are monitoring, they detect one of 400,000

00:44:27   outages every single day. It doesn't matter how big a company is. It doesn't matter how many people

00:44:32   look at a work on your website. Things can go wrong and you want to know about them. If there

00:44:36   are any critical website issues, you want to be alerted. And what's more, wouldn't it be great if

00:44:41   you could be alerted depending on what type of outage goes to the right person or depending on

00:44:46   what problem it is, gets the right alert level. This is the stuff that you can do at Pingdom.

00:44:50   You can customize these alerts. So like if the login functionality goes down, that should go to

00:44:54   the right person. If things are a little bit slow, maybe you don't need a text message, a push

00:44:58   notification and an email, right? Like maybe it's just an email for that one. So you can kind of

00:45:02   just make sure that you're keeping on track of things so that when stuff goes, when stuff gets

00:45:07   really dicey, you can maybe set up the IFTTT action that turns your lights red. You know,

00:45:11   you can do that if you want to. Pingdom is very, very customizable. It's super, super awesome.

00:45:16   If you have a site of any size, you should be using Pingdom. They have a no-fuss approach to

00:45:20   get started. You just give them the URL that you want to be monitored and they'll take care of

00:45:24   everything else. So go to pingdom.com/relayfm right now and you can get yourself a 14-day

00:45:30   free trial. No credit card requires. You can just see if the service is right for you. Then when you

00:45:34   sign up, use the code upgrade at checkout to get a huge 30% off your first invoice. Thanks to Pingdom

00:45:40   for their support of this show, "Mrelay FM." Now, Jason, I believe that you have a story

00:45:47   you would like to tell. [laughter]

00:45:49   - I do. I do. We could talk about the iPad more. I like that. But I do want to tell a story. It's

00:45:55   got a couple of links to the stuff we talk about here. Also, I just really wanted to talk about

00:46:00   this because I went through this kind of whole thing. It happened a little bit of it trickled

00:46:03   out onto my Twitter feed. I just want to tell the story. We're going to call it "Frozone Quest"

00:46:12   for reasons that will be apparent in a moment. This spring, we redid our backyard.

00:46:21   We poured new concrete. We had totally uneven pavers and stuff. You could trip over them and

00:46:28   they were awful. We put concrete back there in the backyard. It's a larger area. It's really nice.

00:46:36   We wanted some new outdoor furniture out there so we could enjoy the California environment.

00:46:41   There's new grass back there now, which we never really had grass that was anything but

00:46:50   sort of randomly there. There were no sprinklers. There was nothing like that.

00:46:55   Then we're going to redo the front yard and take out all the grass and stuff out there

00:46:58   at some point. Anyway, we redid this. We wanted a nicer backyard. After being in the house almost

00:47:02   20 years, we got one. For the outdoor furniture, we looked at a bunch of places and we looked at

00:47:07   some outdoor furniture. It was extremely expensive. It was nice, but it was extremely expensive.

00:47:12   In the end, we went to IKEA and we looked at the stuff that they had. There was some stuff there,

00:47:17   I think it's called Solaron, that was perfectly nice and much more within our budget.

00:47:25   We bought some IKEA furniture and they have cushions for their furniture. We got some cushions

00:47:32   for them so you could sit and it's nice and cushy. They've got covers for the cushions so that they're

00:47:38   not just the loose fill. You can pick a color and so we picked a color and all that. We got the back

00:47:45   cushions and we couldn't find the cushion covers for the back, which are called Frozon, I will say.

00:47:51   That's where it comes in here. The guy at the store says to me, "Look, here's what you do.

00:47:57   Buy the cushions here. They got the covers online. Just order the covers online."

00:48:01   A word of advice, as you'll hear in this story, is never leave IKEA intending to buy parts of

00:48:10   what you just bought online. I will also say when I was trying to outfit my office here,

00:48:17   did a lot of IKEA shopping, completely agree with that sentiment. Do not--

00:48:22   Just if you can't get it in the store--

00:48:24   Avoid IKEA's online ordering system as much as you possibly can because it is fraught with disaster.

00:48:29   Yeah, so I've had some good luck with IKEA orders online. I have ordered bins for my little pieces

00:48:38   of furniture that I've got here, the Cal-X. Those came, they were fine. The shipping price was

00:48:44   fairly reasonable for that. I actually ordered a piece of this furniture we wanted to corner,

00:48:48   so we could put them in a corner. I ordered that online as well, and we got that.

00:48:53   But in that same order were those covers, and they just weren't in there.

00:48:59   There was no communication that they weren't in there. They just weren't in there.

00:49:02   So I call IKEA, and guess what? I'm on hold for half an hour, and then I get to somebody

00:49:10   who looks up my order and says, "It's very strange. I explained the whole thing."

00:49:14   And they're like, "All right, well, this is very strange. I need to transfer you to somebody who

00:49:19   could help me, somebody else who could help me." That was another 25, 30 minutes on hold,

00:49:27   as if I was just reliving my last half hour. The next person comes on, they have no idea who I am

00:49:33   or any of my background. I've dealt the whole story again. I don't even know what happened.

00:49:39   Anyway, they're like, "All right, you say you didn't get it. That's great. We'll just put in

00:49:42   a new order, and we'll make sure you get those." And they'll be there in a week.

00:49:45   A month passes. I keep checking over this month the shipping number on the invoice.

00:49:52   So among the stories I wanted to tell here is how IKEA's website is terrible. Amazon has set the

00:50:01   bar so high for everybody else, and everybody else has tried to come up to Amazon's level here.

00:50:06   IKEA, first off, you get an order and there's an email, and it says, "Click here to track your

00:50:10   package." I click on that link. It goes to a customer service page that's like information

00:50:16   about looking up product manuals and things like that. There's no information about tracking a

00:50:21   package on it at all. And I think, "What is happening? Why is the track package link not..."

00:50:27   So I copy the URL of the track package link, and it actually is a package tracking URL. It says

00:50:34   track package in it. But then there's a whole bunch of stuff on the end that's like other little

00:50:38   data points that they're passing out of the email to their server, presumably for tracking and

00:50:45   logging reasons. So I delete all of those. So it's just the pure package tracking URL. And that works.

00:50:52   That gets me to a package tracking page, which I think to myself, "This is really bad." If your

00:50:57   email you send to people who you're shipping a package to, literally the package tracking link

00:51:02   in it doesn't work, either by design or by an accident where they're accidentally redirecting

00:51:09   you. Because why they're redirecting a package tracking link to this totally other page,

00:51:13   it's completely baffling. So I put in my number, and basically what I get back is, "Oh, yes,

00:51:21   you made that order last week or two weeks ago, and it hasn't shipped yet." There's no other status.

00:51:27   It's just like the order was made and it hasn't been shipped. So after a month, I phone again,

00:51:32   spend 45 minutes on hold, finally talk to somebody. I say, "Well, I get this new order because they

00:51:37   failed to send my last order." Like, "We're very sorry. I don't really know what happened there.

00:51:42   I'm going to cancel this order, and I'm going to make a new, new order."

00:51:44   - Just so you know, this exact thing that you had, I had this with an entire sofa. What you're going

00:51:51   through right now, this happened to me when I was trying to get a sofa that they had in stock,

00:51:57   delivered for like seven weeks. So I am with you on this one.

00:52:01   - And there's no communication. I mean, we joke about Amazon saying, "Hey, would you like

00:52:05   to see where the truck is on a map? Would you like a picture of the box outside your door?

00:52:11   We've got that for you." IKEA is like, "We don't know what your thing is. We don't know if we have

00:52:17   it. We don't know if we shipped it. We don't know if you didn't get it. We literally know nothing

00:52:22   about this." So it is quite a contrast. Anyway, they're like, "All right, we'll cancel it. The

00:52:27   new, new order." A month passes again. Same story as before. It's in the system. When I get to that

00:52:35   page, it's in the system that there is an order, and there's an estimated-- the thing that kills me,

00:52:39   there's an estimated delivery date. But it never shows as shipped, and the delivery date passes.

00:52:45   - And it is, again, just so we're all on the same page here. We are talking literally about

00:52:50   fabric covers for cushions. That's it. It's not like a big thing here. Like, it's a small--

00:52:55   - No, very small item. Very small item. So after a month, I decide I'm not gonna sit on the phone

00:53:03   for an hour at this time. So I find their email contact form, and I decide, "Let's try this one."

00:53:08   And I get, within a day, I get a response from somebody who's like, "I don't know what's going

00:53:13   on here, but I've canceled that, and I've given you-- here's your new order number. I've reordered

00:53:16   it." Okay, a few weeks pass, and I call again. I'm like, "This is-- it's the end of the summer now.

00:53:25   We've missed the whole summer. The furniture's been sitting out there with bottom cushions and

00:53:29   a whole bunch of assorted pillows that we found around because we don't have the top-- we have

00:53:33   the top cushions, but they're these thin little white things that need a cover on them." After--

00:53:38   this time, I push a different set of buttons in the phone tree, and I immediately get somebody

00:53:45   on the phone, which is amazing. I think I just had a problem with my order instead of miscellaneous

00:53:49   help. This person is very nice, and I spend about 25 minutes with her kind of putting me on hold and

00:53:56   checking and coming back and putting me on hold and checking and coming back. And then she says,

00:54:00   "I got-- I need to get a manager because I don't know what I'm seeing here." And I wait for another

00:54:05   15, 20 minutes, and a manager comes on. And the manager's also very nice and very smart and says,

00:54:09   "Okay." I-- first off, he says, "I also tried to get these and couldn't."

00:54:17   That's a bad sign.

00:54:18   He says, "I'm really sorry. Here's the story. We never had them in stock online. All of our stock

00:54:25   went to the stores." Now, I'm doing a callback now to the Apple Watch because this is another case

00:54:30   where a company has two different supply chains, although it seems like for IKEA, they basically

00:54:36   have their supply chain to stores, and then some stuff goes online, but it's not-- they're not

00:54:42   connected. And what it means is if you place an order online and they literally have it in the

00:54:47   store near your house, there's no connection. Like, they're not going to alert you. And I spent

00:54:52   the whole summer with an existing order that I'd already paid for and had never been delivered,

00:54:56   that had never been communicated as being backordered, right? That's-- I think that's one

00:55:00   of the key problems here is at no point did they say, "We don't have these, and we don't know when

00:55:04   we're going to get them," because then I could have said, "Well, refund my money and I'll go

00:55:07   try to get them in the store," but they never actually said that. But it's similar to the Apple

00:55:12   situation where they're in the stores, but they're not in the online supply chain. So the guy was very

00:55:17   nice. He's like, "You know, the trick here is to go look for them in the stores. The problem is it's

00:55:24   the end of the summer now, and it's a seasonal item, so it won't be available until next spring.

00:55:28   Good luck. I'll give you a $10 gift card as a sorry, and I'll refund your money."

00:55:33   Well, that's great. Okay, thus ends. Summer's over now. Whole summer. No cushions. Whatever.

00:55:41   And I decide, "Okay, at least I've gotten this resolved. They're never going to come. They're

00:55:47   going to refund my $18 or whatever, and I've got a $10 gift card. Great. I should, you know,

00:55:53   I should not have expected them to come, but it was always a mystery and nobody would give me a

00:55:57   straight answer." I'm going to take this into my own hands. And thus begins phase two of Frozen

00:56:02   Quest. This is the real quest. This is when the quest actually starts. This is where the quest

00:56:05   actually starts, because at this point I didn't know. I thought that when you order something on

00:56:10   the internet, it just shows up at your door. Because that's how it works literally to everybody

00:56:14   else. Everybody else, right. And if it doesn't show up at your door, they're like, "Oh, guess what?

00:56:18   We don't have it." That didn't happen here. So instead, Frozen Quest begins.

00:56:22   IKEA's website. So IKEA, as much as I've said negatively about IKEA's online store,

00:56:30   one of the interesting features of their website is, is tracking of stock in stores. So you go to

00:56:37   the site and you see a product. And if you've got, we actually have two stores in the Bay Area.

00:56:42   You actually can say this store, and it'll say there are three of these in the store,

00:56:46   or there are no, it's not in stock in this store. So I looked and the guy actually I had talked to

00:56:52   said, according to my information here, the Emeryville store has four of these. So if you

00:56:58   want, you could go over there and get them. And I think he said something like, "If they're there."

00:57:04   It's a little foreshadowing. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to do it. So one morning,

00:57:10   I drove, timed to get to the store at 10 AM when they open, parked right by, went all the way

00:57:16   straight to the exit, because I'm not going to weave my way through the whole store. All this

00:57:23   stuff is off in the, at the end where there's like the warehouse part of Ikea. So I go in the exit

00:57:28   through the, through the checkout line backward, go straight to where it says that there are four

00:57:35   of them on the shelf. And I find a box containing three of them and a paper cup, a half full of cold

00:57:47   coffee that somebody has just abandoned in the box. Okay. So I take those three and I buy them.

00:57:55   I'm halfway to my goal. I've got three covers. I thought, well, three is better than none.

00:57:59   And I've got all the cushions in my, in my car. And I think, should I just bring in the other

00:58:02   three and return them? I'm like, no, I'm, I'm going to, I'll wait it out to spring or, and I

00:58:07   get this brilliant idea as I'm standing in the store, or I'll go home and I'll see where else

00:58:11   they're in stock and I'm going to do it. I never do this, but I'm going to use the power of social

00:58:15   media to put out the bat signal. You can use your brand. You can engage, you can engage your brand.

00:58:20   Right. And, and you know what? So I get one of these every little while you get one,

00:58:25   right? That you can do. And everyone's going to forgive you for. If you do this all this time,

00:58:28   people will be annoyed by this. All right. So I go back and I spend a half an hour clicking on

00:58:33   Ikea's website to literally every single location in North America to see if this thing isn't.

00:58:39   How many do you need at this point? Three, three, three more. I need three,

00:58:43   three frozen cushion covers in gray. Yes. Okay. There are only two. Well, there are three stories

00:58:50   that have them. One claims to have one. That's not any good to me. I'm not going to even, but,

00:58:54   but the Renton store outside of Seattle has eight. Whoa. And the Atlanta, Atlanta store has four.

00:59:03   And I think, I think this might work. So I post a note on Twitter and I say,

00:59:07   Hey, anybody out there who is near the Ikeas in Renton, Washington, or Atlanta, I am, I need an

00:59:14   item. Can you help me out here? I immediately get a note back from my friend, Monty Ashley,

00:59:21   who I do podcasts with on the incomparable who says, Oh yeah, I'm going to be over at

00:59:25   wizards of the coast today. He used to work there. They make magic, the gathering and D and D and

00:59:29   stuff like that. And they're right next to the. The Ikea. So I'll go in and I'll go in and check.

00:59:34   And I'm like, great, fantastic. Um, like literally an hour later, I get a text from Monty

00:59:41   showing me the empty box where they all, all eight of them are not, they're not there.

00:59:46   Whatever, whoever said that there were eight. So that is like a, they have a stock management

00:59:51   problem. So now, now we've discovered is that they're very helpful in store supply chain

00:59:56   management system. Also doesn't really work. Um, but in the meantime, no, no, no, don't,

01:00:04   don't give up hope. Everybody. I have two Twitter followers who are both near the Atlanta store

01:00:10   and both of them say that they're going to go. One guy says he's going to go tomorrow. And the

01:00:14   other guy says he could, he goes past there on his commute. He could go today. And I say to the guy

01:00:20   tomorrow, I say, sounds great. And then the guy says, I can go today. And I'm like,

01:00:24   well, that's great. Cause I'll just tell the other guy. If you don't get them and then he

01:00:28   can go tomorrow. If you don't get by there or I can just tell him not to, it's like,

01:00:32   we'll work it out. Well, the guy who was going to go by tomorrow, he couldn't wait. So he went there.

01:00:37   They met, they met each other. No, one guy walks in, looks at the box where the

01:00:44   Frozans are supposed to be. And there's another guy there and he says, are you looking for the

01:00:48   Frozans for Jason? And the guy says, yes. And the other guy says, Oh, there aren't any.

01:00:59   Oh God. They're going to fight it out for you to provide you with. Oh my word.

01:01:05   It doesn't matter. They were supposed to be four. There are zero. There are zero.

01:01:09   Now I've been very specific on Twitter. I haven't even gone into, I haven't even gotten into the

01:01:14   details of exactly what it, what model number it is that I need. I just asked for Seattle and Atlanta,

01:01:20   but it's Twitter. And so there are people on there, you know, Twitter, right? Where you very

01:01:26   specifically target something at one little narrow specific group or concept and everybody else who

01:01:32   follows you ignores that and expands it to include themselves. That's pretty much how Twitter works.

01:01:37   So I start getting others, a guy in Beijing, who's like, they might have them in Beijing. And then I

01:01:42   got somebody else who in like Germany, who's like, they don't have them in Germany. I'm like,

01:01:46   I figured they didn't thank you, but I figured that was probably not. Um, and I think, okay,

01:01:52   this was really exciting. I sent people to Ikeas around North America. We all failed. It's very

01:01:57   sad. I'll wait until the spring. Hopefully they'll still make this thing in the spring and I can get

01:02:02   them then. And then I get a, uh, a message in the incomparable member Slack from the paying members

01:02:10   of the incomparable. We have a Slack community from a guy in Bergen, Norway, listener, Michael,

01:02:16   who says, is this the model you're looking for? I don't know how he figured that one out,

01:02:21   but he figured it out. He said they have them at my local Ikea. Now, how, how does they know?

01:02:27   Because I mean, cause everyone's got them at their local Ikea. I know. Well, right. So I'm like,

01:02:30   well, if you are near there and it's not too much trouble and you want to go look,

01:02:35   this is the model number. These are what they are. You know, that would be great. And I'm thinking to

01:02:41   myself, really, I'm going to get, come get, get a cushion covers from Norway. Well, the next day I

01:02:49   get a picture from listener, Michael and they had him and he bought them and he put them in a box

01:02:57   and sent them from Norway. And a week, a week later on Friday, I got a box from

01:03:04   Norway post opened it up. There are indeed three frozen gray covers, cushion covers.

01:03:13   I put them on the cushions that had been sitting shrink wrapped in my garage for three plus months,

01:03:20   put them out on the furniture. Hooray. The backyard is complete frozen quest is a success.

01:03:28   Thanks to listener, Michael, who I compensated for his, for his trouble. And it's going to rain

01:03:34   tomorrow. So happy summer everybody. And I have an epilogue here too, which is why I got this finally

01:03:42   all complete this epic quest on Friday, Saturday, Lauren and I go to the Cal football game.

01:03:47   And they have a pregame tailgate area where you can hang out before the game. You can buy a beer.

01:03:52   We walk in there and there, there, there's this huge area where you can sit and just hang out

01:03:59   and chat with people. It's entirely our solar on furniture, all of which are in neutral gray

01:04:06   and all of which have their cushions with covers. I have a question for you, Jason, dozens of them,

01:04:12   Jason. Now I want your honesty here. It's very important. If you hadn't got those covers,

01:04:19   would you install? I, what I'll say, probably not because I'm a fundamentally honest person,

01:04:29   but I will say that as I stood there looking at those things, I thought to myself,

01:04:35   what would I need to do if I did need to steal three of those? Who do I need to talk to,

01:04:41   to make this right? What charity do I need to give some money to? Well, I was thinking like,

01:04:46   could I casually take the covers off of them without people noticing and stuff them like

01:04:52   under my shirt and then run out before anyone noticed and, and flee to a place where they

01:04:58   couldn't, you know, into the, into the stadium where they couldn't find me. God. But fortunately,

01:05:04   Lister Michael prevented me from stealing from tailgate town at the California Memorial Stadium,

01:05:11   but there are like dozens of them there. I couldn't, Lauren saw it and she was like,

01:05:14   you got to check that out. Like, oh no. Anyway, that's my story. That's my story. Lister Michael,

01:05:21   save the day. Don't buy anything online from Ikea. Don't believe everything you see, anything you see

01:05:25   on Ikea's website. I like Ikea stuff, but if I can't buy it in the store, I'm not ever, ever,

01:05:33   ever going to buy it again. And I'm looking forward to next summer when we will have

01:05:37   a fully functional backyard for the first time. Well, Jason, I for one,

01:05:42   am really pleased that you did not let it go. I have been holding onto that pun for this entire

01:05:50   thing. I know that there are people that have already tweeted this joke to you because they

01:05:54   didn't have the self-restraint that I did. The cushion covers didn't bother me anyway.

01:06:01   Oh, so proud of you. Today's show is brought to you by Casper. Casper are the company focused on

01:06:08   sleep and they're dedicated to making you exceptionally comfortable one night at a time.

01:06:13   You spend a third of your life sleeping when you're not sitting on the cushions,

01:06:16   you know, you're sleeping. If you spend a third of your life doing anything, you want it to,

01:06:21   you want to make sure that it is the best that it can possibly be. And that's why you need Casper.

01:06:25   Their mattresses are perfectly designed for humans of engineering to soothe and support your natural

01:06:30   geometry. Casper mattresses have all of the right support in all of the right places and gosh down

01:06:36   it does it feel comfortable because they combine multiple supportive memory phones for a quality

01:06:42   mattress that has just the right sink and bounce. Casper mattresses are designed and developed in

01:06:46   the US and they have a breathable design that will help regulate your body temperature throughout the

01:06:51   night. Casper have a 100 night risk free sleep on a trial. They will deliver directly to your door

01:06:57   and if for any reason you don't love it they have a hassle-free return policy and I'm sure this is

01:07:01   one of the just one of the many reasons why Casper has over 20,000 positive reviews online, right?

01:07:08   They have 4.8 stars overall because of those wonderful, wonderful things that go into making

01:07:13   a Casper mattress. This is why they are becoming the internet's favorite mattress. Jason, is Casper

01:07:18   the Snell's favorite mattress? Yes, it's way better than cushions that aren't covered by the way and

01:07:24   it's super comfortable and we sleep on it every night. It is our number one favorite mattress that

01:07:30   we sleep on every day and I miss it when I'm sleeping somewhere else. You can get $50 towards

01:07:35   select mattresses by going to casper.com/upgrade and using upgrade at checkout. Terms and conditions

01:07:41   apply. That is casper.com/upgrade and the offer code upgrade to get $50 towards select mattress

01:07:47   purchases. Our thanks to Casper for their continued support of this show and Relay FM.

01:07:54   We have some #AskUpgrade questions to round out today's episode. Adam wants to know, Jason,

01:08:01   should Adam buy a TV, Apple TV I should say right now? They would love to future proof as well as

01:08:07   upgrading their next TV in the next year or two. Is now a good time or a bad time for to buy an

01:08:12   Apple TV? I think now is a great time because I think, would you agree with me? It seems unlikely

01:08:17   that Apple is going to upgrade the Apple TV 4K anytime soon. I can't understand what they would

01:08:22   put in it if they did. Yeah, right. No, and we know that they don't update these TVs very often,

01:08:27   these Apple TVs, and they just did it last year. And I don't know what tech they would put in it

01:08:33   that doesn't currently already sort of exist out there for TVs and audio and stuff like that.

01:08:39   And they did a, they did a software update to get the Dolby Atmos stuff in there. So if you'd love

01:08:44   to fruit future proof as Adam would love to future proof, get the Apple TV 4K, even if you don't have

01:08:49   a 4K TV. And I think that when you upgrade your TV in the next year or two, the Apple TV 4K will

01:08:56   work great with that TV too. Peter wants to know, do you use Apple Pay and iMessage? And if so,

01:09:02   like why do you use it? Like what do you like about it? And do you think that it'll ever get

01:09:06   outside of the US? Apple Pay cash is great. I use it whenever I can. Unfortunately, a lot of the

01:09:14   times that I need to pay somebody like to listener Michael for Frozen Quest. He's out of the US,

01:09:20   so I can't do Apple Pay cash. So when I am sending money to people just in here in the US,

01:09:27   I do use it and it's great. It's a lot of fun. I like it a lot. For Myke's bachelor party,

01:09:33   when we were divvying up who was paying for what, everybody who is American just Apple Pay cashed

01:09:41   everybody else what they needed to. So I think it's great. I get the challenges. I hope they get

01:09:46   it out of the US soon. There are, you know, because it's a debit system and you've got to have,

01:09:50   I think they've got a credit card partner. There's a lot of complexity to how it's built, but Apple

01:09:57   rarely does something and then just leaves it parked in the US. It does happen, but they know

01:10:02   that they want to be overseas with it. So I think it'll happen. I would say this rollout has

01:10:07   definitely been slower than Apple Pay. And Apple Pay feels like a more complicated system than

01:10:13   Apple Pay cash was. Yeah, but Apple Pay, like contactless payments and things already existed

01:10:18   where they were going. And this is more of a challenge because they have to have these

01:10:22   financial partners. Right, but they have to like make up deals of individual banks. It's true.

01:10:29   I'm surprised. A deal with Visa or MasterCard would not be as hard because those companies

01:10:34   would really want that business. So I find it peculiar. I feel that potentially it's that Apple

01:10:41   Pay cash is also a difficult thing, but not as high priority as Apple Pay itself was. It's

01:10:47   possible. Also, I think banks have tried to build their own versions of this, right? And so it's a

01:10:54   harder sell for Apple because banks want everybody to use the send cash feature that's inside their

01:11:00   own banking app instead of using the one that's controlled by Apple. But the Apple one is super,

01:11:06   basically what you want is you want terms that make the banks go, "Oh yes, we want to support

01:11:11   this because this will ultimately create a certain amount of money that passes through our bank

01:11:16   that benefits us." But it is strange. And I think you're right. It is a combination of it being

01:11:23   a whole bunch of deals need to be made and maybe it's not as high priority. But I like it. I think

01:11:28   it's a great feature. As Rick in the chat room points out, the complication may come through

01:11:32   if you enable this in multiple countries, how and if those countries communicate. So like,

01:11:39   can you send money to me? And if that is something that they want to enable, which when they do this,

01:11:44   they probably should, there's then a whole big thing about foreign exchange. Now it's all possible

01:11:49   to do because PayPal manages it. PayPal does it, yeah, exactly. Lots of companies manage this,

01:11:54   but that is the complexity because you shouldn't launch this if it's then locked to the country

01:12:00   because it's too confusing. That just becomes a pain point. So maybe that is the thing that

01:12:06   they're a little bit held up on is making it work across country lines. Marcus said, "Jason,

01:12:13   if the 10 and 10s weren't available and all that was available, it was a 10R or a 10s max." That

01:12:20   was what Apple went with. They just pushed the OLED screen up into a large screen and the only

01:12:24   smaller phone available was a 10R. Which one do you think you'd go with? Remind me, do you know

01:12:34   the dimensions? Is one of them smaller physically? Not really. I actually think,

01:12:43   and I'm going to check this off the top of my head, that they're about the same size.

01:12:47   I think it seems pretty obvious to me which one most people will go with, but I'm checking this

01:12:52   right now. We're looking at, well, okay, so the 10s max is 6.2 inches high and the 10R is 5.94

01:13:03   and the 10s max is 3.05 inches wide and the 10R is 2.98. So the 10R is slightly smaller

01:13:12   than the 10s max. I would probably, I don't know. The 10R sits pretty comfortably in between

01:13:22   the 10s and the 10s max. So, again, this is the world where the 10 and the 10s don't exist,

01:13:30   because that's my preference. I like the 10s max. I think it's really, because the 10s already a

01:13:36   little bit larger, that decreases the space between the two models, which means that it

01:13:40   feels like less of a jump to get up there. But the fact is when I hold it in my hand and I'm trying

01:13:44   to reach around on the screen, it's just too big for me. So on that level, I would want the 10R

01:13:50   because it's a little bit smaller. And the screen looks great. I would be really sad to give up the

01:13:55   2x lens because I do use that a lot when I'm taking pictures. But I think if I had to choose,

01:14:05   I would probably choose the 10R just because I think the 10s max is just too large for my hands,

01:14:10   and the 10R will be a little bit smaller. I'm really excited for the 10R reviews to

01:14:15   start coming out in the next couple of weeks. I'm just really keen to see how people stack it

01:14:21   up against the 10s, like after an extended use period. Yeah, and how people react to the screen,

01:14:25   because the screen looked great when I saw it at the Steve Jobs Theater. But what happens in

01:14:30   regular circumstances when you're looking at both of them side by side? How is that going to be?

01:14:35   I'm really keen to see how people start to judge that. But the 10R is a quarter of an inch less

01:14:42   wide. And for me, that's a big deal. It's still larger by three tenths of an inch than the 10.

01:14:54   But if I was forced to pick, I think that would drive it more than anything else. I would want to

01:15:00   try it in my hand for a while because there may be just a threshold that is crossed, and that

01:15:06   ultimately the 10R and the 10s max are both just over the threshold, and so it doesn't matter.

01:15:11   And if that's the case, I might go for the 10s max just because I'm stuck with a big screen. I

01:15:17   might as well have the big awesome phone. But my hope would be that the 10R would be somehow

01:15:24   more comfortable to use because it's a little bit smaller. It's thicker though. It's only like

01:15:30   just over a millimeter. My issues are about just where my fingers can reach on the screen

01:15:34   more than anything else when I'm holding it in my hand. And so that would be what I would be

01:15:39   most concerned by. Nantalus asks, "I'm having apps that I don't actually have installed on my iPad

01:15:45   show up in my screen time report. Is there any reason why or how this is happening?"

01:15:49   Yes. What you are probably seeing is the report for all of your devices. So when you're in screen

01:15:54   time, there is a button on the top right or a word that says "devices" which is a button.

01:16:00   If you tap that, you can choose specific devices attached to your iCloud account or all devices.

01:16:06   So if you tap around on that, you should be able to narrow it down. I wanted to mention this

01:16:11   because that is a feature. I do have a weird bug right now where my 10s max is just showing us the

01:16:17   word iPhone, which is very weird. And my iPhone 10, which is no longer attached to my iCloud account,

01:16:22   is still in that list. I think that there's some weird stuff going on in there, but it is still

01:16:26   a feature that I like. I like the book around on that. I like the reports. I still want to see more

01:16:31   refinement come to screen time, but I'm really pleased with that feature. I think it's pretty cool.

01:16:35   Nick asks, "Is there any idea, Jason, why some complications aren't available on the new Infograph

01:16:44   watch face?" Is this a thing that you're finding? Yeah. So the problem with what Apple has done

01:16:50   with the new Infograph face, and I'm going to write about this. I'm working on my Apple Watch

01:16:54   review right now, is they decided to do different complications in the different faces. So even

01:17:00   though there's little circles in the old faces and the new faces, the new faces circle complication

01:17:07   is different than the old one, and they're not compatible. You can't just take an old,

01:17:11   smaller complication and put it in the circle in the new one, which means that every app that has

01:17:15   a complication for the old watch faces and hasn't been updated for the new watch faces, their

01:17:22   complications are invisible on the new watch faces. So like Overcast, when we were first taking these

01:17:29   new watches out for a spin, you couldn't put an Overcast complication on the new faces.

01:17:35   Marc Arment had to update Overcast to add a new complication. I think this is a bad decision on

01:17:41   Apple's part. One of my complaints, I think ATP did a very nice job following up on our criticism

01:17:47   of complications and watch faces on our show last week. I meant to put this in follow-up, but forgot.

01:17:52   Listening to Marco talk about the watch faces, I found it absolutely fascinating, because he is a

01:17:59   watch person, right? Has a lot of experience with a lot of different watch faces, different sizes,

01:18:05   different shapes, different features. I loved that segment of ATP, just hearing him go through all of

01:18:11   that. It was really, really good. And I enjoyed that he said he had listened to us talk about it,

01:18:16   and then he was sort of building on what we were talking about. It's a good conversation. I like

01:18:19   it a lot. And he's right that one of my frustrations-- I feel like this is one of those

01:18:24   things where the Apple Watch has gotten good enough now that we need to start getting down

01:18:28   to some of the details. And some of the details are these faces. Apple keeps adding faces, but not

01:18:34   going back to their other faces. They modified the old faces on the Series 4, and the straight lines

01:18:38   curve now, which I agree with Marco, is really weird that they did that. But the fact that they

01:18:46   didn't make it so that the old complications, if they didn't have a new one to override it,

01:18:52   were compatible or something like that. They just didn't do that. You got to update for the new one.

01:18:57   And the fact that they didn't update the old ones to use the new style either, which they could have

01:19:01   done for some of them. They could have said, "Well, the circle on these faces, we're going to make

01:19:06   space for them because we're going to use the snazzy new circular complications on these older

01:19:12   faces." They're like, "Nah, that's too much work, apparently. We're not going to do that. We're just

01:19:16   going to use the old style complications." So I'm in a situation where, in a lot of ways, like Marco,

01:19:21   I want numbers on my watch face. I like a watch face with hands, but I want numbers on them. I

01:19:29   don't want to do that extra mental calculation of where would the numbers be, what time is it.

01:19:34   That's a little bit more mental load that I prefer not to have. I like having an analog watch face,

01:19:40   but I want the numbers on it too. I like how it looks. And that means that the utility face

01:19:45   is still a face that I really want to use. But it's also really boring on the Series 4 when I

01:19:50   know that I've got these super awesome Infograph faces. But they didn't offer a variation of the

01:19:57   Infograph face that has the numbers on it. I know why the numbers aren't there on the main one,

01:20:01   because you'd lose some of that space on the interior where they put these complications.

01:20:05   But could there be an alternate design? Could there be a modification to the old

01:20:09   utility face to add some of the new complication styles in there?

01:20:14   And it's just one of those areas where, is it this hard to develop watch faces that Apple has,

01:20:20   sort of, they make them and kind of abandon them? Or were they just prioritizing other things?

01:20:25   Because I understand, like, up until the release of WatchOS 5, there were lots of other things for

01:20:30   them to prioritize. But at this point, I feel like they got to get their watch face house in order.

01:20:36   And that's one of my big frustrations with the Series 4 watch, is the inconsistency of faces and

01:20:43   complications and the lack of alternatives or adaptable faces, faces that have some different

01:20:54   variations. Like, if you like a face and it doesn't do exactly what you want, too bad. You

01:21:01   move on to the next one. And I'm not asking for, like, super nerdy face modification formats or

01:21:08   anything like that. I think they need more variations on their themes than they've really

01:21:12   been able to offer up to now. So, anyway, to Nick's point, one of the things they did there

01:21:19   is literally, like, if an app hasn't been updated to support the new complications on the new faces,

01:21:24   they're just not there. It's really annoying. All right, so our next question comes from Gustavo.

01:21:30   Gustavo is a happy user of the 2018 9.7-inch iPad, but they are suspicious that this will be the last

01:21:37   iPad Apple releases at this price point. Jason, what do you think Apple's strategy will be for

01:21:44   that iPad, the regular iPad going forward? Do you think that it's something they're going to keep

01:21:48   doing? I think that iPad is the bedrock of the iPad line, and I think that is their strategy.

01:21:56   I think we've seen it. I think there will be a seventh-gen iPad at some point, 9.7 inches low

01:22:02   price. I don't think that's an aberration. I think that's the final destination of the iPad line.

01:22:08   Yeah, I think that it's going to continue, right? Like, it feels like an entryway,

01:22:12   like it just feels like something that's going to stick around. I don't think that the iPad Pro

01:22:19   means that the iPad can't exist. And I think for there to be an iPad Pro, that always has to be

01:22:25   an iPad. Like, I think that there will something, something will stick around in that price point

01:22:34   for the foreseeable future. I don't know how often it will be updated, but there will be something.

01:22:39   That I don't know. Maybe it's every other year or something like that, but I don't get Gustavo's

01:22:45   suspicion. I think this is exactly where Apple wanted to go with the iPad. They want a mass

01:22:51   appeal iPad. And in fact, they will keep rolling Pro-style features down to it eventually, as they

01:22:56   did with pencil support. Like, that is their education model. That is their under-the-tree

01:23:02   model. The iPad Pro gets the freedom to be as high-end as it needs to be because there's a

01:23:08   low-end base model iPad. And our last question today comes from Steven. Steven is very happy,

01:23:15   Jason, how iOS 12 has optimized performance on these older devices, but feeling a little bit

01:23:21   shy about putting Mojave on his 2015 iMac. Is there a rule of thumb or resources to help

01:23:28   determine when your Mac is too old to upgrade? I don't know. I feel like Apple's done a pretty

01:23:34   decent job with the last couple of versions in terms of not making it be a sort of slowdown

01:23:40   disaster. I don't have a rule of thumb about it. I think a 2015 iMac is probably going to be fine

01:23:48   with Mojave, especially if you're already running the previous edition and you're going from High

01:23:55   Sierra to Mojave. I don't have a resource beyond that. I think Apple's gotten better at that.

01:24:04   These updates have not been ones that totally slow down your Mac. So you should only ever upgrade

01:24:10   when you need to for a reason, though, right? I mean, I give you a hard time, Myke, about updating

01:24:16   to Mojave, but really you should have a reason to do it. And for a while, Apple will continue

01:24:22   to release security updates on older versions anyway. And unless there's a feature you want

01:24:27   or there's a compatibility reason to switch, you can also just stay behind and that's okay. So

01:24:31   that's my rule of thumb is do you want the new features or not? And beyond that, I think Mojave

01:24:40   on a 2015 iMac is probably not an issue. All right, thank you so much to everybody

01:24:45   that submitted their Ask Upgrade questions. You can always send out a tweet with the hashtag

01:24:49   Ask Upgrade to have your question answered at the end of the show. And don't forget,

01:24:53   if you have something fun you'd like us to start the episode off with, send out a tweet with the

01:24:57   hashtag Snell Talk. You can find links and information about this episode at relays.fm/upgrade/213

01:25:05   and those show notes should be in your podcast player of choice as well. Thanks to Hollow and

01:25:10   Pingdom and Casper for their support of the show. And of course, thank you for listening. As always,

01:25:15   you can find Jason online at sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com. Jason hosts a wide variety

01:25:22   of shows here at Relay FM, as do I, and you can find information about those at relay.fm/shows.

01:25:29   Jason is on Twitter, he is @jsnell. You can find me on Instagram, I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E there.

01:25:36   And until next time, we'll be back. Don't worry about gradients, we'll be back for you next week.

01:25:41   Say goodbye Jason Snell. Goodbye everybody.