0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 187. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom,
0:00:15Casper, and Peacock. My name is Myke Hurley, I am joined by Mr. Jason Snow. Hello, Jason Snow.
0:00:21Hi Myke, I'm back in my garage now and Alex Cox isn't like peering at me from behind a curtain.
0:00:27So it's different. It would be concerning, I think. That would be a little weird, because
0:00:31I didn't invite her over if she was lurking, but she's not.
0:00:36Our #SnailTalk question this week comes from Will, and this is baseball-related because
0:00:40I understand that the season is open, or however it is you refer to it in baseball world.
0:00:45Sure. Yeah, the season is open. That's exactly what we say.
0:00:48Open for play. Will wants to know, "Jason, if you had the ability to play for the Giants,
0:00:54I believe, are your team. San Francisco Giants? What position would you want to play and what
0:00:59would be your walk-up music?
0:01:03Well position-wise, I always played, when I played baseball in like little league, I
0:01:10was mostly a second baseman so I would probably choose that, although in rec softball in college
0:01:16I sometimes played first base, so something like that.
0:01:19So you're a catcher, you're in the field at that point, right?
0:01:23It's not a catcher is a position that is not generic term, so you can't say I'm a catcher.
0:01:28That would be literally the catcher is the person who sits behind home plate and catches
0:01:32the pitches from the pitcher.
0:01:34I did that a little bit too, but that's not for me.
0:01:37But that's your predominant role, is it then, to catch the ball?
0:01:40Do you ever hit the ball?
0:01:41I don't know how baseball works.
0:01:43I very well know you all, so everybody who plays in the field also has to hit the ball.
0:01:48Except in some circumstances for the pitcher, who is sometimes swapped out for a person
0:01:52who can hit. But that's complication levels we don't want to. When you're not a bat, when
0:01:56you're not on that side, you would be standing at second base. That's where you want to be.
0:02:00Yeah, and actually the second, one of the things I had to learn when I was a kid and
0:02:02I was playing second base is that you don't stand on the base when you're second base.
0:02:06Second base is to toward the first base side of second base. You stand, because there's
0:02:11a shortstop who stands on the other side of second base. Of course there is. It's complicated.
0:02:15Anyway, my walk-up music, and I want to just mention because it makes me laugh every time
0:02:20I think about it that my friend Philip Michaels has explained that his walk-up music would
0:02:25be the Soviet national anthem, which just I think would be hilarious. I think that's
0:02:32a wrestling reference, Myke. You might actually even get that one. Because I think there was
0:02:35a wrestler who they played, he was supposedly the, he was a heel and he was from the Soviet
0:02:41Union and everybody would boo him as he entered to the Soviet national anthem. Anyway, I think
0:02:46it's got to be "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House, right? Like, I think that would
0:02:50have to be it. That's my walk-up music for the Pundit Showdown podcast when we did that
0:02:54at Macworld. So I think that would have to be it.
0:02:59That's a good choice, and honestly, if I would have written an answer for you, that would
0:03:03have been the answer I would have written down. I know how much you love that song.
0:03:06It's a great song! That's gotta be it. Gotta be it.
0:03:09So we have some follow-up about iBooks Author. In the last episode, after we were talking
0:03:15about the education event. We are under the impression that the inclusion of digital book
0:03:21publishing tools or digital book creation tools, I should say, in pages meant that iBooks
0:03:25author was going to be dead. But Serenity Caldwell confirmed with Apple that iBooks
0:03:29author is continuing as its own standalone product and that the pages update is not a
0:03:34replacement for it.
0:03:36Continues to exist. We have our shovels out, we were ready to bury it, and Serenity broke
0:03:42down the doors and was like, "No, no, no. It's still alive. Don't bury it yet." Although,
0:03:47I have a hard time believing that they're going to put much effort into iBooks Author.
0:03:50I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's more likely that they would upgrade the book publishing
0:03:56stuff inside of Pages and then keep iBooks Author around just for the people who are
0:04:02already using it. You can definitely do stuff with iBooks Author that you can't do with Pages.
0:04:07And that format is still supported in iBooks and only iBooks. But this is good news for people.
0:04:12like our friend David Sparks who do books in iBooks author format, that they can still
0:04:17do that and it's okay.
0:04:19And Jason, iBooks author remains a product in our lineup, but there is nothing more to
0:04:23say about it today.
0:04:24Yeah, I actually asked somebody at Apple about it. I actually asked somebody at Apple and
0:04:29I said, "So iBooks author continues to be a product?" And they said, "Yep." I was like,
0:04:34"All right, well."
0:04:35It will continue with the same or little as treatment as it has received over the last
0:04:41few years.
0:04:42I'm just imagining iBooks author giving Apple a big hug, like, "Thank you for keeping me
0:04:46around and Apple's got its arms out." Like, "Mm, yeah, okay, stop hugging me now."
0:04:51Or it's like it's going for the hug but it's making a face over iBooks author's shoulder.
0:04:58Yeah. Yeah.
0:04:59Oh dear. Well, it still exists. It's still there. I mean, I guess it's good because there
0:05:04are more tools in it, right? So my feeling is it exists for now. I would be very surprised
0:05:11if they didn't just continue to make pages better or write quicker than they
0:05:15make iBooks Author better, but we'll see.
0:05:16Yeah.
0:05:17And we didn't do any Upstream last week because of the event.
0:05:21And there were a few interesting topics that we wanted to talk about.
0:05:24So let's get into that right now.
0:05:26We're going to start off by saying that Amy Apolo, you may know from Parks
0:05:29and Recreation, who we mentioned in the last week's episode, because it was
0:05:31your favorite of the two between Parks and Rec and The Office, is making her
0:05:35directorial debut with Netflix.
0:05:38It is a comedy movie called Wine Country, which tells the story of a group of old friends
0:05:43who go to Napa for a weekend getaway to celebrate a 50th birthday.
0:05:46It is a really great and huge cast, including Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, and many more.
0:05:53So that's going to be interesting to see.
0:05:54Tina Fey is of course going to be doing some kind of walk-on role in the movie, right?
0:05:59She's going to be in it.
0:06:00But yeah, I'm excited to see this.
0:06:03So this is fascinating because this is one of those questions of would this have been
0:06:07a, would this have been a movie before, a theatrical release before, and there's just
0:06:12no room for it.
0:06:14Or is this a smaller kind of story that would have been maybe 15, 20 years ago would have
0:06:20been a TV movie or something, which they kind of don't do anymore, and so now it's a Netflix
0:06:25movie.
0:06:26I don't know, but I think this is interesting.
0:06:27Well, it's like it never would have existed, right?
0:06:28Like it maybe never would have happened.
0:06:31Hell yeah, because a lot of stuff it's just, is there a place for something like this?
0:06:35And the advantage of having these streaming services is that they aren't as constrained
0:06:41as a theatrical release especially would be, and the networks don't do TV movies anymore.
0:06:46So whether this is something that would have five or ten years ago been a relatively kind
0:06:52of low-budget, low-to-mid-budget theatrical release, or whether it might have been in
0:06:57the TV movie, like a little bit cheaper TV movie camp,
0:06:59which now the TV movies only really are like on,
0:07:02on like HBO or things like that,
0:07:04or they're films released on Netflix.
0:07:07So interesting.
0:07:08And that's what, that is what, I mean,
0:07:11I think Amy Poe is really funny
0:07:13and this could be really good,
0:07:14but I think it's also really interesting
0:07:15that this is not necessarily a piece of content
0:07:18that would otherwise have existed.
0:07:21Other than having a platform like Netflix to put it.
0:07:23- Common with a lot of these types of productions,
0:07:27like her production company is producing it, um,
0:07:30along with another production company owned by Morgan Secut,
0:07:32who was a producer of Parks and Rec,
0:07:34a Parks and Rec writer is writing it with her and she has,
0:07:38and she's bringing in a lot of like colleagues and friends, right?
0:07:40Like this is becoming extremely common with these types of movies because it's
0:07:46like the stars have got enough money to put this type of thing together on a
0:07:51small budget,
0:07:52but they haven't got enough money to put it in cinemas.
0:07:56Right. Because that's like a whole different thing.
0:08:00Which means...
0:08:01Well, you know, the marketing cost of a major motion picture is vastly more than the cost
0:08:06to make the movie at this point.
0:08:08Yep. So, you know, and so basically my expectation is, right, they cover the production side,
0:08:14Netflix covers the marketing side, and they call it job done. And this allows for Amy
0:08:19Poehler to get a directorial credit on her IMDb page, right? So she continues to build
0:08:23herself up so like maybe in a couple years time she will have a feature film.
0:08:28Like this is this is this is why a lot of this stuff is is like so hot right
0:08:32now I think because it's allowing a lot of really talented creators to get their
0:08:37foot in the door. Right well this is and and you see how the business I mean
0:08:42there's a business aspect to this which is the money and the the strategizing
0:08:45about like where where the money is going going to Netflix you know it's
0:08:49going away from things like the networks and even some cable, but it also has this creative
0:08:55of the in the end the money story, the business story becomes a creative story too because
0:09:00there become outlets for stuff that wouldn't have existed before and opportunities. I was
0:09:06going to say the another example of this is just prestige. The existence of prestige television
0:09:12has completely melted the certainly for actors completely melted the distinction between
0:09:19film and television. Film stars, Academy Award winners do television now. I could come up
0:09:26with multiple examples of Academy Award winning actors and actresses who are stars of regular
0:09:33TV shows now, right? I mean, I just watched the finale of Counterpart last night with
0:09:39J.K. Simmons, who's an Oscar winner, and Allison Janney has a sitcom and she's an Oscar winner.
0:09:45you know, the list goes on, that's completely melted away. And then for writers too, there's
0:09:50that sense like writers, you know, TV is now a better place for writers and writers get
0:09:55to kind of run the show in a way that they don't necessarily in features because features
0:10:00are becoming more like a, you know, writers room that is dominated by the corporate organization
0:10:06that is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in each release because it's got to
0:10:12be marketed and targeted and all of those things. It's fascinating that you get, you
0:10:16know, the money machinery gets tweaked by, in a lot of cases, technology changes, but
0:10:25when the machine is running, then creative stuff pops out. And when you alter how the
0:10:30machine runs, different creative stuff pops out. And this is a great example of that.
0:10:35So yeah, it's fascinating. Here's an interesting one. YouTube have announced
0:10:40a movie called Vulture Club. It stars Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon, Eddie Falco and
0:10:47Matt Bomer. It's a drama.
0:10:49multiple Emmy winner Eddie Falco.
0:10:53It's a drama and YouTube are planning for a theatrical release in 2018 and it will be
0:10:59released on YouTube Red afterwards. And you say to yourself, that's weird. Why are YouTube,
0:11:05they have their own subscription service, why are they putting this movie into cinemas?
0:11:10Let me tell you why. They want it to win an Oscar. That's why.
0:11:13Yeah, that's it. That is actually becoming a very common thing. Amazon has done this
0:11:17too in a few different ways, and there are a couple ways to do it. One way you can put
0:11:21it in theaters is you can put it in a theater in New York and LA for a week, and it's eligible
0:11:27for the Oscars. But another way that some of these companies are doing it is they're
0:11:31giving it a theatrical release. Maybe not investing massively in marketing and all that,
0:11:37but they give it a legitimate theatrical release and then they put it on their streaming service
0:11:41afterward. And that qualifies it for awards and also potentially, you know, it gets in
0:11:46talking to Tim Goodman from the Hollywood Reporter, one of the, which I do a podcast
0:11:50with every week, one of the things that comes up is how hard it is to find stuff. And when
0:11:56you're a consumer, but like also how does something get reviewed? Like does a Netflix
0:12:01movie get reviewed? Do the movie reviewers review it? Do the TV reviewers review it or
0:12:07does it get caught like lost in the cracks, right? One of the advantages of giving your
0:12:11film a theatrical release before you put it on streaming is it's a movie. Everybody understands
0:12:16it's a movie and the movie reviewers review it. Whereas Amy Poehler's thing like, "Who's
0:12:20gonna review that?" Are movie reviewers gonna review it? Are TV reviewers gonna review it?
0:12:25Or is it going to be a neither fish nor foul situation?
0:12:28So lots of smart reasons for doing this.
0:12:31Netflix goes back and forth on this too, where Netflix wants to win Oscars.
0:12:35And they have.
0:12:36They won an Oscar for documentary feature for that film about Russia and the Russian
0:12:41doping scandal.
0:12:44But Netflix also does direct-to-Netflix releases where they're not eligible, and presumably
0:12:48they can win Emmy awards for that.
0:12:50I don't know.
0:12:51It's just a decision they have to make.
0:12:53Well on that note Netflix have been banned from Cannes because they are not going to be putting
0:12:58their next movies in theaters. This is so ridiculous to me. This is so ridiculous. I find
0:13:04this to be so old school and stupid. Like I don't understand why there is this like vice grip that
0:13:14they're trying to hold on theater releases when I know that there is an industry of people there
0:13:21that worked that way but there is a new industry building around streaming services and actors and
0:13:28actresses are finding and all production companies are finding new success in streaming services that
0:13:34wouldn't exist right we were just talking about that like that Amy Poehler movie may not have ever
0:13:38existed but it can exist because Netflix will put the money into it but now they're being banned
0:13:43from award ceremonies because they don't they don't want to kiss the ring of the old god I find it so
0:13:49change. Yeah, basically the Cannes Film Festival is saying you can't be eligible for any awards
0:13:54that can. You can screen your films if you want, but you can't be eligible for any awards unless
0:13:58you get a full French theatrical release. And Netflix was like, "All right, we'll put it out
0:14:04for a week in theaters and the whatever entity approves or disapproves that disapproved it."
0:14:10So nope, that's not good enough. And you're right. It is, you know, look, at some point either
0:14:18Netflix will decide that it's more important that they release the film in France because they want to get win the Palme d'Or in
0:14:25at the Cannes Film Festival or
0:14:27The Cannes Film Festival will say hey
0:14:30We would be better off letting Netflix come regardless
0:14:35Eventually something will give there, but you're right
0:14:39It is it is resistance and fear and I get it if they are the extension of the cinema owners in France and
0:14:47and more broadly around the world, then they may be saying, "Why should we give our
0:14:51cachet to these people who don't want to be in our theaters?" I get it, but it does
0:14:57seem a little foolish.
0:14:58Yeah, I understand it. I just think it's the wrong move. I mean, I think even, you
0:15:03know, if you want to look down on them, create a best streaming movie award, right? Like,
0:15:07they're not eligible for the big ones, but you can give them an award.
0:15:11Yeah, well, eligibility, award eligibility is a little silly anyway, right? Like, the
0:15:15Academy Awards, if I make a movie and it is the best two hour, you know, whatever is in
0:15:19the, what is it, 60, 70 minutes, whatever the feature length is upward, and it's the
0:15:27best one of those in the year, but it didn't go in theater in LA for a week. It just went
0:15:34on to Netflix. But it's, by far, everybody agrees, the best movie of the year. Why shouldn't
0:15:38it be eligible for an Oscar? And the answer is, well, there's got to be some eligibility
0:15:42requirement and that's it. So you pay your money to a theater and what the film festival
0:15:47is saying is, "No, that's not good enough. We're not going to let you skate in. You got
0:15:51to be a real movie with a real release or we're not going to be about you." And fair
0:15:56enough, I guess. It's their trophy. It's their festival. It's interesting that they're not
0:16:02banning them from coming. They're just banning them from getting awards. They can come, you
0:16:08- Yeah, pay us money, bring your--
0:16:09- Please, please.
0:16:10- Yeah, but just don't, anyway,
0:16:11it is fascinating to see how industries
0:16:14that are changing or dying react to that change.
0:16:18And this is an example of that.
0:16:20- And finally today, the New York Times
0:16:22have a report about Apple's upcoming video service
0:16:25and provide some information that we hadn't yet gotten,
0:16:29or at least some clarifications
0:16:31from wherever New York Times are getting their sources,
0:16:33whether it's from Apple, which it very well could be,
0:16:35or others.
0:16:37I can tell you where they got this source because they actually said,
0:16:40"Apple is saying to people that they're talking to now about doing shows."
0:16:44Okay, okay.
0:16:46That, so it's obviously from those people.
0:16:48So they're getting it from movie executives, right?
0:16:50Right, it's whoever they're making the deals with.
0:16:52They're saying to those people that they're targeting spring or summer of 2019
0:16:58to launch this thing, which I will refer you back to my previous,
0:17:05I felt good when I read this.
0:17:06I was like, oh, thank goodness.
0:17:07Because it was, you know, I said like quite a while ago,
0:17:11like almost a year ago now, that there's no way
0:17:13that they could get this done before at earliest late '18.
0:17:20And here we go.
0:17:20They're actually not even going to try to hit late '18,
0:17:23apparently.
0:17:23It's going to be early to mid '19 before they get it out
0:17:28there, because this stuff, it takes a long time
0:17:30to make TV shows.
0:17:32It really does.
0:17:33And they've got to have enough of them ready to go that they
0:17:35can start releasing them and promoting their service and they can't just trickle them out
0:17:40episode by episode. They've got to get a bunch of them ready to go. So spring/summer 2019.
0:17:45I expect we will probably start seeing the first trailers around iPhone time this year.
0:17:50I think they might start trickling stuff out then to try and start building the excitement
0:17:56for it. The New York Times also says that Apple is on track to spend significantly more
0:18:02than the previously reported $1 billion budget.
0:18:05I wonder if that was their content budget to get going in '17, and now that they're
0:18:10in '18 or talking about '19, that they're like, "Well, that was the first billion.
0:18:15Now we're into the next year.
0:18:17Now we've got a couple more billion."
0:18:18It could just be the possibility that when they started on this process, they found out
0:18:22that people were a lot more open to them than they had originally thought that they would
0:18:25be.
0:18:26And now it's like, "Well, okay, we have a lot of interesting stuff on the table.
0:18:30Let's wrap that budget up."
0:18:31Right?
0:18:32Keep in mind, it is rolling too.
0:18:35They don't spend a billion dollars and then walk away.
0:18:37To be honest, when you have a billion dollars
0:18:41to spend on launching your service, guess what?
0:18:44Year two, you spend a billion and a half more.
0:18:47Year three, you spend two billion.
0:18:49Year four, you spend four billion.
0:18:50- And really, really hope that you've got
0:18:51a lot of subscribers by that point.
0:18:53- Right, although your Apple, you've got a giant cash pile,
0:18:56so you can afford to do that for a very long time.
0:18:58So yeah, they're gonna keep spending money
0:19:00and we're gonna keep talking about this in general
0:19:03and about Apple's strategy in particular here,
0:19:06but they keep making deals and they are gonna,
0:19:10it's a real thing.
0:19:11This is gonna be a real thing competing with Netflix
0:19:14and Amazon and Disney and Hulu and anything else
0:19:19that is out there.
0:19:20Apple is gonna be an HBO and all of that.
0:19:24Apple's gonna be in the fray.
0:19:25This is all still a little theoretical now,
0:19:29but it's gonna happen and we're gonna be,
0:19:32they're gonna be Apple TV shows.
0:19:34It's already in the works.
0:19:35And so next year, I had that moment where 2019
0:19:38seems so far away and then you realize
0:19:40it's not that far away.
0:19:41When I finished the season finale of Counterpart last night,
0:19:44they ran a trailer that said season two, 2019.
0:19:47I thought, oh God, 2019, oh, that's just next year, okay.
0:19:51- I maintain like in thinking about this,
0:19:53I'm really pleased we started doing this regular segment
0:19:55because by the time this service comes around,
0:19:58I'm gonna know so much about the way this business works
0:20:00that like I'm gonna feel confident in talking about it.
0:20:02You know?
0:20:03- There's something to be said for the fact
0:20:05that by getting on this early,
0:20:07and we have heard from a few people who are like,
0:20:08oh, I'm not as interested in that stuff.
0:20:09- I get why people don't like it.
0:20:11I mean, I understand.
0:20:11- I think it's fascinating because it's a way
0:20:14that technology changes are leading to massive changes
0:20:17in this whole other industry
0:20:18that most of us are consumers of in one way or another.
0:20:21But Apple's presence in it, I think,
0:20:23makes it even more a fit for the charter of this podcast
0:20:27because we don't want to not pay attention to it,
0:20:30and then Apple announces a service,
0:20:32and we suddenly look up and go,
0:20:33oh, what's this service about?
0:20:34Like, we're talking about it from the very beginning
0:20:37and trying to get a handle on what they're doing
0:20:39and how they're doing it.
0:20:40So I'm excited to see it,
0:20:42and I'm excited to see the shows,
0:20:43and I'm fascinated to see how they roll it out.
0:20:45And will they, how do you communicate a trailer of content
0:20:48for a service that you haven't announced?
0:20:50And would they announce it six months in advance?
0:20:52Or would they just say,
0:20:53well, we've got something coming next year
0:20:55that we're not gonna talk about,
0:20:56but here's a trailer of whatever it is.
0:20:59I don't even know how they communicate this stuff.
0:21:01So that's gonna be fun to watch.
0:21:03- Today's show is brought to you by
0:21:05our amazing friends at Pingdom.
0:21:07The reason Pingdom are awesome,
0:21:09and the reason that I find them amazing,
0:21:10is because they help keep your sites
0:21:12and the sites that you love online.
0:21:14Pingdom will monitor any site that you wanna throw at it
0:21:16so you don't have to,
0:21:17and they will give you real-time feedback
0:21:19so you know exactly what's going on at all times
0:21:21if you need it.
0:21:22Look, this is because, and let's be real,
0:21:24stuff breaks on the internet all the time.
0:21:25Every month Pingdom detects around 13 million outages, that's more than 400,000 outages
0:21:30every day.
0:21:31And this is just of the websites that they're monitoring.
0:21:34There are many many more outages than this.
0:21:37So regardless of whether you have a small website or you're maintaining a huge infrastructure,
0:21:42it's incredibly important to monitor its availability and performance because things
0:21:45break.
0:21:46You don't want to have to find out that your site's down.
0:21:49You never want to know.
0:21:50It's never a good thing to hear, but if you have to hear it, you want to get that stuff
0:21:54fast.
0:21:55don't want to wait until somebody sends you a tweet or an email and that's why you
0:21:59need Pingdom. It's easy to get started. All you need to give Pingdom is the URL you
0:22:03want to monitor and they will take care of the rest. Go to Pingdom.com/RelayFM right
0:22:08now and you can get a 14 day free trial with no credit cards required. Then when you sign
0:22:12up use the code UPGRADE at checkout and you will get a huge 30% off your first invoice.
0:22:18That is Pingdom.com/RelayFM right now and get that 14 day trial with the code UPGRADE
0:22:23at checkout to get 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom for the continued support
0:22:28of this show and Relay FM.
0:22:31So the education event was a week ago.
0:22:34Yep.
0:22:35And there's been a lot of discussion and thought that's come out since and I think it's good
0:22:40that maybe we should touch on some of these things. I've got a couple of quotes that I
0:22:44want to read and we can talk about some thoughts from some observers and I know there's some
0:22:48stuff that you want to fill in as well having had some time to think about and discuss this
0:22:52in a little bit more detail.
0:22:54So first off, I want to read a couple of quotes
0:22:57from Bradley Chambers, who was,
0:22:58he's written some pieces for 9to5Mac.
0:23:01Bradley, if you don't know Bradley,
0:23:02has long managed large, huge deployments
0:23:04for Apple devices in education.
0:23:06So he knows what he's talking about.
0:23:07And he actually has a regular column at 9to5Mac now,
0:23:10which started a few weeks ago,
0:23:11which is kind of the perfect time for him and for them.
0:23:14So that was like, that was a good coup.
0:23:16Bradley compared the 2018 event to the 2012 event.
0:23:20That's what he was looking at in one of his articles,
0:23:22because that 2012 event was the education event
0:23:24that we mentioned where they introduced the textbooks.
0:23:27And he kind of said that really,
0:23:29if you look at that 2012 event,
0:23:31everything that was announced hasn't really gone anywhere.
0:23:34Like all the textbook stuff, it didn't make a big impact.
0:23:38And so this is what he said,
0:23:39"As I re-watched a 2012 keynote and pondered a 2018 keynote,
0:23:43I realized that Apple is yet again trying to craft a future
0:23:45for education that I am not sure fits with reality."
0:23:50So Bradley cites some issues being device prices,
0:23:53the timelines of having to implement new features
0:23:56and kind of when Apple are introducing them,
0:23:58and that potentially they're focusing on the wrong places.
0:24:00And he talks about the fact that Google targets
0:24:03IT departments with their features, not educators,
0:24:06because that's where it's deployed.
0:24:08And this is why Google are making headway.
0:24:10And he says, "Google is touting ease of management
0:24:12and deployment.
0:24:13Apple is touting new apps with Apple Pencil support."
0:24:16I really liked this because it's showing
0:24:18some of the practicalities that go into these decisions
0:24:21when Apple seems to be way more focused
0:24:24on trying to woo people
0:24:25and Google is maybe a little bit more down in the trenches
0:24:28and showing IT departments why their stuff's easy to deploy.
0:24:31- Yeah, it's the whole thing here, I mean, look,
0:24:36if you're Apple, you've got to go with what you've got.
0:24:38You literally can't sell--
0:24:40- Yeah, and they don't have the IT management stuff.
0:24:42They don't have that down.
0:24:43- You can't sell what you don't have.
0:24:44Also, I would argue this is so familiar
0:24:46and I think I said this last week,
0:24:47But I mean, this is so familiar 'cause it's, you know,
0:24:50when people are talking about this education market,
0:24:52I hear a lot of market share arguments,
0:24:54which again, Apple losing share
0:24:56and Google gaining share is important,
0:24:58but like Apple's goal is not purely market share.
0:25:02So that's part of it.
0:25:03And also I hear things that remind me of the old days
0:25:05of the Mac versus PC in businesses,
0:25:08where it comes down to who's got a better story
0:25:11for the IT managers.
0:25:13And back in those days, the answer was always,
0:25:15Microsoft owns the minds of the IT managers.
0:25:19Apple basically is trying to own the minds of the,
0:25:23in those cases, it was like the workers and the executives
0:25:26so that they say, well, yeah, I know it's easier
0:25:29if you have Windows PCs, but we want Macs.
0:25:32And here, Apple is trying to communicate to teachers
0:25:35and talk about how great their products are for students
0:25:38and how much students like them too.
0:25:40And they're not as strong to the IT people.
0:25:44And so this is a really familiar game in a lot of ways,
0:25:48where Apple has to lean on the stuff
0:25:50that it feels that it's stronger at
0:25:52and make an argument that basically is like,
0:25:55yeah, I know your tech administrator at your school
0:25:59would rather just deploy a bunch of Chromebooks,
0:26:03but look how much teachers and students love what we do.
0:26:07You should probably authorize them to buy this
0:26:10and tell your guy not to buy those Chromebooks.
0:26:12And that's just, I mean, I think that's the game
0:26:15they have to play, 'cause that's,
0:26:17those are the cards they've got.
0:26:18So they need to go that direction.
0:26:22That's where their strength is.
0:26:23They are trying to get better
0:26:25in terms of the services stuff.
0:26:26They're never gonna be as good as Google at it,
0:26:28but they could be better.
0:26:30I've actually heard a bunch of people say that,
0:26:32like device management stuff,
0:26:34that Apple should like buy Jamf,
0:26:36because if like you need management stuff like Jamf
0:26:40in order to get the iPad management to be good enough.
0:26:44And so maybe, you know, maybe Apple should acquire there
0:26:48or they should improve their own stuff,
0:26:49but they're never gonna probably match Google
0:26:51and Microsoft at that game,
0:26:53but they've got this other game that they're pretty good at.
0:26:55So that's sort of the game they're playing.
0:26:57And, you know, it's a fascinating thing
0:27:02to see this, such a similar story playing out
0:27:06that played out involving Apple, you know,
0:27:09not too many years ago with a completely different product set in a different market.
0:27:15And then we have Carol Anna Milanese who is a frequent guest on Jason's show Download
0:27:20on Relay FM. She was writing for Tech Pinions. This is a longer quote so give me a moment.
0:27:26"I know many will evaluate Apple's opportunity only by considering the price of the new iPad,
0:27:31which is of course high when compared to most Chromebooks and especially once you add the
0:27:35case on the pencil or crayon. But a way I think about it is, with the iPad you get more
0:27:40than a computing device, you get a camera, a video camera, musical instruments and now
0:27:44a drawing board and support for AR. AR support is particularly interesting as it would allow
0:27:49schools to experiment with more immersive teaching without having to invest in a separate
0:27:54headset as is the case with VR and mixed reality. In this way justifying the price is much easier,
0:27:59if you're investing in an iPad to continue focus on traditional work of text charts and
0:28:04slides, you would be better served by a lower price device with a good productivity suite.
0:28:09So this makes sense to me, right? But the thing is, I feel like when I look at stuff
0:28:15like this, it's like perpetuating this idealistic view of teaching, which I don't know if it
0:28:19exists, right?
0:28:21Yeah, I don't either, and it definitely is, that's the Apple take on it. This is sort
0:28:28of Apple, how Apple is selling this and it makes sense. I get what Apple is trying to
0:28:34do here, right? And I like what it's trying to do, which is saying, "Look, with Apple,
0:28:38you're making an investment on doing more with technology and with your students and
0:28:42having them do AR and making videos and making music and all sorts of other things that Apple
0:28:51has advantages over the competition in." I get that. I get the argument from the other
0:28:57side as well that the price is pretty dramatically different and that in the end, teachers just
0:29:05need to do and schools just need to do this stuff that they are required to do. And it's
0:29:10not the wizzy AR stuff. It's the more prosaic testing and turning in reports and things
0:29:20like that. At the same time, I gotta say, I don't like the idea that I think I see from
0:29:29some people who argue essentially that what a computer is is a spreadsheet and a word
0:29:37processor and a slide maker. Like, Google Docs has got those, right? Google Apps has
0:29:42those features. And there are people who seem to think that that's what technology is, that's
0:29:50what students are need most. And I think I just I get really depressed by that because
0:29:58that that seems to me again to be a version of that same argument which is the Microsoft
0:30:03argument from the old days which is what is computing but office. It's like it's a lot
0:30:09more than that and I know that Chromebooks do more than this, that you can do a lot more
0:30:14with Chromebooks than just use Google Apps, but the argument for them seems to be a lot
0:30:21about that. Like, you gotta use the keyboard for this test and you gotta do this thing,
0:30:25and you know, I wanna side with the group that's saying, "You know, a crappy laptop
0:30:33with a keyboard assumed to be the default is maybe going to change and maybe we should
0:30:40be agents of change and say that you don't always need a crappy laptop with a keyboard,
0:30:45that maybe having a tablet is better and will make everybody have more stuff that they can
0:30:49do and cool stuff and it will change the world instead of and being kind of pro the idea
0:30:55that things are going to change instead of being the agent of the status quo. And agent
0:31:01that the status quo is a very sensible position to take. And there are a lot of reasons why
0:31:06the status quo remains. I always have that little red flag that goes up. It's like, I
0:31:11mean, we had this conversation on download, I think last week, which was, are people really
0:31:15going to need physical keyboards? And one of my panelists said, people will always need
0:31:19physical keyboards. And the other panelist who is quite a bit younger said, maybe not.
0:31:25And I think that's, again, I'm a physical keyboard guy. I would have a hard time adapting,
0:31:29I did try to put my mind in the thought of what would a really good touchscreen keyboard
0:31:35device be, because you could make it really good. But I am not somebody who's inclined
0:31:40to bet on the status quo and say, "Well, yes, there will always be physical keyboards."
0:31:46Because, I don't know, change is a really powerful thing. And so this is my long way
0:31:51of saying that I totally get the argument for the sensibility of Chromebooks, but what
0:31:57What Apple's tapping into is this other thing, which is, can't we strive to do more? Can't
0:32:03we try to be different? Can't we try to do new and interesting things? And the only way
0:32:07new and interesting things are going to happen in any area, but in this particular area,
0:32:12is if you try to do things differently instead of just doing things the same old way. And
0:32:19again, I will say, this plays into Apple's strengths. That's why Apple's making this
0:32:24argument. But this is a traditional strength of Apple. This is not a new argument they're
0:32:27making, that they're just making now because it's all they've got. This has sort of always
0:32:31been the Apple argument for stuff and it continues to be.
0:32:37So I've been thinking about this too, right? And I know we've been talking about it. And
0:32:42a lot of this stuff comes down to price as well. Like there is this idealistic view,
0:32:47which of course, like I'm sure that there are so many educators that really want the
0:32:51idealistic view and that these tools will really help them to, you know, to kind of
0:32:57expand their curriculum a little bit. You've got to learn the same stuff, but there might
0:33:00be some cool ways you can do it. And I think that's kind of what Apple are hoping that
0:33:04people will do. But the other part, the other big stumbling block is price. And I know that
0:33:10we were kind of chatting about some ways that potentially this stuff can be made easier.
0:33:14Yeah, I mean there's two things here. First, just on bare price, I think it's fair to say
0:33:20that unless you're a technology buyer at a school, you probably don't know the details
0:33:23of this. My understanding is that although Apple stuff is more expensive than the Google
0:33:28Chromebook solution, they're not, you can't just take their list price and multiply it.
0:33:33It's different than that because there are different prices and there are leases. And
0:33:38so one of Apple's arguments that Apple makes is, for example, that most iPads, and this
0:33:45is true at my son's school, most iPads are leased, they're not purchased by the school
0:33:49they're leased for, you know, three, four years, and then they're turned back in,
0:33:54and there's residual value there. They get credit for the value that remains on those iPads,
0:34:01and then they get resold or whatever somewhere else, resold, released. And the argument is that
0:34:09the value retained by Chromebooks after three years out in the field is a lot less. And again,
0:34:16I don't have corroboration here, but my understanding just from, you know, talking to people theoretically
0:34:23about this, and certainly this is Apple's argument, and I've talked to people at Apple
0:34:26who have made this argument, is, you know, basically Chromebooks are, they're $199, $150
0:34:34laptops. They're kind of cheaply constructed in order for them to be that, and there's
0:34:38less residual value, or no residual value when those things get turned in because they're
0:34:42beat up. Now, that's the sales pitch from Apple, is that the leases change the finances
0:34:50to a certain degree. Apple's still more expensive, but at the mat, it's closer than you might
0:34:55think. And that you maybe don't buy a pencil for everybody, but the pencils stay in one
0:34:59class. There are ways to mitigate that. Now they have the crayon as an option that cuts
0:35:04that price. They are building this case. I got a chance to handle that forthcoming Logitech
0:35:11iPad case. The rugged. Yeah it's hilarious I mean it makes it feel like a laptop.
0:35:17It's a detachable keyboard so you can use it like a tablet but it is
0:35:22putting that sleek iPad in a blocky box but it means that it's rugged and it
0:35:29turns it into a laptop essentially which is pretty funny. It adds a lot
0:35:35like I would I'm not somebody who likes a big case on my iPad anyway because I
0:35:39feel like it adds so much weight to a product that one of the great things about it is it's
0:35:43so small. Anyway, so there's the lease argument. I think there's the larger argument here,
0:35:48right, which is something that I've heard people make, but we get so focused on the
0:35:53technology and it's like this event laid down the argument to us, which was Chromebooks
0:35:57or iPads. It's like, all right, we can have that conversation. We just had that conversation.
0:36:01I do think it's fair to say there's another conversation that we should probably not be
0:36:06the ones to have. But there is a conversation to be had about technology in schools, because
0:36:14I think you could make a strong argument that – and actually, I remember Casey Liss made
0:36:21this argument briefly, at least, on ATP last week, which is, you could make the argument
0:36:26that the money that schools spend on technology purchases should probably go to paying teachers
0:36:34better, getting more materials in schools. Like, there's an argument to be made that
0:36:38technology is not a solution, that tech companies are constantly trying to sell into education
0:36:44and saying that it's the solution and it's going to make your school better and it's
0:36:48going to make your students smarter and all of these things. And this has been going on
0:36:52for 30 years, maybe even 40 years now. And it's unclear, my understanding is, it's unclear
0:36:59if that's really true. There are very specific places where computers in schools make sense.
0:37:03need to teach people how to be a computer programmer. It makes total sense. Some multimedia
0:37:08stuff totally makes sense. But a one-to-one program, you know, there is an argument, and
0:37:13I'm not saying it's right, but there is an argument to say that the money that goes into
0:37:17buying everybody an iPad would be better spent somewhere else in improving the quality of
0:37:21the education. And I wanted to at least voice that because I think it's a fair question
0:37:28And Google and Apple are not going to have that, are not going to talk about that question
0:37:34because their goal here is not to change the world, it's to sell products.
0:37:41That's the goal.
0:37:42That's the goal here.
0:37:43I am definitely at the camp that I personally don't believe that like every class requires
0:37:56keyboards and computers.
0:37:58I think that it's perfectly fine for kids to
0:38:01handwrite essays.
0:38:02I don't think that it is required that there has
0:38:06to be a keyboard in like every single
0:38:09lesson for all of the stuff to be typed.
0:38:11I just don't know if that's required.
0:38:12I mean, I know I didn't learn that way.
0:38:14And, you know, and like I know that the majority
0:38:16of people that have ever been to school in human
0:38:18history have not done that.
0:38:20So I don't know if it is a requirement
0:38:23as much as it is a nice to have in some
0:38:26some areas, required in some areas, and is being heavily pushed by these companies because
0:38:31they want to make sure that they're the company that people use forever.
0:38:34Yeah, which I actually, and I think I might have said this last week, but I dispute that
0:38:40premise too. There is this view of like, well, you know, you get them when they're young
0:38:43and you own them forever. But that was a premise that came up when people didn't have computers
0:38:48at home. And they would go to school and they would get that Apple II or a PC or a Mac.
0:38:56and you'd be like, oh yes, and now they're going to be loyal to us forever.
0:39:00First off, I know lots of people whose first computer was an Apple computer in
0:39:04school and then they were a PC person after that, so I'm not sure that actually
0:39:08worked, but that was part of the narrative anyway. And second, like today
0:39:11people have technology throughout their homes. I'm not convinced that using a
0:39:15Chromebook in schools means that you're gonna be tied to Google forever. I just, I
0:39:18I don't, I question the entire premise of that too. But I think you're right, I mean
0:39:23you're making an argument that is sort of "we've always done it this way, so why
0:39:27should it be any different?" which is not my favorite argument to be made, but I get
0:39:30what you're saying.
0:39:31No, no, I completely understand why there are things we should advance. I just don't
0:39:37know if it's needed for everything, right? I don't know if an iPad is needed in every
0:39:41single class a student takes.
0:39:43Well, so the argument for the one-to-one program, whatever the technology is, is that at that
0:39:49point teachers are no longer thinking, "Well, we're going to get the technology for one
0:39:54class or one week or whatever, and we'll use it to do a unit that uses the technology."
0:39:59Instead, the idea is once you know that everybody's got one, you can just have it be – it's
0:40:04just a tool. It's just like a backpack or a pencil. We assume everybody brings a pencil
0:40:09to class and paper to class, a notebook or whatever, and therefore I can ask you to put
0:40:14something in your notebook and you can do it because you've got a pencil or a pen
0:40:17and you've got paper. So the idea with the one-to-one program is similar. It's
0:40:21the idea that you can just put everything in Google Classroom, for
0:40:24example, which my sons, even though they use iPads, that's what they do, that
0:40:28the grade tracking is there, the assignment tracking is there, things get
0:40:31turned in there. Apps, they know what the apps are that are on the systems so that
0:40:35they can say, "Let's all open this app and do this thing," and there's advantages to
0:40:40doing that because it's just assumed that it's there. So you use it when it's
0:40:43useful rather than trying to construct sort of like a technology now we're
0:40:48going to get the cart in here and do computer things and instead just say
0:40:51look the computer is just a tool as part of the education process and and again I
0:40:55don't have studies or anything to tell you whether that's good or bad but
0:40:59that's the idea and I like the idea of that by the way as an aside I find it
0:41:05funny that the very week that Apple had its education event and we started
0:41:08talking about this stuff the something went wrong in the management system that
0:41:13my son's middle school uses and a lot of iPads had like their apps and documents
0:41:19deleted and my son was talking to one of his friends about it like yeah I lost
0:41:23this thing and I lost this thing and he's oh yeah a lot of people lost that
0:41:26thing so that's that's the other the other side of this is what happens when
0:41:32something goes wrong in the school management system and stuff gets deleted
0:41:36off of kids kids devices the dog is in the school and it's eating everybody's
0:41:41homework.
0:41:42I don't know.
0:41:43All right, let's leave it there on education for today.
0:41:46I'm sure more stuff will continue to come up.
0:41:49I'm not a Luddite.
0:41:50I just want to make that clear.
0:41:52It's just my case.
0:41:54I just get a little bit…
0:41:55Like I question the motives.
0:41:56What's wrong with people using pens, Myke?
0:41:58Why would you be a proponent of pens?
0:42:01I don't like the idea of future generations growing up without having strong abilities
0:42:05in reading and writing.
0:42:08With pens and paper, right?
0:42:10being on screens, as much as of course I spend my entire time on them now, I think having
0:42:16the base skills of just being able to express yourself in that way are important. So it
0:42:20just makes me a little bit skittish.
0:42:22I don't know, it sounds like you're in the pocket protector of Big Pen.
0:42:26Oh, nice. Very good. Very, very good. Very good. And I'm just going to leave it there.
0:42:31Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Casper, the company
0:42:35focused on sleep, dedicated to making you exceptionally comfortable one night at a time.
0:42:41You will spend a third of your entire lifetime sleeping in your bed. If you spend a third
0:42:46of your life doing anything, don't you want to make sure it's the best it could possibly
0:42:49be? This is why you need a Casper mattress, because they are perfectly designed for humans
0:42:53with engineering to soothe and support your natural geometry. Casper mattresses have all
0:42:59the right support in all the right places. So what goes into making a Casper mattress
0:43:03so comfortable. While they combine supportive memory foams, multiple of them in fact, many,
0:43:09all the great memory foams for a quality mattress with just the right sink and bounce. Their
0:43:15mattresses are designed and developed in the US and their breathable design helps to regulate
0:43:19your body temperature throughout the night. With over 20,000 reviews and an average rating
0:43:24of 4.8 stars, Casper is very quickly becoming the Internet's favorite mattress. And you
0:43:29be sure of your purchase with Casper because they have a 100 night risk-free sleep on it trial. They
0:43:35will deliver directly to your door and if for any reason you don't love your mattress they have a
0:43:39hassle-free return policy. Jason did you take advantage of the hassle-free return policy or
0:43:45do you in fact love your mattress? No I love my mattress and I kept my mattress in fact we just
0:43:49had a moment the other day where um where my wife was drinking tea in bed in the morning and I sat
0:43:54down on the bed and she she and she said to me oh I had a moment when I was going to brace myself
0:43:59because the tea was going to slosh and spill all over me and then I realised, oh yeah we
0:44:03have a Casper mattress that doesn't happen anymore.
0:44:05No concerns.
0:44:06It used to happen with the old mattress that was like a trampoline but the new one, nope,
0:44:09it's solid, it's great.
0:44:10So no, we kept it past the hundred days and are now headed for a thousand days I think.
0:44:16You can get $50 towards select mattress purchases by going to casper.com/upgrade and using the
0:44:22code 'upgrade' at checkout.
0:44:23Terms and conditions apply, that is casper.com/upgrade and the offer code 'upgrade' for $50 towards
0:44:29select mattress purchases. Our thanks to Casper for their support of this show and Relay FM.
0:44:34So there were a heck of a lot of software updates that came out towards the tail end of last week
0:44:40for basically all of Apple's major platforms. None of them were whiz-bang wonderfulness,
0:44:47so we're going to kind of I guess round up all of the little tidbits that we found interesting
0:44:52or important that came from the releases. I think the biggest was 11.3. It has the iPhone battery
0:44:58settings screen in it, which is hilarious to me because that feels like a really long
0:45:04time ago that we were talking about that now.
0:45:06And here it is.
0:45:07Like that was back before Christmas, right?
0:45:10That was back before the holidays.
0:45:13And here we are.
0:45:14It's out in 11.3 now, like some four months later, basically.
0:45:19The screen is, I find it honestly, a little bit incomprehensible.
0:45:25I don't fully understand, like it feels like things should be buttons but they're not buttons,
0:45:30it's a strange little screen. It is a baker of course.
0:45:32You can see why Apple didn't want to show this to people.
0:45:35Yes. You know, obviously my results are as I would expect, my phone is at 100% battery
0:45:42health which I would expect because it's still new, right? It was interesting, Stephen Hackett
0:45:49saw that his wife's iPhone SE was at 90% battery which he bought when it debuted in 2016. So
0:45:55So that was quite surprising to see that the battery still counted to be that good.
0:46:00I haven't seen anybody reporting lower percentage batteries anywhere, but it's there now.
0:46:05The screen is there.
0:46:06It's something you can keep checking in on if you want to.
0:46:09I don't expect to ever look at that screen like ever again, I guess, because I now know
0:46:15that even if I kept the phone for a couple of years, it would probably be in pretty good
0:46:18condition.
0:46:19But it's there if you want it.
0:46:21I genuinely think, honestly, it's probably just going to confuse people more than anything
0:46:24else, but Apple didn't need to add it because, you know, to reiterate all the conversations
0:46:28from December of 2017, they badly communicated it to people.
0:46:33And I think it's one of those things where they would rather not have a conversation
0:46:36and they would rather have not people obsess over it, but some people are going to obsess
0:46:39over it. Some people are going to wonder, they're going to have a friend who says, "Well,
0:46:43I don't know, did you check the battery? That battery, Apple's got problems with batteries,"
0:46:46or whatever, and they're like, "Oh, is there a battery setting? I'll go check it. Oh, it's
0:46:49I'm fine. I'll it's that's not it. I'll move along or whatever
0:46:53this is I
0:46:56I will say I talked to somebody who works in Apple retail who told me that
0:47:00that the battery thing has been a huge drain on Apple retail because
0:47:05You know everybody said bring in your phones and and then they get really angry when they're there
0:47:11You know
0:47:11They've got people doing battery swaps all the time
0:47:14like at high volume, as high volume as they possibly can,
0:47:17and still people come in and they wait in line at the,
0:47:19they drive to an Apple store,
0:47:20which can be far for some people,
0:47:22and they wait in line and then they're told,
0:47:25no, you actually need to come back in two weeks
0:47:29and do this again,
0:47:30'cause we can't take care of this right now.
0:47:31And that makes them angry.
0:47:32And if you look at Yelp reviews for Apple stories,
0:47:34you'll see those angry people in the Yelp reviews.
0:47:36And it's one of those things that I think Apple
0:47:39made the right decision on a large scale
0:47:41in terms of making that controversy go away,
0:47:45and it totally did.
0:47:47Like by saying, "No, no, we'll fix it, it's fine.
0:47:49Just bring it in."
0:47:52They like, the media story ended.
0:47:54But my understanding is there is this like follow-on
0:47:57corrosive effect to the story,
0:47:58which is that at retail now,
0:48:02you're getting pileups of people with batteries.
0:48:04And that is a problem that makes people angry at Apple
0:48:11on a personal close basis
0:48:14instead of the kind of like global media firestorm,
0:48:16but it's still an issue for them.
0:48:18The advantage of something like this, this information is,
0:48:21it does potentially let a user,
0:48:23a friend of the person who has the phone
0:48:25or somebody at the Apple store,
0:48:26be able to point at it and say,
0:48:28"No, you're actually fine,"
0:48:30and have them leave or not come in.
0:48:32And that is helpful,
0:48:35even though it's more complexity and it's weird
0:48:38and Apple would rather not communicate this stuff.
0:48:41I like that it's there just because it's another thing
0:48:44that people could cite.
0:48:46But I definitely get the sense that Apple retail
0:48:48is having a really hard time,
0:48:50keeping in mind too that after the holidays,
0:48:52which is when this all went on,
0:48:54after the holidays, Apple retail traditionally cuts back
0:48:57on staff hours because it's out of the holiday period.
0:49:01So now they're down staff and dealing with a massive influx
0:49:05of people who want their batteries checked or replaced.
0:49:08So it's, yeah, yeah.
0:49:10So anyway, I think it's tough times
0:49:12in Apple retail land right now.
0:49:14So if this provides a little more clarity or cushion
0:49:18or something for people, then that's good.
0:49:21That's a good start.
0:49:23- 11.3 also included ARKit 1.5,
0:49:26which has a bunch of advantages
0:49:28like being able to detect vertical surfaces.
0:49:30Previously, it was on the horizontal surfaces.
0:49:32So it can detect like tables and floors, but not walls.
0:49:35So that's great to have that.
0:49:36ARKit can now map irregularly shaped objects.
0:49:40So if you've got like a, I don't know, a pointy wall or something, who knows?
0:49:4350% greater resolution and the ability to use autofocus.
0:49:47So apparently from reading around and I read this on Mac stories,
0:49:51these were the things that developers were asking for.
0:49:55And Apple have added them really quickly.
0:49:58Like the amount of stuff that they've actually added in,
0:50:01the advancements that they've taken for ARKit 1.5,
0:50:05these were the things that people were expecting Apple to debut at WWDC
0:50:08this year.
0:50:09Right. And ship in the fall at iOS 12.
0:50:11But they've just put it out now. So apparently this should make ARKit apps a lot,
0:50:16lot better. Um,
0:50:17I'm excited about the 50% greater resolution and autofocus.
0:50:21So I'm expecting this is going to help the images look better and it work in the
0:50:25dark, like it work in not great lighting better. So I'm,
0:50:28I'm pretty excited about that.
0:50:29So I'm going to keep my eye on this like to kind of,
0:50:32to see apps that I use and have installed
0:50:34to see if they're gonna like mention
0:50:36that they got 1.5 ARKit added and see what that does.
0:50:40- I think it's also an interesting thing for,
0:50:43we talk a lot about Apple's cycle with software
0:50:46and things that they say they may be,
0:50:48or reports are they may be slowing down on.
0:50:51When we look at what's in this 11.3, ARKit is a good example.
0:50:55Like maybe Apple also has decided
0:50:58they're not going to hold some major stuff until the next fall release if they don't have to.
0:51:06And I actually am really encouraged by that. I'm very excited by the fact that ARKit 1.5
0:51:11shipped now because, yeah, I know it's a follow-on to that first ARKit release and that there were
0:51:18probably lots of things that they didn't have ready or that they really wanted to knock down
0:51:23quickly and get it out there so that they could press their lead on it. That's all true,
0:51:26But still, the fact that it's out now and not in six months is a big deal.
0:51:33That's a big deal.
0:51:34There are now music videos in the music app, and Apple debuted a lot of music videos, I
0:51:40think some kind of exclusive music videos too.
0:51:44Really this feels like very basic video support.
0:51:47It's kind of strange.
0:51:48You can't airplay the videos.
0:51:49The video player is kind of weird.
0:51:51It doesn't do full screen in the way you'd expect.
0:51:53It's very strange.
0:51:55basically is in the same way that all of the TV shows inside of
0:51:59Apple music feel strange so do the music videos, but they have them there
0:52:03They have playlists and you can cue playlists up. You can take all the advantage of the features in Apple music
0:52:07but with music videos now, too
0:52:09New animoji there is a lion a dragon a bear and a skull
0:52:13Great additions. They're fun. I
0:52:16Demoed an emoji to my five-year-old nephew yesterday and he was losing his mind. So that was really fun to watch
0:52:25But yeah, I mean an emoji for me like I use it I use them for stickers every now and then I don't record videos
0:52:31I'm still just waiting for like an actual emoji face then I would use it all the time
0:52:36Just let me make my own emoji faces
0:52:38Like let me let my the shocked emoji face instead of there being like a lion
0:52:43I mean, I'm still hoping that though at that some point
0:52:45And then the last I think the last big thing in in in 11-3 is the health records thing
0:52:52So your personal health records can be stored in the health app if you're a patient of a partnering facility
0:52:58Which seems like a really cool thing
0:53:00But it's one of those things that I know I'm never gonna get because they're probably never gonna expand
0:53:04Outside of the US and even if they do you have to be like a very specific hospital
0:53:09Right, like of the partner hospitals are gonna do it blah blah blah blah, but it's cool if you've got it available to you. I
0:53:15Think more interesting for me Jason than what's included in 11.3 is what isn't
0:53:21So, things that were in the beta process that have been removed.
0:53:27Airplay 2 and iMessages in the cloud.
0:53:30So, these were both things that were in the beta processes, things that were both announced
0:53:35at WWDC 2017 and they're still not shipping.
0:53:41So let's assume now that these won't come in 11.3.1, right?
0:53:49would maybe come in 11.4 which we know will exist because they spoke about it last week
0:53:54and this is slated for a June release which is going to bring a lot of the support for
0:53:58the education some of the education stuff so we know that 11.4 is coming so let's assume
0:54:04that Airplay 2 messages in the cloud are in 11.4 if they are this is a year after the
0:54:09features were announced and four months after the HomePod shipped and the HomePod was the
0:54:15poster child for AirPlay 2. But this is even assuming that they will ship it at 11.4. It
0:54:20is possible that these might be pushed to 12. That is wild.
0:54:25I think if they can't get them in 11.4, that's what will happen next, right? I think it would
0:54:30be amazing if they got them in an 11.4 release. And like on stage while they're announcing
0:54:35iOS 12 mentioned that AirPlay 2 and messages in the cloud is also in an iOS 11 update that's
0:54:42available, like they'll get applause for that or something, but it would have been on the
0:54:45same stage where they announced those features a year before. It's pretty wild. But this
0:54:51is our conversation about this. Like, they pulled stuff forward and then they also pushed
0:54:54stuff back. And so you get ARKit 1.5, but you also get no AirPlay 2. And, you know,
0:55:03we've talked about it before. Apple has stuff that's not ready, and they've decided not
0:55:09to ship it, and on one level that's really good, especially with messages in the cloud
0:55:12that you kind of don't want to mess that up. But it is interesting that 10 months later
0:55:17from when they announced it, it's still not shipping. It's still not ready. Even though
0:55:21it was in the betas, they put it in the betas, they wanted to test it out, that was great.
0:55:24It wasn't good enough to ship it, so they pulled it back out, and presumably there'll
0:55:28be another iOS beta shortly that will probably have it back in.
0:55:32messages in the cloud I'm kind of like okay right like that I assume is
0:55:41like I assume both of these things are really difficult to do anyway but like
0:55:44I'm like okay well I'll wait until that comes because whatever right like it
0:55:48will come when it comes but AirPlay 2 is like a temp hole feature of a product
0:55:52that now is in my living room like that one seems way weirder to me like that
0:55:58the home pod should have AirPlay 2 in it so like all of my airplane will be
0:56:02better on this thing so I'm not waiting for four seconds every time I press the
0:56:05play button when sending an overcast like podcast to it right an overcast
0:56:10stream like I want at play - I bought a product that should have it in there
0:56:14right you told me you told me when you originally told me about this product
0:56:19that it would include it and then I kind of gave you benefit of the doubt that it
0:56:22didn't and this is this is a really weird one to me like what is stopping
0:56:27them I mean there obviously must be something really tough with it are they
0:56:31can do it? Like is this something they can do? Like is it just...
0:56:34I think it's something they can do but they obviously had trouble with it and are still
0:56:39working on it. It is the mystery of the HomePod, the riddle of the HomePod continues, right?
0:56:45Like why that product exists the way it does and when it existed and when they announced
0:56:49it and when they shipped it and the fact that features are missing even now from it. It's
0:56:53fascinating. Fascinating.
0:56:57WatchOS 4.3 was released, it restored the ability to control your iPhone's music playback.
0:57:03If you read that and you're like, hang on a second, I don't understand, what this did
0:57:07was it reverted a decision from 4 point whatever, 2 I guess, where now you can browse your whole
0:57:15library again, not just what was in the watch music app.
0:57:20That's what it changed.
0:57:21So you can now browse your whole library and choose from anything and control the music
0:57:25playing on your phone not just on your watch and it also added some home pod music controls
0:57:30so you can now like go in with the audio picker thing and you can control the volume levels
0:57:36of your home pod with the digital crown and stuff like that.
0:57:40It added activity to the Siri watch face so now on the Siri watch face you have like a
0:57:44permanent thing there when there's no other cards that shows your rings and it shows the
0:57:49calories you've burned in the day, the amount of minutes of exercise and how many stand
0:57:54hours. Previously on the watch when it had nothing else to display it just said "have
0:57:59a great afternoon" and so that was kind of pointless. I prefer to have this piece of
0:58:04information there even though it's guilting me constantly into the fact that I haven't
0:58:07closed my rings. It added also portrait support for nightstand mode. So nightstand mode is
0:58:13when you if you have your Apple watch charging on the side you get the big clock at night
0:58:20and you can kind of like bump your nightstand and it lights the watch up. This is now available
0:58:25in portrait mode which is probably for air power. I did notice Jason when you put the
0:58:32Apple watch on to charge there's a new charge animation. So all of this stuff is for air
0:58:36power if that ever arrives. That product, who knows where it is, it's out there somewhere.
0:58:43So a lot of this stuff is probably added for that when it will come. The home pod got an
0:58:47update 2.3 gigabytes just bug fixes no idea this is one of those things I've seen people saying like
0:58:52oh I think there's less bass in the home pod I can't like believe any of that stuff because
0:58:58it's all subjective right they haven't said that it's reduced the base so I don't know how you
0:59:04how you test that yeah I saw several people say that they thought that the um that some songs
0:59:10sounded different that they were fixing bugs in what they were doing with their processing of
0:59:16songs, but it's very hard to tell because, you know, how do you do? You get two home
0:59:22pods and you try very hard for one not to be updated, but there's a small window
0:59:28and then it downloads a software update and you can't take it off the internet
0:59:33because it needs to use the internet in order to play the music and it's a
0:59:36challenge is what I'm saying. It's a challenge to to test that out and then
0:59:39you've got a library of songs and how do you do that? It's hard to say, but I
0:59:43have heard people report that they feel like there were songs that were
0:59:45problematic that the processing on the HomePod was weird and that it doesn't sound weird
0:59:52now. So it may be that they are fixing bugs in their audio processing too.
0:59:56But it's so hard to really kind of like categorically say one way or another for that, right?
1:00:03Yeah, especially if Apple doesn't detail it in some way.
1:00:07And Mac OS 10.13.4, so this is High Sierra point four?
1:00:15Is that right?
1:00:16Sure.
1:00:17Yeah.
1:00:18It added external GPU support, which is something we knew about.
1:00:21There are a small range, but a range of products that are available that are supported by the
1:00:26Mac, which is more than just the one that they had originally allowed for people to
1:00:32buy during the testing period.
1:00:34So there are a range of external GPU products that you can buy and they are supported now
1:00:39officially by Mac OS.
1:00:43It cannot be used in boot camp with Windows, right?
1:00:47Which I thought was funny.
1:00:49You can't do that so if you think you're going to be able to use your iMac for super powerful
1:00:52gaming now on Windows, that is not going to happen for you.
1:00:58There was something that I saw that wasn't an addition but something has broken which
1:01:03I find really unfortunate and interesting and it's just yet another example of why development
1:01:11can be tricky. Lots of Mac desktop extension software, so a few different programs, one
1:01:20including Duet Display, have been rendered inoperable by this version of Mac OS due to
1:01:26what the developers of Duet Display are calling critical bugs. They have alerted these critical
1:01:31bugs to Apple for Apple to fix them. This seems like a difficult and risky situation
1:01:37to hope that that's going to occur for you. Yeah, I don't know. So basically something's
1:01:45changed in Mac OS, which is basically rendering apps like Air Display, iDisplay, Duet Display,
1:01:52they don't work. They just don't work. So these are the applications where you can have
1:01:56an iOS device and a Mac and you can basically use your iOS device like it's a secondary
1:02:01screen for your Mac and something in this version of Mac OS has broken those
1:02:06applications so whatever API they were taking advantage of or whatever this is
1:02:12like just another example of why some what was there like some things on on
1:02:18the Mac that you can do because the Mac is open right like you can do this the
1:02:25weird and wonderful stuff is open to be broken and then what do you do?
1:02:30Yeah well I think this is a good example of why if you rely on stuff that is not
1:02:38stock Apple that you don't rush to update to 10.13.4 because you never
1:02:46know something like this might happen and it does happen from time to time so
1:02:49if you've got critical stuff that is that is not stock you know waiting to
1:02:54update until you see an all-clear from people who are using or testing the stuff you use
1:03:00is always a prudent thing. This is a weird one. I'd like to think that this is probably
1:03:05a bug that maybe even is related to the eGPU stuff, that there's something different about
1:03:10display stuff in 1013.4 and they introduced a bug that it's not Apple. I think Apple has
1:03:15no motivation to crush these apps. I think probably it was just they didn't test against
1:03:19these apps and they broke something and with any luck it'll get fixed. The bad
1:03:24news is if that you're in 10.13.4 already and you rely on them you're gonna
1:03:28have to find a way to roll back and even then you're gonna have to wait it out
1:03:31until a 10.13.5 beta or until 10.13.5 drops. I had a funny thing I'm on 10.13.4
1:03:40now and it's very exciting because I was on a beta of 10.13... it might not have
1:03:48even been three, it might've been two.
1:03:50I was on one of those betas and it prevented,
1:03:54I was not able to update to another version after that
1:04:01on my iMac Pro, something weird, I think with the iMac Pro,
1:04:06'cause it's got the weird, you know,
1:04:09it's got the bridge OS and then,
1:04:10and it's got, it's an unusual new system for Apple
1:04:16for how the machine boots and runs.
1:04:20And I was in a boot loop.
1:04:23Every time a new version would download,
1:04:24it'd be like, I'm gonna install this now,
1:04:26getting ready to install.
1:04:27And then it would restart or maybe shut down,
1:04:30but then it would restart or I would turn it on
1:04:32and it would end up booting into an installer window
1:04:34and saying, I couldn't install it.
1:04:36Would you like to save an error log?
1:04:38And then you like try, let's try that again.
1:04:41Nope, I still can't do it.
1:04:43And then if you set your disc as the startup disc,
1:04:46it would just boot back into the same beta
1:04:49that I was in before.
1:04:50So I was running a Mac OS beta for a couple months,
1:04:53at least.
1:04:56- Whoops.
1:04:57- And amazingly, 10.13.4 actually installed.
1:05:02- That's good news.
1:05:03- I left the installer loop behind,
1:05:06which is, and it's one of those things where it was a beta.
1:05:09So like on one level, I'm like, well, it's a beta.
1:05:11I did this to myself.
1:05:12On another level, I'm thinking to myself,
1:05:14"How do I get out of this beta?"
1:05:15And I tried downloading a full installer
1:05:19of the most recent version of High Sierra
1:05:21and putting them in external drive and installing from that
1:05:24and turning off all of the security settings on the iMac
1:05:26so that you can actually boot from an external drive
1:05:29and install.
1:05:29And it was like,
1:05:30"Oh, I need to download some components to add to this."
1:05:33And I thought, "Oh, that's pretty cool
1:05:34that the macOS installer knows that I'm on the iMac Pro
1:05:38and it needs a couple other pieces."
1:05:39So it downloads it and then it restarts.
1:05:41is now I'm installing it and guess what?
1:05:43Then it would reboot and say,
1:05:44oh, I had an installation error and I couldn't install.
1:05:46Sorry, would you like to save a log?
1:05:48And yeah, so that led to lots of concern,
1:05:54but the good news is I am now off of the betas
1:05:58and on 10.13.4 and I guess I just won't use duet display,
1:06:02but at least I'm not on a beta now.
1:06:05- No, I did think to myself,
1:06:08whilst Apple may not have decided to do this,
1:06:11like, you know, it's easy to assume that just something changed and broke it. I wonder if
1:06:16like iOS 12 and like, hey, you can now use your iPad as the secondary display. And like
1:06:21the reason it broke it was because they've been building their own system. Who knows?
1:06:26Like, it'd be kind of funny to me in a very sad, sad way because that's how shell-looking
1:06:31goes.
1:06:32There's a Kickstarter project that has already closed that's out there that and I forget
1:06:36the name of it now.
1:06:37It's by the Astropad people.
1:06:39- Yeah, that's it.
1:06:40And they have a hardware thing that you pop in
1:06:43to many display port or USB-C,
1:06:45and then it transmits that to the Mac.
1:06:49And that has struck me as I've read about it
1:06:52as a safer solution, 'cause they're not hacking,
1:06:55they're not kind of hacking the graphics card,
1:06:57which is what these other ones are doing.
1:06:59- It's tricking the system into thinking
1:07:03that another display is attached.
1:07:05- Yeah, well, basically the little thing you attach
1:07:08is essentially an external display, right?
1:07:11It's a hardware external display and it's saying,
1:07:13here I am, and that external display is then transmitted,
1:07:16the data is transmitted to the iPad.
1:07:19And that, I wonder if that works still.
1:07:22I bet you it does, but I don't know for sure.
1:07:25Because that's still in beta.
1:07:26Haven't shipped it yet.
1:07:27- As is usual when we talk about these things on the show,
1:07:30iOS 11.4 has been seeded to developers.
1:07:33Don't know what's in it yet because--
1:07:35- As we talked.
1:07:36- And not enough people have been able to dig into it
1:07:38at this point to talk about what's in there, but I mean, we are naturally assuming class
1:07:43kit and school work will be in there because that's what we knew was going to be in it.
1:07:47Who knows if Airplay 2 and Messages in the Cloud are in there. You will probably know
1:07:52by the time you're hearing this. If you just go to the links in the show notes, it will
1:07:56say. Hello future people.
1:07:59All right, let's do some #AskUpgrade. But today's AskUpgrade is brought to you by PCALC, the scientific
1:08:06calculator you didn't even know you needed. PCALC is designed for engineers, students
1:08:10or anybody looking for a great calculator. It's available for the iPhone, iPad, Mac,
1:08:15Apple Watch and even the Apple TV. One powerful feature of the iOS version of PCALC is the
1:08:26ability to create your own custom layouts. Let's say you're on holiday and you want
1:08:30a specific currency conversion button whilst you're using your calculator. You can make
1:08:35one easily. Peacalc is like a calculator construction kit. But if you want more, you can add your
1:08:40own functions, unit conversions and constants into the app as well and they will even sync
1:08:45automatically to all your devices. There's a wide array of settings to customise every
1:08:50aspect of Peacalc including how it looks. To give you an idea of the level of customisation,
1:08:55there are more than 40 alternative icons that you can choose from for Peacalc. It's wonderful.
1:09:01PCalk works seamlessly with iPad multitasking, so you can use it in split screen alongside
1:09:05another app, and it even includes drag and drop support and there's also a notification
1:09:09center widget, which is a full calculator on iOS and macOS.
1:09:14For engineering types, PCalk optionally supports marking calculations via reverse polish notation,
1:09:20which I obviously don't need to explain any further because me and Jason know exactly
1:09:24what this means, as we're both certified math experts, right Jason?
1:09:27You know all about reverse polish notation.
1:09:29That's right, what you do, Myke, is you take a Polish sausage and then you eat it the other
1:09:34way.
1:09:35That's how it works.
1:09:36If you're still in the mood for yet another Easter egg, Peacock has the most elaborate
1:09:40about screen, maybe since Microsoft hid an entire flight simulator inside of Excel.
1:09:46The Peacock about screen is one of my very favorite things on all of iOS.
1:09:51So yeah, you should just go down there, load this app and try it.
1:09:55You can search in the App Store for Peacalc or if you go to peacalc.com/upgrade for more
1:10:06details about Peacalc.
1:10:08Our thanks to Peacalc for their support of this show and Relay FM.
1:10:11We're outside of the ad now so I would just say Peacalc is one of my very favourite apps
1:10:15on iOS.
1:10:16If you have yet to try it, you should try it.
1:10:20It's brilliant.
1:10:22I love it.
1:10:24#AskUpgrade. First we have a question from Jeff. Jeff wants to know, "Do you think
1:10:29that something like the Logitech Crayon could come to an iPhone model in the future?"
1:10:34So I have a couple of thoughts about this. One, I am just waiting for the Logitech Crayon
1:10:38to go on sale generally now because people seem so excited about it. I think at some
1:10:43point there's going to be a product like this which comes out to the masses. We'll
1:10:46have to wait and see. And I mean, I was on the books of predicting that the iPhone 10
1:10:52would have Apple Pencil support.
1:10:55I still think it will happen in the future.
1:10:56Do you?
1:10:57- Yeah, I think it's inevitable that it will happen.
1:11:01The question is, what form will it take?
1:11:06And is Apple, is the crayon a hint
1:11:09that Apple Pencil may change,
1:11:12and how Apple's approach to writing may change?
1:11:15And I don't know, 'cause a crayon uses a different system.
1:11:18It's not Bluetooth, it's a single radio frequency.
1:11:21It doesn't pair, instead it's proximity based.
1:11:23So you can use that crayon on an iPad
1:11:25and then literally just move it over to another iPad
1:11:27and write on it and it totally works,
1:11:29which the Apple Pencil doesn't work like that.
1:11:31- I would love that because I currently have
1:11:33two Apple Pencils, I would like to just have
1:11:35one Apple Pencil.
1:11:36- Right, and so it could be that people are like,
1:11:38oh, well, you know, why does it only work with this one iPad
1:11:41and not all the other iPad Pros?
1:11:43And the answer is because they're using this new technology
1:11:45and it wouldn't shock me if they might be doing that
1:11:50for other devices too down the road.
1:11:52And if they do that, yeah, maybe that's a thing
1:11:54that they could put in an iPhone.
1:11:56It wouldn't surprise me.
1:11:57And they're gonna have, if this iPhone 10 Plus is real,
1:12:01where it's even larger than the iPhone 10,
1:12:04that would be potentially a natural
1:12:06for some sort of optional stylus input.
1:12:11- Yeah, honestly, I would be surprised.
1:12:14I would be really surprised if Apple has this
1:12:17like 700 inch iPhone 10 plus without without pencil because like the rumors
1:12:23are like you know getting up there to seven inches at 6.7 or something like
1:12:27that if I remember off the top of my head it's basically an iPad mini like
1:12:31you're getting real close to the iPad mini it kind of I think it'd be kind of
1:12:36nice worth the wait huh Jason asks this is not used as another Jason not me
1:12:41probably why do people want the bezels on the iPad to go away the bezels serve
1:12:46a better purpose on the iPad than on the iPhone, surely.
1:12:49Jason, when we talk about the bezels going away on an iPad, what do you mean?
1:12:53Well, I mean, I think the top and the bottom, the forehead and the feet, I don't know where
1:13:00the button is, like, I get that you want to hold your iPad by the corners, I get that,
1:13:05but they've already reduced the bezel on the sides, and it doesn't bother me, like, it
1:13:10hasn't affected it at all.
1:13:12And the idea there is you can get more screen
1:13:14in a smaller device,
1:13:17and that either makes the iPad smaller
1:13:19or it makes the screen bigger,
1:13:20and those are both good things.
1:13:21So, you know, I don't expect that the iPad
1:13:25needs to be iPhone 10-like in its lack of bezel,
1:13:30but there's a lot of bezel space left
1:13:33to be slimmed down, I think, in the iPad.
1:13:35- I wanna see the thickness that's on the long sides
1:13:39the whole way around.
1:13:40like really small, right?
1:13:43You know, I wonder if it's like proportionally
1:13:47like the iPhone, I don't know,
1:13:48like I'd have to do some mathematics,
1:13:50probably using Peacap to work out that,
1:13:52but when I hold my iPad in portrait mode,
1:13:56I'm not accidentally touching things,
1:13:59like, you know, the palm rejection is very good still,
1:14:02right, I don't think anyone is expecting
1:14:04or really asking for just this front of the iPad
1:14:08to be only a screen, right?
1:14:09but what we refer to as bezel-less.
1:14:12There is a continuum of no bezels,
1:14:18which goes from zero to the iPad,
1:14:21and it's all referred to as there not being any bezels,
1:14:25but what everybody really means is just very thin, right?
1:14:28And that's all I want, very thin,
1:14:29is what I'm looking for.
1:14:31Virginia asks, "Was there a day
1:14:33"when Apple's education discounts were more aggressive?
1:14:37"Urban legend has it that Apple IIs
1:14:39were basically given away. Do we know if this is the case, Jason?
1:14:42Well, Apple's education discounts were much more aggressive back in the day.
1:14:47I would say that although we think of Apple's products as expensive today
1:14:51in a lot of places, you know, you gotta keep in mind back in the earlier days of
1:14:55computing, in the early days of the Mac,
1:14:57you know, a lot of these Apple computers were multi-thousands of dollars at a
1:15:01time when
1:15:02that would be like even more cost today.
1:15:05- Let me be like 10 grand today or something, right?
1:15:07For like Apple II.
1:15:09- Historically, the prices have come down
1:15:12in terms of real dollars from back in the day.
1:15:15But that meant that also, yes,
1:15:17that with larger prices came larger discounts.
1:15:20So that is true.
1:15:21It used to be that if you knew somebody who was in college
1:15:25and you could get them to buy you a Mac
1:15:27at their college sales outlet,
1:15:31which all colleges had computer sales outlets.
1:15:33I'm not sure if they still do.
1:15:34I think UC Berkeley shut theirs down or moved it into the bookstore and all that.
1:15:38But there used to be like the Scholars Workstation at UC Berkeley, and that's where I bought
1:15:42my PowerBook 160.
1:15:44And you got a good deal.
1:15:45You got a really good deal.
1:15:46Like that was the place to get a computer, an Apple computer if you could, if you knew
1:15:52somebody who was eligible and you had to prove your eligibility and show your student ID
1:15:55and all to be an active student.
1:15:56And you were limited to like buy one computer a year or something so that it wasn't abused.
1:16:00But it was a little bit like knowing somebody who works at Apple and having them buy a computer
1:16:04for you, you get a big discount that way too. So, uh, there's still education discounts
1:16:09like individual student education discounts today, you can get like 10 or 15% off some
1:16:13stuff. Yeah, some stuff, it's still there, it's just not like it was. It's just not like
1:16:18it was. Um, and as for the urban legend, um, I think the source of this is that, um, Apple
1:16:25gave an Apple II to every public school, I believe, in California at one point. Wow.
1:16:32That was their initiative.
1:16:35And that is the source of that legend, and I think it's the source of the narrative about
1:16:39how you catch them early and they're your user for life.
1:16:43But that's the story that Apple gave an Apple II to every school in California.
1:16:51Elijah asks, "Do you think that the Apple Watch will ever be sold as a separate, complete
1:16:57computer without the need for an iPhone?"
1:17:02I feel like that's the eventual goal, right?
1:17:06Like that's the logical end game of the product.
1:17:09- Yeah, I think it's most likely that what it'll be
1:17:11is like an airport where, you know, it'll be independent,
1:17:15but you'll need an app to set it up.
1:17:17- Okay, I wonder what airport you were referring to.
1:17:19It's like if things come in-- - San Francisco International
1:17:21- whenever they need. - Airport.
1:17:23No, like the airport base station, you know,
1:17:25you don't need a Mac for that even,
1:17:27you can use an iOS app for that,
1:17:28you can use an iPad app for that.
1:17:30I wonder if that might be the future of the Apple Watch,
1:17:33that they'll still want you to sign in somewhere.
1:17:36Like, are they gonna really make you put in your Apple ID
1:17:38by finger on the little, or like by emoji
1:17:43on the Apple Watch?
1:17:44So it may be that they make it that you can, you know,
1:17:48hold that Apple Watch near any iOS device
1:17:51or even other devices and, you know,
1:17:55or put in a code or whatever and configure it
1:17:58and then have it be up and running.
1:18:00could be like it would be nice if you didn't need an iPhone to at the very
1:18:05least what they're going to try to do is make it less and less dependent on the
1:18:08iPhone right like I can see I think it's more likely that sooner you'll have an
1:18:12Apple watch that won't go talk to the iPhone for everything like if it's in
1:18:17your home network like it doesn't need to glom onto your iPhone use your iPhone
1:18:22cell connection or whatever it's just it's on the Wi-Fi it's doing its own
1:18:24thing it doesn't need to check back with data on the iPhone which is how it
1:18:28started. So I think we'll get there first because the setup is the
1:18:33trick. I think that there's a lot that goes on in the setup process that you
1:18:37kind of want another device for at this point. But I think beyond that, having it
1:18:41be independent from an iPhone would be nice. If you have two iPhones
1:18:45and one watch, you should be able to go with either one and have it work
1:18:48fine. And you have two watches and one iPhone. Whatever your combinations are, I
1:18:52I think it should be less tied to the iPhone, but I feel like the setup is going to be the
1:18:59last.
1:19:00Remember how long it took for iOS devices to be able to be set up on their own.
1:19:03It actually took quite a while.
1:19:04Yeah, I think of the watch to the iPhone as the iPhone was to the Mac, right?
1:19:09There was a time where you had to set it up and then sync all of your contacts and data
1:19:14and podcasts through those two devices.
1:19:17And then eventually it could use all that data and pull that data on its own from the
1:19:21cloud and then slowly just more and more of it went away to the point that now
1:19:25you can own an iPhone without ever owning a computer. There is no
1:19:32computer needed anymore to have an iPhone and so like I imagine it going
1:19:36that kind of route. I also imagine a future Jason where we don't even need
1:19:42our iPhones because we have our Apple watches and our glasses and those two
1:19:46things talk to each other right and then that's that that's your computer.
1:19:51I don't honestly like I see that as a thing, but I am of the Marco Arment school of don't
1:19:58bet against the smartphone. Like even though that will exist, I still think people will
1:20:03want smartphones as well or like whatever those pocket computers become, which is more
1:20:08than just this floating UI in front of your face. But we'll wait and see. And Brent asked,
1:20:14what stock apps do you use on iOS? So I went through this. I picked out a selection of
1:20:19of applications that I use frequently.
1:20:20Of course, there are many applications that the app will make that I use every now and
1:20:24then, like find my friends or something.
1:20:27But I don't really consider that as like an app that I use a lot.
1:20:30So I use Safari and Mail, whilst Chrome is my browser that I use typically even on iOS,
1:20:38links open in Safari.
1:20:39It's nothing I can do about it.
1:20:41So I use Safari a bunch, and Mail because I have a constant fight with all email applications.
1:20:47I use Messages and I use Apple Music as my music service of choice. I use the Health
1:20:53and Activity apps for work out and stuff and for checking that data. I like the way that
1:20:58it represents that stuff. I use Notes as my notes app. I use Notes for so much stuff.
1:21:05Basically everything unless it's long form text which I typically use Bear for these
1:21:10days. And I use the Files app. I use the Files app as the way to try and look into all of
1:21:15my cloud connected services. I use iCloud and Dropbox mostly so use the files app and
1:21:22the camera. Third party cameras are lovely and never as good as like they're never as
1:21:27accessible and fast and simple as the camera that Apple puts into every phone. So that's
1:21:32my list Jason what about you?
1:21:35Yeah, Safari mail messages, music, reminders, and notes.
1:21:41Do you use the calendar?
1:21:44I don't. I use Fantastic Cal.
1:21:48So, camera, sure. Photos.
1:21:52Do you use notes? Do you use Apple Notes? Or do you use something else?
1:21:55Yeah, I use Apple Notes.
1:21:57I think they're kind of like the standard these days.
1:22:00And then there are other ones that you can or can't use depending on, like,
1:22:03reminders and stuff like that. Not everybody uses that. The podcast app is good, but not
1:22:07everybody uses that, right? Like there are a bunch of these other applications, but I
1:22:11think kind of the list that we have probably similar for most people that listen to this
1:22:16show, I would expect.
1:22:17All right, so that is it for today. Thank you so much for sending in your #AskUpgrade
1:22:22questions to close out the show. Just send out a tweet with the #AskUpgrade and then go
1:22:26into a document for us to pull from. And also if you have a question you want us to start
1:22:31the show with, use the hashtag SnellTalk and that will go into another document so we can
1:22:36open the show and close the show in the fun ways that we do. I want to thank our sponsors
1:22:40again for their support of this episode, Pingdom, Casper and Peacock. Don't forget that we are
1:22:46doing a live show, Relay FM is doing a live show at WWDC. There is still a small amount
1:22:52of tickets available. If you go to autconf.com you can get tickets for our Relay FM live
1:22:58show we'd love to see you there if you're going to be in San Jose for WWDC week. If
1:23:05you want to find our show notes for this week head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/187 you
1:23:12can find Jason online at he's on Twitter @jasonl and he writes at sixcolors.com and Jason produces
1:23:18many many many podcasts at the incomparable.com and at relay.fm you go to relay.fm/shows
1:23:25you can find many shows that we do here. For example, you can listen to Free Agents or
1:23:29Download or Liftoff, which is some shows that Jason produces at Relay FM. I am on Twitter,
1:23:35I am @imike, I M Y K E. I also make many shows at Relay FM. If I was to list them to you
1:23:42now, I would definitely forget one of them. So just, I'm not going to do that. I don't
1:23:48want to break any hearts. So go to relay.fm/shows and you can find many shows there. Pick out
1:23:53There's going to be something else that you like, even if you think you've already subscribed
1:23:58to all of the relay FM shows that you want.
1:24:00I bet there's at least one more in there.
1:24:02We have lots of great stuff.
1:24:04Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade.
1:24:06We'll be back next time.
1:24:08Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.
1:24:10Class dismissed.
1:24:11I should have said that last week.
1:24:12[MUSIC PLAYING]
1:24:15[ Music ]