The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Federico

00:00:01 ◼   ► John oh, I'm so excited to have you here. Oh

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm glad to be on the show. I have no idea what we're gonna talk about

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm just well I can tell you I did my research all the things you care about so we're gonna talk about the Mac Pro and

00:00:15 ◼   ► Watches and American sports yeah

00:00:20 ◼   ► I'm ready

00:00:25 ◼   ► - Oh, did you see, I mean, just knock it out of the way easy.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Did you see Marquez Brownlee's video?

00:00:34 ◼   ► - Yes, I did.

00:00:36 ◼   ► - He got the wheels for the Mac Pro.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - No brakes on those wheels.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - And they spin so freely,

00:00:45 ◼   ► and the floor of whatever room he was in

00:00:47 ◼   ► is obviously off by maybe a half of a degree.

00:00:51 ◼   ► It's obviously not like a crooked floor.

00:00:53 ◼   ► It's a very nice looking room.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - And when he just lets go of the Mac Pro,

00:00:57 ◼   ► it just starts rolling away.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - You don't want a computer to run away from you.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, like a 30 to $40,000 computer.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - Just going away.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I mean, I don't plan on buying a Mac Pro

00:01:14 ◼   ► anytime soon, but if I were to buy a Mac Pro,

00:01:17 ◼   ► I totally would get the wheels.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - Oh, really?

00:01:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it just looks fun.

00:01:23 ◼   ► See, how much are the wheels?

00:01:26 ◼   ► They're like $100 each, right?

00:01:29 ◼   ► - 400?

00:01:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're $100 each.

00:01:32 ◼   ► I love that they don't come with locks.

00:01:36 ◼   ► - So I was thinking like, it's so strange.

00:01:41 ◼   ► I mean, I guess maybe it's too soon,

00:01:43 ◼   ► but maybe somebody like Belkin,

00:01:45 ◼   ► you know, these like third-party manufacturers

00:01:47 ◼   ► that have like a relationship with Apple,

00:01:49 ◼   ► maybe they should make a version that has locks.

00:01:52 ◼   ► I can't help but think that there will be,

00:01:54 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause you know that there's,

00:01:57 ◼   ► because the Pro Display XDR has,

00:02:01 ◼   ► takes standard VESA mounting,

00:02:03 ◼   ► there's already, it doesn't,

00:02:05 ◼   ► nobody has to make it custom for it.

00:02:07 ◼   ► There's already all sorts of standard arms

00:02:10 ◼   ► and wall mounts you can get for it and stands.

00:02:13 ◼   ► I can't help but feel that there's gonna be

00:02:16 ◼   ► third-party options for the wheels and stuff like that.

00:02:20 ◼   ► maybe the one cost a hundred dollar per wheel. Also, that'd be nice.

00:02:26 ◼   ► I just remember I haven't seen the wheels since WWDC. You know, like, you got to the hands-on area,

00:02:38 ◼   ► right? Well, you know, I actually, I never went. I was desperate for some coffee. And you know,

00:02:46 ◼   ► like they serve the worst coffee.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Like I was just looking for some espresso,

00:02:51 ◼   ► but what's the name of the place that closed down?

00:02:54 ◼   ► Like Social Policy in San Jose used to serve,

00:02:58 ◼   ► well, some kind of espresso.

00:03:00 ◼   ► And it was like the only place

00:03:04 ◼   ► where I could get espresso in San Jose.

00:03:06 ◼   ► Because San Jose, like the whole place is mysteriously

00:03:11 ◼   ► devoid of any sort of normal coffee place.

00:03:15 ◼   ► But social policy used to have Espresso,

00:03:17 ◼   ► and it was like five bucks for an espresso,

00:03:19 ◼   ► like totally insane.

00:03:21 ◼   ► But it closed, and so last year after the keynote,

00:03:25 ◼   ► I had this terrible headache.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And so the PR tells me, like, hey, there's a hands-on area.

00:03:32 ◼   ► You should go play around with the macro.

00:03:34 ◼   ► And I was like, yeah, maybe I will go.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I was just basically roaming around the convention area,

00:03:38 ◼   ► just looking for an espresso, and I never went.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And I kind of regret that.

00:03:43 ◼   ► - It was across the street, which is unusual.

00:03:46 ◼   ► - I know. (laughs)

00:03:47 ◼   ► - Because A, the San Jose Convention Center is enormous,

00:03:52 ◼   ► and you would think there would be plenty of space in there,

00:03:59 ◼   ► but they did have a truly,

00:04:02 ◼   ► I mean, I didn't really spend enough time in there,

00:04:07 ◼   ► so I did go in, but I kinda missed out.

00:04:11 ◼   ► But I can kinda see why they did it across the street,

00:04:14 ◼   ► and it wasn't gonna be there all week,

00:04:17 ◼   ► and it was definitely not intended for developer attendees.

00:04:22 ◼   ► It was definitely set up as a press hands-on area

00:04:26 ◼   ► that required an awful lot of Apple staffing.

00:04:29 ◼   ► They had real pros from their real pro teams

00:04:36 ◼   ► talking about the tools.

00:04:38 ◼   ► It was not something that they intended to staff all week.

00:04:41 ◼   ► So I can see why they didn't set it up

00:04:43 ◼   ► in the convention area.

00:04:44 ◼   ► But the fact that it was across the street,

00:04:46 ◼   ► I can kinda see why you didn't make it.

00:04:48 ◼   ► And it sounds so funny 'cause it's just quote unquote

00:04:51 ◼   ► across the street.

00:04:53 ◼   ► But that street is a real pain in the ass to cross too

00:04:56 ◼   ► because there's like trains that run down the middle of it.

00:05:01 ◼   ► - You can die if you cross the street.

00:05:04 ◼   ► - It feels like there's hardly any cars,

00:05:06 ◼   ► which is very unusual for America,

00:05:09 ◼   ► but there's trains that come by frequently

00:05:12 ◼   ► and don't stop and could easily kill you,

00:05:15 ◼   ► and then the rest of the traffic

00:05:16 ◼   ► are people on those rent-a-scooters.

00:05:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:19 ◼   ► Which are not dangerous at all.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Well, not dangerous to you as a pedestrian.

00:05:25 ◼   ► - Those scooters made their way to Europe

00:05:27 ◼   ► and Italy specifically.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Like just a few months ago, a bunch of cities here

00:05:31 ◼   ► started passing regulations to allow the scooters,

00:05:33 ◼   ► but I think we have more regulations

00:05:35 ◼   ► that in the United States, like more speed control and stuff.

00:05:38 ◼   ► So they may be less dangerous now, but I'm not sure.

00:05:43 ◼   ► - Philadelphia-- - I will not try them again.

00:05:44 ◼   ► - Where I live, Philadelphia, they are,

00:05:47 ◼   ► because in America, so many things are

00:05:51 ◼   ► left to not just states, but cities.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Individual cities have different regulations,

00:05:59 ◼   ► and the city of Philadelphia

00:06:01 ◼   ► qualifies them as motor vehicles,

00:06:04 ◼   ► and so you need license plates and driver's licenses.

00:06:09 ◼   ► So we have none of them in Philadelphia.

00:06:12 ◼   ► Although it was funny, these companies are so weird,

00:06:16 ◼   ► like Lime, I think it was Lime,

00:06:18 ◼   ► and somebody figured out, and my wife is the one

00:06:21 ◼   ► who found it, but she was just on one of the local

00:06:23 ◼   ► news sites, just a blog about Philadelphia stuff.

00:06:27 ◼   ► And I don't know, like a year ago,

00:06:29 ◼   ► it was like three Limes showed up in Philadelphia.

00:06:32 ◼   ► It's like somebody just fired up the Lime app,

00:06:35 ◼   ► and it was like, now there's three of them in Philadelphia.

00:06:37 ◼   ► Just three, three scooters.

00:06:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:40 ◼   ► For a city of five million people.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And it was like, is this real?

00:06:45 ◼   ► And it was like, that's how, like sometimes,

00:06:47 ◼   ► apparently that's how they like roll it out sometimes.

00:06:50 ◼   ► It's like, you know, like,

00:06:51 ◼   ► I guess it's supposed to create buzz, you know?

00:06:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:55 ◼   ► And then the city was like, these are illegal.

00:06:58 ◼   ► And Lime was like, oh yeah, we didn't mean to do that.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And then they took them away.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And it was like, what do you mean you didn't mean to do it?

00:07:02 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:07:03 ◼   ► Like, what, like somebody drove their lime

00:07:06 ◼   ► from some other city and dropped it off in Philadelphia?

00:07:11 ◼   ► But anyway, anyway, I didn't really,

00:07:16 ◼   ► I didn't spend anywhere near as much time

00:07:18 ◼   ► in that hands-on area as I wished that I had.

00:07:21 ◼   ► I had briefings and a couple other things,

00:07:22 ◼   ► and the next thing you know, I went to go back

00:07:24 ◼   ► and they're like, "Uh, it's closed, dude."

00:07:26 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh, crap."

00:07:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:07:29 ◼   ► But did it have wheels?

00:07:30 ◼   ► - Yes, they had the wheels there.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And I was actually talking to Jaws there,

00:07:39 ◼   ► and it was on Monday after the keynote.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And Jaws was on my show later that week too.

00:07:47 ◼   ► But I was just chatting with him briefly there,

00:07:49 ◼   ► and I asked him if I could ride,

00:07:50 ◼   ► if I could ride the Mac Pro like a little scooter.

00:07:55 ◼   ► And he said no.

00:07:58 ◼   ► But they did have the wheels and I got to play with them

00:08:00 ◼   ► and I can vouch that at least at WWDC

00:08:04 ◼   ► they were very nice wheels.

00:08:06 ◼   ► So I'm not surprised at all.

00:08:08 ◼   ► It's almost like the MKBHD problem

00:08:11 ◼   ► where it just starts rolling if your desktop

00:08:13 ◼   ► or floor is ever so slightly tilted.

00:08:16 ◼   ► It's almost like you'd want them to be worse wheels,

00:08:18 ◼   ► you know what I mean, so that there'd be

00:08:20 ◼   ► a little bit of friction so that you kinda have to push it.

00:08:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I don't know, it just looks fun though.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Like if I were to have a computer like that,

00:08:28 ◼   ► I would like it to have wheels, just for the fun of it.

00:08:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, until it starts rolling away.

00:08:36 ◼   ► - Maybe just get a long extension cable

00:08:40 ◼   ► and that's gonna be fine.

00:08:41 ◼   ► - All right, while we're talking about WWDC,

00:08:44 ◼   ► let me mention something.

00:08:45 ◼   ► I'll bet this has come up in your circles as well,

00:08:49 ◼   ► but with this coronavirus that is spreading around there

00:08:56 ◼   ► And I know it's only late February right now,

00:08:59 ◼   ► and WWDC almost certainly is scheduled for early June,

00:09:04 ◼   ► which is where it's been every single year,

00:09:08 ◼   ► except for one for like the last, I don't know, 15 years.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And for like the last 10 years, it's always been,

00:09:16 ◼   ► 10, 11, 12 years, it's always been,

00:09:18 ◼   ► I think 2006 was the weird year where it was in August.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Is WWDC going to be canceled because of coronavirus?

00:09:26 ◼   ► is the question on a lot of people's minds.

00:09:28 ◼   ► And it seems ridiculous in February,

00:09:30 ◼   ► but I actually think, like, watching the news,

00:09:34 ◼   ► I think that it's gotta be,

00:09:35 ◼   ► I put the odds at around 30 to 40% chance,

00:09:38 ◼   ► yes, WWDC will be canceled.

00:09:40 ◼   ► What do you have?

00:09:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, Facebook just canceled

00:09:43 ◼   ► their developer conference today.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - Yep, and that's a May conference.

00:09:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:09:49 ◼   ► And I just saw on the news,

00:09:52 ◼   ► I mean, we're here in Italy,

00:09:54 ◼   ► the virus spread like super quickly, like until last week.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It's so weird because like until last Thursday,

00:10:04 ◼   ► there were no confirmed cases.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Basically, I'm from Friday up until today,

00:10:08 ◼   ► like in so in six days,

00:10:11 ◼   ► we went from two cases to I think it's 600.

00:10:16 ◼   ► It's wild.

00:10:17 ◼   ► And I just saw on the news yesterday

00:10:19 ◼   ► that California started seeing the first confirmed cases

00:10:23 ◼   ► of the virus.

00:10:24 ◼   ► So it's starting to look likely.

00:10:27 ◼   ► I also saw that a bunch of video game companies

00:10:30 ◼   ► started pulling out from GDC,

00:10:32 ◼   ► so the Game Developers Conference,

00:10:33 ◼   ► which is in San Francisco, usually in March.

00:10:36 ◼   ► And it seems very likely that the whole thing

00:10:40 ◼   ► is gonna be canceled as well.

00:10:41 ◼   ► I don't know, what do you think will happen

00:10:45 ◼   ► if WWC gets canceled?

00:10:46 ◼   ► - So if it gets canceled, I would,

00:10:51 ◼   ► And let's assume that we're not looking

00:10:56 ◼   ► at a true global pandemic, right?

00:11:01 ◼   ► And I mean, I don't think we can take that

00:11:03 ◼   ► off the table at this point.

00:11:04 ◼   ► I think it's, you know, I think anybody

00:11:06 ◼   ► who wants to be realistic about this

00:11:08 ◼   ► can see that this is a very serious situation.

00:11:12 ◼   ► It's already, you know, I mean, there's, you know,

00:11:15 ◼   ► hundreds of people dead, thousands,

00:11:17 ◼   ► tens of thousands sick around the world,

00:11:18 ◼   ► especially in China, so I'm not making light

00:11:20 ◼   ► of the situation right now today,

00:11:23 ◼   ► but I think anybody being realistic has to look at this

00:11:25 ◼   ► and say this might be one of these

00:11:27 ◼   ► like once in a generation things that truly is a pandemic.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And in that case, of course,

00:11:34 ◼   ► everything's gonna get canceled, right?

00:11:35 ◼   ► The whole world's gonna be affected.

00:11:38 ◼   ► If it stays more like it is now, right,

00:11:40 ◼   ► where it's still out there, it's still floating about,

00:11:45 ◼   ► they're still spreading, they're still, you know,

00:11:47 ◼   ► they're tracking, you know, as it moves around the world,

00:11:50 ◼   ► and air travel is still a thing,

00:11:54 ◼   ► it's not like airlines and airports are shut down,

00:11:56 ◼   ► what I would guess Apple would do is hold a,

00:12:00 ◼   ► well, I guess what they could do

00:12:04 ◼   ► is they could either postpone until August

00:12:07 ◼   ► or something like that, or kind of do it virtually.

00:12:12 ◼   ► I mean, this is, and me chatting in a group Slack

00:12:17 ◼   ► with a bunch of friends is just a spitball idea,

00:12:20 ◼   ► but the idea would be maybe what they would do

00:12:22 ◼   ► is hold a press event at the Steve Jobs Theater,

00:12:25 ◼   ► just invite media.

00:12:27 ◼   ► But again, is that, even just that,

00:12:29 ◼   ► is inviting 300 media to a Steve Jobs Theater

00:12:33 ◼   ► is even that problematic?

00:12:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:36 ◼   ► But this would be the idea.

00:12:38 ◼   ► It would be, all right,

00:12:39 ◼   ► what if they still hold a WWDC keynote?

00:12:43 ◼   ► I don't know what they would call it

00:12:44 ◼   ► 'cause it's not really WWDC,

00:12:46 ◼   ► but they would still hold the event

00:12:47 ◼   ► to do all the stuff they want to announce, right?

00:12:49 ◼   ► 'cause Apple likes doing that, I think.

00:12:53 ◼   ► I don't think that it's like Mac World Expo

00:12:57 ◼   ► of years gone by where Apple eventually got to the point

00:13:01 ◼   ► where they didn't like having this thing on the schedule

00:13:05 ◼   ► in January and whether they're ready

00:13:07 ◼   ► to announce anything or not, they have to do this keynote.

00:13:11 ◼   ► And when they had the opportunity to beg out of it,

00:13:15 ◼   ► they took it, which effectively canceled

00:13:18 ◼   ► the whole conference because without that keynote,

00:13:21 ◼   ► it just sort of took the air out of it.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I don't think they feel that way about WWDC.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I think they like WWDC.

00:13:27 ◼   ► I think they like having developers there.

00:13:30 ◼   ► I think they find it energizing.

00:13:32 ◼   ► I really do.

00:13:34 ◼   ► I know it's a lot of work for the engineers who do it,

00:13:38 ◼   ► 'cause the presentations are all done.

00:13:41 ◼   ► It's not like there's some special team

00:13:43 ◼   ► of WWDC presenters who create all these sessions.

00:13:48 ◼   ► sessions, if there's a session on shortcuts,

00:13:52 ◼   ► what's new in shortcuts, it's presented by somebody

00:13:56 ◼   ► or people, multiple people, from the shortcuts team.

00:14:00 ◼   ► It's the people who made it who are the most intimately

00:14:02 ◼   ► familiar with it who do it.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And those presentations aren't things they whip together

00:14:07 ◼   ► at the last minute, right?

00:14:08 ◼   ► I mean, I would guess they're starting to work on them now.

00:14:12 ◼   ► So they could still do all of that work.

00:14:17 ◼   ► And it's a lot of work, but I feel like Apple,

00:14:21 ◼   ► it's worth it.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Apple wants developers to use new stuff, right?

00:14:25 ◼   ► And so without teaching and having these sessions

00:14:28 ◼   ► where you can learn about the new stuff,

00:14:29 ◼   ► how are you gonna do it, right?

00:14:30 ◼   ► So I don't think they, it is a lot of work,

00:14:32 ◼   ► but I don't think they resent it.

00:14:34 ◼   ► I think that they enjoy it.

00:14:35 ◼   ► I think they like the opportunity.

00:14:37 ◼   ► But I guess what they could do if this virus makes them,

00:14:40 ◼   ► or they feel like they should,

00:14:42 ◼   ► even if they don't have to but feel like

00:14:44 ◼   ► gets the safe thing to do is cancel the actual,

00:14:48 ◼   ► let's get 5,000 people in San Jose together,

00:14:51 ◼   ► is do it virtually.

00:14:52 ◼   ► And that's how most people around the world

00:14:55 ◼   ► actually experience WWDC anyway, right?

00:14:57 ◼   ► 'Cause there's, with the lottery and everything,

00:15:01 ◼   ► there's 5,000 attendees or so,

00:15:04 ◼   ► and obviously at this point,

00:15:06 ◼   ► tens of thousands of developers around the world

00:15:09 ◼   ► who consume the entirety of WWDC via streaming.

00:15:13 ◼   ► So what if everybody did it via streaming

00:15:15 ◼   ► and they just have the presentations,

00:15:17 ◼   ► they still do all the work they would have done

00:15:19 ◼   ► if it was going to go on,

00:15:21 ◼   ► but the entire thing goes through the WWDC app

00:15:24 ◼   ► in terms of your experience,

00:15:26 ◼   ► and then the press event would just be

00:15:28 ◼   ► for press only on Monday morning

00:15:29 ◼   ► and they'd have it at the Steve Jobs Theater.

00:15:31 ◼   ► That's my spitball idea.

00:15:33 ◼   ► - They could do that.

00:15:34 ◼   ► And I mean, they've also done,

00:15:37 ◼   ► in the past, like when a new iPhone comes out,

00:15:38 ◼   ► they have done new presentations

00:15:42 ◼   ► for new technical features like new APIs

00:15:44 ◼   ► about the new camera, for example.

00:15:46 ◼   ► And they have just posted those on the developer website.

00:15:50 ◼   ► So it's not totally new to talk about new APIs,

00:15:54 ◼   ► and it's just available via streaming, right?

00:15:57 ◼   ► I guess the main downside maybe is

00:15:59 ◼   ► that you do lose, with the remote event,

00:16:02 ◼   ► you lose obviously the personal contact.

00:16:04 ◼   ► And for a lot of developers, there's

00:16:06 ◼   ► a lot of value in being able to go to the labs

00:16:09 ◼   ► and actually get your code in front of somebody

00:16:11 ◼   ► works at Apple, I can give you pointers and suggestions,

00:16:14 ◼   ► and you lose all of that with a remote event.

00:16:17 ◼   ► And I highly doubt that Apple would do some sort of chat

00:16:21 ◼   ► feature where a developer can-- I mean,

00:16:24 ◼   ► I guess it could be even possible for a developer

00:16:26 ◼   ► to talk to somebody directly during WWDC week.

00:16:30 ◼   ► But I mean, going to the labs in person physically,

00:16:35 ◼   ► go there, is a totally different experience.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And you will lose all of that.

00:16:39 ◼   ► But also, I think I agree with you, they should still do some kind of WWDC, even if it's just

00:16:49 ◼   ► a streaming-only one, if only because it sets so much of the narrative for the year, at

00:16:55 ◼   ► least in terms of software.

00:16:57 ◼   ► As you said, it's a way for Apple to-- they like doing this, because it's also a way for

00:17:01 ◼   ► them to share a story and a strategy for the next few months.

00:17:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they really,

00:17:08 ◼   ► they've always been a company of habits.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And there's an annual calendar to Apple

00:17:18 ◼   ► and following Apple.

00:17:20 ◼   ► And I guess it's never set in stone

00:17:23 ◼   ► and never assumed that anything is permanent.

00:17:26 ◼   ► But I do feel though that internally

00:17:32 ◼   ► they clearly feel it's a good idea

00:17:36 ◼   ► And I think some of us on the outside

00:17:39 ◼   ► talking about software quality,

00:17:40 ◼   ► which we can get into as the podcast, as the show goes on,

00:17:44 ◼   ► might disagree with this to some degree that it's good,

00:17:48 ◼   ► but that the annual schedule they have the OSs on

00:17:52 ◼   ► is clearly a deliberate strategy on their part.

00:17:55 ◼   ► I mean, they almost come out and say it.

00:17:58 ◼   ► They very seldom, at the executive level,

00:18:01 ◼   ► like to explain their thinking,

00:18:04 ◼   ► They're secretive about why they do what they do.

00:18:07 ◼   ► They're just like, here's what we have,

00:18:09 ◼   ► here's what we're going to do.

00:18:10 ◼   ► Well, why, why do you tell us everything

00:18:13 ◼   ► that's coming for the next year at WWDC?

00:18:15 ◼   ► They don't wanna tell you, but they clearly,

00:18:17 ◼   ► it's so many years in a row

00:18:19 ◼   ► where they've been doing it this way.

00:18:22 ◼   ► And iOS has always been on this annual schedule.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Ever since the original iPhone came out,

00:18:28 ◼   ► there have been major new integer .o releases of iOS,

00:18:33 ◼   ► iOS, even before iOS had a name,

00:18:36 ◼   ► and now that iOS and iPadOS are two different names,

00:18:41 ◼   ► they're still on the same schedule,

00:18:42 ◼   ► and TVOS, which is built on iOS,

00:18:47 ◼   ► has the same fundamental version number.

00:18:49 ◼   ► It's TVOS 13.0.

00:18:51 ◼   ► WatchOS has been on the same annual schedule.

00:18:55 ◼   ► macOS, which in the early years of iOS

00:18:58 ◼   ► was not on an annual schedule anymore,

00:19:00 ◼   ► and is now, and I feel like it's all very strategic.

00:19:05 ◼   ► I think Apple thinks it keeps them honest.

00:19:08 ◼   ► I feel like they feel like this is a way that they can,

00:19:11 ◼   ► and at some level, it's undeniable.

00:19:15 ◼   ► We can quibble about whether they push too fast

00:19:19 ◼   ► and do new features faster than they fix bugs, et cetera,

00:19:23 ◼   ► but at some level, it obviously keeps them

00:19:26 ◼   ► from falling into the trap

00:19:29 ◼   ► that I think Microsoft fell into over a decade ago

00:19:33 ◼   ► with Windows 7, right?

00:19:36 ◼   ► I mean, that's the thing that I think they want to avoid,

00:19:39 ◼   ► where post, what was it, Windows NT,

00:19:44 ◼   ► what was the, Windows 2000, right?

00:19:47 ◼   ► Windows 2000 came out and was a huge hit.

00:19:50 ◼   ► It was probably peak Windows in terms of popularity

00:19:54 ◼   ► and industry dominance.

00:19:57 ◼   ► and they came up with the what's next after Windows 2000,

00:20:00 ◼   ► and they had sort of a boil the ocean plan

00:20:04 ◼   ► with all these, you know, they wanted to do so much

00:20:07 ◼   ► in the next version, and all of a sudden,

00:20:09 ◼   ► you know, five, six years go by, you know,

00:20:12 ◼   ► and they hadn't come out with the successor, right?

00:20:15 ◼   ► That's what you wanna avoid.

00:20:16 ◼   ► You don't want to try to bite too much off,

00:20:18 ◼   ► and this annual schedule kind of keeps everything down

00:20:23 ◼   ► to we're gonna keep making incremental progress every year,

00:20:27 ◼   ► and I think they like it, and I think announcing it at WWDC is very strategic.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Yeah, and also, unlike other companies like all these Android manufacturers, Apple controls

00:20:40 ◼   ► both the software and the hardware, and because of that, they can tie the new version of iOS

00:20:46 ◼   ► to a new iPhone.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Right.

00:20:49 ◼   ► And only, you know, Apple is one of the very few companies that can do this, and the reason

00:20:53 ◼   ► why there's an annual version of iOS,

00:20:55 ◼   ► it's because usually the new iPhone also

00:20:57 ◼   ► has some hardware feature that is enabled via software.

00:21:01 ◼   ► And so what this virus does though,

00:21:03 ◼   ► it's such a new situation because supply chains

00:21:08 ◼   ► are going to be constrained.

00:21:09 ◼   ► And we're starting to hear all these rumors

00:21:12 ◼   ► about all kinds of devices being delayed

00:21:14 ◼   ► from smaller companies like, you know,

00:21:17 ◼   ► Bridge, they make the Bridge keyboard.

00:21:19 ◼   ► They're having issues with their,

00:21:23 ◼   ► They did a trackpad-enabled keyboard, which is kind of funny because we're going to talk about that in a few.

00:21:30 ◼   ► But that's been delayed and we're hearing that like Sony and Microsoft, they are preparing the PlayStation 5 and the new Xbox.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And now they're also facing issues with the coronavirus.

00:21:42 ◼   ► So what's going to happen to the iPhone?

00:21:45 ◼   ► It's something that in my lifetime,

00:21:49 ◼   ► I've never seen anything like this

00:21:53 ◼   ► in terms of a stop to the global economy.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And what does it mean in the world of Apple

00:22:00 ◼   ► in terms of will there be a new iPhone in September?

00:22:03 ◼   ► And if so, there must be a new version of iOS.

00:22:06 ◼   ► - Obviously, it's one of those things where maybe,

00:22:11 ◼   ► here's a situation where having Tim Cook

00:22:13 ◼   ► as the CEO of the company is ideal, right?

00:22:18 ◼   ► Like who better, 'cause ultimately

00:22:20 ◼   ► it's an operations problem, right?

00:22:22 ◼   ► This is literally operations 101

00:22:26 ◼   ► to have a supply chain disruption this significant.

00:22:31 ◼   ► And so it's not like somebody has to come in

00:22:34 ◼   ► and explain how the supply chain works to Tim Cook, right?

00:22:38 ◼   ► Like, you know,

00:22:42 ◼   ► You literally could not ask for a better CEO

00:22:46 ◼   ► for a crisis like this, if it is indeed a crisis.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And I am not an expert on the supply chain,

00:22:52 ◼   ► and the details of the supply chain are,

00:22:56 ◼   ► like much at Apple, it's like the recipe to Coca-Cola.

00:23:00 ◼   ► It is a very tightly held secret.

00:23:02 ◼   ► They don't talk about how their,

00:23:04 ◼   ► they don't talk about how the supply chain works in detail.

00:23:11 ◼   ► It's effectively a black box in a lot of ways.

00:23:15 ◼   ► But one thing, reading up on this in,

00:23:19 ◼   ► hey, how big a deal is this coronavirus

00:23:21 ◼   ► in terms of the supply chain,

00:23:23 ◼   ► and is it the sort of thing that could

00:23:24 ◼   ► disrupt Apple's obvious plans

00:23:28 ◼   ► to have brand new iPhones in September?

00:23:30 ◼   ► And this makes, I think this makes common sense,

00:23:34 ◼   ► is that let's say it's a two or three week shutdown,

00:23:38 ◼   ► and they shut down certain factories and suppliers

00:23:40 ◼   ► for two to three weeks, tell everybody to stay home,

00:23:43 ◼   ► don't leave your house, and then two or three weeks go by

00:23:45 ◼   ► and they open back up in China and they're there.

00:23:48 ◼   ► That doesn't mean that everything that would have happened

00:23:52 ◼   ► is just pushed back two or three weeks, right?

00:23:55 ◼   ► It's like a ripple effect, right?

00:23:57 ◼   ► Like a two or three week disruption could have

00:24:00 ◼   ► a months long disruption in supply

00:24:04 ◼   ► because it's just that complicated

00:24:09 ◼   ► and there's so many cogs that having one or two cogs

00:24:13 ◼   ► stop for a bit shuts the whole machine down for a while

00:24:18 ◼   ► and then has to start back up.

00:24:20 ◼   ► And the other thing too you have to keep in mind

00:24:24 ◼   ► is like oh well 95% of suppliers are back up

00:24:28 ◼   ► and running at full steam,

00:24:30 ◼   ► but what about the 5% that aren't?

00:24:33 ◼   ► What if they're not, what if the components

00:24:35 ◼   ► that those suppliers provide aren't obtainable

00:24:40 ◼   ► from alternative suppliers or aren't obtainable

00:24:43 ◼   ► in sufficient quantity from other suppliers, right?

00:24:47 ◼   ► Like it could be one tiny little screw,

00:24:49 ◼   ► but if it only comes from one factory,

00:24:51 ◼   ► you cannot make the iPhone

00:24:53 ◼   ► or you have to redesign around it, right?

00:24:55 ◼   ► I mean, a screw is probably a bad example,

00:24:57 ◼   ► but who knows how many components from the iPhone

00:25:03 ◼   ► have sufficient alternatives to defend against this.

00:25:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:25:09 ◼   ► And in the short term, not to mention,

00:25:11 ◼   ► there's rumors of a spring event,

00:25:13 ◼   ► and now that's an even more problematic one

00:25:16 ◼   ► because all these issues are happening now,

00:25:21 ◼   ► like countries that are saying,

00:25:23 ◼   ► like Italy and France, for example,

00:25:25 ◼   ► are saying it's probably best if you don't travel right now.

00:25:28 ◼   ► So what does that mean for any kind of European media

00:25:32 ◼   ► that may be invited to an Apple event.

00:25:34 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:25:36 ◼   ► - Do you have any idea before we leave the subject?

00:25:39 ◼   ► But I mean, I think it's just a fluke,

00:25:43 ◼   ► but I mean, Italy certainly has

00:25:45 ◼   ► a world-class healthcare system,

00:25:47 ◼   ► and it just seems so anomalous that Italy,

00:25:52 ◼   ► of all countries, has this 600-person outbreak.

00:25:56 ◼   ► My guess is it's just a fluke,

00:26:00 ◼   ► and that's just the way things like this go, right?

00:26:02 ◼   ► Like somebody shows up with it and it starts to spread

00:26:05 ◼   ► and boom, 600 people have it.

00:26:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, so what they're saying is that

00:26:11 ◼   ► it went unnoticed for 10 days.

00:26:16 ◼   ► - Right.

00:26:17 ◼   ► - And in those 10 days, it spread to a lot of people.

00:26:22 ◼   ► Now, I actually think that the government

00:26:24 ◼   ► actually did a very good job in terms of,

00:26:26 ◼   ► okay, now we need to shut down at least two major areas

00:26:30 ◼   ► in northern Italy.

00:26:32 ◼   ► And they did that, and they closed offices and schools

00:26:34 ◼   ► and public transportation.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Right now we're asking those people who live near Milan

00:26:41 ◼   ► and near Venice, for example, we're asking them a lot.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Stay inside and don't leave the house for two weeks.

00:26:49 ◼   ► But I also think that it's a

00:26:56 ◼   ► mindset problem in the sense that we Italians, we tend to take these kinds of

00:27:02 ◼   ► things way too lightly. And like right now there's a whole debate going

00:27:08 ◼   ► on whether the government is actually doing too much because it's just the flu.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Like a lot of people are saying that, "Oh, it's just the flu, whatever." And I think

00:27:18 ◼   ► that's something that we Italians do all the time. Like we don't necessarily

00:27:22 ◼   ► give as much importance to things that the government says,

00:27:26 ◼   ► "Actually, look, this is important.

00:27:27 ◼   ► "You should care about it."

00:27:28 ◼   ► And so I'm seeing a lot of people simply say,

00:27:31 ◼   ► "Well, whatever, it's just a cold, it's just a flu.

00:27:34 ◼   ► "I don't care, it's not a problem."

00:27:36 ◼   ► And so I think a lot of people do not go get tested

00:27:40 ◼   ► because of that.

00:27:41 ◼   ► And for that reason, it's spreading even more quickly.

00:27:44 ◼   ► So the healthcare system here is actually very good.

00:27:49 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:27:51 ◼   ► - One of the things I read was that you have to understand

00:27:54 ◼   ► that one of the things we might see

00:27:57 ◼   ► is we might see higher rates of infection reported

00:28:02 ◼   ► in countries with better healthcare systems

00:28:04 ◼   ► because they have the better healthcare system

00:28:06 ◼   ► and people will go to the doctor and get identified

00:28:09 ◼   ► and that the danger is that in the countries

00:28:12 ◼   ► where the healthcare system isn't as good

00:28:15 ◼   ► and people don't have access to quality health insurance,

00:28:19 ◼   ► it might be spreading faster than the numbers

00:28:22 ◼   ► that are reported because the people who have it

00:28:24 ◼   ► aren't going to the doctor where it can be reported.

00:28:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, because here it's totally free.

00:28:28 ◼   ► I believe it's like one euro

00:28:30 ◼   ► if you wanna get the coronavirus test.

00:28:34 ◼   ► And in general, being treated here is entirely for free

00:28:38 ◼   ► for any kind of problem that you may have.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And I cannot possibly imagine

00:28:42 ◼   ► what that's like in the United States.

00:28:44 ◼   ► I mean, every time I travel for WWDC,

00:28:47 ◼   ► I have to get special insurance to travel to America.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Because if something happens to me,

00:28:53 ◼   ► I need to pay for travel insurance

00:28:55 ◼   ► that ensures that I will be covered if anything happens.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And that's such a foreign concept to me

00:29:02 ◼   ► because here, more or less, they won't,

00:29:06 ◼   ► they will not let you die and they will not ask you for money

00:29:09 ◼   ► at the hospital. - Right, no.

00:29:10 ◼   ► And I know that it's true even for people

00:29:12 ◼   ► who are vacationing there and something.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I have friends from America and they're blown away.

00:29:18 ◼   ► They took a fall and sprained their ankle

00:29:20 ◼   ► and went to the hospital in London

00:29:23 ◼   ► or probably Rome and it's like, oh, they go

00:29:26 ◼   ► and then they take a couple of bucks

00:29:28 ◼   ► and they pat you up and you're like,

00:29:33 ◼   ► where are you gonna send the bill?

00:29:34 ◼   ► And they're like, there is no bill.

00:29:35 ◼   ► And you're like, what?

00:29:36 ◼   ► No, it is, no, I do worry though.

00:29:38 ◼   ► And all the politics of US healthcare aside,

00:29:41 ◼   ► which we certainly can't get into,

00:29:44 ◼   ► This sort of epidemic type thing really puts a bullseye

00:29:49 ◼   ► on what's wrong with a system that allows

00:29:53 ◼   ► literally millions of people to not have insurance at all

00:29:56 ◼   ► and therefore to weigh every single calculation

00:29:59 ◼   ► of whether they should go to the doctor or not

00:30:02 ◼   ► with hmm, what's it gonna cost me?

00:30:04 ◼   ► This is the sort of thing where anybody who suspects

00:30:08 ◼   ► that they have it really ought to go to the doctor,

00:30:11 ◼   ► not just for their own benefit,

00:30:12 ◼   ► for the benefit of everybody, right?

00:30:15 ◼   ► So anyway, I don't know.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Like I said, I would put the odds at around 30 or 40%

00:30:23 ◼   ► at this point that WWDC is not gonna happen.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Because I think, and the Facebook news coming out today

00:30:31 ◼   ► for a May developer conference shows how far in advance

00:30:35 ◼   ► a company wants to make a decision like that.

00:30:38 ◼   ► In some ways, you know what I mean?

00:30:39 ◼   ► And it's like, what if Facebook canceled this thing

00:30:42 ◼   ► and May comes around and the whole thing is blown over,

00:30:45 ◼   ► it's gone, it's, you know.

00:30:47 ◼   ► I don't think that means that anybody should be upset.

00:30:51 ◼   ► I think it calls for caution.

00:30:53 ◼   ► So let's say two or three weeks from now,

00:30:56 ◼   ► or sometime by the end of March, Apple says,

00:30:59 ◼   ► you know what, because of this,

00:31:01 ◼   ► we're not gonna have WWDC this year,

00:31:03 ◼   ► and then June 8th rolls around and there's nothing.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I'm sure some people are gonna complain,

00:31:09 ◼   ► but you can't expect somebody in March

00:31:14 ◼   ► to have 100% certainty as to where it's gonna be in June.

00:31:17 ◼   ► You have to do what seems responsible,

00:31:22 ◼   ► which doesn't mean somehow magically foreseeing the future.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And in a shorter term, I mean, months in advance

00:31:33 ◼   ► is very hard to anticipate,

00:31:37 ◼   ► But like, here in the US, it's always the case,

00:31:41 ◼   ► like we, on the east coast of the US,

00:31:43 ◼   ► especially in the south, like where I live,

00:31:45 ◼   ► it's seldom an issue.

00:31:47 ◼   ► But there was one a couple years ago,

00:31:48 ◼   ► but we have hurricanes, and then these hurricanes come,

00:31:51 ◼   ► and days in advance, they make a determination

00:31:54 ◼   ► as to whether people on the coast should evacuate or not.

00:31:58 ◼   ► And then at some point, they often make it

00:32:00 ◼   ► a mandatory evacuation, where, I mean,

00:32:03 ◼   ► they don't arrest you if you don't leave,

00:32:04 ◼   ► but you know, it's, they're officially saying

00:32:07 ◼   ► everybody must leave and if the police see you

00:32:10 ◼   ► that you're not leaving, they try to encourage you

00:32:14 ◼   ► to get the hell out.

00:32:15 ◼   ► But then every once in a while, the storm comes in,

00:32:17 ◼   ► it's not so bad, and then people are like,

00:32:19 ◼   ► "Well, why the hell did you have us evacuate?"

00:32:21 ◼   ► And it's like, you can't only tell people to evacuate

00:32:25 ◼   ► when you're 100% certain they need to evacuate

00:32:28 ◼   ► because you're only 100% certain when the 120 mile hour winds

00:32:32 ◼   ► are blowing the roof off your house.

00:32:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:32:36 ◼   ► And like these events, they are planned several months

00:32:40 ◼   ► in advance.

00:32:41 ◼   ► It's not like you can say, oh, let's wait until

00:32:44 ◼   ► the middle of May, and then we can announce the WBC.

00:32:48 ◼   ► It doesn't work like that, and I think a lot of people

00:32:51 ◼   ► actually think that it does, but it's not like that.

00:32:53 ◼   ► You need several months of planning for, you know,

00:32:57 ◼   ► I mean, we mentioned engineers preparing their sessions.

00:33:01 ◼   ► That's one example.

00:33:02 ◼   ► It takes months of work.

00:33:03 ◼   ► - Well, like I said, I think either way,

00:33:06 ◼   ► that will still happen on the same schedule,

00:33:09 ◼   ► and I think that whether they have full WWDC,

00:33:13 ◼   ► whether they cancel it and do it online only

00:33:16 ◼   ► and hold a press event,

00:33:17 ◼   ► or whether even a press event isn't deemed safe,

00:33:21 ◼   ► and maybe they would do a keynote that's online.

00:33:24 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:25 ◼   ► I mean, that would be weird

00:33:25 ◼   ► to not have anybody in the audience,

00:33:27 ◼   ► but although I guess they'd still have

00:33:29 ◼   ► their own Apple employees,

00:33:31 ◼   ► and so you'd still hear all the applause.

00:33:33 ◼   ► - So maybe-- - And then the retail employees.

00:33:35 ◼   ► - Right, they could fill it up with some people.

00:33:37 ◼   ► But I still feel like they will do the annual,

00:33:43 ◼   ► this is the state of our OSs and our roadmap for 2021,

00:33:48 ◼   ► fall of 2020 into 2021, here you go.

00:33:55 ◼   ► I feel like that'll happen either way.

00:33:57 ◼   ► It's just a question of whether you wanna have

00:33:59 ◼   ► invite 5,000 developers from around the world

00:34:01 ◼   ► into beautiful, hospitable San Jose.

00:34:05 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:34:07 ◼   ► - Beautiful, especially beautiful San Jose.

00:34:10 ◼   ► - I don't even remember.

00:34:11 ◼   ► I drink coffee every day, and now I'm trying to remember

00:34:15 ◼   ► where the hell do I get it.

00:34:17 ◼   ► I don't even remember.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Honest to God, I can't even,

00:34:20 ◼   ► I was there for four days last week,

00:34:22 ◼   ► and I don't remember where I got coffee.

00:34:24 ◼   ► I think it's like my mind was so scarred by the experience,

00:34:27 ◼   ► It was like traumatic and I've forgotten the memory.

00:34:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm pretty sure that one time last year,

00:34:35 ◼   ► Mark Hormant walked us to some kind of breakfast place

00:34:40 ◼   ► that took like 20 minutes to get to

00:34:43 ◼   ► and they didn't have coffee.

00:34:45 ◼   ► So that sounds like it for you.

00:34:48 ◼   ► - Social policy, which I do miss,

00:34:50 ◼   ► but social policy didn't take 20 minutes to get to,

00:34:53 ◼   ► but it did take 20 or 30 minutes to get like a sandwich.

00:34:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:34:58 ◼   ► My wife goes and, you know, my wife got a hamburger

00:35:01 ◼   ► and it took 45 minutes to get a hamburger.

00:35:06 ◼   ► That place, I mean, it's like shocker

00:35:09 ◼   ► that that place closed.

00:35:10 ◼   ► - But it's too bad because they actually had

00:35:14 ◼   ► decent espresso and croissants sometimes.

00:35:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was good food.

00:35:19 ◼   ► It just clearly wasn't meant for--

00:35:22 ◼   ► - They were so unprepared for more--

00:35:27 ◼   ► than usual.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Right, but I don't even know if it is more people than usual.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I think the San Jose Convention Center often holds conventions that are far larger than

00:35:36 ◼   ► WWDC.

00:35:37 ◼   ► That's the thing about San Jose that just boggles the mind is that it feels, in terms

00:35:45 ◼   ► of the restaurant hours, the coffee shop service, the early closing of the bars, everything

00:35:53 ◼   ► makes it feel as though it is this sleepy little town where nothing big ever happens,

00:35:58 ◼   ► and Apple just picked it and puts up a 5,000-person tent like the circus once a year, and it comes

00:36:06 ◼   ► out of nowhere, and nobody in town was aware of it.

00:36:10 ◼   ► And even though now they've had it there, what, three years?

00:36:13 ◼   ► It's like nobody remembers that in June, you know, there's a busy week.

00:36:17 ◼   ► But it's worse than that because they have conventions throughout the year.

00:36:20 ◼   ► It is a very large convention center.

00:36:23 ◼   ► I suppose when you add up all of Moscone,

00:36:28 ◼   ► north, south, and west,

00:36:32 ◼   ► or whatever the hell the three parts of it are,

00:36:36 ◼   ► I guess Moscone is bigger overall.

00:36:38 ◼   ► I mean, you can't eyeball it

00:36:40 ◼   ► 'cause so much of Moscone is underground.

00:36:43 ◼   ► But Apple never, for WWDC,

00:36:45 ◼   ► never took the two main buildings.

00:36:48 ◼   ► they only use the one that actually is glass and upstairs.

00:36:53 ◼   ► I think it's bigger than the old,

00:36:54 ◼   ► where Apple used to hold WWDC.

00:36:57 ◼   ► And so there's gotta be big conventions throughout the year.

00:37:00 ◼   ► It's like, it's a convention area,

00:37:03 ◼   ► it's a convention area of town

00:37:04 ◼   ► that is not ready for any conventions

00:37:06 ◼   ► of any sort whatsoever.

00:37:08 ◼   ► It boggles the mind.

00:37:10 ◼   ► - Maybe they just don't like other people coming in.

00:37:13 ◼   ► It's just, I don't know.

00:37:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:15 ◼   ► - Everybody, it feels like it's everybody's

00:37:18 ◼   ► first day on the job.

00:37:19 ◼   ► - And to be fair, it saddens me

00:37:23 ◼   ► because every San Jose local that I've met,

00:37:25 ◼   ► they're like super lovely and kind people.

00:37:28 ◼   ► It's just the store owners that don't know

00:37:32 ◼   ► how to deal with that, so I don't know.

00:37:34 ◼   ► - I was there with somebody once

00:37:38 ◼   ► and they were trying to close a bar

00:37:39 ◼   ► and my friend, Luke, asked the manager,

00:37:42 ◼   ► "Do you like to make money?"

00:37:44 ◼   ► And the guy-- (laughs)

00:37:46 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly, that's the problem.

00:37:48 ◼   ► - Oh my God, anyway.

00:37:50 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here

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00:39:42 ◼   ► All right, so while we're talking about Apple

00:39:46 ◼   ► events, there are rumors of a spring event

00:39:50 ◼   ► which I would guess would take place

00:39:54 ◼   ► at the end of March, and the reason that I guess that

00:39:58 ◼   ► and I keep track of this, let me open up my note here,

00:40:02 ◼   ► is, like I said, Apple is a company of habits and

00:40:06 ◼   ► patterns and they might decide to stop following something but that would be

00:40:11 ◼   ► like a major decision and they do not hold a March event every year but they

00:40:19 ◼   ► did hold a March event in 2016 that was a town hall in Cupertino they did a new

00:40:30 ◼   ► iPad and a smaller iPhone that was the the iPhone SE's debut and the 9.7 inch

00:40:38 ◼   ► iPad Pro which I think was the first small iPad Pro they did not have one in

00:40:43 ◼   ► 2017 in March but then in 2018 they had a special event March 27th at Lane Tech

00:40:53 ◼   ► High School in Chicago were you there for that one we would do you go to

00:40:56 ◼   ► - I was not, I was not.

00:40:58 ◼   ► - Well, that was another,

00:40:59 ◼   ► that was a new 9.7 inch iPad Pro,

00:41:02 ◼   ► or no, just an iPad, that's right.

00:41:04 ◼   ► It was the first iPad with pencil support.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Right, and they introduced the Logitech Crayon,

00:41:09 ◼   ► and of course the reason it was a regular iPad,

00:41:11 ◼   ► not iPad Pro, and it was held at a school,

00:41:13 ◼   ► was that their pitch was that this is

00:41:15 ◼   ► for the education market,

00:41:16 ◼   ► where the price of the device is very sensitive.

00:41:18 ◼   ► Anyway, 2017, no March event.

00:41:22 ◼   ► 2018 they had an event

00:41:25 ◼   ► Or I did 2018 so 16 18 now we're in 2020 it's an even year

00:41:33 ◼   ► So if the pattern holds and even numbered years they hold March events that are often feature new iPad hardware

00:41:42 ◼   ► Will they do it again? I don't know but there's been random. I'll give you I'll give you another timeline John

00:41:50 ◼   ► I have a list. I remember I had this list somewhere

00:41:53 ◼   ► WWDC announcement dates

00:41:56 ◼   ► We forget for context because we were talking about this last year March 14

00:42:04 ◼   ► 2018 March 13

00:42:07 ◼   ► 2017 February 16 and I believe this was early because of the San Jose switch

00:42:13 ◼   ► so if they do announce

00:42:16 ◼   ► WWDC must be

00:42:18 ◼   ► within the next couple of weeks at this point.

00:42:21 ◼   ► - I think they've had some that went

00:42:22 ◼   ► as long as April though, I'm pretty sure.

00:42:25 ◼   ► - They used to be up until 2016, April 18, 2015, April 14.

00:42:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, so maybe if, I wouldn't be surprised,

00:42:34 ◼   ► if we get into April and they haven't said anything,

00:42:37 ◼   ► I would interpret that as meaning they're still

00:42:41 ◼   ► like holding their breath on this coronavirus thing

00:42:44 ◼   ► and waiting until the last minute to make a decision.

00:42:47 ◼   ► But anyway, the March event, what I do know is that it tends to be, at least the past couple of years, in the spring break week.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Is it called spring break? I think it's called spring break.

00:43:02 ◼   ► Yeah, but we are at the spring break, schools have spring break in widely varying weeks of the year.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Some schools try to time it with Easter, other schools have it the same, like the last week of March every year or something like that.

00:43:16 ◼   ► It's not there's no one universal spring break week. It's spread out in late March through April

00:43:23 ◼   ► But will they do an event now

00:43:27 ◼   ► I really don't I really don't know and you know, one of the changes they've made in recent years is

00:43:35 ◼   ► that

00:43:37 ◼   ► For many years they would hold

00:43:40 ◼   ► satellite events in

00:43:44 ◼   ► somewhere in Europe and somewhere in Asia and

00:43:47 ◼   ► This dates back to even before they had

00:43:52 ◼   ► Reliable consistent live streams for everybody to watch right? I mean, it's it's easy to forget because nowadays

00:43:59 ◼   ► They're there. They're they seem rock-solid every single event

00:44:03 ◼   ► But for years they would you know you

00:44:07 ◼   ► We we if you weren't attending the event, you know, I'm sure you remember this

00:44:13 ◼   ► well, it would be like, is there gonna be a live stream?

00:44:15 ◼   ► I don't know, and Apple wouldn't say,

00:44:17 ◼   ► and then sometimes like an hour before the event,

00:44:19 ◼   ► they would be like, here's a URL for the live stream.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Is it going to stay up?

00:44:23 ◼   ► Hold your breath.

00:44:26 ◼   ► And it was weird, 'cause sometimes it would,

00:44:27 ◼   ► sometimes it wouldn't, it was, you know,

00:44:30 ◼   ► it wasn't something you would wanna bet on.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Whether they were even gonna try, and if they did try,

00:44:35 ◼   ► whether it was gonna stay up was a crapshoot.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Nowadays, that's not an issue.

00:44:42 ◼   ► But back in that era, they would hold satellite events

00:44:45 ◼   ► for the media in Asia and Europe

00:44:47 ◼   ► so that European journalists could just go to London

00:44:52 ◼   ► and there would be like,

00:44:54 ◼   ► wasn't something that maybe was public,

00:44:56 ◼   ► but it was some kind of technology

00:44:57 ◼   ► where they could stream it just to one facility in London

00:45:02 ◼   ► and people wouldn't have to travel the extra

00:45:05 ◼   ► eight time zones to get all the way to California

00:45:08 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:45:10 ◼   ► But at some point a handful of years ago, they stopped that.

00:45:14 ◼   ► And if you're going to be press credentialed for an event,

00:45:18 ◼   ► you need to be at the event.

00:45:21 ◼   ► And otherwise you're just watching, which isn't bad.

00:45:24 ◼   ► I mean, I missed an event.

00:45:25 ◼   ► I missed the iPhone event this year

00:45:31 ◼   ► because I couldn't fly because of eye surgery

00:45:33 ◼   ► that I had in the end of August.

00:45:35 ◼   ► So I didn't go to the iPhone event in September

00:45:37 ◼   ► and just watched it live on my Apple TV.

00:45:40 ◼   ► But there's no more satellite events like that.

00:45:44 ◼   ► So Asian media all fly to California.

00:45:48 ◼   ► I mean, I guess they could not, I don't know,

00:45:51 ◼   ► I just can't imagine that they wouldn't not invite them

00:45:53 ◼   ► just because they're from Asia or something.

00:45:55 ◼   ► And it's not really, that's obviously ground zero for this,

00:45:58 ◼   ► but as we just talked about 15 minutes ago,

00:46:01 ◼   ► it's in Italy, it's in California,

00:46:04 ◼   ► it's all around the world.

00:46:07 ◼   ► - But maybe there doesn't have to be an event, right?

00:46:10 ◼   ► Because if you look at last year,

00:46:12 ◼   ► it was a similar situation,

00:46:13 ◼   ► like a bunch of different products.

00:46:15 ◼   ► We had the new AirPods and we had,

00:46:18 ◼   ► was there a new iPad last year?

00:46:20 ◼   ► Maybe it was the iPad Air 2, I believe.

00:46:22 ◼   ► So a bunch of different products,

00:46:24 ◼   ► and instead of doing an event

00:46:25 ◼   ► and throwing a few different products together,

00:46:28 ◼   ► they just did the week of press releases, right?

00:46:31 ◼   ► With the Tim Cook tweets, the Tim Cook photo.

00:46:36 ◼   ► And I think maybe there's an opportunity to do a repeat of that, because if you look at the products that we're talking about now,

00:46:42 ◼   ► we're looking at an iPad Pro that, if you were to follow the rumors, has a new camera system,

00:46:47 ◼   ► but the new design, basically the same design of the existing iPad Pro, and maybe a new smart keyboard.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And then we're looking at the iPhone 9 or SE2, and potentially the new MacBook Pros with the new keyboards.

00:47:02 ◼   ► So, and maybe the new over-ear headphones

00:47:07 ◼   ► that were rumored a while back.

00:47:10 ◼   ► So not necessarily products that tell a cohesive story.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Like yes, they are updates.

00:47:18 ◼   ► New products even, if you look at the over-ear headphones,

00:47:22 ◼   ► for example, and the iPhone 9,

00:47:23 ◼   ► but maybe it's not necessary to throw an event

00:47:27 ◼   ► just to group those products together.

00:47:29 ◼   ► - Right, they don't, you know,

00:47:32 ◼   ► I've had this discussion, I think it was with regard

00:47:36 ◼   ► to the fact that last year, or the end of 2019,

00:47:41 ◼   ► just four or five months ago,

00:47:43 ◼   ► they didn't hold the second event.

00:47:45 ◼   ► The only event they really held

00:47:46 ◼   ► was the September iPhone event,

00:47:48 ◼   ► and then in October they had

00:47:50 ◼   ► small press briefings for other stuff,

00:47:57 ◼   ► like seeing the Mac Pro again before it came out,

00:48:01 ◼   ► and getting hands-on time with the new 16-inch MacBook Pro,

00:48:06 ◼   ► with the miraculous new keyboard

00:48:11 ◼   ► that actually works and clicks.

00:48:12 ◼   ► You know, they had, you know, I went to New York for that.

00:48:16 ◼   ► I think New York was actually the main,

00:48:19 ◼   ► for whatever reason, was more media than California.

00:48:24 ◼   ► But, you know, I could see them doing something like that,

00:48:28 ◼   ► where they still want to, for invited media

00:48:30 ◼   ► and people who are going to review the hardware,

00:48:32 ◼   ► they still want to meet them and brief them

00:48:35 ◼   ► and give them their take on it,

00:48:36 ◼   ► but it doesn't have to be a 500 person event in a theater.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And the thing that I don't think a lot of people get,

00:48:45 ◼   ► I think people who don't pay close attention

00:48:47 ◼   ► are under the assumption that Apple holds these events

00:48:51 ◼   ► willy-nilly, you know, and every time they do,

00:48:53 ◼   ► because why wouldn't you?

00:48:54 ◼   ► If you can get all this attention

00:48:56 ◼   ► every time you hold a big media event,

00:48:58 ◼   ► why wouldn't you do it all the time?

00:49:00 ◼   ► But I think it's the opposite.

00:49:01 ◼   ► I think Apple realizes to the very highest levels

00:49:05 ◼   ► what a tremendous privilege and marketing hammer it is

00:49:10 ◼   ► that when they do hold an event,

00:49:16 ◼   ► it garners so much attention and gets so much news

00:49:21 ◼   ► and is literally on the front page of newspapers.

00:49:24 ◼   ► And I know newspapers, printed newspapers

00:49:27 ◼   ► aren't the big deal they used to be,

00:49:29 ◼   ► but it's still a good rule of,

00:49:31 ◼   ► just a good gauge of how big of news something is.

00:49:35 ◼   ► It's a pretty big deal in the grand scheme of things

00:49:39 ◼   ► that when this company announces a new cell phone,

00:49:42 ◼   ► it's front page news around the world.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I think they realize that part,

00:49:48 ◼   ► there's the little boy who cried wolf problem, right?

00:49:52 ◼   ► I mean, you know that fairy tale, right?

00:49:55 ◼   ► It's like, if you hold events

00:49:57 ◼   ► that aren't worth people's attention eventually,

00:50:00 ◼   ► even when you have an event that is worth their attention,

00:50:03 ◼   ► people aren't gonna pay attention to it,

00:50:05 ◼   ► or they're not gonna pay as much as they did.

00:50:07 ◼   ► And I think Apple, at the very highest levels,

00:50:09 ◼   ► is very cognizant of not doing that.

00:50:12 ◼   ► And the 16-inch MacBook Pro is a perfect example of that.

00:50:16 ◼   ► It is a tremendous product.

00:50:18 ◼   ► I mean, I'm still using one right now, and I love it,

00:50:23 ◼   ► and I really do think it is truly a return.

00:50:26 ◼   ► As much as it looks like, and I'm not gonna go off

00:50:29 ◼   ► on a whole MacBook Pro tangent here, we gotta talk iPad,

00:50:32 ◼   ► but as much as it looks side by side

00:50:34 ◼   ► like the 15-inch MacBook Pro replaced in so many ways,

00:50:38 ◼   ► it really does fix so many of the things

00:50:41 ◼   ► that we all complained about with the 15-inch MacBook Pros

00:50:44 ◼   ► for the last two or three years,

00:50:46 ◼   ► but was it worth an event?

00:50:48 ◼   ► And like you said, is there a story to tell?

00:50:51 ◼   ► Well, if the story is we fixed this, that,

00:50:54 ◼   ► and the other problems, they don't really wanna

00:50:56 ◼   ► get up on stage and say that.

00:50:58 ◼   ► They'd rather say that privately in a small room

00:51:02 ◼   ► and just say, yeah, we have a new keyboard design.

00:51:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, and if you look at the previous events,

00:51:09 ◼   ► there always tends to be a narrative around them.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Like last year, it was the services event,

00:51:14 ◼   ► like the strange one with a bunch of services together,

00:51:17 ◼   ► but it told a story.

00:51:18 ◼   ► And the year before that, it was the education event.

00:51:21 ◼   ► And in October 2018, it was the pro event.

00:51:24 ◼   ► So in Brooklyn, we got the iPad Pro and the Mac Mini,

00:51:28 ◼   ► I believe.

00:51:28 ◼   ► So there tends to be an overarching narrative to an event.

00:51:33 ◼   ► And we've seen how when they have a bunch

00:51:39 ◼   ► of different products to release and to announce,

00:51:42 ◼   ► maybe the best strategy is not to throw an event,

00:51:44 ◼   ► but to try different ways,

00:51:46 ◼   ► whether it's like private press briefings or YouTubers

00:51:50 ◼   ► or doing just the Tim Cook tweet

00:51:54 ◼   ► and the announcement on the website,

00:51:56 ◼   ► people last year were sure,

00:51:58 ◼   ► "Oh, the AirPods Pro are gonna have an event for sure,"

00:52:02 ◼   ► or, "The 16-inch MicroPro will have an event for sure,"

00:52:05 ◼   ► but no, the AirPods Pro actually

00:52:07 ◼   ► only had a press release, I believe.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Not even press reviews, embargoed reviews.

00:52:14 ◼   ► - Let me think about that.

00:52:16 ◼   ► I got to try them.

00:52:17 ◼   ► I did get to try them at the hands-on thing in New York.

00:52:20 ◼   ► That was the same thing.

00:52:21 ◼   ► - Oh, maybe there were then.

00:52:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think I did get a review unit then.

00:52:25 ◼   ► I forget, I don't think they were embargoed though.

00:52:28 ◼   ► I think it was like you could just take them and you start.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Yeah, they definitely did that.

00:52:32 ◼   ► And they definitely had a little,

00:52:36 ◼   ► like it was like a dozen of us at a time

00:52:42 ◼   ► got to go up to these tables

00:52:44 ◼   ► and they were factory sealed.

00:52:48 ◼   ► They were like little spots and you'd go up

00:52:51 ◼   ► and there was a shrink wrap box of AirPods Pro

00:52:54 ◼   ► that you could open up and just pair to your phone.

00:52:59 ◼   ► And it was kind of an interesting demo

00:53:01 ◼   ► because unlike most Apple demos

00:53:03 ◼   ► where the whole thing is scripted,

00:53:05 ◼   ► they have this device that's already got everything

00:53:08 ◼   ► they wanna show you, including the game that shows off metal

00:53:11 ◼   ► and this and that, they just were like,

00:53:14 ◼   ► here's a brand new AirPods Pro, open them up,

00:53:17 ◼   ► pair them with your iPhone to see how easy it is

00:53:20 ◼   ► just to get off the ground,

00:53:21 ◼   ► and then listen to something on your phone.

00:53:23 ◼   ► And it was funny, they did this thing, it was in New York,

00:53:27 ◼   ► and it wasn't a soundproof room,

00:53:33 ◼   ► but they don't like people talking about it,

00:53:36 ◼   ► but it was quiet enough,

00:53:37 ◼   ► but they wanted to show off the noise canceling,

00:53:40 ◼   ► and so they said, so this is ridiculous,

00:53:42 ◼   ► but we got here and realized there really isn't

00:53:44 ◼   ► any street noise here, so they used a HomePod

00:53:49 ◼   ► to play street traffic noise.

00:53:52 ◼   ► - Oh wow, I swear to God.

00:53:54 ◼   ► - So they were like, this seems silly,

00:53:55 ◼   ► but it should sound, we wanna make it sound

00:53:58 ◼   ► more like you're outside on the sidewalks,

00:54:00 ◼   ► and they just pumped--

00:54:01 ◼   ► - Best street traffic noise you've ever heard.

00:54:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, they just played street,

00:54:05 ◼   ► the best street traffic noise you've ever heard

00:54:07 ◼   ► in an AirPod, and then they were like,

00:54:09 ◼   ► now just squeeze the stem to turn off noise,

00:54:12 ◼   ► turn noise canceling on, et cetera.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I could see them doing that.

00:54:18 ◼   ► I think the wild card in the rumored events for this,

00:54:22 ◼   ► if there's a March or early April event,

00:54:24 ◼   ► the wild card is iPad.

00:54:26 ◼   ► Like the iPhone 9 or whatever they're going to call it,

00:54:30 ◼   ► but I kinda like the name iPhone 9.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And I know people are like,

00:54:34 ◼   ► "Well, why would you wanna make it seem old?"

00:54:35 ◼   ► And it's like, dude, you have no idea

00:54:37 ◼   ► how many millions, tens of millions of people out there

00:54:40 ◼   ► who already have an iPhone 6,

00:54:43 ◼   ► and they just want something exactly like it,

00:54:45 ◼   ► but brand new, you just cannot underestimate that.

00:54:49 ◼   ► My mom is waiting for one.

00:54:51 ◼   ► My mom has a years-old iPhone.

00:54:53 ◼   ► The battery, it's like 82%,

00:54:56 ◼   ► so it's still above that 80% threshold,

00:54:58 ◼   ► but it's getting close.

00:55:01 ◼   ► And all she, she is not terrified,

00:55:04 ◼   ► but the idea of switching from touch ID to face ID

00:55:08 ◼   ► gives her anxiety.

00:55:10 ◼   ► 'cause she does, it's unfamiliar.

00:55:11 ◼   ► She's like, well, how do you get out of an app?

00:55:13 ◼   ► And I was like, you learn, you just swipe up, it's easy.

00:55:15 ◼   ► Now, you know what she wants?

00:55:16 ◼   ► She wants a home button.

00:55:18 ◼   ► I have to tell you, this thing is gonna be a huge seller.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Call it the iPhone 9, and yeah,

00:55:23 ◼   ► anybody who knows that they're already up to 11

00:55:25 ◼   ► and we're like seven months away from,

00:55:27 ◼   ► and put an asterisk and a footnote here,

00:55:29 ◼   ► go back 20 minutes to our whole coronavirus.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Maybe it's not September, but iPhone 12

00:55:35 ◼   ► is probably coming in September,

00:55:37 ◼   ► or an iPhone 11s or something,

00:55:39 ◼   ► there are literally maybe hundreds of millions of people

00:55:44 ◼   ► around the world who would love an iPhone 9,

00:55:46 ◼   ► called the iPhone 9.

00:55:47 ◼   ► So, but here's the thing, is it a good demo?

00:55:50 ◼   ► No, it would be the worst demo in the world, right?

00:55:53 ◼   ► Because you can't see that it's faster, right?

00:55:58 ◼   ► Because like this, you know, what are you gonna do?

00:56:01 ◼   ► You know, run a benchmark on an iPhone

00:56:04 ◼   ► compared to an iPhone 7 or something like that?

00:56:06 ◼   ► I mean, it's an iPhone 8 with new internals.

00:56:11 ◼   ► What do you demo?

00:56:13 ◼   ► There is no demo.

00:56:14 ◼   ► - Not the best product to show off on stage.

00:56:16 ◼   ► - Right, and it would be running iOS 13.3

00:56:21 ◼   ► or maybe iOS, probably iOS 13.4, right?

00:56:24 ◼   ► 'Cause iOS 13.4 is far enough in beta

00:56:26 ◼   ► that it would probably be the OS for the out of the box

00:56:30 ◼   ► for this new phone.

00:56:32 ◼   ► It's running the iOS version

00:56:35 ◼   ► that everybody around the world already is running.

00:56:37 ◼   ► It's not a demo.

00:56:40 ◼   ► The iPad is the thing that maybe would have a demo, right?

00:56:44 ◼   ► And our, everybody's mutual friend,

00:56:48 ◼   ► the internet's friend, Steven Trout and Smith,

00:56:51 ◼   ► it's spelunker of betas,

00:56:53 ◼   ► has poking around the iPad OS 13.4 betas

00:57:00 ◼   ► has uncovered a whole slew of keyboard-related stuff

00:57:05 ◼   ► in iOS 13.4.

00:57:07 ◼   ► I don't even know, you're probably more familiar with me

00:57:13 ◼   ► in terms of what's already been uncovered,

00:57:15 ◼   ► but it would sort of coincide with a sort of,

00:57:19 ◼   ► hey, this is a demo, like hey,

00:57:22 ◼   ► people are using their iPads with a keyboard

00:57:25 ◼   ► for all sorts of stuff,

00:57:26 ◼   ► and it fits in with the years-long narrative

00:57:29 ◼   ► for a lot of people this is the portable that you can use in a laptop type setup.

00:57:36 ◼   ► So I don't know. What all have we already know is new in 13.4 for keyboard?

00:57:41 ◼   ► So the things that we've seen tie in a bunch of different ways with some potential good

00:57:49 ◼   ► demo candidates in the sense that there's one feature which is called full keyboard

00:57:54 ◼   ► access. This one was actually available for at least a couple beta builds last

00:58:02 ◼   ► summer in 13.0, and then it got pulled and never came back, and now it's back in

00:58:07 ◼   ► 13.4, and so full keyboard access lets you essentially define, I believe,

00:58:14 ◼   ► custom shortcuts that you can execute from the keyboard to perform specific

00:58:20 ◼   ► functions. Essentially it's another version of something that is

00:58:25 ◼   ► already available in accessibility and that is if you connect a mouse in

00:58:31 ◼   ► iAPET OS 13 and you have a programmable mouse that has multiple buttons, I mean

00:58:36 ◼   ► usually two buttons, but you know I have a Logitech mouse that has five of them,

00:58:40 ◼   ► and you can configure each button in accessibility right now to do things

00:58:45 ◼   ► like "show me notification center" or "reveal the dock" or "go back to the home screen"

00:58:51 ◼   ► all that kind of stuff.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Now with full keyboard access you can do that, you can assign those system functions to keyboard

00:58:57 ◼   ► commands.

00:58:58 ◼   ► And one of the interesting features is that you can run a shortcut from the shortcuts

00:59:05 ◼   ► app with a system-wide hotkey basically.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And it's not as good as on the Mac because you cannot pass any input.

00:59:15 ◼   ► So it's not like on the Mac with an automated workflow and you can say run this when I press command shift X.

00:59:23 ◼   ► But you can pass the selected finder item as input.

00:59:28 ◼   ► You cannot do that with full keyboard access in 13.4. But it's a step forward nonetheless.

00:59:34 ◼   ► And also, the other big change is support

00:59:38 ◼   ► for key up and down events.

00:59:40 ◼   ► - Yes, right.

00:59:41 ◼   ► - So that's one of the big features missing

00:59:46 ◼   ► from developers who wanted to have

00:59:48 ◼   ► serious keyboard integration with their apps.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And so there's the productivity angle

00:59:53 ◼   ► that I could see being demoed of like,

00:59:56 ◼   ► now you can fully control your iPad Pro

00:59:58 ◼   ► in two different ways, with touch, of course,

01:00:00 ◼   ► and with the keyboard.

01:00:01 ◼   ► And if you wanna use the keyboard,

01:00:03 ◼   ► you never have to leave the keyboard.

01:00:05 ◼   ► You never have to reach the screen

01:00:06 ◼   ► because you can do it all, in theory.

01:00:08 ◼   ► But there's also the gaming angle, right?

01:00:10 ◼   ► Because now games can have proper keyboard integration

01:00:13 ◼   ► because of key up and down events.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And so I could see a story sort of like,

01:00:18 ◼   ► now on Apple Arcade, you can,

01:00:20 ◼   ► here's a bunch of PC quality games

01:00:22 ◼   ► that you can now play with the keyboard or with touch.

01:00:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it sounds so rudimentary, right?

01:00:29 ◼   ► But just to further explain for anybody

01:00:32 ◼   ► doesn't know what key up and down events are.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Literally, let's say you're the developer of an application.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And in the old days, there were always APIs on Mac, Windows,

01:00:43 ◼   ► whatever you were on, where you could say, is the A key down?

01:00:46 ◼   ► Or notify me when the A key is pressed.

01:00:49 ◼   ► And was the key pressed, or is it being pressed and held?

01:00:54 ◼   ► And you would think that there should be a way for computer

01:00:56 ◼   ► programs to tell.

01:00:59 ◼   ► But iOS and iPadOS have not had those sort of events until 13.4, which is still in beta.

01:01:06 ◼   ► And so, for example, and again, very demo-able, and speaking of friends in San Jose,

01:01:14 ◼   ► there's a small company in San Jose called Adobe that makes a now 30-year-old app called Photoshop.

01:01:23 ◼   ► And anybody who's ever used Photoshop extensively on the desktop knows that they use the keyboard

01:01:31 ◼   ► in all sorts of ways. And a casual Photoshop user is going to do everything with a mouse,

01:01:37 ◼   ► and you click on a tool, and then you go over to your image and you start painting.

01:01:43 ◼   ► But a Photoshop expert is using the keyboard all the time, and they have single key switches where

01:01:50 ◼   ► where you can just type, I forget what all of them are.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Honestly, I haven't used them in a while,

01:01:55 ◼   ► but I don't know, you can just type like B for the brush

01:01:58 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:01:59 ◼   ► People who use Photoshop all the time know them by heart.

01:02:02 ◼   ► And then you can do things like hold down the space bar

01:02:04 ◼   ► and the cursor turns into a hand

01:02:07 ◼   ► that you can use to page around

01:02:09 ◼   ► without using scroll bars or something like that.

01:02:12 ◼   ► And you can hold down the option key to do different,

01:02:15 ◼   ► you know, get different behavior,

01:02:17 ◼   ► or the shift key to constrain a selection

01:02:20 ◼   ► to a fixed aspect ratio as opposed to a freeform rectangle.

01:02:25 ◼   ► All sorts of ways that Photoshop uses the keyboard

01:02:30 ◼   ► and has been problematic, to say the least,

01:02:35 ◼   ► on iPad up until now would make for a very good demo.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And yeah, again, the gaming thing is obvious

01:02:43 ◼   ► in terms of being able to get fast key events

01:02:47 ◼   ► to be able to drive a game from the keyboard.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and when you think about it,

01:02:52 ◼   ► not so many companies can have,

01:02:54 ◼   ► can say we have a tablet that has a really amazing GPU

01:02:59 ◼   ► that gives you this kind of graphical performance

01:03:02 ◼   ► and lets you, and of course, if this is all true,

01:03:06 ◼   ► lets you play games with two different input methods.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Like you can play with touch

01:03:11 ◼   ► or you can play with the keyboard.

01:03:13 ◼   ► I mean, the Nintendo Switch has some kind of touch control,

01:03:17 ◼   ► but it's basically never used in games.

01:03:19 ◼   ► And the GPU is not nearly as good as the current iPad Pro.

01:03:24 ◼   ► I cannot imagine the next iPad Pro.

01:03:26 ◼   ► So it's definitely an interesting proposition.

01:03:29 ◼   ► And from a productivity standpoint,

01:03:31 ◼   ► as you mentioned, Photoshop,

01:03:32 ◼   ► and all the existing productivity apps,

01:03:35 ◼   ► there's a few developers who,

01:03:38 ◼   ► over the past couple of years,

01:03:40 ◼   ► have tried to enable full keyboard navigation

01:03:44 ◼   ► in their apps, in their iPad apps.

01:03:47 ◼   ► You look at something like agenda, for example, or things,

01:03:50 ◼   ► or just today, the RSS client Unread

01:03:55 ◼   ► has a new version, Unread 2.

01:03:57 ◼   ► And one of the features is you can fully navigate Unread

01:04:00 ◼   ► with a keyboard if you have an iPad.

01:04:03 ◼   ► So developers have been doing

01:04:04 ◼   ► their own custom implementations, but again, they're custom

01:04:08 ◼   ► and they require a lot of work,

01:04:11 ◼   ► and they do not support key up and down events.

01:04:14 ◼   ► So in theory, having a proper framework from Apple

01:04:17 ◼   ► with support for key up and down events,

01:04:19 ◼   ► it makes a world of difference if you're an iPad developer.

01:04:23 ◼   ► So that's very demo-able for sure.

01:04:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:04:27 ◼   ► I think that there's,

01:04:31 ◼   ► it's just the roots showing through, the roots of the,

01:04:37 ◼   ► And it's funny because, and I say this,

01:04:39 ◼   ► and it's like people forget it,

01:04:40 ◼   ► and it's come up a couple times in recent weeks,

01:04:43 ◼   ► but it is funny that the original iPad from 2010

01:04:48 ◼   ► was demoed with a first party keyboard dock.

01:04:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:04:54 ◼   ► I had that, I had that dock, I used it twice,

01:04:58 ◼   ► and then I forgot about it.

01:05:00 ◼   ► You know what, I knew I didn't want it,

01:05:02 ◼   ► and so I didn't buy it.

01:05:03 ◼   ► And I don't know how I knew it,

01:05:05 ◼   ► And I was like-- and it was funny, because I'll never

01:05:09 ◼   ► forget that demo.

01:05:11 ◼   ► I went to the event, and the hands-on area was open.

01:05:16 ◼   ► And I'm always one of the-- often one of the last to leave,

01:05:21 ◼   ► because I'm not under pressure to immediately get something

01:05:24 ◼   ► up on Daring Fireball.

01:05:26 ◼   ► I can take my time.

01:05:28 ◼   ► Whereas an awful lot of the media who are in attendance

01:05:31 ◼   ► either are required to file a story very quickly,

01:05:35 ◼   ► or just feel that pressure to file very quickly.

01:05:39 ◼   ► And nowadays, 2010 it wasn't as big a deal,

01:05:42 ◼   ► but nowadays a lot of them have to shoot video

01:05:44 ◼   ► and there's all this going on.

01:05:46 ◼   ► And I'll just sit there and play with the devices.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And I just remember, it was like,

01:05:51 ◼   ► and they're so very nice, but they came up,

01:05:53 ◼   ► it was me and Dan Morin, who was then at Macworld,

01:05:56 ◼   ► were playing with the iPad on the dock

01:05:58 ◼   ► and we were trying to figure out all the keyboard shortcuts,

01:06:01 ◼   ► what worked and what didn't work.

01:06:02 ◼   ► And we're going through mail, and we're like,

01:06:04 ◼   ► "All right, let's go to..." and this was before you could hold down the command key and just see the shortcuts.

01:06:09 ◼   ► But we're like, "Oh, what about shift-command-D? Can you do shift-command-D to send an email?" And we're like, "Yes!"

01:06:15 ◼   ► And we're just going through and this very nice woman came over and she was like, "Hey, you know, hey guys,

01:06:22 ◼   ► you know, we're wrapping up." And we look around and there's literally nobody left except Apple and Voice.

01:06:30 ◼   ► We're like, "Oh, I guess we should go."

01:06:33 ◼   ► We're like, we're sorry.

01:06:35 ◼   ► And we like left, but we literally got dragged out

01:06:39 ◼   ► while we were using the keyboard doc

01:06:42 ◼   ► to try to figure out all the keyboard shortcuts

01:06:45 ◼   ► that they managed to hook up.

01:06:46 ◼   ► But I didn't use it.

01:06:48 ◼   ► But anyway, the keyboard was clearly an afterthought,

01:06:51 ◼   ► at least originally.

01:06:52 ◼   ► Even though they sold a keyboard, that's my point.

01:06:54 ◼   ► They sold one originally,

01:06:56 ◼   ► and it was to sort of sell the line that,

01:06:58 ◼   ► hey, they've got a full-blown version of numbers

01:07:03 ◼   ► and pages and you can actually sit there and write and stuff.

01:07:07 ◼   ► But actual proper first class support of a hardware keyboard,

01:07:12 ◼   ► honestly, it's still not there.

01:07:14 ◼   ► And it sounds like we may not have to wait for iOS

01:07:18 ◼   ► or iPad OS 14.

01:07:20 ◼   ► It seems like 13.4 might be the height,

01:07:23 ◼   ► the mark where we say this is where iPad OS crossed the line

01:07:27 ◼   ► and now has,

01:07:32 ◼   ► It's over the 50-yard line. It's over the halfway mark of having good keyboard support.

01:07:36 ◼   ► That's a sports metaphor, right?

01:07:38 ◼   ► Yes, yeah, I'm sorry.

01:07:39 ◼   ► That's why I switched.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Yards? That's football.

01:07:43 ◼   ► Well, that's why I switched. What do you call the center line on a soccer pitch?

01:07:48 ◼   ► Midfield? Crossed midfield?

01:07:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yes, yes.

01:07:55 ◼   ► All right, so 50-yard line is midfield. So we've crossed midfield, you know.

01:08:00 ◼   ► We've gone over and now we're on the scoring end.

01:08:03 ◼   ► - Got it.

01:08:04 ◼   ► - You know, like for me, one of the things that is just,

01:08:07 ◼   ► it's just so frustrating and I don't think 13.4 does this,

01:08:11 ◼   ► but boy, it's like, man, when I have a hardware keyboard

01:08:15 ◼   ► connected to my iPad, and I don't wanna go off

01:08:17 ◼   ► on the whole iPad stretch here,

01:08:19 ◼   ► because that'll be the closing segment of the show,

01:08:22 ◼   ► we have a lot to talk about,

01:08:23 ◼   ► but just in terms of like driving your iPad

01:08:25 ◼   ► with the keyboard, when I'm on the home screen,

01:08:29 ◼   ► it drives me insane that you can't just use the arrow keys

01:08:32 ◼   ► to select between apps and then hit the return key

01:08:36 ◼   ► to open it or something to open it.

01:08:39 ◼   ► You know, like in the Finder, you know, on the Mac,

01:08:42 ◼   ► people might think that you hit return to open something,

01:08:45 ◼   ► but no, return renames it,

01:08:47 ◼   ► which is sort of a historical artifact.

01:08:49 ◼   ► You have to use command open or command down arrow to open.

01:08:52 ◼   ► You know, I'm not gonna argue

01:08:56 ◼   ► whether those keyboard shortcuts

01:08:57 ◼   ► we're a historical mistake or not,

01:08:59 ◼   ► but we're stuck with them.

01:09:00 ◼   ► But there should be some way

01:09:01 ◼   ► with a keyboard connected to an iPad

01:09:04 ◼   ► to arrow key around.

01:09:06 ◼   ► And they enforce the grid, right?

01:09:09 ◼   ► It's not like the desktop on the Mac

01:09:11 ◼   ► where you can kind of have your icons

01:09:12 ◼   ► on your iPad home screen strewn about in a mess.

01:09:17 ◼   ► It enforces a nice grid,

01:09:20 ◼   ► which is just begging for up, down, left, right, right?

01:09:24 ◼   ► - Yes. - Just begging.

01:09:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, and really the main problem when you think about it

01:09:30 ◼   ► is that the iPad, and that is not changing in 13.4,

01:09:35 ◼   ► it lacks any kind of selection state from the keyboard.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Any kind, like on tvOS you have the focus engine, right?

01:09:44 ◼   ► And you can select items and then you can click.

01:09:47 ◼   ► And there's none of that on the iPad.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Which is why some developers, some third-party developers

01:09:52 ◼   ► have done their own custom thing, but at a system level,

01:09:55 ◼   ► like even the basic stuff,

01:09:56 ◼   ► like I want to select icons on the home screen.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Well, it's not possible because the idea of selection

01:10:02 ◼   ► is just not there.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Just like the idea of hovering over items in UIKit.

01:10:07 ◼   ► It's just not there, it doesn't exist,

01:10:08 ◼   ► which is why the current implementation

01:10:12 ◼   ► of the pointing device is via accessibility.

01:10:15 ◼   ► That's not a real pointing device.

01:10:17 ◼   ► You're not hovering over anything.

01:10:19 ◼   ► You're just simulating a finger on screen

01:10:20 ◼   ► and then you click, which means you tap.

01:10:23 ◼   ► But I totally agree with you.

01:10:25 ◼   ► Like it's so annoying that whenever you're on the home screen, really the only way to

01:10:29 ◼   ► launch an app without touching the screen is to search for it and then press return.

01:10:35 ◼   ► Which yeah, sort of works, but no, just let me select stuff.

01:10:41 ◼   ► The other thing that drives me nuts about, you do command space and then you search for

01:10:45 ◼   ► an app and it is the first search result.

01:10:48 ◼   ► You can hit the return key and it will open, but there's still no selection state to show

01:10:53 ◼   ► you that.

01:10:54 ◼   ► to have to trust that the return key will open, but then you can use the arrow keys

01:10:58 ◼   ► to move up and down the selection, much like Spotlight on the Mac.

01:11:03 ◼   ► So I want to say, and I may be wrong, that maybe you can do Command+Down to jump between

01:11:10 ◼   ► different sets of results. Like, maybe you can do Command+Down and you select…

01:11:17 ◼   ► There still should be a selection.

01:11:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it should be better than it is right now,

01:11:22 ◼   ► for sure, and I really, why do I hope that in 14

01:11:26 ◼   ► we get some kind of selection state API

01:11:29 ◼   ► and just hover state.

01:11:32 ◼   ► It's really necessary.

01:11:34 ◼   ► If you wanna have serious keyboard integration.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Speaking of which, did you see this rumor

01:11:40 ◼   ► about the smart keyboard possibly getting a trackpad?

01:11:44 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

01:11:45 ◼   ► The information, which is not like a regular source

01:11:50 ◼   ► of Apple stuff, the information is subscriber only

01:11:54 ◼   ► and it's largely startup focused and sort of VC,

01:11:59 ◼   ► I often think sort of VC centric,

01:12:02 ◼   ► but then when they do pipe up with Apple stuff,

01:12:04 ◼   ► it's usually pretty accurate.

01:12:06 ◼   ► And they'll go months without anything

01:12:10 ◼   ► and then pop up with a blockbuster.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And this one, this is a report from Wayne Ma,

01:12:15 ◼   ► Apple planning iPad keyboard with trackpad

01:12:18 ◼   ► Apple is planning to release an iPad keyboard accessory later this year that will include a built-in trackpad

01:12:24 ◼   ► Hmm that's you know, I don't know that we even need to go any further

01:12:30 ◼   ► I think you know their article goes on and on but I feel like we all kind of you know

01:12:35 ◼   ► I guess the one thing we don't know and they don't know in the article is

01:12:39 ◼   ► To me it

01:12:43 ◼   ► it would imply that it's going to be promoted

01:12:48 ◼   ► out of accessibility and will become

01:12:51 ◼   ► a first-class mouse cursor when you have

01:12:56 ◼   ► a pointing device attached, whether it's a trackpad

01:13:00 ◼   ► on a keyboard or a mouse or a, I guess,

01:13:04 ◼   ► I mean, since you can connect mice, you can connect,

01:13:07 ◼   ► I don't even know if this is true,

01:13:08 ◼   ► can you connect like a magic trackpad to an iPad?

01:13:11 ◼   ► - No, you cannot right now.

01:13:14 ◼   ► - So you can't.

01:13:15 ◼   ► So you can plug in a USB mouse,

01:13:17 ◼   ► but you can't do a trackpad.

01:13:18 ◼   ► But in theory, they could support it.

01:13:21 ◼   ► And I would think that then,

01:13:27 ◼   ► here we go into the meat of the subject.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Maybe I should take a break before we continue.

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01:17:05 ◼   ► where we were.

01:17:06 ◼   ► We were talking about the mouse cursor support.

01:17:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it's gotta be.

01:17:10 ◼   ► If they're gonna do a trackpad,

01:17:11 ◼   ► which I think they should and I would love,

01:17:13 ◼   ► I really, really, really hope that this rumor is true.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Not just for the idea of a smart keyboard cover

01:17:21 ◼   ► with a trackpad that you could use,

01:17:23 ◼   ► but just in the broader sense,

01:17:26 ◼   ► the idea that they would add first-class mouse pointer

01:17:28 ◼   ► support to iPad OS.

01:17:30 ◼   ► - Jason Snyder just posted on Six Colors,

01:17:35 ◼   ► a post with questions about potential smart keyboard

01:17:39 ◼   ► with a trackpad, and all those questions basically match

01:17:42 ◼   ► the things that I was thinking about.

01:17:45 ◼   ► What does it mean if they do a trackpad

01:17:47 ◼   ► in terms of the kind of pointer that we get?

01:17:52 ◼   ► because right now I could see Apple saying,

01:17:55 ◼   ► look, it's got a trackpad,

01:17:56 ◼   ► but it's just for text editing, right?

01:17:59 ◼   ► Just like now, for example,

01:18:00 ◼   ► you can hold down two fingers on the software keyboard

01:18:03 ◼   ► and you get a trackpad when you're editing text.

01:18:05 ◼   ► I could see a scenario where, yes, there's a trackpad,

01:18:10 ◼   ► but it only helps when it comes to text editing.

01:18:12 ◼   ► And I think that will make sense,

01:18:14 ◼   ► but also I would be disappointed

01:18:17 ◼   ► because I would love to see a full-blown trackpad support

01:18:20 ◼   ► and actual support in UIKit

01:18:24 ◼   ► for controlling the entire interface with the trackpad.

01:18:27 ◼   ► But also what does it mean

01:18:28 ◼   ► in terms of hardware keyboard design?

01:18:32 ◼   ► Like does it mean that Apple is gonna have a keyboard

01:18:35 ◼   ► with a hinge, like fully adjustable viewing angle,

01:18:39 ◼   ► for example?

01:18:40 ◼   ► So there's a lot of questions right now,

01:18:41 ◼   ► but I guess the main point being,

01:18:44 ◼   ► do we foresee a scenario where the iPad,

01:18:49 ◼   ► you can actually control the entire iPad OS UI

01:18:52 ◼   ► with a pointing device, with a trackpad

01:18:55 ◼   ► built into the keyboard so that you never

01:18:56 ◼   ► have to touch the screen.

01:18:58 ◼   ► - I really hope so, and for a couple of reasons.

01:19:00 ◼   ► One of them is that touch screens have been around,

01:19:04 ◼   ► I mean, really, we're like 13 years into it

01:19:08 ◼   ► at this point, right?

01:19:09 ◼   ► It was 2007 in January when Apple announced

01:19:14 ◼   ► the original iPhone.

01:19:17 ◼   ► So we're now 13 years after, not quite to the point,

01:19:21 ◼   ► I mean this was the point when everybody

01:19:23 ◼   ► was still speculating that it was gonna be a dud,

01:19:25 ◼   ► it wasn't gonna work, blah, blah, blah,

01:19:27 ◼   ► but nobody had it yet.

01:19:28 ◼   ► But we're easily over a 10 years into the period

01:19:32 ◼   ► where people have touch screens

01:19:35 ◼   ► and Apple has answered questions about,

01:19:37 ◼   ► well, why doesn't the Mac have touch screen support

01:19:40 ◼   ► for a long time?

01:19:41 ◼   ► And until and if they ever do release touch screen Macs,

01:19:47 ◼   ► they're gonna keep answering it,

01:19:48 ◼   ► and their answer is, one of the answers has always been

01:19:52 ◼   ► that the ergonomics are terrible, right?

01:19:54 ◼   ► Especially for like an iPad or an iMac, right,

01:19:59 ◼   ► where you're pointing at this screen,

01:20:01 ◼   ► an arm's length in front of you, your arm gets tired,

01:20:05 ◼   ► and they've mentioned it many times,

01:20:07 ◼   ► but even on a laptop, it's,

01:20:10 ◼   ► a swipe here, a swipe there, tap here,

01:20:14 ◼   ► and put your hands back down is no problem,

01:20:16 ◼   ► but if the only way to,

01:20:19 ◼   ► let's say you have a text editing document,

01:20:23 ◼   ► a long article, you know, school paper,

01:20:26 ◼   ► someone like me or you who writes for the web,

01:20:28 ◼   ► and you've got edits to make,

01:20:30 ◼   ► and editing is often largely, you know, selecting,

01:20:35 ◼   ► you know, you don't necessarily wanna do it all

01:20:37 ◼   ► with arrow keys, you know.

01:20:39 ◼   ► It's tiresome to sit there and touch the screen

01:20:42 ◼   ► over and over again, and touching the screen

01:20:45 ◼   ► obscures the thing you're looking at, right?

01:20:47 ◼   ► Your hand is actually in front of your face.

01:20:49 ◼   ► It doesn't make sense if Apple's argument,

01:20:59 ◼   ► one of Apple's arguments against touchscreen Macs

01:21:02 ◼   ► is the ergonomics are bad, which I believe is true.

01:21:05 ◼   ► I actually think that is actually true,

01:21:07 ◼   ► the ergonomics are bad, but then it doesn't make sense

01:21:10 ◼   ► that when they say here with our iPad Pro,

01:21:13 ◼   ► you can get this smart keyboard and turn it into a laptop-like physical configuration,

01:21:19 ◼   ► and then when you want to do anything, you have to touch the screen, which we've already

01:21:21 ◼   ► told you with our other thing is ergonomically bad.

01:21:24 ◼   ► Right?

01:21:25 ◼   ► I mean, that's – it fundamentally doesn't make sense.

01:21:28 ◼   ► And when I've confronted Apple folks with that, they just give non-answer answers.

01:21:36 ◼   ► But it clearly doesn't hold water, right?

01:21:39 ◼   ► And basically the ergonomic argument in favor of this is beyond arguments over the operating

01:21:47 ◼   ► system and the UI for it, right?

01:21:49 ◼   ► But if your hands, your fingers are on the home row keys of your keyboard, right, and

01:21:55 ◼   ► the keyboard is flat on the desk, where are your thumbs?

01:21:59 ◼   ► Your thumbs are right where track pads go, right?

01:22:03 ◼   ► Like ergonomically, this is a solved problem.

01:22:09 ◼   ► And I know that in the early years of PC laptops,

01:22:11 ◼   ► the IBM ones had the little rubber nubbin in the middle,

01:22:16 ◼   ► and we had track balls before we had track pads.

01:22:20 ◼   ► But Apple quickly figured out that the right place

01:22:22 ◼   ► for the track ball, I mean, there were early laptops,

01:22:24 ◼   ► I don't know if you remember, you're a youngster,

01:22:27 ◼   ► but Apple had one, the original Mac portable,

01:22:31 ◼   ► which was like a suitcase, more than a laptop.

01:22:34 ◼   ► But it had the track pad, the track ball, off to the side,

01:22:38 ◼   ► so that you would use it like where a mouse was.

01:22:40 ◼   ► You'd move, you know, 'cause,

01:22:42 ◼   ► but I guess they had to put something over there

01:22:43 ◼   ► 'cause the thing was so big.

01:22:44 ◼   ► But we've, you know, ergonomically,

01:22:47 ◼   ► we've gotten to the point where it seems pretty obvious

01:22:49 ◼   ► that you put your fingers on the keyboard like you're typing

01:22:52 ◼   ► and your thumbs are just right there where a trackpad goes.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And so wouldn't it be nice if you're,

01:22:58 ◼   ► when you're using an iPad,

01:23:00 ◼   ► if you could just make use of those thumbs

01:23:03 ◼   ► that are right there without lifting 'em up?

01:23:05 ◼   ► You know, so I feel like there's an ergonomic argument.

01:23:08 ◼   ► On the software side, this is where I think it's more interesting and nuanced, is because

01:23:14 ◼   ► I think the better argument against touchscreen Macs is that by assuming that every single

01:23:24 ◼   ► Mac has a mouse pointer attachment, you either have a mouse or a trackpad.

01:23:31 ◼   ► It's almost impossible.

01:23:32 ◼   ► I mean, you could run a Mac as a kiosk of some sort without a keyboard and mouse, but

01:23:37 ◼   ► But to actually use a Mac, it's borderline impossible without, as a typical user, you

01:23:44 ◼   ► know, it's, you know, nobody would really want to use a Mac without a mouse pointer,

01:23:48 ◼   ► a mouse or a trackpad.

01:23:50 ◼   ► And those are very fine, precise pointing things.

01:23:55 ◼   ► There's all sorts of UI elements that are able to be packed as small targets close together.

01:24:01 ◼   ► And my most prominent example are the red, yellow, green buttons for closing a window

01:24:07 ◼   ► minimizing a window and full screen zooming a window.

01:24:10 ◼   ► They're very small targets,

01:24:12 ◼   ► they're very close to each other,

01:24:14 ◼   ► and if they were touch targets,

01:24:16 ◼   ► they would have to be further apart,

01:24:18 ◼   ► and that would take up more room in every single window.

01:24:22 ◼   ► There's also, just looking at,

01:24:23 ◼   ► I'm looking at Safari right now,

01:24:24 ◼   ► there's just all sorts of stuff

01:24:26 ◼   ► at the top of my Safari window that's way too small,

01:24:30 ◼   ► way too small of a target, way too close to other targets

01:24:35 ◼   ► to be good for a touch interface.

01:24:38 ◼   ► So, I'm not going to bet money

01:24:43 ◼   ► that Apple will never have a touchscreen Mac.

01:24:45 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it's inevitable, I don't know,

01:24:47 ◼   ► 'cause there's certainly a lot of people

01:24:48 ◼   ► who think they want it.

01:24:49 ◼   ► But my deep concern is that to do it right,

01:24:52 ◼   ► they would have to fundamentally change the Mac interface

01:24:55 ◼   ► in a way that would make it less information dense,

01:24:58 ◼   ► which I think is one of the convenient things about it.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Whereas I feel like you could add mouse support to iPad OS without sacrificing anything in

01:25:11 ◼   ► terms of the experience for what if you're just touching it like a you know like like

01:25:17 ◼   ► you don't you if you never have a trackpad or mouse connected to it does it change the

01:25:22 ◼   ► size or placement of any UI targets no right I feel like it I'm not saying it's easy nobody

01:25:31 ◼   ► I don't want to ever tell engineers that anything is easy, but I think conceptually

01:25:35 ◼   ► iPadOS is a much better fit for first-class mouse pointer support than macOS is a fit for touchscreen support.

01:25:44 ◼   ► I agree with that. And the reason why I also want them to do this is

01:25:49 ◼   ► because right now there's a, on the iPad, there's a fundamental case of feature disparity between the two

01:25:58 ◼   ► different modes. If you think about it, what really sets the iPad apart from the Mac is

01:26:06 ◼   ► the fact that you can pull it out from the keyboard and just use it as a tablet. Whereas

01:26:11 ◼   ► a MacBook, you cannot just pull out the screen and use it. It's always attached to the keyboard,

01:26:16 ◼   ► or if it's a desktop Mac, it always needs to be a desktop computer. So the iPad does

01:26:21 ◼   ► support two different modes. And when it's in multi-touch mode, so you don't have any

01:26:27 ◼   ► keyboard accessory, you don't have any mouse,

01:26:31 ◼   ► it's fully usable like that, right?

01:26:32 ◼   ► It fully supports multi-touch,

01:26:34 ◼   ► it's got a software keyboard, it's fully usable.

01:26:37 ◼   ► But if you add a smart keyboard,

01:26:40 ◼   ► that's when the feature disparity comes in.

01:26:42 ◼   ► And it's so funny right now that Apple itself

01:26:47 ◼   ► created this problem of when you use a smart keyboard,

01:26:51 ◼   ► you cannot fully use the iPad from the keyboard alone

01:26:55 ◼   ► because you still need to touch the screen.

01:26:57 ◼   ► And this is the keyboard that Apple makes, that Apple sells,

01:27:00 ◼   ► and that Apple promotes as the accessory for the iPad Pro.

01:27:03 ◼   ► So I think they should do it, because right now the iPad

01:27:07 ◼   ► can be used with the keyboard.

01:27:09 ◼   ► And I mean, I use it.

01:27:10 ◼   ► I came up with all sorts of workarounds for like--

01:27:14 ◼   ► I have a Logitech mouse that I have with some shortcuts.

01:27:18 ◼   ► But it's not native, and you can feel that it's an afterthought.

01:27:23 ◼   ► And whereas the iPad is fully usable as a tablet in touch mode,

01:27:28 ◼   ► it is not fully native if you want to use it with a keyboard.

01:27:32 ◼   ► And so I'm seeing a bunch of people on Twitter saying,

01:27:36 ◼   ► if they're going to do it, if they're going to add a cursor,

01:27:38 ◼   ► it's just going to be for text fields.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:27:41 ◼   ► But I think it should be a real cursor.

01:27:43 ◼   ► And I think it should be a real pointing device that

01:27:45 ◼   ► lets you control the whole UI.

01:27:49 ◼   ► I could see it, but as being just for text,

01:27:53 ◼   ► like you said, exactly like the virtual trackpad you can get.

01:27:58 ◼   ► And you can get it on the iPhone too

01:28:01 ◼   ► by holding down on the space bar now that 3D touch is gone.

01:28:05 ◼   ► And it's a two-finger touch

01:28:08 ◼   ► on the virtual keyboard on iPad OS, right?

01:28:12 ◼   ► If you-- - Yes, yep.

01:28:14 ◼   ► - You just go there and two fingers touch.

01:28:16 ◼   ► Yeah, you put two fingers down.

01:28:18 ◼   ► anywhere on the keyboard, which is really nice, very, very nice.

01:28:22 ◼   ► You don't have to aim for the space bar.

01:28:26 ◼   ► So there's a tip of the day.

01:28:28 ◼   ► Every time I mention something like that,

01:28:29 ◼   ► I know that there's people who are like, holy crap,

01:28:31 ◼   ► I didn't know you could do that.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Virtual keyboard up on the iPad, put two fingers anywhere

01:28:36 ◼   ► on the keyboard, and you get-- while you're editing text,

01:28:39 ◼   ► and you can move the insertion point around.

01:28:42 ◼   ► I just don't think, though, that they--

01:28:44 ◼   ► if they're going to go so far as to actually put a trackpad

01:28:47 ◼   ► on the smart keyboard, I just don't see

01:28:49 ◼   ► why they wouldn't do it for everything.

01:28:50 ◼   ► And I really do think, I really do think,

01:28:54 ◼   ► and there might be some edge cases,

01:28:56 ◼   ► there's always edge cases, there's always something

01:28:58 ◼   ► that's tricky, but I think for the most part,

01:29:00 ◼   ► it won't take away from touch at all.

01:29:04 ◼   ► I really do feel that that's true,

01:29:06 ◼   ► and that it's just sort of a historical artifact

01:29:11 ◼   ► of the fact that the iPad was derived

01:29:13 ◼   ► from the iPhone's operating system

01:29:16 ◼   ► that it didn't have it right from the start.

01:29:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and I've been part of this computing life,

01:29:25 ◼   ► I guess, for the past several years at this point.

01:29:30 ◼   ► And really, whenever I share a photo of my iPad setup,

01:29:35 ◼   ► I always got a bunch of people saying,

01:29:37 ◼   ► "Why don't you just use a Mac?"

01:29:39 ◼   ► And while I do get the point, right,

01:29:42 ◼   ► because it does look like when you're using the iPad

01:29:45 ◼   ► with the keyboard and maybe a mouse

01:29:46 ◼   ► and maybe some other accessory, it does look like a laptop.

01:29:49 ◼   ► But to me, that's the whole point of the conversation

01:29:53 ◼   ► of if I want, I can pull out the tablet

01:29:57 ◼   ► and go work on the couch or stay in bed.

01:30:01 ◼   ► And that is actually how I started using the iPad

01:30:03 ◼   ► when I was sick and undergoing cancer treatments years ago.

01:30:08 ◼   ► And I couldn't use a MacBook.

01:30:10 ◼   ► I just had the iPad and I was able to stay in the hospital bed

01:30:14 ◼   ► use the iPad as a tablet. And that to me is really the greatest strength of the device.

01:30:23 ◼   ► And I know that it's an overused term, but it can be sort of like hybrid computer in

01:30:28 ◼   ► the sense that it's tablet and then you just slide it into a keyboard and it becomes sort

01:30:32 ◼   ► of like laptop. So yeah, I really do think that the two modes can coexist. And when it

01:30:40 ◼   ► comes to the trackpad, I was just thinking about this as we were talking about it. We've

01:30:46 ◼   ► seen all these concepts. You linked one of them on Daring Fireball for like rethinking

01:30:52 ◼   ► iPad multitasking. And I was thinking about these concepts and then the rumor came out

01:30:57 ◼   ► today of the trackpad. And so I realized if there's an opportunity for Apple to bring

01:31:04 ◼   ► consistency to a new multitasking interface. What better way to add

01:31:11 ◼   ► consistency than to say there's new gestures that you can use for multitouch

01:31:16 ◼   ► if you want to use multitasking and split view and the same gestures actually

01:31:21 ◼   ► work with our multitouch trackpad on the smart keyboard. It's always the same

01:31:25 ◼   ► gestures, it's always the same interaction system and you can use it

01:31:33 ◼   ► be attached and you can use it with the keyboard. And I think René Ritchie on YouTube also had

01:31:38 ◼   ► some kind of concept a couple of months back, maybe, arguing if Apple were to do a new multitasking

01:31:46 ◼   ► system on iPad, maybe they should consider multitouch gestures. So that could potentially

01:31:52 ◼   ► be interesting if it's also a multitouch trackpad on the smart keyboard, of course.

01:31:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it would be too, because I think that they're all in on that in terms,

01:32:01 ◼   ► and it's a way to bring some consistency

01:32:04 ◼   ► between the Mac and iOS.

01:32:06 ◼   ► I mean, I can't imagine that it wouldn't be, right?

01:32:09 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, it is one of the most exciting rumors,

01:32:14 ◼   ► and it's so funny because we could have recorded yesterday,

01:32:19 ◼   ► we would have done the whole show before it broke,

01:32:21 ◼   ► but to me, it's honestly one of the most exciting rumors

01:32:24 ◼   ► in a long while.

01:32:26 ◼   ► I'm terribly excited about it

01:32:28 ◼   ► because it's not just about having the trackpad,

01:32:30 ◼   ► It's everything that it says about what I think they would need to do with iPadOS

01:32:34 ◼   ► to make it worthwhile having a first-party trackpad, right?

01:32:38 ◼   ► And I just can't help but think that it would mean that you could put two fingers

01:32:44 ◼   ► on it to scroll a scroll view, right?

01:32:47 ◼   ► But that also implies some sort of focus, whether it's a mouse hovering over it.

01:32:53 ◼   ► Like on the Mac, it's wherever the mouse cursor is hovering,

01:32:57 ◼   ► you can scroll up and down with two fingers to scroll the thing, including in a background

01:33:01 ◼   ► window, you know, but what determines it? You don't even have to click on it. You just put the

01:33:06 ◼   ► mouse cursor over it and then use two fingers to go up and down to scroll the view. It would be

01:33:12 ◼   ► baffling if they don't support that, right? Like, what's the point of having a trackpad if you can't

01:33:20 ◼   ► scroll with it, if you still have to do it? I mean, would it mean that literally every single

01:33:26 ◼   ► thing in the system could be done from the keyboard and trackpad? Maybe, right? That almost seems like

01:33:32 ◼   ► one part of me wants to say, "Well, maybe not everything." But then I want to say, "Why not?"

01:33:38 ◼   ► Right? Like, what is there that you wouldn't be able to do? You know, with the combination of

01:33:44 ◼   ► moving the cursor as a virtual finger over elements and tapping to simulate a touch,

01:33:51 ◼   ► and a combination of multi-fingered gestures

01:33:54 ◼   ► for things like, you know, bringing, I don't know.

01:33:59 ◼   ► I mean, would you be able to bring down control center

01:34:03 ◼   ► with a drag from the top of the track pad?

01:34:05 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:34:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, you could do expose now that you have

01:34:08 ◼   ► multiple windows on iPad, you could do that.

01:34:11 ◼   ► You could show the app switcher and maybe, again,

01:34:15 ◼   ► if they were to add a new, a different multitasking system,

01:34:18 ◼   ► you could have gestures for split view and slide over and that kind of stuff.

01:34:23 ◼   ► So, yeah, I mean, why not, right?

01:34:26 ◼   ► If you go so far as to add a physical trackpad

01:34:31 ◼   ► to the smart keyboard, which is super premium space, right?

01:34:36 ◼   ► You go to such lengths as to add an actual trackpad,

01:34:41 ◼   ► limiting that trackpad to just scrolling text fields and text views.

01:34:48 ◼   ► That seems like a wasted opportunity.

01:34:50 ◼   ► - It just seems a little spiteful, you know?

01:34:52 ◼   ► Like not spiteful that Apple doesn't like iPad users

01:34:57 ◼   ► and wants them to be frustrated,

01:35:00 ◼   ► but like spitefully sticking to the idea

01:35:04 ◼   ► that it's fundamentally a touchscreen,

01:35:07 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

01:35:07 ◼   ► It's putting an idea above the actual practicality

01:35:12 ◼   ► of would this actually be useful

01:35:15 ◼   ► without taking away from anything that's already good.

01:35:19 ◼   ► - It will be political more than practical.

01:35:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, or dogmatic, I don't know what word

01:35:24 ◼   ► you wanna use, right?

01:35:25 ◼   ► Like you're just sticking to this dogma

01:35:27 ◼   ► that no longer holds.

01:35:29 ◼   ► Well, now one thing that comes to me,

01:35:32 ◼   ► and this is why it's fascinating me,

01:35:34 ◼   ► I love reading your stuff on iPad,

01:35:36 ◼   ► and I've complained a bit recently,

01:35:38 ◼   ► and I have a couple more complaints

01:35:40 ◼   ► to get off my chest before I'm done,

01:35:44 ◼   ► about the state of iPadOS.

01:35:47 ◼   ► And there's just so many people who got angry at me.

01:35:57 ◼   ► Oh, really?

01:35:57 ◼   ► People get angry at you?

01:35:59 ◼   ► And I don't get it.

01:36:01 ◼   ► I really tried to write around it and anticipate it.

01:36:03 ◼   ► And the basic idea is if you come up with-- like me,

01:36:07 ◼   ► you have a bunch of what I think are very valid complaints

01:36:10 ◼   ► about the current state of iPadOS,

01:36:12 ◼   ► and you describe them to the best of your ability,

01:36:16 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden they say,

01:36:17 ◼   ► "Well, you hate the iPad because you're an old person

01:36:20 ◼   ► "who likes the Mac and you just want the iPad to be a Mac."

01:36:23 ◼   ► And it's like, no, I don't.

01:36:24 ◼   ► What I would like, ideally, I love the Mac.

01:36:27 ◼   ► And again, I'm a sort of person,

01:36:29 ◼   ► if I had to choose between iPad and Mac

01:36:31 ◼   ► for the rest of my life without hesitation,

01:36:32 ◼   ► half a second, I would choose Mac.

01:36:35 ◼   ► That's just where I am, that's who I am,

01:36:36 ◼   ► no surprise from what I've written.

01:36:38 ◼   ► But holy crap, wouldn't it be amazing

01:36:40 ◼   ► if the iPad got so good that I thought, "Wow, even I as a Mac person think this is better."

01:36:44 ◼   ► That would be better, right?

01:36:46 ◼   ► Like I love the Mac.

01:36:47 ◼   ► The Mac is still my favorite operating system there is, but I'm not like going to look anything

01:36:56 ◼   ► -- I would love to find something better, right?

01:36:58 ◼   ► Like people think, "Well, if you love the Mac and that's your thing, then you're some

01:37:02 ◼   ► kind of zealot, and no matter what anybody else does, you're going to find ways to say

01:37:08 ◼   ► the Mac is better, that's not my mindset at all. I love the Mac, and so therefore if there

01:37:16 ◼   ► were ever something from Apple or any other company that I thought was a better overall

01:37:20 ◼   ► system than the Mac, that would be amazing because the Mac is already great. So it would

01:37:24 ◼   ► be great if the iPad got better. I would love to see the iPad get better. So I don't understand

01:37:29 ◼   ► the defensiveness on some people's parts. And that's one thing, I don't know how you

01:37:33 ◼   ► get away with it because you're well known as an iPad power user and somebody who really

01:37:39 ◼   ► it just fits with your brain. I mean that's what you're trying to I know what you're trying to say

01:37:45 ◼   ► is like the reason that you like using an iPad for everything and the reason why when people say

01:37:50 ◼   ► well why don't you just use a Mac for that is that the iPad is like it for me Mac OS fits my brain

01:37:58 ◼   ► And maybe my brain has been warped to fit Mac OS over the years.

01:38:02 ◼   ► But it's very clear from your writing and your enthusiasm and the clever things you come up with

01:38:08 ◼   ► with shortcuts and stuff like that, that the iPad OS just fits your brain, right?

01:38:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:14 ◼   ► It is a natural extension of your brain.

01:38:17 ◼   ► And it's like the lack of keyboard support is like, at times, for certain tasks,

01:38:24 ◼   ► one of your hands is tied behind your back.

01:38:25 ◼   ► Yes.

01:38:27 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:38:29 ◼   ► - Like I feel bad for you.

01:38:31 ◼   ► I feel that I do, I really do.

01:38:33 ◼   ► 'Cause I feel like right now,

01:38:37 ◼   ► the iPad is constrained in ways that aren't,

01:38:41 ◼   ► it's not like, oh, well that would be impossible to solve.

01:38:44 ◼   ► Right, like if you,

01:38:45 ◼   ► just off the top of my head,

01:38:48 ◼   ► if you really wanted Siri to be as intelligent

01:38:51 ◼   ► as the HAL computer in 2001

01:38:54 ◼   ► and be able to hold a real conversation with you,

01:38:56 ◼   ► Well, to get from where we are today to there is an awful lot of work and maybe, who knows,

01:39:02 ◼   ► maybe it's not even technically possible, AI is never going to get there.

01:39:07 ◼   ► Whereas getting proper mouse pointer support in iPadOS, that's obviously technically possible,

01:39:14 ◼   ► right?

01:39:15 ◼   ► Like this is, it's a design decision, not a technical or engineering limitation.

01:39:22 ◼   ► It's exactly that.

01:39:23 ◼   ► Like it's so close, right?

01:39:26 ◼   ► you can see the thing actually in front of you,

01:39:29 ◼   ► but you cannot reach it.

01:39:30 ◼   ► - Right.

01:39:31 ◼   ► - Especially now that we have that sort of like

01:39:35 ◼   ► external pointing device feature,

01:39:37 ◼   ► but it is an accessibility feature,

01:39:40 ◼   ► so it's not exactly that.

01:39:42 ◼   ► And it's so close and you can feel like

01:39:44 ◼   ► that reality is within my grasp,

01:39:46 ◼   ► but the closer you get, the further away from you,

01:39:50 ◼   ► it escapes.

01:39:51 ◼   ► And that is why I'm so excited about this rumor.

01:39:55 ◼   ► And as you said, the reason why I keep using the iPad is one,

01:40:02 ◼   ► yes, because it does fit my brain at this point better.

01:40:06 ◼   ► And two, I would say because ever since I

01:40:10 ◼   ► was unable to get any work done--

01:40:13 ◼   ► and we're talking now seven years ago,

01:40:14 ◼   ► and everything is fine now.

01:40:15 ◼   ► That is while in the past.

01:40:17 ◼   ► But that scared me in the sense that the iPad,

01:40:24 ◼   ► I, working on the iPad, I know that I always have a fallback built in, in the sense that

01:40:31 ◼   ► if I cannot work with my keyboard and my mouse and my vertical stand, I can still hold the

01:40:39 ◼   ► thing in my hands and stay in bed and send an email, right? And so that, I, like, that

01:40:47 ◼   ► disability, you could say, like years ago, it really left an impression in my brain

01:40:54 ◼   ► in terms of I never want to just depend on a desktop computer ever again. And

01:41:00 ◼   ► that is why I've always been on a sort of quest to see what's a way to

01:41:06 ◼   ► to do this with full portability, with full mobility. And that is why

01:41:13 ◼   ► I get a lot of people making fun of me whenever I share a complex shortcut.

01:41:19 ◼   ► And years ago, it used to be Python scripts with Pythonista, and it used to be URL schemes before that.

01:41:26 ◼   ► And Launch Center Pro, which is still a great utility, but Launch Center Pro, when it first came out,

01:41:34 ◼   ► came out was a way to get interapplication communication

01:41:39 ◼   ► all through URL schemes, which can get complicated.

01:41:44 ◼   ► - It can get complicated, but still,

01:41:49 ◼   ► it did allow me to be more efficient years ago.

01:41:53 ◼   ► So I generally get why people like you

01:41:58 ◼   ► and people like Stephen Hackett, for example,

01:42:03 ◼   ► prefer working on Mac OS. And I think it's totally fine. And I think it's so silly that

01:42:09 ◼   ► some people on Twitter think that, like, oh, now they're going to fight it out, the iPad

01:42:15 ◼   ► guys versus the Mac guys. And I don't think it's like that at all.

01:42:19 ◼   ► No.

01:42:20 ◼   ► I think if anything, like, it is. There's a certain—and I struggle to explain this

01:42:26 ◼   ► whenever I get into these arguments on Twitter—there's a beauty to the idea, like a fundamental

01:42:31 ◼   ► beauty to the idea that two operating systems can coexist within each other. And I see the beauty in

01:42:42 ◼   ► that, in the sense of you can choose what you want to use. Like you can choose your favorite computer.

01:42:49 ◼   ► And I think that's beautiful. And I think it's like, yes, I like working on the iPad. And yes,

01:42:56 ◼   ► I would like it to be more like a Mac in certain examples.

01:43:01 ◼   ► But I fully know that it's not there yet.

01:43:07 ◼   ► And it's like, because those complaints that you get,

01:43:10 ◼   ► they also work the other way around.

01:43:13 ◼   ► Like, I get the comments from people saying,

01:43:15 ◼   ► oh, you're an iPad fanboy, you're a zealot,

01:43:19 ◼   ► you're never gonna say that anything else is better.

01:43:23 ◼   ► And like, that's so short-sighted.

01:43:25 ◼   ► And I fully agree with you in the sense that there are some things that need to be different.

01:43:34 ◼   ► For example, multitasking, right?

01:43:39 ◼   ► So here's what I'm going to say.

01:43:42 ◼   ► I think we need some kind of change.

01:43:46 ◼   ► What I don't want to see is a regression for people like me.

01:43:54 ◼   ► The current system, the iOS 11 system for multitasking on iPad, heavily based on drag-and-drop

01:44:02 ◼   ► for adding icons to split view or slide over. I know that system, right? I know how to use it.

01:44:10 ◼   ► I know how to operate it. I know how to use the dock and multiple apps in slide over.

01:44:17 ◼   ► And those are powerful features.

01:44:19 ◼   ► At the same time, I also think it's not

01:44:23 ◼   ► the most intuitive it could be.

01:44:27 ◼   ► I think it's too complicated for a lot of folks

01:44:31 ◼   ► who are approaching the iPad now.

01:44:34 ◼   ► At the same time though, as a power user,

01:44:36 ◼   ► I don't want to lose those features.

01:44:37 ◼   ► So it's this kind of weird situation where like,

01:44:39 ◼   ► I know it needs to be different,

01:44:41 ◼   ► but I also don't wanna lose what I already know.

01:44:43 ◼   ► I think fundamentally it's exactly the whole multitasking thing.

01:44:49 ◼   ► And it is complicated.

01:44:50 ◼   ► It is absolutely complicated.

01:44:52 ◼   ► Not just what we already have being too complicated, but any idea of how to go forward is very,

01:45:00 ◼   ► very tricky and requires really, really top-notch UI design at a conceptual level.

01:45:07 ◼   ► But I really do also feel that it is ground zero

01:45:10 ◼   ► of the fault line that iPad OS has found itself in

01:45:15 ◼   ► between the Mac and iPhone, right?

01:45:18 ◼   ► And that being, you know, in theory,

01:45:22 ◼   ► iPad could have been a version of Mac OS

01:45:27 ◼   ► with bigger touch targets instead of the phone OS

01:45:33 ◼   ► put on a bigger screen.

01:45:35 ◼   ► I don't think it should have been.

01:45:36 ◼   ► I think they made the right decision because I think that,

01:45:39 ◼   ► put the UI stuff aside, there's all sorts,

01:45:44 ◼   ► and this is another thing I've been writing about recently,

01:45:47 ◼   ► but all sorts of complexity with the assumptions of macOS

01:45:52 ◼   ► in terms of assumptions like that stuff can run

01:45:55 ◼   ► in the background and that you can install apps

01:45:58 ◼   ► from outside the App Store and that you have direct access

01:46:03 ◼   ► to the actual file system.

01:46:06 ◼   ► And people mix that up, right?

01:46:08 ◼   ► Like the Files app on iOS could get so much better

01:46:13 ◼   ► and still never actually show you the actual file system

01:46:20 ◼   ► of the device, and I don't think it ever should, right?

01:46:23 ◼   ► It's, 'cause it is conceptually better and cleaner

01:46:28 ◼   ► to only show the user, here are the files

01:46:32 ◼   ► that are actual files that you create and read

01:46:36 ◼   ► and diddle with, and all of the stuff,

01:46:39 ◼   ► like the actual binaries for your application

01:46:42 ◼   ► and stuff like that, and the actual operating system

01:46:45 ◼   ► aren't even visible.

01:46:47 ◼   ► That's a much better and cleaner design

01:46:49 ◼   ► for people who aren't developers

01:46:51 ◼   ► and actually aren't working at that level.

01:46:53 ◼   ► And the Files app has gotten a lot better,

01:46:59 ◼   ► and I think it really, it's obviously an area

01:47:01 ◼   ► where it can continue to get better

01:47:03 ◼   ► without being mapped to the literal file system.

01:47:07 ◼   ► And I think it's such a better design.

01:47:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:47:13 ◼   ► - All right, before we go on--

01:47:14 ◼   ► - I also like it.

01:47:16 ◼   ► - Before we go on with multitasking,

01:47:17 ◼   ► let me do the third and final sponsor,

01:47:18 ◼   ► and then we will run out the clock on multitasking.

01:47:22 ◼   ► But our third and final sponsor of the show is Linode.

01:47:25 ◼   ► Oh, do I love this company too.

01:47:27 ◼   ► Whether you're working on a personal project

01:47:29 ◼   ► or managing your enterprise's infrastructure,

01:47:30 ◼   ► Linode has the pricing support and scale you need to take your project to the next level.