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295: Leave the Podcast at the Beep

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 295. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom, Linode, and Fully.

00:00:17   My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:22   Hi, Myke Hurley, how are you?

00:00:23   I'm very well, Jason. I just realized... just realized something here. It's very exciting to me.

00:00:27   That we're five weeks away from episode 300.

00:00:30   And that's June 1st, so come on Apple. The day for the keynote needs to be Monday, June 1st,

00:00:37   because then it can be episode 300 of Upgrade. Don't give us it on June 8th, when it's 301,

00:00:42   because that'd be super upsetting. It would just redirect. So come on, episode 300, June 1st, WWDC.

00:00:50   Wouldn't that be great? Or, I mean, honestly, I would take a draft. Episode 300 would be in a draft,

00:00:55   so they could do it the week after. So the first two weeks, that's when it's got to be.

00:00:58   All right. No one cares about that. #SnellTalk question.

00:01:01   Arthur asks, "Jason, what do you use for your voicemail greeting?"

00:01:06   I laughed at this because I can't remember what my voicemail greeting even says,

00:01:10   but I have recorded something that says that it's, "You've reached my phone and leave a message."

00:01:19   I think that's it. It's very generic in my voice that you've reached me.

00:01:23   That it is you.

00:01:25   And, you know, I really love voicemail greetings that go into great detail about how you leave a voicemail message.

00:01:32   Or sometimes the automated system explains that now that you've heard this message, here's what we're going to do.

00:01:38   You're going to hear a tone. And then after the tone, we're not going to say anything because you need to say something then.

00:01:43   And then when you're done, you can either just hang up or press the pound key because it's like an email you have to send.

00:01:50   I don't know. Anyway, go ahead and do that now.

00:01:52   I like the idea of telling people they need to hang up. Just wait. Maybe they'll pick up.

00:01:56   You know, just hang around for a while.

00:01:59   They invented answering machines in the late 70s. Why are we still explaining how you use them?

00:02:05   Plus, at this point, anybody who's leaving a voicemail is old enough to remember the late 70s.

00:02:10   My feeling is no one should call me. They especially should not leave me a voicemail.

00:02:14   I did. At one point when I was at Macworld, I think I actually had a thing that said,

00:02:20   "Oh, this is on my phone, on my landline phone in my office at Macworld."

00:02:23   I literally said, "I don't check this voicemail. Send me an email because I'm not going to hear you."

00:02:31   And seriously, I never checked that thing.

00:02:34   I would check it every once in a while and there'd be like 18 messages on it from three months before.

00:02:39   And I'd be like, "Whew. Well, I hope there's nothing important here."

00:02:42   And that's why I put the message on there. It was more like, "You can leave a message if you want,

00:02:46   and I'll probably listen to it eventually, but if you really want to reach me, send me an email, please.

00:02:51   Don't. Just don't."

00:02:52   Do you remember the trend of like, "Hey! Oh, wait. I can't hear you."

00:02:56   You know, like, a reverse robocall?

00:02:59   Those have happened so many times. It's, um... Yeah. It's true.

00:03:04   Leave the message at the beep because that's how we've done it for 50 years.

00:03:07   Jason, we leave our podcast at the beep.

00:03:09   We do.

00:03:10   That's how every episode begins.

00:03:11   Every episode. It can be revealed now in episode 295.

00:03:14   Every episode of Upgrade is just a long voicemail message.

00:03:17   Very, very, very long voicemail call.

00:03:20   If you would like to send in a question to help us begin an episode of Upgrade,

00:03:23   just send out a tweet with the hashtag #SNELtalk, and it may be considered for the future.

00:03:27   Thank you to Arthur for sending that in.

00:03:29   Jason, I want to talk to you about Apple and Google's partnership for COVID-19.

00:03:35   And I'm not calling it contact tracing because that's not what it's called anymore.

00:03:38   So, Apple and Google have released some more information about their joint effort.

00:03:43   It is now called exposure notification, which I think is a better...

00:03:48   It sounds nicer to me.

00:03:49   I think it's more descriptive and less 1984-sounding.

00:03:53   And it's more accurate in the sense that it's a tool to be used

00:03:58   as a part of a larger contact tracing effort.

00:04:01   Yes.

00:04:01   Which is a way to look at...

00:04:02   I was reading an interview with Bill Gates this morning,

00:04:05   and he was talking about how...

00:04:07   They asked him...

00:04:08   I think it was Ezra Klein at Vox.

00:04:10   Asked him, "What about Bluetooth things?"

00:04:13   And he said, "It's better to think about that almost as a tool to remember where you were

00:04:20   and who you might have been with."

00:04:22   He was really kind of poo-pooing it, I think maybe a little too much.

00:04:25   But he was making the broader point that it's a tool to be used by the public health workers

00:04:32   who are trying to do contact tracing.

00:04:34   It's a source of information.

00:04:36   That's what it's for.

00:04:38   I think it is a good idea in a way to have it downplay it a little,

00:04:43   because it's not a magic bullet, this thing.

00:04:47   It's going to help some stuff, but it's not going to fix anything.

00:04:52   As you say, especially in its first iteration, which we'll get to a little bit more.

00:04:56   But there's more stuff that they've announced.

00:04:58   So the keys, the identifying keys, will now be generated randomly

00:05:03   rather than being derived from a temporary tracing key.

00:05:05   So it's more privacy, basically, more random generation.

00:05:10   Bluetooth metadata will be encrypted.

00:05:13   The exposure time, so the time of people talking,

00:05:16   will be recorded in five-minute intervals, capped at 30 minutes,

00:05:20   because I guess that would kind of be like you're not living with this person, right,

00:05:23   if it just kept triggering forever.

00:05:26   The API that we have made available to healthcare agencies around the world

00:05:31   will allow developers to specify the strength of a Bluetooth connection,

00:05:35   allowing them to understand how close people are to each other,

00:05:39   and it also allows them to filter out some events for accuracy,

00:05:42   and to also better calculate the distances at which people were to each other when talking.

00:05:49   Right, because Bluetooth LE can have a decent range,

00:05:51   and you're going to get a trace of somebody who is 15 feet away from you,

00:05:55   and that's less important.

00:05:56   So they're trying to look at the signal strength and the amount of time,

00:06:00   and make a guess, because again, there are sudden,

00:06:03   you know, it doesn't measure quick interactions.

00:06:06   It doesn't measure stuff that might be left on a surface,

00:06:11   although it's unclear if there's a lot of surface transmission going on,

00:06:14   but if you touch something that was sneezed on by somebody who was there 10 minutes ago,

00:06:20   there's no way to measure that,

00:06:21   and it can over-measure if you're 20 feet from somebody or 15 feet from somebody.

00:06:25   So they're trying to build in more of this kind of reduction of false results,

00:06:32   of misleading results.

00:06:34   The efficiency of the encryption has also been improved to help with efficiency,

00:06:38   like battery life and processing and stuff,

00:06:40   and the number of days since an exposure event will be able to be calculated.

00:06:45   So you'll be able to say, "Oh, it's been this amount of time since an event."

00:06:49   So Apple and Google are expecting to release their first seed of this next week,

00:06:54   so then healthcare companies will be able to start,

00:06:58   or agencies, I should say, will be able to start implementing this into their applications.

00:07:01   I would say from reading about this online, seeing a lot of people talking about it,

00:07:06   it feels like there's still a lot of confusion about how these APIs are going to be implemented.

00:07:11   I've seen lots of reports of governments and developers saying,

00:07:13   "The apps need to be running, your phone needs to be unlocked," that kind of stuff.

00:07:17   - I can explain what's going on here,

00:07:19   and this actually segues pretty well into the other part of this that we need to talk about,

00:07:22   which is what's been going on with some governments that initially made

00:07:26   these announcements that they were gonna be doing,

00:07:27   like these apps that were going to do all the tracking.

00:07:31   - Yeah. - And that they were kind of in opposition.

00:07:34   It's funny, European countries that have been part of the EU and very forward in privacy issues,

00:07:40   right? And then they say, "Well, we're gonna do this thing where you send us all your data."

00:07:43   And Apple and Google end up being on the other side of it, which is funny,

00:07:47   'cause they often get hit by EU things about them not protecting people's privacy.

00:07:53   And this is them sort of giving their own medicine back to the EU and saying,

00:07:57   "We are building a system that does not have a centralized location for data,

00:08:01   that is opt-in to all these things that we've been talking about."

00:08:04   And what happens if you don't do that, and you just build an app yourself and put it out there,

00:08:10   and I think Australia did this, and there's some countries that have done this, and others

00:08:14   were planning on doing it, is on iOS, you can't do that. On iOS, you can't just have an app that

00:08:20   is monitoring all Bluetooth stuff and is running all the time, because eventually,

00:08:26   the system will shut it down and say you're working in the background. So you have to keep it

00:08:29   in the foreground and you have to keep your app open and your phone open and unlocked and running

00:08:35   that app, which nobody's... It's not gonna work. Nobody's gonna do that. But because Apple doesn't

00:08:40   support this kind of behavior in an app to do all of this in the background and run forever,

00:08:45   they're trying to work around it and complain to Apple and say, "Oh, Apple is bad. They should just

00:08:52   let us do whatever we want here," which is against all of Apple's rules for good reasons that exist

00:08:56   there. But what seems to be happening is that was the first wave of like, "We're gonna write an app

00:09:01   that does this." And then Apple and Google came out with their thing, which said, "Hold on now.

00:09:04   Why don't we do this thing? You'll get an API, and then later, it'll be in the system,

00:09:08   and it'll protect everybody's privacy." And you get cases like in Germany, where Germany,

00:09:13   and I think France too, said, "We're gonna do it the first way. We're gonna build this centralized

00:09:18   thing, and we're gonna build an app, and you're gonna have to run it, and Apple needs to play

00:09:21   ball with us and let us run our app all the time," and all of that. And everybody was like,

00:09:26   "Look at the white paper that Google and Apple are working on now. That's the way to do this."

00:09:32   Something that I will say is pretty impressive for government and leaders of a government to see

00:09:40   new information and change their minds and not double down on their old dumb thing.

00:09:44   They say, "Oh, yeah, you're right. Let's do that instead." And so I think it's the right thing to

00:09:50   do. It is kind of breathtaking and a little bit scary to consider that the government of Germany,

00:09:55   for example, was like, "We want to do it this way," and then two tech companies from the Bay Area

00:10:00   say, "Mm, Germany, no. Do it our way instead," and Germany's like, "Oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir.

00:10:06   You're right. We'll do it your way. We'll do it your way." - But for me, though, I prefer that,

00:10:11   personally. - Well, I will say this. The technical expertise at Apple and Google about building a

00:10:19   system like this and having it work right and having it preserve people's privacy

00:10:22   far exceeds the technical expertise available in a government. - That's my feeling, right? Like,

00:10:29   if the government told me they wanted to look after this data, I would not trust them.

00:10:33   I would trust Apple and Google. - Exactly. And that's the thing is,

00:10:37   is Germany using this as a secret method to get all their information about their people? No,

00:10:46   but once a government has that information, you don't know what the government's going to do with

00:10:50   it. You don't know what aspects of the government are going to do. You don't know what the next

00:10:53   government's going to be. And as a lot of people learned after 9/11, once rules about information

00:11:00   and security and other things change, it's often very hard to get them to revert back to what they

00:11:06   were before the event. So to their credit saying, I just think it's funny that it's like the tech

00:11:12   companies step up and go, no, no, no countries, don't do it that way. And the countries are like,

00:11:16   oh, no, we won't do it that way. You're right. - It's like Winter Charmsian in the chat. Like,

00:11:20   I believe that a lot of these governments, they had the best intention, right? Like,

00:11:25   in their current form, but they don't have, they cannot have the technical expertise and ability

00:11:35   to make this work correctly as Google and Apple do. - Who's building these apps? Who's building

00:11:40   the Australia monitoring app and the German monitoring app? It's some third party who

00:11:45   probably doesn't know a lot about these issues and hasn't thought about them a lot and is doing the

00:11:52   most straightforward, well, we're looking for Bluetooth and then we log it to a server and we

00:11:56   run in the foreground and we're done. Whereas Apple and Google are the OS vendors and they have come

00:12:03   together and they are building something that's based. I wrote a piece in Mac world a few weeks

00:12:07   ago that basically is like, it's really good that Apple's in the conversation here because Apple has

00:12:11   spent so much time trying to figure out ways to do this that keep people's information private

00:12:16   while having it be usable because it's been Apple's game to do it this way. It's been their brand

00:12:21   promise to do it this way. They've done the research and that's really helpful in this moment

00:12:27   when everybody's looking for a solution that Apple can go to Google and they can both step forward

00:12:32   and say, we have all the smartphones on the planet and we're gonna build it this way. Please build it

00:12:36   with us this way because that leadership is going to end up with people in all sorts of countries

00:12:44   not having a centralized database of all their location information in the name of contact

00:12:49   tracing that is then a centralized government database, which again might not be misused,

00:12:56   but this is a better approach. This is a better approach. So I'm glad that Apple's kind of

00:13:04   differentiator as a company and the work they do into that has ended up being something that

00:13:10   I think is going to make the world a better place. Not intentionally, they didn't do it this way,

00:13:15   but because they had it and they've thought about it this way and then this happened,

00:13:20   I think we're going to get a system that doesn't have governments tracking everybody's movements

00:13:24   and that's better. For a long time on this show, if you've been listening for long enough,

00:13:30   I've had this kind of feeling, this thing that I've been trying to get across of

00:13:34   I believe that Tim Cook is the most powerful person on the planet. That is my opinion. He is at world

00:13:41   leader level and everyone will listen to him and I think that this is another example of this

00:13:46   because it's known now that Tim Cook and the President is Prime Minister of France. I can't

00:13:54   remember if it's President or Prime Minister, I apologize, but the leader, the Premier of France,

00:13:59   they had a conversation because there was this weird photo of Tim on a screen. You've seen

00:14:04   this picture, right? And the Premier talking and it's like, then they're like, "Oh, we've spoken

00:14:10   to Apple and it's all good now. We're going to go with the Apple Google solution." And I think that

00:14:16   that was the PRI thing, but I genuinely feel like at a level, Tim is just going to them and being

00:14:23   like, "This is how we are going to do it and we strongly advise that you do it our way." Because

00:14:31   the scale that he is at and to definitely to some level, Sundar Pichai as well,

00:14:37   they are at world leader level and at a time, thank you, Kate, for telling me that Macron is

00:14:45   President. I went with President, Prime Minister and Premier. I thought I would hit it off

00:14:49   somewhere and thank you for the reminder. But I think this is showing and I am unsure how I feel

00:14:58   about this. It's good and bad to me. Who's got the power here? Who do I want to have it?

00:15:04   Tim Cynova Well, when I joke about Germany and France saying, "Oh yes, Apple and Google,

00:15:09   yes sir, yes sir, we'll do what you want." I don't mean, I mean, that's what I'm getting at is,

00:15:14   it is a little disturbing to see nations realize that the giant corporations are

00:15:24   on this and that they need to follow their lead because that's sort of not how it's supposed to

00:15:30   work and it makes me worry about the power of these huge tech companies. I think this is a

00:15:36   good thing in the short term, but I think after we're done with this, a lot of people are going

00:15:40   to point to moments like this and say, "Why do they have so much power?" That said, having not

00:15:46   it just be in the government, but having it be in other places too might not be the worst thing,

00:15:51   but it is unsettling to think about it. The vast amount of power that these private, I mean,

00:15:59   they're publicly held, but these corporations have over everything in the world.

00:16:04   David Tompa I think that this is where,

00:16:06   this is going to be one of the big things in history from this pandemic that we're in,

00:16:13   is the change in power. This is a defining moment, I think. I'm not trying to

00:16:21   overplay this, but we need to look at what is happening here. If this system continues to go

00:16:28   forward and the tech companies continue to push it and they continue to do different things to

00:16:34   massage the way that governments work, everyone's learned a lesson here. Cook and Pachai have

00:16:42   realised, "Oh, we can bend the world to our will if we need to." And that is a weird thing.

00:16:54   You mentioned how a lot of things changed after 9/11, right? And the powers of the government

00:17:01   in America became much, a lot of freedoms changed and freedom of movement changed, right?

00:17:09   Travelling across the globe changed because of that one event. And the way that tourists

00:17:15   are treated when they come to America is like you are guilty until proven innocent, right?

00:17:20   That is how you are treated when you enter an American customs situation, right? I feel like

00:17:26   anyone, I think even some Americans have this problem, but if you arrive into America as a

00:17:32   tourist with all of the visas and stuff, you are still treated like you need to prove to me that

00:17:38   you are not coming here to cause trouble, which is a very weird thing. But those are the things

00:17:44   that changed and this could be the stuff that changes, which is the power balance moves.

00:17:50   Because it's one of those things that if you look, you can see it, right? Again, look at the

00:17:57   Mac Pro thing that we spoke about with Cook and Trump. That was something where it's like, "Oh,

00:18:02   this is a weird global political situation." But now it's like, they're not even coming at this to

00:18:09   be like, "Oh, we'll give you something, you give us something back." It's very much like, "This is

00:18:14   the system. You cannot interact with your apps in any better way than this. We will not allow it.

00:18:21   Go for it." Right? Because there's a report from Reuters, which says that basically that's

00:18:27   effectively what happened in the German government. They were like, "Well, the only way we can make

00:18:30   this work properly is if it will work in the background. And the only way we're going to do

00:18:37   that is if we go with Apple's system." It's just class that. Yeah. And this is also an example of

00:18:44   extreme... And this is where it may backfire on the tech companies. This is an extreme moment.

00:18:49   And so right now they need to get this out as quickly as possible. And Apple and Google have

00:18:55   teed it up. They're like, "May, we're going to have the API. And later on in the summer, we're

00:19:00   going to have it built into every phone that is on the current version of our operating system or

00:19:05   whatever. It's going to happen." And if you're the government and you say, "Well, no, what we want

00:19:10   you to do is modify your operating system to run our app in the foreground all the time," Apple's

00:19:14   going to be like, "Uh, no, we can't do that." In the long run, though, the governments are going

00:19:23   to look at this situation and say, "Wow, we need to be able to tell them what to do." I really

00:19:28   believe that's going to be the outcome of this in a year or two. It's just going to be like, "Wow,

00:19:32   they really had us over a barrel there. They had us where they wanted us. We couldn't tell them,

00:19:38   make our app run in the foreground." And I know that that's a little bit like saying to encryption

00:19:42   experts, "Just invent a magic golden key that decrypts things." It doesn't work that way. But

00:19:48   governments want to be able to order corporations to do what they want if they need them to do it,

00:19:56   whether it's give up information. Governments want to pass laws and say, "You have to do it this way.

00:20:00   This is why we operate as a government representing the people, and you don't represent the people,

00:20:06   and we need you to behave in a certain way." That's how it works. So I think they're going

00:20:09   to look at this and be like, "We did it now." And it is a superior approach, but I think a lot of

00:20:16   people in governments are going to look at it and say, "Wow, Google and Apple had us all. They had

00:20:21   us under their thumbs because they have all the smartphones." And I would not be surprised if the

00:20:27   EU especially is much more aggressive at some point down the line because of stuff like this.

00:20:32   Even though Apple and Google, I think, are in the right here, and they're trying to get all

00:20:37   these governments that were doing these fast reactions to build smartphone tracking in,

00:20:46   they're doing the right thing and saying, "Don't do that." It still shows their power,

00:20:53   and I think will make a lot of people in government uncomfortable.

00:20:56   And again, I would just say, I agree. Governments might say, "Well, we need to have a better control

00:21:05   over this." But then Apple and Google might say, "They can't control us." And so we are entering

00:21:12   into these very strange times because of stuff like this. However, I think my feeling on this

00:21:17   right now is still, I think this is a good thing for right now. I agree with that. I agree with

00:21:25   that. I think the long run is the question and the balance of power. I could take the optimistic side

00:21:33   here too, and that the European countries will look at this and say, "Oh, these guys aren't as

00:21:37   bad as we thought." That they stepped up and built a privacy-based system without anybody asking them

00:21:42   to, and it was better than ours. And maybe these people, we shouldn't be quite as troubled by their

00:21:52   behavior. That could happen. I'm skeptical. Anyway, we should put a bookmark in that and say,

00:21:57   "Let's check back in a few years and see what the ramifications of Google and Apple basically say

00:22:04   nope to global governments and having them fall in line." But it's fascinating to watch. And

00:22:11   hopefully, again, the point of this is, hopefully, these will roll out quickly in all sorts of places

00:22:17   and that this technology will be helpful. This technology that's not called contact tracing,

00:22:22   it's called exposure notification, will be helpful in a larger program of finding out where the virus

00:22:27   is and who has been in contact with somebody who might have been contagious so that we can stop

00:22:32   this virus from reemerging as people reemerge from their homes.

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00:25:22   My family now owns three of these. Fully, everything you need to find your work flow. Our thanks to

00:25:28   Fully for their support of this show and all of Relay FM. Upstream, Jason Snell, we have some upstream

00:25:35   headlines. There's been a lot going on. HBO Max is set to launch on May 27th in the US for $14.99 a

00:25:42   month, which seems expensive now in the overall landscape. But you do get #allyourfavorites,

00:25:48   friends. Big Bang Theory, South Park Studio, Ghibli, tons of movies, tons of originals.

00:25:53   All the HBO originals, some other originals. I want to point out, by the way, that one of the

00:25:59   ads for this that came out from HBO social media promoting this was a picture of Tony Soprano,

00:26:08   a picture of Chandler Bing from Friends, and a picture of, I don't know, Sheldon from The Big

00:26:13   Bang Theory. And it said Bada Bing Bang. And I thought, this isn't going to devalue the HBO brand

00:26:22   at all. So here's two things about that. One, that went viral because it was so bad, but that,

00:26:27   but it doesn't matter because it means most people saw it. And I did see a lot of people being like,

00:26:31   the people at old HBO, this was their number one fear. Yeah, it's true. Bada Bing Bazinga,

00:26:37   right? Like, what do you want? Yeah, Bada Bazinga. I think, I think from, okay, let me put on my

00:26:45   WarnerMedia corporate hat. I think HBO is the best brand they had. I think HBO Max is probably the

00:26:50   right decision. I also appreciate the fact that it basically, you know, is going to redefine

00:26:57   what HBO means in a way that is maybe not great, but I think this is what they had to do. I just

00:27:05   think this is what they had to do. And they can still make quality originals and they've got a

00:27:10   bunch of catalog content. I don't think HBO Max is going to probably be making, you know, CBS-style

00:27:18   sitcoms as their originals going forward. It seems less likely that they would do that. My guess is

00:27:23   that they may be broader than HBO proper, but that they will still be in terms of their originals

00:27:29   stuff that they can be more or less proud of. But yeah, like this is what they had to do because

00:27:35   they needed to create this product. I'm as an HBO subscriber via cable, so I get HBO Go. It's

00:27:44   unclear to me even now exactly what that means when this launches. And if I have to pay more to

00:27:52   get this or if I can't get it or what, but they've got a big catalog. And HBO's stuff is good on its

00:28:01   own because I pay for that. So this is a superset of that. You're right, $15 a month does seem like

00:28:06   a lot, but they have this challenge, as we've talked about here, with the fact that they've got

00:28:10   HBO, which people pay for via their cable companies and cable companies pay for. And then you're

00:28:16   adding all this other stuff on top of it. You can't charge less for everything than you do for

00:28:24   just HBO. That would have the effect of literally you'd be paying not to watch Friends. The Friends

00:28:31   reunion episode is delayed, right? Because they wanted to get them all in the same room.

00:28:36   I think a Zoom call would not give you what you wanted. So that's some stuff that they're doing.

00:28:42   I want this service. There are no international plans. And this is because a lot of the content

00:28:49   is spread all over the place still. So I would expect that HBO will wait for a while before they

00:28:54   can rein some of it in. Yeah, they've got years of deals with other places for a lot of their

00:28:59   content internationally. And so they've got to start somewhere. So they want Friends, right?

00:29:04   That's a massive point. That must have part of their service that they will try to sell you.

00:29:10   But it's on Netflix. So I guess they're gonna wait. But there's stuff here that I want. I can't

00:29:17   get HBO content. I don't know if you know this, I've mentioned before, there is no HBO for me to

00:29:24   put. I mean, don't Sky have most of their... Yeah, so we are a now TV customer. So we can get...

00:29:33   Because I like to watch John Oliver and stuff like that. But the now TV app, which I've said

00:29:37   a million times, all their apps are absolute garbage. They are garbage. They are so bad.

00:29:42   The design of them is front rows design. That is the design on Apple TV. It's front row.

00:29:48   It is absolute garbage. So bad, but it's the only way we're gonna get content. Anyway, Peacock has

00:29:56   also kind of launched as of April 15th. This is NBC service, Comcast X1 and Flex customers. I don't

00:30:04   know what that means. They are getting an ad supported version of Peacock. What is Comcast X1

00:30:11   and Flex? Okay. Comcast X1 is Comcast DVR. It's their latest generation DVR. I don't have one,

00:30:19   even though I have Comcast because I have a TiVo instead. But it's their fake TiVo. It's their

00:30:24   faux TiVo. Tifo. And the Flex is their fake Apple TV or fake streaming box, streaming stick,

00:30:34   which is weird, but that's a thing they've got where like, "No, no, no, no. I know you want to

00:30:39   cut the cord. We'll just sell you the internet and then you can get your TV from us on this thing."

00:30:44   It's totally cutting the cord, right? So it's their streaming box. So if you've got their

00:30:50   hardware that they control right now, you can get it. It's unclear whether as... So I'm a

00:30:56   Comcast subscriber. Am I going to get a version of this between now and July 15th? Probably,

00:31:03   but it's unclear exactly when that'll happen. Right now, they're basically beta testing it on people

00:31:07   who are their subscribers with Comcast controlled hardware. - Because that is the big thing right

00:31:13   now, which is kind of, I think it's very funny. So it's ad supported. This is their testing,

00:31:19   and they're still planning to launch on July 15th. That date was set because of the Olympics,

00:31:24   and the Olympics aren't happening. So there's been a lot of questions of like, "Well,

00:31:30   why don't you just launch it now then? Because you already can. People want it. Why not do it?"

00:31:39   And NBC have been asked that question a bunch, and they're kind of saying like, "Oh, we're

00:31:44   trying to see what we can do. Our team is distributed right now." Understandably,

00:31:48   right? Like it's difficult. But this is the time right now to launch this project. And July

00:31:55   will still be fine, but now is the right time. Anyway, so that's where Peacock is. Again,

00:32:01   just US only for now, but it's starting to trickle out. Moving on, Samsung and Apple are continuing

00:32:08   their partnership. Apple Music is now streaming on Samsung Smart TVs. This is the first Smart TV to

00:32:14   get Apple Music. And I just thought it was interesting because expanding Apple Music

00:32:19   further than just Amazon. I know Sonos has it, but that... I mean, I love you Sonos, but let's

00:32:24   not really consider that a big strategic partnership. But the Amazon Echo products

00:32:29   could do it. Now Apple Music is an app on Samsung Smart TVs, which is peculiar. Like I can't imagine

00:32:35   there is a huge desire for that, but it was interesting to me nonetheless of Apple continuing

00:32:41   to expand their services out to other places. And you might know a bit more about this than me. I

00:32:49   had to do a lot of Wikipedia reading this morning to try and understand this story.

00:32:53   Apple is one of the many streaming companies currently discussing the rights to collegiate

00:32:57   sporting events. They're talking to the Pac-12 Conference, which I'm going to need you to explain.

00:33:03   I'm actually the expert on this because I'm a lifelong Cal fan, and that's the Pac-12

00:33:08   Conference, formerly the Pac-10 Conference. It goes back beyond that. But anyway, they're based

00:33:13   in San Francisco. There were several reports that Apple and Pac-12 officials had been talking.

00:33:19   This is a few years before all of the college media rights come up for grabs. There's a long

00:33:26   story here about the Pac-12 deciding not to partner with ESPN or Fox and give over ownership

00:33:33   of their media properties. They instead own them themselves. This was a play that was intended to

00:33:38   allow them to cash in with media rights. It hasn't really worked out that way for them. They've

00:33:44   actually had a hard time getting carried on DirecTV and other places like that. There's been a lot of

00:33:49   it. It's very controversial, actually, in athletic and media analysis circles, especially on the West

00:33:55   Coast. So this report basically says Apple's talking to them, except when you really look into

00:34:01   it, it's all unofficial because they have an official negotiation period with the existing

00:34:09   right holders. So they're basically allowed to officially talk to only their partners until a

00:34:17   date, at which point they can talk to everybody. So they can talk generally with Apple, but they

00:34:22   can't negotiate anything. There's nothing being negotiated. What is interesting about this is

00:34:29   that it's Apple investigating sports and live sports as a part of their system. Now, is that

00:34:40   Apple TV Plus? Is that a different Apple service that's for live sports that competes with ESPN

00:34:48   and Disney? Is this, you know, talking about it, but really kind of keeping an eye toward it being

00:34:56   more like a channel on Apple TV that would be for Pac-12, where you could get it? Now, the Sports

00:35:05   Business Daily report that seems to be the originator of this says that Apple is not as

00:35:10   interested or at least indicated because these are just conversations. I don't know how you have

00:35:14   conversations with somebody during an exclusive negotiating window with someone else. I don't

00:35:18   understand quite what the rules are there. But obviously...

00:35:20   - Just bump into each other in the virtual hall. That's all it is.

00:35:22   - Yeah, well, they're in San Francisco, so they're just taking a walk. Well,

00:35:26   they're not allowed to do that. Wait a second. - They're just shouting at each other.

00:35:29   - They live near each other and are walking their dogs. Yeah. But what the Sports Business

00:35:35   Daily report suggests is that Apple is not interested in talking to them about a digital

00:35:43   tier. So the idea that they would sell this many football games and basketball games to ESPN

00:35:48   and this many to Fox, and then they'd do some streaming stuff with Apple. Apple's talking to

00:35:53   them about everything, about the whole package. Like, we want all of it, and we're going to show

00:36:00   all of it. And maybe Apple would be open to something like, you know, this game, you know,

00:36:05   this is a high-profile game, and it'll be on ESPN or something like that. But maybe not. Maybe it's

00:36:08   all just on Apple. And you think, if you're a sports conference, do you want to have your

00:36:14   sports be an Apple TV exclusive? Like, you're risking losing a lot of viewers, even if you

00:36:19   get a lot of money out of it. So there's that. It also is a question of the scope of Apple's

00:36:25   interest, because we talked about a while ago, there's another rumor that after a couple of years,

00:36:30   the NFL Sunday Ticket package, which lets you stream all of the NFL games no matter where you

00:36:35   live in the U.S., that Apple's been talking about, that's currently a DirecTV thing, that Apple's

00:36:41   interested in that, too. So it does seem to me like Apple is doing some due diligence about sports,

00:36:47   because live sports is a huge draw. And it's not something that can be time-shifted, although,

00:36:53   I mean, you can have sports content that can be time-shifted, but, like, it also is going to

00:36:56   draw people live. And people have these allegiances. It is a major portion of why I still have Comcast,

00:37:06   and I know this sounds ridiculous, is because of my sports allegiances. And particularly,

00:37:12   Pac-12 Network is on Comcast, and it's not on most of the streaming channels. And the ones that it is

00:37:18   on don't have NFL Network or MLB Network. And, like, sports is a powerful tool to get people

00:37:26   to use your service over someone else's. So Apple's clearly interested here. I'm unclear

00:37:31   what form that would take or whether anything would come out of it, but something's going on here.

00:37:35   >> Apple have ordered another wonder podcast to be turned into a TV show. This one is called

00:37:41   The Shrink Next Door. It's going to star Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd. It's like a dark comedy

00:37:46   based loosely on true events of the relationship between a celebrity psychiatrist and a patient.

00:37:51   I like these two. I think that they are very good together, and I am excited to see a comedy show

00:38:00   featuring Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd again. I also find it interesting that Apple keeps

00:38:03   buying the rights to podcasts turned into TV shows. >> Hey, Apple. Call us.

00:38:08   >> Yeah. I don't know what we would do, but we could do it. It would be great. Just give us a call.

00:38:13   And just to round this out, there's a bunch of new content on Apple TV+, which I'll just highlight.

00:38:18   Fraggle Rock, Defending Jacob, Beastie Boys Story, and Trying are all shows that are debuting,

00:38:24   have debuted last week or but ended this week. >> Defending Jacob with Chris Evans has gotten

00:38:28   pretty good reviews. And, of course, as we've detailed here before, a lot of scenes shot in

00:38:32   the park behind John Syracuse's house. >> That's the one of those. I'm going to watch that,

00:38:38   and I want to watch Trying, too. >> I have a Syracuse of Park update,

00:38:40   which is this. John has confirmed now that there are numerous locations in Defending Jacob where

00:38:45   John's dog has pooped. >> Excellent. I'm so pleased to know that.

00:38:49   >> Also, I watched Home Before Dark, which is an Apple TV original. And I'm not going to spend too

00:38:56   much time on it, but I did not like it. >> You sent me a message and said, "Avoid."

00:39:02   >> Yes, I was. I've heard from people who are like, "Oh, but I like it." Well, I watched episode one,

00:39:07   and I didn't particularly like it, but I thought, "Well, I'll give episode two a try." And by the

00:39:11   end of episode two, I was convinced that I did not like it. So, alas, that's the first Apple TV show

00:39:17   that I've really disliked. But, you know, hey, if you like it, great. I couldn't take it. >> I'll

00:39:24   tell you something I like. Bloomberg Reports. >> Oh, yeah? You like Mark Gurman?

00:39:28   >> Yeah, I love him. Love a good report, me. >> Love a good Gurman. >> This one comes from

00:39:33   Mark Gurman, Debbie Wu, and Ian King. This is unusual. It's a third individual.

00:39:37   >> It took three people to report this story, yeah. >> It's a third person. And I don't recall

00:39:41   Ian King. Debbie Wu is very frequently named in these reports. Wu, I think, is based in Taiwan,

00:39:47   so I think probably has quite a lot of supply chain sources, which is probably why Debbie

00:39:53   Wu has mentioned so much with Gurman. I expect that they work together. Anyway.

00:39:57   ARM Macs to be on sale next year, according to this report from Bloomberg. They are preparing

00:40:03   now to release one in 2021 with others to follow later. Maybe in 2021, maybe later. >> This is great

00:40:08   because I get one more year of predicting that next year will be the year of ARM Macs,

00:40:12   as I've done the last, like, five years. So, great. >> Apple are currently working on three

00:40:18   ARM processors for the Mac that are all based on the A14 design. To quote the report,

00:40:23   the first of these will be much faster than the processors in the iPhone and iPad, the people said.

00:40:28   The first Mac processors will have eight high-performance cores, codenamed Firestorm,

00:40:33   and at least four energy-efficient cores known internally as IceStorm. Apple is exploring Mac

00:40:45   processors with more than 12 cores. For the further in the future, the people said,

00:40:51   Apple's designs will double or quadruple the number of cores that Intel provides them. >> So,

00:40:56   is the GPU Spider-Man? I'm referring, of course, to the cartoon Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,

00:41:01   where he had a flame buddy and an ice buddy, and then there was Spider-Man. So, maybe the GPU is

00:41:06   Spider-Man. >> Spiderstorm, which I don't want. >> Spiderstorm, no, no, that's terrible. That's

00:41:11   one of the biblical plagues, I think. So, the A14, just as a point of order, is the chip that

00:41:17   is expected in the next generation of iPhones that comes this fall. So, the idea here is that

00:41:22   Apple's doing a new processor that is their processor for fall of 2020, or as we, you know,

00:41:28   I don't know, and then for the spring of 2020, part two, numerals, or 2021, as it used to be known.

00:41:34   And I think this really makes sense, right? This is their, we're going into production. I think

00:41:39   this story said that they were doing a test, a prototype based on the A12X that they used in some

00:41:46   Mac prototype designs. But this is the one where they're like, okay, now we're just going to full

00:41:49   on, there's going to be an A14 family, essentially, whether they're called that or not. And it's going

00:41:54   to power, presumably, iPhones, iPads, and our Macs. And they're going to have to build their

00:42:00   own GPU for this, and like they do, essentially, for the iPhone stuff. And it's, I don't know,

00:42:07   this sounds real. This sounds like it's a done deal. This is what Apple is doing next.

00:42:12   >> This is why, you know, in my opinion, the Bloomberg reports are important. Like,

00:42:19   we've been talking about this forever. They've been talking about this forever.

00:42:22   But a Gherman report, a Mark Gherman report, is usually an indication that something is happening,

00:42:28   right? He has the track record. So when you see this stuff, it's like, here is, we've been talking

00:42:34   about this for a while, we've seen rumors about this for a while, but here is some like, pinpoint

00:42:38   details which are important, right? Like, the idea that they were doing this in 2018 as a test,

00:42:44   that is an important thing to know. The fact that they're like, the A14 design is going to become a

00:42:48   platform, essentially, which the iPhone will get, then the iPad will get, and then a Mac will get.

00:42:54   And there's also a detail in the report that I like that in parallel, a process has already begun

00:42:59   to make Mac versions of the 2021 A series of chips, which I guess suggests that it is possible

00:43:06   that there will be yearly chip revisions to every laptop and every Apple computer that is produced,

00:43:13   from the iPhone all the way up to whatever in the future, with the idea being, and it's referenced

00:43:18   in this report, we spoke about it forever, Apple is fed up of being tied to other people and relying

00:43:25   on them and their schedules, right? So this is, this is the, we already see the iPhone and the iPad

00:43:31   more or less marching in lockstep. The current iPad Pro is a little bit weird where they're using

00:43:37   that older version, but I think with variations like that happening from time to time, I think

00:43:42   this is the idea, right? Is Apple is going to do a new chip family design every year, and then they'll

00:43:48   use those chips in all of their products. - Alright, this gives them the opportunity to, because like,

00:43:53   you said they don't do it with the iPad, right? They do like every 18 months or two years, they'll

00:43:57   do it. - Once this is rolling, what you get is you get the A12 or the A14 based stuff, and it rolls

00:44:03   out to some computers, and then you do the A15 based stuff, and it rolls out to some computers,

00:44:07   but maybe there are also some low-priced computers that are using the A14 at that point that are max.

00:44:12   Like once you, once you start rolling out and you've got a chip family every year, it does allow

00:44:17   them to dip back and say, "We're going to actually make this with a slower chip from a past year

00:44:21   that we built," but it, it keeps, they control the cadence, they control the cycle, they know that

00:44:26   this is going to, this stuff, just like their OS releases, this is going to go into this year,

00:44:30   and we're going to push that off to next year, and they, they start building them, and this is

00:44:34   important, they start building them with a computer in mind. I don't think you can just take an A12X

00:44:40   and stick it in an ARM MAC prototype, right? They made a chip based on the A12X, so you need to go

00:44:47   into the design of the chips knowing where it's going, right? Knowing what your target systems are.

00:44:53   So I think this is the, the reason that this seems like the most definitive report yet is

00:44:58   it sounds like Mark Ehrman's sources, and maybe Debbie Wu's sources, and Ian King's sources,

00:45:02   we don't know. Mark is the one who's famous for having these sources, but Bloomberg's sources

00:45:07   suggest very strongly that this is happening now. They've done the work or are doing the work in

00:45:12   building these A14-based chips, and they've done it with all of those in mind, with the MAC in mind

00:45:18   as well. So all of these chips apparently going to be made at Taiwan Semiconductor in a five-net

00:45:23   nanometer process. Just showing off now. Yeah, I understand that that's a good thing.

00:45:28   Yeah. I, I, I know from, from the people that I know, like listen to ATP and talking with Austin,

00:45:34   like Austin Evans, my cohost and the test drivers, like the smaller the number, the better the chip.

00:45:38   You want to keep making that nanometer process smaller and smaller. Um, and you mentioned about

00:45:44   GPUs, Mark Ehrman followed up in a tweet. It's always important to read his tweets.

00:45:49   Sometimes there's stuff in the tweets that's not in the articles, um, that Apple is working on its

00:45:55   own GPUs for this, of course, because I think what you mentioned, I kind of have to probably,

00:46:00   otherwise you're kind of in the same situation, right? Like, right. I'm sure they could use,

00:46:05   uh, an external GPU from somebody, but first off, they stopped doing that on the iPhone and the iPad

00:46:11   a long time ago. And, uh, and second, you're then beholden to some other chip maker for something

00:46:17   that you probably don't want to be. And I'm sure they're pretty proud of their GPU performance and

00:46:21   it's already integrated into their system on a chip. So why would they, why would they change

00:46:26   from that? So next week on this show, uh, we're going to be joined by Mark Ehrman. Yeah. Let's

00:46:33   just get Ehrman on. We'll talk to him. Why not? Let's do it. So Mark's going to join us for a

00:46:37   segment on the show next week where I think I want to cover a couple of things with him. I want to

00:46:43   talk a little bit about meta stuff about the articles that he produces, but I also want to see,

00:46:49   like, this is a good time to talk to Mark, I think, and see what he thinks is going to be important

00:46:55   for Apple over the next six months, because we are building to the time, right? Like we are a

00:47:01   month away, probably maybe nearly from WWDC. Um, stuff starting to ramp up now. So we thought we'd

00:47:07   have him on the show next week and we can talk about it in a little more detail with the man that

00:47:11   knows the stuff. Yeah, I think so. And it's a, it's a good conversation. I've, I've, uh, enjoyed

00:47:16   talking to Mark, um, at, at like Apple events and stuff. So it'll be fun to have him on the show.

00:47:21   So you know what about our max, I'm starting to get like excited about this in the sense of having

00:47:29   the product as opposed to just thinking about it as a thing, right? Like the idea of the potential

00:47:37   power and efficiencies and the new things that could happen because of this is exciting to me.

00:47:42   And I'm starting to feel the actual, like it's getting close kind of excitement.

00:47:48   We could know this is going to happen in about six to seven weeks time. It's, you know, we may know

00:47:54   then like, Oh, we're doing this. And I am excited for that. Right? Like, I think that's going to be

00:47:59   a lot of fun to dig into what's going to be like a new frontier. I'm excited about that very much.

00:48:06   All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom from SolarWinds.

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00:49:28   All right, the main event of today's episode, Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. It's not deja vu.

00:49:36   We talked about it last week, but we didn't have them. And we've had them. For the best part of a

00:49:41   week, we've both been using our Magic Keyboards. We both have the 12.9, right? You don't have an 11.

00:49:46   I don't have an 11. Right. And I think that may make a difference. It definitely seems that people

00:49:52   with the 11 have reported, you know, it doesn't tilt as high, the keyboard's a little more cramped.

00:49:58   It's a different experience. And we can't talk about that because neither of us has that. I have

00:50:03   an 11 iPad Pro, but I don't have this keyboard in the 11 inch. I have an 11 inch iPad Pro, but it's

00:50:08   the iPad I use when I travel, so I'm not using it right now, so I didn't get the keyboard. Maybe at

00:50:12   some point in the future, I will get that keyboard, but it's not in my immediate future because I'm

00:50:17   not using the iPad. So you wrote a great review. Thank you. Spoiler alert, we both really love this

00:50:25   product. Because, again, I don't think that it is a surprise to people that have listened to the show

00:50:32   that me and Jason would really love a two-in-one convertible iPad. We are the target audience for

00:50:39   this in a way, so much so, in fact, that we are the people who sought out alternatives to this in

00:50:47   advance, right? The Brydge keyboard being a great example. That is a product for people who, even

00:50:52   though Apple didn't want you to use your iPad fully like a laptop, that you could do it if you

00:50:59   bought the Brydge keyboard. It suddenly became the shape of a laptop, felt like a laptop. And so we

00:51:05   were already there. So I think this is one of the things that I've noticed in a lot of the coverage

00:51:10   of this is, and I said it in my review, this is a part of Apple's product line for iPad Pro. It's

00:51:16   one of the accessories. They also still make, and I think will still keep making, the Smart Keyboard

00:51:22   Folio because that has it. - Because this is too expensive. Otherwise, you can't have this as the only option.

00:51:27   - Too expensive, too heavy, and a lot of people just don't need this product. Now, you and I look at this

00:51:33   and we're like, "This is perfect for us." But I also see people who really like the Smart Keyboard or

00:51:37   like don't really use the keyboard a lot, but the Smart Keyboard Folio, it's around if they

00:51:43   need it, and it's convenient enough that they're not gonna just go down to the Folio case. They're

00:51:48   gonna, they wanna have that keyboard around. If you're used to that, and you have, and especially

00:51:53   if it's sort of like barely useful for you already, this product is irrelevant for you because, you know,

00:52:01   you aren't even convinced about the Smart Keyboard or you like the Smart Keyboard just fine and it

00:52:04   fits. This is, it's on like a spectrum of you're down with like the Folio case, and then you move

00:52:09   on to kind of the Smart Keyboard Folio, and then you move up to the Magic Keyboard. And it's not

00:52:14   for everybody, but for you and me, Myke, it is absolutely, we were already chasing this with third-party

00:52:20   stuff that didn't do quite the job that this does because, again, this is a first-party product.

00:52:27   Like Apple gets the advantage of designing all the hardware and software around their concept.

00:52:32   Like one of the things that we both gravitated toward the Bridge Keyboard for was the fact that

00:52:41   it enabled flexibility in the angle, right, like a laptop hinge. Yes. The Smart Keyboard Folio had

00:52:51   two fixed positions which was less adaptable. The Bridge Keyboard has more adaptability than

00:53:00   the Magic Keyboard because you could basically open it up flat, right, like a laptop. What do you think

00:53:06   about the available angles that you have with the Magic Keyboard? Right. I will say Apple hasn't made

00:53:13   a laptop you could lay flat in a long time. I think maybe the Titanium PowerBook was the last one to do that.

00:53:18   Close to. But you can open it pretty wide and this one you can't. And I, my gut feeling is that in

00:53:29   most scenarios, especially when I'm writing and I'm using it in my lap, that I open it fully and

00:53:35   that's the right angle. And I could use a little bit more actually that it won't give me, but

00:53:44   given the feeling, you can actually feel the weight distribution on your lap when you're using it

00:53:50   roll toward the back. Like it doesn't tip over backward but it rolls toward the back

00:53:55   a little bit. And to me that says any more, any further back and it's going to tip over. Like it's

00:54:02   outside the realm of safety. So when I adjust it all the way out, I would like to make it a little

00:54:09   bit more and it's disappointing but I get why it's not because as with so many things, this keyboard

00:54:15   is engineered exactly. Like you can tell all of these decisions were made in order to get it to

00:54:21   be what it was and that if they pushed it a little more it would all unravel. Because it's very, very

00:54:27   carefully, yeah, it was very carefully done. So I have rarely found a use for lower angles than that.

00:54:36   I generally just open it up in one go all the way to the full angle. There was one occasion where I

00:54:41   was kind of like laying down on the bed and I was watching a video and I didn't take it out of the

00:54:45   case, which I probably should have done, but I just sort of tilted it down and I did it that way.

00:54:49   And it's great that that flexibility is there. You can actually tilt it all the way back so it's

00:54:52   facing toward the keyboard. Like so you can't see it at all. You could do that if you really want to.

00:54:57   But yeah, it works for me. I wish it was a little bit more, but again, I can't speak to the 11,

00:55:04   which is my understanding doesn't quite open as much. So I feel pretty much the same. I would

00:55:10   love it to be a little more just because I always want more. But I am really pleased about the fact

00:55:18   that I have completely flexible adjustability within the angles that it provides. So I can move

00:55:24   it a little bit if I want to. And I have found that like if I'm sitting on the couch, I will have

00:55:31   it a different angle than if I'm sitting at my desk. Like I do move it and I like that I have

00:55:35   the freedom of moving it to exactly what I want rather than just within two areas. But I would

00:55:42   like more. I would love to see in the future, right? Like revisions on the design that allow for

00:55:48   more flexibility than what we currently have, just because why not? That's what I would want

00:55:53   in a version two of this product. But I am happy with what I've got. But again, I would love more.

00:55:59   Do you, you've used it in a lot of instances. I've used it on the couch, I've used it in a

00:56:03   lap, I've used it on a desk. Do you feel like it remains balanced like a laptop?

00:56:07   - Yeah, I do more or less. I mean, like I said, I think I feel like there's a little bit of a

00:56:13   rolling toward the back. Again, it doesn't ever leave my lap, but I can tell that the weight on

00:56:18   the flat surface, the perpendicular typing surface is a little bit toward the back, which it is. But

00:56:26   it seems very stable to me. It seemed quite pleasant. It's different feeling than like the

00:56:32   bridge or like a laptop, but that's mostly due to the fact that they've got this double hinge thing

00:56:37   where it's for the screen, which is the iPad, is closer to you than a laptop screen would be.

00:56:44   Because a normal laptop hinges all the way at the back and that's where the tilt is. And then,

00:56:48   so the screen is all the way at the back. And this one, it pops up and then it angles in.

00:56:55   And so you end up being a little bit closer to it.

00:56:58   - Yeah. And so like, I feel like when I'm using it on softer surfaces, say, right? Like if I'm

00:57:08   sitting down on a couch and down on a chair, on the bed or whatever, it's somewhere in between

00:57:14   the smart keyboard folio and a laptop and like how balanced it feels, right? Like it's not exactly

00:57:20   the same as a laptop because it is weighted differently, right? There's weight in the top

00:57:25   rather than in the bottom. - Right. I'd say it's top heavy. And I mean, even the bridge doesn't

00:57:30   quite feel like a laptop because the screen part is so much heavier than a laptop screen is.

00:57:37   - But I feel like this Magic Keyboard is much closer, right? Because it is so heavy.

00:57:44   I find it kind of like one of those Marvel of engineering things. It's so thin,

00:57:50   but it's so heavy. It's very peculiar to me. Like I can't, the denseness of it,

00:57:54   I'm really shocked to get my head around. I've been waiting for and haven't seen a tear down.

00:57:58   I want someone to tear this down because I want to see what it looks like inside.

00:58:01   - Yeah, for sure. It's an interesting product. It is engineered differently to do the same thing,

00:58:11   if that makes any sense. Like it really is. I mentioned this in the review. It really is a

00:58:17   laptop. Like you put the iPad on this thing, it's just a laptop. We talk a lot about the two hinges,

00:58:23   but in practice, when I use it, I open it up and I open, I move through both hinges. It just moves

00:58:30   smoothly open. And then it looks like a laptop when you're typing on it, even though it's floating

00:58:34   over the keyboard a little bit from your position, looking down at it, it just looks like a laptop.

00:58:40   It does everything like a laptop does. And then when you're done, you can grab it on the back and

00:58:46   fold it down and it closes again. Yes, there are two hinges there, but it just closes like a

00:58:51   laptop. And then you carry it around like a laptop. So they've done a lot of very weird

00:58:58   things in order to get it to be that way. But the end result is it doesn't feel like,

00:59:04   "Whoa, I'm using a strange thing that's kind of like a laptop." But not there. For me, at least,

00:59:09   it's not in the uncanny valley where it doesn't seem like a laptop or an iPad anymore. It's in

00:59:14   between. I think they kind of nailed the laptop feel of it. It is an iOS laptop when you're using

00:59:19   it, iPadOS laptop. Part of the laptop-ness of it. And it's funny, like most of the conversations

00:59:24   that I hear about it, most conversations I have just barely talk about the actual keys on the

00:59:29   keyboard. I know, right? Because there's so much other stuff going on. And we've had keys,

00:59:35   we've had keyboards for the iPad forever. We've had third-party keyboards for the iPad,

00:59:39   including the Brydge keyboard. It's less novel to have those keys. The keys, although on an Apple

00:59:45   product, it's new, it's not that novel. And they're keys. They're good. They're good.

00:59:52   - And I think that's part of it, right? So much of the keyboard discussion in our community over

00:59:56   the last few years has been around how bad a keyboard is. But this keyboard is perfectly good.

01:00:03   It's great. In as good as a keyboard can be. So I think that's why I haven't been focusing on it so

01:00:10   much. But it feels really nice. I prefer it to the smart keyboard. I prefer it to the laptop

01:00:17   keyboards I've used recently. It's close to the 16 in the way that it feels. And I like that keyboard

01:00:23   in the same way that it was like, "This is a keyboard," rather than, "I don't know how I feel

01:00:29   about this with the other MacBook Pros." Right? - I feel like it just fades away. It is reminiscent

01:00:33   of the 16 and the new MacBook Air keyboard. It is reminiscent of the old, like my beloved old 11-inch

01:00:40   MacBook Air keyboard. I actually took the 11-inch MacBook Air out and held it up right next to this

01:00:46   thing. And the two things I noted, this is the 11-inch Air, by the way, remember that, the old

01:00:50   11-inch Air. - The old favorite. - Yes, the old favorite. The Air is wider than this thing is.

01:00:55   It's not as tall, but it's wider. The keyboard is exactly the same size. It is a full-size keyboard,

01:01:02   which is a little bit scrunched on the 11-inch model. But here, it's the full-size thing. And,

01:01:09   you know, and it weighs three pounds, so it weighs more. If weight and size are an issue,

01:01:13   look at the 11, although I'm interested in the fact that I've heard a lot of people who are the

01:01:17   11 users who seem, again, it's just anecdotes. I don't know what the long-term story is gonna be,

01:01:24   and I haven't seen it. But the 11-inch users seem a little less charmed by it than the 12.9 users.

01:01:31   And I wonder if it's just not quite as nice because it's smaller, but it's certainly lighter.

01:01:36   But anyway, my point is, I look at that 11 Air, and I look at this keyboard, and they're very close.

01:01:44   And they're not quite the same, but they're very close, and that's nice. Except they're lacking

01:01:49   the-- this lacks the function row, which on the Air is these little tiny like quarter-height,

01:01:53   third-height keys, but they're there for you to adjust brightness and volume and stuff. And I know,

01:01:58   I can see why they didn't put them on this, because you reach that high up, and your fingers are gonna

01:02:05   start to hit the iPad that's hanging over, because the iPad's basically hanging over the number row.

01:02:09   So there isn't any room. It is balanced on the head of a pin. Again, like I said, everything here

01:02:16   has a reason for being what it is. But I am frustrated that Apple did not do a tweak in

01:02:23   software to allow us to assign some sort of keyboard adjustment for those common things

01:02:31   like backlighting and screen light and media controls. Like, all they would have had to do

01:02:36   was add a function key to the options that you could remap those various keys to. So I could

01:02:45   take the globe key and turn it into a function key, and then use that with the number row to

01:02:50   control stuff. They could have done something like that. Maybe they will on iPadOS 14. I hope they do.

01:02:55   - I feel like that is a feature to come. - Yeah, it does. It feels like that it just

01:03:01   didn't make it this time. But that's the missing piece here is they don't need to do a function

01:03:05   row. They really don't. But I would like the ability to change my screen brightness and my

01:03:11   backlighting on my keyboard from the keyboard. I would like that.

01:03:16   - Yeah, the keyboard backlighting thing is an unfortunate situation. This is one of those

01:03:21   things that didn't make it. The fact that you can only adjust it in settings, it should be in

01:03:27   Control Center. For some reason, it just didn't make it into Control Center. But it surely will,

01:03:32   because it's a really silly thing that you have to dig so deep to get it. It just seems funny to me.

01:03:39   Something you mentioned in your review, which is something that I am totally doing,

01:03:44   is still touching the screen sometimes and using the screen as well as the trackpad.

01:03:48   That is the benefit and one of the features of a touchscreen laptop. You hear it all the time from

01:03:58   Windows users, PC users that have touchscreen laptops. It's nice to have the option,

01:04:02   because sometimes you just scroll an article with your thumb. Why not?

01:04:07   - Yeah, that's it. I get why it kind of breaks apart on the Mac, because the touch targets

01:04:12   aren't there. But having used a Chromebook for a while that had a touchscreen, I didn't

01:04:19   manipulate the interface on that thing with my hands. I used the trackpad. But there are times

01:04:26   where you're like, "I'm just going to scroll," and you reach out and you scroll, and it's perfectly

01:04:30   natural, and your hands are not down on the keyboard. When they're down on the keyboard,

01:04:33   the trackpad makes more sense. But when you're not actively using the keyboard right at that moment,

01:04:37   and you see something and you just kind of flip it up with your finger, that's great.

01:04:43   In fact, I found this thing—I don't know if you've done this—where I immediately started just

01:04:48   not even thinking about it, grabbing the bottom right corner of the iPad, which that bottom

01:04:57   part of it doesn't have anything on it. The case isn't on that. It's come away from that part with

01:05:03   the double hinge, and putting my fingers behind the iPad and then my thumb on the front of the iPad.

01:05:10   So I'm kind of pinching it, I'm kind of grabbing the iPad, and then I'm flicking with my thumb to

01:05:14   scroll a document. I do that all the time now since I started using this thing. It's a very natural

01:05:19   gesture. I'm holding the iPad a little bit, and I'm just kind of scrolling a document.

01:05:24   I'm not down on the keys at that point, so that's fine. Whereas in another context, when I'm writing

01:05:29   and my hands are down on the keyboard, and then I'll move with two fingers and I'll do a little

01:05:34   bit of a scroll to move the document. And that also is natural, so you use both.

01:05:38   Yeah, I am using all of it, right? I find it really nice to use the Apple Pencil still to do

01:05:46   some scrolling and stuff like that. It all works really, really nicely. And I like that I have

01:05:51   options. This is my favorite thing about this. Options. I want options. I'll talk a little bit

01:05:57   more about the options that I like available to me in a bit. But everyone's talking about the weight,

01:06:02   right? That's the thing. That is the "gotcha" headline, right? "Oh, it's just as heavy as a

01:06:09   laptop." It's the point. It's a laptop. It weighs like a laptop because it's a laptop.

01:06:17   And you want to use an iPad OS device like a laptop, and you get this, and then it's the

01:06:23   weight of a laptop. For those of us who use things like the Brydge keyboard, this is not surprising.

01:06:28   This is how it works. If you're going to have something like this that has to counterbalance

01:06:32   the weight of the iPad and has to have full keys and a trackpad and all of that, it's going to weigh

01:06:38   like a laptop weighs. That's just how it's going to be. So it weighs about what the 13-inch MacBook

01:06:46   Pro weighs. And that is... of course it does. I think behind some of that criticism is this

01:06:53   chauvinism about the Mac that, implied in the criticism, is basically, "Look, the only reason

01:07:02   you use an iPad is because it's lighter than a Mac. If they're the same weight, you would just

01:07:07   use a Mac, right?" Like, why? The iPad is obviously inferior to the Mac. The only reason you could

01:07:14   possibly use it is that it offers something that the Mac lacks. But if you put that back

01:07:18   so that they're the same, it's pointless. If it's an A/B comparison where they weigh the same and

01:07:25   they're right in front of you, why would you ever pick an iPad? That is what is implicit in that

01:07:30   criticism. And the answer is twofold, which is, it's one, but I like the iPad and I want to use

01:07:39   the iPad. Even in that scenario, I find value in the iPad. And two is, also I can immediately

01:07:47   just lift it off and walk away with a touch tablet and I can't do that with a Mac.

01:07:51   And that's one of the things that makes it so great, right? Like, and it is funny that

01:07:58   there is that idea that like, but you, why would you would never, right? Like, you would never use

01:08:05   a Mac if it had, you know, you only ever would use an iPad if it has these specific advantages. You

01:08:11   would never use it over a Mac because you wanted to. It's like, well, no, that's not how it works.

01:08:17   - No, that's the sign that somebody doesn't get it, is they have decided that the iPad is a lesser

01:08:26   beast that is compromised and that you only use it because it offers something that is not available

01:08:33   elsewhere. And that's their worldview. And then you challenge them with this and they don't,

01:08:39   they just don't get it. And then there are two ways to respond. And one way to respond is to say,

01:08:44   wow, that's really interesting. Why do you prefer the iPad? And the other way to respond is just use

01:08:50   a Mac. Those people are jerks. You know, five years ago, they weren't jerks, three years ago,

01:08:59   they weren't jerks. At this point, if you're still asking that question, leading a life that's that

01:09:04   unexamined and not being curious about somebody's choice to do something different from you,

01:09:11   but just think that it doesn't make any sense. I have lost patience with those people now.

01:09:16   - Talk about being different. Should we talk about my setup right now?

01:09:22   - Myke, we really, is this the thing you tweeted? Because we really need to talk about it.

01:09:26   - Yeah, yeah. So listeners of this show know that I have been using a stand at my desk,

01:09:34   the Clearlook stand for a long time. You use the, what is it called? I always think Verizon. That's

01:09:39   not it, is it? What is the name of your stand? The little adjustable one?

01:09:43   - The Viazon stand, yes.

01:09:46   - So I was using this stand for a while. And then when I got the Magic Keyboard,

01:09:51   I was thinking to myself, I don't want to keep taking it out of the Magic Keyboard and putting

01:09:55   it in the stand. It's frustrating to me. So then I thought, well, actually, this is just a laptop,

01:10:00   right? So why not use a laptop stand? Because they exist, stands for laptops. And so then

01:10:07   I never need to take it out of the Magic Keyboard case and I have a stand that's easier to use.

01:10:12   I haven't got to clamp it in every time. I just sit it down, right? Just allow me,

01:10:15   please allow me to go through this. Because when I'm sitting at my desk to work,

01:10:21   I want to use my iPad Pro and I want to use a keyboard and an external mouse because

01:10:26   it's more comfortable for me. For me, just because I don't, my body doesn't survive very well using

01:10:33   laptops on desks. Like I need to be able to expand it out a bit. Screen at eye height,

01:10:39   sitting up straight, keyboard in front of me. - Like most bodies, your body does not hold up.

01:10:43   - Some people don't have these problems, right? Like they can, they find their way to do it,

01:10:49   even though, again, really just think about your ergonomics if you're at home. We have a sponsor

01:10:54   fully. They're really good for this. But if you don't use something like that, please be mindful

01:10:58   of this. So I was talking about this. A listener, Thomas, sent me a link to something called the

01:11:04   Roost, which is like a collapsible laptop stand, which is good, but not perfect. It gives me the

01:11:12   height that I want, but not the angle I want because this thing kind of like forces an angle

01:11:18   and I want to have it go back a bit further because the iPad won't, screen won't go back

01:11:23   further enough. So I've kind of elevated the front feet. So if you look at that image,

01:11:27   you'll see that the front feet of the Roost stand that I'm using is sitting on top of another

01:11:34   keyboard, which is just the situation that I'm in. And so I've tried that out. And then another

01:11:41   listener linked to me a product called the Nuluxy stand, which looks bananas amazing, very adjustable.

01:11:49   So I'm getting one of these. It's on the way. So I'm trying different stands. Oh, wow. It is worth

01:11:55   just prefacing all of this, including the setup that you're seeing. This is all temporary. I was

01:12:01   supposed to be in a studio that has VESA arms with laptop stands on, but I can't be there. So I'm

01:12:07   having to set up like a, this is like my, like, I don't know, my, my temporary workspace. Temporary.

01:12:14   Yeah. I want to point out that the key thing that you've said so far, key thing is you seem to always

01:12:23   want your iPad pro in the case. I just don't want to keep taking out and putting in something else

01:12:30   now. Cause I don't need to like before I had to, there wasn't a stand that could hold it and also

01:12:36   hold the smart keyboard. Like nothing would work for that. I'm just differentiating it because like

01:12:40   I, and I think this is a real difference in how people use their iPad. Even like we just said,

01:12:47   we are the same. We really want this product. We are the same. This is a way where we're very

01:12:52   different. I have my iPad in a keyboard case historically, and it probably will go up because

01:12:59   of this product, but like 5% of the time, 2% of the time, not when, when I'm traveling,

01:13:06   which I'm not doing any of right now as we all aren't. And when I'm writing, I put it in the

01:13:12   case, but the rest of the time it's either no case or it's the folio. So it's nothing. You seem to

01:13:20   view this iPad's default state as having a keyboard attached. Yes. So that's a, that's a difference.

01:13:27   But that's just kind of how I've been over time. And I very frequently will take my iPad out,

01:13:31   but most of the time it's always connected to a keyboard of some kind. That's just my default for

01:13:38   iPad. And with the magic keyboard, I prefer it to the bridge keyboard or the smart keyboard.

01:13:44   So I'm finding myself using it like that more. Um, the bridge keyboard, I could have done this

01:13:50   with, I guess, but never had the thought of putting it in a laptop stand. I would just take it out.

01:13:55   Um, that's a good point. I could have done this for a long time ago, but didn't think about it.

01:13:59   Uh, but this, this, I like it more. I just like this whole set up more. Uh, I will mention,

01:14:05   cause people will ask the keyboard I'm using is called the Digma Raise. It is a split keyboard.

01:14:09   It has RGB and it's amazing. I freaking love this keyboard so much. Um, that's just me. I'm also

01:14:15   using a Logitech track ball, an ergonomic track ball and a magic track pad too, all connected.

01:14:23   This is what I love about the iPad, right? Like Federico talks about this, about like modular.

01:14:28   I just love that all the, all the input methods. I can do everything with this now. And it makes

01:14:33   me very happy. Um, I like now that I have the pass-through charging because my keyboard is,

01:14:41   it needs a USB. Uh, unfortunately I need to use a dongle for this, which is hilarious. Um, at some

01:14:47   point I'm going to get a USB-C dock to help me with some of this stuff, but now I can charge at

01:14:53   the same time, which I really, really like a lot. Um, I got the brown key switches. People are asking

01:14:58   me the key switches that I got, but so I am aware that posting a picture like this, I'm doing two

01:15:05   things. I want to show people like how I'm using it, but I am also kind of doing this to, to

01:15:10   annoy people that find this stuff ridiculous. But at the same time, I get a lot of people who are

01:15:19   like in on this too, right? Like they, they, this is what they want their computing life to be.

01:15:24   These like the options that I feel that this device can give. And I want to share the way

01:15:29   that I am using this device. Cause I know I'm out in the edge cases now, but I think it's amazing

01:15:35   that my iPad can do all of this and I can use it the way that I want to. Uh, I think it's

01:15:42   frigging awesome. And I can't wait to, to keep pushing it. I love it. It's so awesome. I love it.

01:15:48   Yeah. So I wanted to mention the fact that you use it in the case all the time.

01:15:54   Cause I get that you want to keep it in the case all the time and not remove it and then put it in

01:16:01   a stand and then take it back out and put it back on this, even though that's very easy to do.

01:16:06   That said, that was my initial reaction to this is might just take it out and put it in a stand.

01:16:13   It's, it's going to be better. You don't have to have like a laptop stand. You're not going to type

01:16:18   on the laptop stand. You're just going to let it sit there. So why, why not just remove the iPad

01:16:23   and put it on a stand? I think it would look less ridiculous. I don't care about how it looks. Yeah,

01:16:29   I know. I'm just, I think it would look less ridiculous and it would probably be better

01:16:33   suited to the task. You could get the screen a little bit closer to your face. Um, but you know,

01:16:38   you do you, and I do understand. Well, but it's the thing I am restricted by screen distance by

01:16:44   my keyboard. That's true, but this is going to, this restricts it even further, right? This puts

01:16:48   the screen even further away from you. Yeah, but I think when I'm using it in a stand, it doesn't

01:16:53   feel like it's far away. All right. I just, for me, I look at this and I think I, so we talked

01:16:59   about flexibility for me, the beauty of the iPad is that mostly it's just on its own and then I'll

01:17:05   add it to the keyboard or I'll add it to a doc when I want to work in that configuration. But

01:17:10   I see where you're coming from here, which is as far as you're concerned, the default configuration

01:17:14   of your iPad is in this case. And so why take it out if you don't have to? And I get that. That's

01:17:20   just not how I use it. Right? Like it may be that in a few months time, I'm saying, you know, I want

01:17:25   to just put it in there when I want, but like right now, like, no, this is what I want. I want

01:17:28   the default to be in. It's like, this is like a laptop now that is the default and then move from

01:17:34   there and see what that's like. Okay. I've been very happy with it so far because I found myself,

01:17:39   even sometimes just like, I would just use the track pad on the, on the laptop. I don't know

01:17:43   why. It's just what I want to do in the same way of like, you've got it in the case, just go on the

01:17:47   screen. So like I am enjoying this experience so far. I'll keep pushing it and see where I go.

01:17:54   I think not enough is being made of the fact that you, in addition to an Apple pencil and

01:17:58   a touch screen and a track pad, have two other pointing devices on your, on your table. I think

01:18:04   that's an important point too. Oh, so good. And you know what, if you could put your Wacom tablet

01:18:09   and attach it and that would work. You do that too. I would, but you would do, you would do that

01:18:13   too. You'd have all of the input devices because on my iMac right now I have a Wacom, a magic track

01:18:18   pad and a Logitech vertical mouse. Yeah. See, because it's that. So it's, it's you, it's you,

01:18:25   you like all, like you said, you like choices like the tweet says. I, if there's one thing I love

01:18:31   with my computers, it is choices. I get to make choices. Like even just using the iPad the way

01:18:37   that I do for as much as I use it for is just a choice that I make that I enjoy. Right? Like

01:18:42   right now I have a Logitech webcam packed and attached to my iMac because I like the choice

01:18:49   that that one's better than the one built into my iMac. You know, I kind of have in me the

01:18:56   thing that makes people want to build PCs. Like I have that in me, you know, like that is like

01:19:03   that choice mentality, which doesn't always fly with being a fan of Apple products. But I feel

01:19:10   like as a devoted iPad pro user, I get to make more weird choices at the moment than a Mac user

01:19:18   would. Like I get to be super weird with my device and do like strange things like what I'm doing

01:19:26   right now. But it brings me joy to do that. Like I have a very weird computer setup. I have a split

01:19:36   keyboard made out of aluminium that is RGB, right? That plugged in via a USB-C split cable to a

01:19:45   dongle that's regular USB to go into my iPad. And that's how I type, right? It's like, and I'm using

01:19:52   a trackball, right? Everyone else is using either the MX Master or a trackpad. And I'm like, no,

01:20:00   no, I'm going to use a trackball. I love it. And then I got my Apple pencil. I'm scrolling with the

01:20:05   Apple pencil. I'm just, this makes me happy. The only thing you're missing here is the full

01:20:11   Vitici of having it be an external screen that's mirrored that you're driving. Well, there's a

01:20:17   screen behind it. I thought about it. As soon as I want, I want it to be more than what it currently

01:20:23   is. Like the, the, the, the external display support. Um, yeah, I want a second screen.

01:20:29   And when they do that, you can bet your bottom dollar. That's what I'll be doing.

01:20:33   Magic keyboard is amazing. You're beta testing all of this stuff for when you get back in your

01:20:39   studio too, right? That's, you will have had this chance to experiment. This is all very experimental.

01:20:45   This is an excellent job trolling on Twitter. Just good job. Good job. You got it. It's like,

01:20:50   I'm trolling people with my actual real life choices, which makes it even more

01:20:54   fun. Right. Uh, but anyway, let's wrap this magic keyboard discussion up. Okay. Effectively. Why

01:21:00   should you buy it? You should already, my feeling, I just want to say that you should already know

01:21:05   you want this product before you buy it. Don't buy this $300 keyboard on a lock because it's not what

01:21:13   it's for. I mean, you can return it if you don't like it and you could do that. You can try it if

01:21:17   you're curious. It's a shame that there aren't stores open. So you could go in and try it at the

01:21:21   store, but you know, you really, yeah, you should have some inkling that using an iPad as a laptop

01:21:27   is a thing that you, you should, you actually might want to do. Yeah. Like you probably know you are

01:21:34   this type of person, right? Like that, that would want this product. There are other options. The

01:21:38   smart keyboard is still a good keyboard. The OG bridge keyboard is still a great option. Get a

01:21:43   trackpad and mouse and you'll be happy. Yeah. There are lots. I mean, I've, I've talked to

01:21:47   a few people where I've said, if your primary use case is at a table or a desk and you don't

01:21:55   anticipate using this as a laptop, don't get this. This is a laptop shape. The world you've got one.

01:22:02   Now the world is full of accessories that try to make laptops more ergonomic for a desktop.

01:22:08   The beauty of the iPad is it's not a laptop. It can become a laptop. It can also be put in a stand

01:22:14   with an external keyboard and, and trackpad and be a much more ergonomic match for a desk. So

01:22:22   only get this. If you're planning on using it like a laptop, if you're planning on using as a desktop,

01:22:27   don't spend the money on this, get a, get a stand and a keyboard that you probably already own and

01:22:33   a trackpad you may already own and do it that way instead. I want to wrap this up with a quote from

01:22:39   the end of your review, which I like a lot. Uh, Apple now sells two more laptops and 11

01:22:44   inch model. It starts at $1,098 and a 12.9 inch model that starts at $1,348. Those are pro laptop

01:22:51   prices, but guess what? The iPad pro is a pro laptop now, if and when you want it to be beautiful,

01:22:56   Jason, I love it. That really sums it up for me. So I wrote that out in the backyard, sitting under

01:23:01   my redwood tree with the, uh, using the iPad pro as a laptop. Yeah, it is. This comes back to the

01:23:07   thing about the, it weighing like a laptop, like judge this as a laptop. I mean, there's mitigating

01:23:12   circumstance, which is if you've got a 2018 iPad pro, you don't actually have to buy the iPad again.

01:23:17   You just have to buy the, uh, the, the keyboard. So that's good. But in reality, like judge this as a

01:23:26   laptop, do you want an iPad that can also be a laptop? You will pay laptop prices. It will weigh

01:23:32   like a laptop does because you're making your iPad into a laptop. It doesn't have to stay there.

01:23:37   You can, you can take the iPad out. That's great. And if this is overkill for you, guess what? Apple

01:23:44   makes another keyboard that's lighter and thinner. It's not as, not as nice, but it's still nice.

01:23:49   There are third parties. Like that's the beauty of this is when Apple makes a laptop, like we know

01:23:54   from the butterfly keyboard thing, you're kind of stuck, right? Like you get what they give you. And

01:23:58   if you don't like it too bad, that's not entirely true with the iPad because Apple is giving you

01:24:04   more choices. Imagine if Apple made two different keyboards for the Mac book line, right? We could

01:24:10   choose a magic keyboard or a butterfly keyboard. Like, well, they don't do that, but they do that

01:24:16   for the iPad. You can choose or, or no keyboard. Bring your own keyboard. B Y O K A M. Was that it?

01:24:28   Sure. Bring your own keyboard and mouse? Display keyboard and mouse, but you can bring your own

01:24:32   display to the iPad too. I guess it's just weird and mirrored. Not, not as good yet.

01:24:36   Should we do some hashtag ask upgrade questions to finish off today's show?

01:24:43   It's a great idea. Great idea. What a wonderful idea. But let me thank our final sponsor of this

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01:25:40   promo code upgrade 2020 when creating a new Linode account, and you'll get a $20 credit towards your

01:25:46   next project. Once again, that's linode.com/upgrade and the promo code upgrade 2020 for that $20

01:25:53   credit. Thanks to Linode for the continued support of this show and Relay FM. And we now will do some

01:25:59   hashtag ask upgrade questions. Let me start with Jared. Choose only one. Do you choose your current

01:26:07   iPhone, no AirPods or an iPhone SE with AirPods? My answer should come as no surprise. I'll choose

01:26:15   the iPhone SE with AirPods because I really like AirPods and I don't use my phone that much and it

01:26:20   would be fine. I would miss AirPods the most, I think. I'm going to say AirPods Pro. I've been

01:26:27   getting real good use out of the noise canceling recently. Me too. Me too. And I would miss those

01:26:34   desperately, which I think says something interesting that I can't yet put my finger on,

01:26:40   like why I feel that way. Like I think part of it is like, I really do feel like I, it would

01:26:46   frustrate me in a bunch of ways, but I could live with the iPhone SE, especially now, this new one.

01:26:51   The older one might have been a bit more difficult, but I really, really love my AirPods Pro.

01:26:58   But if you were on public transit every day, back in the old times, I mean, that's the thing is

01:27:05   right now we're also not out and about very much. And so the phone is less- But I'm still using it

01:27:08   a lot because like things are going on in my house that I don't want to have to listen to.

01:27:13   Sure. Okay. I'm not going to ask more about that, but- And there's conversations and they're not,

01:27:18   you know, it's like, I want to focus. Oh yeah. I'm using them too. I'm just saying that

01:27:25   our phones are not necessarily the most important product at the moment compared to some other

01:27:30   scenario, but I would still have a phone and I'm not as attached to my iPhone as I am to

01:27:36   many of my other computing devices. And I really love the AirPods Pro. So I would,

01:27:40   I would keep them regardless. Eric says, I currently travel with just,

01:27:46   I don't know where Eric's traveling, but this was a recent question. I currently travel with

01:27:50   just an 11 inch iPad Pro and a smart folio and carry a magic keyboard. I want to add a pointing

01:27:55   device to my setup. Is a magic mouse enough or should I spring for a magic trackpad or Bluetooth

01:28:01   mouse? I think if you want to stick with this device, if for some reason you don't want to move

01:28:06   to a magic keyboard and you do sound like a magic keyboard person, but if you don't want to, I would

01:28:12   recommend the magic trackpad. I think it's the best experience out of all three options that you

01:28:18   have posed. The magic mouse, I hate that mouse. It is uncomfortable and I don't know why anybody

01:28:25   uses it. A regular Bluetooth mouse, you can get work for you in certain ways, but the,

01:28:32   the magic trackpad I think is the best for using trackpad support in iOS.

01:28:37   Yeah, I don't use mice at all, so I can't really help you there. The magic trackpad support is

01:28:44   great and I agree it's worth considering if you want to travel with the magic keyboard for iPad

01:28:51   Pro, but failing that and you already have a magic keyboard and you already have a smart folio,

01:28:55   um, I would, I would see if a magic trackpad too would work for you because that might be the

01:29:03   nicest thing. You gotta have enough room for it, right? You gotta put it next to that keyboard,

01:29:07   but I think that's going to be a pretty nice experience. Benjamin asks, I just got a Kindle

01:29:12   Oasis and I cannot find a grip that I like. The ridge isn't sharp, but it's not smooth and my

01:29:17   fingers constantly feel it, but pulling them back to just the thicker side doesn't feel stable for

01:29:21   me. Jason, how do you hold your Kindle Oasis? I, you know, I hold it between my thumb and my

01:29:28   other finger, sort of like I was describing for the iPad Pro, um, on the, on the smart or the magic

01:29:33   keyboard. And I, I actually keep my fingers resting on the next page button and I just keep

01:29:40   clicking it as I read and it doesn't, it doesn't bother me at all. And then I'll flip it to the

01:29:45   other hand and read with that hand sometimes and then move it back and it's just not that big a

01:29:50   deal. So I don't know if I've got any, any great advice here. You could try, you could try a case,

01:29:55   you lose some of the thinness that way. I do have a case that I, that I travel with, or you could try

01:29:59   a pops up socket. I have a pop socket on my Kindle Oasis, which I've used very sporadically, but I

01:30:05   find that a very comfortable way to hold that device. It's perfect. So there you go.

01:30:10   Siddharth says, I was reading an article about how advertising has been affected significantly

01:30:14   by COVID-19 and it got me worried about independent podcasting, which is so heavily ad

01:30:18   supported. Do you have any thoughts on how this affects the ecosystem as a whole? This is a very

01:30:24   interesting subject, obviously to me and to Jason. There's a couple of things here which are

01:30:29   interesting to me. So the trends will tell you that podcasting is down, right? Uh, but a lot of

01:30:36   the trend data that I've seen is that there are certain areas where it isn't and technology

01:30:40   podcasting has remained incredibly stable. People are still listening to these types of shows,

01:30:45   shows that are listed in the technology category. So thank you for continuing to listen. Um, I mean,

01:30:51   I would say, I don't know about you, Jason, with the incomparable, but I haven't seen any

01:30:55   significant downturn in the listenership. Right? No, not really. No. It seems to be unchanged.

01:31:01   The advertising stuff is difficult. Um, there are going to be changes, I think, as time goes on,

01:31:08   like budgets are being frozen, they're being reassessed. So I would suggest if you enjoy

01:31:13   independent podcasting, now would be a really good time to look into membership programs that you

01:31:18   could support. Like for example, if you look in our show notes, you will find a link to support

01:31:23   upgrade, or you can go to relay.fm/upgrade and you can become a relay.fm member. There's lots of

01:31:28   wonderful benefits for that. And if you support upgrade, support this show, you can support any

01:31:32   show, but that's kind of where I think we are. Like it is going to affect it. I don't know how

01:31:37   much it's going to affect it. Time will tell. I just wanted to point to Marco's, um, post about

01:31:44   Overcast. Basically Marco Arment looked at this and said that the weekday peaks are down. Weekend

01:31:51   listening is largely unchanged and you know, overall he, and he's got an earlier audience

01:31:55   than the mainstream podcast audience, but they're down, but not as much as you'd think. And I think

01:32:00   that matches the anecdotes that I've heard where I've heard from people who have lost all their

01:32:05   podcast time because they're not commuting anymore. And I've heard from other people who

01:32:08   are desperate for more podcasts now because they have so much podcasting time because they're stuck

01:32:13   at home and it depends on your kind of lifestyle and how you consume podcasts. So at least for our

01:32:17   kind of category, it seems like listenership is down a little, but not enormously. Um,

01:32:24   it strikes me that the big issue is not going to be, Hey, people aren't listening to podcasts,

01:32:29   therefore podcasts are going to be hurting. It's more likely, Hey, the economy is in bad

01:32:34   shape right now. It's basically stopped and that's going to make it bad for advertising. And I think

01:32:40   that's the, again, with technology, so many of our advertisers are cloud-based and they're tech-based

01:32:46   and they're, they're more like, they're still operational even now that this is all going on.

01:32:53   But, you know, this is such a huge economic issue going on right now around the world where the

01:33:00   economy is basically stopped in large sectors that those are going to have lots of knock-on effects.

01:33:05   And so it's impossible to imagine that it won't affect us, um, at some point in some way,

01:33:11   even though, even though we're insulated by it in other ways. So we'll, we'll see.

01:33:17   Marketing budgets are always the first thing to go.

01:33:19   That's true.

01:33:21   And you know, I will say it, right? Like, I'll be honest, we are seeing

01:33:24   significant reductions in marketing spend, like coming towards us. So we're working it through

01:33:31   as best we can, but if you do want to support our shows via the membership programs, please do. And

01:33:37   we're working on, we're working on some stuff there that will be announced in over the coming

01:33:41   weeks, like extra things. So it will be, it's a good time to sign up. And Majd asks, what Mac

01:33:47   app not made by Apple would you most like to see come to the iPad?

01:33:51   My answer is BB edit. Because I use BB edit to write most of the things on the Mac. And while

01:34:00   I have text editors on iOS that I use, um, BB edit has so many features that I use that I,

01:34:08   I just have not been able to replicate. And I don't think it ever will. I think Rich Segal has,

01:34:14   has decided that he has no interest in doing that, which is a shame, but it's been so long now that I

01:34:20   assume it's never going to happen, but that's the one not made by Apple that I would want the most

01:34:25   on my iPad, because then I would have my text editor on both platforms and I wouldn't have to

01:34:29   worry about it. And all the features would be there. Audio hijack, because if I had audio

01:34:35   hijack, it would mean I could re I would be in a position to be able to record podcasts on my iPad.

01:34:40   That's my answer. Assuming that Apple, so I answered in a realistically, it could be there.

01:34:46   Mine was not realistic by any stretch of the imagination.

01:34:48   Yours would be my answer in the unrealistic category of I would like that, but that requires,

01:34:53   of course, Apple to completely change its operating system in order to allow access to the audio.

01:34:58   But yes, I, because same reason, because I could do a podcast a hundred percent on iPad if I wanted

01:35:04   to with that feature. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.

01:35:11   Thank you to our sponsors, fully, Pingdom and Linode for their support of this show.

01:35:15   If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com and he is @jasonel on Twitter.

01:35:20   I am @imike, I am Y-A-K-E. If you want to submit questions for us to answer on the show,

01:35:25   just send out a tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade. Thank you to everybody who does that.

01:35:29   We have lots of great questions in the opera at the moment, which I'm excited about.

01:35:32   So we've got a really exciting episode next week. So we're really excited about that.

01:35:35   We've got some cool stuff planned. We've already talked about some of it.

01:35:39   Again, if you want to support the show, there's links in the show notes and you can go to

01:35:42   relay.fm/membership to learn more about that. We'll be back next time. Until then,

01:35:49   say goodbye Jason Snow. Goodbye Myke Hurley.

01:35:52   [Music]

01:35:58   [ Silence ]