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Upgrade

245: Get Ready for the Sensor Square

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 245, and today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN,

00:00:15   Lunar Display, and Pingdom. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.

00:00:21   Hello, Mr. Myke Hurley, how are you? I'm very good. We've got a big action-packed show today. We've got

00:00:26   lots of things to talk about. So we should jump right in with our #snowtalk question that comes

00:00:31   from Doug, and Doug wants to know, "After hearing you discuss sandwiches last week, I'm curious, what

00:00:36   are your usual snacks for recording?" This is a very curious question to me. Yeah, yeah, well, so first off,

00:00:42   I very rarely have a snack while I'm recording. Basically not at all. I will often have a beverage,

00:00:49   I have tea during upgrade, and most of the things that I do in the morning in the, you know, afternoon

00:00:54   or evening, I might have a different beverage. Occasionally, so the idea here is you don't

00:01:01   really want to be eating when you're doing a podcast. You shouldn't be. Because even if you mute

00:01:05   while you're crunching on something, your mouth is in eating, I don't know, mode, and you can, like,

00:01:15   there are more mouth noises. You can tell that you just ate something. Yeah, it changes the way your

00:01:19   voice sounds. It does, it does, and so, and in fact, occasionally I have had to have food during, like,

00:01:28   an incomparable, where it's like, literally, I'm starving and there was no dinner, and then the

00:01:32   dinner happens just as I'm going in. I avoid that, but mostly it happens during Total Party Kill,

00:01:37   because we play for four hours, and I will eat my lunch during that, because you take turns and all

00:01:42   that, but when I'm listening back, I can tell, "Oh, I must have been eating lunch right here." I can tell,

00:01:48   because it sounds different. So when I'm doing things that are not extended Ridiculous Dungeons

00:01:52   and Dragons marathon episodes of Total Party Kill, I don't snack during podcasts. Just don't do it.

00:02:01   I do have a favorite snack for before I record these days. Oh, yes, what is that? I came across

00:02:08   this brand, this is not, hashtag not sponsored, called Brave. I don't know if this is just, like,

00:02:14   a UK thing or whatever, but they make roasted peas, and they do them in a bunch of really

00:02:20   interesting flavors, and it's just, like, a very nice, quick snack. I can't eat nuts, you see,

00:02:25   and these are very much like eating nuts, right? So, like, I'm a person who cannot eat nuts, because I

00:02:31   have an allergy, so this is just a thing that I've found recently that I really like, and I just

00:02:35   wanted to suggest it to people, if they, especially people that can't eat nuts, this has been, like, a

00:02:40   nice replacement for that type of thing for me, and I've been eating these recently, like, if I

00:02:44   haven't had the time to eat lunch or whatever and I have to record a show,

00:02:48   this is a snack that will do that for me, right? Like, it will give me, it will kind of fill me up

00:02:54   a little bit. If you can't eat nuts, how do you know that eating roasted peas is like eating nuts?

00:02:59   Because I used to eat nuts. Okay. My allergy developed, it wasn't obvious,

00:03:03   it's something I've had for my entire life, yeah. Well, then I think you have credibility in this

00:03:07   area. Thank you. I know you're trying to get me on that one, but no, because I know what nuts

00:03:11   taste like, what the textures like, that kind of thing, and these are pretty close to that.

00:03:16   All right, that's good. Thank you to Doug for sending in that #snowtalk question. If you would

00:03:20   like to help open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk,

00:03:23   and your question may be included for the future. We have some follow-up on cleaning AirPods.

00:03:28   So, we had Upgrading and Lonnie ask last week in Ask Upgrade, ask how we clean our AirPods,

00:03:35   and both me and Jason held up our hands and said that it was basically impossible to do so.

00:03:39   Key point here is that we answered Lonnie's question because he asked,

00:03:43   "How do we clean our AirPods?" And we're like, "I don't know, scrape this, do that, all of that."

00:03:48   And then a bunch of people wrote in, like a lot of people wrote in, to give the what is the right

00:03:55   solution. I just want to point out, we answered Lonnie's question because we do clean our AirPods

00:04:00   in weird ways, but this is the right solution, I think. I think this is the right answer.

00:04:06   So, many people wrote in with some form of silly putty or blue tack or white tack or whatever,

00:04:13   things of that nature, that tacky stuff that you would use to put a poster on the wall so you don't

00:04:18   put a hole in the wall with a drawing pin. Yeah, museum putty, that kind of thing.

00:04:21   Yeah, those, apparently, we've heard from many people that this is the way to do it,

00:04:25   and as soon as I saw it, I was like, "Oh, that makes a lot of sense," because you can

00:04:29   jam it in there, right? Like in the case, in the AirPods, and you'll get anything out.

00:04:33   Super gross, but you know, what are you going to do? Colin recommended a mascara brush,

00:04:39   which was a good, it seemed like a good option. I can imagine you getting in there and stuff.

00:04:44   And Jeremy recommended a toothbrush and compressed air. Compressed air fixes all Apple products.

00:04:50   I guess. That's my understanding. If you've got some sort of SSD problem,

00:04:54   you just blow compressed air on it. So that's how you zap the PRAM now,

00:04:58   just with compressed air. That's right. If you don't have any compressed air, just, you know,

00:05:01   just go, you know, really hard, just blow on the disk. I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm sure that'll fix

00:05:07   it. Big, and then just, you just put it back in again and it's fine. So yeah, so that is how you

00:05:13   can clean some AirPods. Thank you to all of our upgradeans who wrote in, especially all of you

00:05:18   who recommended some kind of tacky putty of some description. Now, Jason, I believe you

00:05:27   created follow out, follow out, which is the method of, uh, well, I popularized it. I think

00:05:33   one of our upgradeans actually created the concept, but I popularized it. We all know

00:05:37   that attribution and follow related topics is very important. So thank you for clarifying that.

00:05:44   Follow out is the method of which we will provide as if it's follow up, but for a show that isn't

00:05:50   this one. Uh, and Jason has a lot of follow out this week. Yeah. I guess I listened to podcasts

00:05:55   this week, so just topics that came up on other podcasts that I wanted to wanted to mention and,

00:06:00   uh, say something about, uh, so last week on connected you and Steven and Federico,

00:06:05   uh, we're talking about, well, I was walking the dog as you do. I was listening live to the

00:06:09   live stream in the relay FM app while walking my dog. Um, and that was lovely. It was a lovely,

00:06:16   uh, lovely thing to do, to listen to a live podcast while you walk a dog. And you were

00:06:21   talking about aperture, right? You were talking about how aperture is officially deprecated won't

00:06:25   work with the next version of Mac OS, but people out there, I think was it you who said, yeah,

00:06:32   I requested listeners to write using aperture, explain yourself to tell me why you are using

00:06:37   aperture. Cause I was interested. I wanted to basically like, I wanted to see cause these things

00:06:44   you see, see, see something like, Oh, Apple's killing aperture. And then you can assume some

00:06:49   level of outrage on the part like on from the internet, like what a travesty this is.

00:06:54   So I wanted to actually understand even listeners to connected who are going to be technologically

00:07:01   savvy and up to date people. Are they still using a piece of software, which is really outdated?

00:07:07   Cause I was keen to work that out and we heard from a lot of people and I gave them all their

00:07:11   moment to shine and read their messages. Yeah. Including a message about somebody's dad. Anyway,

00:07:18   it struck a chord with me because in working at Mac world for all of those years, we would get

00:07:23   letters from some of these people, maybe not particularly these people, but this, and I think

00:07:30   it's a, it was a really important lesson. I'm not sure what can be done about it, but I think it's,

00:07:34   it's, it provides a little perspective that maybe we lack sometimes because we are in a, I don't,

00:07:41   you know, I'm not trying to be negative about this, this, I don't mean this negatively,

00:07:45   but we are in a bubble in terms of people who are more tech savvy and it's not just the people who

00:07:49   are doing podcasts. It's people who are listening to podcasts, listening to tech specific podcasts,

00:07:54   especially, right? Like we are more tech savvy on the whole than the general population. And

00:08:01   sometimes you lose sight of that. Sometimes you lose sight of the fact that, well, all of my

00:08:05   friends do this with their computer. And you don't realize that your friends represent the top, like

00:08:12   1% of users in terms of sophistication with that feature and that, you know, half of 1%, 10th of 1%

00:08:19   and that the vast majority of people don't do what you do. And it doesn't mean that what you do isn't

00:08:24   important. And it doesn't mean that if it's in a key area that Apple might not be concerned about

00:08:28   it if it's an Apple product, but it's an important perspective because Apple, you know, I think when

00:08:34   we talk about features coming and going and like ATP last week was talking about default apps and

00:08:41   we'll get to that, but it's this idea that Apple is designing for the masses and their priorities

00:08:48   are not necessarily your priorities for good reasons. And what flashed in my mind when you

00:08:56   guys were talking about this on connected is we used to get letters from people. So we would do

00:09:00   snow leopard would come out and we would start writing articles about all the new features in

00:09:06   snow leopard and how you could use them. And, you know, right, that was like that basic tech

00:09:12   journalism kind of job. Here's what's new. Here's how you use it. Here's what's changed. Here's,

00:09:17   did you know you could do this new thing? Gives us stuff to talk about for maybe a year, although

00:09:22   maybe not quite a year, which is why in those last few months, you're like, come on, WWDC, we need

00:09:26   new stuff to write about. And we would get letters every single time. So we're writing like snow

00:09:33   leopard, super guide, everything you need to know that snow leopard. And you get the letter

00:09:36   from somebody who says, why are you writing so much about snow leopard? I want you to write more

00:09:41   about tiger or leopard like one or two OS versions back. I'm still using that. Why aren't you writing

00:09:48   about that more? Why are you only writing about this new thing? Or do you get paid by Apple to

00:09:54   write about this new thing? And the response is, well, no, we have run out of things to write.

00:09:58   Like if you would like to see everything we've written about tiger, please go back two years in

00:10:04   your pile of magazines that you've saved and read those articles, but we have to move on. But I

00:10:11   think it's an important point that we have to move on. They don't have to move on. And in fact, I

00:10:18   think that users have a lot of users of technology are not like us where we're often driven forward

00:10:24   by wanting the latest and greatest and the newest thing and are willing to take the change along

00:10:28   with it. There are so many people who are users of technology who do not aggressively upgrade.

00:10:34   And I do think some of them listen to the podcast. I just think it's a smaller percentage. And you

00:10:38   got this with your people using Aperture and connected. They don't aggressively upgrade.

00:10:43   They don't aggressively buy new hardware. And at the top of it is they don't keep buying

00:10:49   new third-party apps, especially expensive third-party apps. So they are, we have this

00:10:57   story that we tell about how like, oh, well, you know, the IT department means that this company

00:11:04   isn't going to update to the new version because they've got their publishing software, they've got

00:11:08   their Adobe suite or whatever that they've qualified for this. And so everybody else has

00:11:12   moved to Mojave, but not the publishing company. They're still back two versions because of their

00:11:17   IT people. And there's truth to that sometimes, but people behave like that too, where they're

00:11:23   like, why would I update? Why would I break this thing? Why do I need to upgrade to a new version?

00:11:28   - I'm still on High Sierra.

00:11:30   - Right? So why don't we talk about High Sierra more, Myke, is what I'm saying. I'm going to file

00:11:35   a complaint with you. We should have lots more High Sierra tips.

00:11:38   - I get this, I will get people ask me these questions too every now and then. And I think

00:11:43   really the reasoning for it is pretty simple. Or like the idea of like someone, you know,

00:11:48   people said like, oh, you know, you always buy the newest phone. Like it's kind of losing touch.

00:11:53   The reason is because ultimately people tune into this show to hear about the new stuff.

00:11:58   I genuinely don't think upgrade connected ATP would be as interesting as they are.

00:12:06   If we're all still talking about what it's like to use an iPhone 5S on iOS 12.

00:12:14   Because it's just not...

00:12:16   - We did that for a year. We did that for a year.

00:12:19   - And I just think that like, it needs, we need to keep moving forward to make sure we always have

00:12:26   the newest stuff to talk about. Of course it is very useful every now and then to look back and to

00:12:30   talk about something specific, right? Like if, especially if it's in the news, it's more easier

00:12:35   to do that. Like talking about Aperture, you know, like we took time a couple of episodes ago when

00:12:40   the news came out, like what was Aperture? Why was Aperture good? Right? Like, and you can frame it

00:12:45   that way. But really I think our jobs is to be as informed as we can about new stuff to help people

00:12:55   make decisions in their lives. - Sure. But I think it is, I think it's valuable while doing that to

00:13:00   have, because again, like I said, at Macworld, our answer was not, "Oh, you're right. We should write

00:13:04   more about Tiger." Our answer was, "That's not what we're here to do. We're here to write about

00:13:10   the new stuff." But to keep in mind, and I think it's just a useful reminder every year, it reminded

00:13:16   me, and I think this was a good example of it with the talk about Aperture, that a lot of people are

00:13:21   interested in the new stuff, but their philosophy, I think it's a very common tech philosophy is,

00:13:26   "I set on something, and then until I have to change, I'm just going to ride this out."

00:13:31   Because my computer works fine, the OS works fine. It, you know, if you don't upgrade your software

00:13:38   and you keep the same hardware, your computer basically doesn't get slower, right? What happens

00:13:43   is you keep upgrading and then you, and you're like, "Oh my God, it's so slow." But like,

00:13:46   it doesn't really get slower. You know, it gets slower in comparison, but it doesn't really get

00:13:51   slower. So you end up with a four-year-old computer running a four-year-old operating

00:13:54   system and four-year-old piece of software. It's probably actually an eight-year-old piece

00:13:58   of software, but you know, you got it four years ago. And you know which buttons to click,

00:14:03   and you've got all your files set up, and it all works. And that is, you know, people do that.

00:14:10   And I think what's interesting about this 32-bit apps getting deprecated, which is behind,

00:14:17   you know, not just Aperture, but a lot of stuff dying this fall, is it, this stuff is not dying

00:14:24   this fall, right? It just is a compatibility barrier being set up by Apple. So I think part

00:14:31   of this, and I've told this to people who are really worried about their stuff not working,

00:14:36   is keep an older computer around. Either buy a computer now that's capable of running Mojave,

00:14:41   because it'll run 32-bit apps for its lifetime as long as you stay on Mojave, or keep the computer

00:14:47   you're using now around and keep using Aperture, because Aperture is not going to time out

00:14:51   on, you know, on September 15th or October 1st or whenever they release the next version of macOS.

00:14:58   It's not. It'll still work. And there's nothing wrong with that. Also, I will remind people,

00:15:02   because a lot of people don't know this, that Apple for the last, I think, five years, six years,

00:15:08   has allowed virtualization of old versions of macOS on macOS. So it's not ideal, but like,

00:15:15   if you've got an old piece of software that you dearly love and you need, especially if you only

00:15:19   need it occasionally, because virtualization is slow, you can put that in a virtual machine

00:15:26   and run it on at least an Intel Mac for a long time, running 10.10, you know, whatever,

00:15:32   some old OS version with that piece of software you want. And it's allowed. It's allowed by Apple

00:15:38   on Apple hardware. So there are options out there. It's not as if, you know, Aperture is going to

00:15:45   turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight. But this is a very clear case where people who

00:15:52   are relying on this workflow that they've built up, they're seeing that there's a wall coming,

00:15:58   there's a barrier coming, and that at this point, they're kind of locked in because now they can't

00:16:03   move forward and keep their old stuff. They can stay behind, but they know that at some point,

00:16:08   they're going to need to move forward. And I get that too. So I just think that this is part of

00:16:13   a weird part of the technology world. And it's worth, you know, putting in perspective that even

00:16:19   though we talk about the new stuff, there are definitely people out there who are interested

00:16:22   in hearing what's going on with the new stuff, but are also very happy to use this thing that

00:16:26   they've been using for five years and the way they've been using it. And they don't want to

00:16:30   change. And that's, you know, if Aperture works for you, you don't have to get rid of Aperture,

00:16:38   but you are going to have to stay behind. That's unfortunately the truth of it.

00:16:42   Let me do my second follow out. Is that okay? Can I do that now? Okay. I mentioned ATP earlier,

00:16:47   and this was a thing where I'm listening to Marco talk about the reminders update that is coming,

00:16:56   supposedly, that we talked about last week. And it was funny because Marco and I often agree. Like,

00:17:03   I feel like one of the reasons why Marco and I are not on more podcasts together is because I think

00:17:08   it would be kind of boring because we do agree so much on things. And I hear Marco say things. I'm

00:17:12   like, yep. Yeah, I don't need to say that now. Marco said it. But he said something that struck

00:17:16   me where he sort of characterized what we said is that we thought an update to make reminders

00:17:23   more useful would be okay to the third-party reminders to do ecosystem. And he thought it

00:17:29   would be much more destructive. And I'm not sure whether he kind of misunderstood what we said or

00:17:34   whether we just didn't say it clearly, but I thought it was worth clarifying at least a little

00:17:39   bit that, you know, when I talked earlier about how Apple's job is to make these default apps

00:17:44   appeal to 95% of users, like the masses, because so many people just use the default app of whatever

00:17:50   it is. I feel like there are two different scenarios there. And one of them is they do a bad

00:17:57   job and they ignore basic features that should be there. And what you get is a bunch of third-party

00:18:02   apps that build basic features to take advantage of Apple doing a bad job that Apple's not paying

00:18:07   attention or they blew it or they don't care. Sometimes Apple does a good job and they make

00:18:16   an app that has the basic features for 95%. And then third parties rush to fill the gap for the

00:18:21   people who want to do more than what Apple is willing to do in their pre-installed on every

00:18:27   device app. Also, I should say, sometimes Apple does a bad job and people do come in with a really

00:18:32   good app. It's not like only bad apps fill the gap. But I feel like those are the two scenarios.

00:18:38   And when Apple fixes one of its core apps to be okay, I think two different things happen. The

00:18:47   apps that just rushed in with an app that is, you know, fine, but really what it's trying to do is

00:18:53   fill the fact, replace the fact that Apple has done a bad job with basic functionality. And then

00:18:58   there are the apps that are really going beyond for what the power users want. And I think that's

00:19:02   the challenge here is if you're the first kind of app, yes, Apple becoming respectable with whatever

00:19:09   app it built is horrible for you because you were just trying to make a basic app that did things

00:19:16   that Apple failed at. If you were trying to make something that appeals to people who are going to

00:19:21   go above and beyond what the basic level is of whatever Apple develops, I feel like you're going

00:19:27   to be fine. You might have to adjust a little bit, but I feel like you're going to be fine because

00:19:30   in watching what Apple does, you know, every Apple app, even good built-in Apple apps,

00:19:36   there are users who look at it and go, "Hmm, but I want to do this," you know, very specific thing.

00:19:43   And there's probably an app that will do that. And that's, for me, I feel like that is the safest

00:19:49   third-party app place to be if you are in a category where Apple has an app is you do more.

00:19:57   Because Apple's never going to do it all. They're never going to make super

00:20:00   tweaky power user features because it's a lot of work and it complicates the app. And

00:20:08   most of the people that they are caring about are they want to hit the middle. They want to hit like

00:20:11   the masses. But there are also apps that are not that sophisticated and are just filling

00:20:20   a niche because Apple has completely failed at building a good app. And when Apple gets,

00:20:26   you know, finally realizes that that thing has to be fixed, those apps are in trouble. And

00:20:34   there's truth in that. That's true. I don't feel quite as bad for those apps as I do for the ones

00:20:41   that are about the edge cases because that is a good place to play if you're building an app

00:20:47   in a category with a default Apple app. So for reminders, like if there are any low-hanging fruit

00:20:53   features that Apple's going to take care of, yeah, if your whole app is about that stuff,

00:20:57   you're going to be in trouble. But I think so many task planning apps are about personal preference,

00:21:03   the ways people plan their tasks. They're going to go way beyond what Apple wants to do. Because,

00:21:09   you know, Apple's never going to make a super focused task planning app. They're going to make

00:21:16   a better reminders app for 95% of the population. And that's okay.

00:21:21   Yeah, I think most of the applications that we talk about or think about that are considered

00:21:29   successful in this realm, like more than just to-do apps, but actual like getting things done

00:21:37   type applications will probably be mostly unaffected by this, I reckon.

00:21:42   You know, it's kind of like how like Marco used Notes apps as an example, right? Like

00:21:47   typical Notes apps were kind of would have felt the pain. But then there are these other types

00:21:53   of applications, the ones that we would use more, which like, oh, this is a markdown formatting

00:21:56   application. It's like, well, they probably weren't affected that much. Like there's tiers.

00:22:01   Reminders probably will have an effect, but I don't think it's going to affect any of the apps

00:22:06   that I would typically even come close to using. And another thing that happens is,

00:22:11   and we know people who develop some of these apps, right? The other thing that happens is Apple says,

00:22:16   we're going to do these three things that we didn't do before. And the developers of the apps

00:22:20   go, hmm, that was kind of most of my value proposition were those three things, but there's

00:22:25   this fourth and fifth thing that I do that they don't do. And now I'm going to add this feature

00:22:29   that they also were not going to do because all of these Apple apps have gaps and weaknesses.

00:22:34   And the smart app developer, and again, you know that Apple is walking in this market and you know

00:22:43   that they may stomp on you and you have to dodge them. It's a tough place to be, but there are

00:22:50   always little places for apps to go because Apple's never going to make the app where everybody goes,

00:22:55   well, nobody ever needs another app, right? That it's not going to happen. So that's the challenge

00:23:01   for those developers is just to find the place where Apple is not fulfilling some part of the

00:23:07   market because the truth is going off a default app to a third-party app is a real niche thing.

00:23:13   It's why most people on iOS still use Apple Maps and not Google Maps. It's like, behold the power

00:23:18   of the pre-installed app that's called Maps. It's just, it's a thing. So you can find your place for

00:23:25   the people who desire more because quite honestly, those are the people searching in the app store

00:23:29   for an app to replace the default app because the default app hasn't satisfied them for some reason.

00:23:34   And if you can reach them, you can succeed. Speaking about the power of the default

00:23:39   application, uh, maybe we're going to get, get into some of that in a minute about some of the

00:23:44   problems that can come when you look into these types of things. But before we do, let me thank

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00:25:41   So Jason, before we recorded today, there was a little bit of breaking news about Apple and the

00:25:48   Supreme Court. This is straight up something that I don't really understand. So I'm hoping that you

00:25:57   can help me a little bit with it. - American legal processes.

00:26:02   - Yeah, this one's a little bit over my head, I think.

00:26:05   - Yeah, I think it's complicated just in the sense that it is leading a lot of places more than what

00:26:12   actually happened today as we record this. - Right, 'cause there wasn't like a ruling, like no one's

00:26:18   saying something's right or wrong today, are they?

00:26:21   - This is an appeal that kicks it back to the lower courts. And so basically Apple is being

00:26:27   sued in an antitrust class action about Apple's control of the App Store. And this lawsuit was

00:26:37   thrown out on a lower court by saying that there is a precedent to not holding distributors

00:26:46   responsible for some of these controls. And that Apple said, "We are that, we are a distributor."

00:26:53   I'm simplifying it here, but we are a distributor of apps for developers. Developers sell them,

00:26:59   we distribute them, and therefore this doesn't apply to us. And it got appealed and the ninth

00:27:05   circuit agreed with Apple. It got appealed up to the Supreme Court and in a 5-4 vote,

00:27:10   and interestingly, a 5-4 vote that you kind of wouldn't expect where it was actually

00:27:15   the liberal justices and one of the conservative justices who came together to form the five

00:27:22   vote majority, they kicked it back to the lower court and said, "Yes, it does apply to Apple.

00:27:27   Apple is a seller of apps, not a distributor of apps." And that means that this process is

00:27:35   gonna continue. Apple probably didn't expect that they would be in this. And because Apple has kind

00:27:42   of lost this battle over its claim that it's an intermediary and then couldn't be sued, it can

00:27:48   now be sued. And so the case will go forward in the federal courts, it will probably last a while.

00:27:53   What it does outside of like the details of this case is it's yet another pressure point on Apple

00:27:58   to possibly change its App Store policies in reaction to not just the suit, but increased

00:28:06   scrutiny that they've been getting from regulators, politicians, and presidential candidates. And

00:28:10   there's a question about like, will Apple try to make changes in order to get the heat off versus

00:28:19   also like there's a real open question about like, what might a court ruling be and might make them

00:28:26   do? A few possibilities that have occurred to me and that I've seen blow by in my Twitter stream

00:28:32   this morning. One of them is the idea simply of what if Apple introduced Gatekeeper for iOS like

00:28:39   they have on the Mac, where basically by default, you can only install things from the App Store,

00:28:44   but they allow, quote-unquote, "freedom" for the user of turning that off and letting you

00:28:50   sideload apps that you download elsewhere, presumably following Gatekeeper's model that

00:28:55   were still signed and notarized so that they would be kind of approved developers and apps from Apple,

00:29:01   but not actually go through the App Store, which means that they could be charged for

00:29:04   outside of the App Store. It would be a much less pleasant process, but it might be a way for Apple

00:29:10   to say, you know, the bulk of users, like I was saying earlier, are going to just use the App

00:29:14   Store. But if you're somebody in a particular niche and you want to go off and have this

00:29:17   kind of inferior experience, but get this app over here, maybe we'll allow you to do that,

00:29:23   but it'll have to be from a verified developer and they've notarized their app or whatever.

00:29:27   They could do that. That would be a big change on one level. I think on another level, it wouldn't

00:29:32   probably change a whole lot for most iOS users, but it would be another vector for sleazy software

00:29:40   to get on iOS devices. However, somewhat under the ability for Apple to revoke certificates and

00:29:47   make those apps break if people are doing things that Apple doesn't like. Another option, which

00:29:53   is on the table, I think, is what if Apple changed their policy about outside links and payments

00:30:00   inside apps? This is the, you must use an in-app purchase rule, right? And Apple would still have

00:30:06   an advantage in that case because in-app purchase is super easy. All you're doing is basically

00:30:10   saying, yes, buy this, and it uses your Apple ID and your credit card that's on file. And if they

00:30:14   have to open a webpage and have you log into their website or put in your credit card and then tap

00:30:19   and then have it go back to the app, that would be less fun. However, they would save 30% on those

00:30:26   in-app purchases. And that would be a hit to Apple services revenue if you look at Netflix walking

00:30:32   away from doing subscriptions, which is not quite the same as a pure in-app purchase, but still

00:30:37   Netflix walked away and was like, "We don't want to share 15 to 30% with Apple." It would be

00:30:42   potentially a big hit, but Apple may be forced to go in that direction by this because that really

00:30:47   is Apple. You know, that's a great example of Apple saying, "No, no, no, we want all commerce

00:30:52   on our store to go through us and we want to take a cut of it." Except for ads.

00:30:58   I think on the face of it, and again, this is all big legal stuff, so it is what it is, but

00:31:04   the way that you expressed it as like a seller or a vendor, I feel like it can't be argued that they

00:31:11   sell apps. Like, they take a cut, right? Like, Apple's selling them.

00:31:15   The level of control, yeah, it feels to me very much like, and again, we're not lawyers,

00:31:19   but it feels to me as an observer and as a user that Apple is the seller of the apps. Apple's

00:31:26   built the store, Apple is selling the apps, they're not just distributing them. And I would say also,

00:31:31   in my mind, developers don't feel that they've got control over their app sales.

00:31:38   They have no information about customers, they don't get anything, particularly these days,

00:31:44   I think, other than just the ability to have their app on an iPhone. And I don't know what that,

00:31:51   I mean, this is, you know, you go back to that Spotify thing, that's what this whole

00:31:55   value proposition is about. Developers these days don't feel like they get the same.

00:31:59   And you're right, if they offered the ability for people, once again, to at least be able to

00:32:05   reference the fact and allow for a signup flow of their own in an application, that could go a long

00:32:10   way. But I mean, even for Apple, right, but that's still, you have to be a very specific type of

00:32:16   company. It's going to make a hit for them because it's going to be big publishers and big that go

00:32:21   and do it, but it's not going to be the be all, end all. I think there was a statistic that I can't

00:32:26   remember off the top of my head, but they actually called this out on the last earnings call, didn't

00:32:29   they, about the fact that none of the companies, they tried to, I think they tried to put investors

00:32:36   at ease to be like, oh, you know, it's only, no company, no one company holds more than X

00:32:42   percentage of our service revenue. Did you count, obviously you got that.

00:32:46   It was a small percent of the app store revenue was like the largest one was less than 1% of the

00:32:52   app store revenue or something like that. And I think that was them kind of trying to be like,

00:32:56   oh, if, if people decide like to do what Netflix did, what Spotify has done, it's not going to wipe

00:33:02   out 20% of our revenue. I think that's what they were kind of trying to show. Right. But it was,

00:33:06   it was an interesting statistic for them to throw out. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, uh, I don't know. Um,

00:33:14   I think things can go weird. Uh, I, I take the larger view here that Apple is probably going to

00:33:20   have to revisit its approach to the app store now. Um, and not because it isn't working for them. I

00:33:25   think the app store that we've got now is because the app store was a hit. And we've said this a

00:33:30   bunch of times on this show that, um, one of the ways that the app store has been not as good as

00:33:36   it should be is because Apple didn't feel the need until, until really that moment where they put

00:33:42   Phil Shiller in charge of it. There was a long period there where Apple was like, look, it's a

00:33:46   hit. Don't mess with a hit. It's like, but there's, there's 50 things wrong with it that you should

00:33:51   fix. And I'm like, Hmm, but why? Cause it's great. And then finally they kind of got over that, but

00:33:58   I think Apple is reluctant to change its policies in this area because they don't know what the

00:34:03   fallout will be and it has worked for them spectacularly. And so they just kind of like

00:34:08   say, Nope, we're going to just keep these policies. And it's very rare that they change

00:34:11   something. This feels like a moment where because of political and legal pressure, Apple has more of

00:34:17   a motivation to revisit their approach to the app store. And although it could get weird in this area

00:34:23   too, my gut feeling is that this is overall probably going to be good for developers and users

00:34:29   because if Apple loosens up a little bit, because I can just see all sorts of areas where Apple's

00:34:36   policies make a worse user experience. And, you know, my go-to example is you should be able to

00:34:41   buy Kindle books in the Kindle app. You should be able to buy comics in the Comixology app.

00:34:46   And you can't because they don't want to have Apple take 30% of their margins.

00:34:52   I've been saying for a while that my understanding was that that basically eats all the profits. It

00:34:58   doesn't eat all their profits. It just eats most of their profits. And they've built a business on

00:35:03   taking, making money by taking the profit margin that's built into reselling a comic book or a book

00:35:11   and it gets blown up inside of Apple's in-app purchase system. Also, you know,

00:35:17   podcast support in podcast apps is a great example where we know people who build podcast apps and

00:35:24   lots of podcasts. There's a trend now toward independent podcasts wanting support from

00:35:29   listeners. Relay does it. The Incomparable does it. It happens. But podcast, general interest

00:35:37   podcast apps are very reluctant to do anything involving a link to somebody asking for money

00:35:44   because potentially anything, even like me putting a link in my show notes saying support

00:35:51   the incomparable could be interpreted by an overzealous app reviewer as a podcast app

00:36:00   sending somebody to the web for money, which is not allowed. So there are lots of things that

00:36:05   could get better if Apple changed its rules and some of these rules feel more Apple just trying

00:36:14   to skim money out of the system than Apple making a reasonable exchange in terms, you know, in

00:36:21   exchange for some user features. And again, I believe that in-app purchases and Apple's

00:36:27   payment system would still remain popular in apps if they allowed other approaches because

00:36:33   it would be so much easier and more convenient to be inside the system.

00:36:38   But there would also probably be apps that who would opt out and they would make it much more

00:36:45   unpleasant for their users. But the same time you would hope that the market would then say this app

00:36:51   isn't very good because they make you go through this ridiculous system in order to buy things and

00:36:54   this app is good because it's easy. But you know, giving the developers the choice and giving better

00:37:01   features to the consumer who wants to just buy a book inside the Kindle app,

00:37:05   like I think that could be good. I think making Apple revisit some of these rules and back down

00:37:11   on some of them, my feeling is we'll have the net effect of being good for everybody except maybe

00:37:16   Apple and maybe not as bad to Apple as they are afraid of. So last week on the show when talking

00:37:22   about the iPhone sales and some of the changes that are going on at Apple retail, we theorized

00:37:28   that maybe Angela Arendt's departure from Apple was because of some kind of culture clash, right?

00:37:34   About the way her vision was and then maybe clearly how the company is changing in the stores.

00:37:40   Then last Tuesday, Mark Gurman and Matthew Townsend at Bloomberg published a report that

00:37:44   actually dives into this as a thing. So the article itself details some customer experiences

00:37:49   at the Apple store which have changed, right? It's the color on the article, people complaining.

00:37:53   And again, it's like with anything, we talk about this all the time, especially with reports like

00:37:57   this. Think about where this information is coming from, who has an ax to grind.

00:38:02   - Yeah, you can get a man on the street to complain about whatever subject you're writing about. I'll

00:38:07   just say from a journalism standpoint, I look at these articles and I think, well, this user was

00:38:12   offended by this thing that happened in an Apple store. I'm like, that tells me nothing. I'm sorry

00:38:16   that they had a problem, but it literally the best and worst retail store you could get that same

00:38:21   quote from somebody when you go shopping for a quote. That part's meaningless to me.

00:38:26   - The employees that they speak to, I think very clearly are employees with access to grind, right?

00:38:32   - Yeah, it could be, right. I mean, otherwise why?

00:38:34   - Exactly, right? So like people are upset about who've worked at the Apple store forever,

00:38:39   and they're upset about how it is and that kind of thing. But nevertheless,

00:38:42   I think there was some interesting information to glean from this article, maybe to add a little

00:38:47   bit more color and perspective around what happened when all of a sudden Angela Ahrens left. So

00:38:54   the article references that they spoke to employees who say that the stores have become

00:38:59   too much of a branding exercise for the company and that the overall quality of the staff that

00:39:04   they employ is slipping. So I think you can understand this. As the Apple store has expanded,

00:39:12   the idea of the Apple store and more stores, they can't only hire the very best applicants.

00:39:19   They need more people, right? They need lots of people. So it's not gonna be like your friendly

00:39:26   neighborhood tech nerds all the time. Like that just feels like a natural thing. However,

00:39:30   when you think about it now, like why would they put the HR chief in charge of retail? Well,

00:39:37   this would be why. Because apparently, Deidre O'Brien is gonna be putting a lot of focus on

00:39:43   how they recruit and then how they train their employees in the hopes that this will try and

00:39:48   make the overall Apple store experience better. It is also worth noting, and I think this is

00:39:54   important, that even many of the people that they spoke to said that Ahrens wasn't the root cause

00:40:00   for this, but these things worsened under her tenure. Like before Angela Ahrens joined the

00:40:04   Apple store, a lot of the complaints we have about the Apple store now still existed. Like the lines

00:40:09   were too long. All of that kind of stuff was happening before. Or that it was confusing and

00:40:13   you didn't know where to go. Like that all predates that. That is all the way back in

00:40:17   Ron Johnson's era. That has been an issue. But it has been exacerbated, but they were all still

00:40:21   there. I think what we said at the time when she left was that, I mean, my feeling at the time was

00:40:27   she did what she was hired to do. And when we talked last week about the idea that Apple is now

00:40:33   really stepping up its sales, this really dovetails. That's why I was kind of tickled by the fact that

00:40:38   this article came out Tuesday. I was like, "Oh, good, Myke. We were ahead on this one. We were

00:40:42   talking about it." And then this article dropped because the idea that, you know, they brought in

00:40:46   Angela Ahrens to talk about, you know, it's supposed to be an experience and it's supposed

00:40:50   to be branding. And it's not supposed to be about fixing your problem and checking you out with your,

00:40:59   you know, purchase and all of those things like that. We want a luxury experience. We want it to

00:41:03   be an experience. We've got a grove. We've got trees. We want people. It's all about branding

00:41:08   and the Apple experience. And, you know, my feeling is that even when they hired her, that was probably

00:41:16   a mistake, but certainly it has been borne out over the last few years that that was a mistake.

00:41:21   - Well, 'cause it's like, how did they get to Angela Ahrens?

00:41:24   - Well, why did they hire her? She was a CEO at Burberry, right? So they had to hire her away

00:41:28   with a pitch about like, "We have this powerful retail. It's the most profitable brand. It's more

00:41:33   profitable than any other luxury retailer. And we want you to work your magic on it."

00:41:37   - She didn't apply. Like they had an idea.

00:41:40   - They recruited her, yeah.

00:41:41   - They had an idea of where they wanted the stores to go. You know, again, a quote from the

00:41:45   article that her goal was to make Apple stores more like luxury showrooms, pushing offstage

00:41:50   the unseemingly business of checking out and fielding complaints. Like, and that's what she

00:41:55   did. I mean, the stores are more like that. - Yeah, that's what she was hired to do. The problem

00:42:00   is that they need to sell product. We now live in an era where Apple really actually needs to sell

00:42:04   their products, not just let them sell themselves. And that they, Apple, look, Apple got high on its

00:42:09   own supply here a little bit, right? Where they're like, "Oh, we're Apple. We don't need to do

00:42:13   anything." And it's like, no, actually having all of these stores in all of these places,

00:42:17   you are on the front lines. Your retail employees are on the front lines of fixing broken things.

00:42:22   And I feel like the battery thing really just brought it to a head, which is like, "Oh my God,

00:42:26   our branding exercises somehow are not able to deal with a massive number of people who have

00:42:31   a battery they want to replace." And that was, for me, that was like that final moment of a clash,

00:42:36   which is we're not capable. I mean, well, they were capable, but like, we're not prepared to be

00:42:42   the battery replacement shop because we are here for branding and to teach classes and not to sell

00:42:49   products and replace products. And when you talk to people about their complaints about the Apple

00:42:54   store, what they very rarely say is, "It wasn't a nice experience. I like to go there and look

00:43:00   at the stuff and it's pretty and all of that." It's like, you know, they did a good job. Apple

00:43:04   store, Apple stores are pretty. The flagship ones are gorgeous. Apple stores are more beautiful now

00:43:11   than they have ever been. I mean, and I think that that is something about Angela Ahrens' time,

00:43:15   like the most that they took. Apple stores have always been beautiful, but I think they took an

00:43:20   incredible step forward in that. And I personally appreciate that. The problem is that you want,

00:43:26   in the end, they need to be places, and the people who are complaining are saying this,

00:43:30   they need to be places where, "I just want to buy a case. I just want to buy a cable." And they can

00:43:35   do a little bit of like, "Well, maybe you should just do it online or order it online and then come

00:43:38   pick it up." But it's like, they don't really want to do that. I have a broken thing. I need you to

00:43:44   fix my broken thing. I had an experience last week at my retail store where there was a product

00:43:48   recall on the UK power plug adapter. And it said, "We're not going to, basically, we're not going to

00:43:56   send you one. You need to go to an Apple store and exchange your old one for the new one." And I have

00:44:00   the universal or the international kit. So I wanted to get that done while I was thinking about it.

00:44:05   And they click on a link and they say, "You need to make an appointment. And here are available

00:44:08   appointments." And I went in and the guy sat me down and said, "Well, let me go see if we have one."

00:44:16   And I thought to myself, "Wait a second. Why would you not be sure if you're making me come here?"

00:44:25   And that was just one example of like, I mean, and they did have one and it was fine, but it's like,

00:44:29   why is that even a question? And that's the thing is, as this article says, it's kind of the

00:44:35   unseemly business of product support. And everybody's had that experience, I think,

00:44:42   at an Apple store where you just want to buy a thing. And then you stand there with the thing

00:44:46   and you're like, "Hello, somebody, can I buy this?" I mean, you literally can buy it in the

00:44:49   Apple store app. They kind of want you to just use the app and check yourself out because they

00:44:54   really don't want to deal with you, which is sending a message, even though it's convenient.

00:44:57   And if you never want to talk to a soul, you can go into an Apple store and buy a lot of stuff

00:45:01   and walk out and never talk to somebody. And that's great. But what if you aren't comfortable

00:45:04   with that and you want to talk to somebody? That's the stuff that is not part of that

00:45:08   idealized brand thing. And that's, so this article, I think, makes clear what many of us

00:45:16   already suspected, which is like, this is not really Angela Ahrens' fault as much as I think

00:45:22   it is the people who thought that Angela Ahrens was the person to take the Apple store in the

00:45:27   direction it needed to go. And that direction was even more luxury. And if I have to point out

00:45:32   a moment that seems to be the key moment of making mistakes at Apple in the last few years,

00:45:41   it is that moment of Apple deciding that it's a luxury brand and making a gold watch and having

00:45:49   the CEO of Burberry rebrand all of their stores. Because it seems like that was Apple losing what

00:45:55   it really is because in the end, Apple isn't that kind of luxury brand. Apple is...

00:46:02   I think that the watch did bring with it one of their better store experiences, which was to try

00:46:07   on. I think that that was really good. That was very valuable.

00:46:10   And yet today we hear, like last week, there was on Twitter, Marco and Tiff Arment went into an

00:46:15   Apple store and they were like touching a display Apple watch and were yelled at and said, "Don't

00:46:21   touch them. You can't touch them." And then other...

00:46:23   Right there, that's staff training. That's the problem, right?

00:46:27   Right. Exactly.

00:46:28   That is an example of poor training for staff.

00:46:30   Exactly. Right. So there's a bunch of stuff going on here with Apple retail, but it is not

00:46:37   surprising that basically they thought Apple retail, the execs who hired Ahrens went in one

00:46:44   direction and then I think it became clear over the course of several years that that was actually

00:46:48   the wrong direction to take the Apple store. And while there's a lot of good stuff at Apple stores,

00:46:52   they have done a bad job. They're being measured on things that are not the things they should get

00:47:00   measured on. And my guess is that Deidre O'Brien is going to be... That's one of her big challenges

00:47:06   is how do we measure the stores based on these other metrics, which are not... And if I was an

00:47:11   employee, I'd be frustrated because I experienced this as a manager. Sometimes the business changes

00:47:16   and you say, "Okay, I know up to now you've been working on this and this is how we measure

00:47:20   success, but as of tomorrow, we measure success differently. And now we have to work on this to

00:47:25   measure success." And if you're an employee being told that the thing that you've really chugged on

00:47:29   and that you've worked on and you've been successful at, and it gives you value as an

00:47:34   employee is no longer valuable, not only does that invalidate all the work you've done up to

00:47:40   that point, but now you're being told you need to do something different, which means you need to

00:47:43   change how you work, change your value system, that's brutal. And as that goes on at Apple

00:47:48   Retail, you're going to get quotes from Apple Retail people who are frustrated because of

00:47:53   course they are. - Yeah, because I mean, first you have people annoyed that they got rid of the

00:47:58   Genius Bar and now you're going to get people more annoyed that the reason that they got rid of the

00:48:03   Genius Bar now has to change as well, because then it's kind of like, "Ha ha, I told you."

00:48:07   And I get it, right? But that's why, as you say, there are people with access to grind.

00:48:11   But I feel pretty, at this point, when Aaron's departed, it was a surprise. I feel like it's

00:48:19   completely clear now. I think it's completely clear. - Right, and it's not the job she was

00:48:23   hired to do and it's not in her area of expertise. - And I think that was why it was such an amicable

00:48:27   but also fast split, because it was just like, "Well..." - "We need to go in a new direction.

00:48:32   I don't want to go there. Great. Let's resolve this and we can go our separate ways."

00:48:36   Yep. - Another Bloomberg report that I want to touch on is from Mark Gurman and Debbie Wu.

00:48:42   Basically, so this report is about Taiwan Semiconductor starting to manufacture the A13

00:48:50   chip for the next iPhone. - Right.

00:48:52   - Headline-wise, why would you read it? Of course they are, right? This is not an exciting

00:48:58   report, but there's some little details in it, which are interesting. And it's not necessarily

00:49:04   stuff that's new, but it's stuff that's interesting to see reported again, maybe in slightly different

00:49:10   ways. Right? So this is an expected story. We all know that the next chip will be the A13.

00:49:16   We know it needs to be made in advance and it's coming in September. Right? That's obvious.

00:49:21   So I read some quotes from the article. Apple also makes specialized chips for Macs and is working on

00:49:28   a main Mac processor to eventually replace those supplied by Intel. This is one of those things

00:49:33   where it's like, okay, so we all believe this to be the case, but it's not often said. And like,

00:49:41   what are either Gurman or Wu saying here? Do they know this to be the case? Are they saying

00:49:49   that like it's 100% happening? Is someone working on it?

00:49:53   - Is working on a main Mac processor. The way I choose to read that phrasing is that Apple is

00:50:00   working with Taiwan Semiconductor probably on samples that it hasn't gone into production,

00:50:08   but they have talked to them about a different ARM processor version, a variation or whatever it is

00:50:16   that will be used on the Mac, but that this is not like, they're not producing it now for the fall.

00:50:24   But they are working on something with Apple, which is, again, something that we kind of

00:50:29   suspected, but I read this as being, they have gotten some confirmation from Taiwan Semiconductor

00:50:35   basically that, yeah, we've seen that and are providing Apple with samples.

00:50:39   - It seems like it's come back around again, right? Like whoever told them about the A13 was like,

00:50:44   oh yeah, and we're also working on the Mac processor.

00:50:47   - It's also possible that this is the, what they're doing is they're making the A13,

00:50:52   but they're also in the process of ramping up for variations, like an A13X for an iPad and an

00:50:58   A13M maybe for a Mac, something like that. - A13XL for the Mac.

00:51:03   - That might be the case too, where it's like, well, this is not just about A13,

00:51:08   it's about the extensions to A13 that will be done after we start ramping up the iPhone

00:51:13   versions of the chips. - The A13, it's a family

00:51:16   of products, right? Like there's more than just the one chip and within a year, as you say,

00:51:20   there's three of them. - I think that's the most likely

00:51:23   scenario is that the A13 is not only the processor for the iPhone, but it's also the beginning of a

00:51:28   family where we, and we know that because they always do the X version that has some different

00:51:34   kind of technology on it that fits the specs of an iPad better. And then you can imagine they,

00:51:42   I don't see why they couldn't either use the X chip for the Mac or they could use another variant,

00:51:46   like I said, like an A13M. And I just made that up, but that's not unreasonable to say,

00:51:52   here's our processor generation. And that may be how Apple handles the processor generations

00:51:56   going forward is essentially everything's A13 or whatever, followed by some variants,

00:52:03   but it's all branded as A13 generation. And that's not surprising at all.

00:52:08   - It's also planning other new types of chips, including a cellular modem for making calls and

00:52:14   connecting to the internet and power components based on a recent deal with dialogue semiconductor.

00:52:19   - This sounds to me like Apple has talked to them about roadmap.

00:52:24   - Right. - Like we're working on modems.

00:52:26   We're gonna need you to make modems. Get ready for that. This sounds like even further off,

00:52:31   right? Planning on making. - Good news for you,

00:52:33   Taiwan Semiconductor. - More business for you.

00:52:34   - We now have the patent access as well. So you can do whatever you want because we had to buy

00:52:38   that from Qualcomm. Everyone's friend. - Yeah, we've got patents we're working on.

00:52:41   We're working on chips. We want you to help us with some references there. And eventually we're

00:52:45   gonna need you to make these for us too. And they're like, all right, great. And so that's

00:52:50   a little further off, but also they're happy to do it, right? It's more business from this

00:52:55   big important client. - Then this article takes a real left turn

00:52:59   and starts talking about iPhone cameras and gives a detail that has yet, in my opinion, to be so

00:53:07   explicitly given. So a third camera on the high-end iPhone models will have an ultra wide angle lens

00:53:14   to produce larger and more detailed photos. It will also enable a broader range of zoom.

00:53:19   Like I feel like at this point, what the third camera was gonna do had been in a bit of contention.

00:53:25   This seems to be the clearest kind of mentioning of this and also is the one that makes the most

00:53:33   sense. - So it's wide, regular, and zoom lenses on the back. And then with an interface where you

00:53:41   basically can slide it across it, which is what they mean by broader range of zoom, because now

00:53:46   you can go back all the way to the wide and then through the normal one and then into the telephoto

00:53:50   one. - Exactly. The three camera system will only be on the, what will be 11 and 11 max, I guess.

00:54:00   - Who knows? - There'll still be a two camera model.

00:54:02   - I don't even know anymore. - Exactly, on the 10R,

00:54:04   but that will have increased zoom as well. So I'm intrigued about what that means. Maybe like the

00:54:10   broader range of zoom, potentially the telephoto lens might be able to do more now, I guess,

00:54:15   right? Like that actually might be something that can provide a closer zoom than before. If the 10R

00:54:21   is gonna have increased zoom, right? You would expect, if there's only gonna be two cameras,

00:54:26   so maybe the telephoto lens will be better as well, which is great. And apparently the

00:54:31   two higher models will be a millimeter thicker than the current phones.

00:54:35   - Half a millimeter, or about half a millimeter. - Can you imagine, sorry, half a millimeter,

00:54:38   but still though, thicker phones, it's interesting. And that the back camera array will fit into a

00:54:44   square on the top left. Mark Gurman then tweeted an image to some like, basically, plates,

00:54:52   some renders, sort of back cases to show what these will look like.

00:54:56   - Yeah, he said this is a mold that is floating around and it's unclear what that exactly means.

00:55:00   But yeah, the idea is that the camera bump is now sort of a camera, a sensor square,

00:55:04   let's call it that. The camera bump now a sensor square. Also, at one point, the consensus was that

00:55:11   the XS Max equivalent would get the third camera, but that the XS wouldn't. And that's not the case

00:55:20   in this report. This report says they will both get it. - That's when you start looking at like,

00:55:25   okay, so in the past, we've also heard that this third camera might be used for better AR room

00:55:31   sensing, right? So what if somehow the Max phone has a different type of sensor that can allow that

00:55:40   as well, right? Like that's where it's kind of, there's been a lot of backwards and forwards about

00:55:45   what the cameras are gonna be for compared to what Bloomberg said and what Min-Chi Kuo is saying.

00:55:51   But this is, I think, at least for the back camera system, this feels like the most up to date and

00:55:57   complete version of history that also makes the most sense. I would be really surprised if Apple

00:56:04   does not have a wide angle lens on the next iPhone because all of their competitors are doing it.

00:56:09   - Yeah. - Same as I want a wide angle lens on the selfie camera as well. - For sure.

00:56:15   - So that's all wide angle all the time. But yeah. - So get ready for the sensor square, everybody.

00:56:21   - Yeah, I don't know about that. I really don't, I'm not sure about that.

00:56:24   - It looks kind of like a dye, like you rolled a three. - A three, yeah.

00:56:29   - Or you rolled a five, I don't know. Two of the dots are little and three of them are big.

00:56:34   But yeah, it's, we'll see. - I feel like at this point, maybe it shouldn't be on one of the corners.

00:56:41   I feel like it's getting too big to live on the corner. - I don't know. I mean, it's all in the

00:56:46   execution, right? I'm sure it'll look good, but it is, yeah. This is the case where Apple's got

00:56:51   its beautiful design principles and then it's got to put these ugly sensors somewhere and you

00:56:54   get a notch and you get a sensor square. - Yeah, we'll see, we'll see. But there you go.

00:57:00   And what appeared to just be an article about chips being made. There's a couple of extra

00:57:04   details in there. Always pay close attention. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends

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00:57:46   Luna Display is a complete extension to your Mac. It supports external keyboards, as well as the

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00:59:14   this show and Relay FM. All right, so iPad keyboard reviews. We're going to talk about

00:59:22   the Logitech Slim Folio Pro and the Bridge keyboard for the 2018 iPad Pro.

00:59:29   The Bridge Pro. Is it Bridge Pro? Is that the final name? I feel like I've forgotten.

00:59:32   That's the name of it. Bridge Pro.

00:59:34   That's probably a good idea to name it that way. I hadn't thought of that until now.

00:59:39   That's an easier naming. So Bridge Pro. I have one, Jason.

00:59:43   Oh good. So do I.

00:59:44   I don't have the Logitech Slim Folio because I know I won't like that product. Your review

00:59:50   confirmed that for me. But even when Federico was telling me about it and Federico likes it,

00:59:54   I know it's not for me. I just, I know. But I had assumed that the Bridge would be for me.

01:00:03   It is. And we can talk about in a little bit why. But I will say Bridge, they sent me this

01:00:10   in advance. They sent me one of the kind of like the first production models like they did for you.

01:00:15   I have purchased the 11 inch one myself and that will come at some point. I'm very excited for that

01:00:22   to arrive too because I'm keen to see what that's going to be like. But yeah, they did send me one.

01:00:27   So I just want to set it up front. And again, I think Logitech and Bridge both sent you yours,

01:00:32   right? For review? Yes. Yep.

01:00:33   So I'm keen because you published two reviews. I'm keen to kind of get into a little bit of

01:00:40   comparison between the two of them. And I have a few areas that I would like to get your

01:00:46   feeling on. It's like kind of like a versus like what what and which category does each product

01:00:53   win out. So in your opinion, between the Logitech's Lympholia Pro and the Bridge Pro,

01:00:59   which has the better design? Okay, it's all in the eye of the beholder. I think the Bridge

01:01:05   design is better because the Bridge is made with anodized aluminum. It matches the back of the

01:01:13   iPad Pro. It matches the sides of the iPad Pro. It matches the design of the iPad Pro. So you make a

01:01:20   little sandwich basically where the Bridge is one piece of bread and the iPad Pro is the other piece

01:01:26   of bread. And they're designed similarly and they come together to make this laptop when they're

01:01:30   closed and the metal finish matches. It is, you know, so I like that it matches and I like that

01:01:38   design. The Logitech matches the one of my least things about least favorite things about the iPad

01:01:48   Pro, which is the featureless gray of its cases. It's basically a kind of featureless gray expanse.

01:01:59   The keyboard is gray plastic with a gray plastic surrounding it. It's just gray. And it's a whole

01:02:07   case as well, isn't it? The Logitech one. You can't just, it's not just a keyboard. It's like

01:02:13   a whole thing that you have to put the iPad in. It's a front and back and you have to sort of snap

01:02:19   the, you slide the bottom into this rubberized bottom on the Logitech and then there are two

01:02:25   edges that you kind of have to lift or push and they go over the edges of the iPad. And then the

01:02:30   iPad is kind of being held in that back plate and then there's the keyboard and then you carry it

01:02:36   around like that. So it's not any heavier. It's actually a couple of millimeters lighter than the

01:02:41   Bridge, but it's this wraparound thing that turns your whole iPad into a featureless gray plasticy

01:02:50   device. So I think, I mean, the Bridge Pro is so much more sleek in its design and matching with

01:03:02   the iPad. I think from a design perspective, like from a visual perspective, it is, I think the

01:03:08   Bridge would definitely looks better, but the Smart Folio has additional functionality, right?

01:03:15   So like if you're thinking about it from a design perspective, it's not just about the way that it

01:03:18   looks, but the way that it works. And with it being a full on case, it has stuff that I think

01:03:24   is quite clever about like it can hold the Apple Pencil in place, right? Like the kind of the thing

01:03:28   that goes over to keep the whole case closed. It also can then hold the Apple Pencil, which is like,

01:03:33   okay, that's nice. It's true. It can hold because it's got this magnetic flap that can flap down in

01:03:38   front of your screen, which is annoying. But if you flap it, if you fold it back, it will hold

01:03:43   magnetically open and therefore not get in your way. But yes, you've got, not only can you slide

01:03:47   the pencil in there, so it's super secure, but even if you just put the pencil on the charging

01:03:51   thing and then fold this over when it's closed, it's not going to get brushed off and fall out

01:03:57   in your bag or whatever. That is definitely an advantage. It's got, I would say probably better

01:04:01   protection. Bridge comes with a magnetic back plate, basically, that you just attach and it

01:04:10   makes it look kind of like a weird, some other company's laptop because it's covering the

01:04:14   Sideways Apple logo at that point. But it does give it some back protection for those who are

01:04:18   concerned about that. Yeah, I think it's a nice addition, but that's not for me. Yeah, I've been

01:04:24   using it some, but other times I just don't bother putting it on because I don't care. But sometimes

01:04:30   I do. When I'm taking it out or I'm putting it in the bag, I kind of like the fact that there's a

01:04:34   little extra layer and it's magnetic, so it's just not that big a deal. But yeah, the Logitech has

01:04:38   more stuff going on because it's got that whole back shell. And the other kind of like design

01:04:44   feature that it's got is it only is active when it's docked in typing position. So basically

01:04:52   there's a magnet and when it docks in typing position, that's what turns it on. Whereas with

01:04:57   the bridge, you do have to like turn, I mean, if you want to control it, you have to turn it on and

01:05:02   off. It will auto wake and things like that. Yeah, or you have to like, you know, you find yourself

01:05:07   hitting the space bar a couple of times for the keyboard and, you know, for everything to kind of

01:05:11   like connect again. But it seems like the Logitech, it does it itself with quite a clever system,

01:05:17   right? Like it kind of wakes up the Bluetooth, you know, and then it's ready to go. Yeah,

01:05:21   what's funny about it though is that it is, the concept is essentially the same as when the

01:05:27   smart connector was on the side of the iPad. It's essentially they didn't want to change their

01:05:33   concept. So you're basically docking your iPad where the smart connector would attach to the

01:05:39   keyboard, except now that it's just a magnetic latch. So that's them recycling, I think,

01:05:44   their design from previous cases. It's super weird to me. And it leads to a whole bunch of other

01:05:49   design issues. I would argue these are design issues, which is you can't adjust the angle.

01:05:54   There's only the one angle for the screen. Because it's docking in the middle of that plane that the

01:05:59   keyboard sits on, it means that there's a bunch of stuff behind there. You know, that's not how

01:06:04   laptops are shaped. Laptops aren't shaped where there's a flat plane and then somewhere sort of

01:06:08   two-thirds of the way up past the keyboard, there's another angle that comes out of it.

01:06:12   They hinge at the back. And that's not what the Logitech case does, which means it's a little,

01:06:17   I mean, it means it's closer to your eyes and the keyboard, which is nice. But the downside of that

01:06:22   is also that there's this whole extra stuff behind it that is sitting there and it kind of flaps

01:06:27   around and it's not as stable, I think, when you type. Whereas the Brydge keyboard, you can adjust

01:06:33   it to pretty much any angle, like a laptop. And that's the, you know, I think that's a design flaw,

01:06:40   honestly, of the Logitech. Yeah, the angleability of the Brydge is one of my very favorite features

01:06:48   about this in general, right? I like that I can sit with it in laptop position, but I can also have

01:06:55   it basically like completely perpendicular to each other, right? Like it's just like a big flat plane

01:07:00   if I wanted to like lay down and like just have it on my knees, right? And it's like, it's one of the

01:07:06   reasons I love the Brydge in the first place. And it's probably the thing that I found most

01:07:11   frustrating about the Smart Folio, right? It has one effective position. I mean, this, it has two

01:07:17   positions, but they're not that different from each other, really. Like they're still only

01:07:21   pretty much met for desk environments. Right, there's only one good one. Sure, sure. And the

01:07:28   Logitech seems to have that same, you know, that same kind of problem. If that angle works for you

01:07:33   and the keyboard, you know, I think its keyboard is comparable to the Brydge, it might be, I might

01:07:38   like the feel of it slightly better, but they're basically both fine keyboards, better than Apple's

01:07:44   current laptop keyboards. The Brydge one is nice because the, it's got a, you know, it's on the

01:07:50   aluminum shell, whereas the Logitech one, like I said, is just sort of plastic, so it doesn't

01:07:53   look as nice. I do think fundamentally the biggest difference between the two models is that the

01:08:01   Brydge, because it's based on those two clips that go in the corners of the iPad, you basically slide

01:08:07   it in and it's a laptop and slide it back out and it's a tablet again. And Logitech wants you to snap

01:08:13   your iPad in this holding case and make it a laptop, which if you are somebody who primarily

01:08:21   uses your iPad as a laptop, that's better, right? And you can still take off, you know, pull off

01:08:28   those corners and pull it out and use it as a tablet again. But I think if you're using it for

01:08:33   extended periods of time in laptop configuration, that's not a big issue. For me, that's a deal

01:08:39   breaker essentially, because I never want to commit to using my tablet as a laptop for that

01:08:46   length of time. I always, even with the Brydge keyboard, like when I'm writing, if I go in the

01:08:51   backyard to write an article, I will slide the iPad into the Brydge keyboard, go out back,

01:08:56   write the article, come back in, pull it right back out. I'm done. Like that, I only want it for that

01:09:00   instance. And that's the great thing about that Brydge keyboard is it's a laptop in seconds,

01:09:05   and then it's a tablet again in seconds. And Logitech wants you to commit to being in laptop

01:09:10   configuration for longer. And that just doesn't, that ultimately that doesn't work for me. And I

01:09:15   get that other people like Federico might feel different about that. I love that USB-C exists.

01:09:23   This is like one of the great reasons for USB-C. I now don't need two different cables if I need to

01:09:28   charge my keyboard, right? Because these are all Bluetooth now. The smart connector is probably

01:09:33   dead for third parties at this point. But I love that they can both charge with the same cable,

01:09:39   right? I think that's fantastic. I really love that. Got to do that, right? So it's good that

01:09:43   the USB-C, they both charge. Battery life is long on these things. People often who haven't used them

01:09:49   ask me about the what's the battery life. You know, if you use the backlighting, the battery

01:09:53   life is going to be less and I very rarely use the backlighting. For me, it's basically endless

01:09:58   battery life because I occasionally think to myself, I should probably charge that keyboard.

01:10:03   And I never run out of battery. They last a long time. Especially if you turn it off,

01:10:08   because turning it on, it's so quick. Like you don't wait really. Like you just press it,

01:10:14   the button goes green and you're ready to go again. Like turning it off if you're not going

01:10:18   to like at the end of the day or whatever is actually not that much of an issue. And I also

01:10:23   find especially, and this is probably why you see this, if you're a person that doesn't always use

01:10:28   your iPad in laptop mode, you will find yourself turning the keyboard off anyway, because then if

01:10:33   the keyboard is in another room, then it's connected and you have to like press and hold

01:10:38   that little downward chevron button to get the keyboard. So you will find yourself turning it off.

01:10:43   It does like an auto sleep, but if it got jostled or bumped or what happens to me often is that I

01:10:47   take it out of the thing and then I walk away and I forgot to turn it off. And because I jostled it,

01:10:53   it has auto awoken and then I start to type something and no keyboard slides up and I think,

01:10:58   oh, and then I have to go turn it off. And that's an advantage of Logitech, right? Is that doesn't

01:11:02   happen because if it's not in the case attached magnetically, it's off, which is, that is an

01:11:09   advantage, but for me it's not enough, but it is a nice feature. I think, you know, people always ask

01:11:14   us to try and give them an opinion between these things. And I think you've already nailed the main

01:11:20   difference, right? Like you can look at these and work out which one do you like the design of more,

01:11:24   which one do you think might have additional functionality that you like. But the key thing

01:11:29   here really between these two products is do you see yourself in a situation where you will want to

01:11:36   not have the iPad in this keyboard frequently? And I think the answer is if you are that person

01:11:44   and you will want to use your iPad as the tablet as well, the bridge is probably the one between

01:11:48   the two of them because the Logitech device is a little bit more tricky to remove from its case.

01:11:53   - Right. But if you're not mode switching that often, if you're like, I put my iPad in a keyboard

01:11:59   case during the day and then at the end of the day I take it out, then the Logitech is fine for that.

01:12:05   I would argue the bridge is fine for that too, but the Logitech is made for that kind of scenario,

01:12:10   but I don't work that way. And so for me, you know, I don't see a lot of benefit plus it's,

01:12:18   I mean, honestly, if it was just as easy to get in and out of the Logitech cases as the bridge,

01:12:22   I would still prefer the bridge because I think the aluminum feel is better and I think having

01:12:31   it pivot like a laptop at the very back instead of being in the middle is better and it's more stable.

01:12:36   You know, it's got a lot of other things going for it, but that for me is like a key differentiator

01:12:44   between the two products. It's just like their approaches to how you get the iPad in and out

01:12:48   of the case are completely different. - But there is a fly in the ointment

01:12:53   this time around, which I think there wasn't last time with the iPad Pro is that the SmartFolio

01:13:01   is probably more of a viable contender here than we had maybe originally given Apple credit for.

01:13:09   - Yes, I think I mentioned this in my review, but the truth is having used the SmartFolio for

01:13:19   six months, it's good. I like it way better than I like the old smart keyboard.

01:13:24   - It is a much, much, much, much better product. - Partially just because I can leave it on. The

01:13:29   old one where it was like thicker halfway through, I hated it so much. Plus the iPad, the big iPad

01:13:35   got smaller, which means the keyboard cover got smaller, so it got less bulky. But you put those

01:13:39   two things together and it is the Smart keyboard folio is a much better product than its predecessor.

01:13:45   I like it. I can work on it. I prefer the bridge, but, and the bridge is cheaper, by the way,

01:13:52   both of these keyboards, the Logitech is even cheaper. The bridge is cheaper than Apple's

01:13:55   keyboard. - I would say that makes it harder

01:13:57   to justify the SmartFolio. - Well, the SmartFolio, it's really like,

01:14:02   do you want to carry something that's much lighter than these other two things? Have a keyboard

01:14:06   available, but not have the keyboard out. Like the Smart keyboard folio is going to give you your

01:14:11   thinnest lightest option where you can always have a keyboard with you without having to carry

01:14:15   something that doubles the weight of your iPad. - And you do never, ever, ever have to think about

01:14:20   charging it. - Right. Exactly. Because it's just using the Smart connector. So there, I think there

01:14:25   are a lot of advantages of the SmartFolio that were not there on the last generation. I think,

01:14:30   I feel like it's a better product and therefore is more competitive and that for some users and some

01:14:35   use cases, it's the best option here. For me, it's, I mean, I wouldn't say it's close for me.

01:14:45   It gives me a little bit of pause because I've learned because it's taken the bridge six months

01:14:49   to get this keyboard out. I've spent that time with a Smart keyboard folio and I've come to

01:14:52   appreciate it. It's not perfect. There are a lot of things I don't like about it, but it's pretty

01:14:57   good. And it's pretty easy to carry it around with you. And that makes the case for the bridge a

01:15:03   little bit harder. In the end, I like really feeling like it's a laptop and using the Smart

01:15:08   keyboard folio on my lap out in like the backyard or whatever is not a great experience. I feel like

01:15:14   even on a plane using the bridge is a better experience than using the Smart keyboard folio

01:15:18   because it puts the iPad further back. But you know, it's a much closer thing than it was before.

01:15:28   Oh, also no function keys on the Smart keyboard folio, which means you can't use a key to do

01:15:34   brightness and volume and media controls and all of those things too. And that's a down.

01:15:39   So that's a negative on the Smart keyboard folio. Plus it's more expensive than these.

01:15:43   Obviously it's harder to make a super thin, delicate piece of keyboard cover than it is to

01:15:50   make a big slab of aluminum with a traditional keyboard in it because the Apple case actually

01:15:55   costs more than these other things do. But I think it's a close one. I think for some people,

01:15:59   the Smart keyboard folio is the right choice. You mentioned about the iPad being far away from you

01:16:05   and that being nicer. It was funny. I was talking to Federico about the bridge and he is more keen

01:16:11   on the the Logitech one right now because the iPad is closer to him. Like he wants the iPad closer.

01:16:16   I am in the camp of wanting when I'm in this configuration what bridge has, which is that

01:16:21   there is a wrist rest, like a palm rest, right? Because that feels more natural to me having come

01:16:27   from laptops. From laptops it feels like a laptop, feels like a MacBook. Yeah and I like that feeling.

01:16:32   That actually works for me. I'm perfectly happy with the iPad being the distance that it is away.

01:16:37   But that palm rest is missing a trackpad. Yeah so this is so bad. This to me is one of the great

01:16:44   mysteries of where we are right now and when people say "should I buy the bridge keyboard?"

01:16:47   It's like it's my favorite, still my favorite, although the Smart keyboard folio is good.

01:16:52   Logitech one is fine if you are of a particular kind of user case. But hanging over all of this

01:17:00   is Federico saying that iOS 13 is going to have an accessibility feature that you'll be able to

01:17:08   turn on and then you'll be able to use a Bluetooth pointing device. And bridge already makes

01:17:17   this case, you know, a version of this case for the Microsoft Surface. And there's a trackpad in

01:17:24   that, you know, palm rest space. There's a trackpad there, a Bluetooth trackpad, because

01:17:30   Microsoft Surface can have a traditional pointing device. And I think to myself, well this is great,

01:17:35   but the moment that I can do a pointing device on my iPad I don't want this anymore. I want the one

01:17:42   with the trackpad. There's nothing to be done about it and it's not going to ship until the fall and

01:17:46   a lot of people aren't going to see the need for a trackpad on iOS. But until we really know

01:17:51   what the deal is and how it works and all of that, it's just sort of out there. But I feel like

01:17:56   that's the next phase here, right? The next phase of this is that I'm going to want that model.

01:18:02   Now, the funny thing is assuming that Apple isn't going to change the industrial design of the iPad

01:18:05   Pro for a while now because they just did it, I think bridge is going to be able to iterate on

01:18:10   this design a lot faster because they've made the design now. It took them six months to do a

01:18:15   completely new industrial design, but now they've got it. So assuming that the design of these

01:18:23   things doesn't change over the next year or two, hopefully they'll be able to turn this stuff

01:18:27   around faster. I will be interested to see what they do. They clearly have the capability to build

01:18:33   that with the trackpad in it. And what will they do? Will they want to do that? How many people are

01:18:39   going to want to turn that on? I don't know. I know I want it. Yeah, me too. But we'll say,

01:18:43   can I give you, Jason, my mini review of the 12.9 bridge? Yes, please. What have we not

01:18:50   talked about that you would like to talk about? We have, but I just want to run through. Oh, okay.

01:18:55   I really missed this form factor like a lot. Yeah, I missed it a lot the last six months,

01:18:59   for sure. And I didn't realize how much I missed it until it was back again.

01:19:03   This is the true laptop form factor that I'm looking for with the iPad in times when I want

01:19:09   that. There has been a big change for me since I used the original bridge, which is I now use my

01:19:15   iPad in a stand a lot more, right? Because that is more ergonomically friendly for me.

01:19:21   But the bridge now is even better for this because now I don't need two keyboards anymore.

01:19:27   Right, you can put it in the stand and then put the bridge just down on the flat typing surface.

01:19:34   What I've been doing is the smart keyboard got wrapped around, it got put in the clear

01:19:38   lookstand that I use and then I add a magic keyboard. But now I don't need to do that

01:19:42   because I just use the bridge keyboard. It's like that's one of the big advantages of Bluetooth.

01:19:47   It's one keyboard now. And I still benefit from all of the things that that has. I mean,

01:19:52   I have all of the function keys and stuff. So it's great. Plus, I like the keyboard a lot.

01:19:56   It felt super different to me than I remembered. There is a texture on the keys now, which

01:20:03   is different. But I feel like I had to maybe just reacquaint myself to the travel of this keyboard

01:20:09   because Bridge Say is exactly the same. Now I would tell them it's not, but they have said it is.

01:20:15   So I believe them. I think what happened is they did a second generation version of their last

01:20:21   keyboard and that changed the travel and the keyboard type. And then they did a change this

01:20:27   time where they changed the finish on the surface of the keys. So it feels a little more like

01:20:31   textured and a little less smooth. It's got a matte finish to it. Which I actually do like.

01:20:35   I don't know if I necessarily prefer one or the other, but I have no problem with that texture.

01:20:39   I think I preferred the old finish. So it's a two-step thing. It's not the same keyboard as

01:20:45   it was two generations ago. They've made these two different changes, but the travel apparently

01:20:49   didn't change between the last and this. It feels more like a magic keyboard to me than anything.

01:20:53   It feels kind of like a magic keyboard. Yeah, it's close. It's definitely close to that, right?

01:20:58   It does look so much nicer. They did a great job of matching the color.

01:21:01   I have the space gray. And just in general, everything just looks tidier than it did before.

01:21:07   The lines are all so good, right? From an industrial design standpoint, it really

01:21:12   matches the iPad. It looks so much more like a laptop than it did before.

01:21:17   Yeah. And it looks like a laptop that doesn't exist, which I find fascinating because the old

01:21:21   one was basically the bottom of a MacBook Air. That's how they designed it. They said, "What

01:21:26   is this going to look like?" I mean, they said, "Let's make it look like the bottom of a MacBook

01:21:29   Air." This doesn't, right? Because it's got the sides and stuff. It really is sort of their

01:21:36   vision of what the iPad Pro design language would look like in a laptop that doesn't exist. And I

01:21:43   think that's kind of fascinating. I love the opening and closing.

01:21:46   Locks and unlocks the iPad. Or like, yeah, wakes the screen. It's just a nice touch, right?

01:21:52   Thank you, Bridge, for thinking about putting the magnet in the right place, right? I just

01:21:57   like stuff like that. I also, so I mean, I've 100% I'm in on this, right? Like I gave it a couple of

01:22:04   days. Like, "Oh, well, I want to go back to the smartphone." No, this is what I want to use on my

01:22:09   home iPad. The jury's still out on the 11 inch, right? Like I don't know how I'm going to feel

01:22:14   about that yet. I feel like it will be a really good work and travel combination, but am I going

01:22:18   to like the additional thickness and weight? Because it definitely adds weight, right? Like,

01:22:22   it's a little bit heavier than just the iPad on its own. And it is heavier than with the SmartFolio,

01:22:28   but it feels bigger, right? Like, so I'm intrigued to see what the 11 inch is going to be like.

01:22:33   But for my home setup, right, the 12.9, this is perfect for this now. Like, I'm super happy.

01:22:38   But I now, having just using the iPad without the SmartFolio one, I'm falling in love with the

01:22:47   ProK factor again, because I'd forgotten how thin and incredible this iPad feels. But now I'm using

01:22:53   it more without the SmartFolio on it. So that's also really nice too. I'm using my iPad mostly

01:23:00   using the, I have a, the regular cover, regular case for it, in the non-keyboard version. And that's

01:23:08   really nice, because it's much lighter than the one with the keyboard. But I've also been using

01:23:13   the ProK, and that's even nicer. So I'm happy to go with no case like it doesn't bother me too much.

01:23:17   I have AppleCare after I destroyed my last one. Like, I'm good to go. But I'm really, I'm actually

01:23:23   really happy. I was wondering, right, like leading up to the bridge, like, I like the SmartFolio,

01:23:30   right? Like, it's like, this is great. This is like, this is much better than the Smart keyboard.

01:23:36   But no, they did it again. I'm all in. Like, I'm all in. I think if, for me, if you like the original,

01:23:42   see how you wouldn't like this one too. You know, I think this is a really great product. It's

01:23:48   better than the last one, in my opinion. I'm very, very happy with it. I'll follow up on the 11 as

01:23:53   well whenever that comes in. Right. Because that's, that's complete, you know, because we both really

01:23:58   like the 10.5 one, but it came too late for us both, right? Right. So I'm really keen to see what

01:24:04   it will be like to use the 11. Like, if it's going to change how I travel with my work, my travel

01:24:10   iPad, right, which that one is. So, right. And also the 10.5 now works with the new iPad Air. So for

01:24:15   people who are not going to get an iPad Pro, but are going to get an iPad Air, that bridge 10.5 that

01:24:20   they designed for the 10.5 Pro works with the Air and it's great. Like, it's the, it's that previous

01:24:27   generation keyboard and we felt really bad when they made it and it's like, it's going to be

01:24:31   discontinued. But look, that size and shape remained. Yeah. Today's episode is also brought

01:24:38   to you by our friends over at Pingdom. While you've been listening to the show, how would you

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01:26:03   to find out more and sign up for that free trial. Thanks to Pingdom for their continued support of

01:26:08   this show and Relay FM. Now it's time for some #AskUpgrade questions. Thank you, Jason. The first

01:26:18   one comes from Florian. Florian says, I know this is extremely unlikely, but do you think there is

01:26:23   any possibility of Apple announcing any new iPhone version, maybe like the red version of the phone

01:26:29   at WWDC? I'm planning to buy a new iPhone at the end of May. My feeling is they wouldn't announce

01:26:37   it probably at WWDC. They could like in a press release or whatever. They could do it anytime, but

01:26:42   all it would be is, yeah, would be like a color variant or something like that. I don't think

01:26:47   anybody's expecting anything else until the fall. Yeah. I, you know, Florian, if you're ready to go

01:26:52   and you want to get a phone now and you don't want to wait until the fall, you can't wait until the

01:26:56   fall. Just get one now. Don't worry about it. Like it's going to be fine. I would love for there to

01:27:00   be rumors out there about a new low cost iPhone, like replacing the SE that would come out sometime

01:27:04   soon, but there have been zero. Absolutely nothing. So I suspect it does not exist. There was some

01:27:10   rumors for a while, but they've all stopped. So I'm not so sure about that. Right. Gareth says,

01:27:16   follow up from the iPad charging question last week. Do you charge your AirPods case regularly

01:27:22   or just when it's low with my usage pattern, it lasts long enough that I always find myself taken

01:27:27   by surprise when it finally runs out. For me, it's exactly what I said about the keyboards,

01:27:32   which is I think about it and think, oh, I've used my iPad or my AirPods a bit. I maybe should charge

01:27:38   them. I very rarely get to the situation where the case is out. I do sometimes get to the case where

01:27:44   the, you know, the AirPods are out, but the case is very rarely out. And now that I've got that

01:27:48   new case, what I often will do is I'll use them for, to take a walk or, or whatever, or work in

01:27:54   the backyard. And, uh, this little thing will go off my brain and say, Hey, you haven't charged

01:27:58   those in a while. And I, um, during the day my wife is at work, one of our charging pads is open

01:28:04   and I'll just set it on there for a while. And so for me, it really is like, I just have,

01:28:10   rather than having a cycle for it, I just remind myself every now and then, oh, you should probably

01:28:17   top up the AirPods case. And that has worked a hundred percent of the time. So it is just

01:28:22   worth noting in this hashtag segment that iOS 12.3 is out. Um, so there's some breaking news

01:28:29   release lasers. I wanted to just mention it because it includes the Apple TV app and like

01:28:34   that's launching on TVs today as well. Like this is going to pop up on the Samsung TVs today. So

01:28:39   it's just worth noting because it also brings with it the channels and all of that kind of stuff.

01:28:44   Right. So we'll have to kind of follow up on that. We didn't do any upstream. Is this upstream,

01:28:49   Myke? Did upstream happen in the middle of Ask Upgrade? Sure. Um, anyway, that's, that's weird.

01:28:55   So it's, uh, yeah, we'll check it out and, and find out. I'm looking forward to seeing how that

01:28:59   goes. I wonder, I have a Roku TV, so I, I keep wondering when the, when I'm going to get the,

01:29:04   you know, when that, that Roku TV update happens, probably not until Apple's TV service launches,

01:29:10   I would, I would guess. Yeah. Samsung, Samsung got an exclusivity period clearly, I think,

01:29:14   you know, for being Samsung. Uh, our next question comes from Ace. Do you think that the new Mac,

01:29:21   Oh, I didn't answer about the AirPods did I? Uh, basically the same as you. I just sometimes like,

01:29:26   I'm sitting on my desk and I'm like, Oh, I'll just plug that in. Cause I don't really have

01:29:30   any wireless charging stuff around me. So, but I have a lightning cable just on my desk all the

01:29:35   time. So I just plugged my AirPods case in, uh, like, you know, my AirPods run out. They actually

01:29:41   AirPods themselves and I just charged them up. That happens every now and then, but I've never,

01:29:45   ever, ever had the case die on me ever on any of my AirPods. Cause I just, I don't charge it

01:29:51   like mindfully. It's very mindless. It's like, Oh, plug it in. Come sit in there. I might as well

01:29:56   just plug it in. So Ace's question was, do you think that a new Mac Pro could have two processors,

01:30:01   both ARM and Intel to help start the transition? That would sure be fun though. Right? Wouldn't

01:30:07   that be fun? I like this idea. It will cause it'll have presumably a T2 or a T3 or whatever.

01:30:13   Sure. But let's imagine it is the, uh, Jason Snell A11M or A13M. I think that would be a

01:30:19   fascinating thing, but it sounds very much like not a great, like that would be a weird,

01:30:24   like developer transition product. I don't know. Uh, I, uh, no, I'll say no. I think it's too,

01:30:35   I think it's too complex and you can build, you can build all these apps to run on Intel

01:30:41   in the simulator already. That's how it works. I don't see what you get really from having an

01:30:48   ARM processor in there as well. If you've got the Intel processor in there, I just, I, I'm kind of

01:30:54   not seeing it. I feel like the Mac Pro is a great system to just have a super powerful Intel

01:30:59   processors and, and, uh, just do your work on those while the ARM kind of creeps across the line from

01:31:04   the laptops. I agree. It's incredibly unlikely, but I just liked the thought of it anyway. Um,

01:31:08   it, it, it, this isn't the right product to, to start the transition with. It's a laptop is where

01:31:15   it probably should be first, but I still just like the idea of it. Uh, DC fan says, how does one

01:31:20   stick arise their laptop more specifically? How do you go about actually putting them on? Is there a

01:31:24   system? Do you have a particular ritual? Um, I I've gotten over wanting to defile my perfect computer,

01:31:30   but I need some advice. All right. So I want to, this is for me mostly. I know Jason, you have,

01:31:35   uh, you put the little rainbow stickers on your laptops, which are beautiful. You find those on

01:31:40   Etsy and places like that. Can't you, you get a little Apple rainbow logo, but I am known for

01:31:44   stick arising my products. Um, so first off I will say, cause everybody asks me, Myke, where do you

01:31:49   buy your stickers? I don't have a place anymore. I used to use sticker mules marketplace because you

01:31:55   could just buy stickers there with various designs, but they closed that down. Um, so now these days

01:32:01   I find stickers in places, right? So like I might go to some kind of store and I buy some stickers

01:32:07   cause I think they look cool or like, um, like, you know, maybe I follow some artists on Instagram

01:32:12   and I buy their stickers that they're selling directly or I just make them myself. And this

01:32:16   isn't something I necessarily recommend for everyone, but I have more than enough opportunities

01:32:21   in my life to give out stickers to people. So I'll make some designs, you know, when we're coming up

01:32:25   to WWDC or whatever and I'll just get them out. So, um, I like that we should make some, uh,

01:32:30   maybe make some different upgrades stickers. We'll see. We might have some stuff for WWDC, but, um,

01:32:36   for actually putting them on, really, I just go with how it feels. One thing I don't do,

01:32:42   and I really recommend people do not do is put all of their stickers facing one orientation.

01:32:47   You've got to mix it up. You've got to really like, so it looks good from every angle. I think

01:32:51   that's the right way to do it. Um, that's the way that I like it. I think it looks better that way.

01:32:55   I am also overlap. You got to overlap them as well. I feel like you've really got to go for it.

01:33:00   Um, so, so I'm excited because all of my stickers for my iPad pro are on my smart folio. So now

01:33:08   I have a blank canvas, so I'm going to be re-stickering. So I'm excited about that.

01:33:14   Um, I also don't, you know, I use my, like, like I just use the stickers, right? Like,

01:33:18   even though there are stickers on my smart folio, I only had them once, but like whatever,

01:33:23   like they live there now. And now I have, I can get all new stickers. I'm always collecting

01:33:27   stickers. I see them out. I buy them. Um, it's just a thing. And Jeff wants to know finally today,

01:33:33   how are you liking a high telephone on your AirPods? I remember how much you disliked

01:33:38   tapping. So I don't like the tapping, uh, to activate Siri. Um, do you, you know, how do you

01:33:45   like it? Do you use a using a high telephone on your AirPods? I haven't used it once. Okay. I've

01:33:51   used it a few times. I've had it go off by accident a few times. I'm happy that it's there. Um, but

01:33:57   I'm not finding myself using it all the time because I'm still having the problem sometimes

01:34:02   where I have them in my ears, but I'm not playing anything. So I get the command and then my home

01:34:07   pod goes off and it's like, you're not doing what I want. Like this isn't what I want. So

01:34:12   anyhow, if you'd like to send in a question to help us close out the show, you can always send

01:34:19   in a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade. And they go into a document for us to pull from.

01:34:25   If you'd like to find our show notes for this week's episode, you can go to relay.fm/upgrade/245.

01:34:28   You can find Jason online. He is @JSNEL, J S N E double L on Twitter. Um, and you can go to

01:34:38   sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com for more of Jason's work. I am I Myke, I M Y K E. You can

01:34:45   follow me online. And this show is a part of many shows here at relay FM. Go to relay.fm/shows.

01:34:51   You can find upgrade and many other wonderful related programs. Thanks once more to our sponsors

01:34:56   this week, Luna display, Pingdom and Express VPN, and we'll be back next week. Until then

01:35:02   say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:35:05   Oh.