0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, Episode 188. Today's show is brought to you by Linode,
0:00:14Pingdom and Slack. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.
0:00:19Hello Myke Hurley, how are you?
0:00:21I am very well. We have a #SnellTalk question this week from listen to Brian. Brian wants to know,
0:00:27So Jason, why do you keep your iPhone in the kitchen, as you mentioned you leave it there
0:00:32for Qi charging, when you sleep in the bedroom?
0:00:35Why is your iPhone not in the bedroom with you?
0:00:38I could turn this around and say why would I bring my phone into the bedroom?
0:00:44So many reasons, so many reasons.
0:00:46Alarms.
0:00:47No.
0:00:48Emergency telephone calls.
0:00:49There are so many reasons.
0:00:51Alarms.
0:00:52I use my Apple Watch when I have an alarm set.
0:00:56I don't use the phone because I find the Apple Watch a better alarm device.
0:01:03Late night phone calls, emergency phone calls, well, that is a worldview that I'm going to
0:01:07leave my phone right next to my ear in case somebody who actually is supposed to call.
0:01:13I've got "do not disturb" on, quite frankly, so that emergency phone call is not making
0:01:17it through.
0:01:18Right, but it's like emergency phone calls from a family member and you have the "do
0:01:22not disturb" thing set in such a way, right, that it's like multiple calls within a certain
0:01:26period of time. Well, okay, okay, so my house is not that big. It's all on one level. Okay.
0:01:33You've been in my, you've been in my house. My house is not that big. I can hear my phone.
0:01:37If something breaks through "do not disturb," I can hear it just fine from where I, where
0:01:43I am. It's never happened. And I have my iPad that I keep by the side of my bed. So that's
0:01:51- That's what you do, you're like late night tweeting,
0:01:54you're using the iPad.
0:01:55- It's all on the iPad.
0:01:56Late night, early in the morning, whatever.
0:01:57Yeah, it's on the iPad.
0:01:58So I don't need an iPhone there too.
0:01:59- So it's not that you are like,
0:02:01you are not one of these people who is adverse
0:02:03to having devices in the bedroom,
0:02:05you just have a different device in the bedroom, right?
0:02:07- Yeah, the phone, I have no need of the phone
0:02:10in the bedroom at night,
0:02:13because the iPad is my information source there
0:02:16and in the morning.
0:02:17So the phone, I have no need for that.
0:02:20And I get why people do it and why there are those,
0:02:23like this originates with that, like having that charger
0:02:26that charges your Apple Watch and your phone together.
0:02:28I'm like, nope, not interested.
0:02:31And I would say also my wife is the same way.
0:02:35We have his and hers Qi chargers, aw, out in the front.
0:02:40And then we have iPads in the back
0:02:43and that's what we use.
0:02:45So it works for me.
0:02:46I don't see any real value.
0:02:49I think also technically if the phone rang,
0:02:52my phone, my iPad would ring too.
0:02:54- Wouldn't your watch ring?
0:02:55- It might.
0:02:56My admission here is that I don't actually have,
0:03:00I have the sound turned off on all of my devices basically.
0:03:04So I never hear them chime when they do chime.
0:03:08I feel the Apple Watch buzz when I'm wearing it.
0:03:11And that's about it.
0:03:12I don't have any sounds on almost ever.
0:03:16I have a lot of really cute ringtones
0:03:18and you never hear them because I just never have them on.
0:03:22- So I am like phone, do not disturb 24/7 a day, right?
0:03:26Including my iPads, all my devices are on do not disturb
0:03:29because the notifications come through to my Apple Watch.
0:03:31But I have it set up that if something breaks through
0:03:34do not disturb, it will make the phone ring audibly.
0:03:39- Yeah, I think that's a setting and that's fine.
0:03:42- That's how I have mine set up.
0:03:43- But I don't, that's yeah.
0:03:47So there you go, that's why.
0:03:48I expect that Brian asked this question
0:03:51thinking that you might be a like, you know,
0:03:53no devices in the bedroom type person.
0:03:56Which I'm pleased, I mean,
0:03:57'cause I don't really subscribe to it.
0:03:59I think it's fine to have these things in the bedroom.
0:04:01So I was pleased to hear that, you know,
0:04:02your phone isn't there
0:04:03'cause you have another device for it.
0:04:05So I think that that is, that's good.
0:04:06- Also the phone just sort of lives out.
0:04:08It would require me to take the phone
0:04:10from where it spends most of its time,
0:04:12which is on the counter in the kitchen.
0:04:14And at the end of the night say,
0:04:15"All right, little phone, I'm gonna talk to you
0:04:17- You know, you take yourself to the room, right?
0:04:21- Yeah, but the phone, like the phone just is laying,
0:04:23unless it's in my pocket,
0:04:24the phone is laying on that Qi charger.
0:04:27And before that it was laying on that counter
0:04:28with a plug in it.
0:04:30It doesn't need to be relocated at the end of the night.
0:04:32Whereas the iPad does float around the house with me.
0:04:36And so it's just, it's all of a kind, right?
0:04:38Like this is the role that the iPhone plays in my life,
0:04:43which is it's only really with me
0:04:45when I'm going somewhere or I need it for some reason.
0:04:50Otherwise it's generally on its charger.
0:04:52And the iPad is the device that I use
0:04:55when I'm in the house roaming around.
0:04:57The phone is not generally.
0:04:59So it's all part of that same kind of approach
0:05:03to those devices that one of them,
0:05:05the iPad's role is expansive
0:05:07and the iPhone's role is really limited in the house.
0:05:10- If you would like to suggest a question
0:05:12for us to open the show,
0:05:13just send out a tweet into the into the world into the ether with the hashtag
0:05:17SnellTalk and it may be picked for a future episode. Thank you to Brian for
0:05:21the submission. iOS 11.4 was during last week's episode the beta one was
0:05:28released and we were talking in the episode about the fact that messages in
0:05:33the cloud and a home pod stereo support of Airplay 2 was missing from 11.3
0:05:38according to 9to5Mac the 11.4 beta does again include messages in the
0:05:43cloud and HomePod stereo support, but there is a catch. To use HomePod stereo support,
0:05:49you have to be able to update to beta firmware on your HomePod, which is not available right
0:05:54now. So no one can test it, but it is referenced in the iOS release. So it's there.
0:06:02Interesting.
0:06:03But yeah.
0:06:04I guess unless you need to test HomePod things and are granted access to the HomePod beta
0:06:10firmware you don't get to test. I would love that. I would love if a future beta, that
0:06:14would be enough for me to update to a beta, is if the beta included or they released beta
0:06:20firmware so that we could try out the AirPlay 2 and stereo support. That would be really
0:06:25fun.
0:06:26But nothing yet, but there you go. It's back in again. Eleven point four. All these features
0:06:31are back in again. Maybe we'll see them soon.
0:06:34The testing continues.
0:06:37large scale testing on this. Today, April 9th, Apple released a press release in the
0:06:42morning. It was rumored last night because of a leak from Virgin Mobile that Apple is
0:06:49introducing an iPhone 8 and 8 Plus product red special edition. It goes on sale tomorrow
0:06:57I believe and is available like you can pre-order and will be and is available on Friday April
0:07:0413th to purchase.
0:07:08You may remember this from I think this was last year with the seven that you could get
0:07:13a product read version of the phone had a white face and a red back and some of the
0:07:18proceeds of the sales go to to help fight the AIDS right into to fund AIDS research
0:07:26and stuff like that. But this time, what everybody wanted last time, or what loads of people
0:07:30wanted last time has been given to us this time. The phone now has a black front and
0:07:35a red back. I personally like the look of that a lot more. It was interesting to me
0:07:41that this is just the 8 and the 8 Plus. I was expecting, honestly, the X to have this.
0:07:47I think that would be really cool looking. Who knows, maybe some point in the future.
0:07:51the X back is stainless, right? I don't think they can do a red stainless.
0:07:56No, the back isn't stainless. The sides are stainless.
0:07:59Oh, you're right. The sides are stainless. The back is not.
0:08:02The back is just colored glass. It's black or white.
0:08:05They must have looked and said, "No, this doesn't." Then again, they did that red-white
0:08:08phone which is not pretty. It's the – I find it funny that so many people are like,
0:08:17finally they did the black front and not the white front with the red because they didn't
0:08:21like that. It's like this is such a weird product because it comes out midstream which
0:08:25means anybody who's really excited about the iPhone 8 already bought it.
0:08:28Geoff - Yeah. I don't know who buys this but some people will.
0:08:31Tim - They will sell some. It looks great. I wish they would just release them at the
0:08:34time because I think that would make they would sell a lot of them that way. I do not
0:08:40have strong opinions about the design of either of those models but I will say this which
0:08:44is Blackfront. I'm just a big fan of the Blackfront in general. It should be, you know, that's
0:08:51the one to get, the Blackfront. So I'm glad that this one also has the Blackfront now.
0:08:55You know, no iPhone X though, although they did have a case. I guess there's a red leather
0:08:59folio case now for the X. Still no sign of AirPower. I was expecting
0:09:05AirPower today when this seemed like there was going to be another press release. Who
0:09:09knows maybe maybe it will come with 11.4 who knows right everything everything
0:09:14comes with the next version of iOS maybe AirPower will get that then but still no
0:09:19sign Jason you had for review and you posted a review on six colors of the
0:09:252018 iPad the new regular 9.7 inch iPad with Apple pencil support so that is
0:09:33available and you made an interesting comparison with this iPad and automobiles. Would you
0:09:40like to explain a little bit about that? What your kind of takeaway is of the iPad?
0:09:47I'm surprised I have not heard from more people who are really into cars about how I dared
0:09:51to use an automobile metaphor for the iPad.
0:09:56Maybe you just nailed it, right? Like everyone's like, "Oh yeah, he totally got it."
0:10:01- Well, so I have a Honda Civic
0:10:04and before I had the Honda Civic,
0:10:05I had a different Honda Civic.
0:10:07And that is the Honda's, you know,
0:10:10it's a solid, relatively cheap car.
0:10:15And my point in saying that the iPad is like the Honda Civic
0:10:20is to say, the way I try to frame this story is,
0:10:24how do you talk about this iPad?
0:10:25This iPad is not as good on lots and lots of fronts
0:10:29as the iPad Pro on lots of different fronts.
0:10:34And presumably there will be new iPad Pros
0:10:36at some point in the next few months
0:10:38and that gap will widen even further.
0:10:40But the iPad is almost half the cost of the 10.5 iPad Pro.
0:10:45So I tried to liken it to cars
0:10:52where there are some people who want to spend
0:10:55a lot of money to get the very best car.
0:10:59it has nice features, it's got a lot of amenities, you do it because you want the very best that
0:11:06there is, you do it because you have the money, you do it because you like the lifestyle of
0:11:12being somebody who's got cutting edge technology. I feel like drawing a parallel between that
0:11:18and people who buy luxury cars, or lease luxury cars or whatever, seemed like a fit to me
0:11:24that, and I'm not saying that luxury car people are iPad Pro people, it's like what your priorities
0:11:29is your priority cars, is your priority iPads. iPads are a lot cheaper to have that priority
0:11:33on than cars, let me tell you. And I made the point that like I'm just not, when it
0:11:39comes to cars, I'm not one of those people. When it comes to cars, I look for value and
0:11:43I don't need the cutting edge. And that is what the iPad said to me is, this is a product
0:11:50that is faster than the iPad Pros that were released in 2015 and 2016, the first generation
0:11:56and iPad Pro models. It's faster than those. And it costs a fraction of what they cost.
0:12:05And so what you're doing is you're saving half the price in giving up a couple of years
0:12:09on the cutting edge. And it's not for everybody. And I would wager it's not for a lot of the
0:12:16people who listen to podcasts like this and read websites like mine, because the people
0:12:20who are very enthusiastic about technology, just as I would wager that the people who
0:12:28are reading all of the articles about the highest quality, high test, super expensive
0:12:33cars are probably not driving a 2005 Honda Civic. Although some of them are because the
0:12:41other part of this is just money. You can love them but not have the money to buy them.
0:12:45And so it's where you, whether you have any money at all to spend or whether you have
0:12:50money to spend on some things and you prioritize other things to spend your money on. But either
0:12:55way, it comes back to the fact that this is a really great value as an iPad. It's impressive
0:13:01how powerful it is. It's got the A10 processor in it and that does make it faster than the
0:13:11processors that were in those first generation iPad Pros. The current iPad Pros blow it away,
0:13:14But again, they're twice the price, more or less.
0:13:17So it's a really nice iPad.
0:13:21And if you don't care about, and the review has a litany of things that it doesn't have
0:13:28that are in the iPad Pro, but it's like, you don't care about the quality of the cameras.
0:13:33If you don't care about the wider color gamut and true tone and like...
0:13:39- 120 hertz refresh rate, that kind of stuff.
0:13:41I mean, it's all these things that are really nice features, but if you're looking at the price tag,
0:13:47and then you're looking at the price tag of this thing, and you say, "I don't really need all those
0:13:51features." Yeah, everything with the screen, they're like, luxury nice-to-haves. None of the
0:13:56things that are in the iPad Pro screen that are not in the regular iPad screen actually add anything
0:14:02of real, like, productive value. They're all just like, "Oh, well, this is just much nicer."
0:14:09right? And a lot of that, like even the processors, which is like, well, there isn't really iPad
0:14:15software that you get a ton of advantage out of having the fastest processor. Things just
0:14:22happen quicker. It's just more capable. Yeah, there are, yeah, something I mentioned is that
0:14:27I don't think that there are lots of people who are using iPad apps and waiting because the
0:14:31the processor is just not fast enough.
0:14:35There are examples, and like I was thinking
0:14:39in something like Ferrite, which I use to edit,
0:14:41and I've got plugins turned on to process the audio,
0:14:44and then I export the audio at the end.
0:14:46I would imagine an audio export
0:14:48of a multi-track Ferrite project on the iPad
0:14:51would be a lot slower than on the iPad Pro, is my guess.
0:14:54Might be wrong, I don't know,
0:14:56but my guess is that it would be a lot slower
0:14:58because the processor is a lot slower
0:15:00than on the current iPad Pro. But again, that's an edge case. And if you're somebody who cares
0:15:06about that, you probably know it and you would probably make a different buying decision.
0:15:09If you're doing that level of power, perhaps if you've got the -- that might make you prioritize
0:15:15that more expensive iPad. Although, it'll still work on the iPad. That's the thing.
0:15:19It just would be a little bit slower. But I think it's less of a big deal. And yeah,
0:15:23so you wrap that all in and you end up with a product that is -- it's pretty great. Like,
0:15:27For a price that Apple didn't use to sell iPads at all, let's remember, before last
0:15:31year, it's pretty great, $329 for an iPad that is two years away from being cutting
0:15:40edge but still incredibly capable with a bunch of features.
0:15:44The other Honda Civic thing I mentioned is when I bought my first car I ever bought new
0:15:48was a Honda Civic in 1993.
0:15:52And I had just gotten a job and my wife had just gotten a job and we weren't even married
0:15:56was before we were married, and my car died. And we bought a Honda Civic. And we didn't
0:16:02have a lot of money, so we couldn't buy any of the fancy features they had. The car didn't
0:16:10have a clock, Myke. They're like, "Oh, that'll be another $100 for the clock." And we're
0:16:15like, "$100 for a clock? That's outrageous!" And then, for a stupid little clock, and then
0:16:19we spent the next 15 years driving that car without a clock, thinking, "This is the dumbest
0:16:24thing ever, why did we not pay a hundred dollars for a clock? But there was one
0:16:28feature of the windows. We had to crank the windows, there were no power windows on
0:16:32that car. We just had to use a plastic handle to crank the windows up and down.
0:16:35The one feature we spent on, because we lived in a hot part of the Bay Area, was
0:16:41air conditioning. And I was thinking about that with the Apple Pencil, which
0:16:45is sometimes—and again you don't get to choose your features in the iPad, they
0:16:49are what they are—but the Apple Pencil is like the frill that now comes with
0:16:53with the budget product.
0:16:55And I think it's the right frill to bring down there
0:16:59because there's so much potential for people.
0:17:02Like I gave the iPad to my son with an Apple Pencil
0:17:06for him to try out and he took to it easily
0:17:09and he's never had an iPad with an Apple Pencil.
0:17:12And I think that's a great decision by Apple,
0:17:14not just for education, but in general,
0:17:16to let the Apple Pencil be part of the whole iPad story now,
0:17:20which is, that's the story of car technology too,
0:17:23where all the cool tech starts off in the luxury cars
0:17:26and then eventually it comes down to everywhere.
0:17:28It's hard to find a car that,
0:17:31I'm not sure they make cars anymore
0:17:33where you have to crank the windows up and down, right?
0:17:34Like that may just be over,
0:17:37but there was a time when that was a fancy feature.
0:17:39And then over time, they just, you know, the auto,
0:17:43all cars I think have to have backup cameras now in the US.
0:17:45So now, you know, I've got a car with a backup camera,
0:17:49but that used to be a fancy feature.
0:17:51Eventually some of these smart cruise control
0:17:53and automatic parking and stuff that are luxury things are getting, those are getting pushed
0:17:57down into cars. Anyway, the Apple Pencil is now that. It's like the power windows. The
0:18:02Apple Pencil is just, every iPad from now on is probably going to have Apple Pencil
0:18:05support. It's great. And other things may come. The only bummer, I would say, is it's
0:18:10a bummer that this thing doesn't do smart connector if only because I think that the
0:18:169.7 iPad Pro with that Logitech Create keyboard that uses the smart connector was a really
0:18:21great combo as a compact writing machine and for this thing you're going to need to use
0:18:26a Bluetooth keyboard but there will be cases, there are probably already cases that abound
0:18:32that are Bluetooth based and will let you use it as a little typing machine.
0:18:38So put a link in the show notes to Jason's review if you want to read more but it's a
0:18:42great little machine that iPad. It's a good little computer.
0:18:46Yeah.
0:18:47Alright today's show is brought to you by a new sponsor which I'm very excited about
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0:20:01And having it all happen within its own little app, all within Slack, is so much nicer than
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0:21:27That's good. Sorry, I didn't hear all that ad. I was responding to something in Slack.
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0:21:32It's true. It's nice to have a product you use as a sponsor. It's great. We have
0:21:37some more of those in this episode, which is also great.
0:21:40Apple invited Matthew Panzareno from TechCrunch to take a look at what they're doing to
0:21:45address the pro market. So this was reminiscent of the Roundtable event.
0:21:52Yeah. What if they had a Roundtable with no table and only Matthew Panzareno? That's
0:21:56basically what happened. It's the one year later, there's a, there looks like no Phil
0:22:01Schiller and nobody but Panzer there. But it is the follow-up to the roundtable that
0:22:09we got last year where they said, "We are going to do a Mac Pro after all. It won't
0:22:14happen this year, but it will happen after that." Key point.
0:22:19And now we know, again, not this year, but we'll get to that in a moment because there
0:22:24are a few things that we should set up first. So this is, even though it was interesting,
0:22:30Interesting, right? They only invited one journalist. It's still another indication of
0:22:34Apple believing that it is very important for them to show that they are serious about providing
0:22:41solutions for pro users of their platform. So one thing that they spoke about this time, which has
0:22:48happened in the kind of the intervening time from the last round table to now, is the establishment
0:22:54of the Pro Workflow team. This is nothing to do with the Workflow app. This is Workflow
0:23:02in the sense of the flow of your work. John Turnus, the VP of hardware engineering at
0:23:08Apple, amassed this group of pro users to help him understand what Apple needed to do.
0:23:14So what they did is they started with observing some people, talking to some creative professionals
0:23:19and trying to understand, you know, like in an environment where someone's asking you
0:23:23a bunch of questions, how much information can you get? Apple believed that wasn't
0:23:27enough. Just like asking some people questions in the abstract is not enough because what
0:23:32you need to understand is on a day to day basis, what are people being frustrated about?
0:23:38Because if you're going to go to Apple Park and sitting in a room, you might not remember
0:23:42that like three days ago you were clicking this button over and over and over again and
0:23:46nothing was happening. Right? Like these are the things that you kind of forget about but
0:23:50are really important. So they decided that they would start hiring people to work directly for
0:23:56Apple who are experts in creative fields. So that Apple are focusing on visual effects animators,
0:24:03video editors, 3D animators and music producers. These people now all work for Apple as part of
0:24:10the Pro Workflow team on real projects. They're making videos, they're making music, which I
0:24:15expect Apple using somewhere.
0:24:42Apple have said that this team is helping them shape what the Mac Pro is going to look
0:24:47like. They mentioned modular system again a bunch of times. So that is all but confirmed
0:24:52that the Mac Pro will be modular, whatever modular ends up meaning. And also as well,
0:24:58they did underscore that this team is helping inform the MacBook Pros and iMacs too. This
0:25:03is only about the Mac Pro. Jason, what is your take on the creation of this Pro workflow
0:25:09team.
0:25:10It's kind of weird. I think it's… I appreciate the idea that Apple perhaps responding to
0:25:21what happened with the Trashcan Mac Pro where it realizes that it made some decisions that
0:25:28didn't actually fit what its customers wanted, that it's trying to understand its customers
0:25:32better.
0:25:33They made a bunch of assumptions as to what professionals needed and then a bunch of creative
0:25:37professionals told them, you got this wrong, right?
0:25:40- Yeah, so I appreciate that.
0:25:42I find it weird the idea, and again,
0:25:44I don't know how much of this is that it was
0:25:46a surprising thing and Panzer focused on it
0:25:48because it was surprising,
0:25:50or that they thought it was a cool thing
0:25:52and so they wanted to highlight it.
0:25:53But the idea that they've brought people in on contract
0:25:58to sit in the group with the pro development team
0:26:01and do like their work while they're being observed,
0:26:05I find that strange because those aren't real projects.
0:26:09They're, I mean, they're probably not real projects
0:26:13or if they are, I don't, it just seems very strange
0:26:16that, and not necessarily reflective
0:26:20of what their actual jobs are.
0:26:22Like, wouldn't it be better to just send Apple people
0:26:26in the field to spend weeks watching them,
0:26:30a record producer producing an album
0:26:33on Apple hardware and software in their own space,
0:26:36like a real job and the same for, you know,
0:26:39name the field, visual effects industry, you know,
0:26:42video editing, all of these things.
0:26:44Wouldn't that be more cost-effective than having them be,
0:26:47you know, brought into Apple and working on
0:26:51presumably demo projects?
0:26:53It seems, I mean, I guess there are reasons, right?
0:26:55'Cause otherwise they wouldn't do it,
0:26:57but it just, it strikes me like the moment that you're
0:27:02inside Apple working on real projects,
0:27:05but you're inside Apple,
0:27:06I start to wonder at what point does that become artificial
0:27:10and you're no longer, you know,
0:27:11you're affecting what's happening.
0:27:14At the same time, I think I can understand the idea that
0:27:19if you were working on this stuff and Apple's like,
0:27:22"Well, why did you do that?
0:27:23What about this?
0:27:24Can you go back and show us that?"
0:27:26And you're working on this stuff every day.
0:27:27You're like, "No, I need to do my job."
0:27:30And that might lead to somebody saying,
0:27:32well, what if we pay you to do a project for us
0:27:37that we can stop you at any point and say,
0:27:40well, what about this?
0:27:41Well, what about that?
0:27:42So it's probably not their only data point,
0:27:43but it's something that's new and interesting.
0:27:45The point of it, I think, in terms of messaging
0:27:47was just to communicate to pro users
0:27:49that they're really trying to understand
0:27:52how pros use their stuff
0:27:54and have a direct line of conversation
0:27:56between the pro users who are using the stuff
0:27:59and the people who are building the pro hardware
0:28:01and the pro software for that matter.
0:28:02So I like that because that's showing that,
0:28:06they're really trying to show that they're paying attention
0:28:08and that they care and they wanna learn about this.
0:28:10It just, I think there is probably some missing context here
0:28:14that would have been helpful for me.
0:28:16But I think it's a cool idea and I just,
0:28:19the larger point is, yeah,
0:28:20this is another example of Apple trying to show,
0:28:23it's almost like penance for what they,
0:28:28for not listening to their customers for a while.
0:28:31- So Tom Boger, Senior Director
0:28:35of Mac Hardware Product Marketing had the following to say.
0:28:39We want to be transparent and communicate openly
0:28:43with our pro community.
0:28:44So we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product.
0:28:49It is not something for this year.
0:28:52We know that there's a lot of customers
0:28:54that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro
0:28:57and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro.
0:29:00So they have come out and said, 2019.
0:29:03And I like the thinking behind this,
0:29:05whether like, we know there are people
0:29:07that could probably do with an iMac Pro
0:29:11for the next year and a half,
0:29:13but they're not buying it
0:29:15because they wanna see if the Mac Pro's coming.
0:29:18Well, now you know it's not, right?
0:29:20Like if you were thinking to yourself,
0:29:21oh, I really need to upgrade,
0:29:24but I can't do it just yet
0:29:27because, oh, you know, I believe,
0:29:30I don't wanna spend all this money
0:29:31and then regret it in two months time.
0:29:34- So I think one aspect of this announcement
0:29:37and the first thing that came to mind
0:29:38when I saw this story was,
0:29:41this is Apple saying, no, no, no,
0:29:42you should just go ahead and buy the iMac Pro.
0:29:44- Yeah, which I think is fine.
0:29:47- Don't wait for 2020 or whenever 2019, sorry.
0:29:50They did say it will ship in 2019, the new Mac Pro.
0:29:53But this is Apple saying, it's gonna be a while.
0:29:56don't wait this year for the Mac Pro, just buy the iMac Pro.
0:30:00Just go ahead and do it because it's gonna be a while
0:30:03for this thing.
0:30:04And that's not their only message here,
0:30:06but that's part of the message.
0:30:07That's absolutely part of the message is,
0:30:09here's what we're doing, it's gonna be a while.
0:30:13If you're planning your purchasing decisions
0:30:15and you're trying to hold out for another year, don't do it.
0:30:18- So I think one of the things that a lot of people
0:30:22were kind of holding onto was the idea
0:30:25that the Mac Pro was definitely a 2018 product.
0:30:29But Apple never gave a date, did they?
0:30:33They never said anything about a date before.
0:30:35- No, they said it won't be this year.
0:30:37- And I think everyone just assumed,
0:30:40well, if you don't mean this year,
0:30:41you definitely mean next year.
0:30:43I think that was just a thing,
0:30:45and then it's one of these things that gets perpetuated.
0:30:48- Not everybody.
0:30:48I think we all hoped it would be this year,
0:30:51but I remember very clearly writing and saying
0:30:55at several points, and I know that like the ATP guys did
0:30:58and all that, like they didn't say it would ship in 2018.
0:31:02They did not say that.
0:31:03They said it won't ship in 2017.
0:31:06That's all they said.
0:31:08And that was always hanging out there.
0:31:10Like they didn't say it would ship in 2018.
0:31:13Now, oh boy, wouldn't that be something
0:31:15if it didn't ship until 2019.
0:31:17And guess what?
0:31:22They didn't commit to shipping in 2018 for a reason,
0:31:25because it's not going to, but it is gonna ship in 2019.
0:31:28They did commit, Pansarino did get that out of them,
0:31:31that their plan is for it to ship next year.
0:31:34- That is, it's risky though to give a date, isn't it?
0:31:37- Well, that far in advance, I think that's the thing
0:31:40is that the message from the round table last year
0:31:42was like, we're just starting on this process
0:31:43and we don't know how it's gonna go.
0:31:45Now there's a lot of people out there who are saying,
0:31:46well, why don't you just ship something?
0:31:49Why are you taking this long?
0:31:51And I think part of it is that this is how long it takes
0:31:53for Apple to develop products.
0:31:55They're developing these things in advance.
0:31:56They didn't plan on doing a Mac Pro, right?
0:31:58It wasn't a plan like, okay, the iMac Pro is gonna come out
0:32:01and then the Mac Pro is gonna come out.
0:32:02Like the iMac Pro was the replacement for the Mac Pro
0:32:05and they weren't gonna do a Mac Pro anymore.
0:32:06That was the deal.
0:32:08And then they changed their mind
0:32:10and they had to start a Mac Pro design process from scratch.
0:32:15Now you could argue, I think it's a reasonable argument
0:32:18that that market is so desperate for a product
0:32:23that perhaps a faster development cycle
0:32:28that generated something that was not super mind blowing
0:32:31or anything, but was a box that ran Mac OS
0:32:35and had high-end features and was modular like a box
0:32:40would have made a lot of people happy.
0:32:42But you know, it's Apple, they don't do that.
0:32:44They're not gonna put out,
0:32:45they're not gonna get the cheese grater out of mothballs.
0:32:48and do a new Mac Pro cheese grater
0:32:50to hold you over for two years.
0:32:52They're not gonna do that.
0:32:54And we can see with the iMac Pro,
0:32:56like what's the iMac Pro?
0:32:58It's not just a Xeon iMac.
0:33:00It's got like the T2 ARM processor
0:33:03and this whole other like boot sequence and-
0:33:05- And it's black.
0:33:06- Well, yeah.
0:33:07And it's space gray, of course you've got to do it.
0:33:10So Apple, like this is just, this is Apple.
0:33:14Apple doesn't want to make a generic box.
0:33:16Apple wants to make something that is pushing the Mac platform forward in some way and that's
0:33:22really interesting when we get to the other hot topic of the last week about the future
0:33:26of the Mac, but it's, yeah, I mean, I can see both sides of it. I understand the frustration
0:33:32of people who just want a new Mac Pro and cannot believe that it's gonna be a couple
0:33:38years from when Apple says they're gonna do it before they ship something, but at the
0:33:42same time it was a new addition to Apple's product roadmap that came. It was unlikely
0:33:48that anything was going to ship soon and it's hard to, it's like the the scorpion and the
0:33:55frog, right? Like I can't help it, it's my nature as the scorpion stings the frog and
0:33:59they both drown. It's, this is like that, it's like it's Apple's nature. I don't think
0:34:03you can legitimately, asking Apple to just ship a beige box full of Mac Pro parts is not,
0:34:12is asking Apple to not be itself.
0:34:14- It is unrealistic.
0:34:15It is an unrealistic expectation to assume
0:34:17that they would ever do that.
0:34:18Like, this is not gonna happen.
0:34:20- No, 'cause it's Apple.
0:34:21And you can say, and again,
0:34:23so then your argument is Apple should not be Apple.
0:34:25It's like, okay, you can make that argument, but guess what?
0:34:28Apple is Apple.
0:34:30- Why are you here then?
0:34:31- Yeah, well, that, exactly right.
0:34:34Like, that's exactly it.
0:34:36And meanwhile, the iMac Pro is an excellent option.
0:34:40And I get that it's not a great option for everybody,
0:34:43but it is an excellent option in the interim.
0:34:47- So they've obviously decided to talk about this now
0:34:52because they're not gonna bring anything out
0:34:55on stage at WWDC, right?
0:34:57Like that's probably why they've decided to do this now,
0:34:59just to like make sure they're getting ahead of that.
0:35:03- Yeah, this is actually, it's funny,
0:35:06this is the exact same strategy as last year, I think,
0:35:09where the last thing Apple wants is to have WWDC
0:35:14become a story about Apple not caring about pros,
0:35:17especially since developers are the most important,
0:35:20in many ways, segment of pros in Apple's product,
0:35:23you know, line of customers,
0:35:25because they're making apps for everybody else.
0:35:28So the last thing they want is for WWDC
0:35:32to be the place where they give bad news and say,
0:35:36you know, we're not gonna ship,
0:35:37let's talk about the Mac Pro
0:35:38that you guys want that we haven't given you in a very long time." Like, they don't even
0:35:42want to have that conversation.
0:35:43It's like two things. We have nothing to show you today and it's not coming this year.
0:35:47Yeah, exactly. So last year they said, "Oh well, we do care about you," which would have
0:35:52been a positive thing, but the thing that we're going to show that we care about you
0:35:56with is not coming anytime soon. And then this year it would have been like, you know,
0:36:03is today Mac Pro Day? Maybe they'll announce the Mac Pro at WWDC. And by doing this they're
0:36:08saying no we won't don't get your hopes up no it's gonna be next year and that
0:36:12totally changes the the it's funny too because this might have been the kind of
0:36:17story that they leaked in the past right this might have been the kind of story
0:36:20where two weeks before WWDC they leaked something that said the Mac Pro is not
0:36:24coming until 2019 don't get your hopes up just because they want to set
0:36:28expectations but today's Apple has some different strategies like inviting
0:36:32Panzer over to Cupertino to talk about it and write a story that we all then
0:36:37talk about that disseminates the information that it's not going to happen until 2019.
0:36:41But either way, it is, I would argue, maybe the most important thing it does is take that
0:36:46conversation off the table for WWDC. Not that people at WWDC aren't going to be grousing
0:36:51about it, but it's a done deal. It's a little bit like the headphone jack thing. It's like,
0:36:57by the time we get there, everybody's going to have talked themselves out of it. By the
0:37:00time the iPhone 7 shipped without the headphone jack, we had talked about it for 10 months.
0:37:05we were you know people were still grumpy about it but like the outrage had faded and
0:37:10the same is going to go with this like by the time we get to San Jose we will already
0:37:15have processed and gone through all the stages of grief about the 2018 Mac Pro theory that
0:37:21is dead and we will have moved on and that's why you do it that's like the number one reason
0:37:26you do it.
0:37:27I guess like last year they knew that they had a cool video about the iMac Pro to show
0:37:32But if they didn't reference the Mac Pro before that, everyone's going to be like, "Okay,
0:37:36but where's the Mac Pro?"
0:37:38So they didn't want to ruin, they didn't rain on the iMac Pro's parade, so they did the
0:37:43whole thing beforehand where they were like, "We have this thing coming, it's called the
0:37:46iMac Pro.
0:37:47By the way, we've also decided we're going to do a Mac Pro, but you're not going to hear
0:37:50about that this year."
0:37:51Yeah.
0:37:52Right?
0:37:53It probably allows them to stand on stage, "We'll see how we draft this at WWDC," and
0:37:57say, "Of course we ship the iMac Pro, which is the most powerful Mac we've ever shipped
0:38:02and you guys love it and everybody loves it and it's great." And of course there will
0:38:06be a Mac Pro next year too, but the iMac Pro is great. Now they could get away with that
0:38:12on stage without probably being booed.
0:38:15So yeah.
0:38:16They may say, "Oh, we have these updates that we want to do to these products." So they
0:38:21might update something in the iMac Pro, they might update something in the MacBook Pros,
0:38:25but then they don't have again this like,
0:38:27well, where's the Mac Pro you promised?
0:38:29- And it lets them say like, we love you,
0:38:32we love developers and we love Pro users.
0:38:36And underlying that is everybody having read this story
0:38:38from TechCrunch about how they've got like teams of pros
0:38:43inside Apple working with them and they're observing them
0:38:47and giving them electric shocks,
0:38:48probably not that last part.
0:38:50And that underlies our understanding
0:38:54when they stand on stage and say, "We love the pro market
0:38:56and we're recommitted to it."
0:38:57And they don't have to talk about all that stuff.
0:39:00It's just kind of in the water.
0:39:02So it's an interesting PR decision on their front
0:39:07in order to get out in front of this.
0:39:09But I think WWDC is the most important thing in their mind
0:39:13when they're doing this.
0:39:13Just get it off the table
0:39:15before they have that big high profile event.
0:39:18Because the last thing you want is the developers
0:39:20to be a bad audience and cranky
0:39:23and because it's supposed to be like a very,
0:39:27it's Apple's second biggest kind of tent pole event
0:39:30of the year and they want it to go off smoothly.
0:39:33- Just a couple of like tidbits from some tweets
0:39:36that Matthew Panzorino was sending
0:39:37after the report went out, his article,
0:39:41no information about new Mac minis,
0:39:43nothing mentioned, nothing seen, nothing.
0:39:47They did mention-- - Oh, it's not a pro product,
0:39:48right? - But like nothing, right?
0:39:50But they're talking about everything else,
0:39:51but like nothing else about the Mac Mini.
0:39:53And they did reference in passing again, the Pro Display.
0:39:57So like that's still very much on the table
0:39:59will probably come with the Mac Pro.
0:40:01- And that's where you see the difference between Apple.
0:40:05When Apple announced the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar,
0:40:09a few of us asked them about the display.
0:40:14And I think they told Nielle Patel,
0:40:16we're out of the display business.
0:40:18And that was in the fall.
0:40:20And in the spring, that was the fall of '16,
0:40:23in the spring of '17, they had that round table
0:40:27and they said they were doing a Mac Pro
0:40:28and an external display.
0:40:30And in the intervening time, first off,
0:40:31they shipped that, you know, the LG display
0:40:34that had so many problems
0:40:35and that people complained a lot about.
0:40:37And very clearly, they also made this Mac Pro decision.
0:40:42You can see the window where they went from,
0:40:44we're out of the display business to,
0:40:45oh no, no, no, we're gonna make a display.
0:40:47So somewhere between the fall of '16 and the spring of '17
0:40:50is when that all pivoted around.
0:40:55This is only half of the Mac story for today because there's this whole other side to this
0:41:00which makes maybe everything even more interesting, which is the idea of Intel processors no longer
0:41:08being in Macintosh computers. But before we get to that, let me thank Linode for their
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0:42:56According to Mark Gurman and Ian King at Bloomberg, Apple is currently planning to transition
0:43:02from Intel to their own chips, we will assume ARM for the sake of this discussion, in their
0:43:08Mac line as early as 2020. The project is codenamed Kalamata. It is obviously still
0:43:16in early development and it is part of a larger strategy from Apple to make their devices
0:43:21more seamlessly work together. So, Jason, my question for you...
0:43:28>> Kalamata is a kind of olive. >> I think it's also a place. So, there we
0:43:35go. >> Oh, there's a city in Greece, but I was
0:43:37just like it's an olive what does that mean? Stuff an olive is there like the pit in the
0:43:43yeah I think it's because they're I don't know they're putting new stuff in it I don't
0:43:47know like who knows what it means. So here's my question for you Jason. Okay. Is Apple
0:43:54moving towards a shared platform? Well so so the I wrote a piece about this for Macworld
0:44:05last week where I said, I likened it to the parable
0:44:08of the blind men and the elephant, right?
0:44:10Where the blind men touch the elephant
0:44:11and they think it's three different animals
0:44:12'cause they don't see the whole picture.
0:44:13- You're all about parables today, aren't you?
0:44:15- Yes, I am, I am.
0:44:16Today it's all about, there'll be a haiku later.
0:44:18So we know about this, we know about Marzipan,
0:44:23which is the idea of building kind of a shared app framework
0:44:27for app development across iOS and Mac.
0:44:30I wonder if we're not seeing the entire picture here.
0:44:33It certainly seems that at the very least,
0:44:35what Apple is trying to do is take advantage
0:44:38of the work that it's done on one platform
0:44:42on another platform, because it's very clear,
0:44:45like maintaining two entirely separate consumer platforms
0:44:48is not realistic.
0:44:50The more, you know, they had this huge advantage
0:44:51with the app store, and yet they can't translate that
0:44:54to the Mac because it uses all sorts
0:44:56of different technologies.
0:44:57I mean, it's not easy for an iOS developer
0:44:59to bring their stuff to the Mac.
0:45:01So could they make that easier?
0:45:03They've been putting ARM, I mean, right?
0:45:05Like there was a report a while ago about the hybrid Macs,
0:45:08right, and we have, I have a hybrid Mac
0:45:10in front of me right now.
0:45:11It's got the T2 processor in it,
0:45:13which is an Apple built ARM processor,
0:45:15and it's not being used for anything much,
0:45:18security stuff, boot stuff, but it is in there.
0:45:21And so they're already integrating
0:45:24their chip technology into Macs.
0:45:27Dropping Intel is a dramatic move.
0:45:31There are lots of different pieces here, right?
0:45:33like this would be a way to move to a unified platform
0:45:38if they want to make the Mac of 2020 run software
0:45:43that's more or less iOS apps,
0:45:46but it doesn't have to be.
0:45:49It doesn't have to be the whole platform,
0:45:51but the two previous chip transitions
0:45:53were the entire platform.
0:45:55But Apple could, as part of its,
0:45:59like let's bring in another piece,
0:46:00its commitment to pro users, right?
0:46:03it could retain x86, Intel compatibility,
0:46:08or even keep max around at the high end
0:46:13that run on Intel processors.
0:46:14It doesn't necessarily have to mean
0:46:16that they would switch the entire line over to ARM,
0:46:19although it would be a lot more messy if they didn't.
0:46:22So I don't know, I think it's not surprising.
0:46:26I've seen some people speculate that it's entirely possible
0:46:28that they will, that they could build something,
0:46:32'cause it is Apple building its own chips, right?
0:46:36Apple building its own chips is not fundamentally ARM.
0:46:39All of Apple's chips are ARM now,
0:46:40but Apple could design something
0:46:43with x86 compatibility in some way.
0:46:47Obviously AMD makes x86 compatible chips.
0:46:50They could also have hybrid systems for pros
0:46:53that had ARM and also had Intel or AMD processors in it.
0:46:58There's lots of complexity
0:47:00about the way you would architect something like that.
0:47:04And I am not a chip designer,
0:47:05so I can't go down that route.
0:47:07But it's fascinating because it does feel like
0:47:09at a fundamental level,
0:47:10we are hearing stories about how the Mac is going to get
0:47:13the processors that are in iOS devices,
0:47:15the app development framework,
0:47:17or something similar to what's available to iOS developers.
0:47:20And it does feel like
0:47:22if they're not basically merging the Mac into something
0:47:26that is a subset or a superset of iOS,
0:47:29it is definitely taking big chunks of things that it has done on iOS and saying this is
0:47:35going to be the future of the Mac.
0:47:38I have a lot of opinions about this which is just based mostly on my own feelings as
0:47:46opposed to logic, which is like it goes into a couple of different directions.
0:47:53one I kind of feel like if you're gonna do this, if you're gonna move towards designing your own
0:48:00chips, why maintain two OSs? It feels like one of the main reasons you do this is to simplify
0:48:06everything. So I look at this story and I'm like okay this is Apple simplifying, they want to bring
0:48:11it all in-house so they can control it all, so why maintain two OSs? You just at this point find a
0:48:17a way to create one OS that runs everywhere. And I don't think this is a case of like,
0:48:23make the Macs run iOS, but like something which is more than that. And this also extends
0:48:28to me thinking, why would you want to have two processor architectures going on at once,
0:48:35right? It's like, you are grossly overcomplicating the way that stuff works at that point to
0:48:40to a level where it's like, is it even worth going through that incredible amount of work
0:48:47when you could just stick with Intel?
0:48:49Yeah, well that has always been my argument against Apple doing an arm transition for
0:48:55the Mac, is if Apple's goal is just to keep the Mac in stasis as a product that continues
0:49:02to exist in their product line, the right thing to do is just keep those things floating
0:49:09and keep the Intel processors revving
0:49:14as Intel updates them, you update them,
0:49:17and just let it go on like that
0:49:19and do software updates for compatibility.
0:49:22And I feel like Apple has done that for a while
0:49:25where there has not been a lot.
0:49:26And then we've started to see some changes
0:49:29and they're all changes that are kind of like,
0:49:30oh, that's kind of like an iOS thing
0:49:32that you're bringing over to the Mac.
0:49:33So I think what people get freaked out about this
0:49:39is when they think about today's iOS and they think,
0:49:41I can't use iOS to do my job, I need a Mac,
0:49:44I like the Mac, I don't wanna use iOS.
0:49:47And I think that's fair.
0:49:49The argument that I would make is,
0:49:55what if Apple's changes to the Mac are essentially
0:50:00to allow this new platform to do all the things iOS can do
0:50:05and the things the Mac can do?
0:50:08And what, and, you know, basically if you're a Mac user,
0:50:12whether it feels like a Mac or it feels like iOS,
0:50:14or it feels like a combination thereof,
0:50:16is it now acceptable because it does what you need it to do?
0:50:21In the end, if it does what you need it to do,
0:50:24that's probably okay.
0:50:25I start to wonder if what Apple has decided is,
0:50:28rather than let the Mac just kind of float out there
0:50:35doing its thing, it has decided to be aggressive
0:50:39in building the bridges that get them to a place
0:50:47where they've got one platform.
0:50:50And that means making changes to the Mac
0:50:53to make it fit in more with iOS
0:50:55and potentially making changes to iOS
0:50:59to make it capable of doing more stuff like the Mac.
0:51:02And I don't know whether they come together
0:51:04or whether, like I said, is it a superset?
0:51:06Is it a subset?
0:51:07Like is the Mac of the future kind of like
0:51:10an iOS capable device that also has this Mac layer
0:51:13on top of it?
0:51:14Or does, you know, do they really come together?
0:51:18We've been talking about the idea of like an iOS laptop
0:51:21or an iOS desktop.
0:51:23That's the elephant in the room here.
0:51:25Now I brought the elephant back again.
0:51:27The, right?
0:51:30Because like that's the domain of the Mac.
0:51:32So what do those products look like in five years?
0:51:34Are those Macs and there are no iOS devices that do it?
0:51:37Does Apple offer iOS devices and Macs in the same shapes?
0:51:40They don't do that currently.
0:51:41That's a mental barrier that you would have to go through.
0:51:45Or is the answer all of the above, none of the above,
0:51:48where suddenly, you know, there's the Apple platform stuff
0:51:52and it just works on the Apple platform,
0:51:53whether you're using a laptop or a desktop
0:51:55or a tablet or a phone.
0:51:57A lot of tough decisions.
0:51:58We've talked about it in a bunch of different ways.
0:52:00I think the idea that Apple's gonna use its own processors
0:52:04and Macs though, suggests that it's trying to make the Mac
0:52:07something different.
0:52:09And I don't think Apple has any fantasies
0:52:13that by making the Mac something different,
0:52:16it's going to expand its market share
0:52:18and become more than 8% of the company's revenue.
0:52:21And for that reason, I think that it's probably motivated
0:52:24by trying to make the Mac a lot more like iOS
0:52:28so that Apple's work on one benefits the other
0:52:32or benefits both and it's that platform unification thing.
0:52:36How does the square with Apple's commitment to pros?
0:52:39That's a good question.
0:52:41You know, Apple could try to build an A series processor
0:52:46that has many, many, many, many cores
0:52:49and is dedicated to pros and maybe they'll do that
0:52:51or maybe they have another solution
0:52:53involving keeping x86 compatibility around
0:52:56for the high end for a long time.
0:52:58I don't know, but it's fascinating to think about it
0:53:01because this is a, you know, I'm inclined to believe
0:53:05this report, right?
0:53:06This is Mark Gurman, and it means that Apple
0:53:09is exerting effort on the Mac.
0:53:11And I don't believe that Apple would be doing all of this
0:53:16just to keep macOS totally separate from iOS.
0:53:19I just, I don't believe that they would do that,
0:53:23that it would be so much easier for them
0:53:25if they really believed the Mac was just gonna be
0:53:27in maintenance mode to let it coast.
0:53:30And that isn't what they're doing, apparently.
0:53:33- Like, it really feels to me that if you're gonna do
0:53:38anything in this arena, like if you're gonna make
0:53:42any kind of move, any kind of transition,
0:53:44it must come with it, some large shifts, some description.
0:53:49Because, you know, I hear a lot of people say that,
0:53:52"Oh, Apple being held back by Intel."
0:53:54I don't know if they have been.
0:53:55Like, it's not like the laptop line was getting bright neck revision, right?
0:54:02Like, I know that there were chips that were potentially holding them back, but it's not
0:54:06like Apple had a history of like super quickly updating everything.
0:54:10Like I think that they've just, they went through a period of time where they were addressing
0:54:13a lot of things.
0:54:15And I don't know if it is necessarily Intel that was being a problem for them, because
0:54:19there's a lot of stuff that Apple can do, right, which isn't just processor revisions
0:54:24all the time to their line if they want the line to improve in different ways.
0:54:28They've shown that, right? There are different designs they can do,
0:54:30there are different advancements they can do to the hardware in some way.
0:54:33It really just feels to me that they're kind of like in a situation where it's,
0:54:38well, we have these, we have these two platforms
0:54:42and one of them sells significantly less,
0:54:46but is super important to us for a variety of different reasons.
0:54:50how can we make the smaller platform benefit the bigger platform and vice versa and finding some way
0:55:01to have them all work on the same architecture and then develop them more cohesively makes a lot of
0:55:09sense to me. Like if they want to create more hybrid-y like machines like Jason Snell's iBook,
0:55:19right? This feels like a great place to start with that, where it's like, here is a device
0:55:24that runs this, what feels like an almost bridge between iOS and macOS as we've known them, and
0:55:33it is the future of our platform. The platform has to change eventually, right? Like, this is
0:55:39what happens. Like, iOS was different to macOS and there will at some point be something that
0:55:44that is different to iOS. And if Apple were thinking that, you know, it's like me and
0:55:49you have spoke about this for a long time where we don't believe that the iPad is the
0:55:54future of computing, but it is closer to the future than the Mac is, right? Like, we kind
0:56:03of put that right, yeah?
0:56:04Right, right.
0:56:05Like, that what the iPad is is closer to what Apple will do in the future than what the
0:56:08Mac currently is.
0:56:10- Well, yeah, that's true, but I would say also
0:56:12that they're both on these paths
0:56:15where they both have features that feel necessary.
0:56:18And there are things that you can do on the Mac
0:56:21you can't do on iOS and vice versa.
0:56:24But iOS is a more modern platform
0:56:28and it's a more successful platform.
0:56:30So what I don't wanna say is,
0:56:34well, what Apple's gonna do is it's gonna transition to iOS
0:56:36and the Mac's just gonna get forcibly moved in
0:56:38'cause it's not quite like that.
0:56:40I feel like Apple may be viewing this as an opportunity
0:56:44to take Mac users and take not necessarily all of the Mac,
0:56:50but a big chunk of the Mac,
0:56:52the people who just wanna buy a laptop, right?
0:56:56Not necessarily even the high-end users, the pro users,
0:57:00maybe there's a different story there.
0:57:02And give them a product that has better battery life
0:57:05and that has better apps.
0:57:07And how do you do that?
0:57:10And they could continue to call it Mac OS,
0:57:13but all of a sudden it runs a lot of apps
0:57:15that look an awful lot like iOS.
0:57:17And maybe they add a touch to that layer only.
0:57:21And it's a touchscreen Mac,
0:57:23sort of like what Microsoft has done
0:57:24where the nice apps are built for touch.
0:57:29And then there's also sort of apps
0:57:32that are really built for keyboard and mouse.
0:57:33And that's okay.
0:57:35I don't know, the, it's a challenge.
0:57:40I think, just to come back to it,
0:57:43I think my gut feeling is that Apple looks
0:57:45at its consumer market.
0:57:47All the people who buy MacBooks and iMacs and things
0:57:50who are not the high-end pro users,
0:57:53they're not the super technical users.
0:57:55And it's a big portion of the Mac market are those people.
0:57:59And think we need to serve them better.
0:58:02And do look over at what Microsoft is doing
0:58:05with their surface line and with a lot of the other PC
0:58:09devices that are out there.
0:58:10And now Microsoft is doing, you know,
0:58:12ARM version of Windows.
0:58:13And we're seeing those ARM laptops
0:58:15that have incredible battery life.
0:58:17And Apple is saying not,
0:58:19well, we gotta be like those guys,
0:58:20but is saying, are we serving that audience,
0:58:23our audience with what we've got,
0:58:26with Intel processors and no touch screen.
0:58:30And when we, you know, and, you know,
0:58:34The Windows stuff has this touch first kind of thing
0:58:37and it's a modern kind of app layer and we have that.
0:58:39It's on iOS, but we don't have that on the Mac.
0:58:41What do we do?
0:58:42And it's gotta be that Apple looks at that and says,
0:58:47this is what we need to change this.
0:58:50We need to change, for those users,
0:58:51we need to give them a better product.
0:58:52And the way we're gonna be able to give them
0:58:53a better product is to get the richness
0:58:56of the iOS app store on their devices.
0:58:59And one way to do that would be to make an iOS laptop.
0:59:02Sure, but then an iOS laptop has a lot of limitations.
0:59:05They're gonna have to improve iOS to get.
0:59:07So maybe it is this thing where the Mac is feeding iOS
0:59:10and iOS is feeding the Mac.
0:59:11And is that a toaster fridge?
0:59:13Or is that a new kind of device
0:59:17that is taking however you wanna spin it.
0:59:21It's taking the best of the Mac and putting it in iOS,
0:59:23or maybe it's taking the best of iOS
0:59:24and putting it on the Mac.
0:59:26It's a, because in the end, an ARM-based, let's say,
0:59:31MacBook that can run iOS apps and has 20 hour battery life. I would argue is a way better product for most people
0:59:40So there was a tweet that I saw from Steve Tran Smith
0:59:47Which is really interesting to me where there is like a kind of a bridge between these two
0:59:51Topics right where you have Mac Pro in 2019 on Mac in 2020 think about those two dates
1:00:012019, 2020. It is very likely that the Mac Pro and an ARM Mac may be introduced at the
1:00:13same time.
1:00:14Wwdc 2019, they'll tell the developers, "Okay, we're making a chip transition. Here's the
1:00:19details and here's what you're going to have to do in order to get to the new world."
1:00:23Yeah. So that was more what I meant, right? They won't say, "Oh, and we're shipping today
1:00:27- It is! - In our MacBook,
1:00:28but like, they will say like, we have this Mac Pro
1:00:31and also, you know, we are doing a transition now.
1:00:34So my question to you is,
1:00:36will the Mac Pro be the last Intel Mac
1:00:42or the first ARM Mac?
1:00:44- I think it's a great question.
1:00:47It would, I'm gonna say yes.
1:00:52I think. - Okay.
1:00:56I think we've already seen that before Apple abandons Intel,
1:01:01according to this story, right?
1:01:05Apple is gonna keep infusing its processors,
1:01:09its designed ARM-based processors into the Mac.
1:01:14Step one was the Touch Bar and the T1.
1:01:17Step two was the iMac Pro and the T2.
1:01:20That's gonna continue.
1:01:22So I have a hard time believing that the Mac Pro
1:01:25that ships in 2019 won't have an ARM processor in it.
1:01:30I have, I mean, this story is starting in 2020.
1:01:35My guess is that it's gonna start in 2020 at the low end.
1:01:38It may reach the high end, eventually it may not.
1:01:40So my guess is that that Mac Pro
1:01:42is gonna have Xeons in it.
1:01:43But it's also gonna have ARM in it.
1:01:46And it's possible that if Apple is announcing in 2019
1:01:51at WWDC, let's say, a chip transition,
1:01:54it's possible that one of the things that it will say
1:01:57about the Mac Pro, if it indeed talks about the Mac Pro
1:02:00at that time, will be that it's got an ARM processor in it
1:02:05and that there perhaps is even a development story there
1:02:09about how this allows you to develop software
1:02:14for both platforms, both chip architectures, maybe.
1:02:18Or it could just be as simple as it's like a T4
1:02:21and it does some booting things and some security things
1:02:23and not a lot else. And it's got Xeons and it's basically the iMac Pro in a case and
1:02:28it is not colliding with the chip transition narrative because that Mac Pro is not going
1:02:33to turn over into an Apple designed chip for five years. Because that will be the last
1:02:39product that goes.
1:02:40It's just, I like the idea of these two things coming together. It really does feel like
1:02:46a kind of like, here is where we are today and here is where we're going.
1:02:50an elephant! Oh! I mean, right? I mean, I really believe it. Like, there are pieces
1:02:59to this puzzle that we don't have, but all will become clear. And Apple is—I have a
1:03:08great deal of confidence that Apple knows exactly where it's going, and that these
1:03:12Mark Gurman reports are pieces of the puzzle, but they're not the whole story.
1:03:17I genuinely believe that all of this is linked, right?
1:03:20Marzipan.
1:03:21It's obvious, it's clear to see, right?
1:03:23That Marzipan is the beginning which can lead to a transition because people are starting
1:03:30to build with new tools which can cross the bridge between them, which eventually there
1:03:36is no bridge to cross anymore, we're all on the bridge.
1:03:39And we've moved in, there's lots of metaphors today, we've moved our homes to the bridge,
1:03:45we live on the bridge now.
1:03:46put an elephant on that bridge because it's too heavy.
1:03:49Because it's too heavy. The elephant has to stay off the bridge.
1:03:52Because the elephant has to take a raft across the river instead, but the bad news is the
1:03:59scorpion is on the raft.
1:04:01And so it's going to get rid of it.
1:04:02I brought it all together.
1:04:04There is a clear through line which gets us to R Max and Apple OS, right? And I believe
1:04:13that is a long-term thing but will begin in 2018 and then moves through to 2019, 2020,
1:04:212021, by 2025 maybe, right? Like, there is one thing.
1:04:26Yeah, think 10 years from now. I think if you asked Apple behind the scenes as a person
1:04:31inside Apple who gets the truth, where they view their platforms in 10 years. It's a long
1:04:37time. I think they would say one app development framework for all devices
1:04:43and that all of the needs defined by them right but all the needs of Mac
1:04:53users including professional class Mac users are capable of being served by the
1:04:58operating system. How do you get there? And that's the that's the that's why
1:05:03they get paid the big money because it's a it's a lot of moving parts it's a lot
1:05:07the technology that they have to build to do it. But I think that is the ultimate goal,
1:05:13is one app development platform, one operating system, essentially, and not giving away all
1:05:20sorts of features that today's users depend on, which, again, will be a source of frustration
1:05:26because there will probably be decisions Apple makes to say, "This is not a thing that we're
1:05:30going to do," and that's going to take 1% of the market or half a percent of the market
1:05:35- Like straight up, people are gonna get left behind
1:05:38when this happens, but like that,
1:05:40there is no other way of doing it.
1:05:43Like this is what has to happen.
1:05:45- I was listening to John on ATP point out like,
1:05:48there are a lot of web developers who use Docker
1:05:49and they're using Intel if it's for Intel based servers.
1:05:53And when we talked about this last year,
1:05:55we heard from a few of them.
1:05:57And I've heard people say basically,
1:06:00well, if they go off of Intel, I probably won't buy a Mac
1:06:03because a lot of web developers buy Macs
1:06:07because they can run the Mac OS,
1:06:08but they can also have Intel compatibility.
1:06:10And there are other stories similar to that.
1:06:12And I totally get it.
1:06:13As I said last year, I'll say it again,
1:06:14I totally get that.
1:06:17If I'm Apple and I look at the Mac market,
1:06:19what percentage of the Mac market are those people?
1:06:21And if you think you can better serve 99.5% of the market
1:06:26by getting rid of Intel compatibility,
1:06:28you're willing to get rid of the other half of a percent
1:06:33or whatever it is.
1:06:34If you're in that half a percent, it stinks.
1:06:37No doubt about it, but I think it's any change like this,
1:06:41you're gonna lose some people.
1:06:42And that's just how it works.
1:06:45That's just how it is.
1:06:46And there is, I definitely see it on the internet a lot.
1:06:49This is not a surprise that there is an attitude
1:06:54that you should never make a decision
1:06:56that loses you a customer.
1:06:58But not making a decision will also lose you customers.
1:07:01That's just how it is.
1:07:02So you have to make smart decisions and it sucks if you're the customer who gets lost,
1:07:07but sometimes that's just how it is.
1:07:09And as well, like if you believe that by losing this 1% you're able to do this thing, which
1:07:16can then also impact iOS positively, well that 1% became a minuscule percent.
1:07:23If you believe that a change that you're making to the Mac will eventually benefit the entire
1:07:28platform somehow, right, as they move more closely together, then the percentages that
1:07:33you lose from people that have edge cases, those percentages become really nothing.
1:07:40And there's a case to be made that as—Microsoft has failed to reach people on mobile, right?
1:07:45They don't have a mobile platform. They have a PC platform. There's a—you know, and
1:07:50still Windows is still strong there's an argument to made that Apple is a much
1:07:58stronger company selling laptops and even computers computers desktops to
1:08:05people who are comfortable with iOS and today they can't do that today they're
1:08:11like well we have the Mac it's kind of like iOS but not really and it's
1:08:15compatible with our stuff that's on iOS, kind of, but not really. And that's a terrible,
1:08:21like that's a terrible strategy, right? That's, you've got, like when we look at Microsoft
1:08:26we say, "Oh, well, Windows is kind of boxed in. They're a PC operating system, but on
1:08:35mobile it's Android and iOS." And Apple would be in a much stronger position, I think I
1:08:41I would argue, if they could use iOS and say,
1:08:46we have a variety of products that run iOS.
1:08:48And so replace that PC with, you already have an iPhone,
1:08:51maybe you have an iPad, and now you can buy our computer
1:08:54and put it on your desk and it'll be all those apps
1:08:57and it'll be familiar.
1:08:58Like that is a stronger position to a lot of people.
1:09:01And I'll remind all of our loyal Mac users out there,
1:09:04there are way more people who use iOS who are not Mac users
1:09:06than who are Mac users.
1:09:08So, you know, would Apple make a trade
1:09:10that would drive some loyal Mac users to Windows
1:09:13in exchange for a much larger group of people,
1:09:16access to a much larger group of people
1:09:18who are comfortable on iOS,
1:09:21you gotta do the research, but maybe, maybe so.
1:09:24And that's something, to wrap this all up, Myke,
1:09:28this is something that I've been thinking about
1:09:29for the last few weeks, which is this really existential
1:09:32kind of feeling about the Mac, which is like,
1:09:34does this mean the Mac is really,
1:09:35as we know it, is going away?
1:09:37And I think maybe it is.
1:09:39But what I will say, I went through all these,
1:09:42again, sort of like the stages of grief.
1:09:45The funny thing about things that you rely on that go away
1:09:48is, first off, things don't go away fast.
1:09:52When I started in covering the Mac,
1:09:55I was downstairs from the skeleton staff that was still
1:09:58putting out an Apple II magazine.
1:10:01That was-- wow.
1:10:02That was years after the Apple II's heyday,
1:10:04but it was still around, still around.
1:10:06So things don't just die, and they
1:10:09pull the plug and they're gone.
1:10:10There's a long kind of ramp down.
1:10:14But also, most of the stuff that I've had
1:10:17that felt essential, by the time it became inessential,
1:10:22it didn't matter anymore.
1:10:25And I think that's important that like,
1:10:28and part of this is us,
1:10:29and part of this is Apple's challenge,
1:10:31which is that when the time comes when the Mac,
1:10:37when I like don't have a Mac anymore,
1:10:39which I never had conceived of,
1:10:41but I think is gonna happen in the next,
1:10:43I don't know, five or 10 years, right?
1:10:44It's gonna happen.
1:10:45When that time comes,
1:10:49if Apple has done its job right, it won't matter
1:10:53because I will have already,
1:10:55I will be able to do everything I will have adapted,
1:10:57the world will have changed and it won't matter.
1:10:59And I think about things like the telephone,
1:11:03like I, you know, phone wire, my house is wired for a landline and there are wires all over the
1:11:11house because when we were here it's like oh we need to put a phone jack in this room and then we
1:11:15can do a wireless thing to this thing and all of that. Like and all of a sudden it didn't matter.
1:11:19My house has a port in the wall that I can plug an aerial into so I can get,
1:11:27you know, and I can get like our like over-the-air television. We don't have that plugged in. We
1:11:33don't have that because we watch all of our television over the internet. Yeah, you could,
1:11:40but as an aside, I just answered a question about this. There are, there is like a little,
1:11:43um, a little product you can buy that attaches to the the aerial cable and it gives you like a
1:11:51little DVR and it just puts all the shows in Plex, if you ever did want to do that. But we don't,
1:11:55we don't there's nothing there but we don't need there's nothing there that you don't already have
1:11:59right yeah we can get it wherever we want it yeah and traditional tv is another great example right
1:12:04where it's like i have a tivo and it's very nice but the amount of streaming stuff that i watch now
1:12:12including stuff that i get on the tivo but i just prefer to watch it on streaming because it's
1:12:16easier and in some cases it's higher quality or i get it sooner and you know i didn't notice when
1:12:23when it happened, but all of a sudden,
1:12:25I realize that I'm very close to being able
1:12:28to not have traditional TV anymore
1:12:30because of the technology advancing.
1:12:33So what I'm saying is, if done right,
1:12:36and if the timing is right, if the implementation is right,
1:12:39by the time it comes for you to do the inconceivable
1:12:42and give up this thing that has been a part
1:12:45of what you do for a long time,
1:12:49in the best circumstances, by the time that happens,
1:12:53you won't notice or it won't matter or it won't hurt
1:12:58because the world will have changed.
1:13:02The idea of not having a landline,
1:13:04the idea of not having cable TV.
1:13:06And, you know, if done right, the idea of not having a Mac,
1:13:09it won't just be, it won't be terrible,
1:13:12it will be irrelevant because the things that you do
1:13:16will now be done in a different place,
1:13:19but you're still doing them.
1:13:21And I just, I know that's kind of a squishy
1:13:23and touchy feely kind of moment,
1:13:24but I really do think that we could get to that point.
1:13:29But it is kind of on Apple, right?
1:13:30'Cause Apple could screw it up.
1:13:31Apple could do something to make the Mac unusable
1:13:36and create a complete exodus of people from the Mac.
1:13:41But I would argue that if Apple did nothing
1:13:44and just let the Mac sit there, we've seen it.
1:13:47Like, that's not gonna satisfy people who use the Mac
1:13:50'cause they want new features and they want new hardware.
1:13:52And Apple, you know,
1:13:55Apple is probably not gonna do that
1:13:58as an active investment in just the Mac
1:14:02as a standalone platform.
1:14:04It just seems unlikely at this point.
1:14:06But the good news is it may not matter in five years.
1:14:09It matters today.
1:14:10They couldn't take it away today.
1:14:12But by the time that they take it away, quote unquote,
1:14:15it may not matter for most people.
1:14:18We'll see.
1:14:19- Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom.
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1:15:49So we are into #AskUPGRADE and our first question this week comes from Elijah. Elijah wants
1:15:56to know, how do you define a pro user on either of Apple's platforms?
1:16:02There, this is a great question and there's no great answer. I would define it as being
1:16:12people who were, I would loosely define it as people who use the devices to get their
1:16:16work done. Because there is a, and to get like their livelihood accomplished. I think
1:16:25is a portion of the market that is just like looking at their email and checking Twitter
1:16:30and playing games and stuff like that, especially on iOS. And the requirements of those users
1:16:39are a lot lower or at least they're very different because in some cases they have very specific
1:16:45requirements that need to be met, but they're not the same requirements as somebody who
1:16:48is in a particular industry, a particular field. It's a hard -- there's no good answer
1:16:53are here other than to say that it's the people I think the way it's broadly been defined
1:16:57is it's people who require a level of performance and functionality that is above and beyond
1:17:06the general population of technology users because they're applying the technology to
1:17:11very specific generally industry tasks and that's I know that that's kind of a vague
1:17:18way way of doing it but I've always viewed and we used when I when I started writing
1:17:21about Apple, we used to use the term power user a lot. And that's funny because some
1:17:26of the power users are pros and some of them are regular people who just love getting the
1:17:31most out of their devices. But I like that name too because sometimes it's not that you're
1:17:39– the power user is the person who behaves like their job depends on the technology working,
1:17:46but it doesn't actually. It's just fun. But for a lot of people, it's their livelihood
1:17:50and they have needs and the needs are not something that is needed by 80% of the people,
1:17:55but it is life and death to them in terms of their business. So that's sort of how I
1:18:00would define it. The problem is that there's not one industry and there's not one need
1:18:05and there's not one, we can say like performance is a need and that's pretty broad, but you
1:18:10get into the details and sometimes it's very specific kinds of performance, very specific
1:18:15kinds of software. And that's what makes it complicated to serve a pro market because
1:18:20there isn't a pro market as Apple pointed out in their thing when they talk to Panzer,
1:18:24there's not one pro market, there's dozens of pro markets, all of which are very small,
1:18:29have some things in common, some things not in common. And that's why it's so hard to
1:18:33serve pro markets well.
1:18:38Sage wants to know, do you happen to know if there are any websites or resources that
1:18:42list WWDC adjacent activities. In the past I have used an app called Parties for WWDC,
1:18:51which kind of gets updated as it gets a little bit closer to the time and then I think throughout
1:18:56the week of like events and meetups and live shows and stuff that are occurring. It looks
1:19:03like the app is coming back. There was a there was another one called WWDC Parties which
1:19:09finished in 2017. That app is no longer being updated anymore, I believe that resources
1:19:13is done with. But it looks like from the release notes of this parties app that 2018 is coming,
1:19:21they know, and so there will be stuff going in there. I've used it in the past and I really like
1:19:26it. It's nice and simple but gives you an idea of some of the stuff that's going on.
1:19:29Great. And I will just note as well, one of those events is Relay FM Live or Alt Conf. Tickets,
1:19:36a small amount of tickets are still available. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to
1:19:40come and see us do a live show on Wednesday the 6th of June. David has written in to say,
1:19:47"The months of..." This is weird, but I love it. "The months of July, August, September,
1:19:52October, and November spell out Jason." Jason, did you know this?
1:19:57Yes, of course I knew this. Isn't it awesome? It's amazing.
1:20:01I'll also point out that my initials are J-A-S.
1:20:07That's right, my initials are the first three letters of my name.
1:20:12It's all true. It's my world, you're all just living in it.
1:20:15It turns out my mind is slowly expanding over here to take in all this new and
1:20:19wonderful information. Right, mm-hmm, that's right.
1:20:22Let's go back to Earth with Nathan's question.
1:20:25What are the odds that we'll see a new iPad Mini by the end of the year? What
1:20:29- What about just a price drop?
1:20:31No and no is my opinion.
1:20:33- The odds are no.
1:20:35- The odds are no.
1:20:36No new iPad mini, I just don't see it happening
1:20:39and a price drop, I don't think they're gonna do that
1:20:41for as long as that product exists.
1:20:42Like for as long as they are selling that iPad mini,
1:20:46I suppose like 228 or 256 gig,
1:20:49like that thing will just stick around
1:20:51and nothing will change until it's gone.
1:20:54- Until it dies, yeah.
1:20:55And I think you're right at this point,
1:20:57my guess would be that we won't see it ever.
1:21:01Think we're gonna die. - iPad Mini 4
1:21:04is the one that is still available,
1:21:05and it is only available in 128 gigabytes,
1:21:08but at least you can choose
1:21:09between silver, gold, and space gray.
1:21:11But no, at this point, I don't see it happening.
1:21:14- My son has used an iPad Mini for ages,
1:21:18and it's great, especially for younger kids.
1:21:21It is great.
1:21:21I wish that they would keep it around
1:21:23and do a kind of cheap model of it,
1:21:25but I think the answer really is
1:21:27that there's not enough of a market for that product
1:21:28to keep it in existence.
1:21:30- And finally today, Barry's question is,
1:21:34do you believe that iOS would benefit
1:21:36from the ability that Android has
1:21:39to designate a third-party app
1:21:41to wholly replace a core app like calendar or mail?
1:21:45And if so, what are the hurdles that prevent it?
1:21:48What do you think, Jason?
1:21:50- Benefit?
1:21:51I think it could benefit from it,
1:21:52but there are some challenges
1:21:53in how integrated the first-party apps are into the system.
1:21:58We do have the ability to delete them now,
1:22:01but sometimes that just leads to you clicking a link
1:22:03and it's saying, "Oh boy, this is a calendar link.
1:22:05I don't know what to do,"
1:22:06instead of just opening the other calendar app
1:22:08that you have.
1:22:09So yes, I think it would benefit it.
1:22:11It is a lot of...
1:22:14There's work involved in doing that on Apple's part.
1:22:17And I hope they do,
1:22:19because when we talk about convergence,
1:22:21this is a thing that the Mac does way better than iOS.
1:22:24And it goes not just to replacing first-party apps,
1:22:27but also being able to set default apps
1:22:29and even register like different apps
1:22:34for different URL types.
1:22:37And the example there is like for podcasts,
1:22:39I should be able to, there should just be a podcast URL.
1:22:42And if I tap it, iOS should be able to know
1:22:46what my podcast app is or ask me and let me say,
1:22:48"Yes, this is my podcast app."
1:22:50and from then on, it opens that app.
1:22:53All of these things kind of go together,
1:22:55and it's clearly just not been a priority for Apple.
1:22:58And so, yes, it would be better if iOS could do that.
1:23:03What are the chances?
1:23:05I don't know.
1:23:06I feel like it's something that they have to get to
1:23:09eventually, but it's probably not been
1:23:11a high priority for them.
1:23:13Apple has a really,
1:23:17Apple seems to have a really high opinion
1:23:18of its first party apps, which is funny,
1:23:20'cause a lot of them are not that interesting.
1:23:23Mail is a great example where that is an app
1:23:25that feels like it has just never been touched.
1:23:28And I realize it's got some features
1:23:29that it didn't have before, but it feels so old.
1:23:32And maybe some of that is that email feels old in general,
1:23:34but mail feels really old and like they are,
1:23:38it's like, talk about your legacy product that they do,
1:23:42I just wanna keep floating along.
1:23:43It feels a little bit like that.
1:23:44And other people are trying interesting things
1:23:46with mail apps.
1:23:47And so it is frustrating that Apple is sort of like
1:23:49not trying interesting things in mail,
1:23:51but also not letting people integrate directly
1:23:55where all the mail stuff just feeds to a different app.
1:23:58So I hope it happens eventually,
1:23:59but I think there are technical issues
1:24:02and it's just a matter of attention.
1:24:04- When I read this question,
1:24:06the first thing that jumped into my head,
1:24:08to the answer to what are the hurdles that prevent it?
1:24:12My answer was just Apple.
1:24:14Like they just, I just believe that for a long time,
1:24:17maybe even still, I reckon even still,
1:24:20they just think that there is no point
1:24:23that their apps are good enough?
1:24:25- Apple can't, doesn't seem to be able to conceive,
1:24:29it's funny because they have to hold two thoughts,
1:24:31two opposing thoughts in the collective Apple brain at once.
1:24:34One of which is we have all these great third-party apps,
1:24:37including these innovative calendars
1:24:38and innovative mail programs.
1:24:39And then their other mind has to say,
1:24:42we've deeply integrated mail and calendar with the system
1:24:45and they're great.
1:24:46And, you know, that's fascinating
1:24:51that both of those things can be true at once.
1:24:54So yeah, but I think you're right.
1:24:56I think the mindset within Apple clearly is
1:24:58this is good enough.
1:24:59Now, the fact is those apps are used probably by 95% of users
1:25:04if not 98% of users.
1:25:05- Because what other choice do you have, right?
1:25:07Like in certain instances.
1:25:08- Well, people don't even look in the app store
1:25:12for replacements to calendar and mail.
1:25:13They have calendar and mail,
1:25:14they're integrated with the system, that's it.
1:25:16And that's why Apple doesn't prioritize this,
1:25:18is because it is an edge case.
1:25:22Most people just use the stock apps.
1:25:24Most people use Maps and Safari too,
1:25:26for that very reason.
1:25:28- Yeah, but like, you know, there is,
1:25:30the other one that was in this argument forever
1:25:33was custom keyboards, and they did that.
1:25:35You know, so it's like-- - They did.
1:25:36- Custom keyboards was when everything changed.
1:25:39So it's like, oh, they will do stuff
1:25:42that we assume they're never gonna do,
1:25:43which like, it for me at least,
1:25:45reignited the lost hope of replacing the first party apps.
1:25:50The reason that I want, you know, I don't,
1:25:53we spoke about this in last week's episode, right?
1:25:56With the apps that we use, I use replacement apps
1:26:00for like really significant things, including Chrome.
1:26:04I use Chrome, right?
1:26:05Which is like, that is a daily test in patience,
1:26:09like when dealing with iOS.
1:26:11But one of the reasons that I believe
1:26:14that this can happen is there are so many third-party apps
1:26:19that allow me to choose what web browser I want to use.
1:26:23So I know that this is a thing that third-party developers
1:26:27have worked out how to do this.
1:26:28Apple can do this.
1:26:30It's just whether they want to or not.
1:26:32And it seems like right now they don't want to.
1:26:35- Yeah, it is weird given that, yeah,
1:26:40it's this in-between where I understand building mail
1:26:43and calendar to be for the most common use
1:26:46because it's going to be commonly used.
1:26:48But it would be nice then if you said,
1:26:50and for our users who prefer other things
1:26:52because they need to go beyond,
1:26:55we give you this ability to swap these in.
1:26:58And that's the frustration, right?
1:27:01Is like, I don't want to say mail is bad
1:27:05because it's not built for the 2% of people
1:27:08who would use these awesome, weird features, right?
1:27:11I don't wanna say that.
1:27:12I think mail could be better for everybody,
1:27:14but I understand why it's not built for the power users.
1:27:16It has to be built for everyone.
1:27:18But if you're gonna do that, it would be awfully nice
1:27:20if you could take those power users,
1:27:22those people who download third-party apps
1:27:24to replace the default apps,
1:27:25if they could say, "This is my email program now."
1:27:28And I do think they will probably get there at some point.
1:27:30The keyboard is a great example of that.
1:27:32- If you would like to submit questions for us to answer
1:27:36at the end of the show,
1:27:37or questions for us to give our opinions on at least,
1:27:40because there isn't always an answer.
1:27:42You can send in questions by just tweeting
1:27:45at #AskUpgrade out into the world.
1:27:48Just send a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade
1:27:50and we may pick it for a future episode.
1:27:53I guess if you want to send examples of interesting parables
1:27:57you can send them to @JSnell on Twitter
1:28:00because this is clearly Jason's like thing right now.
1:28:03He's into deep parables and metaphors.
1:28:06This has been like clearly shown on today's episode.
1:28:10- So I think if you go to the incomparable--
1:28:12- A blind man, an elephant, and a scorpion
1:28:16get into a Honda Civic.
1:28:18- If you go to the incomparable.com,
1:28:20you can find some of Jason's work,
1:28:22including the upcoming ParablePod,
1:28:24which I think will be coming any day now
1:28:26on the incomparable.
1:28:27Jason is a host of many technology-focused shows
1:28:31and creativity-focused shows here on Relay FM as well.
1:28:34Go to relay.fm and you can find those.
1:28:36I will recommend people check out Download
1:28:39If they never have before Download is a weekly technology news show which focuses on technology
1:28:46companies as a whole as opposed to a strict lens on one or the other as many shows that
1:28:52we do here or that we listen to have.
1:28:56What Download does is tries to kind of spread that out a little bit more so you may hear
1:29:00a story about Microsoft and Google and SpaceX as well as just what's going on with Apple.
1:29:06I am @imikeyke on Twitter and I host many shows here at Relay FM as well. Go to relay.fm/shows
1:29:14and pick something else out there. If I was going to make a recommendation to you today
1:29:18I would recommend a show that I do called Playing for Fun which is a show that I do
1:29:21with Tiff Ahment and it is a video game show but even if you don't like video games I think
1:29:26that there is still some enjoyment to be had because the show is just about two friends
1:29:31just talking about what they like about a specific video game. So it's just two people
1:29:35just having fun and talking positively about something.
1:29:39And that can be a nice break sometimes from a lot of the stuff that we take in in our
1:29:43daily lives.
1:29:44Thank you to Pingdom and Linode and Slack for their support of this week's episode.
1:29:50Most of all, as always, thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to listen
1:29:54to me and Jason talk about Powerables.
1:29:57You can go to relay.fm/upgrades/188 for today's show notes and we'll be back next time.
1:30:03Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.
1:30:06- The Upgrade Podcast.
1:30:07We talk about Apple stuff.
1:30:09Goodbye, Myke Hurley.
1:30:11- What was that?
1:30:12- I told you I would do a haiku at the end.
1:30:14- Oh!
1:30:15Yes.
1:30:17(laughing)
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