Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, Episode 188. Today's show is brought to you by Linode,

00:00:14 ◼   ► Pingdom and Slack. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hello Myke Hurley, how are you?

00:00:21 ◼   ► I am very well. We have a #SnellTalk question this week from listen to Brian. Brian wants to know,

00:00:27 ◼   ► So Jason, why do you keep your iPhone in the kitchen, as you mentioned you leave it there

00:00:32 ◼   ► for Qi charging, when you sleep in the bedroom?

00:00:35 ◼   ► Why is your iPhone not in the bedroom with you?

00:00:38 ◼   ► I could turn this around and say why would I bring my phone into the bedroom?

00:00:44 ◼   ► So many reasons, so many reasons.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Alarms.

00:00:47 ◼   ► No.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Emergency telephone calls.

00:00:49 ◼   ► There are so many reasons.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Alarms.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I use my Apple Watch when I have an alarm set.

00:00:56 ◼   ► I don't use the phone because I find the Apple Watch a better alarm device.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Late night phone calls, emergency phone calls, well, that is a worldview that I'm going to

00:01:07 ◼   ► leave my phone right next to my ear in case somebody who actually is supposed to call.

00:01:13 ◼   ► I've got "do not disturb" on, quite frankly, so that emergency phone call is not making

00:01:17 ◼   ► it through.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Right, but it's like emergency phone calls from a family member and you have the "do

00:01:22 ◼   ► not disturb" thing set in such a way, right, that it's like multiple calls within a certain

00:01:26 ◼   ► period of time. Well, okay, okay, so my house is not that big. It's all on one level. Okay.

00:01:33 ◼   ► You've been in my, you've been in my house. My house is not that big. I can hear my phone.

00:01:37 ◼   ► If something breaks through "do not disturb," I can hear it just fine from where I, where

00:01:43 ◼   ► I am. It's never happened. And I have my iPad that I keep by the side of my bed. So that's

00:01:51 ◼   ► - That's what you do, you're like late night tweeting,

00:01:54 ◼   ► you're using the iPad.

00:01:55 ◼   ► - It's all on the iPad.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Late night, early in the morning, whatever.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it's on the iPad.

00:01:58 ◼   ► So I don't need an iPhone there too.

00:01:59 ◼   ► - So it's not that you are like,

00:02:01 ◼   ► you are not one of these people who is adverse

00:02:03 ◼   ► to having devices in the bedroom,

00:02:05 ◼   ► you just have a different device in the bedroom, right?

00:02:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, the phone, I have no need of the phone

00:02:10 ◼   ► in the bedroom at night,

00:02:13 ◼   ► because the iPad is my information source there

00:02:16 ◼   ► and in the morning.

00:02:17 ◼   ► So the phone, I have no need for that.

00:02:20 ◼   ► And I get why people do it and why there are those,

00:02:23 ◼   ► like this originates with that, like having that charger

00:02:26 ◼   ► that charges your Apple Watch and your phone together.

00:02:28 ◼   ► I'm like, nope, not interested.

00:02:31 ◼   ► And I would say also my wife is the same way.

00:02:35 ◼   ► We have his and hers Qi chargers, aw, out in the front.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And then we have iPads in the back

00:02:43 ◼   ► and that's what we use.

00:02:45 ◼   ► So it works for me.

00:02:46 ◼   ► I don't see any real value.

00:02:49 ◼   ► I think also technically if the phone rang,

00:02:52 ◼   ► my phone, my iPad would ring too.

00:02:54 ◼   ► - Wouldn't your watch ring?

00:02:55 ◼   ► - It might.

00:02:56 ◼   ► My admission here is that I don't actually have,

00:03:00 ◼   ► I have the sound turned off on all of my devices basically.

00:03:04 ◼   ► So I never hear them chime when they do chime.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I feel the Apple Watch buzz when I'm wearing it.

00:03:11 ◼   ► And that's about it.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I don't have any sounds on almost ever.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I have a lot of really cute ringtones

00:03:18 ◼   ► and you never hear them because I just never have them on.

00:03:22 ◼   ► - So I am like phone, do not disturb 24/7 a day, right?

00:03:26 ◼   ► Including my iPads, all my devices are on do not disturb

00:03:29 ◼   ► because the notifications come through to my Apple Watch.

00:03:31 ◼   ► But I have it set up that if something breaks through

00:03:34 ◼   ► do not disturb, it will make the phone ring audibly.

00:03:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's a setting and that's fine.

00:03:42 ◼   ► - That's how I have mine set up.

00:03:43 ◼   ► - But I don't, that's yeah.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So there you go, that's why.

00:03:48 ◼   ► I expect that Brian asked this question

00:03:51 ◼   ► thinking that you might be a like, you know,

00:03:53 ◼   ► no devices in the bedroom type person.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Which I'm pleased, I mean,

00:03:57 ◼   ► 'cause I don't really subscribe to it.

00:03:59 ◼   ► I think it's fine to have these things in the bedroom.

00:04:01 ◼   ► So I was pleased to hear that, you know,

00:04:02 ◼   ► your phone isn't there

00:04:03 ◼   ► 'cause you have another device for it.

00:04:05 ◼   ► So I think that that is, that's good.

00:04:06 ◼   ► - Also the phone just sort of lives out.

00:04:08 ◼   ► It would require me to take the phone

00:04:10 ◼   ► from where it spends most of its time,

00:04:12 ◼   ► which is on the counter in the kitchen.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And at the end of the night say,

00:04:15 ◼   ► "All right, little phone, I'm gonna talk to you

00:04:17 ◼   ► - You know, you take yourself to the room, right?

00:04:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, but the phone, like the phone just is laying,

00:04:23 ◼   ► unless it's in my pocket,

00:04:24 ◼   ► the phone is laying on that Qi charger.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And before that it was laying on that counter

00:04:28 ◼   ► with a plug in it.

00:04:30 ◼   ► It doesn't need to be relocated at the end of the night.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Whereas the iPad does float around the house with me.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And so it's just, it's all of a kind, right?

00:04:38 ◼   ► Like this is the role that the iPhone plays in my life,

00:04:43 ◼   ► which is it's only really with me

00:04:45 ◼   ► when I'm going somewhere or I need it for some reason.

00:04:50 ◼   ► Otherwise it's generally on its charger.

00:04:52 ◼   ► And the iPad is the device that I use

00:04:55 ◼   ► when I'm in the house roaming around.

00:04:57 ◼   ► The phone is not generally.

00:04:59 ◼   ► So it's all part of that same kind of approach

00:05:03 ◼   ► to those devices that one of them,

00:05:05 ◼   ► the iPad's role is expansive

00:05:07 ◼   ► and the iPhone's role is really limited in the house.

00:05:10 ◼   ► - If you would like to suggest a question

00:05:12 ◼   ► for us to open the show,

00:05:13 ◼   ► just send out a tweet into the into the world into the ether with the hashtag

00:05:17 ◼   ► SnellTalk and it may be picked for a future episode. Thank you to Brian for

00:05:21 ◼   ► the submission. iOS 11.4 was during last week's episode the beta one was

00:05:28 ◼   ► released and we were talking in the episode about the fact that messages in

00:05:33 ◼   ► the cloud and a home pod stereo support of Airplay 2 was missing from 11.3

00:05:38 ◼   ► according to 9to5Mac the 11.4 beta does again include messages in the

00:05:43 ◼   ► cloud and HomePod stereo support, but there is a catch. To use HomePod stereo support,

00:05:49 ◼   ► you have to be able to update to beta firmware on your HomePod, which is not available right

00:05:54 ◼   ► now. So no one can test it, but it is referenced in the iOS release. So it's there.

00:06:02 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:06:03 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I guess unless you need to test HomePod things and are granted access to the HomePod beta

00:06:10 ◼   ► firmware you don't get to test. I would love that. I would love if a future beta, that

00:06:14 ◼   ► would be enough for me to update to a beta, is if the beta included or they released beta

00:06:20 ◼   ► firmware so that we could try out the AirPlay 2 and stereo support. That would be really

00:06:25 ◼   ► fun.

00:06:26 ◼   ► But nothing yet, but there you go. It's back in again. Eleven point four. All these features

00:06:31 ◼   ► are back in again. Maybe we'll see them soon.

00:06:34 ◼   ► The testing continues.

00:06:37 ◼   ► large scale testing on this. Today, April 9th, Apple released a press release in the

00:06:42 ◼   ► morning. It was rumored last night because of a leak from Virgin Mobile that Apple is

00:06:49 ◼   ► introducing an iPhone 8 and 8 Plus product red special edition. It goes on sale tomorrow

00:06:57 ◼   ► I believe and is available like you can pre-order and will be and is available on Friday April

00:07:04 ◼   ► 13th to purchase.

00:07:08 ◼   ► You may remember this from I think this was last year with the seven that you could get

00:07:13 ◼   ► a product read version of the phone had a white face and a red back and some of the

00:07:18 ◼   ► proceeds of the sales go to to help fight the AIDS right into to fund AIDS research

00:07:26 ◼   ► and stuff like that. But this time, what everybody wanted last time, or what loads of people

00:07:30 ◼   ► wanted last time has been given to us this time. The phone now has a black front and

00:07:35 ◼   ► a red back. I personally like the look of that a lot more. It was interesting to me

00:07:41 ◼   ► that this is just the 8 and the 8 Plus. I was expecting, honestly, the X to have this.

00:07:47 ◼   ► I think that would be really cool looking. Who knows, maybe some point in the future.

00:07:51 ◼   ► the X back is stainless, right? I don't think they can do a red stainless.

00:07:56 ◼   ► No, the back isn't stainless. The sides are stainless.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Oh, you're right. The sides are stainless. The back is not.

00:08:02 ◼   ► The back is just colored glass. It's black or white.

00:08:05 ◼   ► They must have looked and said, "No, this doesn't." Then again, they did that red-white

00:08:08 ◼   ► phone which is not pretty. It's the – I find it funny that so many people are like,

00:08:17 ◼   ► finally they did the black front and not the white front with the red because they didn't

00:08:21 ◼   ► like that. It's like this is such a weird product because it comes out midstream which

00:08:25 ◼   ► means anybody who's really excited about the iPhone 8 already bought it.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Geoff - Yeah. I don't know who buys this but some people will.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Tim - They will sell some. It looks great. I wish they would just release them at the

00:08:34 ◼   ► time because I think that would make they would sell a lot of them that way. I do not

00:08:40 ◼   ► have strong opinions about the design of either of those models but I will say this which

00:08:44 ◼   ► is Blackfront. I'm just a big fan of the Blackfront in general. It should be, you know, that's

00:08:51 ◼   ► the one to get, the Blackfront. So I'm glad that this one also has the Blackfront now.

00:08:55 ◼   ► You know, no iPhone X though, although they did have a case. I guess there's a red leather

00:08:59 ◼   ► folio case now for the X. Still no sign of AirPower. I was expecting

00:09:05 ◼   ► AirPower today when this seemed like there was going to be another press release. Who

00:09:09 ◼   ► knows maybe maybe it will come with 11.4 who knows right everything everything

00:09:14 ◼   ► comes with the next version of iOS maybe AirPower will get that then but still no

00:09:19 ◼   ► sign Jason you had for review and you posted a review on six colors of the

00:09:25 ◼   ► 2018 iPad the new regular 9.7 inch iPad with Apple pencil support so that is

00:09:33 ◼   ► available and you made an interesting comparison with this iPad and automobiles. Would you

00:09:40 ◼   ► like to explain a little bit about that? What your kind of takeaway is of the iPad?

00:09:47 ◼   ► I'm surprised I have not heard from more people who are really into cars about how I dared

00:09:51 ◼   ► to use an automobile metaphor for the iPad.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Maybe you just nailed it, right? Like everyone's like, "Oh yeah, he totally got it."

00:10:01 ◼   ► - Well, so I have a Honda Civic

00:10:04 ◼   ► and before I had the Honda Civic,

00:10:05 ◼   ► I had a different Honda Civic.

00:10:07 ◼   ► And that is the Honda's, you know,

00:10:10 ◼   ► it's a solid, relatively cheap car.

00:10:15 ◼   ► And my point in saying that the iPad is like the Honda Civic

00:10:20 ◼   ► is to say, the way I try to frame this story is,

00:10:24 ◼   ► how do you talk about this iPad?

00:10:25 ◼   ► This iPad is not as good on lots and lots of fronts

00:10:29 ◼   ► as the iPad Pro on lots of different fronts.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And presumably there will be new iPad Pros

00:10:36 ◼   ► at some point in the next few months

00:10:38 ◼   ► and that gap will widen even further.

00:10:40 ◼   ► But the iPad is almost half the cost of the 10.5 iPad Pro.

00:10:45 ◼   ► So I tried to liken it to cars

00:10:52 ◼   ► where there are some people who want to spend

00:10:55 ◼   ► a lot of money to get the very best car.

00:10:59 ◼   ► it has nice features, it's got a lot of amenities, you do it because you want the very best that

00:11:06 ◼   ► there is, you do it because you have the money, you do it because you like the lifestyle of

00:11:12 ◼   ► being somebody who's got cutting edge technology. I feel like drawing a parallel between that

00:11:18 ◼   ► and people who buy luxury cars, or lease luxury cars or whatever, seemed like a fit to me

00:11:24 ◼   ► that, and I'm not saying that luxury car people are iPad Pro people, it's like what your priorities

00:11:29 ◼   ► is your priority cars, is your priority iPads. iPads are a lot cheaper to have that priority

00:11:33 ◼   ► on than cars, let me tell you. And I made the point that like I'm just not, when it

00:11:39 ◼   ► comes to cars, I'm not one of those people. When it comes to cars, I look for value and

00:11:43 ◼   ► I don't need the cutting edge. And that is what the iPad said to me is, this is a product

00:11:50 ◼   ► that is faster than the iPad Pros that were released in 2015 and 2016, the first generation

00:11:56 ◼   ► and iPad Pro models. It's faster than those. And it costs a fraction of what they cost.

00:12:05 ◼   ► And so what you're doing is you're saving half the price in giving up a couple of years

00:12:09 ◼   ► on the cutting edge. And it's not for everybody. And I would wager it's not for a lot of the

00:12:16 ◼   ► people who listen to podcasts like this and read websites like mine, because the people

00:12:20 ◼   ► who are very enthusiastic about technology, just as I would wager that the people who

00:12:28 ◼   ► are reading all of the articles about the highest quality, high test, super expensive

00:12:33 ◼   ► cars are probably not driving a 2005 Honda Civic. Although some of them are because the

00:12:41 ◼   ► other part of this is just money. You can love them but not have the money to buy them.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And so it's where you, whether you have any money at all to spend or whether you have

00:12:50 ◼   ► money to spend on some things and you prioritize other things to spend your money on. But either

00:12:55 ◼   ► way, it comes back to the fact that this is a really great value as an iPad. It's impressive

00:13:01 ◼   ► how powerful it is. It's got the A10 processor in it and that does make it faster than the

00:13:11 ◼   ► processors that were in those first generation iPad Pros. The current iPad Pros blow it away,

00:13:14 ◼   ► But again, they're twice the price, more or less.

00:13:17 ◼   ► So it's a really nice iPad.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And if you don't care about, and the review has a litany of things that it doesn't have

00:13:28 ◼   ► that are in the iPad Pro, but it's like, you don't care about the quality of the cameras.

00:13:33 ◼   ► If you don't care about the wider color gamut and true tone and like...

00:13:39 ◼   ► - 120 hertz refresh rate, that kind of stuff.

00:13:41 ◼   ► I mean, it's all these things that are really nice features, but if you're looking at the price tag,

00:13:47 ◼   ► and then you're looking at the price tag of this thing, and you say, "I don't really need all those

00:13:51 ◼   ► features." Yeah, everything with the screen, they're like, luxury nice-to-haves. None of the

00:13:56 ◼   ► things that are in the iPad Pro screen that are not in the regular iPad screen actually add anything

00:14:02 ◼   ► of real, like, productive value. They're all just like, "Oh, well, this is just much nicer."

00:14:09 ◼   ► right? And a lot of that, like even the processors, which is like, well, there isn't really iPad

00:14:15 ◼   ► software that you get a ton of advantage out of having the fastest processor. Things just

00:14:22 ◼   ► happen quicker. It's just more capable. Yeah, there are, yeah, something I mentioned is that

00:14:27 ◼   ► I don't think that there are lots of people who are using iPad apps and waiting because the

00:14:31 ◼   ► the processor is just not fast enough.

00:14:35 ◼   ► There are examples, and like I was thinking

00:14:39 ◼   ► in something like Ferrite, which I use to edit,

00:14:41 ◼   ► and I've got plugins turned on to process the audio,

00:14:44 ◼   ► and then I export the audio at the end.

00:14:46 ◼   ► I would imagine an audio export

00:14:48 ◼   ► of a multi-track Ferrite project on the iPad

00:14:51 ◼   ► would be a lot slower than on the iPad Pro, is my guess.

00:14:54 ◼   ► Might be wrong, I don't know,

00:14:56 ◼   ► but my guess is that it would be a lot slower

00:14:58 ◼   ► because the processor is a lot slower

00:15:00 ◼   ► than on the current iPad Pro. But again, that's an edge case. And if you're somebody who cares

00:15:06 ◼   ► about that, you probably know it and you would probably make a different buying decision.

00:15:09 ◼   ► If you're doing that level of power, perhaps if you've got the -- that might make you prioritize

00:15:15 ◼   ► that more expensive iPad. Although, it'll still work on the iPad. That's the thing.

00:15:19 ◼   ► It just would be a little bit slower. But I think it's less of a big deal. And yeah,

00:15:23 ◼   ► so you wrap that all in and you end up with a product that is -- it's pretty great. Like,

00:15:27 ◼   ► For a price that Apple didn't use to sell iPads at all, let's remember, before last

00:15:31 ◼   ► year, it's pretty great, $329 for an iPad that is two years away from being cutting

00:15:40 ◼   ► edge but still incredibly capable with a bunch of features.

00:15:44 ◼   ► The other Honda Civic thing I mentioned is when I bought my first car I ever bought new

00:15:48 ◼   ► was a Honda Civic in 1993.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And I had just gotten a job and my wife had just gotten a job and we weren't even married

00:15:56 ◼   ► was before we were married, and my car died. And we bought a Honda Civic. And we didn't

00:16:02 ◼   ► have a lot of money, so we couldn't buy any of the fancy features they had. The car didn't

00:16:10 ◼   ► have a clock, Myke. They're like, "Oh, that'll be another $100 for the clock." And we're

00:16:15 ◼   ► like, "$100 for a clock? That's outrageous!" And then, for a stupid little clock, and then

00:16:19 ◼   ► we spent the next 15 years driving that car without a clock, thinking, "This is the dumbest

00:16:24 ◼   ► thing ever, why did we not pay a hundred dollars for a clock? But there was one

00:16:28 ◼   ► feature of the windows. We had to crank the windows, there were no power windows on

00:16:32 ◼   ► that car. We just had to use a plastic handle to crank the windows up and down.

00:16:35 ◼   ► The one feature we spent on, because we lived in a hot part of the Bay Area, was

00:16:41 ◼   ► air conditioning. And I was thinking about that with the Apple Pencil, which

00:16:45 ◼   ► is sometimes—and again you don't get to choose your features in the iPad, they

00:16:49 ◼   ► are what they are—but the Apple Pencil is like the frill that now comes with

00:16:53 ◼   ► with the budget product.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And I think it's the right frill to bring down there

00:16:59 ◼   ► because there's so much potential for people.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Like I gave the iPad to my son with an Apple Pencil

00:17:06 ◼   ► for him to try out and he took to it easily

00:17:09 ◼   ► and he's never had an iPad with an Apple Pencil.

00:17:12 ◼   ► And I think that's a great decision by Apple,

00:17:14 ◼   ► not just for education, but in general,

00:17:16 ◼   ► to let the Apple Pencil be part of the whole iPad story now,

00:17:20 ◼   ► which is, that's the story of car technology too,

00:17:23 ◼   ► where all the cool tech starts off in the luxury cars

00:17:26 ◼   ► and then eventually it comes down to everywhere.

00:17:28 ◼   ► It's hard to find a car that,

00:17:31 ◼   ► I'm not sure they make cars anymore

00:17:33 ◼   ► where you have to crank the windows up and down, right?

00:17:34 ◼   ► Like that may just be over,

00:17:37 ◼   ► but there was a time when that was a fancy feature.

00:17:39 ◼   ► And then over time, they just, you know, the auto,

00:17:43 ◼   ► all cars I think have to have backup cameras now in the US.

00:17:45 ◼   ► So now, you know, I've got a car with a backup camera,

00:17:49 ◼   ► but that used to be a fancy feature.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Eventually some of these smart cruise control

00:17:53 ◼   ► and automatic parking and stuff that are luxury things are getting, those are getting pushed

00:17:57 ◼   ► down into cars. Anyway, the Apple Pencil is now that. It's like the power windows. The

00:18:02 ◼   ► Apple Pencil is just, every iPad from now on is probably going to have Apple Pencil

00:18:05 ◼   ► support. It's great. And other things may come. The only bummer, I would say, is it's

00:18:10 ◼   ► a bummer that this thing doesn't do smart connector if only because I think that the

00:18:16 ◼   ► 9.7 iPad Pro with that Logitech Create keyboard that uses the smart connector was a really

00:18:21 ◼   ► great combo as a compact writing machine and for this thing you're going to need to use

00:18:26 ◼   ► a Bluetooth keyboard but there will be cases, there are probably already cases that abound

00:18:32 ◼   ► that are Bluetooth based and will let you use it as a little typing machine.

00:18:38 ◼   ► So put a link in the show notes to Jason's review if you want to read more but it's a

00:18:42 ◼   ► great little machine that iPad. It's a good little computer.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Alright today's show is brought to you by a new sponsor which I'm very excited about

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00:18:56 ◼   ► channels. You can use Slack for projects, interests, teams or for your whole office.

00:19:01 ◼   ► When you do, you're going to know that all the right people are always in the loop, that

00:19:05 ◼   ► all of the information you need is in one place and that it's super easy for any new

00:19:09 ◼   ► members to get up to speed. Slack helps you dramatically reduce the number of emails you

00:19:14 ◼   ► need to send and helps streamline your team's communications.

00:19:18 ◼   ► With Slack your team can make use of real-time messaging, video and voice calls, group file

00:19:23 ◼   ► sharing, searchable archives, everything all in an easy to use app.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Plus you can use drag and drop file sharing that works with all of the apps you already

00:19:32 ◼   ► use like Google Drive, Salesforce and Zendesk.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And Slack works wherever you do.

00:19:37 ◼   ► The mobile apps for iOS and Android sync seamlessly so you can pick up where you left off no matter

00:19:41 ◼   ► where you are.

00:19:42 ◼   ► We have been using Slack since before day one of Relay FM and I can't even comprehend

00:19:50 ◼   ► the thousands of emails that I have not had to send and receive because of Slack.

00:19:56 ◼   ► Because all of this type of communication, this business communication, has to happen

00:20:00 ◼   ► somewhere.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And having it all happen within its own little app, all within Slack, is so much nicer than

00:20:07 ◼   ► and having all of these communications also interwoven with all of the other types of

00:20:12 ◼   ► email that I get, it's a horrible mess.

00:20:15 ◼   ► And then being so easily searchable, so like if I, this happens to me quite a lot, so like

00:20:20 ◼   ► maybe me and Jason are planning out something scheduling wise and I forget something, I

00:20:25 ◼   ► can just type in a couple of keywords and I can search through our previous chat history

00:20:28 ◼   ► and I can find it.

00:20:29 ◼   ► It's so, so easy.

00:20:31 ◼   ► If I had to do it in email, I would lose about a week of my life trying to find that email.

00:20:36 ◼   ► This is just some of the many, many reasons that I absolutely love Slack. It completely

00:20:41 ◼   ► changed the way that I work and I know has helped significantly with all of the things

00:20:47 ◼   ► in my company. It is like a super, super important tool for me.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I had somebody ask me the other day about if I feel lonely as somebody who works at

00:20:55 ◼   ► home by myself. And I actually said these words, which is, "Well, no, because I have

00:21:00 ◼   ► Slack. And the people I work with, we're all in Slack together. And that is our collaborative

00:21:05 ◼   ► work environment. And yeah, it's fun too, but that's also where all the work gets done.

00:21:09 ◼   ► And that's our office, and it completely works.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:12 ◼   ► 100%. To learn more about Slack, head to slack.com. That is S-L-A-C-K dot com. Thanks to Slack

00:21:18 ◼   ► for their support of Real AFM and for giving us an easy way to communicate Slack where

00:21:23 ◼   ► work happens.

00:21:25 ◼   ► I'm so excited to have Slack as a sponsor.

00:21:27 ◼   ► That's good. Sorry, I didn't hear all that ad. I was responding to something in Slack.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Oh, see what I did there? Anyway.

00:21:32 ◼   ► It's true. It's nice to have a product you use as a sponsor. It's great. We have

00:21:37 ◼   ► some more of those in this episode, which is also great.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Apple invited Matthew Panzareno from TechCrunch to take a look at what they're doing to

00:21:45 ◼   ► address the pro market. So this was reminiscent of the Roundtable event.

00:21:52 ◼   ► Yeah. What if they had a Roundtable with no table and only Matthew Panzareno? That's

00:21:56 ◼   ► basically what happened. It's the one year later, there's a, there looks like no Phil

00:22:01 ◼   ► Schiller and nobody but Panzer there. But it is the follow-up to the roundtable that

00:22:09 ◼   ► we got last year where they said, "We are going to do a Mac Pro after all. It won't

00:22:14 ◼   ► happen this year, but it will happen after that." Key point.

00:22:19 ◼   ► And now we know, again, not this year, but we'll get to that in a moment because there

00:22:24 ◼   ► are a few things that we should set up first. So this is, even though it was interesting,

00:22:30 ◼   ► Interesting, right? They only invited one journalist. It's still another indication of

00:22:34 ◼   ► Apple believing that it is very important for them to show that they are serious about providing

00:22:41 ◼   ► solutions for pro users of their platform. So one thing that they spoke about this time, which has

00:22:48 ◼   ► happened in the kind of the intervening time from the last round table to now, is the establishment

00:22:54 ◼   ► of the Pro Workflow team. This is nothing to do with the Workflow app. This is Workflow

00:23:02 ◼   ► in the sense of the flow of your work. John Turnus, the VP of hardware engineering at

00:23:08 ◼   ► Apple, amassed this group of pro users to help him understand what Apple needed to do.

00:23:14 ◼   ► So what they did is they started with observing some people, talking to some creative professionals

00:23:19 ◼   ► and trying to understand, you know, like in an environment where someone's asking you

00:23:23 ◼   ► a bunch of questions, how much information can you get? Apple believed that wasn't

00:23:27 ◼   ► enough. Just like asking some people questions in the abstract is not enough because what

00:23:32 ◼   ► you need to understand is on a day to day basis, what are people being frustrated about?

00:23:38 ◼   ► Because if you're going to go to Apple Park and sitting in a room, you might not remember

00:23:42 ◼   ► that like three days ago you were clicking this button over and over and over again and

00:23:46 ◼   ► nothing was happening. Right? Like these are the things that you kind of forget about but

00:23:50 ◼   ► are really important. So they decided that they would start hiring people to work directly for

00:23:56 ◼   ► Apple who are experts in creative fields. So that Apple are focusing on visual effects animators,

00:24:03 ◼   ► video editors, 3D animators and music producers. These people now all work for Apple as part of

00:24:10 ◼   ► the Pro Workflow team on real projects. They're making videos, they're making music, which I

00:24:15 ◼   ► expect Apple using somewhere.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Apple have said that this team is helping them shape what the Mac Pro is going to look

00:24:47 ◼   ► like. They mentioned modular system again a bunch of times. So that is all but confirmed

00:24:52 ◼   ► that the Mac Pro will be modular, whatever modular ends up meaning. And also as well,

00:24:58 ◼   ► they did underscore that this team is helping inform the MacBook Pros and iMacs too. This

00:25:03 ◼   ► is only about the Mac Pro. Jason, what is your take on the creation of this Pro workflow

00:25:09 ◼   ► team.

00:25:10 ◼   ► It's kind of weird. I think it's… I appreciate the idea that Apple perhaps responding to

00:25:21 ◼   ► what happened with the Trashcan Mac Pro where it realizes that it made some decisions that

00:25:28 ◼   ► didn't actually fit what its customers wanted, that it's trying to understand its customers

00:25:32 ◼   ► better.

00:25:33 ◼   ► They made a bunch of assumptions as to what professionals needed and then a bunch of creative

00:25:37 ◼   ► professionals told them, you got this wrong, right?

00:25:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I appreciate that.

00:25:42 ◼   ► I find it weird the idea, and again,

00:25:44 ◼   ► I don't know how much of this is that it was

00:25:46 ◼   ► a surprising thing and Panzer focused on it

00:25:48 ◼   ► because it was surprising,

00:25:50 ◼   ► or that they thought it was a cool thing

00:25:52 ◼   ► and so they wanted to highlight it.

00:25:53 ◼   ► But the idea that they've brought people in on contract

00:25:58 ◼   ► to sit in the group with the pro development team

00:26:01 ◼   ► and do like their work while they're being observed,

00:26:05 ◼   ► I find that strange because those aren't real projects.

00:26:09 ◼   ► They're, I mean, they're probably not real projects

00:26:13 ◼   ► or if they are, I don't, it just seems very strange

00:26:16 ◼   ► that, and not necessarily reflective

00:26:20 ◼   ► of what their actual jobs are.

00:26:22 ◼   ► Like, wouldn't it be better to just send Apple people

00:26:26 ◼   ► in the field to spend weeks watching them,

00:26:30 ◼   ► a record producer producing an album

00:26:33 ◼   ► on Apple hardware and software in their own space,

00:26:36 ◼   ► like a real job and the same for, you know,

00:26:39 ◼   ► name the field, visual effects industry, you know,

00:26:42 ◼   ► video editing, all of these things.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Wouldn't that be more cost-effective than having them be,

00:26:47 ◼   ► you know, brought into Apple and working on

00:26:51 ◼   ► presumably demo projects?

00:26:53 ◼   ► It seems, I mean, I guess there are reasons, right?

00:26:55 ◼   ► 'Cause otherwise they wouldn't do it,

00:26:57 ◼   ► but it just, it strikes me like the moment that you're

00:27:02 ◼   ► inside Apple working on real projects,

00:27:05 ◼   ► but you're inside Apple,

00:27:06 ◼   ► I start to wonder at what point does that become artificial

00:27:10 ◼   ► and you're no longer, you know,

00:27:11 ◼   ► you're affecting what's happening.

00:27:14 ◼   ► At the same time, I think I can understand the idea that

00:27:19 ◼   ► if you were working on this stuff and Apple's like,

00:27:22 ◼   ► "Well, why did you do that?

00:27:23 ◼   ► What about this?

00:27:24 ◼   ► Can you go back and show us that?"

00:27:26 ◼   ► And you're working on this stuff every day.

00:27:27 ◼   ► You're like, "No, I need to do my job."

00:27:30 ◼   ► And that might lead to somebody saying,

00:27:32 ◼   ► well, what if we pay you to do a project for us

00:27:37 ◼   ► that we can stop you at any point and say,

00:27:40 ◼   ► well, what about this?

00:27:41 ◼   ► Well, what about that?

00:27:42 ◼   ► So it's probably not their only data point,

00:27:43 ◼   ► but it's something that's new and interesting.

00:27:45 ◼   ► The point of it, I think, in terms of messaging

00:27:47 ◼   ► was just to communicate to pro users

00:27:49 ◼   ► that they're really trying to understand

00:27:52 ◼   ► how pros use their stuff

00:27:54 ◼   ► and have a direct line of conversation

00:27:56 ◼   ► between the pro users who are using the stuff

00:27:59 ◼   ► and the people who are building the pro hardware

00:28:01 ◼   ► and the pro software for that matter.

00:28:02 ◼   ► So I like that because that's showing that,

00:28:06 ◼   ► they're really trying to show that they're paying attention

00:28:08 ◼   ► and that they care and they wanna learn about this.

00:28:10 ◼   ► It just, I think there is probably some missing context here

00:28:14 ◼   ► that would have been helpful for me.

00:28:16 ◼   ► But I think it's a cool idea and I just,

00:28:19 ◼   ► the larger point is, yeah,

00:28:20 ◼   ► this is another example of Apple trying to show,

00:28:23 ◼   ► it's almost like penance for what they,

00:28:28 ◼   ► for not listening to their customers for a while.

00:28:31 ◼   ► - So Tom Boger, Senior Director

00:28:35 ◼   ► of Mac Hardware Product Marketing had the following to say.

00:28:39 ◼   ► We want to be transparent and communicate openly

00:28:43 ◼   ► with our pro community.

00:28:44 ◼   ► So we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product.

00:28:49 ◼   ► It is not something for this year.

00:28:52 ◼   ► We know that there's a lot of customers

00:28:54 ◼   ► that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro

00:28:57 ◼   ► and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro.

00:29:00 ◼   ► So they have come out and said, 2019.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And I like the thinking behind this,

00:29:05 ◼   ► whether like, we know there are people

00:29:07 ◼   ► that could probably do with an iMac Pro

00:29:11 ◼   ► for the next year and a half,

00:29:13 ◼   ► but they're not buying it

00:29:15 ◼   ► because they wanna see if the Mac Pro's coming.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Well, now you know it's not, right?

00:29:20 ◼   ► Like if you were thinking to yourself,

00:29:21 ◼   ► oh, I really need to upgrade,

00:29:24 ◼   ► but I can't do it just yet

00:29:27 ◼   ► because, oh, you know, I believe,

00:29:30 ◼   ► I don't wanna spend all this money

00:29:31 ◼   ► and then regret it in two months time.

00:29:34 ◼   ► - So I think one aspect of this announcement

00:29:37 ◼   ► and the first thing that came to mind

00:29:38 ◼   ► when I saw this story was,

00:29:41 ◼   ► this is Apple saying, no, no, no,

00:29:42 ◼   ► you should just go ahead and buy the iMac Pro.

00:29:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, which I think is fine.

00:29:47 ◼   ► - Don't wait for 2020 or whenever 2019, sorry.

00:29:50 ◼   ► They did say it will ship in 2019, the new Mac Pro.

00:29:53 ◼   ► But this is Apple saying, it's gonna be a while.

00:29:56 ◼   ► don't wait this year for the Mac Pro, just buy the iMac Pro.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Just go ahead and do it because it's gonna be a while

00:30:03 ◼   ► for this thing.

00:30:04 ◼   ► And that's not their only message here,

00:30:06 ◼   ► but that's part of the message.

00:30:07 ◼   ► That's absolutely part of the message is,

00:30:09 ◼   ► here's what we're doing, it's gonna be a while.

00:30:13 ◼   ► If you're planning your purchasing decisions

00:30:15 ◼   ► and you're trying to hold out for another year, don't do it.

00:30:18 ◼   ► - So I think one of the things that a lot of people

00:30:22 ◼   ► were kind of holding onto was the idea

00:30:25 ◼   ► that the Mac Pro was definitely a 2018 product.

00:30:29 ◼   ► But Apple never gave a date, did they?

00:30:33 ◼   ► They never said anything about a date before.

00:30:35 ◼   ► - No, they said it won't be this year.

00:30:37 ◼   ► - And I think everyone just assumed,

00:30:40 ◼   ► well, if you don't mean this year,

00:30:41 ◼   ► you definitely mean next year.

00:30:43 ◼   ► I think that was just a thing,

00:30:45 ◼   ► and then it's one of these things that gets perpetuated.

00:30:48 ◼   ► - Not everybody.

00:30:48 ◼   ► I think we all hoped it would be this year,

00:30:51 ◼   ► but I remember very clearly writing and saying

00:30:55 ◼   ► at several points, and I know that like the ATP guys did

00:30:58 ◼   ► and all that, like they didn't say it would ship in 2018.

00:31:02 ◼   ► They did not say that.

00:31:03 ◼   ► They said it won't ship in 2017.

00:31:06 ◼   ► That's all they said.

00:31:08 ◼   ► And that was always hanging out there.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Like they didn't say it would ship in 2018.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Now, oh boy, wouldn't that be something

00:31:15 ◼   ► if it didn't ship until 2019.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And guess what?

00:31:22 ◼   ► They didn't commit to shipping in 2018 for a reason,

00:31:25 ◼   ► because it's not going to, but it is gonna ship in 2019.

00:31:28 ◼   ► They did commit, Pansarino did get that out of them,

00:31:31 ◼   ► that their plan is for it to ship next year.

00:31:34 ◼   ► - That is, it's risky though to give a date, isn't it?

00:31:37 ◼   ► - Well, that far in advance, I think that's the thing

00:31:40 ◼   ► is that the message from the round table last year

00:31:42 ◼   ► was like, we're just starting on this process

00:31:43 ◼   ► and we don't know how it's gonna go.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Now there's a lot of people out there who are saying,

00:31:46 ◼   ► well, why don't you just ship something?

00:31:49 ◼   ► Why are you taking this long?

00:31:51 ◼   ► And I think part of it is that this is how long it takes

00:31:53 ◼   ► for Apple to develop products.

00:31:55 ◼   ► They're developing these things in advance.

00:31:56 ◼   ► They didn't plan on doing a Mac Pro, right?

00:31:58 ◼   ► It wasn't a plan like, okay, the iMac Pro is gonna come out

00:32:01 ◼   ► and then the Mac Pro is gonna come out.

00:32:02 ◼   ► Like the iMac Pro was the replacement for the Mac Pro

00:32:05 ◼   ► and they weren't gonna do a Mac Pro anymore.

00:32:06 ◼   ► That was the deal.

00:32:08 ◼   ► And then they changed their mind

00:32:10 ◼   ► and they had to start a Mac Pro design process from scratch.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Now you could argue, I think it's a reasonable argument

00:32:18 ◼   ► that that market is so desperate for a product

00:32:23 ◼   ► that perhaps a faster development cycle

00:32:28 ◼   ► that generated something that was not super mind blowing

00:32:31 ◼   ► or anything, but was a box that ran Mac OS

00:32:35 ◼   ► and had high-end features and was modular like a box

00:32:40 ◼   ► would have made a lot of people happy.

00:32:42 ◼   ► But you know, it's Apple, they don't do that.

00:32:44 ◼   ► They're not gonna put out,

00:32:45 ◼   ► they're not gonna get the cheese grater out of mothballs.

00:32:48 ◼   ► and do a new Mac Pro cheese grater

00:32:50 ◼   ► to hold you over for two years.

00:32:52 ◼   ► They're not gonna do that.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And we can see with the iMac Pro,

00:32:56 ◼   ► like what's the iMac Pro?

00:32:58 ◼   ► It's not just a Xeon iMac.

00:33:00 ◼   ► It's got like the T2 ARM processor

00:33:03 ◼   ► and this whole other like boot sequence and-

00:33:05 ◼   ► - And it's black.

00:33:06 ◼   ► - Well, yeah.

00:33:07 ◼   ► And it's space gray, of course you've got to do it.

00:33:10 ◼   ► So Apple, like this is just, this is Apple.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Apple doesn't want to make a generic box.

00:33:16 ◼   ► Apple wants to make something that is pushing the Mac platform forward in some way and that's

00:33:22 ◼   ► really interesting when we get to the other hot topic of the last week about the future

00:33:26 ◼   ► of the Mac, but it's, yeah, I mean, I can see both sides of it. I understand the frustration

00:33:32 ◼   ► of people who just want a new Mac Pro and cannot believe that it's gonna be a couple

00:33:38 ◼   ► years from when Apple says they're gonna do it before they ship something, but at the

00:33:42 ◼   ► same time it was a new addition to Apple's product roadmap that came. It was unlikely

00:33:48 ◼   ► that anything was going to ship soon and it's hard to, it's like the the scorpion and the

00:33:55 ◼   ► frog, right? Like I can't help it, it's my nature as the scorpion stings the frog and

00:33:59 ◼   ► they both drown. It's, this is like that, it's like it's Apple's nature. I don't think

00:34:03 ◼   ► you can legitimately, asking Apple to just ship a beige box full of Mac Pro parts is not,

00:34:12 ◼   ► is asking Apple to not be itself.

00:34:14 ◼   ► - It is unrealistic.

00:34:15 ◼   ► It is an unrealistic expectation to assume

00:34:17 ◼   ► that they would ever do that.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Like, this is not gonna happen.

00:34:20 ◼   ► - No, 'cause it's Apple.

00:34:21 ◼   ► And you can say, and again,

00:34:23 ◼   ► so then your argument is Apple should not be Apple.

00:34:25 ◼   ► It's like, okay, you can make that argument, but guess what?

00:34:28 ◼   ► Apple is Apple.

00:34:30 ◼   ► - Why are you here then?

00:34:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, that, exactly right.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Like, that's exactly it.

00:34:36 ◼   ► And meanwhile, the iMac Pro is an excellent option.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And I get that it's not a great option for everybody,

00:34:43 ◼   ► but it is an excellent option in the interim.

00:34:47 ◼   ► - So they've obviously decided to talk about this now

00:34:52 ◼   ► because they're not gonna bring anything out

00:34:55 ◼   ► on stage at WWDC, right?

00:34:57 ◼   ► Like that's probably why they've decided to do this now,

00:34:59 ◼   ► just to like make sure they're getting ahead of that.

00:35:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is actually, it's funny,

00:35:06 ◼   ► this is the exact same strategy as last year, I think,

00:35:09 ◼   ► where the last thing Apple wants is to have WWDC

00:35:14 ◼   ► become a story about Apple not caring about pros,

00:35:17 ◼   ► especially since developers are the most important,

00:35:20 ◼   ► in many ways, segment of pros in Apple's product,

00:35:23 ◼   ► you know, line of customers,

00:35:25 ◼   ► because they're making apps for everybody else.

00:35:28 ◼   ► So the last thing they want is for WWDC

00:35:32 ◼   ► to be the place where they give bad news and say,

00:35:36 ◼   ► you know, we're not gonna ship,

00:35:37 ◼   ► let's talk about the Mac Pro

00:35:38 ◼   ► that you guys want that we haven't given you in a very long time." Like, they don't even

00:35:42 ◼   ► want to have that conversation.

00:35:43 ◼   ► It's like two things. We have nothing to show you today and it's not coming this year.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. So last year they said, "Oh well, we do care about you," which would have

00:35:52 ◼   ► been a positive thing, but the thing that we're going to show that we care about you

00:35:56 ◼   ► with is not coming anytime soon. And then this year it would have been like, you know,

00:36:03 ◼   ► is today Mac Pro Day? Maybe they'll announce the Mac Pro at WWDC. And by doing this they're

00:36:08 ◼   ► saying no we won't don't get your hopes up no it's gonna be next year and that

00:36:12 ◼   ► totally changes the the it's funny too because this might have been the kind of

00:36:17 ◼   ► story that they leaked in the past right this might have been the kind of story

00:36:20 ◼   ► where two weeks before WWDC they leaked something that said the Mac Pro is not

00:36:24 ◼   ► coming until 2019 don't get your hopes up just because they want to set

00:36:28 ◼   ► expectations but today's Apple has some different strategies like inviting

00:36:32 ◼   ► Panzer over to Cupertino to talk about it and write a story that we all then

00:36:37 ◼   ► talk about that disseminates the information that it's not going to happen until 2019.

00:36:41 ◼   ► But either way, it is, I would argue, maybe the most important thing it does is take that

00:36:46 ◼   ► conversation off the table for WWDC. Not that people at WWDC aren't going to be grousing

00:36:51 ◼   ► about it, but it's a done deal. It's a little bit like the headphone jack thing. It's like,

00:36:57 ◼   ► by the time we get there, everybody's going to have talked themselves out of it. By the

00:37:00 ◼   ► time the iPhone 7 shipped without the headphone jack, we had talked about it for 10 months.

00:37:05 ◼   ► we were you know people were still grumpy about it but like the outrage had faded and

00:37:10 ◼   ► the same is going to go with this like by the time we get to San Jose we will already

00:37:15 ◼   ► have processed and gone through all the stages of grief about the 2018 Mac Pro theory that

00:37:21 ◼   ► is dead and we will have moved on and that's why you do it that's like the number one reason

00:37:26 ◼   ► you do it.

00:37:27 ◼   ► I guess like last year they knew that they had a cool video about the iMac Pro to show

00:37:32 ◼   ► But if they didn't reference the Mac Pro before that, everyone's going to be like, "Okay,

00:37:36 ◼   ► but where's the Mac Pro?"

00:37:38 ◼   ► So they didn't want to ruin, they didn't rain on the iMac Pro's parade, so they did the

00:37:43 ◼   ► whole thing beforehand where they were like, "We have this thing coming, it's called the

00:37:46 ◼   ► iMac Pro.

00:37:47 ◼   ► By the way, we've also decided we're going to do a Mac Pro, but you're not going to hear

00:37:50 ◼   ► about that this year."

00:37:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:52 ◼   ► Right?

00:37:53 ◼   ► It probably allows them to stand on stage, "We'll see how we draft this at WWDC," and

00:37:57 ◼   ► say, "Of course we ship the iMac Pro, which is the most powerful Mac we've ever shipped

00:38:02 ◼   ► and you guys love it and everybody loves it and it's great." And of course there will

00:38:06 ◼   ► be a Mac Pro next year too, but the iMac Pro is great. Now they could get away with that

00:38:12 ◼   ► on stage without probably being booed.

00:38:15 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:38:16 ◼   ► They may say, "Oh, we have these updates that we want to do to these products." So they

00:38:21 ◼   ► might update something in the iMac Pro, they might update something in the MacBook Pros,

00:38:25 ◼   ► but then they don't have again this like,

00:38:27 ◼   ► well, where's the Mac Pro you promised?

00:38:29 ◼   ► - And it lets them say like, we love you,

00:38:32 ◼   ► we love developers and we love Pro users.

00:38:36 ◼   ► And underlying that is everybody having read this story

00:38:38 ◼   ► from TechCrunch about how they've got like teams of pros

00:38:43 ◼   ► inside Apple working with them and they're observing them

00:38:47 ◼   ► and giving them electric shocks,

00:38:48 ◼   ► probably not that last part.

00:38:50 ◼   ► And that underlies our understanding

00:38:54 ◼   ► when they stand on stage and say, "We love the pro market

00:38:56 ◼   ► and we're recommitted to it."

00:38:57 ◼   ► And they don't have to talk about all that stuff.

00:39:00 ◼   ► It's just kind of in the water.

00:39:02 ◼   ► So it's an interesting PR decision on their front

00:39:07 ◼   ► in order to get out in front of this.

00:39:09 ◼   ► But I think WWDC is the most important thing in their mind

00:39:13 ◼   ► when they're doing this.

00:39:13 ◼   ► Just get it off the table

00:39:15 ◼   ► before they have that big high profile event.

00:39:18 ◼   ► Because the last thing you want is the developers

00:39:20 ◼   ► to be a bad audience and cranky

00:39:23 ◼   ► and because it's supposed to be like a very,

00:39:27 ◼   ► it's Apple's second biggest kind of tent pole event

00:39:30 ◼   ► of the year and they want it to go off smoothly.

00:39:33 ◼   ► - Just a couple of like tidbits from some tweets

00:39:36 ◼   ► that Matthew Panzorino was sending

00:39:37 ◼   ► after the report went out, his article,

00:39:41 ◼   ► no information about new Mac minis,

00:39:43 ◼   ► nothing mentioned, nothing seen, nothing.

00:39:47 ◼   ► They did mention-- - Oh, it's not a pro product,

00:39:48 ◼   ► right? - But like nothing, right?

00:39:50 ◼   ► But they're talking about everything else,

00:39:51 ◼   ► but like nothing else about the Mac Mini.

00:39:53 ◼   ► And they did reference in passing again, the Pro Display.

00:39:57 ◼   ► So like that's still very much on the table

00:39:59 ◼   ► will probably come with the Mac Pro.

00:40:01 ◼   ► - And that's where you see the difference between Apple.

00:40:05 ◼   ► When Apple announced the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar,

00:40:09 ◼   ► a few of us asked them about the display.

00:40:14 ◼   ► And I think they told Nielle Patel,

00:40:16 ◼   ► we're out of the display business.

00:40:18 ◼   ► And that was in the fall.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And in the spring, that was the fall of '16,

00:40:23 ◼   ► in the spring of '17, they had that round table

00:40:27 ◼   ► and they said they were doing a Mac Pro

00:40:28 ◼   ► and an external display.

00:40:30 ◼   ► And in the intervening time, first off,

00:40:31 ◼   ► they shipped that, you know, the LG display

00:40:34 ◼   ► that had so many problems

00:40:35 ◼   ► and that people complained a lot about.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And very clearly, they also made this Mac Pro decision.

00:40:42 ◼   ► You can see the window where they went from,

00:40:44 ◼   ► we're out of the display business to,

00:40:45 ◼   ► oh no, no, no, we're gonna make a display.

00:40:47 ◼   ► So somewhere between the fall of '16 and the spring of '17

00:40:50 ◼   ► is when that all pivoted around.

00:40:55 ◼   ► This is only half of the Mac story for today because there's this whole other side to this

00:41:00 ◼   ► which makes maybe everything even more interesting, which is the idea of Intel processors no longer

00:41:08 ◼   ► being in Macintosh computers. But before we get to that, let me thank Linode for their

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00:42:56 ◼   ► According to Mark Gurman and Ian King at Bloomberg, Apple is currently planning to transition

00:43:02 ◼   ► from Intel to their own chips, we will assume ARM for the sake of this discussion, in their

00:43:08 ◼   ► Mac line as early as 2020. The project is codenamed Kalamata. It is obviously still

00:43:16 ◼   ► in early development and it is part of a larger strategy from Apple to make their devices

00:43:21 ◼   ► more seamlessly work together. So, Jason, my question for you...

00:43:28 ◼   ► >> Kalamata is a kind of olive. >> I think it's also a place. So, there we

00:43:35 ◼   ► go. >> Oh, there's a city in Greece, but I was

00:43:37 ◼   ► just like it's an olive what does that mean? Stuff an olive is there like the pit in the

00:43:43 ◼   ► yeah I think it's because they're I don't know they're putting new stuff in it I don't

00:43:47 ◼   ► know like who knows what it means. So here's my question for you Jason. Okay. Is Apple

00:43:54 ◼   ► moving towards a shared platform? Well so so the I wrote a piece about this for Macworld

00:44:05 ◼   ► last week where I said, I likened it to the parable

00:44:08 ◼   ► of the blind men and the elephant, right?

00:44:10 ◼   ► Where the blind men touch the elephant

00:44:11 ◼   ► and they think it's three different animals

00:44:12 ◼   ► 'cause they don't see the whole picture.

00:44:13 ◼   ► - You're all about parables today, aren't you?

00:44:15 ◼   ► - Yes, I am, I am.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Today it's all about, there'll be a haiku later.

00:44:18 ◼   ► So we know about this, we know about Marzipan,

00:44:23 ◼   ► which is the idea of building kind of a shared app framework

00:44:27 ◼   ► for app development across iOS and Mac.

00:44:30 ◼   ► I wonder if we're not seeing the entire picture here.

00:44:33 ◼   ► It certainly seems that at the very least,

00:44:35 ◼   ► what Apple is trying to do is take advantage

00:44:38 ◼   ► of the work that it's done on one platform

00:44:42 ◼   ► on another platform, because it's very clear,

00:44:45 ◼   ► like maintaining two entirely separate consumer platforms

00:44:48 ◼   ► is not realistic.

00:44:50 ◼   ► The more, you know, they had this huge advantage

00:44:51 ◼   ► with the app store, and yet they can't translate that

00:44:54 ◼   ► to the Mac because it uses all sorts

00:44:56 ◼   ► of different technologies.

00:44:57 ◼   ► I mean, it's not easy for an iOS developer

00:44:59 ◼   ► to bring their stuff to the Mac.

00:45:01 ◼   ► So could they make that easier?

00:45:03 ◼   ► They've been putting ARM, I mean, right?

00:45:05 ◼   ► Like there was a report a while ago about the hybrid Macs,

00:45:08 ◼   ► right, and we have, I have a hybrid Mac

00:45:10 ◼   ► in front of me right now.

00:45:11 ◼   ► It's got the T2 processor in it,

00:45:13 ◼   ► which is an Apple built ARM processor,

00:45:15 ◼   ► and it's not being used for anything much,

00:45:18 ◼   ► security stuff, boot stuff, but it is in there.

00:45:21 ◼   ► And so they're already integrating

00:45:24 ◼   ► their chip technology into Macs.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Dropping Intel is a dramatic move.

00:45:31 ◼   ► There are lots of different pieces here, right?

00:45:33 ◼   ► like this would be a way to move to a unified platform

00:45:38 ◼   ► if they want to make the Mac of 2020 run software

00:45:43 ◼   ► that's more or less iOS apps,

00:45:46 ◼   ► but it doesn't have to be.

00:45:49 ◼   ► It doesn't have to be the whole platform,

00:45:51 ◼   ► but the two previous chip transitions

00:45:53 ◼   ► were the entire platform.

00:45:55 ◼   ► But Apple could, as part of its,

00:45:59 ◼   ► like let's bring in another piece,

00:46:00 ◼   ► its commitment to pro users, right?

00:46:03 ◼   ► it could retain x86, Intel compatibility,

00:46:08 ◼   ► or even keep max around at the high end

00:46:13 ◼   ► that run on Intel processors.

00:46:14 ◼   ► It doesn't necessarily have to mean

00:46:16 ◼   ► that they would switch the entire line over to ARM,

00:46:19 ◼   ► although it would be a lot more messy if they didn't.

00:46:22 ◼   ► So I don't know, I think it's not surprising.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I've seen some people speculate that it's entirely possible

00:46:28 ◼   ► that they will, that they could build something,

00:46:32 ◼   ► 'cause it is Apple building its own chips, right?

00:46:36 ◼   ► Apple building its own chips is not fundamentally ARM.

00:46:39 ◼   ► All of Apple's chips are ARM now,

00:46:40 ◼   ► but Apple could design something

00:46:43 ◼   ► with x86 compatibility in some way.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Obviously AMD makes x86 compatible chips.

00:46:50 ◼   ► They could also have hybrid systems for pros

00:46:53 ◼   ► that had ARM and also had Intel or AMD processors in it.

00:46:58 ◼   ► There's lots of complexity

00:47:00 ◼   ► about the way you would architect something like that.

00:47:04 ◼   ► And I am not a chip designer,

00:47:05 ◼   ► so I can't go down that route.

00:47:07 ◼   ► But it's fascinating because it does feel like

00:47:09 ◼   ► at a fundamental level,

00:47:10 ◼   ► we are hearing stories about how the Mac is going to get

00:47:13 ◼   ► the processors that are in iOS devices,

00:47:15 ◼   ► the app development framework,

00:47:17 ◼   ► or something similar to what's available to iOS developers.

00:47:20 ◼   ► And it does feel like

00:47:22 ◼   ► if they're not basically merging the Mac into something

00:47:26 ◼   ► that is a subset or a superset of iOS,

00:47:29 ◼   ► it is definitely taking big chunks of things that it has done on iOS and saying this is

00:47:35 ◼   ► going to be the future of the Mac.

00:47:38 ◼   ► I have a lot of opinions about this which is just based mostly on my own feelings as

00:47:46 ◼   ► opposed to logic, which is like it goes into a couple of different directions.

00:47:53 ◼   ► one I kind of feel like if you're gonna do this, if you're gonna move towards designing your own

00:48:00 ◼   ► chips, why maintain two OSs? It feels like one of the main reasons you do this is to simplify

00:48:06 ◼   ► everything. So I look at this story and I'm like okay this is Apple simplifying, they want to bring

00:48:11 ◼   ► it all in-house so they can control it all, so why maintain two OSs? You just at this point find a

00:48:17 ◼   ► a way to create one OS that runs everywhere. And I don't think this is a case of like,

00:48:23 ◼   ► make the Macs run iOS, but like something which is more than that. And this also extends

00:48:28 ◼   ► to me thinking, why would you want to have two processor architectures going on at once,

00:48:35 ◼   ► right? It's like, you are grossly overcomplicating the way that stuff works at that point to

00:48:40 ◼   ► to a level where it's like, is it even worth going through that incredible amount of work

00:48:47 ◼   ► when you could just stick with Intel?

00:48:49 ◼   ► Yeah, well that has always been my argument against Apple doing an arm transition for

00:48:55 ◼   ► the Mac, is if Apple's goal is just to keep the Mac in stasis as a product that continues

00:49:02 ◼   ► to exist in their product line, the right thing to do is just keep those things floating

00:49:09 ◼   ► and keep the Intel processors revving

00:49:14 ◼   ► as Intel updates them, you update them,

00:49:17 ◼   ► and just let it go on like that

00:49:19 ◼   ► and do software updates for compatibility.

00:49:22 ◼   ► And I feel like Apple has done that for a while

00:49:25 ◼   ► where there has not been a lot.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And then we've started to see some changes

00:49:29 ◼   ► and they're all changes that are kind of like,

00:49:30 ◼   ► oh, that's kind of like an iOS thing

00:49:32 ◼   ► that you're bringing over to the Mac.

00:49:33 ◼   ► So I think what people get freaked out about this

00:49:39 ◼   ► is when they think about today's iOS and they think,

00:49:41 ◼   ► I can't use iOS to do my job, I need a Mac,

00:49:44 ◼   ► I like the Mac, I don't wanna use iOS.

00:49:47 ◼   ► And I think that's fair.

00:49:49 ◼   ► The argument that I would make is,

00:49:55 ◼   ► what if Apple's changes to the Mac are essentially

00:50:00 ◼   ► to allow this new platform to do all the things iOS can do

00:50:05 ◼   ► and the things the Mac can do?

00:50:08 ◼   ► And what, and, you know, basically if you're a Mac user,

00:50:12 ◼   ► whether it feels like a Mac or it feels like iOS,

00:50:14 ◼   ► or it feels like a combination thereof,

00:50:16 ◼   ► is it now acceptable because it does what you need it to do?

00:50:21 ◼   ► In the end, if it does what you need it to do,

00:50:24 ◼   ► that's probably okay.

00:50:25 ◼   ► I start to wonder if what Apple has decided is,

00:50:28 ◼   ► rather than let the Mac just kind of float out there

00:50:35 ◼   ► doing its thing, it has decided to be aggressive

00:50:39 ◼   ► in building the bridges that get them to a place

00:50:47 ◼   ► where they've got one platform.

00:50:50 ◼   ► And that means making changes to the Mac

00:50:53 ◼   ► to make it fit in more with iOS

00:50:55 ◼   ► and potentially making changes to iOS

00:50:59 ◼   ► to make it capable of doing more stuff like the Mac.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And I don't know whether they come together

00:51:04 ◼   ► or whether, like I said, is it a superset?

00:51:06 ◼   ► Is it a subset?

00:51:07 ◼   ► Like is the Mac of the future kind of like

00:51:10 ◼   ► an iOS capable device that also has this Mac layer

00:51:13 ◼   ► on top of it?

00:51:14 ◼   ► Or does, you know, do they really come together?

00:51:18 ◼   ► We've been talking about the idea of like an iOS laptop

00:51:21 ◼   ► or an iOS desktop.

00:51:23 ◼   ► That's the elephant in the room here.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Now I brought the elephant back again.

00:51:27 ◼   ► The, right?

00:51:30 ◼   ► Because like that's the domain of the Mac.

00:51:32 ◼   ► So what do those products look like in five years?

00:51:34 ◼   ► Are those Macs and there are no iOS devices that do it?

00:51:37 ◼   ► Does Apple offer iOS devices and Macs in the same shapes?

00:51:40 ◼   ► They don't do that currently.

00:51:41 ◼   ► That's a mental barrier that you would have to go through.

00:51:45 ◼   ► Or is the answer all of the above, none of the above,

00:51:48 ◼   ► where suddenly, you know, there's the Apple platform stuff

00:51:52 ◼   ► and it just works on the Apple platform,

00:51:53 ◼   ► whether you're using a laptop or a desktop

00:51:55 ◼   ► or a tablet or a phone.

00:51:57 ◼   ► A lot of tough decisions.

00:51:58 ◼   ► We've talked about it in a bunch of different ways.

00:52:00 ◼   ► I think the idea that Apple's gonna use its own processors

00:52:04 ◼   ► and Macs though, suggests that it's trying to make the Mac

00:52:07 ◼   ► something different.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And I don't think Apple has any fantasies

00:52:13 ◼   ► that by making the Mac something different,

00:52:16 ◼   ► it's going to expand its market share

00:52:18 ◼   ► and become more than 8% of the company's revenue.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And for that reason, I think that it's probably motivated

00:52:24 ◼   ► by trying to make the Mac a lot more like iOS

00:52:28 ◼   ► so that Apple's work on one benefits the other

00:52:32 ◼   ► or benefits both and it's that platform unification thing.

00:52:36 ◼   ► How does the square with Apple's commitment to pros?

00:52:39 ◼   ► That's a good question.

00:52:41 ◼   ► You know, Apple could try to build an A series processor

00:52:46 ◼   ► that has many, many, many, many cores

00:52:49 ◼   ► and is dedicated to pros and maybe they'll do that

00:52:51 ◼   ► or maybe they have another solution

00:52:53 ◼   ► involving keeping x86 compatibility around

00:52:56 ◼   ► for the high end for a long time.

00:52:58 ◼   ► I don't know, but it's fascinating to think about it

00:53:01 ◼   ► because this is a, you know, I'm inclined to believe

00:53:05 ◼   ► this report, right?

00:53:06 ◼   ► This is Mark Gurman, and it means that Apple

00:53:09 ◼   ► is exerting effort on the Mac.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And I don't believe that Apple would be doing all of this

00:53:16 ◼   ► just to keep macOS totally separate from iOS.

00:53:19 ◼   ► I just, I don't believe that they would do that,

00:53:23 ◼   ► that it would be so much easier for them

00:53:25 ◼   ► if they really believed the Mac was just gonna be

00:53:27 ◼   ► in maintenance mode to let it coast.

00:53:30 ◼   ► And that isn't what they're doing, apparently.

00:53:33 ◼   ► - Like, it really feels to me that if you're gonna do

00:53:38 ◼   ► anything in this arena, like if you're gonna make

00:53:42 ◼   ► any kind of move, any kind of transition,

00:53:44 ◼   ► it must come with it, some large shifts, some description.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Because, you know, I hear a lot of people say that,

00:53:52 ◼   ► "Oh, Apple being held back by Intel."

00:53:54 ◼   ► I don't know if they have been.

00:53:55 ◼   ► Like, it's not like the laptop line was getting bright neck revision, right?

00:54:02 ◼   ► Like, I know that there were chips that were potentially holding them back, but it's not

00:54:06 ◼   ► like Apple had a history of like super quickly updating everything.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Like I think that they've just, they went through a period of time where they were addressing

00:54:13 ◼   ► a lot of things.

00:54:15 ◼   ► And I don't know if it is necessarily Intel that was being a problem for them, because

00:54:19 ◼   ► there's a lot of stuff that Apple can do, right, which isn't just processor revisions

00:54:24 ◼   ► all the time to their line if they want the line to improve in different ways.

00:54:28 ◼   ► They've shown that, right? There are different designs they can do,

00:54:30 ◼   ► there are different advancements they can do to the hardware in some way.

00:54:33 ◼   ► It really just feels to me that they're kind of like in a situation where it's,

00:54:38 ◼   ► well, we have these, we have these two platforms

00:54:42 ◼   ► and one of them sells significantly less,

00:54:46 ◼   ► but is super important to us for a variety of different reasons.

00:54:50 ◼   ► how can we make the smaller platform benefit the bigger platform and vice versa and finding some way

00:55:01 ◼   ► to have them all work on the same architecture and then develop them more cohesively makes a lot of

00:55:09 ◼   ► sense to me. Like if they want to create more hybrid-y like machines like Jason Snell's iBook,

00:55:19 ◼   ► right? This feels like a great place to start with that, where it's like, here is a device

00:55:24 ◼   ► that runs this, what feels like an almost bridge between iOS and macOS as we've known them, and

00:55:33 ◼   ► it is the future of our platform. The platform has to change eventually, right? Like, this is

00:55:39 ◼   ► what happens. Like, iOS was different to macOS and there will at some point be something that

00:55:44 ◼   ► that is different to iOS. And if Apple were thinking that, you know, it's like me and

00:55:49 ◼   ► you have spoke about this for a long time where we don't believe that the iPad is the

00:55:54 ◼   ► future of computing, but it is closer to the future than the Mac is, right? Like, we kind

00:56:03 ◼   ► of put that right, yeah?

00:56:04 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:56:05 ◼   ► Like, that what the iPad is is closer to what Apple will do in the future than what the

00:56:08 ◼   ► Mac currently is.

00:56:10 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, that's true, but I would say also

00:56:12 ◼   ► that they're both on these paths

00:56:15 ◼   ► where they both have features that feel necessary.

00:56:18 ◼   ► And there are things that you can do on the Mac

00:56:21 ◼   ► you can't do on iOS and vice versa.

00:56:24 ◼   ► But iOS is a more modern platform

00:56:28 ◼   ► and it's a more successful platform.

00:56:30 ◼   ► So what I don't wanna say is,

00:56:34 ◼   ► well, what Apple's gonna do is it's gonna transition to iOS

00:56:36 ◼   ► and the Mac's just gonna get forcibly moved in

00:56:38 ◼   ► 'cause it's not quite like that.

00:56:40 ◼   ► I feel like Apple may be viewing this as an opportunity

00:56:44 ◼   ► to take Mac users and take not necessarily all of the Mac,

00:56:50 ◼   ► but a big chunk of the Mac,

00:56:52 ◼   ► the people who just wanna buy a laptop, right?

00:56:56 ◼   ► Not necessarily even the high-end users, the pro users,

00:57:00 ◼   ► maybe there's a different story there.

00:57:02 ◼   ► And give them a product that has better battery life

00:57:05 ◼   ► and that has better apps.

00:57:07 ◼   ► And how do you do that?

00:57:10 ◼   ► And they could continue to call it Mac OS,

00:57:13 ◼   ► but all of a sudden it runs a lot of apps

00:57:15 ◼   ► that look an awful lot like iOS.

00:57:17 ◼   ► And maybe they add a touch to that layer only.

00:57:21 ◼   ► And it's a touchscreen Mac,

00:57:23 ◼   ► sort of like what Microsoft has done

00:57:24 ◼   ► where the nice apps are built for touch.

00:57:29 ◼   ► And then there's also sort of apps

00:57:32 ◼   ► that are really built for keyboard and mouse.

00:57:33 ◼   ► And that's okay.

00:57:35 ◼   ► I don't know, the, it's a challenge.

00:57:40 ◼   ► I think, just to come back to it,

00:57:43 ◼   ► I think my gut feeling is that Apple looks

00:57:45 ◼   ► at its consumer market.

00:57:47 ◼   ► All the people who buy MacBooks and iMacs and things

00:57:50 ◼   ► who are not the high-end pro users,

00:57:53 ◼   ► they're not the super technical users.

00:57:55 ◼   ► And it's a big portion of the Mac market are those people.

00:57:59 ◼   ► And think we need to serve them better.

00:58:02 ◼   ► And do look over at what Microsoft is doing

00:58:05 ◼   ► with their surface line and with a lot of the other PC

00:58:09 ◼   ► devices that are out there.

00:58:10 ◼   ► And now Microsoft is doing, you know,

00:58:12 ◼   ► ARM version of Windows.

00:58:13 ◼   ► And we're seeing those ARM laptops

00:58:15 ◼   ► that have incredible battery life.

00:58:17 ◼   ► And Apple is saying not,

00:58:19 ◼   ► well, we gotta be like those guys,

00:58:20 ◼   ► but is saying, are we serving that audience,

00:58:23 ◼   ► our audience with what we've got,

00:58:26 ◼   ► with Intel processors and no touch screen.

00:58:30 ◼   ► And when we, you know, and, you know,

00:58:34 ◼   ► The Windows stuff has this touch first kind of thing

00:58:37 ◼   ► and it's a modern kind of app layer and we have that.

00:58:39 ◼   ► It's on iOS, but we don't have that on the Mac.

00:58:41 ◼   ► What do we do?

00:58:42 ◼   ► And it's gotta be that Apple looks at that and says,

00:58:47 ◼   ► this is what we need to change this.

00:58:50 ◼   ► We need to change, for those users,

00:58:51 ◼   ► we need to give them a better product.

00:58:52 ◼   ► And the way we're gonna be able to give them

00:58:53 ◼   ► a better product is to get the richness

00:58:56 ◼   ► of the iOS app store on their devices.

00:58:59 ◼   ► And one way to do that would be to make an iOS laptop.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Sure, but then an iOS laptop has a lot of limitations.

00:59:05 ◼   ► They're gonna have to improve iOS to get.

00:59:07 ◼   ► So maybe it is this thing where the Mac is feeding iOS

00:59:10 ◼   ► and iOS is feeding the Mac.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And is that a toaster fridge?

00:59:13 ◼   ► Or is that a new kind of device

00:59:17 ◼   ► that is taking however you wanna spin it.

00:59:21 ◼   ► It's taking the best of the Mac and putting it in iOS,

00:59:23 ◼   ► or maybe it's taking the best of iOS

00:59:24 ◼   ► and putting it on the Mac.

00:59:26 ◼   ► It's a, because in the end, an ARM-based, let's say,

00:59:31 ◼   ► MacBook that can run iOS apps and has 20 hour battery life. I would argue is a way better product for most people

00:59:40 ◼   ► So there was a tweet that I saw from Steve Tran Smith

00:59:47 ◼   ► Which is really interesting to me where there is like a kind of a bridge between these two

00:59:51 ◼   ► Topics right where you have Mac Pro in 2019 on Mac in 2020 think about those two dates

01:00:01 ◼   ► 2019, 2020. It is very likely that the Mac Pro and an ARM Mac may be introduced at the

01:00:13 ◼   ► same time.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Wwdc 2019, they'll tell the developers, "Okay, we're making a chip transition. Here's the

01:00:19 ◼   ► details and here's what you're going to have to do in order to get to the new world."

01:00:23 ◼   ► Yeah. So that was more what I meant, right? They won't say, "Oh, and we're shipping today

01:00:27 ◼   ► - It is! - In our MacBook,

01:00:28 ◼   ► but like, they will say like, we have this Mac Pro

01:00:31 ◼   ► and also, you know, we are doing a transition now.

01:00:34 ◼   ► So my question to you is,

01:00:36 ◼   ► will the Mac Pro be the last Intel Mac

01:00:42 ◼   ► or the first ARM Mac?

01:00:44 ◼   ► - I think it's a great question.

01:00:47 ◼   ► It would, I'm gonna say yes.

01:00:52 ◼   ► I think. - Okay.

01:00:56 ◼   ► I think we've already seen that before Apple abandons Intel,

01:01:01 ◼   ► according to this story, right?

01:01:05 ◼   ► Apple is gonna keep infusing its processors,

01:01:09 ◼   ► its designed ARM-based processors into the Mac.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Step one was the Touch Bar and the T1.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Step two was the iMac Pro and the T2.

01:01:20 ◼   ► That's gonna continue.

01:01:22 ◼   ► So I have a hard time believing that the Mac Pro

01:01:25 ◼   ► that ships in 2019 won't have an ARM processor in it.

01:01:30 ◼   ► I have, I mean, this story is starting in 2020.

01:01:35 ◼   ► My guess is that it's gonna start in 2020 at the low end.

01:01:38 ◼   ► It may reach the high end, eventually it may not.

01:01:40 ◼   ► So my guess is that that Mac Pro

01:01:42 ◼   ► is gonna have Xeons in it.

01:01:43 ◼   ► But it's also gonna have ARM in it.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And it's possible that if Apple is announcing in 2019

01:01:51 ◼   ► at WWDC, let's say, a chip transition,

01:01:54 ◼   ► it's possible that one of the things that it will say

01:01:57 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro, if it indeed talks about the Mac Pro

01:02:00 ◼   ► at that time, will be that it's got an ARM processor in it

01:02:05 ◼   ► and that there perhaps is even a development story there

01:02:09 ◼   ► about how this allows you to develop software

01:02:14 ◼   ► for both platforms, both chip architectures, maybe.

01:02:18 ◼   ► Or it could just be as simple as it's like a T4

01:02:21 ◼   ► and it does some booting things and some security things

01:02:23 ◼   ► and not a lot else. And it's got Xeons and it's basically the iMac Pro in a case and

01:02:28 ◼   ► it is not colliding with the chip transition narrative because that Mac Pro is not going

01:02:33 ◼   ► to turn over into an Apple designed chip for five years. Because that will be the last

01:02:39 ◼   ► product that goes.

01:02:40 ◼   ► It's just, I like the idea of these two things coming together. It really does feel like

01:02:46 ◼   ► a kind of like, here is where we are today and here is where we're going.

01:02:50 ◼   ► an elephant! Oh! I mean, right? I mean, I really believe it. Like, there are pieces

01:02:59 ◼   ► to this puzzle that we don't have, but all will become clear. And Apple is—I have a

01:03:08 ◼   ► great deal of confidence that Apple knows exactly where it's going, and that these

01:03:12 ◼   ► Mark Gurman reports are pieces of the puzzle, but they're not the whole story.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I genuinely believe that all of this is linked, right?

01:03:20 ◼   ► Marzipan.

01:03:21 ◼   ► It's obvious, it's clear to see, right?

01:03:23 ◼   ► That Marzipan is the beginning which can lead to a transition because people are starting

01:03:30 ◼   ► to build with new tools which can cross the bridge between them, which eventually there

01:03:36 ◼   ► is no bridge to cross anymore, we're all on the bridge.

01:03:39 ◼   ► And we've moved in, there's lots of metaphors today, we've moved our homes to the bridge,

01:03:45 ◼   ► we live on the bridge now.

01:03:46 ◼   ► put an elephant on that bridge because it's too heavy.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Because it's too heavy. The elephant has to stay off the bridge.

01:03:52 ◼   ► Because the elephant has to take a raft across the river instead, but the bad news is the

01:03:59 ◼   ► scorpion is on the raft.

01:04:01 ◼   ► And so it's going to get rid of it.

01:04:02 ◼   ► I brought it all together.

01:04:04 ◼   ► There is a clear through line which gets us to R Max and Apple OS, right? And I believe

01:04:13 ◼   ► that is a long-term thing but will begin in 2018 and then moves through to 2019, 2020,

01:04:21 ◼   ► 2021, by 2025 maybe, right? Like, there is one thing.

01:04:26 ◼   ► Yeah, think 10 years from now. I think if you asked Apple behind the scenes as a person

01:04:31 ◼   ► inside Apple who gets the truth, where they view their platforms in 10 years. It's a long

01:04:37 ◼   ► time. I think they would say one app development framework for all devices

01:04:43 ◼   ► and that all of the needs defined by them right but all the needs of Mac

01:04:53 ◼   ► users including professional class Mac users are capable of being served by the

01:04:58 ◼   ► operating system. How do you get there? And that's the that's the that's why

01:05:03 ◼   ► they get paid the big money because it's a it's a lot of moving parts it's a lot

01:05:07 ◼   ► the technology that they have to build to do it. But I think that is the ultimate goal,

01:05:13 ◼   ► is one app development platform, one operating system, essentially, and not giving away all

01:05:20 ◼   ► sorts of features that today's users depend on, which, again, will be a source of frustration

01:05:26 ◼   ► because there will probably be decisions Apple makes to say, "This is not a thing that we're

01:05:30 ◼   ► going to do," and that's going to take 1% of the market or half a percent of the market

01:05:35 ◼   ► - Like straight up, people are gonna get left behind

01:05:38 ◼   ► when this happens, but like that,

01:05:40 ◼   ► there is no other way of doing it.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Like this is what has to happen.

01:05:45 ◼   ► - I was listening to John on ATP point out like,

01:05:48 ◼   ► there are a lot of web developers who use Docker

01:05:49 ◼   ► and they're using Intel if it's for Intel based servers.

01:05:53 ◼   ► And when we talked about this last year,

01:05:55 ◼   ► we heard from a few of them.

01:05:57 ◼   ► And I've heard people say basically,

01:06:00 ◼   ► well, if they go off of Intel, I probably won't buy a Mac

01:06:03 ◼   ► because a lot of web developers buy Macs

01:06:07 ◼   ► because they can run the Mac OS,

01:06:08 ◼   ► but they can also have Intel compatibility.

01:06:10 ◼   ► And there are other stories similar to that.

01:06:12 ◼   ► And I totally get it.

01:06:13 ◼   ► As I said last year, I'll say it again,

01:06:14 ◼   ► I totally get that.

01:06:17 ◼   ► If I'm Apple and I look at the Mac market,

01:06:19 ◼   ► what percentage of the Mac market are those people?

01:06:21 ◼   ► And if you think you can better serve 99.5% of the market

01:06:26 ◼   ► by getting rid of Intel compatibility,

01:06:28 ◼   ► you're willing to get rid of the other half of a percent

01:06:33 ◼   ► or whatever it is.

01:06:34 ◼   ► If you're in that half a percent, it stinks.

01:06:37 ◼   ► No doubt about it, but I think it's any change like this,

01:06:41 ◼   ► you're gonna lose some people.

01:06:42 ◼   ► And that's just how it works.

01:06:45 ◼   ► That's just how it is.

01:06:46 ◼   ► And there is, I definitely see it on the internet a lot.

01:06:49 ◼   ► This is not a surprise that there is an attitude

01:06:54 ◼   ► that you should never make a decision

01:06:56 ◼   ► that loses you a customer.

01:06:58 ◼   ► But not making a decision will also lose you customers.

01:07:01 ◼   ► That's just how it is.

01:07:02 ◼   ► So you have to make smart decisions and it sucks if you're the customer who gets lost,

01:07:07 ◼   ► but sometimes that's just how it is.

01:07:09 ◼   ► And as well, like if you believe that by losing this 1% you're able to do this thing, which

01:07:16 ◼   ► can then also impact iOS positively, well that 1% became a minuscule percent.

01:07:23 ◼   ► If you believe that a change that you're making to the Mac will eventually benefit the entire

01:07:28 ◼   ► platform somehow, right, as they move more closely together, then the percentages that

01:07:33 ◼   ► you lose from people that have edge cases, those percentages become really nothing.

01:07:40 ◼   ► And there's a case to be made that as—Microsoft has failed to reach people on mobile, right?

01:07:45 ◼   ► They don't have a mobile platform. They have a PC platform. There's a—you know, and

01:07:50 ◼   ► still Windows is still strong there's an argument to made that Apple is a much

01:07:58 ◼   ► stronger company selling laptops and even computers computers desktops to

01:08:05 ◼   ► people who are comfortable with iOS and today they can't do that today they're

01:08:11 ◼   ► like well we have the Mac it's kind of like iOS but not really and it's

01:08:15 ◼   ► compatible with our stuff that's on iOS, kind of, but not really. And that's a terrible,

01:08:21 ◼   ► like that's a terrible strategy, right? That's, you've got, like when we look at Microsoft

01:08:26 ◼   ► we say, "Oh, well, Windows is kind of boxed in. They're a PC operating system, but on

01:08:35 ◼   ► mobile it's Android and iOS." And Apple would be in a much stronger position, I think I

01:08:41 ◼   ► I would argue, if they could use iOS and say,

01:08:46 ◼   ► we have a variety of products that run iOS.

01:08:48 ◼   ► And so replace that PC with, you already have an iPhone,

01:08:51 ◼   ► maybe you have an iPad, and now you can buy our computer

01:08:54 ◼   ► and put it on your desk and it'll be all those apps

01:08:57 ◼   ► and it'll be familiar.

01:08:58 ◼   ► Like that is a stronger position to a lot of people.

01:09:01 ◼   ► And I'll remind all of our loyal Mac users out there,

01:09:04 ◼   ► there are way more people who use iOS who are not Mac users

01:09:06 ◼   ► than who are Mac users.

01:09:08 ◼   ► So, you know, would Apple make a trade

01:09:10 ◼   ► that would drive some loyal Mac users to Windows

01:09:13 ◼   ► in exchange for a much larger group of people,

01:09:16 ◼   ► access to a much larger group of people

01:09:18 ◼   ► who are comfortable on iOS,

01:09:21 ◼   ► you gotta do the research, but maybe, maybe so.

01:09:24 ◼   ► And that's something, to wrap this all up, Myke,

01:09:28 ◼   ► this is something that I've been thinking about

01:09:29 ◼   ► for the last few weeks, which is this really existential

01:09:32 ◼   ► kind of feeling about the Mac, which is like,

01:09:34 ◼   ► does this mean the Mac is really,

01:09:35 ◼   ► as we know it, is going away?

01:09:37 ◼   ► And I think maybe it is.

01:09:39 ◼   ► But what I will say, I went through all these,

01:09:42 ◼   ► again, sort of like the stages of grief.

01:09:45 ◼   ► The funny thing about things that you rely on that go away

01:09:48 ◼   ► is, first off, things don't go away fast.

01:09:52 ◼   ► When I started in covering the Mac,

01:09:55 ◼   ► I was downstairs from the skeleton staff that was still

01:09:58 ◼   ► putting out an Apple II magazine.

01:10:01 ◼   ► That was-- wow.

01:10:02 ◼   ► That was years after the Apple II's heyday,

01:10:04 ◼   ► but it was still around, still around.

01:10:06 ◼   ► So things don't just die, and they

01:10:09 ◼   ► pull the plug and they're gone.

01:10:10 ◼   ► There's a long kind of ramp down.

01:10:14 ◼   ► But also, most of the stuff that I've had

01:10:17 ◼   ► that felt essential, by the time it became inessential,

01:10:22 ◼   ► it didn't matter anymore.

01:10:25 ◼   ► And I think that's important that like,

01:10:28 ◼   ► and part of this is us,

01:10:29 ◼   ► and part of this is Apple's challenge,

01:10:31 ◼   ► which is that when the time comes when the Mac,

01:10:37 ◼   ► when I like don't have a Mac anymore,

01:10:39 ◼   ► which I never had conceived of,

01:10:41 ◼   ► but I think is gonna happen in the next,

01:10:43 ◼   ► I don't know, five or 10 years, right?

01:10:44 ◼   ► It's gonna happen.

01:10:45 ◼   ► When that time comes,

01:10:49 ◼   ► if Apple has done its job right, it won't matter

01:10:53 ◼   ► because I will have already,

01:10:55 ◼   ► I will be able to do everything I will have adapted,

01:10:57 ◼   ► the world will have changed and it won't matter.

01:10:59 ◼   ► And I think about things like the telephone,

01:11:03 ◼   ► like I, you know, phone wire, my house is wired for a landline and there are wires all over the

01:11:11 ◼   ► house because when we were here it's like oh we need to put a phone jack in this room and then we

01:11:15 ◼   ► can do a wireless thing to this thing and all of that. Like and all of a sudden it didn't matter.

01:11:19 ◼   ► My house has a port in the wall that I can plug an aerial into so I can get,

01:11:27 ◼   ► you know, and I can get like our like over-the-air television. We don't have that plugged in. We

01:11:33 ◼   ► don't have that because we watch all of our television over the internet. Yeah, you could,

01:11:40 ◼   ► but as an aside, I just answered a question about this. There are, there is like a little,

01:11:43 ◼   ► um, a little product you can buy that attaches to the the aerial cable and it gives you like a

01:11:51 ◼   ► little DVR and it just puts all the shows in Plex, if you ever did want to do that. But we don't,

01:11:55 ◼   ► we don't there's nothing there but we don't need there's nothing there that you don't already have

01:11:59 ◼   ► right yeah we can get it wherever we want it yeah and traditional tv is another great example right

01:12:04 ◼   ► where it's like i have a tivo and it's very nice but the amount of streaming stuff that i watch now

01:12:12 ◼   ► including stuff that i get on the tivo but i just prefer to watch it on streaming because it's

01:12:16 ◼   ► easier and in some cases it's higher quality or i get it sooner and you know i didn't notice when

01:12:23 ◼   ► when it happened, but all of a sudden,

01:12:25 ◼   ► I realize that I'm very close to being able

01:12:28 ◼   ► to not have traditional TV anymore

01:12:30 ◼   ► because of the technology advancing.

01:12:33 ◼   ► So what I'm saying is, if done right,

01:12:36 ◼   ► and if the timing is right, if the implementation is right,

01:12:39 ◼   ► by the time it comes for you to do the inconceivable

01:12:42 ◼   ► and give up this thing that has been a part

01:12:45 ◼   ► of what you do for a long time,

01:12:49 ◼   ► in the best circumstances, by the time that happens,

01:12:53 ◼   ► you won't notice or it won't matter or it won't hurt

01:12:58 ◼   ► because the world will have changed.

01:13:02 ◼   ► The idea of not having a landline,

01:13:04 ◼   ► the idea of not having cable TV.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And, you know, if done right, the idea of not having a Mac,

01:13:09 ◼   ► it won't just be, it won't be terrible,

01:13:12 ◼   ► it will be irrelevant because the things that you do

01:13:16 ◼   ► will now be done in a different place,

01:13:19 ◼   ► but you're still doing them.

01:13:21 ◼   ► And I just, I know that's kind of a squishy

01:13:23 ◼   ► and touchy feely kind of moment,

01:13:24 ◼   ► but I really do think that we could get to that point.

01:13:29 ◼   ► But it is kind of on Apple, right?

01:13:30 ◼   ► 'Cause Apple could screw it up.

01:13:31 ◼   ► Apple could do something to make the Mac unusable

01:13:36 ◼   ► and create a complete exodus of people from the Mac.

01:13:41 ◼   ► But I would argue that if Apple did nothing

01:13:44 ◼   ► and just let the Mac sit there, we've seen it.

01:13:47 ◼   ► Like, that's not gonna satisfy people who use the Mac

01:13:50 ◼   ► 'cause they want new features and they want new hardware.

01:13:52 ◼   ► And Apple, you know,

01:13:55 ◼   ► Apple is probably not gonna do that

01:13:58 ◼   ► as an active investment in just the Mac

01:14:02 ◼   ► as a standalone platform.

01:14:04 ◼   ► It just seems unlikely at this point.

01:14:06 ◼   ► But the good news is it may not matter in five years.

01:14:09 ◼   ► It matters today.

01:14:10 ◼   ► They couldn't take it away today.

01:14:12 ◼   ► But by the time that they take it away, quote unquote,

01:14:15 ◼   ► it may not matter for most people.

01:14:18 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:14:19 ◼   ► - Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom.

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01:15:49 ◼   ► So we are into #AskUPGRADE and our first question this week comes from Elijah. Elijah wants

01:15:56 ◼   ► to know, how do you define a pro user on either of Apple's platforms?

01:16:02 ◼   ► There, this is a great question and there's no great answer. I would define it as being

01:16:12 ◼   ► people who were, I would loosely define it as people who use the devices to get their

01:16:16 ◼   ► work done. Because there is a, and to get like their livelihood accomplished. I think

01:16:25 ◼   ► is a portion of the market that is just like looking at their email and checking Twitter

01:16:30 ◼   ► and playing games and stuff like that, especially on iOS. And the requirements of those users

01:16:39 ◼   ► are a lot lower or at least they're very different because in some cases they have very specific

01:16:45 ◼   ► requirements that need to be met, but they're not the same requirements as somebody who

01:16:48 ◼   ► is in a particular industry, a particular field. It's a hard -- there's no good answer

01:16:53 ◼   ► are here other than to say that it's the people I think the way it's broadly been defined

01:16:57 ◼   ► is it's people who require a level of performance and functionality that is above and beyond

01:17:06 ◼   ► the general population of technology users because they're applying the technology to

01:17:11 ◼   ► very specific generally industry tasks and that's I know that that's kind of a vague

01:17:18 ◼   ► way way of doing it but I've always viewed and we used when I when I started writing

01:17:21 ◼   ► about Apple, we used to use the term power user a lot. And that's funny because some

01:17:26 ◼   ► of the power users are pros and some of them are regular people who just love getting the

01:17:31 ◼   ► most out of their devices. But I like that name too because sometimes it's not that you're

01:17:39 ◼   ► – the power user is the person who behaves like their job depends on the technology working,

01:17:46 ◼   ► but it doesn't actually. It's just fun. But for a lot of people, it's their livelihood

01:17:50 ◼   ► and they have needs and the needs are not something that is needed by 80% of the people,

01:17:55 ◼   ► but it is life and death to them in terms of their business. So that's sort of how I

01:18:00 ◼   ► would define it. The problem is that there's not one industry and there's not one need

01:18:05 ◼   ► and there's not one, we can say like performance is a need and that's pretty broad, but you

01:18:10 ◼   ► get into the details and sometimes it's very specific kinds of performance, very specific

01:18:15 ◼   ► kinds of software. And that's what makes it complicated to serve a pro market because

01:18:20 ◼   ► there isn't a pro market as Apple pointed out in their thing when they talk to Panzer,

01:18:24 ◼   ► there's not one pro market, there's dozens of pro markets, all of which are very small,

01:18:29 ◼   ► have some things in common, some things not in common. And that's why it's so hard to

01:18:33 ◼   ► serve pro markets well.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Sage wants to know, do you happen to know if there are any websites or resources that

01:18:42 ◼   ► list WWDC adjacent activities. In the past I have used an app called Parties for WWDC,

01:18:51 ◼   ► which kind of gets updated as it gets a little bit closer to the time and then I think throughout

01:18:56 ◼   ► the week of like events and meetups and live shows and stuff that are occurring. It looks

01:19:03 ◼   ► like the app is coming back. There was a there was another one called WWDC Parties which

01:19:09 ◼   ► finished in 2017. That app is no longer being updated anymore, I believe that resources

01:19:13 ◼   ► is done with. But it looks like from the release notes of this parties app that 2018 is coming,

01:19:21 ◼   ► they know, and so there will be stuff going in there. I've used it in the past and I really like

01:19:26 ◼   ► it. It's nice and simple but gives you an idea of some of the stuff that's going on.

01:19:29 ◼   ► Great. And I will just note as well, one of those events is Relay FM Live or Alt Conf. Tickets,

01:19:36 ◼   ► a small amount of tickets are still available. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to

01:19:40 ◼   ► come and see us do a live show on Wednesday the 6th of June. David has written in to say,

01:19:47 ◼   ► "The months of..." This is weird, but I love it. "The months of July, August, September,

01:19:52 ◼   ► October, and November spell out Jason." Jason, did you know this?

01:19:57 ◼   ► Yes, of course I knew this. Isn't it awesome? It's amazing.

01:20:01 ◼   ► I'll also point out that my initials are J-A-S.

01:20:07 ◼   ► That's right, my initials are the first three letters of my name.

01:20:12 ◼   ► It's all true. It's my world, you're all just living in it.

01:20:15 ◼   ► It turns out my mind is slowly expanding over here to take in all this new and

01:20:19 ◼   ► wonderful information. Right, mm-hmm, that's right.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Let's go back to Earth with Nathan's question.

01:20:25 ◼   ► What are the odds that we'll see a new iPad Mini by the end of the year? What

01:20:29 ◼   ► - What about just a price drop?

01:20:31 ◼   ► No and no is my opinion.

01:20:33 ◼   ► - The odds are no.

01:20:35 ◼   ► - The odds are no.

01:20:36 ◼   ► No new iPad mini, I just don't see it happening

01:20:39 ◼   ► and a price drop, I don't think they're gonna do that

01:20:41 ◼   ► for as long as that product exists.

01:20:42 ◼   ► Like for as long as they are selling that iPad mini,

01:20:46 ◼   ► I suppose like 228 or 256 gig,

01:20:49 ◼   ► like that thing will just stick around

01:20:51 ◼   ► and nothing will change until it's gone.

01:20:54 ◼   ► - Until it dies, yeah.

01:20:55 ◼   ► And I think you're right at this point,

01:20:57 ◼   ► my guess would be that we won't see it ever.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Think we're gonna die. - iPad Mini 4

01:21:04 ◼   ► is the one that is still available,

01:21:05 ◼   ► and it is only available in 128 gigabytes,

01:21:08 ◼   ► but at least you can choose

01:21:09 ◼   ► between silver, gold, and space gray.

01:21:11 ◼   ► But no, at this point, I don't see it happening.

01:21:14 ◼   ► - My son has used an iPad Mini for ages,

01:21:18 ◼   ► and it's great, especially for younger kids.

01:21:21 ◼   ► It is great.

01:21:21 ◼   ► I wish that they would keep it around

01:21:23 ◼   ► and do a kind of cheap model of it,

01:21:25 ◼   ► but I think the answer really is

01:21:27 ◼   ► that there's not enough of a market for that product

01:21:28 ◼   ► to keep it in existence.

01:21:30 ◼   ► - And finally today, Barry's question is,

01:21:34 ◼   ► do you believe that iOS would benefit

01:21:36 ◼   ► from the ability that Android has

01:21:39 ◼   ► to designate a third-party app

01:21:41 ◼   ► to wholly replace a core app like calendar or mail?

01:21:45 ◼   ► And if so, what are the hurdles that prevent it?

01:21:48 ◼   ► What do you think, Jason?

01:21:50 ◼   ► - Benefit?

01:21:51 ◼   ► I think it could benefit from it,

01:21:52 ◼   ► but there are some challenges

01:21:53 ◼   ► in how integrated the first-party apps are into the system.

01:21:58 ◼   ► We do have the ability to delete them now,

01:22:01 ◼   ► but sometimes that just leads to you clicking a link

01:22:03 ◼   ► and it's saying, "Oh boy, this is a calendar link.

01:22:05 ◼   ► I don't know what to do,"

01:22:06 ◼   ► instead of just opening the other calendar app

01:22:08 ◼   ► that you have.

01:22:09 ◼   ► So yes, I think it would benefit it.

01:22:11 ◼   ► It is a lot of...

01:22:14 ◼   ► There's work involved in doing that on Apple's part.

01:22:17 ◼   ► And I hope they do,

01:22:19 ◼   ► because when we talk about convergence,

01:22:21 ◼   ► this is a thing that the Mac does way better than iOS.

01:22:24 ◼   ► And it goes not just to replacing first-party apps,

01:22:27 ◼   ► but also being able to set default apps

01:22:29 ◼   ► and even register like different apps

01:22:34 ◼   ► for different URL types.

01:22:37 ◼   ► And the example there is like for podcasts,

01:22:39 ◼   ► I should be able to, there should just be a podcast URL.

01:22:42 ◼   ► And if I tap it, iOS should be able to know

01:22:46 ◼   ► what my podcast app is or ask me and let me say,

01:22:48 ◼   ► "Yes, this is my podcast app."

01:22:50 ◼   ► and from then on, it opens that app.

01:22:53 ◼   ► All of these things kind of go together,

01:22:55 ◼   ► and it's clearly just not been a priority for Apple.

01:22:58 ◼   ► And so, yes, it would be better if iOS could do that.

01:23:03 ◼   ► What are the chances?

01:23:05 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:23:06 ◼   ► I feel like it's something that they have to get to

01:23:09 ◼   ► eventually, but it's probably not been

01:23:11 ◼   ► a high priority for them.

01:23:13 ◼   ► Apple has a really,

01:23:17 ◼   ► Apple seems to have a really high opinion

01:23:18 ◼   ► of its first party apps, which is funny,

01:23:20 ◼   ► 'cause a lot of them are not that interesting.

01:23:23 ◼   ► Mail is a great example where that is an app

01:23:25 ◼   ► that feels like it has just never been touched.

01:23:28 ◼   ► And I realize it's got some features

01:23:29 ◼   ► that it didn't have before, but it feels so old.

01:23:32 ◼   ► And maybe some of that is that email feels old in general,

01:23:34 ◼   ► but mail feels really old and like they are,

01:23:38 ◼   ► it's like, talk about your legacy product that they do,

01:23:42 ◼   ► I just wanna keep floating along.

01:23:43 ◼   ► It feels a little bit like that.

01:23:44 ◼   ► And other people are trying interesting things

01:23:46 ◼   ► with mail apps.

01:23:47 ◼   ► And so it is frustrating that Apple is sort of like

01:23:49 ◼   ► not trying interesting things in mail,

01:23:51 ◼   ► but also not letting people integrate directly

01:23:55 ◼   ► where all the mail stuff just feeds to a different app.

01:23:58 ◼   ► So I hope it happens eventually,

01:23:59 ◼   ► but I think there are technical issues

01:24:02 ◼   ► and it's just a matter of attention.

01:24:04 ◼   ► - When I read this question,

01:24:06 ◼   ► the first thing that jumped into my head,

01:24:08 ◼   ► to the answer to what are the hurdles that prevent it?

01:24:12 ◼   ► My answer was just Apple.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Like they just, I just believe that for a long time,

01:24:17 ◼   ► maybe even still, I reckon even still,

01:24:20 ◼   ► they just think that there is no point

01:24:23 ◼   ► that their apps are good enough?

01:24:25 ◼   ► - Apple can't, doesn't seem to be able to conceive,

01:24:29 ◼   ► it's funny because they have to hold two thoughts,

01:24:31 ◼   ► two opposing thoughts in the collective Apple brain at once.

01:24:34 ◼   ► One of which is we have all these great third-party apps,

01:24:37 ◼   ► including these innovative calendars

01:24:38 ◼   ► and innovative mail programs.

01:24:39 ◼   ► And then their other mind has to say,

01:24:42 ◼   ► we've deeply integrated mail and calendar with the system

01:24:45 ◼   ► and they're great.

01:24:46 ◼   ► And, you know, that's fascinating

01:24:51 ◼   ► that both of those things can be true at once.

01:24:54 ◼   ► So yeah, but I think you're right.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I think the mindset within Apple clearly is

01:24:58 ◼   ► this is good enough.

01:24:59 ◼   ► Now, the fact is those apps are used probably by 95% of users

01:25:04 ◼   ► if not 98% of users.

01:25:05 ◼   ► - Because what other choice do you have, right?

01:25:07 ◼   ► Like in certain instances.

01:25:08 ◼   ► - Well, people don't even look in the app store

01:25:12 ◼   ► for replacements to calendar and mail.

01:25:13 ◼   ► They have calendar and mail,

01:25:14 ◼   ► they're integrated with the system, that's it.

01:25:16 ◼   ► And that's why Apple doesn't prioritize this,

01:25:18 ◼   ► is because it is an edge case.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Most people just use the stock apps.

01:25:24 ◼   ► Most people use Maps and Safari too,

01:25:26 ◼   ► for that very reason.

01:25:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, but like, you know, there is,

01:25:30 ◼   ► the other one that was in this argument forever

01:25:33 ◼   ► was custom keyboards, and they did that.

01:25:35 ◼   ► You know, so it's like-- - They did.

01:25:36 ◼   ► - Custom keyboards was when everything changed.

01:25:39 ◼   ► So it's like, oh, they will do stuff

01:25:42 ◼   ► that we assume they're never gonna do,

01:25:43 ◼   ► which like, it for me at least,

01:25:45 ◼   ► reignited the lost hope of replacing the first party apps.

01:25:50 ◼   ► The reason that I want, you know, I don't,

01:25:53 ◼   ► we spoke about this in last week's episode, right?

01:25:56 ◼   ► With the apps that we use, I use replacement apps

01:26:00 ◼   ► for like really significant things, including Chrome.

01:26:04 ◼   ► I use Chrome, right?

01:26:05 ◼   ► Which is like, that is a daily test in patience,

01:26:09 ◼   ► like when dealing with iOS.

01:26:11 ◼   ► But one of the reasons that I believe

01:26:14 ◼   ► that this can happen is there are so many third-party apps

01:26:19 ◼   ► that allow me to choose what web browser I want to use.

01:26:23 ◼   ► So I know that this is a thing that third-party developers

01:26:27 ◼   ► have worked out how to do this.

01:26:28 ◼   ► Apple can do this.

01:26:30 ◼   ► It's just whether they want to or not.

01:26:32 ◼   ► And it seems like right now they don't want to.

01:26:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is weird given that, yeah,

01:26:40 ◼   ► it's this in-between where I understand building mail

01:26:43 ◼   ► and calendar to be for the most common use

01:26:46 ◼   ► because it's going to be commonly used.

01:26:48 ◼   ► But it would be nice then if you said,

01:26:50 ◼   ► and for our users who prefer other things

01:26:52 ◼   ► because they need to go beyond,

01:26:55 ◼   ► we give you this ability to swap these in.

01:26:58 ◼   ► And that's the frustration, right?

01:27:01 ◼   ► Is like, I don't want to say mail is bad

01:27:05 ◼   ► because it's not built for the 2% of people

01:27:08 ◼   ► who would use these awesome, weird features, right?

01:27:11 ◼   ► I don't wanna say that.

01:27:12 ◼   ► I think mail could be better for everybody,

01:27:14 ◼   ► but I understand why it's not built for the power users.

01:27:16 ◼   ► It has to be built for everyone.

01:27:18 ◼   ► But if you're gonna do that, it would be awfully nice

01:27:20 ◼   ► if you could take those power users,

01:27:22 ◼   ► those people who download third-party apps

01:27:24 ◼   ► to replace the default apps,

01:27:25 ◼   ► if they could say, "This is my email program now."

01:27:28 ◼   ► And I do think they will probably get there at some point.

01:27:30 ◼   ► The keyboard is a great example of that.

01:27:32 ◼   ► - If you would like to submit questions for us to answer

01:27:36 ◼   ► at the end of the show,

01:27:37 ◼   ► or questions for us to give our opinions on at least,

01:27:40 ◼   ► because there isn't always an answer.

01:27:42 ◼   ► You can send in questions by just tweeting

01:27:45 ◼   ► at #AskUpgrade out into the world.

01:27:48 ◼   ► Just send a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade

01:27:50 ◼   ► and we may pick it for a future episode.

01:27:53 ◼   ► I guess if you want to send examples of interesting parables

01:27:57 ◼   ► you can send them to @JSnell on Twitter

01:28:00 ◼   ► because this is clearly Jason's like thing right now.

01:28:03 ◼   ► He's into deep parables and metaphors.

01:28:06 ◼   ► This has been like clearly shown on today's episode.

01:28:10 ◼   ► - So I think if you go to the incomparable--

01:28:12 ◼   ► - A blind man, an elephant, and a scorpion

01:28:16 ◼   ► get into a Honda Civic.

01:28:18 ◼   ► - If you go to the incomparable.com,

01:28:20 ◼   ► you can find some of Jason's work,

01:28:22 ◼   ► including the upcoming ParablePod,

01:28:24 ◼   ► which I think will be coming any day now

01:28:26 ◼   ► on the incomparable.

01:28:27 ◼   ► Jason is a host of many technology-focused shows

01:28:31 ◼   ► and creativity-focused shows here on Relay FM as well.

01:28:34 ◼   ► Go to relay.fm and you can find those.

01:28:36 ◼   ► I will recommend people check out Download

01:28:39 ◼   ► If they never have before Download is a weekly technology news show which focuses on technology

01:28:46 ◼   ► companies as a whole as opposed to a strict lens on one or the other as many shows that

01:28:52 ◼   ► we do here or that we listen to have.

01:28:56 ◼   ► What Download does is tries to kind of spread that out a little bit more so you may hear

01:29:00 ◼   ► a story about Microsoft and Google and SpaceX as well as just what's going on with Apple.

01:29:06 ◼   ► I am @imikeyke on Twitter and I host many shows here at Relay FM as well. Go to relay.fm/shows

01:29:14 ◼   ► and pick something else out there. If I was going to make a recommendation to you today

01:29:18 ◼   ► I would recommend a show that I do called Playing for Fun which is a show that I do

01:29:21 ◼   ► with Tiff Ahment and it is a video game show but even if you don't like video games I think

01:29:26 ◼   ► that there is still some enjoyment to be had because the show is just about two friends

01:29:31 ◼   ► just talking about what they like about a specific video game. So it's just two people

01:29:35 ◼   ► just having fun and talking positively about something.

01:29:39 ◼   ► And that can be a nice break sometimes from a lot of the stuff that we take in in our

01:29:43 ◼   ► daily lives.

01:29:44 ◼   ► Thank you to Pingdom and Linode and Slack for their support of this week's episode.

01:29:50 ◼   ► Most of all, as always, thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to listen

01:29:54 ◼   ► to me and Jason talk about Powerables.

01:29:57 ◼   ► You can go to relay.fm/upgrades/188 for today's show notes and we'll be back next time.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:30:06 ◼   ► - The Upgrade Podcast.

01:30:07 ◼   ► We talk about Apple stuff.

01:30:09 ◼   ► Goodbye, Myke Hurley.

01:30:11 ◼   ► - What was that?

01:30:12 ◼   ► - I told you I would do a haiku at the end.

01:30:14 ◼   ► - Oh!

01:30:15 ◼   ► Yes.

01:30:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:30:20 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:30:23 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]