0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 128.
0:00:12Today's show is brought to you by Freshbooks, Blue Apron, and Encapsula.
0:00:16My name is Myke Hurley.
0:00:17I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.
0:00:19Hello, Mr. Jason Snell.
0:00:20Hello, this is episode 128.
0:00:23So shout out to the original Mac, which had 128K.
0:00:27Congratulations, Macintosh.
0:00:29Congratulations.
0:00:30Congratulations.
0:00:31Let's go straight from the Mac 128 into iPad follow-up.
0:00:36Sure.
0:00:37Why not?
0:00:39We got a ton of iPad follow-up.
0:00:40As was foreseen, I think.
0:00:42But I will say that on the whole, the follow-up was very considered and thoughtful, and I
0:00:49was very happy with it.
0:00:51Like it was all good.
0:00:52There was a lot of really interesting thoughts that came from people.
0:00:54There wasn't really any of anybody saying to me, "You're crazy!"
0:00:58I think that people took in the argument that I was putting out.
0:01:02So I've got some snippets that I would like to go through, some interesting tidbits and
0:01:07some stuff that I hadn't considered because I didn't really know about.
0:01:10So I think we'll start off though with as is something that happens quite frequently
0:01:15on upgrade.
0:01:16We record something, we have a really good conversation and then it sparks some thoughts
0:01:19for you to write a little article.
0:01:21And you did, you wrote an article about the reasons to be optimistic about the iPad for
0:01:25Macworld in your column for Macworld.
0:01:28And there was just a part that I wanted to pull out of that because I think that it was
0:01:32an area we didn't really spend too much time on last week.
0:01:37And so you say to create the future of computing device that we believe that the iPad could
0:01:41be iOS needs better peripheral support, more sophisticated windowing or multitasking, improvements
0:01:46to file handling, better support for application and system automation and a whole lot more.
0:01:51And I think that this is well put.
0:01:54I think that there are a lot of caveats to this.
0:01:58My feeling on windowing is not windows like you see on the Mac.
0:02:04My feeling is new ways of doing windows, like how picture-in-picture is a window, stuff
0:02:08like that.
0:02:09Yeah, I was actually thinking, I had a moment, one of these days I'm going to write about
0:02:11it, I had a moment where I was thinking about a tabbed interface for apps, where you could
0:02:17put different apps and different windows from apps in tabs
0:02:20and or a split or split sets of tabs and things like that
0:02:25that are not arbitrarily positioned windows on a screen
0:02:30maybe like we have now, but are something more than that.
0:02:34The right, I mean, two purposes in writing this part.
0:02:38One is this idea that the,
0:02:43this is what we're talking about about everybody
0:02:45kind of arguing slightly different things.
0:02:47I wanted this to be the acknowledgement that iOS is not all the way there, right? Because
0:02:52some of the arguments are like, "Come on, you can't, you know, it doesn't have this,
0:02:56it doesn't have that." And it's like, "Yes, it doesn't have those things." And so I wanted
0:02:59to say, it needs a lot more work for it to get to this. In the article, it's sort of
0:03:04like, what's that future? Imagine a device in the future, you know, an awesome mobile
0:03:09productivity device in 2025 with a big screen. What does that look like? And it's like, well,
0:03:13that's not that far away when you think about it. And how many iOS versions, if Apple's
0:03:17going to skip iPad features every other iOS version and be very slow to add them, it's
0:03:22not going to get there, right? So I wanted to kind of use it as a little stick to poke
0:03:27at Apple and say, you know, if you really believe the iPad to be this thing, you have
0:03:30to invest in it to get it there because there's a lot of work that Apple still needs to do.
0:03:35We do work on it now, right? But even those of us who do work on the iPad would not, like,
0:03:41great that Federico could do what he does, right? But even Federico would argue it could
0:03:46be a lot simpler, it could be a lot better, you know, and the onus isn't just on people
0:03:50like the guys who do workflow to do this, right? It's on Apple to build foundational
0:03:54stuff that makes the act of getting work done on the iPad something that can be done by
0:03:59more people without having to jump through as many hoops as maybe we have to do now.
0:04:04So that was my point number one, and my point number two was to say about this stuff that
0:04:10The one of my thoughts about the iPad in general is being a part of this is screen size and
0:04:18that you know part what comes with windowing and multitasking and file handling and things
0:04:23like that. One of the things is my belief that ultimately in 2025 we're not going to
0:04:27be using a device that's four inches, five inches, six inches diagonal. I just don't
0:04:31believe it like we'll have smartphones and they're the winners of all of this right.
0:04:36There's no doubt about that but I have a hard time imagining that people are going to get
0:04:40work done on a little screen like that. So the question is, what do you do when you want
0:04:44to sit down at a desk or put something in your lap and have it be a big screen that
0:04:49you're doing your computing stuff on? Is that a traditional PC in the year 2025? Or is that
0:04:53something that's sort of like your smartphone but a lot bigger, which is basically what
0:04:57a tablet is? And it comes back to this point, which is, you need more stuff if you're going
0:05:03to be that kind of device. And how does, what product gets there? How does the iPad get
0:05:09because computers have a lot of advantages in that regard. They do all that stuff, although
0:05:14they're very complex.
0:05:16Yeah, we carried this conversation onto Connected a little bit last week, and Federico brought
0:05:21up an interesting point in regards to Windows and applications and advancements of file
0:05:26systems and that sort of stuff, which I really thought was interesting, and it's tracking
0:05:29some of the way that I'm moving, which is that a lot of this stuff is moving to web
0:05:34apps and to web services.
0:05:36Sure.
0:05:37there are things that are becoming less and less important and I know he's kind of going along the
0:05:41lines of Zapier or Zapier and Workflow with this sort of stuff which is roots that I'm starting to
0:05:47go down as well. Like I'm realizing how you know people tend to be productive on the Mac by taking
0:05:54advantage of scripts right and I'm finding out that as I'm becoming more demanding of my iOS
0:06:00device I'm doing the same thing but using the versions that work on those
0:06:05devices and they are workflow and Zapier and it's very interesting like to see
0:06:09me going down that route because I'm tracking with what I see Mac users doing
0:06:13but frankly like I can understand how to build workflows and Zapier tasks I
0:06:19cannot understand how to use shell scripts and to use Apple script like
0:06:24these are things that don't track my brain but the others do and it's just
0:06:29interesting to see me moving down that route a little bit more as well. So there are, I
0:06:34agree there are definitely things that Apple need to do. I think we all know that this
0:06:37is one of the things, this is one of the whole reasons for my argument last week was that
0:06:42Apple needs to move iOS, advance iOS, and the reason they should do that is because
0:06:46there's so many iPads.
0:06:48Yeah, I think we both might even agree that the iPads biggest hindrance to growth and
0:06:55success as a productivity device is not the market being cool on it, especially since
0:07:00a lot of the feedback we got was from people who work on iPads and, you know, Apple talks
0:07:04a lot about their iPad enterprise deployments and things like that. But the hindrance is
0:07:10Apple's software commitment to iPad features because the hardware is great and there's
0:07:17a lot of opportunity for users, but the iOS on an iPad is not good enough. I mean, it's
0:07:25good enough but it could be much much better in order to reach a much broader user base.
0:07:30So regarding this idea, Roman wrote in to ask if we think that Apple should fork iOS
0:07:35and create a beefed up version, a more professional version of iOS for the iPad. And this is something
0:07:41I've seen many people argue, like there being an iPad OS and what that would look like.
0:07:46And I don't want that to happen. I think that a lot of what the iPad benefits from is that
0:07:52it is a shared operating system with the iPhone and I think they both benefit from each other
0:07:58for that. What I want to see is just more device specific features like split screen
0:08:03multitasking right you can only do that on the iPad and I want to see just extra things
0:08:07continue to be added for iOS for the iPad to take advantage of rather than Apple to
0:08:13kind of spin out iOS and create a new version for iPad. I don't think that is a good idea.
0:08:19I mean, I'm sure that with the way that these things are developed, it's kind of made that
0:08:23way, right?
0:08:24There is a version of iOS that goes onto the iPad, but it isn't positioned as such.
0:08:28It isn't marketed as such.
0:08:30I don't want to see that happen.
0:08:32I mean, yeah, there's a version of iOS for every single device.
0:08:35I think the way most of it works is that it's all just device specific.
0:08:38If I've got a screen of this size, then this behavior is available.
0:08:42And I agree with you.
0:08:43I think the great advantage the iPad has is that it is running the same OS as the iPhone,
0:08:49end. That makes every iPhone user basically a potential user of the iPad because they're
0:08:55comfortable with the concept. It means that every, you know, it means they can take advantage
0:09:00of app development and all of that. So I, yeah, I think that's, this is the way forward
0:09:03for the iPad is that, and if the, if these rumors that we've heard from time to time
0:09:09are accurate, that what Apple's going to try to do is unsync iPad changes from iPhone changes
0:09:15and do iOS releases in WAVES where there's a big iPhone release in the fall, it's iOS
0:09:2110, and then in the spring there's a big iOS release that's 10 point something, and that's
0:09:27got the iPad features in it because that was the spring focus, then great, right? Like
0:09:34great, that is what the iPad needs because I think the iPad needs features that take
0:09:38advantage of the screen. Although I will say a lot of the features that I complained about,
0:09:42Those are also—there are people doing lots of work on their phones, whether it's the
0:09:49big one, #michaelwasright, or whether it's the smaller one that is actually the one I
0:09:54like. I was going to be more insulting there, and I'm going to let it go. It's not like
0:10:01I don't need better file handling on my iPhone when suddenly I've got a file I need to get
0:10:05from one place to another, from out of a Dropbox into an app, or out of an app into the Dropbox,
0:10:10however I want to do it. It's not like my iPhone couldn't use those features too.
0:10:14A lot of these features are not screen size dependent. System
0:10:19automation like workflow works on the iPhone. I don't use it on the iPhone
0:10:22nearly as much as I do on the iPad but it benefits both. So you know maybe
0:10:28windowing and multitasking is a place where if you've got a 27 inch
0:10:33iPad let's say that's like an iMac but it's on your desk that maybe there your
0:10:38apps are broken out as windows, essentially, as tiles that you can float around on the
0:10:43screen because it's so huge that you need to use the space for that. But, you know,
0:10:49an iPhone would never do that. So sure, there are some, but, you know, a lot of this just,
0:10:53these are benefits that roll up to everybody because there are people all over the world
0:10:57using their iPhones, maybe not as their primary work device, although some of them are, but
0:11:02as a work productivity device, and it makes the iPhone better too.
0:11:05Yeah, I mean there are many things, there are many features that the iPad benefits from
0:11:12because they're made for the iPhone and I think it would be nice if there was some more
0:11:16that went the other way as well. You know, the iPhone benefits from some features that
0:11:19are primarily made for the iPad and that would be like better file management and stuff like
0:11:23that. Many people pointed out that iPads are cheaper than Macs and that is a potential
0:11:30reason for the sales numbers to be the way that they are and I agree with this. This
0:11:34This is 100% a reason that many people would buy an iPad over a Mac for having a device
0:11:38at home.
0:11:40But that wasn't, my point wasn't really last week, the iPad is best because it has more
0:11:46units.
0:11:47Like that wasn't really the point that I was trying to make.
0:11:50It wasn't about like why people spend their money the way that they do, but more because
0:11:56they have, what should that mean?
0:11:59Right?
0:12:00People buy iPads because they want to get a computer and it's the cheapest computer
0:12:05that they can buy that Apple makes.
0:12:07Okay, that's a thing that has happened.
0:12:10And they don't necessarily do it because they love iOS.
0:12:13But my point is because people have made those purchasing decisions, and there are that many
0:12:17iPads out in the world, that's why the focus I believe should be heavily on the iPad as
0:12:24a thing.
0:12:25And as you so succinctly pointed out last week, which I really loved, the iPad is Apple's
0:12:29second biggest computer platform.
0:12:31And, and although I do understand that there's going to be a change in purchase behavior
0:12:35for a product that has, you know, that's half the price of the other product. I, the problem
0:12:41I have with that is people don't buy bad products. People don't buy useless dud products because
0:12:46they're cheaper. If the iPad didn't have appeal, they wouldn't buy them. And yes, what they're
0:12:53buying is, uh, you know, maybe not the high end iPads Apple would like, but the cheaper
0:12:58But I feel like that argument can be taken to an extreme that is not realistic because
0:13:05yes the iPads are cheaper, although you know my iPad Pro costs more than the MacBook Air,
0:13:15but in general they're cheaper. And that was a high and a low, right? They do cross over
0:13:20a little bit right at the top and the bottom, but the larger point is if the iPad were useless
0:13:25or a dud or something like that, it wouldn't sell and they still sell twice as many, more
0:13:29than twice as many as the Mac. So there's something there that is lost if you just look
0:13:35at the revenue. I do agree with that.
0:13:37We had some anonymous feedback from somebody who works at a company that supports iPads
0:13:43in education at scale. So they have lots of customers with many, many iPads. And they
0:13:48made a great point that there are lots and lots and lots and lots, I think they said
0:13:53huge numbers of iPads in use in education. And these would typically be used for long
0:14:00periods of time before they were replaced. iPad 2s are pretty much the most common iPad
0:14:06in use in education right now with the iPad 4th gen being in second place.
0:14:10I know the iPad 2 sounds old but I believe Apple was still selling iPad 2s like two years
0:14:15ago. So, yeah, five years ago it was a perfectly
0:14:19The typical turnover rate in education is about five years.
0:14:24So these devices, these iPad 2s,
0:14:28they're ready to be replaced,
0:14:30but an issue that schools are having right now
0:14:32is they don't want or need the Pro devices.
0:14:34- Right.
0:14:35- And that these are more expensive
0:14:37and it's not what they're looking for.
0:14:38Like the features that the iPad Pro,
0:14:40the 9.7 inch iPad Pro has that make it a Pro device,
0:14:43make it a more expensive device,
0:14:44is not necessarily what schools are looking for.
0:14:46and that an Air 3 could help sales again,
0:14:50at least for the education sector.
0:14:51There may be, if Apple either bumped down the current Pro
0:14:55into that market or revamped the Air 2
0:14:58and to make it an Air 3, so it's kind of in line
0:15:01with that 499 that it used to be,
0:15:03this may push a lot more sales into education,
0:15:07which could be significant.
0:15:08So that's an interesting tidbit
0:15:10that I had not really considered.
0:15:12- Yeah, my son's school, they have iPad Air 1s.
0:15:16I believe, but they started their program last year.
0:15:19- There you go.
0:15:20Well, there you go, right?
0:15:20They started it last year,
0:15:21and that's the devices that they were going for.
0:15:23- Yep.
0:15:24- John wrote in to say that for him,
0:15:27iOS had not been a viable option for a long time,
0:15:29as his company had a bring your own device program at work
0:15:32in which you would log in via Citrix
0:15:34to access your work machine.
0:15:36This is exactly how I used to log in when I was at the bank.
0:15:39All of our terminals, there wasn't actually anything on them.
0:15:43Every machine that was physically in the company,
0:15:45nothing on them, you logged in via Citrix always into a virtual terminal. Many security
0:15:52reasons for why something like this will be done. And when I was at home I used to log
0:15:57in on my MacBook Pro and it was perfectly fine to do and you had all the authentication
0:16:01stuff that you needed and passwords and those little dongles and all that stuff. Citrix
0:16:05is on the iPad and has been there for a while but trying to use your finger in place of
0:16:11a mouse pointer is a nightmare because you're typically using Citrix onto a Windows in your
0:16:15environment. So as John pointed out, there are many people who have been forced into
0:16:22buying desktop or laptop machines because it was the only thing they could do to fulfill
0:16:26this need to log into their work machine. However, John told me about something that
0:16:31I did not know existed and I think is incredible. In 2015, Citrix released something called
0:16:36the X1 mouse, which allows you to use a mouse of an iPad that is running either Citrix desktop
0:16:42or the Citrix applications, or go to my PC. So you connect it via Bluetooth and it moves
0:16:51the mouse in the virtual environment with your iPad. It's amazing. And Jon has said
0:16:59he now basically can move to an iPad Pro and it's like a 13 inch laptop and then when he's
0:17:04not using that he can use it like an iPad. And this is a massive opportunity for large
0:17:09corporations to move towards the iPad because they have a way to allow people to use their
0:17:14Windows environments and also to take benefit of all of the great things that iPads can
0:17:19do. I had no idea this thing existed. Naturally, the Citrix page for this is horrific. There's
0:17:25barely any product pages, it's just support pages to find out anything about it because
0:17:29it's like an enterprise thing. So it's like whatever, people are buying it. And I wanted
0:17:34to see if I could try and get one of these. Not easy to get, like it's not like on Amazon
0:17:38or anything. You have to buy it direct from Citrix. And then I can't really use it of
0:17:42anything because I don't have a server anywhere that I can log into. However, there are videos
0:17:45on it on Citrix's website and I think this is awesome. Like just as somebody who worked
0:17:50in this type of environment, I would have used this like for sure. I would have bought
0:17:55one of these and then used my iPad when I was working at home. I just think this is
0:17:59an incredible piece of equipment.
0:18:02Well, I think, and this is a conversation that we should probably have another time,
0:18:07But I think one of the things about the iPad that I heard from some people about was this
0:18:12whole idea of the problem with when I wrote about the Brydge keyboard, right?
0:18:17They're like, "Yeah, but no trackpad and you got to reach out and all that."
0:18:20And it's like, I don't believe that Apple is going to support like a cursor, an arrow
0:18:26on the screen of your iPad that you can move with a trackpad or a mouse.
0:18:31here, you can already 3D touch on the phone or two-finger tap on the keyboard on an iPad
0:18:38and get an iBeam cursor for text editing. And my feeling is, as soon as that came into
0:18:45existence Apple should just build in Bluetooth mouse support for iOS, and basically say,
0:18:50"Look, it's for text editing. It only works in that one context. It doesn't work anywhere
0:18:54else." Or apps can support it, like the Citrix app. And just basically say, "Any Bluetooth
0:18:58pointing device will work with iOS, but it'll only work in the context of text editing or
0:19:02specific apps. There's no cursor per se. And that would be, would most people use it? No,
0:19:08but it would have great edge case uses like this. And so why not? I would love to, I would
0:19:13love it if the makers of Bluetooth and smart connector keyboard shell things could include
0:19:20a track pad just for text editing. I would love that. That would be awesome.
0:19:24Yeah, I don't know about, I mean I can see that. It's just not a use case that I have
0:19:29too much.
0:19:30Well, yeah, I know, it's not your thing, but my argument is basically if I can put two
0:19:34fingers down on my keyboard to move a cursor around on screen and edit text, emulating
0:19:40a trackpad, at that point you might as well just let me use the Magic Trackpad if I'm
0:19:46sitting somewhere at a table. Right? I mean, why not? Why not let me do that?
0:19:51I was yeah okay I just think this is a this is something that's interesting
0:19:56right and obviously Apple is weird pushing into the yeah it's very weird
0:20:01Apple is pushing into corporate IT right like IBM and all that stuff and they're
0:20:04really pushing iPads into that and this will be a product that can help big
0:20:08companies move to a more iPad environment right what if what if
0:20:12Citrix didn't need to make its own mouse right yeah what if what if anybody who
0:20:18is doing a virtual terminal like this. And this also goes for your various VNC clients
0:20:24and things like screens, where you could say, "Well, if you're in screens, now you're driving
0:20:29a Mac from your iPad. If you've got a Bluetooth pointing device connected, it'll move the
0:20:35pointing device on the screen." Again, that's not a super mainstream use case, but it would
0:20:40help out a lot of people, especially in work environments, business and enterprise.
0:20:47And in some hopeful good news, we received some anonymous feedback from somebody who
0:20:50works at an Apple authorized reseller.
0:20:53And they told us that they have not been able to order any new iPads for about two months.
0:20:58So the stock that they are ordering keeps getting pushed back.
0:21:02So it'll be like, oh, it's going to come on this date that date comes, it's like, oh,
0:21:04it's going to come on this date.
0:21:06This reseller is not in the US or Europe.
0:21:09So they said they tend to see these shortages first, even though other places around the
0:21:13the world will still have stock of the devices because Apple kind of they will stock their
0:21:18bigger markets more, right? So they have stuff in the US, they have stuff in Europe.
0:21:22But it's a sign of the channel potentially draining.
0:21:25Yeah, which they said tends to mean new device, new hardware. So I hope that that means that
0:21:34and there's going to be new iPads soon.
0:21:36I wonder if this is connected to something Tim Cook said on the call a couple weeks ago
0:21:41when he talked about how they had some issues meeting demand for some iPads. And there's
0:21:48speculation that that meant that they were iPad models, maybe it's the Air 2, maybe it's
0:21:52the Air, that they just assumed people would buy the Pro and people instead really did
0:22:01want the lower cost devices and they didn't make enough of them. And I saw this note and
0:22:05I thought, or the other possibility is that they have stopped making the Air 1 entirely,
0:22:11or maybe even the Air 2 entirely, but they've stopped making some of those older models
0:22:15now and are repositioning the production line and are making new models. And so, you know,
0:22:24they got stuck. Is it possible that they got stuck not being able to fulfill demand because
0:22:30they were already kind of like moving along to the next model. I don't know. I don't know.
0:22:35But it's interesting to get that hint that perhaps this is, I mean it could be some weird
0:22:39quirk but it could also be a really early sign that there is new iPad hardware coming.
0:22:44We can only hope, right? Yeah, I mean there's got to be, right? Sometime,
0:22:49hopefully soon. Yeah, like eventually there will have to be.
0:22:53There will always be, yeah. All right, so the last piece, last thing
0:22:57I want to mention, obviously, as we mentioned ATP in our last episode, they took all of
0:23:04our stuff and it's in their current episode of ATP, episode 208.
0:23:09Somebody referred to this as like a comic book crossover event where you have to read
0:23:13the issues of all the different comic books to know what the story is.
0:23:17So because of this, as this conversation just keeps going from show to show.
0:23:22And everybody's saying, "Hey, Myke, Marco, get a room."
0:23:25Right?
0:23:26are going to, later on this week, me and Marco are going to go head to head. I don't even
0:23:32know what exactly we're going to address, but I think maybe we're just going to shout
0:23:36at each other or past each other, we're not sure yet. It will probably be a Relay FM B-side,
0:23:42I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to go subscribe there, but if you follow me
0:23:44on Twitter I'll tweet about it when it goes up. So we're going to record just a little
0:23:47special something, which will basically, I think Marco referred to it as top two computing
0:23:53I will be bringing iOS and he will be bringing macOS and we're just gonna talk it out and
0:24:01maybe possibly try and put this thing to bed.
0:24:05And of course, I'll talk about it next week, I'll put a link in the show notes for next
0:24:08week's episode where you'll be able to go and find that.
0:24:10So we're just gonna bring this together and finally try and get some closure on this deal.
0:24:18But we'll see what happens.
0:24:20Maybe I can switch him to iOS, what do you think?
0:24:22Nope.
0:24:23you don't think it's going to happen? Well, I mean, he's… one of the things that made
0:24:27me laugh about it is, you know, iOS developers cannot switch to iOS. So, it's just not
0:24:33going to happen. Yeah, I wonder about that. I wonder about that.
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0:26:46to FreshBooks for their support of Upgrade and Relay FM. So we didn't get any time to
0:26:53talk about this hybrid Mac between the ARM and Intel chips. This is something that Mark
0:27:00Gorman spoke about a couple of weeks ago. Can you give a refresh?
0:27:04Yeah we bumped this story last week because we talked for so long that we didn't, we were
0:27:08we're done. And so we are going to talk about a little late. Mark Gurman wrote a story at
0:27:14Bloomberg where he works about Apple developing a new Mac that involves ARM, but not in the
0:27:24way that sort of the conventional wisdom had described it, which is Mac's running ARM,
0:27:31like ARM processor, an A-series processor like in the iPhone or the iPad with a version
0:27:35of Mac OS on it that is compiled for ARM, uses the ARM instruction set instead of the
0:27:39Intel instruction set and runs on that. That's not what he reported. What he ended up reporting,
0:27:44although the initial headline basically suggested that and then they had to change the headline
0:27:48because I think the person who wrote the headline kind of didn't understand or read the article,
0:27:52which is bad, but they fixed it. And it's interesting though because this is the, and
0:27:57the way I refer to it is it's the coming of the hybrid Mac. It's the idea that, in fact,
0:28:01The hybrid Mac is already here in a way because the touch bar, right, the touch bar on the
0:28:06MacBook Pro is running a version of watchOS, a version of iOS, a couple of levels down,
0:28:14and it's got the touch bar, touch ID, and the webcam are all running through there.
0:28:22And the rest of it's an Intel Mac, right, but those two parts of the system talk to
0:28:27each other.
0:28:29And Germin's report suggests that that's actually the big clue about where Apple is taking the
0:28:35Mac in the future, which is not just compiling Mac OS for ARM, but instead moving functionality
0:28:44to ARM or adding functionality on more capable ARM processors that run side-by-side with
0:28:52the Intel processor.
0:28:54So it's a really interesting idea that you would have an Apple-designed chip that would
0:29:00be running alongside the Intel chip to do who knows what.
0:29:04He suggests some sleep-based functions where, you know, in laptops there's this Power Nap
0:29:10feature where it makes it basically Power Nap is a feature that was introduced a few
0:29:14years ago that makes your Mac behave more like an iPad or iPhone in the sense that when
0:29:19got it closed, when you've got it asleep, it can still be like doing work in the background.
0:29:25Because your iPhone and iPad do that, right? When your iPad is locked or your iPhone is
0:29:28locked, it's not like they aren't able to check your email and stuff so that it's there
0:29:33when you--or receive push notifications, right? But it used to be that Macs, when they were
0:29:38asleep, they were dead, right? They didn't do anything. And with these features, they've
0:29:44been able to do that. So Germin's report is, well, what if those got offloaded instead
0:29:49to this ARM chip? They would be much more power efficient. And that's almost like a
0:29:54beachhead of like, what features can we transfer either while they're in use or while your
0:30:01computer is asleep? And the net result, I think, is interesting because what other computer
0:30:08like this makes Apple capable of making a computer that's unlike any other computer
0:30:13out there in terms of features because they get to use Intel like it's a stock Intel PC
0:30:20but add this Apple chip that makes it different from any Intel PC because no other Intel PC
0:30:26has the ability to run this ARM hybrid thing. So that's the idea.
0:30:35So as Goman pointed out, it's running the stuff that we see in the new MacBook Pro,
0:30:41we see that already, like the touch bar, the touch ID, and apparently the camera as well,
0:30:46right? They're powered by this chip, which is called the T1. Outside of PowerNAP, what
0:30:52other things could conceivably be run by a second chip in this? Like, because, I mean,
0:30:59when I first saw this article, I was like, "Oh, this seems exciting," but PowerNAP wasn't
0:31:05that exciting to me. It's very low level and okay, it may get better battery life, which
0:31:10is awesome. Well, that's it, right? It's not "Yay, power nap arm," right? The answer would
0:31:16be, "What if your battery lasts that much longer?" What if your computer is able to,
0:31:24while you're sitting there, just go to sleep, and it looks like it's still running, but
0:31:28it's asleep? There are potential uses here that are more like it allows them to eke out
0:31:35much better battery life. But I don't know. I mean, this is the real question, is what
0:31:40else can go into this. I had a few people say to me, "Well, one thing you could do is
0:31:45you could run iOS apps."
0:31:47Yeah, I thought about that and I wonder what you thought about that because, I mean, it
0:31:52would make it easier to do it, right?
0:31:54Look, I've been a supporter of the idea of running iOS apps on Macs for a long time now
0:31:59and I know that it would be weird but I think the idea is, you know, is it any weirder than
0:32:05dashboard. I mean, dashboard was essentially a separate platform of apps. There were web
0:32:13apps, JavaScript apps, but that was a separate platform and they ran in a separate layer,
0:32:18although there were weird ways you could get it to appear in the one layer. And so, you
0:32:23know, could you not do that? I'm not sure Apple likes that from a bunch of strategy
0:32:28levels, but it's something that you could do. It could be for developers that they have
0:32:34the ability to run ARM code instead of compiling for Intel and running it there. I don't know.
0:32:40And the real question is what else could you offload there for security reasons and for
0:32:45performance reasons? Could there be other stuff that runs, you know, if the ARM chip
0:32:50is available that it runs on the ARM chip and then other stuff runs on the Intel chip.
0:32:55It's like an extra set of items. I don't know, right? But I'm intrigued by the idea that
0:33:03it's at a fairly low level. This isn't necessarily like, "Oh, well, you have two processors and
0:33:08sometimes you're in ARM mode and sometimes you're in Intel mode." That it's more like,
0:33:12at a very base level in the system, certain devices can take advantage of this chip being
0:33:16there in order to be much more efficient in some way, and as a result, Apple's laptops
0:33:21are more impressive than they would have been otherwise, and more different from the competition.
0:33:28Cuz I assume it would be pretty difficult to run the code kind of on, you know, switching
0:33:36between one or the other. Like you'd have to decode for whatever's gonna be written,
0:33:39gonna run on ARM but have to be rewritten for ARM, right? Because I'm sure that if you
0:33:44were doing emulation you'd only burn through any battery savings or efficiencies you're
0:33:48gonna be keeping.
0:33:49Yeah, it's, it's, it's a weird, it's a weird story and it may be that this is, as David
0:33:55Shab in the chat room points out not that much in the way of news because, you know,
0:34:00everything that's embedded, including dongles, have arm chips in them and that this is a
0:34:07detail that Gurman got that has potentially been blown out of proportion. But the idea
0:34:12here, is it news, for example, to say, "Well, you know that arm chip that runs the Touch
0:34:16Bar. Well, the next generation MacBook Pro, it'll do a little bit more." I mean, that
0:34:21not be a big deal. That may just be like, well, yeah, of course. If you've got—I would
0:34:25imagine that Apple's designers are saying, and their engineers are saying, once we've
0:34:30got an ARM processor, we can make that whatever we want. We're experts at that. Once we've
0:34:34got it inside of MacBook Pro, what could we do? What could we do that nobody's thought
0:34:39about because they've only been using the Intel chip? And now we've got an Intel PC
0:34:44that also has this potentially as powerful as we want it to be ARM processor running
0:34:48a different operating system if we want with security features and all sorts of things
0:34:53like that, what would that be? I don't know, and it may not be that big a deal. In the
0:34:58end it may just be they'll quote better battery life, or it'll be a big deal for developers
0:35:04because they'll need to write some ARM extensions for their apps in order for them to be the
0:35:08most awesome on MacBook Pro, but nobody else cares. That part I don't know. But the back
0:35:16of my mind, the thing that gets me about this is that this, I wonder if this is Apple's
0:35:24take on what the future of the Mac is, which is not to say we have so much prowess in making
0:35:32mobile devices and building ARM processors and doing touchscreen interfaces that we're
0:35:37going to just keep pushing the Mac until it's an iPad, right? It's not that. Instead, it's
0:35:41saying let's take, as they've been doing the last few years, let's take everything we learned
0:35:46from the iPad and the iPhone and use that to give our computers, our Macs,
0:35:52advantages that they wouldn't otherwise have because we spend so much time on
0:35:58on this right down in this case right down to the hardware right down to the
0:36:02existence of another parallel operating system that they can embed in an input
0:36:06device in a computer right and that that is why I think this is interesting
0:36:11because that is Apple--that seems to be Apple's playbook with the Mac and it
0:36:17gets the Mac to an interesting place because like I said it makes the Mac
0:36:22unique in that it's not, you know, it's not an Intel PC anymore. It's an Intel
0:36:31Plus Apple custom PC that is different in some ways. Now can that
0:36:37differentiation be enough? Is that enough to make any difference? Who knows? Who knows
0:36:42if anybody actually cares or if it's a distinction without a difference. But it feels right to me
0:36:49that that is, that feels consistent with Apple's approach with the Mac over the last few years,
0:36:53that they would take it to this level where it's like, we're not going to undo what the Mac is,
0:36:57but we're going to use all of the stuff that we learned from the iPhone and the iPad and pour it
0:37:02into the Mac so that the Mac becomes more than it is now, not like less and, you know,
0:37:07more like an iPad.
0:37:08So let's play this out in the route that the article on Bloomberg seems to suggest that
0:37:15this is, or hint at, that this is like Apple is working on the underpinnings of Mac OS
0:37:20and starting to move a lot of that to ARM, right, to make it more efficient. If that
0:37:24is the case, and they are starting with stuff like low-level stuff like PowerNap and, you
0:37:29they're going to continue to move through until they're able to run a lot of code on Arm to make
0:37:34it more and more efficient and over time they move more and more and more and more over to Arm chips.
0:37:37What is the end game here? Do you think that this is the beginning of a move towards a Mac that runs
0:37:47entirely on Arm processors or is it unlikely that in the future of the Mac existing, you know,
0:37:55You know, imagine it's 20 years from now, right?
0:37:57Until the Mac is replaced, or 30 or 50 years even.
0:38:01Let's keep pushing this out.
0:38:02I'm not saying that it's happening, please.
0:38:04- A thousand years.
0:38:05- Please, I'm not saying it's happening.
0:38:06I'm just, this is a theoretical argument.
0:38:09- On an infinite timescale, yeah.
0:38:10- Would there be advancements in ARM technology
0:38:14to eclipse from a power perspective
0:38:16what Intel is able to do at the same rate?
0:38:18'Cause that's the issue right now, right?
0:38:19Is that Intel chips are far more powerful than ARM chips.
0:38:24- Yeah, this is the question.
0:38:28I know, I think a lot of these arguments get mixed up
0:38:32and you heard it too, the most recent ATP,
0:38:36they talked a little bit about this other thing
0:38:38that was posted on like Reddit or something
0:38:40that was, or Slashdot that was somebody saying,
0:38:42"Oh, I've seen ARM Macs at Apple and their prototypes
0:38:46"and they're totally locked down and it's App Store only
0:38:49"and there's no terminal and they're like iPads
0:38:51"except they're Macs."
0:38:53And there's just a lot of stuff being conflated here,
0:38:55which is one that ARM Macs would be,
0:39:00there's ARM in a Mac is not the same as ARM Macs.
0:39:02And another one is that an ARM Mac would be an iPad,
0:39:05you know, would be totally locked down
0:39:07and they would change all of the security model
0:39:09that they built up over the last few years,
0:39:11like Gatekeeper and signed apps and things like that,
0:39:14which I think are totally separate issues.
0:39:16It could be, but the existence of an ARM Mac
0:39:18does not force that to happen.
0:39:22So there's all of that. I think in this case, the two parallel tracks are Intel Plus ARM and ARM.
0:39:32And I'm sure that Apple is compiling macOS for ARM and running computers, running ARM chips
0:39:42in their labs, just as they ran Intel for years as a hedge against the failure of PowerPC,
0:39:51which is kind of what happened. Power PC let them down, Intel was blowing Power PC's socks
0:39:56off, and they made a switch. So I'm sure they're doing it now, and I'm sure there are conversations
0:40:01inside Apple that are very much, "What kind of ARM chip could we build for a Mac, and
0:40:10what would that get us?" And then there are also conversations about, "Would we be willing
0:40:15to have different chips on different devices in the Mac line, you know, in other words,
0:40:21you know, your laptops are ARM and your desktops aren't, or your MacBook is ARM, but the rest
0:40:27of them aren't. I'm sure they're having all those conversations, right? I feel like in
0:40:33parallel there's this other track, or the outcome of that conversation was, "Nah, you
0:40:39know we're just not there.
0:40:42We don't want to try and compete with Intel at the high end.
0:40:46It's easier to just let Intel build those chips.
0:40:48Let's focus on making our iPhone and iPad chips the best we can
0:40:51and let's not worry about it.
0:40:53But let's take this other hybrid approach.
0:40:57So it may be that they're connected in that way.
0:40:59It may not be.
0:41:01That it's more like the time is not right.
0:41:03Maybe the time will be right later, but it's not right yet.
0:41:05But in the meantime, let's not be so focused on it's either
0:41:09ARM or Intel that we miss an opportunity to roll all of our ARM knowledge into the Mac
0:41:15while keeping the Intel processor there and basically saying, "Hey, Intel, your chips
0:41:18are great. We're going to keep using your chips, but we're going to do some other stuff
0:41:21too, because that makes our computers better." I think that's where Apple is today. That's
0:41:26my gut feeling. Or, you know, it's a little like physics. You know, it's what we see today
0:41:33at Apple seems to be that that's their point of view. It's possible that behind the scenes
0:41:38they totally change their point of view, and we won't know for a year or two when those
0:41:42hardware decisions end up happening. Because remember, there's always kind of a delay.
0:41:46But based on today's evidence, that's what I would say, is that the Apple is keeping
0:41:54armor around as a possibility if Intel lets them down like PowerPC did, and if they feel
0:41:59like the Apple chips are going to beat Intel, they're going to make the Mac better, so why
0:42:04are we bothering with Intel? But Intel's a pretty sweet deal. I mean, they just, Intel
0:42:08does all the work and Apple buys the chips and Apple doesn't have to invest their chip
0:42:14designers in any part of that process because somebody else is doing it and that's pretty
0:42:20sweet. So the hybrid Mac I think is a sweeter deal. So that's my gut feeling is that this
0:42:25is not a step toward an all-arm Mac necessarily. They may yet go there but that this is more
0:42:34like this other path of what can we do to make Intel,
0:42:39it really is like Intel Plus.
0:42:42It's Intel's processor and we know how to do that.
0:42:45And then we add features on with our processor
0:42:47and our operating system that is running on that processor,
0:42:51even if it's not technically macOS at that point.
0:42:54And that's what they're,
0:42:55that seems to be what they're doing.
0:42:56So I don't think this is proof
0:42:58that eventually there'll be ARM Macs,
0:43:00like pure ARM Macs, no Intel,
0:43:03because I think it's on a different track.
0:43:05It might still happen, but I don't think this is going to be the reason it happens,
0:43:08if that makes sense.
0:43:09It would surprise me if the Mac was able to go through a transition
0:43:17from Intel to ARM as successfully as it went from PowerPC to Intel.
0:43:21I would be surprised if that happened.
0:43:26It just seems like it would be a lot to ask of the community.
0:43:33Well, that's, that's, I mean, I hate to say it, but, um, the number one reason I
0:43:37said this, um, I don't hate to say it that much. I said it on this podcast. I
0:43:40said in that Mac world article, I wrote about it too, but I think the number one
0:43:43argument against Apple doing, doing a trip transition, a full on chip transition
0:43:46for the Mac is that it's a lot of work. And, um, does Apple want to do that work?
0:43:52Does Apple want to put developers through that work? Doesn't Apple, I still believe
0:43:56Apple sees the power of the Mac being it, that it is 30 years old and it has an
0:44:02installed base and people like the Mac and they like what the Mac is. This is its benefit as a
0:44:07platform. Yeah, yeah, so undercutting it by making it less stable and weird and new at a point when
0:44:12people could just go to Windows or go to iPad, go to iOS, but just go away from the Mac. To make a
0:44:19weird Mac, even if it wasn't limited in all the ways that that one rumor slash speculation post
0:44:25was, even if it was just a Mac on ARM, going through a chip transition it's like it's a lot
0:44:30of work, it's not that they couldn't do it, but would they do it? And my feeling is they
0:44:34wouldn't. My feeling is that Apple has decided the way forward for the Mac is not to spend
0:44:42effort on that, it's instead to spend effort on these kind of hybrid, sprinkling in hybrid
0:44:47features that push the Mac to be, in some ways it's sort of like Apple is setting expectations
0:44:54with iOS, right, like iOS devices, this goes back to PowerNap actually, iOS devices don't
0:45:01behave like computers and they create expectations in users for how a device behaves, and then
0:45:09the computers don't behave like that, and the users who might have been perfectly fine
0:45:13before are now like, "Why doesn't it do this?" right, "Why is my email not there when I open
0:45:17my computer, it's there when I open my iPad?" The answer is, "Well, it was asleep and it
0:45:21doesn't work like that and it's like that's not a good answer so maybe you
0:45:25know that's Apple's tack with the Mac at this point is what do we need to do to
0:45:29keep advancing the Mac so it's the Mac but without but fulfilling the
0:45:34expectations that our mobile devices have created for that platform that it
0:45:40wasn't designed to to fulfill yeah I think it could be interesting to think
0:45:50about like what are the things that Apple can do that are new or to change
0:45:55the Mac in some way by moving things to ARM right so like when they bring out
0:46:00the next MacBook Pro it won't matter so much that it's running the same Intel
0:46:04chips because it can do all these things that it couldn't do before or can get
0:46:07all these performance increases it couldn't do before because they're
0:46:11enhancing what the ARM chips can do you know and then that could be a way to
0:46:14continue making the Mac appealing even when Intel's missing their timeframes
0:46:19games, right? Right, right, exactly. Well, that's exactly it. Like, how Intel's chips
0:46:26are going to come when they're going to come, and everybody in the PC market's going to
0:46:29get them. And Apple will decide whether it's going to turn over its devices then or not.
0:46:36But that's Apple's decision to make, because the chips are going to come. So what can you
0:46:39control? And the answer is, you can add all of these other features that nobody else gets
0:46:43to add because they don't have, you know, they don't, short of Microsoft doing what
0:46:48they actually did at one point and it didn't go anywhere, but the idea of, you know, short
0:46:55of Microsoft saying, "Well, we've added this whole other spec now, which is this mobile
0:46:59OS inside and you can, and here's a chip, a low-power chip from Intel or Qualcomm that
0:47:04you can put in. And short of a platform-wide reaction from Microsoft on Windows for this,
0:47:13Apple will be able to differentiate in this way. And that's good. That's good because,
0:47:19you know, otherwise they're just being compared to a Dell or Lenovo laptop and they—and
0:47:26if Apple's a step or two behind on the Intel generations, the comparisons are difficult,
0:47:31right? But they're less difficult if you've got something that is a differentiator that is
0:47:37entirely designed by Apple. Last thing I'll ask about this, because my initial thought on this
0:47:44was thinking about corporate land and wondering if something like this would upset Intel and could
0:47:53potentially lead to problems between Intel and Apple. You know, like Intel I'm sure would prefer
0:47:59to sell Apple their versions of these chips because Intel try and they make they make small
0:48:04chips right like I don't know if there are specifically I don't know about this stuff
0:48:08Well they make mobile their own mobile processors yeah so I wonder if something like this could
0:48:13upset Intel and could cause problems in the Apple Intel relationship because Apple were like you
0:48:18know because they will be touting like we have these amazing chips that can do things that no
0:48:22other chip can do and our computers still run Intel but we need to add this other stuff because
0:48:27because the Intel chips are rubbish.
0:48:29- Could be.
0:48:32- I just wonder about that, right?
0:48:33Like I wonder if that could cause stickiness
0:48:35between the relationship
0:48:36and or if anybody would really care, you know,
0:48:39because at least it seems that Apple is a relatively
0:48:43in regards to the rest of the market small customer,
0:48:46like for Intel, like they're a big customer,
0:48:48but there's something like 10% or something
0:48:50of the chips that they sell, I think it said
0:48:51in the Bloomberg article.
0:48:53And I just wonder if this type of thing
0:48:55could rock the boat in any direction.
0:48:57Could it make Intel step up
0:48:59or could it cause problems between Intel and Apple?
0:49:02I don't know.
0:49:02- Yeah, I don't know.
0:49:05I think from Intel's perspective,
0:49:09if Intel feels like it's doing a good job
0:49:12at fulfilling the PC market,
0:49:14that Apple will be a fairly satisfied customer, right?
0:49:18Intel's kind of competing with Apple
0:49:20on chip design internally at Apple,
0:49:22but the rest of the market,
0:49:24It's like, it seems unlikely that Lenovo is gonna be
0:49:27like tapping their watch and being like, come on Intel.
0:49:29Right, it seems unlikely, it's possible.
0:49:32So like, I feel like Intel can just sort of stick
0:49:35to what it knows and try to do its best.
0:49:39And then Apple will just have to make a decision
0:49:41like these guys are messing this up,
0:49:43we could just do this now or not.
0:49:44Like Intel doesn't seem as invulnerable as it used to.
0:49:47There was a time even like three or four years ago
0:49:50where people looked at Intel and were like,
0:49:52nobody is going to catch Intel.
0:49:54Intel's chip making ability is so far ahead of everyone else
0:49:58that they have this huge advantage.
0:50:00And I feel like, you know,
0:50:02it's, Intel's still the leader there,
0:50:04but people don't feel that it's quite as invulnerable
0:50:07as it was.
0:50:08And so, you know,
0:50:09it may also be that Apple's chip designers are like,
0:50:12we could do, we could totally do it.
0:50:13We can totally beat them.
0:50:14I can make a high-end iMac with an ARM chip.
0:50:16Let's do it, let's do it.
0:50:17And somebody in Apple management's like, hold on.
0:50:20(both laughing)
0:50:22Like just because we can, doesn't mean we shouldn't.
0:50:25- I mean, how much in life is like that, right?
0:50:27Which is just 'cause you can do it.
0:50:29I was talking to somebody about another project
0:50:31that I work on that everything on their website
0:50:36is built custom.
0:50:39And we're talking about doing a new version of that website.
0:50:41And several of us in the tech industry were like,
0:50:45okay, this is the point where you need to take
0:50:47your own in-house developers and say,
0:50:51yes, I know you can implement your own forum system
0:50:54and like every single bit of architecture for your site.
0:50:59Just, and this happened to Mac world too.
0:51:02Just because you guys are good programmers
0:51:05and you could build it
0:51:05does not mean you should build it, right?
0:51:07There are other things we can do.
0:51:09Where do we use your talent
0:51:10in the way that has the best net benefit?
0:51:12And where can we take something off the shelf?
0:51:14And it's not quite a perfect parallel,
0:51:17but it's not far off of saying,
0:51:19Intel's gonna hand us processors.
0:51:21That's like taking an open source package
0:51:23and deploying it on your website instead of building
0:51:26something that does the exact same thing,
0:51:28but building it in house.
0:51:29Like you can build it,
0:51:31but imagine all that time that you won't spend building it
0:51:34if you can just take this perfectly good thing
0:51:35off the shelf.
0:51:36Maybe it's not perfect.
0:51:37Maybe it's not exactly what you would do.
0:51:39Maybe it doesn't fulfill all of your needs,
0:51:41but it's free essentially, right?
0:51:44Because somebody else developed it
0:51:45and all you have to do is license it or buy it.
0:51:48I do think there's a parallel there. So much of life and work is about saying just because
0:51:54we can do it, maybe we should not. Maybe there's something else we should do instead.
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0:54:35All right, so
0:54:39Tim Cook has been doing the rounds in Europe over the past couple of weeks. He has been
0:54:45popping up all over the place. He's been visiting schools and he got an honorary degree in Glasgow.
0:54:53From James Thompson's old stomping grounds, no less.
0:54:56My brother as well. My brother went to the University of Glasgow. I actually have been
0:55:00in the room where Tim was given his honorary degree, where I went to see my brother's graduation.
0:55:06And he's been giving lots of quotes about certain topics and one that kind of came a
0:55:11little bit out of left field for me. He gave an interview to the Telegraph in which he
0:55:15spoke out very harshly against the idea of fake news and what fake news means. And I
0:55:22say it's surprising because this just doesn't necessarily feel like something that Apple
0:55:27has too much of an issue with. You know, I would maybe expect something more like this
0:55:32coming from a company like Facebook or Twitter, right? There's like a, we need to stand against
0:55:36this because they are kind of a place where this news gets spread and Apple
0:55:41maybe not so much but Tim Cook believes in this very strongly and the idea of
0:55:45fake news basically being news that is incorrect or you know through bad
0:55:51reporting or that is created to be incorrect to spread mistruths in whatever
0:55:57side of the political fence that you may be sitting on. So I want to read a couple
0:56:01of quotes from Tim he said that he believes this has to be ingrained in
0:56:06In schools it has to be ingrained in the public, there needs to be a massive campaign.
0:56:10We have to think through every demographic.
0:56:12We need the modern version of a public service announcement campaign.
0:56:16It can be done quickly if there is a will.
0:56:18All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of
0:56:22fake news.
0:56:23The outcome of that is truthful, reliable, non-sensational, deep news outlets will win.
0:56:28Jason, what should Apple's role be, realistically, in trying to help stop what fake reporting
0:56:37is occurring, which is, you know, I don't, I can't really think of words to say that
0:56:42aren't gonna bring up emotions in people.
0:56:45- I think there are two issues here. One of the issues is, let's differentiate between,
0:56:52like news that is wrong because somebody well-meaning got it wrong and news that is inaccurate because
0:57:00it was made up or it was intentionally false. Two different issues, right? And one of them
0:57:07has been with us a very long time and the other one probably a little bit less. But
0:57:13certainly that's part of the debate here is there are, the argument is lots of stuff gets
0:57:18passed around on social media, especially on Facebook, that is from these websites that
0:57:24their whole goal is to inflame people of a particular political viewpoint. And it works
0:57:31on both sides of the spectrum here in the US. We've seen examples of both where the
0:57:35goal is create headlines that reinforce a worldview. And they're made up, but they reinforce
0:57:43a worldview and then you get people to share them on Facebook. And people come to those
0:57:48sites to view and they get page views and they make money. That's the whole purpose
0:57:53of it. It's generally not even intended to be. There are sites that fabricate things
0:58:00or that speak to reinforce a worldview that are doing it knowingly and to make money,
0:58:06and then there are other ones that are doing it not that they care about the politics of
0:58:10it, but they just want to make the money and they know that those clicks are there for
0:58:14the taking. So the challenge with that is how can any gateway to news and information
0:58:22sharing, does it want to be a gatekeeper? And if it does, how does it do that? And how
0:58:28does it differentiate between items that are factually incorrect and items that are opinion?
0:58:35And there's no such thing as a wrong opinion. There are such things as wrong facts, but
0:58:39everybody gets to have an opinion. You know, in other words, you can have the opinion that
0:58:45the earth is flat, but it's not, right? And if you say it is versus I think it is, that's
0:58:51a different quality. I mean, I would say your opinion is dumb if you're saying your opinion
0:58:56is a fact doesn't exist, but people get to have their opinions and that's an extreme
0:59:01example. People get to have political opinions. So one of the ways that people are talking
0:59:05about this is like Facebook. Can Facebook say, "This is not a trusted news source. This
0:59:09news source has been known to post things that are false," and like label things, not
0:59:13censor them in the sense of like, you know, "Oh, you posted that thing and it went straight
0:59:18down the memory hole," but instead like, "This is a questionable article." You know, in other
0:59:22words, is a, and Apple News follows into this too, right? Do you have some sort of system
0:59:28that is able to let people flag stories and say, "I don't think this is real," which is
0:59:33different from "I don't like this, this makes me feel icky," but it's like, "I don't think
0:59:37this is real, I think this is made up, this is provably false." Do you have people who
0:59:41are checking things and flagging sites and individual stories and saying these aren't
0:59:44real? It's a little bit like dealing with spam or something like that. If you flag a
0:59:48site, that site will just maybe go away, but they'll put up a duplicate of it at a different
0:59:52name and then you have to flag that site too. You know, there's an arms race that has to
0:59:58happen there. But I personally think that that is one of the jobs of these
1:00:03conduits of information to let their users know that this stuff is junk if
1:00:11it's junk, but you got to be really careful, right? Because the trick is
1:00:15that what you're trying to do is give people a warning that that
1:00:22source is not credible, but people are going to argue about what credibility is.
1:00:27is. Like, is Breitbart credible? Is Newsmax credible? Is Fox News credible? Like, there's
1:00:34a spectrum of conservative media. And, you know, I would say that at the extreme, there
1:00:40are a lot of stories that are posted that are just made up that are entirely fabricated.
1:00:43But somebody might also point to a story here and say, "Well, they're, you know, that person
1:00:47that they're quoting is lying or is not, you know, is not, it's shading the truth there
1:00:53a little bit. It's like, "Well, is that fake? Probably not. That's probably not accurate."
1:00:58There's the other dimension too, which is, what about a story that's wrong? And people
1:01:01argue about them and there are all these definitions of where we draw the line. So it's a really
1:01:07hard problem, but I do think somebody like Facebook needs to make an attempt to, at the
1:01:12very least, push the worst stuff, the stuff that is just spam, essentially. Spam in the
1:01:20guise of news and market and say, "This is not a trusted source." But I think in doing
1:01:28that, they need to be really broad about what the trusted sources are, and that's going
1:01:31to make people angry that their pet issue of this news source on the other side of the
1:01:39political spectrum is all fake and yet isn't marked as fake. And Facebook, like, "That's
1:01:45going to happen, but too bad, you know, right? I do think that there's a responsibility there
1:01:51to maybe be helpful without being, like, without picking a side.
1:01:58Matthew: And how far do Apple go in this? Is it just Apple News or is it more?
1:02:03Tim: Well, I think, I mean, I think at Apple, in terms of being a conduit, it's got to be
1:02:09Apple News, just like that's their thing, right? So with Apple News, if Apple News can
1:02:16work on this, I think the reality is like, wow, this is a tough thing for Apple to bite
1:02:20off on in addition to everything else versus something like Facebook. Facebook, you've
1:02:26got the whole social graph, people are pouring things into your feed, you don't know where
1:02:30they came from. I would actually argue that something like Twitter is actually a better
1:02:34example of a service that should probably worry about this. I think Twitter has other
1:02:38things to worry about than something like Apple News where it's mostly curated and from
1:02:43your own choices, which is a little bit different. I think where what Cook was talking about
1:02:48and this backs it up to something that maybe Apple could do, but it's also sort of a call
1:02:51to everybody, which is this, what he said, public service announcement campaign. It's
1:02:56like we need to educate people, especially kids because that's where most of us get our
1:03:03most of our education, right? But everybody to be way better consumers of information,
1:03:10to not see that email or that Facebook link and take it on, take it on its face. The,
1:03:18I think older people are actually more vulnerable here because they remember when there were
1:03:24gatekeepers. And so they ascribe a level of credibility to headlines that they see than
1:03:34I think a younger person would, because younger people know people can do anything on the
1:03:38internet and is it real or not. And apply some, ideally they would apply a lot of skepticism
1:03:43to that because really you can say anything on the internet. There's no truth detector,
1:03:47right? But older people, and I'm not saying like retirees, I'm saying people who are,
1:03:52did not come of age in the internet age and did not get those antibodies like anything
1:03:56on the internet could be fake. And I think most of our listeners are tech savvy enough
1:04:00that they probably have some of those antibodies, right? But those people, it's a real challenge
1:04:06trying to educate them on this issue, and I don't know if they can be. Like the idea
1:04:11that you can't trust, there was that story about, well, I can't remember, it was a completely
1:04:17false statement. And there was a woman that they were interviewing on, I think it was
1:04:22ABC News. And she said this false statement that had come from one of these organizations.
1:04:29And I think it was about the 3 million illegal immigrants who voted in the California election
1:04:35or something like that, which is, there's no proof of that. It didn't happen. And when
1:04:39they asked her, "Why do you believe that?" She says, "It was in the media." And I think
1:04:44a perfect example of somebody who is seeing something that reinforces her own personal
1:04:53beliefs and has this added benefit of being in the media and therefore that makes it okay
1:05:02and true. And I do think it's a huge problem for society that people are being manipulated
1:05:11by very clever internet people, people like us, right?
1:05:14I feel like a lot of this is people like us
1:05:17are using the technology we love
1:05:19and the systems we love like the internet
1:05:21to troll slash manipulate lots of populations of people
1:05:26who aren't as savvy.
1:05:28And this is not the first time in history
1:05:29that this sort of thing has happened,
1:05:30but it's happening today with our technology
1:05:32and it's our tools and it's the stuff we understand.
1:05:34And I think that may be where Tim Cook
1:05:36is really coming from is we gotta,
1:05:38those of us who are tech savvy
1:05:39need to grapple with the fact that people who are less savvy are being fed bad information.
1:05:50And the problem with it is they're being fed bad information that they accept because they
1:05:54want to feel good and it reinforces their worldview. And you know what? If you want
1:05:57to feel good, that's fine. Have whatever political views you have, it's fine. But this is the
1:06:04The road this goes down is this complete distortion where there's literally nothing connecting
1:06:10two sides of any issue because the facts are not agreed upon. You can't argue a point if
1:06:17you can't agree on the facts about the point.
1:06:20So Tim is kind of stepping up as the guy in charge of the biggest company in the world
1:06:25and he's throwing around some of the political power that comes with that in trying to effect
1:06:31some change, which is not the first time that he's done something like this. You know, he—Tim
1:06:34Cook—and it's one of the reasons that, you know, I've mentioned this in the past and
1:06:37I still believe it, that Apple is a more responsible company under Tim. It's kind of in its mark
1:06:44on the world, it is more responsible. And I think this is another example of that, where
1:06:49if Tim Cook really believes in something, then he molds Apple in his image. And I think
1:06:55mostly that is a good thing, I think.
1:06:56So here's my wacky idea, which will never happen but I'm going to mention it, which
1:07:00is either a company like Facebook should fund this, like internally, or the tech industry,
1:07:08especially those that have vested interests in information, should fund a Super Snopes,
1:07:16basically. Snopes is the fact-checking website, essentially. Create a non-profit entity that,
1:07:23funded tech companies that does nothing but fact check, truth detect, spam watch. Make
1:07:33sure that they are overseen so that what they're not doing is picking political winners and
1:07:38losers but are very much trying to verify information and create an open system of scoring
1:07:48websites and articles for truthfulness so that the Facebooks and Twitters and Apple
1:07:53news of the world can use that information in order to prioritize what floats to the
1:07:58top and to label things. I don't think it'll ever happen, but I feel like that's basically
1:08:04if Silicon Valley threw some money at this, I don't say that lightly because you can't
1:08:08throw money at things usually. There are lots of complications, but, and there would be
1:08:11complications here, but I feel like that would be a big step here is that nobody is really
1:08:16financially motivated to do this, to do truth detection. Like I said, I think maybe Facebook
1:08:23is the only one that is. And even there, we see Facebook's history with this sort of thing
1:08:28and they kind of don't want to spend money on it. Part of that is that there's some institutional
1:08:32arrogance that their software can figure out this stuff better than paying human beings
1:08:37to do legwork and other journalistic work. Facebook kind of doesn't believe in that.
1:08:44I don't know. I do feel like this is not a solution without some, or not a problem without
1:08:51some solutions, but I do feel it's a little like spam email in that it's all about mitigation,
1:08:56making it less terrible, not making it cured. But still, one would actually need to try
1:09:03to make it less terrible.
1:09:05And maybe Apple's going to start that. I hope so.
1:09:08Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I'm skeptical. I feel like this is Tim Cook sort of making
1:09:14a statement of belief, but I have a hard, I don't know.
1:09:19It did feel very non-committal. Yeah, right, like all of us technology companies
1:09:22need to create some tools that help them. Okay, why don't you all get together and build
1:09:26that organization, build that nonprofit that's funded by tech companies with a huge commitment
1:09:30that's going to hire a bunch of people, both technical and editorial people, to build verification
1:09:37tools to create a sort of like, "This is not a fake site. This is not a fake. This is a
1:09:44real story. This is a fake story that's been disproven." So that you can have ubiquitous
1:09:48fact-check links that will pop up and say, "This story is disputed," or, "This story
1:09:53is wrong," or, "This story has been revised, but this news entity hasn't done the revision."
1:10:01I mean, there are lots of approaches here, but saying all of us technology companies
1:10:07need to create some tools is great, but what then?
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1:11:24Ask Upgrade
1:11:26Brent asked if you could use an Apple Pencil on the iPhone would you want to?
1:11:32Be honest have you ever tried?
1:11:33So I have tried.
1:11:35I tried when
1:11:37the Apple Pencil was released.
1:11:40Right. Like, does this work outside
1:11:42of that? I've never tried.
1:11:43Right. Like, I know it doesn't work,
1:11:45but I wanted to see if it would work.
1:11:47Right. I didn't know.
1:11:47We didn't know enough about it.
1:11:48I wondered if it would and it didn't.
1:11:49I would use it maybe
1:11:53in certain circumstances.
1:11:55Like, I feel like there would have to
1:11:56be more
1:11:58added to the
1:12:00software on the iPhone to make it
1:12:02really worthwhile.
1:12:03Something that I always kind of liked and do like on the Samsung phones is that, you
1:12:08know, you can just pop out the stylus and just write on the blank screen and it starts
1:12:11writing.
1:12:12You start taking notes on it.
1:12:13I always thought that was kind of cool.
1:12:14I'd like to see something like that, you know.
1:12:17There are a lot of little features that the note series that have that I wish that Apple
1:12:21would find a way to implement.
1:12:22Like you can like just select areas of the screen and create screenshots or like make
1:12:28GIFs out of areas of the screen by using the stylus.
1:12:31So yeah, stuff like that.
1:12:32I would like for the Apple Pencil.
1:12:36Maybe it would be useful on the plus where you've got big screen, you could do some stuff,
1:12:39but yeah, I think I could find some use for it.
1:12:41I'm sure Jason has no use for it.
1:12:44Not really.
1:12:45No.
1:12:46But I could find use for it because I love the Apple Pencil and I love my iPhone.
1:12:49Reid asked, "Do you ever use the 3D touch app switching gesture?"
1:12:53This is where you kind of like squeeze on the left hand side of the screen.
1:12:57Yeah, then slide it.
1:12:58Then slide it.
1:12:59do because it doesn't work very well with cases?
1:13:03I almost never do. I will occasionally remember that it's there and use it but most of the
1:13:08time I'm still doing the double tap and I don't know how much of that is that I don't
1:13:13think of it and I don't know how much of that is that I use my iPad so much that I end up
1:13:20using the same gestures I use on my iPad on my iPhone.
1:13:24you use the double tap of the home button for your iPad to multitasking.
1:13:29Yeah. Even though there's a touch gesture, I usually don't use it.
1:13:34That's what I do. If I'm not using a keyboard, like if I'm not using Spotlight or Command
1:13:40Tab or something, which is what I'm usually doing because my iPad is usually connected
1:13:43to a keyboard, I do use the software like swipe up with four fingers. Or like swiping
1:13:49left and right with four fingers. I do that a lot.
1:13:51will swipe left and right to go back between apps. If I'm multitasking, I will do that,
1:13:56but I won't do the like reveal the switcher gesture. Usually I double tap and that's just
1:14:02– I think it's just habit. Also works on both devices, right? I mean, that's the
1:14:06other thing. It actually works on both devices as opposed to saying, "Well, on my iPad,
1:14:10I'll do this, but on my phone, I'll do that." I just end up using the button.
1:14:14Yeah.
1:14:15Justin asks, "Why do you think it would be an improvement to have an always on screen
1:14:20with the Apple Watch which is something that we were talking about last week. I don't want
1:14:23other people seeing my messages. So I get where Justin's coming from from this, right?
1:14:28Like what if the screen was always on and everything that came through lit up the screen?
1:14:33I can say from experience having used a Pebble and LG watch for a while, I tried out the
1:14:38LG watch when that came out with the Android Wear on it, it sucks to have your messages
1:14:44just automatically displayed because people will read them, which used to happen to me
1:14:49all the time because my LGG watch would light up and people would just read the message
1:14:53because it was in full color. In my mind, this isn't the same UI. Like to see a message,
1:14:59you'd still have to raise your, like raise it to see it, right? You raise your wrist
1:15:03to like look at the message.
1:15:04- You raise your wrist or you'd tap or pull down or something, but you do something to
1:15:10switch it off of the watch face.
1:15:13- Yeah, but the always on watch face would be the time and maybe there would be some
1:15:18new indicators.
1:15:45Richard asked, "Do either of us have AppleCare on our watches? I just wanted to know if it's
1:15:50something worth getting." I don't think I do. No, I don't. I didn't buy it for my series
1:15:542. Do you?
1:15:57No, I don't have AppleCare for any device I own.
1:16:00Okay, why is that? What is your thinking there?
1:16:05My failure rate has never been enough to justify paying AppleCare for my devices. The amount
1:16:14of money I've saved by not paying for AppleCare has more than covered the few times I've needed
1:16:21to replace or repair a device.
1:16:23I have moved to this thinking over time. Like I used to buy AppleCare for my devices, but
1:16:31I've never had a problem in which I've needed to take something in to have it fixed under
1:16:35an AppleCare warranty. Plus because there is the, you know, there is an excess on those,
1:16:41I've just stopped getting it and I'm fine.
1:16:44But if you are a person who breaks stuff a lot, Richard,
1:16:48then yes, get it.
1:16:49If you, you know.
1:16:51- That's exactly it.
1:16:53- If you break stuff, then get it.
1:16:54If you don't break stuff, then don't get it
1:16:56and just hope that you'll win out over time.
1:16:59And Brent asked me as an activist
1:17:02for the multi-pad lifestyle,
1:17:04how often do you use both of your iPad Pros at the same time?
1:17:07Not very often, honestly.
1:17:09I don't, I mean, I have done that.
1:17:11like if you know that there have been times where I've needed to have lots of information
1:17:16you know like I'm using two applications and I also need to look at a PDF or something
1:17:20for whatever reason it might be for some planning. I have used both iPads and there are times
1:17:26where I might you know crack out my iPhone to use a calculator when I've got two applications
1:17:30open and need them to see them both. But it is infrequent that I will use more than one
1:17:36iPad at a time, mostly because Splitview has really helped a lot. I have kind of multiple
1:17:44screens in my mind, two apps running side by side. There are times when I'll do it,
1:17:48but it is infrequent that I would need to have more than one iPad at a time.
1:17:54Yeah, yeah, it's more about like, what's the context of what you're doing, I would think.
1:18:02This looks like a job for a big iPad, that sort of thing.
1:18:06Yeah, which is how it tends to be for me.
1:18:09All right, so that wraps it up for Ask Upgrade this week.
1:18:12It is worth just reminding you that there will be a mic at the movies next week, and
1:18:17we are going to be watching The Terminator.
1:18:19I'll be back.
1:18:21We will be back, and we'll be talking about The Terminator.
1:18:24This is the first time that I've realized that the movie is called The Terminator.
1:18:28I just thought it was called Terminator.
1:18:30No.
1:18:31That's Terminator 2. The Terminator. The Terminator.
1:18:35The original from 1984. I've also just realised how peculiar that
1:18:40word sounds when I say it compared to when you say it.
1:18:43Yeah. Terminator. I say every syllable, every sound,
1:18:48every consonant is said in quite sharp tones. Terminator.
1:18:53If you want to find out show notes for this week head to relay.fm/upgrades/128. Go to
1:19:00sixcolors.com for Jason's awesome writing. Go to the incomparable.com for his many podcasts on
1:19:07pop culture items and he also hosts a bunch of shows over at relay FM as well. I am imike,
1:19:13I am yke on twitter. Jason is jsnell, he's jsnell. Thanks again to our sponsors this week,
1:19:19The Five Folk over at Encapsula, The Great People over at Blue Apron and the quite lovely
1:19:26fresh books. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye Mr. Snow. We'll be back next time.
1:19:32Goodbye. Oh I wonder if that's gonna get old.
1:19:39[LAUGHTER]
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