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Upgrade

116: Design Team Yearbook

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   from Real AFM this is Upgrade episode number 116 today's show is brought to you by Mac Weldon

00:00:16   in Capsula and Eero my name is Myke Hurley and I am joined across a very big body of water

00:00:24   by Mr Jason Snell.

00:00:26   Big body of water and then a large landmass. Let's not undersell it. It's very far away.

00:00:31   Hello!

00:00:32   Hello. Or you can go large landmass then big body of water if you want. It just depends

00:00:35   which way you want to go, right? You can go anywhere.

00:00:39   Ah, yeah. Fair point. Fair point. You could do it that way.

00:00:42   You could if you want to think about it.

00:00:43   That would kind of be the far way. What you want to do is just kind of go straight here

00:00:47   over Greenland.

00:00:48   Thanksgiving week.

00:00:51   It is. So for those of us in the United States, it's a holiday week. I mean, we, of course,

00:00:57   as I like to say in one of my other podcasts, we release the upgrade simultaneously worldwide

00:01:03   like Netflix does with its original shows. We don't delay it for some markets. You all

00:01:06   get it at the same time. That's how good we are. That's how nice we are. Forward thinking.

00:01:11   But in this country, the US, this is a holiday week and Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. So

00:01:18   So everybody gets Thursday and Friday generally off and sometimes the Wednesday.

00:01:25   My kids have, let's see, my daughter has Wednesday, Thursday, Friday off.

00:01:28   My son has the entire week off, which is kind of funny.

00:01:31   I guess that's, I think some school districts just give up and they realize that they're

00:01:36   going to, in the US school funding, a lot of school funding has to do for public school,

00:01:40   has to do with attendance.

00:01:42   And so if a school anticipates days that will not be well attended, they will often just

00:01:47   make them holidays, make them vacation days, and move those days elsewhere in the year

00:01:52   just because, you know, they can get better attendance on other days. So my son's middle

00:01:59   school has just given up and given him the whole week off, so not eight feet away from

00:02:03   me in the living room, my son and a friend of his are playing video games right now.

00:02:08   It's a party.

00:02:09   He's living the life.

00:02:10   Yeah, it's Thanksgiving week. They're thankful that they have lots of video games to play.

00:02:14   Which also means with being Thanksgiving week, I have some kind of weird pseudo-holiday week.

00:02:18   It's very strange, because I just don't talk to anybody for a couple of days, right? Because

00:02:23   everything shuts down.

00:02:24   Steve McLaughlin Yeah. Life continues as normal. Although you

00:02:26   could, you know, you could do what you did. You could go to an American restaurant for

00:02:30   a Thanksgiving meal on Thursday.

00:02:32   Adam Backman I'd considered it, but didn't get anything

00:02:34   booked in. So that means I probably won't be able to do it. But we'll see. Maybe I'll

00:02:39   find something. It's always options.

00:02:41   Steve McLaughlin You can check that. Have some turkey. And

00:02:43   like a little pre-Christmas Christmas for those over there. Yeah, this is a funny one

00:02:49   because this is our, this is the one, I mean, 4th of July is like this too, where it s like

00:02:52   it s a holiday only for us. And it used to not matter when, yeah, I was thinking about

00:02:58   this, back before the internet, I know that s kind of a weird thing to say, but let me

00:03:02   In ye olden days. And before, yeah, back in the old times, the old times, it s just one

00:03:08   of those things where it, as an American, you didn't think about the fact that the rest

00:03:13   of the world didn't celebrate this holiday. Everything you could see, your entire world

00:03:20   was constrained to, like our TV channels were only American. Everything is only American.

00:03:27   And you didn't have, with the internet, everything is much more globally connected now. So it's

00:03:34   only been more recently that you get that effect of knowing that life goes on everywhere

00:03:41   else while we are stuffing ourselves with turkey and rolls and yams and things like

00:03:49   that. It's funny.

00:03:50   Will Barron Once we're talking about that, Apple is strongly

00:03:52   encouraging that everybody gets out of the house on Thanksgiving and actually participates

00:03:57   in some exercise as opposed to just eating. So they are going to be, they kind of announced

00:04:04   this via push notification I believe today to Apple Watch users that if you do a 5K,

00:04:09   which is about 3 point something miles, 3.1 miles I'm told by Dan Morin at Six Colors,

00:04:14   that you will get a special achievement badge in the activity app on your Apple Watch which

00:04:20   is Thanksgiving themed. It's kind of cute.

00:04:24   Yeah, yeah, I like this idea. I think it's a really great idea. The idea to motivate

00:04:30   people, like what motivates somebody? Is a dumb Apple Watch badge going to motivate people?

00:04:35   Well, maybe it will. I mean, I'm going to have that moment of like, "Oh, we should go

00:04:38   for a walk today," which maybe before I would be like, "We should eat more yams." Yeah,

00:04:45   that's right. More big potato. And instead, go out for a walk. So I think it's a fun idea

00:04:53   to prompt people on a day like Thanksgiving to get out and move their bodies.

00:05:00   We should do some follow-up. G. Llewellyn on Twitter wrote in to tell us, this is just

00:05:04   an interesting tidbit, that in China the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is called the Multi-Touch

00:05:09   Bar version. And you can see it. I'll put a link in the show notes to a screenshot that

00:05:15   G. Llewellyn sent to us and you can see it because they translate that part into English.

00:05:19   It's called the Multi-Touch Bar. That's just an interesting thing to me. I mean, obviously

00:05:23   this stuff happens quite a lot but I can't think of anything like product naming was

00:05:28   from Apple that has been changed when translated like iPhone is iPhone is iPhone right? Yeah

00:05:33   it might there must be some cultural reason right why it was considered or a trademark

00:05:38   reason or something although I'm not sure that's a huge issue but something something

00:05:41   like that where they decided that this was a safer way to to describe it. Dave wrote

00:05:47   in to recommend a lightning to SD card adapter from a company called Lexar.

00:05:53   Yeah, Lexar is a major manufacturer of memory cards basically.

00:05:58   Okie dokie.

00:05:59   And they have an actual physical adapter that you can plug into your iOS devices via lightning

00:06:05   and you can pull the files straight directly from the SD cards.

00:06:09   So this was in response to us talking last time about having a wireless SD card.

00:06:16   - Yeah, the Toshiba Wi-Fi SD card.

00:06:19   So Dave shows how fast things can move sometimes.

00:06:22   I went and immediately purchased this,

00:06:24   got it from Amazon, tried it out,

00:06:26   and discovered that it was no good.

00:06:28   Well, I was gonna write about it.

00:06:30   First off, it uses micro SD cards,

00:06:32   and my recorder, my portable recorder, the Zoom,

00:06:36   uses full-size SD cards.

00:06:37   So I would need to get a micro SD card with an adapter,

00:06:42   and then pull that card out,

00:06:44   and then pull the little card out of the adapter and then put it in in order to get it to work.

00:06:50   But I like the idea of using a wired transfer, essentially a lightning port transfer instead

00:06:55   of a Wi-Fi transfer. And then I do actually already have a couple of micro SD cards and

00:07:02   they are readable by my devices and by my Mac and neither of them was readable by the

00:07:08   Lexar thing. It was like, I don't know what to do. And so I went to Amazon and started

00:07:13   a return and it's going it's in a box going back to Amazon now so I can't I

00:07:17   can't maybe I got a bad one I don't know. It works for Dave. Dave said that he loses it. But it didn't work for me and I'm

00:07:25   pretty happy with how the the Toshiba Wi-Fi card is working so I think I'm

00:07:29   gonna stick with that. We've had a couple of people contact us maybe you could

00:07:33   speak a little bit more to this Jason to say this is in response to an Ask God

00:07:37   question, that it is possible to drive the LG 5K display via Thunderbolt 2. Now we were

00:07:43   under the impression that it could only be driven by a Thunderbolt 3 capable device.

00:07:50   - Right. So since it's, it sounds like, since this is happening where it's multiple channels

00:07:55   of DisplayPort, what I've heard, and I can't confirm this, and I kept asking people who

00:08:01   said that they had heard that this was possible, to let me know if they ever saw it in action,

00:08:06   nobody has said this yet but I've heard because we answered with some confidence last week

00:08:12   that it was impossible when we were asked about it on AskUprader.

00:08:14   Because it literally says on a technical specifications that it works via a computer that has Thunderbolt

00:08:21   3. Like it says it on the page, right?

00:08:23   Right. So it may be that some Macs have the video out capability, the GPU capability to

00:08:32   do it if you attach a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter to the display and

00:08:37   then a Thunderbolt cable from the display to the computer. I don't know if

00:08:45   that will work or not, but we heard from a couple people that it would. We heard

00:08:49   rumblings that this may actually be set up in Apple stores as a way to

00:08:55   display these things attached instead of the Thunderbolt display attached to like

00:09:01   a Mac Pro. It's also possible that it will work, but it will work at a lower frame rate.

00:09:07   It'll work at like 30 frames per second instead of 60. I don't know. So basically, we wanna

00:09:14   say we've heard from some people that it may be more complicated than simply saying no,

00:09:19   like we did last week. So the jury's still out on this. If you have seen one of these,

00:09:24   I mean, they haven't even shipped yet is my understanding, right? So it may be that the

00:09:28   first time we see them will be in an Apple store and somebody should look and see if

00:09:34   they're attached via that Thunderbolt adapter. Maybe that'll be the story.

00:09:38   But we just don't know.

00:09:39   So…

00:09:40   I think I might have something here, Jason.

00:09:41   Oh, yes.

00:09:42   All right. So the 5K display says "Connection Thunderbolt 3 enabled Mac." The 4K display

00:09:52   says "USB-C enabled Mac."

00:09:54   Yeah.

00:09:55   So, they're different.

00:09:56   They are different.

00:09:57   - They are different. - They ask for different things.

00:09:59   - They are different and I'm sure that lots of Macs

00:10:01   can drive a 4K display.

00:10:03   And yeah, so it's a mystery.

00:10:07   So anyway, if somebody does succeed in getting

00:10:10   the 5K display operating with a Mac

00:10:13   that does not have Thunderbolt 3, let us know.

00:10:16   That would be interesting.

00:10:18   - Yeah, I'm still not holding out hope for this.

00:10:21   - Yeah, I have skepticism that even if it does work,

00:10:24   if it's optimal, that's really my thought there

00:10:27   is it going to be able to drive it at 60 hertz like the modern Thunderbolt 3 Macs are?

00:10:35   Is it going to melt your GPU? Who knows.

00:10:38   Anything is possible.

00:10:39   Anything is possible.

00:10:40   Hey, are you at your new house or are you at your old house?

00:10:43   Nope.

00:10:44   So you're still in micro-office?

00:10:45   Yeah, I'm still in micro-office. Due to a myriad of issues last week, I didn't end up

00:10:50   recording any shows from the flat. I actually recorded less shows last week. I had to skip

00:10:54   But this week I should be recording a couple of things from from Mega Office.

00:10:58   Mega Office is now painted which is great.

00:11:01   All right, are you still doing your chair plan?

00:11:06   Yeah, no furniture yet. However, I'm maybe this weekend going to buy a desk.

00:11:11   I'm gonna get a sit-stand desk which is gonna be new for me.

00:11:14   Good, welcome.

00:11:15   So yeah, I'm gonna I'm probably gonna well I'm definitely gonna be recording at least one show this week from from the new from the new flat.

00:11:23   That's great.

00:11:24   And just a piece of homework, next week is going to be our first holiday season mic at

00:11:31   the movies, and as we mentioned before, it's going to be Gremlins.

00:11:34   So we will be talking about Gremlins on next week's episode of Upgrade.

00:11:38   So if you want to follow along with the final segment of the show, which will be our discussion

00:11:42   about Gremlins, you need to watch before next Monday, which is also a reminder to me and

00:11:46   Jason that we must watch the movie by next Monday.

00:11:48   Yes.

00:11:49   I've had a lot of podcast homework lately, watching various movies and TV shows for the

00:11:54   incomparable and then I realized that my next bit of homework is for Upgrade. That's kind

00:12:00   of fun. So sometime this week.

00:12:01   Most important though, right? You agree with that? Myke at the Movies is the most important.

00:12:05   Sure. Of course. Goes without saying.

00:12:08   This week's episode of Upgrade is brought to you very kindly by our friends over at

00:12:11   Mack Weldon. Mack Weldon is better than whatever you're wearing right now, unless you're already

00:12:17   wearing Mac Worlden clothing because we all know, me and Jason, and you should know that

00:12:22   it's the best. Right? We believe this, Jason Snow, do we not? Mac Worlden is the most comfortable.

00:12:26   Yes, I'm wearing it right now, so it's not better than what I'm wearing right now.

00:12:29   That's why I said it, because I knew you would challenge me, because I know that you wear

00:12:33   Mac Worlden often as I do, because their products are so comfortable. Mac Worlden will give

00:12:38   you the most comfortable underwear, socks, shirts, undershirts, hoodies, and sweatpants

00:12:42   that you will have ever experienced. They look good, as well as being comfortable. You

00:12:46   You can be out on the street.

00:12:47   I mean, as I've mentioned many, many times,

00:12:49   I travel with my Macworld and sweatpants

00:12:51   and they're the most fancy looking sweatpants

00:12:53   that I've ever worn.

00:12:54   I don't think I stick out like a sore thumb.

00:12:56   You know, I don't look like I've just come from the gym.

00:12:58   I look good, but the most important thing for me

00:13:01   is that I feel good.

00:13:02   I feel comfortable when I'm wearing this stuff as well.

00:13:05   I love my Macworld and underpants as well.

00:13:08   And I find the whole situation,

00:13:10   the whole way of buying Macworld and products to be so easy.

00:13:13   They have a great website. - The situation.

00:13:14   - The whole situation.

00:13:15   The situation of buying--

00:13:16   The MacWeldon website situation is good, is what you're saying.

00:13:19   They can put that on the website, right on the very top.

00:13:22   Myke Hurley says, "The situation is good."

00:13:24   I really do like their stuff.

00:13:26   This is something that not only am I happy to tell you about it, I'm also happy to put

00:13:31   it on my body.

00:13:32   I think that's got to be the biggest endorsement that a human can give.

00:13:36   They can put that on their website, too.

00:13:37   You can also put-- I'm giving just tagline after tagline for MacWeldon.

00:13:40   It's amazing.

00:13:41   They have silver underwear and shirts that naturally are antimicrobial. They eliminate

00:13:46   odor. This is some cool science stuff to make sure you're also going to smell good.

00:13:50   Also it'll protect you from werewolves. They don't really promote that, but it's true.

00:13:55   Put it on the website, Mack Weldon. Protect you from werewolves, says Jason Snow. Mack

00:13:59   Weldon want you to be comfortable. They believe in that so much that if you don't like what

00:14:03   you buy, if you buy your first pair and you're not happy with it, just keep it and they'll

00:14:07   refund you. They don't want your underpants back. You just keep them.

00:14:13   Listeners of this show can get 20% off at MacWeldon.com. That's Macweldon.com with the

00:14:19   coupon code upgrade. Thank you so much to Mac Weldon for their support of this show

00:14:22   and Relay FM. Trust me, as a human being, you probably need to buy some of these products.

00:14:28   Just go and get yourself some and I know that you're going to love it. Thank you so much

00:14:31   to Mac Weldon for their support this show. Werewolf protection.

00:14:35   Yeah, it just comes standard with silver underpants.

00:14:39   Somebody over in Cupertino should have stretched a pair of silver underpants over the airport

00:14:45   extreme in the airport, so that couldn't be killed because a report from the man who has

00:14:51   been on fire since he joined Bloomberg, Mr. Mark Gurman, he has said today that the wireless

00:15:00   division, the router division, I don't even know what you'd call it, over at Apple.

00:15:04   To make Airport Extreme and Airport Express and Time Machine, basically, or Time Capsule.

00:15:11   Time Capsule.

00:15:12   I mean, the difficult to remember the name of Time Capsule. That they've shut that down,

00:15:19   disbanded the team, and presumably won't be making any more wireless router products.

00:15:25   They said that the team has been kind of slowly being closed down over the last year, and

00:15:32   moving these people into like Apple TV and iPhone and they're just moving them out into

00:15:36   other divisions. This product is dead. They're still on sale though, right? Like I can still

00:15:41   today go to Apple.com and buy an airport for my sins I guess. Let me go and take a look

00:15:48   and see if it's still available in the accessories. But whilst I do this, Jason's now, is this

00:15:54   an issue in any way? Yes, I can still buy an airport extreme and a time capsule if I

00:15:58   I want to. Do you see this as a problem?

00:16:04   I don't. I don't. I know there's a lot of people out there. Any time Apple does anything,

00:16:10   there's a reaction and it's sort of like, people are like, "I can't believe they're

00:16:13   doing this!" That seems to just happen every time. But I don't think it's a big deal. Does

00:16:20   Apple need to be in this business? This is the thing that I keep coming back to with

00:16:23   some of this stuff. It's like, does Apple really need to be in this business? Now, I

00:16:28   will grant you that I think in the long run, the airport products have been pretty reliable.

00:16:36   I still have a generation of prior airport base station that I have been using up until

00:16:45   recently when I switched to another class of product, which we'll get to in a second.

00:16:49   I've been using it. It was solid. It held a connection. I bought other Wi-Fi routers.

00:16:54   They have been much less reliable as well as harder to set up. When I needed to set

00:17:00   up a Wi-Fi router at my mom's house, I got her an Apple router because it was more reliable

00:17:07   than the one that she had, and it has continued to be so. So there are a lot of things to

00:17:11   be said for it, but it's kind of, I mean, they're competing with companies that want

00:17:16   to make routers that specialize in making routers. Does an Apple-branded router bring

00:17:23   a lot more to the table? There are some people who are going to buy it, but at this point,

00:17:28   I don't know. I wasn't a big fan, I should disclose, of the last generation, the tall

00:17:33   design that was basically designed so that they could fit the big hard drive in it for

00:17:38   the time capsule. I thought it looked ridiculous. I never liked it, never bought one. But, you

00:17:44   know, I don't know. It's one of those things I just have a hard time being upset about

00:17:49   because although they've been pretty good and they've been pretty reliable, it feels

00:17:53   like the Wi-Fi world keeps changing and advancing and that Apple reached a point where they

00:18:00   were going to need to either put more effort into these products or just walk away. And

00:18:05   I can really see the argument, like, why are we doing this? There is a thriving market

00:18:10   of companies, traditional and startups, that are making Wi-Fi products and other infrastructure

00:18:16   products. Is this something that we need to go down in order to make the world better?

00:18:20   They're all compatible with our stuff. We don't need to worry about this. And that seems

00:18:24   to be where they've ended up. And it's hard for me to fault that.

00:18:27   I think in the world where Apple have decided that they don't want to make monitors anymore,

00:18:32   why would they continue to make Wi-Fi base stations and routers? That seems like a less

00:18:39   important product even than making a first-party display.

00:18:43   I agree, I agree. And I just, I don't feel like it, I mean, the argument here is also

00:18:50   Apple, what do you mean Apple's got all this money, Apple's huge, why do they need to focus,

00:18:55   why do they need to eliminate jobs and divisions and move people around and things like that.

00:18:59   There are other things that they've done this week that we'll talk about later about this

00:19:02   too, but Apple isn't as big as you think, first off. It's big in terms of size, but

00:19:06   Apple in terms of the core group that's building products is smaller than you might expect.

00:19:12   And they seem culturally not to want to get much bigger. They are, and I think that stems

00:19:17   from Steve Jobs and when he came back to Apple, that they want to, you know, hiring at Apple

00:19:24   is a slow process a lot of the time. They only want to hire, they definitely seem to

00:19:28   practice that, only hire the very best and they're very careful about that, it seems,

00:19:38   and so they don't grow their groups very quickly. So part of this is that, yeah, I'm sure that

00:19:46   they benefit from focus. Also, I think groups that are not in the spotlight tend to not

00:19:51   have the... if you're somebody who wants to grow and advance at Apple, if you get put

00:19:59   on something like Airport, my guess is your feeling is that you're in a cul-de-sac, right?

00:20:04   So they're not going to have their best people working on this stuff anyway, whereas if you're

00:20:07   at a company that this is what you do, you're going to hire people who are the best and

00:20:12   they're going to know that this is what the company is all about. So I think that there's

00:20:15   a bunch of stuff at play here, so that even though Apple is a huge company, it kind of

00:20:20   sense to say this is just isn't a company focus why are we doing this we don't need

00:20:23   to do this.

00:20:24   Or on the flip side of that you know because we don't know who's on the airport team they

00:20:28   could have people that are too good that are working on that team and want to get them

00:20:33   out you know like the airport people could be the best in the world at selling and networking

00:20:39   and they really want them on the iPhone.

00:20:41   Well that's why the slowly tearing down the team thing makes sense because that's like

00:20:45   hey, Billy is over there in the airport team

00:20:49   and we need them to come over here

00:20:51   and work on this thing for iOS.

00:20:54   Like, and Billy's like, yeah, great, iOS engineering,

00:20:58   that's awesome, right?

00:20:59   And then they've just lost somebody from their team

00:21:01   and it just goes like that until it's a skeleton crew.

00:21:04   And then they, somebody says, do we wanna staff this up

00:21:07   in order to do another revision?

00:21:09   And everybody looks at it and goes, no, why?

00:21:11   And that's it.

00:21:12   Billy's doing such good work on the antenna bands.

00:21:16   Why would we take him away and put him back

00:21:17   on the airport extreme?

00:21:19   - Exactly.

00:21:20   - Yeah, I struggle to care about this emotionally

00:21:25   because I've never been invested in these products.

00:21:30   I tend to just use what my provider gives me

00:21:35   and in the UK, the hardware that we get given

00:21:38   from our providers is actually pretty good stuff.

00:21:42   it tends to be, not always, but like,

00:21:43   where there's some proprietary stuff that they make,

00:21:45   but it tends to be pretty good.

00:21:47   - You make a good point in the US too,

00:21:50   like cable modems now tend to come with WiFi,

00:21:53   and we can, nerds especially, can be like,

00:21:55   I don't use it, I turned it off,

00:21:57   and I've got another router that I'm using,

00:21:59   but you know, that's us.

00:22:01   I think for the vast bulk of people,

00:22:03   like you get WiFi with your router, that's it, right?

00:22:07   You're done, you don't need anything more.

00:22:09   - 'Cause I once owned an airport,

00:22:11   I think the Express, the one that just was a plug,

00:22:14   you just plugged it directly into the wall.

00:22:16   And I owned that because my router

00:22:17   didn't have Wi-Fi enabled.

00:22:19   - Right.

00:22:20   - That's why these products first started to exist.

00:22:23   But now, as you say, that's not needed.

00:22:26   - Apple had to make these products

00:22:27   because there was a need for them.

00:22:30   Like they needed to exist and they didn't exist.

00:22:32   And that's just not true anymore.

00:22:34   - But I do have a question though.

00:22:36   This clearly seems like Apple is taking their time right now

00:22:40   to pull back from some areas

00:22:41   that they're not interested in anymore.

00:22:44   And they're using those resources in other areas.

00:22:47   I know that some of this stuff can upset people.

00:22:50   I think for me, I see it as a positive

00:22:52   because there are things in Apple's product line right now

00:22:55   that I agree need work on.

00:22:57   So I would like to see Apple stopping to care

00:23:01   about these periphery things

00:23:03   and putting more focus on these products, right?

00:23:06   I would love to see more work done on the Mac.

00:23:08   would love to see more work on the iPad. So taking talented people and putting them in

00:23:13   other areas, that's a big thumbs up for me. But I can't understand why Apple still sell

00:23:18   iPods.

00:23:19   Tim Cynova Well, Dan Morin posted a link today to a Mac

00:23:25   World story he wrote a little while ago, which was, "Apple products that need love." It was

00:23:32   like displays and airport and the iPod Touch. And he's like, "Umm..." It's like, do they

00:23:43   come in threes? And iPod, obviously, like the regular iPods too, they sell enough. Here's

00:23:49   the thing. Those aren't ever... iPod Touch we could talk about, right? Because that requires

00:23:54   iOS versions and all of that. And there are some arguments to be made there either way.

00:23:58   But the iPods, the music players, they're at the end of their life, right? There's no

00:24:02   development going on for those anymore. They are never going to get updated, and they will

00:24:08   make them until they can't sell them anymore. So I don't think there's any internal focus

00:24:14   placed on a product like that, because literally everybody knows there's never going to be

00:24:20   anything more. And you can say that because already the iPod is, I would argue, kind of

00:24:27   irrelevant, right? Because like, iPods can't do Apple Music. So they're already irrelevant.

00:24:33   They're already just a product that they sell because some people still want to buy them.

00:24:36   But there will come a time when the cost of selling them, or the money made by selling

00:24:40   them is more than the cost of making them, having production line up at all to make them.

00:24:49   Are they going to run out of the parts for them potentially at some point? Right? At

00:24:53   some point it'll balance off and I don't know when that'll be and they'll just say, "Okay,

00:24:57   the time has come. Like when I mentioned a week or two ago about IDG looking at our magazines

00:25:02   back in the day and saying, "Once they're not profitable, the jig is up. We're not going

00:25:06   to keep them around out of ego." At some point, the balance sheet goes into the red and you

00:25:13   say, "That's it. We're done." But I think there's no intellectual energy being expended

00:25:19   on the iPod, right? Whereas with the airport, when you look at what Google is doing, what

00:25:25   companies like Eero who is sponsoring, unrelated, sponsoring this episode. So we'll just try

00:25:31   to keep those separate. But there's an investment in kind of rethinking Wi-Fi, setting up more

00:25:39   intelligent kind of mesh networks where you've got multiple stations doing coverage in houses

00:25:44   where that was always kind of harder to do and now they're trying to make that easier

00:25:48   for people to buy two packs or three packs of routers and you plug one in at the base

00:25:53   and you plug a couple other in, they talk to each other, they configure, it's like,

00:25:57   it's really good and much better as an experience than Wi-Fi has been up to now and much easier

00:26:02   to set up. All of these reasons for that. And you're Apple and you're like, "Are we

00:26:06   going to play that game?" No, we're not. It's fine. Other people are going to play that

00:26:10   game. And you know, I, that's that question is always, are we going to have to spend more

00:26:15   mental energy on this or aren't we? And the iPod is easy because as long as it pencils

00:26:20   out there's no, you know, is there anybody, is there literally anybody looking at iPod

00:26:26   software, firmware, hardware, anything? I don't think so.

00:26:29   But that's, I agree with that, but was anybody doing that with the airport? But I still found,

00:26:35   they're still potentially finding the need to kill this.

00:26:38   Well they were still releasing like software updates for it every now and then. That was,

00:26:42   that was a thing that was happening. And I do wonder again if there was an impetus here

00:26:46   where they realized that beyond a certain point they were going to have to keep releasing

00:26:51   software updates, you know, maybe they keep it on a maintenance mode for a certain amount

00:26:55   of time, I don't know. I mean, you do wonder if there's that moment where they're like,

00:26:59   "Oh, yeah, we need to choose now if this is going to be an ongoing concern or not." And

00:27:04   we choose not.

00:27:06   So the upgrade podcast from Real AFM decrees that it is not an issue.

00:27:11   Yeah I guess, I mean, I feel for people who love these things and are sad that they're

00:27:15   not going to continue, but I really feel like there's a lot of progress being made on other

00:27:19   fronts here and that there are going to be other options that are going to be better

00:27:23   and that for most people, probably the, you know, you get your router out of the box from

00:27:29   your provider that has wifi and then you also have these other companies that are trying

00:27:34   to build more robust mesh kind of networks for people who want that kind of thing. And

00:27:40   do we need, do we need Apple in that game? Maybe it would be nice if they were there,

00:27:44   Apple doesn't think it's particularly, you know, important that they be there.

00:27:48   No, I, I, I endorse that.

00:27:51   I just want to take a moment to touch on the "Design by Apple in California" book.

00:27:55   Yes, yes, that was, that, that happened after our, after our show last week, so we

00:28:00   didn't get a chance to talk about it here.

00:28:02   I feel like there's a slight tie in here, um, because a lot of people are looking at

00:28:07   this and I completely understand why, it's like, are Apple putting their focus on the

00:28:12   right places right now, you know? Is it worth putting time and effort into creating a book

00:28:19   chronicling the last 20 years of Apple design when the MacBook Pro is over a thousand days

00:28:24   without a refresh, right? Like, I can see the idea of that for people's…

00:28:30   Only the people involved in page layout, photography, and paper were instead designing the interior

00:28:36   components of a Mac Pro. If only they had been retasked.

00:28:40   I agree with you there mostly. There is definitely going to be some work expounded by the designers

00:28:47   but I do agree. I don't think that this is saying that Apple are not putting their focus

00:28:55   in the right places. I think that there is a nugget of something here which I'm struggling

00:29:01   to land on which I think is a PR issue. I don't think this was the right time for this

00:29:08   book to come out. So let me, in terms of the people, not only

00:29:13   yes, the people who make a book are not the same people who engineer a product, and I

00:29:17   think it's different, but I think if I had to guess internally how this worked at Apple,

00:29:21   they've been collecting this archive for years, they want to have an archive of their old

00:29:24   products for various reasons, not just for the book. They didn't call Stephen Hackett,

00:29:28   I don't know what was up with that, they bought these products. You know what probably happened

00:29:34   is that they brought some people on on a contract for six months and paid them to make this

00:29:40   book and you know they contracted with a photographer and they contracted with a designer and they

00:29:45   had some meetings where Johnny Ive or some other designers said here's what we'd like

00:29:49   the book to be and then they paid you know they paid people to do it.

00:29:52   And then there were sign-offs and etc etc. It's self-published but I really doubt they

00:29:56   retasked key members of any team anywhere to work on this book. By far the most likely

00:30:02   thing is they brought people in on a six month contract or something to build this book and

00:30:05   paid them, wrote a check and did some interviews and did a couple of, you know, did some product

00:30:10   management passes and some, you know, let's look at the page designs and are they looking

00:30:15   okay and it was not, you know, I think this is a like write a check kind of a transaction

00:30:21   with a little bit of oversight here after having collected the, so I think you could

00:30:25   overstate the amount of effort that was put into this by anybody who has any effect on

00:30:29   Apple's products and design really, really, I think it's very easy to overstate that.

00:30:36   I think it wasn't a big deal. Now, to your point, right, you would say right now, given

00:30:42   all the other things that are going on in the hubbub around all these other things at

00:30:45   Apple, do you want to choose this time to release an introspective self-congratulatory

00:30:53   product?

00:30:54   Who is this book for? Who are they selling it to? Us. Right? They are selling it to the

00:31:03   people that love Apple the most. The people that spend hours a week talking about or listening

00:31:10   about or writing about or reading about these products. Apple must know that there is a

00:31:16   little bit of unrest in that community right now. Right? They're not stupid. That's why

00:31:22   they discounted dongles, right? Like, they're very aware of this.

00:31:26   Sorry, I had to laugh at thinking of, wait, you mean that there's unrest in the community

00:31:33   that Apple made unhappy by prioritizing other things over them? That seems like exactly

00:31:39   consistent behavior, right? Like, they didn't care before, why would they care now? I don't

00:31:46   know. It's, it's, you're, you're, I'm not sure there's ever a good time to do

00:31:51   something like this. I was on the talk show last week and Gruber and I talked

00:31:56   about this a bit and you find that in somewhere an hour or two. It was a long

00:32:02   conversation and, and I feel like what John suggested is they could have used a

00:32:10   a coffee table book publisher of Renown as a front? Like, not even necessarily given

00:32:18   up any control over it, but they could have used the publisher as a front to say, "Oh,

00:32:24   they're publishing it, we're not." But Apple's like, "Nope, we're publishing it, it's all

00:32:28   us, we think we're great, here is this photo book of all of our stuff." And they didn't

00:32:33   do that either. But, you know, was there ever going to be a good time to do it? This seems

00:32:39   like, I feel like they wanted this out for the holidays because they know that there

00:32:42   are people who are big fans of Apple who will buy this as a, you know, as a holiday gift

00:32:47   and it costs a ridiculous amount of money, but a lot of coffee table book kind of art

00:32:52   book stuff, a lot of them cost what we would perceive as a ridiculous amount of money because

00:32:56   that's how those kinds of things are often priced. I don't know. Myke, the thing that

00:33:02   baffles me the most about this book is that it's just pictures of old hardware, that there's

00:33:07   literally no insight into--John Saracusa talked about this on ATP last week--there's no insight

00:33:12   into what they did in detail. Like, apparently there's a booklet that comes with the book

00:33:17   that's got some descriptive text, but that the book is basically just pictures, and,

00:33:22   you know, if this is--why? Like, literally anyone could make this book, and many have.

00:33:30   Why did Apple make a book that is literally just pictures of Apple hardware that is publicly

00:33:38   available and that anyone can amass a collection of, including Steven Hackett, and that there

00:33:42   are other books about this? That's the part that actually baffles me, because that's

00:33:48   somebody saying, "Well, other people can do it, but we want our own." And that's

00:33:55   what I keep coming back to, is what this really feels like is the industrial design group

00:33:59   wanted a yearbook. They wanted a collection of their work so that they would have it.

00:34:05   At some point, somebody said, "Well, why don't we just sell it? Why just make it for us? I'll give

00:34:12   you the money to build this book, but why don't we recoup some of that by selling it at Apple

00:34:17   stores too?" Somebody's like, "All right, let's do that." But it feels very much like this is

00:34:23   somebody, you know, the Industrial Design Group wanted a pretty thing to put, you know,

00:34:29   to take with them.

00:34:30   Is this an example of Johnny I's power? Has he been able to just say, "We're making

00:34:36   this book and the book is made"?

00:34:37   Yeah, I mean, there may be multiple steps there, but my guess is that he or somebody

00:34:41   else in his group was a proponent of this, and like I said, my theory is that they wanted

00:34:46   to make this for themselves, and then a series of decisions was made that led to it being,

00:34:51   well, maybe other people want it.

00:34:52   Well, maybe we should sell it publicly

00:34:53   'cause we can make some money that way

00:34:55   and let fans and people who appreciate our great work do it.

00:34:58   I don't think it started as,

00:34:59   what we need to do is make a photo book

00:35:01   so that the masses can appreciate our,

00:35:03   I don't think it came from that direction.

00:35:05   But sure, I doubt that, I mean, who else could do,

00:35:09   who else could kick off a project like this, right?

00:35:13   - Yeah.

00:35:13   - But Johnny I, but I do feel like it was very much,

00:35:16   we're proud of the hardware work we've done

00:35:18   and we wanna have something that, you know,

00:35:20   we don't think that the existing books about our work really tell the story, or we've been

00:35:25   building this archive for eight years, we'd like to document it, and then it sort of snowballs

00:35:29   into this bigger project, is my guess.

00:35:33   It does frustrate me that there's no iBooks version of this, for a couple of reasons.

00:35:38   One, so people that want to enjoy this stuff don't have to pay $200 for it. And also, two,

00:35:45   This is a multimedia-rich platform that they could have used to create.

00:35:51   You could have put videos in there, they could have put narration in there.

00:35:54   They could have made a really interesting iBook out of this as well, like in complement

00:35:59   to that maybe even you got for free if you bought the real big book.

00:36:03   And that goes back to my theory that this project was always of a smaller scope and

00:36:09   then it just sort of like expanded and nobody, I mean, I've seen that happen in lots of different

00:36:14   areas where you start with something small and it expands without anybody saying, "Wait

00:36:19   a second. If we're going to expand this, maybe we should expand the scope of it." It's like,

00:36:22   "Well, no, no, no. The argument is no, that doesn't work. We don't want to spend too much

00:36:26   time on it. We're just going to do what we're going to do. And if you want to sell it, you

00:36:29   can sell it." And nobody stopped to say, "Well, wouldn't this be a great iBook that we could

00:36:34   build and we could throw in videos and we could throw in other things?" It's like, "No,

00:36:38   The whole goal here was just to have a beautiful photography book on custom paper.

00:36:46   But then they released a big press release about it, which is like, "Ugh!"

00:36:50   That's where it kind of ties together into a bit of a mess, I think.

00:36:53   Yeah, I mean, I agree that the optics of it are weird, but I don't know.

00:36:59   What I said on the talk show, I'll say here, which is, I feel like how people react to

00:37:03   this book is a way to peer into how people feel about Apple right now. I feel like that's

00:37:11   what this is. This is an inkblot test kind of thing, which is if you are inclined to

00:37:16   believe that Apple is rotting and doesn't know what it's doing, then you can point to

00:37:22   this and say, "See? This is proof." And if you think that Apple's fine and people get

00:37:28   freaked out about things that they shouldn't worry about, you can point to this and be

00:37:32   like it's not a big deal. And so I guess that's why I'm kind of lukewarm on the whole thing,

00:37:38   other than being disappointed because it seems like a huge missed opportunity not to actually

00:37:41   tell the story of Apple design in some way and instead just show pictures that anybody

00:37:46   can make a book and has showing pictures of these products. Beyond that, really all I

00:37:51   have to do is sort of shrug and say it's not that big a thing and people who want to use

00:37:57   it as evidence of something are doing it not because they originally thought everything

00:38:03   was fine but because they already were worried about it and this buttresses their case. It

00:38:08   seems very much like an inkblot test to me.

00:38:13   My overall feeling is I'm not annoyed that the book exists, I'm annoyed at how they priced

00:38:17   it and I'm annoyed at the time that they chose to introduce it. I just think that it shows

00:38:23   a little bit of either arrogance or blindness to the people that they're

00:38:29   trying to sell this to which is Apple but it still can be annoying. I guess I

00:38:34   think I think those of us in our our Apple focus bubble can get can think of

00:38:41   the situation as being more extreme than it actually is. Sure but you know I right

00:38:46   you know we're the most likely audience to buy a book like this and I think

00:38:50   must know that. However, after watching Stephen's video where he was able to line up the book

00:38:56   with his own actual Apple collection, I do want the book. I honestly do want it. I'm

00:39:01   a huge Apple fan. This book is for me. I want it. I want to look at the pictures. And with

00:39:07   the holiday season coming up, maybe it will appear in my stocking and I'll be very happy

00:39:11   to receive it.

00:39:12   That's a big stocking.

00:39:13   It's a big stocking. But this is the type of thing that I know that I would enjoy. I'm

00:39:18   not annoyed that the book exists I just think that it could have been done better and I

00:39:23   really wish that they would have had an iBook version so more people could enjoy it I think.

00:39:28   That I think that's the thing that frustrates me the most it's like you can enjoy our photos

00:39:33   if you pay us multiple hundreds of dollars to do so.

00:39:36   So, hey ho, this episode is brought to you by Eero. These days everything in our homes

00:39:42   requires an internet connection, our speakers, thermostats, light bulbs, front door locks,

00:39:46   security cameras, everything in between. And we're increasingly looking at streaming services

00:39:50   like Netflix, Hulu and Spotify for our home entertainment. I know this as I'm collecting

00:39:54   up items to buy for the new home, just seeing how many of these things need Wi-Fi to make

00:39:59   them work. It is the foundation for all of the stuff that we need these days and we are

00:40:03   totally dependent on it. I have no Wi-Fi at all in my new flat right now and it is a sad

00:40:09   place to be at times. It's funny to see just how intrinsic it is to our everyday lives.

00:40:15   funnily enough wifi is broken. So imagine going into a room in your house and plugging

00:40:21   in your iPhone into a socket in the corner of the room and a notification pops up and

00:40:25   tells you that your phone is going to charge too slowly because you're too far away from

00:40:28   the electric meter. It doesn't make any sense right? It doesn't make any sense, electricity

00:40:32   flows everywhere it's fine. But this isn't the norm for wifi. If you're too far away

00:40:36   from your wifi base station or your router you can get dead zones, you're going to have

00:40:40   buffering issues. To get the best connection today you need a distributed system that can

00:40:44   provide you with a connection all over your home. This is what Eero is all about. Each

00:40:51   Eero, you get these little boxes, they have two radios inside them. They keep your connection

00:40:55   fast and everything in sync. You get a pack of them, you install them around your home,

00:40:59   you download the Eero app on your iOS device, it'll walk you through the setup, and then

00:41:02   your whole home is blanketed in great Wi-Fi. Now Jason, I know that you have some Eero

00:41:07   at home.

00:41:08   JASON WARNKE I do. In fact, it's funny you're talking about the importance of Wi-Fi. I currently

00:41:12   have 23 devices on my network. So that is how much we rely on Wi-Fi. That's iPads and

00:41:22   iPhones and Macs and printers and smart home devices, all sorts of things that are on that

00:41:28   Wi-Fi.

00:41:29   And how easy was it to set up the Eero?

00:41:33   Oh, it was surprisingly easy. I plugged them in. I actually have wired locations in my

00:41:41   house where I had other base stations at some point. So I was able to attach it in three

00:41:47   different places in my house with wires, although one of them didn't originally have that. And

00:41:52   it didn't really matter because what happens is you get the Eero plugged in and going and

00:41:56   then you add other, I got a three-pack, and you add other Eero stations and they talk

00:42:03   to each other and they connect with each other. So whether they're wired together or whether

00:42:07   they're just using the wireless mesh network to talk, they configure each other. And this

00:42:12   is something I was mentioning earlier when we were talking about the airport, that getting

00:42:16   base stations to work together seamlessly is actually kind of hard to do with traditional

00:42:23   stuff. And this new generation of wireless base stations is much better at it. And it's

00:42:27   good because, you know, in a lot of situations you need more than one to get your coverage

00:42:32   to be solid. Even my house isn't very large, but if I put the wireless base station in

00:42:39   the front room, then the bedroom's Wi-Fi was poor. That was bottom line, it just wasn't

00:42:46   good enough. And so instead I just plugged these things in and ran through the very simple

00:42:51   setup procedure and that was it. Suddenly I had much better Wi-Fi coverage everywhere

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00:42:56   The average house in the US is easily covered by between 2-3 Eero's. A 3 pack is a good

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00:43:14   just go to Eero.com and because you listen to this show you will get yourself free overnight

00:43:21   shipping just by selecting overnight shipping at the checkout process and entering the code

00:43:25   upgrade at checkout.

00:43:41   So there is some news this week that came out that a man by the name of Sal Sogoin has

00:43:47   left Apple.

00:43:49   Now I am sure that there are people that leave Apple of their own accord or are pushed out

00:43:54   the door every day, but it usually never meets us. It's very rare that we hear about a departure

00:44:02   from a non-executive, right? The executive leaves, we all know about it. But maybe we'd

00:44:08   hesitate to say a rank and file member of Apple, somebody who maybe is a team leader

00:44:12   or works within a team, they leave, we don't hear anything. Who is Sal Seguian? What did

00:44:16   he do at Apple and why is it important that he's no longer there?

00:44:20   So, Sal was the product manager of Automation Technologies, which he announced at the Mac

00:44:26   Tech Conference where he was speaking that his position was eliminated for business reasons,

00:44:31   which is, that's basically Apple code for services no longer required, right? That was,

00:44:38   he was, he was, he was told to leave. Sal's history at Apple goes back a very long way,

00:44:46   into the OS 9 days. The first time I ever saw Sal was at a WWDC in the 90s where he

00:44:51   was not working at Apple, and he was demoing AppleScript support in QuarkXPress, and basically

00:44:59   he was a consultant and he was working for a publishing company, a newspaper company,

00:45:03   and they had a database of all their classified ads, and he built a script that queried the

00:45:09   database and laid out their classified ad page automatically, which you have to, I mean,

00:45:15   have to see it in that context, it was mind-blowing. Like, literally an entire page of the newspaper

00:45:22   was made in seconds by this script. And that was--he was and is a great demo guy. He always

00:45:32   had a session at WWDC. Apple hired him to be their scripting and automation guy, basically,

00:45:40   inside Apple. And he was a pretty high profile, he is a gregarious guy, you get to know him,

00:45:46   he's a nice guy, he was very visible, and I think, you know, I'm unclear on all the

00:45:54   details of how the inner workings of Apple work. He had a team, he was the product manager,

00:46:03   the funding and access that his team got is an open question, how much he got to direct,

00:46:10   what the direction that this stuff went versus what was sort of dictated to them from the

00:46:15   OS people I think is open to discussion. And I would say that his tenure is not without

00:46:20   things that we can criticize about it. There are definitely some things that maybe didn't

00:46:24   work as well as they could have, but I also got the distinct impression that he didn't

00:46:29   have a whole lot of support within Apple for their stuff. Like they did Automator, which

00:46:34   was back in like OS 10.4, I think. It was a long time ago. And then they did some script

00:46:42   bridge stuff so that you could get access with JavaScript to scripting. They did some

00:46:48   things, but it's been pretty limited over time. And I think I got into a Twitter back

00:46:53   and forth with somebody who was saying, you know, they haven't shipped anything interesting.

00:46:57   And my understanding is they haven't shipped anything interesting because they had no support

00:47:00   within Apple. So I think for me the question was in some ways, how is this able to go on

00:47:06   for so long where Apple's OS group didn't seem to care about what Sal and his team were

00:47:13   doing and yet they remained to kind of twist in the wind. I wonder about that, but I just

00:47:18   I don't know enough about the inside details to say.

00:47:22   - Sal has always been something I've been aware of,

00:47:25   maybe over my last kind of 10 years,

00:47:27   or maybe 10, 15 years,

00:47:29   I've been interested in Apple products significantly.

00:47:32   'Cause I've seen him.

00:47:33   You know, I remember episodes of the old MacBreak video show

00:47:38   with Sal Seguin as a guest whilst employed by Apple.

00:47:42   I know that he gives talks whilst employed by Apple.

00:47:44   He has his own website.

00:47:46   - Multiple websites about OS features that he generates

00:47:50   that are not hosted by Apple,

00:47:52   but look like Apple websites sort of, and for years.

00:47:56   So he's definitely been playing by a different book

00:47:58   than most. - Right.

00:48:00   This is the stuff that Apple people can do.

00:48:03   And I wonder, maybe you could provide

00:48:04   a bit of context on this.

00:48:06   Is he kind of a hangover from the days of the evangelists?

00:48:10   - Well, I'd say he definitely feels evangelist-y

00:48:15   in a way that you don't see very much of anymore

00:48:18   in the broader world. I think there's something to that. And the fact that he was given free

00:48:24   reign, I think the fact that he was given sort of free reign for some of this stuff

00:48:27   also speaks to Apple's lack of interest in it. Like, it wasn't important enough to not

00:48:33   have him doing it, and he was just kind of evangelizing their technologies. I definitely

00:48:38   felt, the sense I always got from Sal about Apple stuff was that Sal was counting on us,

00:48:45   press and the users to send the message that the stuff that he was doing was cool and should

00:48:52   continue because the, you know, the implication there was because he and his team couldn't

00:48:59   do it. Like they, they were making the case and that was just not going to do it, that

00:49:04   we needed to make noise for it to continue. In fact, you know, back in the day, there

00:49:08   was a question about whether Apple script was going to make it into a OS 10. And it's

00:49:14   because if you think about the darkest days of Apple, there was a while there where one

00:49:18   of the reasons, one of the main reasons publishers didn't switch to Windows was that they had

00:49:23   all these AppleScript automation things that had been built to ease their production systems

00:49:30   and they didn't translate to Windows and so it kept them on the Mac in the darkest of

00:49:35   the days. So in the end, AppleScript did come to OS X and they did introduce Automator in

00:49:42   and for. But yeah, it's a, I don't know, it was a different time and it was never a huge

00:49:50   priority for him and he was always a good spokesman, so he did end up being kind of

00:49:53   an evangelist and they didn't seem to put the clamps on him either. So yeah, you know,

00:50:03   it's interesting to ask why now and why not sooner and maybe this is all part of a thing,

00:50:09   go back to the airport stuff, maybe this is the end of 2016 reckoning where Apple is doing

00:50:19   some reorg and getting rid of more old stuff that they don't think they need to have around

00:50:26   anymore. Maybe that's the thought process here.

00:50:28   **Beserat Debele

00:50:28   (laughing)

00:50:30   Right?

00:50:30   I mean, I think Sal is great, but does Apple care?

00:50:35   I mean, this is the question.

00:50:37   It's like if Apple doesn't really care

00:50:38   and all that he and his group do is they are underfunded,

00:50:42   under-resourced, and make trouble

00:50:45   because they don't agree. - That's exactly

00:50:46   what I was gonna say.

00:50:47   Well, I would assume that inside of Apple,

00:50:49   I mean, I know nothing, that all Sal and his team

00:50:53   are troublemakers now because they're not able

00:50:55   to do anything else.

00:50:56   - Yeah, sure.

00:50:57   They have no leeway, they have no budget to actually do anything.

00:51:01   I think that shows in the fact that this isn't really a thing that is spoken about in Apple

00:51:04   Script anymore.

00:51:05   So I'm sure all they do is just try and be involved and they're just seen as troublemakers.

00:51:10   And they bug everybody who's building an app internally, I'm sure gets bugged by, or got

00:51:15   bugged by Sal and his team about like, "Are you doing scriptability?

00:51:20   Is pages scriptable?

00:51:21   Is numbers scriptable?

00:51:22   Why isn't it scriptable?

00:51:23   You need to do that."

00:51:24   Right?

00:51:25   And that's probably annoying for people too.

00:51:26   also a couple points. Because it's also possible that they wanted to go in a direction that

00:51:34   this team doesn't want to go in or wasn't a good fit for. It's possible. And that's

00:51:40   my optimism scenario that we can get to in a little bit. But I do want to say one thing

00:51:43   about AppleScript because it's very easy to conflate Sal with AppleScript. He's the AppleScript

00:51:47   guy. But AppleScript and automation is more than AppleScript and it's more than automator.

00:51:53   a lot of stuff. It's hooks into, like I said, you could script apps on the Mac with languages

00:51:59   that are a language that is not AppleScript. You could do with JavaScript. I think you

00:52:02   can do it with a bunch of other scripting languages too. Um, and like I use automator

00:52:08   stuff every day, but most of it is actually triggering shell scripts and automator exists

00:52:15   to make it easy for me to connect those shell scripts with the, the Mac UI. So I don't have

00:52:21   have to open a terminal window and type them. And some of them are Apple scripts and some

00:52:25   of them are Apple scripts that build shell scripts and then run the shell scripts. So

00:52:28   it's a bigger world. And I'm more concerned about Apple's platform having scriptability

00:52:39   and access so that users can connect apps together in ways that the apps can't anticipate

00:52:46   themselves separately and do other kind of automating of simple tasks in general as a

00:52:52   concept than I am in preserving something like AppleScript. I mean, anybody who's used

00:52:56   AppleScript will probably tell you that AppleScript is a kind of a mess and a pain to use. And

00:53:00   I don't particularly love it. If somebody came to me and said, "We're vastly improving

00:53:04   the scripting system in OS X," and maybe even like have something like that for iOS, but

00:53:09   you're going to have to learn Swift, I'd say, "Great. Like, great. Great. Let's do it. Let's

00:53:15   make it happen. So it's a bigger issue than like Apple Scripter Automator, which are not

00:53:21   without their serious flaws.

00:53:24   I think this might just be like this whole thing of automation and scripting. I just

00:53:29   think it might be something that Apple just isn't interested in putting the time and effort

00:53:32   into.

00:53:33   Yep.

00:53:34   And I think the key for that is that they haven't hired the workflow team.

00:53:38   Well…

00:53:39   The fact that workflow exists tells me that maybe they're not that interested in doing

00:53:44   it themselves because if you were you just do just buy them.

00:53:48   I think well I think workflow though so we're talking about the workflow app for iOS I think

00:53:53   the argument could be and this is that my pessimistic scenario versus my optimistic

00:53:59   scenario the argument could be that Apple doesn't need to make automation tools. Apple

00:54:04   needs to make their platform have hooks basically have ways for automation tools for scripts

00:54:12   to access the system.

00:54:15   - That works for me, right?

00:54:17   - Right, so that's the question.

00:54:19   Now iOS automation works not because of Apple,

00:54:23   but despite Apple.

00:54:24   Like workflow is cool, X callback URL is a nice hack

00:54:29   that developers have come up with,

00:54:31   but Apple could have built a legitimate system

00:54:36   of automation and inter-app communication for iOS

00:54:40   and didn't bother.

00:54:42   And that's the question and is poorer because of it.

00:54:44   As great as, you know, and Federico and Fraser can talk

00:54:49   on another podcast about how great automation stuff is

00:54:54   with workflow on iOS.

00:54:56   - As Canvas, you should check out their series, it's awesome.

00:54:58   - It is Canvas, thank you.

00:55:00   You should listen to that podcast.

00:55:03   As great as it is, it could be so much better.

00:55:05   It could be so much better and so much less

00:55:07   of working around things in the system

00:55:09   if Apple had a commitment to doing that.

00:55:13   But my understanding, and talking to Sal over the years,

00:55:16   was that iOS engineering, not even remotely interested.

00:55:21   It was like a wall for the automation group.

00:55:23   Like, nope, not just no, forget it.

00:55:26   At which point you've got to say,

00:55:28   the only reason the Mac had it

00:55:29   is because it had it in the past,

00:55:31   and that Apple has no concern about it moving forward,

00:55:33   because if they cared about this kind of issue,

00:55:35   maybe they would put it on iOS.

00:55:37   You could argue, oh, well, the Mac is,

00:55:39   is a platform for more finicky, fiddly stuff.

00:55:42   And iOS is smooth and serene and for consumers more,

00:55:46   although iPad Pro, what happens there?

00:55:49   But I think that's the optimistic scenario I have

00:55:54   is what if Apple does have a plan to make automation

00:56:00   kind of more modern and tie into modern scripting languages

00:56:03   or maybe even tie into Swift and use it as a kind of a ramp

00:56:07   up, like you learn Swift and you can do automation in the system and then you can build an app

00:56:11   and it's all part of a ramp up, or is, I think more evidence suggests that Apple just doesn't

00:56:17   care and that they look at something like Workflow and instead of saying, "Wow, that's

00:56:21   really amazing," they look at Workflow and say, "See, we don't need to do anything."

00:56:25   Again, that works for me, right? Like I've never been an AppleScript person. I love Workflow.

00:56:32   I've tried AppleScript. It never made any sense to me. Workflow makes sense to me.

00:56:36   And no disagreement there.

00:56:38   And Workflow does a better job of being Automator

00:56:40   than Automator ever did.

00:56:42   But Workflow still has some really weird things about it.

00:56:45   And the access that Workflow has is limited by the fact

00:56:50   that the way Apple has built iOS makes it hard.

00:56:54   There's stuff you can't access.

00:56:55   And I see this on the Mac too.

00:56:57   Like there are apps that are not scriptable.

00:56:58   And this is the thing, again, it isn't just Apple script.

00:57:01   Like I use keyboard maestro for a lot of things

00:57:04   and it's pretty great too.

00:57:05   but there's stuff that, you know, in my Stroll,

00:57:07   I end up having to like open a window,

00:57:10   move the cursor, click on a button.

00:57:13   And that's ridiculous, right?

00:57:14   You should be able to have that,

00:57:16   tell the app to set that setting.

00:57:20   And in some apps you just can't do it.

00:57:23   And you have to resort to kind of scripting the UI,

00:57:25   which is kind of dumb.

00:57:27   So that's my issue is I would be happy

00:57:29   if Apple got out of the tools game,

00:57:34   but had a little bit better of a commitment to opening access for the people who build the tools.

00:57:40   But I'm not sure that's really what's happening here. My most likely scenario for me is that all

00:57:46   the script stuff in the Mac is going to be in the same deep freeze where they keep dashboard.

00:57:51   By the way, there's a dashboard button you can put on the control strip in the touch bar,

00:57:59   which is hilarious. I hadn't even thought of that. I can't believe they made that.

00:58:03   Yeah, you can put that in there. So if you like your 2016 future technology mixed with

00:58:08   your technology from the previous decade, you can do it.

00:58:12   I love that they took the dashboard key away from the keyboard, but now they've put it

00:58:16   back in the touch bar.

00:58:17   Well, the touch bar, if you want it, it's there. And I heard from somebody who said

00:58:21   they use dashboard every day and never use AppleScript. And I was like, fair enough,

00:58:26   to each their own. But yes, if you would like dashboard on the touch bar, you can make that

00:58:30   happen. You crazy diamond.

00:58:31   and shine on you.

00:58:33   - Just carry on my wayward son.

00:58:35   I feel like the theme of today's episode is

00:58:39   Apple is killing some stuff.

00:58:41   They are, they're moving away from certain areas.

00:58:45   But I think we both think that that's okay.

00:58:49   - Yeah, I would say it's okay, I think it's healthy

00:58:53   for Apple to look at stuff and say,

00:58:55   "We don't need to be doing this anymore."

00:58:57   I think it's healthy for all of us to do that, right?

00:58:59   What can we not do? What are we doing because we, many years ago, decided we would do it,

00:59:05   and not because it would ever make any sense for us to do it? It's like what I said about the iPod,

00:59:09   right? At some point you have that balance of like, well, maybe it's easier for me to keep

00:59:13   doing it, but at some point it's not easier for you to keep doing it. The best thing to do is to

00:59:17   stop, and then it's done, and then you get that time back, you get that money back, you get those

00:59:21   people back, whatever it is. I think that's absolutely true. My question is, what comes next?

00:59:28   What comes next? And in the case of the airport, maybe what comes next is other third-party

00:59:36   stuff that's way better than the airport was, so why should Apple bother? In the case of

00:59:40   scripting, this is my question of automation, is what comes next? Is this, we give up, we

00:59:46   don't care anymore, nothing's going to be scriptable anymore, the system, you know,

00:59:50   we just don't care. Or is it, actually what we want to do is something that's very different,

00:59:56   we have an idea. Like we do care and we are going to make some changes there. And like

01:00:02   I said, I think that's less likely, but it comes back to that as much as I feel for Sal

01:00:08   and his team and as much as I have benefited from the work that they've done, if Apple

01:00:12   has truly felt for years that it was a waste of time and money, they should have done this

01:00:19   a long time ago. So why not do it now? Right? If they truly have no commitment to this,

01:00:25   Why put up the false front, right? Why act like you do and cart out these poor people

01:00:33   who are trying their best to advocate for their technology while knowing that they have

01:00:37   no support internally for their technology? Why? Why do that? So on that level, it comes

01:00:43   back to it's okay. Like, if you really don't want to do this, just say so. It's not you,

01:00:48   it's me.

01:00:49   - But we both will just underscore the point that,

01:00:52   we're not happy to see people lose their jobs, of course.

01:00:56   - No, no, and I hope that, and Sal lost his job.

01:00:59   I hope that a lot of the people on his team,

01:01:02   what I, the report I read was that it was disbanded.

01:01:06   I don't know if that's actually accurate or not,

01:01:08   but in a lot of cases, the technical people at Apple,

01:01:11   they don't lose their jobs, they are transferred elsewhere.

01:01:14   And that is, and it could have been, who knows,

01:01:17   this could have been precipitated by key members of the team

01:01:20   being pulled elsewhere,

01:01:21   leaving them with nobody on their team

01:01:23   and somebody saying, "Let's just pull the plug.

01:01:25   Why would we staff this team back up?"

01:01:27   - Let's get rid of the troublemaker and carry on.

01:01:30   - That's right, possibly, possibly.

01:01:32   And I think Sal, again, Sal was a fierce advocate

01:01:34   for his stuff as any product manager should be.

01:01:37   But I can see how that could be perceived

01:01:38   inside an organization that doesn't care about his stuff

01:01:42   as being a pain because, right, that was his job,

01:01:45   to be a pain.

01:01:46   if people aren't listening to him.

01:01:49   So I don't know.

01:01:50   I mean, I look at workflow on iOS and I think there's hope

01:01:54   because somehow even in a cold unfeeling universe

01:01:57   where Apple made no attempt to do automation of any kind,

01:02:01   they found a way.

01:02:02   Life, life finds a way.

01:02:04   Sorry, I'm getting all Jurassic Park on you now.

01:02:07   They found a way to do it with X callback URLs

01:02:09   and other wacky stuff like that.

01:02:11   They found a way to do that stuff

01:02:13   and through share sheets and the sharing extension.

01:02:15   So, you know, there's hope, there's hope,

01:02:18   but I would love it if Apple would give the people out there

01:02:23   who want to build that stuff the access to do it.

01:02:28   For me, that's like, that's my bargaining right now,

01:02:31   is Apple doesn't have to do it.

01:02:32   Apple just has to make it accessible

01:02:36   for other people to do the work and not shut them out

01:02:38   and maybe give them some tools to do a better job with it.

01:02:41   (phone ringing)

01:02:43   Myke, this just in.

01:02:45   After we recorded the entire episode, we've come back in time.

01:02:48   It's like Back to the Future 2, Myke.

01:02:50   Marty, I need your help.

01:02:54   Craig has sent an email.

01:02:56   So after we recorded, but before we finished talking on the live stream,

01:03:00   Craig Federighi sent an email to somebody on the internet who reads 9to5 Mac.

01:03:07   So 9to5 Mac posted a story about it.

01:03:09   And basically the emailer said, Hey, I'm sad that you could let go, Sal.

01:03:14   I like automation on the Mac.

01:03:16   And Craig Federighi wrote back to them and said,

01:03:18   "Hi, we have every intent to continue our support

01:03:22   for the great automation technologies in macOS."

01:03:25   You can hear Craig saying it.

01:03:26   - You really can.

01:03:27   - And do we think this is good news?

01:03:31   My thought is continued support

01:03:34   does not necessarily mean anything other than dashboard.

01:03:39   Right?

01:03:42   It continues to exist.

01:03:44   Is there more to it?

01:03:45   Am I being pessimistic and viewing it that way?

01:03:47   It's great that Craig is reassuring somebody about it,

01:03:50   but this is, you know, again,

01:03:52   no talk about future product directions,

01:03:55   but continuing our support is not anything

01:03:59   other than keeping it alive, I think.

01:04:02   - I think what this means at a minimum

01:04:04   is that this is life support, right?

01:04:07   They are at least confirming

01:04:09   that automation is on life support at Apple.

01:04:11   Best case scenario means that they have some other ideas

01:04:14   that they wanna work on, and as we mentioned,

01:04:16   Sal and his team didn't fit those ideas.

01:04:18   But I think the fact that Federighi took the time

01:04:22   to send those emails, they do this purposefully,

01:04:24   they know these things are gonna get out there,

01:04:26   I think it's a positive message.

01:04:27   Because this isn't something worth giving

01:04:29   a press release over.

01:04:30   Like, the amount of people that actually care about this

01:04:33   in the grand scheme of things for Apple

01:04:35   to issue a press release, it's not worth their time.

01:04:37   They don't have to do more explaining

01:04:40   to try and explain what they're even talking about

01:04:42   to the wider masses,

01:04:43   then it would be worth doing the suppress release.

01:04:45   This makes sense.

01:04:46   They know this stuff's gonna get out there.

01:04:48   This is just a confirmation from them, at least,

01:04:50   that they have no intention of killing this support,

01:04:53   which is, for people that use automation,

01:04:55   is a good thing, is a good starting point.

01:04:57   - All right, so basically, sort of where we were before,

01:05:01   which is a little positive signal from Craig,

01:05:03   but you can take it as being the optimistic view

01:05:06   is they've got a plan and the pessimistic view is

01:05:08   They're going to just let it sit there, but not really do much to it,

01:05:11   which is what we thought before.

01:05:14   Can't believe I came all the way back in time just for that.

01:05:16   Anyway, I'm going to go back to the future, Myke.

01:05:18   Using lasers. Here I go.

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01:06:37   this show, Relay FM and this week's Ask Upgrade. Brent asked "Jason, which product have you

01:06:46   been the most excited to get a review unit for in the last few years?"

01:06:52   I don't know how to answer this question. I don't. I don't. Oh, the last few years.

01:07:01   I don't know. I mean, I was really excited to get the iPad.

01:07:04   I think that that might be my answer.

01:07:06   - The original iPad?

01:07:08   - Yeah, the iPhone, we didn't get really a review unit.

01:07:11   We got it the day of with everybody else.

01:07:14   The original iPad, I got a few days before.

01:07:16   - I remember vividly your iPad review.

01:07:20   You were sitting, I watched all the video parts

01:07:24   that you did of it.

01:07:24   You were sitting on a table by a window

01:07:27   and you were doing all these series of videos

01:07:30   showing what the iPad was capable of.

01:07:32   Hmm.

01:07:33   I remember it.

01:07:34   There you go.

01:07:36   I have no, I have no memory of that, but okay.

01:07:39   Great.

01:07:39   I'm glad it's vivid in your memory.

01:07:42   That was a big, that was a big thing.

01:07:43   The iPad, iPad release that we had been excited for that new product for a long

01:07:48   time.

01:07:49   And I got, I, you know, I got it, uh, like I said, a day or two before release.

01:07:54   And, uh, that was pretty exciting to, to get that an entirely new Apple product.

01:07:58   and I remember little bits of that. I remember writing the review, you know, over the weekend,

01:08:05   sitting on my bed at home, churning out thousands of words and yeah, it was that I'd probably

01:08:12   say that. That was probably the most exciting one.

01:08:15   I wish I could find those videos. I can find your original review but I can't find the

01:08:21   videos. I know that they existed. I'm almost certain of it. I have a very vivid memory

01:08:27   of it but...

01:08:28   It's possible those were Macworld videos that have now been horribly deprecated.

01:08:31   It's entirely possible.

01:08:32   If anybody finds them or remembers them, please write in #askupgrade and we'll

01:08:37   find it and I can talk about it next week. I'm sure I have a vivid memory of this.

01:08:40   Lucas asks, "On the MacBook Pro, is the Touch ID part of the Touch Bar

01:08:44   an actual physical button? Does it click?"

01:08:48   Yeah, yeah it does. It is a key basically. It's not shaped like the other

01:08:52   keys but it is a key.

01:08:54   you can push it down.

01:08:55   And in fact, if you push, it's the power button.

01:08:57   It is what we used to think of as the power button.

01:09:00   Its behavior is very different now.

01:09:01   If you hold it down for six, I wanna say seconds,

01:09:05   it forces a reboot.

01:09:06   And that's so that you've got a hardware,

01:09:09   'cause you can't necessarily,

01:09:11   if the touch bar doesn't work,

01:09:12   you can't do kind of the old method

01:09:14   of force rebooting a system,

01:09:16   'cause that involved the escape key,

01:09:17   which doesn't exist anymore.

01:09:18   So you hold down that key for like six seconds

01:09:22   and it just reboots.

01:09:23   It's very much like the same hardware,

01:09:26   hold down two buttons on the iPhone or iPad

01:09:29   and have it reboot.

01:09:29   - In the same kind of vein,

01:09:33   Brent was interested to know if you have any idea

01:09:36   if the Touch Bar has Generation 1 or 2 Touch ID.

01:09:40   - I think those concepts are concepts

01:09:42   very specifically related to iOS

01:09:44   and don't have applicability on the Mac.

01:09:47   There's no way for me to tell

01:09:48   'cause I'd have to compare it to,

01:09:52   previous touch ID on the Mac, which doesn't exist

01:09:54   or compare it to iOS.

01:09:55   So I don't think I have anything to say about that.

01:09:57   I think it's touch ID,

01:09:59   it's touch ID on the Mac is what it is.

01:10:02   - Does it feel fast enough?

01:10:04   - Yeah, again, yeah, it seems to react quickly,

01:10:10   but it's a very different thing because it's a Mac,

01:10:13   so it's unlocking.

01:10:14   And so is that the Mac responding differently than iOS

01:10:18   or with like one password unlocking?

01:10:21   It's the same thing.

01:10:22   to happen really fast. I would also say, this question was does the touch bar have? It is

01:10:27   distinctly, it's on the touch bar row but it's not the touch bar. It is this distinct

01:10:31   button to the right of the touch bar. So I think it would be inaccurate to say the touch

01:10:35   bar has touch ID. There's a row that's got the touch bar and touch ID sensor in it, but

01:10:42   the touch ID sensor is next to the touch bar, it's not the touch bar.

01:10:46   I really do have a sneaking suspicion that it was supposed to be, but they couldn't get

01:10:50   it to work. My theory is it was supposed to be part of the bar with the idea of that being

01:10:57   the same technology that would implant a touch ID sensor inside of the screen, and I don't

01:11:04   think they've been able to do it.

01:11:07   That would be new tech, and instead they went with... I mean, this solves the other problem

01:11:11   of having a physical reset button on the computer, too. But yeah, I know. There's a lot of interesting

01:11:18   things that if only they release a book explaining their reasoning but all we get is a picture

01:11:23   of the touch bar.

01:11:25   Interesting question from Kyle, "What is the current biggest factor that makes a Mac feel

01:11:30   fast?" What is the most important part there, Jason?

01:11:34   SSD. Storage, storage, storage, storage is the answer.

01:11:37   Interesting.

01:11:38   That's it. That's number one. Like if you--use a Mac with a spinning hard drive and no fusion

01:11:44   drive and then go to a fusion driver or an SS and then go to an SSD you know at

01:11:48   the end of it I did this with a Mac Mini that my Mac Mini that's five years old

01:11:52   now it was a spinning drive and I I took it apart and put in an SSD and it's like

01:11:56   a completely new computer if you've if you've used if you've been on an SSD for

01:12:00   a while and you haven't used a computer with a spinning disk go back and try

01:12:03   that it is horrific like it is it is that is the constraint on so many things

01:12:11   now of computer usability is the responsiveness of the storage. I feel

01:12:17   like that is the big bottleneck right now. If you're already using an SSD like

01:12:21   say you're on an SSD MacBook Pro and you're getting a new MacBook Pro what

01:12:24   would be the thing there would it be like the processor maybe? Maybe. I guess

01:12:27   the jumps aren't as big right? Yeah the jumps aren't as big I feel like that was

01:12:31   the that was the big jump was going to SSD because it's just so much more

01:12:36   responsive and you know the newer SSD is even faster. I don't even remember it

01:12:40   like I you know I know that I did it but like I have no memory of how slow it was

01:12:44   before I bet you're right if I went to something like that I would rip my hair

01:12:48   out yeah another question about the new mac pro what does the function key do on

01:12:55   the MacBook Pro with touch bar it makes the top row of the touch bar turn into a

01:13:02   function row so you get f1 f2 f3 etc yep that's what it does and you can also go

01:13:08   into the keyboard system preferences and actually apply, you can add apps that inherit the F

01:13:18   keys automatically. So like if there's an app that you have that you really need the

01:13:23   function keys, you can actually go into system prefs and drag that app in and then it will

01:13:27   always just show the F keys there. And then I think if you want to see the touch bar,

01:13:31   you hit the F key and it toggles it back. But yeah, that's what the FN key does is flip

01:13:37   you over into classic F-key mode.

01:13:40   And lastly, I'm wanting to know, what do we want to see in the next iPad Pro? Now I have

01:13:46   a list here. This has been a very JSON-focused Ask Upgrade now, so I'm going to take the

01:13:52   lead on this one. So I would like to see True Tone across the line. So the 12.9 inch gets

01:13:57   True Tone, because True Tone is for me as good as Retina was.

01:14:03   You gotta have it.

01:14:04   You gotta have it.

01:14:05   The inconsistency, I mean, we could broaden that and say the inconsistency between the

01:14:09   9.7 and the 12.9 must go away.

01:14:13   - Yeah, 9.7 should get fast charging and all that stuff.

01:14:17   That stuff needs to go.

01:14:18   But yeah, but true tone on the 12.9 is imperative at this point.

01:14:22   I'm upset that it's not on my iPhone as well, but it's a story for another day.

01:14:27   I want the iPad Pros, both of them, to be lighter and thinner because they are products

01:14:31   that should and can still be lighter and thinner, right?

01:14:35   The 12.9 is too heavy.

01:14:37   If that was lighter, that would be awesome.

01:14:39   I don't need my iPhones to do that,

01:14:41   but I do want my iPads to continue doing that.

01:14:43   And then outside of that, you get the usual.

01:14:47   Faster, more OS stuff, all of that.

01:14:52   But iPad Pro is not just the iPad.

01:14:54   iPad Pro is the accessories as well.

01:14:57   So I want to see enhancements there.

01:14:59   I want a pencil 2 that has a better battery life because considering Apple have embraced

01:15:06   the people like me who like to use the pencil a lot more than intended, right, the battery

01:15:11   isn't good enough.

01:15:13   So I want to see a better battery life in there.

01:15:17   And I would also like there to be a button of some kind which apps could take advantage

01:15:20   of in some way, like an eraser or a button on the side, which could enable deeper and

01:15:26   richer interactions.

01:15:28   So for example, with my, I use a Wacom tablet, it has a button on the side of it, it has

01:15:33   a couple, it has actually quite a few buttons, but let's just say one of the buttons, if

01:15:36   I click it, it will make, it will basically highlight select, so then I can drag things

01:15:42   around.

01:15:43   Right, so I would like to see the Pencil 2 have a button on it, which an app like Procreate

01:15:48   could use to turn the pen into an eraser, you know, or many different apps could use

01:15:53   it in different ways, I would like to see a button added to it.

01:15:55   I would also like a new smart keyboard. I would like there to be one of two things.

01:16:00   Now dream scenario would be something touch bar like. Not necessarily that it is a touch

01:16:06   screen, but a screen. That brings down a lot of the things like the quick type. Although

01:16:11   a touch screen would be great because you could use the emoji picker. That would be

01:16:14   amazing. I think we're a way away from that, right? I can't imagine that happening.

01:16:18   In terms of thickness alone, yes. It would be crazy. But I would love to have

01:16:24   media keys on the smart keyboard.

01:16:28   And or make the smart keyboard more like the Logitech Create.

01:16:32   Give me a backlight, make the key travel a little bit nicer, but I actually think the

01:16:37   key travel on the smart keyboard is nicer than the MacBook.

01:16:40   I actually prefer the smart keyboard to type on.

01:16:43   I would like to see some big improvements to the smart keyboard.

01:16:47   Make the keycaps larger, give me some function, give me some media keys.

01:16:54   I want that. I want a backlight.

01:16:56   - I think the top row of keys

01:16:57   that's missing from the smart keyboard is painful, right?

01:17:02   And we've said, "Oh, function keys are dumb,"

01:17:03   but Apple did map those to other functions,

01:17:06   including media playback,

01:17:09   and it's painful to not have those.

01:17:11   - My 9.7 has more keys on it and better features,

01:17:14   the Logitech one, than the 12.9-inch iPad one

01:17:17   that Apple make.

01:17:18   They need to take a key from Logitech

01:17:20   and make those keyboards better.

01:17:22   So that's kind of what I'm looking for.

01:17:24   OS improvements though I think are the most important

01:17:27   even though I spent the least time talking about those.

01:17:30   A lot of the iPad features are very dated now

01:17:35   to the point where I can't understand

01:17:36   how anybody ever thought that the app switching

01:17:40   or the multi-tasking window where you,

01:17:44   I kind of, what do they call that?

01:17:46   The app picker? - I don't even know.

01:17:47   - The multi-tasking app picker?

01:17:49   It's the split view app picker thing.

01:17:52   - I can't understand how anybody ever thought

01:17:54   that that was the right way to design that.

01:17:57   They were just like these little things.

01:17:58   - I think they just ran out of time.

01:17:59   I think they didn't know it,

01:18:01   but we've been now living with it for a year and a half.

01:18:03   So yeah, yeah.

01:18:06   And I'll throw in there that OS improvements,

01:18:09   I mean, yeah, drag and drop would be nice,

01:18:12   a better app picker.

01:18:13   Yeah, there's all sorts of things.

01:18:17   access to mass storage so that I can attach an SD card without having to use some wacky

01:18:24   Wi-Fi transfer app in order to see the files on the SD card and open them in an app.

01:18:29   Find a way to make 3D touch work.

01:18:31   Oh, interesting.

01:18:33   Even if it's not putting 3D touch in the device, find a way to make 3D touch shortcuts work

01:18:38   because the iPad is missing them.

01:18:40   I can't clear all my notifications.

01:18:43   Find a way to make that work.

01:18:44   So there you go.

01:18:46   That's why I want to say I have a high hopes for the iPad Pro.

01:18:51   And I'm looking forward to them revising the next year.

01:18:54   I will, I think this is also in the unlikely category, but I'm going to throw it in there

01:18:58   because I want to, which is USB-C. I was just about to say that.

01:19:06   I think that they really need to add it, but I don't think that they will.

01:19:09   I don't think that they will either.

01:19:11   I understand why they won't and I can support that decision, but I would still like it because

01:19:15   it opens up the device to a whole world of things.

01:19:19   Think of it as a laptop replacement, not as an iPhone.

01:19:23   That's what Apple was saying it is, and they need to push it further towards that.

01:19:28   And I think USB-C would go a long way to enabling that.

01:19:32   But I understand at the same time why they wouldn't do it, because it's vastly different

01:19:37   and an incredible amount of work, I'm sure, to get USB-C support on all of the peripherals

01:19:43   that they would need into iOS. I understand why they wouldn't do it, but I would really

01:19:48   like to see something like that, just to enable more expandability to the system.

01:19:54   Oh, and I mean, part of the across the line, True Tone across the line, I'll say P3 across

01:19:58   the line, because the iPad Pro 10.9 doesn't have P3.

01:20:03   Oh, it has a wider color gamut though, right?

01:20:07   Mm-mm.

01:20:08   No?

01:20:09   - The 10.7 has the wide color gamut, the 10.9 does not.

01:20:12   Or sorry, the 12.9 does not.

01:20:13   - Ah, that's why, yeah, okay.

01:20:14   - Baby Pro has the wide color gamut,

01:20:16   the full size Pro does not.

01:20:18   - Yes, I would like to, yeah.

01:20:19   - So that's the trade, that's the trade.

01:20:21   You get P3, you get True Tone, yay.

01:20:23   - And leave the Mini alone.

01:20:26   - And you get USB 3.0 transfer speeds on the small one,

01:20:29   which doesn't have it, which is, you know,

01:20:30   and the fast charging.

01:20:32   - Yeah, revise the Mini.

01:20:33   I think they need to revise the Mini,

01:20:35   but do not make it a Pro.

01:20:37   Just leave that product alone, give it a nicer screen,

01:20:40   give it a nice touch ID, make it a little bit faster,

01:20:43   but just keep that product ticking along as it is, I think.

01:20:46   All right, I think that wraps it up for today.

01:20:48   We've solved a lot of things here, yeah.

01:20:50   Yeah, we're helping.

01:20:51   Just take our list up and implement those things

01:20:53   and then we'll all be happy.

01:20:55   - Yeah, you're welcome.

01:20:56   - Product roadmap sorted.

01:20:59   If you wanna find our show notes for this week,

01:21:00   head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/116.

01:21:04   I wanna take a moment again to thank our lovely sponsors

01:21:06   this week, Eero, Encapsula and Mac Walden. If you'd like to find Jason's work online

01:21:11   he is @jsnell on twitter and he writes over at 6colors.com. I am @imike on twitter. If

01:21:21   you would like to submit questions, feedback, follow up for the show just tweet with the

01:21:25   hashtag #askupgrade and we will see it and hopefully we'll include it in later episodes.

01:21:31   So don't forget, if you want to be up to date with the show next week, you want to watch

01:21:36   Gremlins in anticipation of Myke at the movies.

01:21:40   Thank you so much for listening, we'll be back next time.

01:21:43   Until then, say goodbye Jason Stell.

01:21:45   Don't get water on Myke or feed me after midnight.

01:21:47   All will become clear next week I suppose.

01:21:49   Mhm.

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