Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► *BEEP*

00:00:00 ◼   ► *Music*

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode number 81.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Ministry of Supply, Squarespace, ITProTV and FreshBooks.

00:00:19 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley. Of course today we have an episode all about the Apple event

00:00:26 ◼   ► that has occurred the March 21st Apple event, but we're doing something a little bit different.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Of course we're going to talk about the event and everything that went down,

00:00:34 ◼   ► but before we do, I want to hand over to our reporter in the field, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Good morning Myke, good morning listeners. You are listening to me coming from inside my car.

00:00:54 ◼   ► I am Jason Snell and this is the weirdest episode ever of Upgrade.

00:01:01 ◼   ► So it's 7-11 and I am making my way from my home in Marin County,

00:01:12 ◼   ► Northern California, just north of San Francisco. I'm going to go across the Golden Gate Bridge

00:01:17 ◼   ► And then I'm going to end up going through the city of San Francisco and down US 101.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Well, let's see, through the city of San Francisco. Well, okay, so here's the Sturbest, San Francisco.

00:01:33 ◼   ► They don't have a lot of freeways where you might expect there to be freeways like through the city.

00:01:38 ◼   ► So after I get off the Golden Gate Bridge, I have to go on the streets of San Francisco

00:01:44 ◼   ► through the city on Park Presidio Avenue and 19th Avenue.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And then on to Interstate 280.

00:01:56 ◼   ► And then that'll take me the rest

00:01:57 ◼   ► of the way to Infinite Loop and Cupertino for the Apple event,

00:02:00 ◼   ► which this episode is actually about.

00:02:04 ◼   ► I'm on the freeway now.

00:02:05 ◼   ► It's very exciting.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So before we get to the post-event part of the car cast, which is what I'm calling this,

00:02:16 ◼   ► I thought I would talk a little bit about the event atmosphere, because I know Myke

00:02:21 ◼   ► likes to do that.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Myke likes me to talk about it, because he's never been to one of these Apple Media events.

00:02:28 ◼   ► So this town hall, this is going to take place in the Town Hall Conference Center, which

00:02:32 ◼   ► is in R&D4 at Infinite Loop.

00:02:37 ◼   ► And Stephen Hackett and I over the weekend

00:02:40 ◼   ► compiled a list of kind of the notable town hall events

00:02:43 ◼   ► that have happened since the iPod introduction in 2001,

00:02:49 ◼   ► which I went to.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And there are a few before then, but we

00:02:52 ◼   ► decided that the history of that place--

00:02:56 ◼   ► internet history gets really vague before 2001,

00:02:59 ◼   ► so we didn't want to make any claims.

00:03:01 ◼   ► We feel like we're pretty confident that our list is everything that's been since 2001.

00:03:05 ◼   ► And it's really like one a year there have been these events at the town hall.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Town hall was designed almost certainly for internal communications, right?

00:03:17 ◼   ► Team meetings.

00:03:18 ◼   ► When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, there were probably team meetings in there.

00:03:22 ◼   ► You can have up to 300 people talking about what the vision for the group is or the company

00:03:26 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:03:28 ◼   ► As a media event area, it used to be fine.

00:03:32 ◼   ► The iPod event was just fine.

00:03:34 ◼   ► But over the years, as interest in Apple has grown, a 300-seat venue is ridiculously small

00:03:40 ◼   ► for any event.

00:03:41 ◼   ► At the end there, they did a couple Mac-related events there.

00:03:47 ◼   ► But in general, it's a tough ticket, and I'm fortunate to even be getting in there.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Also, the way that they handled this over the years has really changed.

00:03:54 ◼   ► It used to be you would show up in front of R&D 4, you'd just park in the parking lot

00:03:58 ◼   ► behind number 4, and go up and there would be a couple of fold out tables and PR people

00:04:05 ◼   ► with little printed out lists of people and they'd check you in and they'd give you a

00:04:09 ◼   ► badge and you'd go inside.

00:04:14 ◼   ► Actually you'd wait outside and they might have some bagels on a table over in the corner

00:04:18 ◼   ► but everybody would mill around outside and eventually they would let us in to this teeny

00:04:22 ◼   ► tiny lobby on the inside but that was super claustrophobic and then eventually they let

00:04:28 ◼   ► you in.

00:04:29 ◼   ► They have changed it now.

00:04:31 ◼   ► That was the way it was for a long time.

00:04:33 ◼   ► There was this interim step where what they did was, I don't know what usually is upstairs

00:04:38 ◼   ► from there but I think they changed it at some point into a briefing center or certainly

00:04:43 ◼   ► it's convertible into that.

00:04:45 ◼   ► So there's an upstairs right off of the lobby for R&D 4, which is the super narrow lobby.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And there's an upstairs with a large room, like a common room, that I think was meant

00:04:59 ◼   ► to be sort of like the hangout meeting place area for the employees who worked there.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And so then they started outfitting that with like, it has chairs, but they'd also like

00:05:08 ◼   ► put some breakfast out up there.

00:05:10 ◼   ► The first time we saw that, we're like, "What is happening with Apple?"

00:05:13 ◼   ► They're like giving us, like there were like egg stations

00:05:18 ◼   ► and stuff, it was bizarre.

00:05:19 ◼   ► We're like, what is happening?

00:05:21 ◼   ► But I think they decided that it was a little embarrassing

00:05:24 ◼   ► for them to have the folding tables and bagels

00:05:27 ◼   ► in the corner and they wanted to kind of do it up.

00:05:30 ◼   ► And also there were so many people that it was unruly.

00:05:33 ◼   ► So they put in that extra effort.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And for the last event,

00:05:37 ◼   ► and what I believe they're doing today

00:05:38 ◼   ► is they're actually having us come to R&D One.

00:05:40 ◼   ► There's a special parking lot at the front

00:05:42 ◼   ► that is usually like visitor parking that they're going to limit for this, which is good because

00:05:48 ◼   ► another unreported story about Apple is that parking at the Apple campus is ridiculous these days.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Like ridiculous. They actually have hired a valet service and they now double park cars in

00:06:01 ◼   ► the Apple parking lot because there's not enough room because the campus is packed.

00:06:05 ◼   ► So, but they for this event they've made this space available over by one infinite loop which

00:06:12 ◼   ► is where it's the main entrance, that's where the new company store is, it's all over right

00:06:17 ◼   ► as you get in and that's like what people think of as Apple headquarters is opening

00:06:23 ◼   ► the door to one infinite loop.

00:06:25 ◼   ► So just like last time I assumed today we're going to go in through one infinite loop through

00:06:29 ◼   ► the main entrance which is very impressive, it's much more impressive, you're led in by

00:06:33 ◼   ► PR people and then they take you out into the center of the loop which is where they've

00:06:38 ◼   ► got a waiting area and last time there was a waiting area with some tents and again they're

00:06:46 ◼   ► serving food because nothing gets journalists on your good side better than serving food

00:06:53 ◼   ► and that's where we kind of waited out. They told us to be there by nine. The event is

00:06:58 ◼   ► at ten. That's to shame all of the late people into getting there on time. And so we just

00:07:06 ◼   ► hang out there and that's where you see the people. There are people I only see at Apple

00:07:10 ◼   ► events these days which is pretty funny and I like to see them and I admire their work

00:07:14 ◼   ► and we interact on Twitter but a lot of times I only ever see them at Apple events because

00:07:21 ◼   ► and not for very long. I see them before the Apple event because afterward although I see

00:07:25 ◼   ► them we're all working on our stories. So what happens is they'll usher us in, you'll

00:07:31 ◼   ► get a seat, it's super tight and uncomfortable, we'll all sit there, cover the event and then

00:07:36 ◼   ► afterward we're usually let into a hands-on area now with it maybe outside

00:07:43 ◼   ► this time now that they're sort of like setting up this area outside it's

00:07:47 ◼   ► possible it'll be outside if it's not outside it may be there's a piano bar

00:07:51 ◼   ► with the famous piano that was has been a part of Apple for decades now that

00:07:56 ◼   ► piano bar space is right across from from Town Hall so it may be there and

00:08:03 ◼   ► And it may be outside, it might be upstairs, but usually there's a big hands-on area where everybody in the press can go and get their paws on the latest stuff.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And it needs to be capacity for 300 people because there are 300 people that fit in the venue.

00:08:17 ◼   ► So it's always a challenge for them. A lot of times the size of the venue is controlled by the size of the hands-on area.

00:08:24 ◼   ► area because even if you had an auditorium that's seated 1,000, that's not enough.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Like the new one will do at the new Apple campus, that'll seat 1,000.

00:08:33 ◼   ► That's not enough.

00:08:34 ◼   ► You also need an area large enough that you can take roughly 1,000 journalists and give

00:08:38 ◼   ► them a reasonable amount of access to a hands-on area because that's just part of the deal

00:08:43 ◼   ► as far as Apple is concerned.

00:08:45 ◼   ► So it'll be interesting to see how that's executed, but I have no doubt that the new

00:08:50 ◼   ► Apple Campus Auditorium will have been designed with that need in mind.

00:08:56 ◼   ► And that'll be interesting to see, hopefully next year.

00:09:01 ◼   ► So anyway, I'll see all those people in the hands-on area afterward and we won't be talking

00:09:06 ◼   ► because everybody's shooting video and taking pictures.

00:09:09 ◼   ► That area has become more and more intense over time because now people are committed,

00:09:13 ◼   ► a lot of them, to shooting a bunch of photos and instantly posting a gallery or shooting

00:09:18 ◼   ► a lot of video.

00:09:20 ◼   ► And that's actually a new trend that kind of bugs me as somebody who's not that invested

00:09:24 ◼   ► in it.

00:09:25 ◼   ► And I totally understand why people do it, but there's nothing worse than waiting around

00:09:29 ◼   ► a hands-on area trying to look at a product, only to discover that the person who's got

00:09:32 ◼   ► it is there with a cameraman and they're going to shoot, "Hey guys, I'm here at the Apple

00:09:38 ◼   ► event and let me walk you through everything about this new iPhone."

00:09:42 ◼   ► And it's going to take forever.

00:09:44 ◼   ► So you just move on, move on to another place.

00:09:47 ◼   ► One of these days they should probably have a special area for people doing hands-on videos.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I bet you that would be a better thing.

00:09:55 ◼   ► Anyway, when all that is said and done, my plan right now is to hop back in the car and

00:10:00 ◼   ► drive back home and along the way do this experimental car cast.

00:10:07 ◼   ► The reason for that is largely because when they have these events in Cupertino, it takes

00:10:11 ◼   ► me an hour and a half to get home.

00:10:14 ◼   ► is prime time I should really be working on something involving the event. But I haven't

00:10:19 ◼   ► been able to do that because I've been just sitting there driving and there's sort of

00:10:25 ◼   ► like nothing else I can do with that time. It's just kind of a waste of my time. And

00:10:28 ◼   ► I said to Myke, "Hey Myke, what if we did a podcast during my drive home from the event?"

00:10:33 ◼   ► So I will do a Skype call with Myke and then record my end using this microphone that I'm

00:10:37 ◼   ► talking to you on now. And Myke will put it together and it will have all of the magic

00:10:42 ◼   ► and majesty of a podcast where somebody's in a car. So now we're going to go into the

00:10:49 ◼   ► upgrade time machine. I'm going to throw it back to Myke and Myke is going to tell you

00:10:54 ◼   ► about something really cool and then we're going to move ahead past the Apple event to

00:11:01 ◼   ► the aftermath. Take it away Myke.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Thank you to our man in the field, our man on the way to the field at that point, Mr.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Now as Jason said when we come back from this break we will be together talking about everything

00:11:16 ◼   ► that happened in the Apple event from our very special show in which we're recording

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00:13:18 ◼   ► you so much to ministry of supply for their support of this show and relay FM. Okay, so

00:13:23 ◼   ► dialling in from a road somewhere in Cupertino is our intrepid man in the field, Mr Jason

00:13:31 ◼   ► Hello Mr. Jason Snell, welcome to Upgrade.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Hi Myke, welcome to Upgrade indeed.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I am coming to you live from the Interstate 280.

00:13:43 ◼   ► You might know it from the maps icon.

00:13:47 ◼   ► And I just have left the Apple Campus where I just finished

00:13:51 ◼   ► working on the Apple Media event.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Interstate 280 is my favorite of all the Interstates.

00:13:59 ◼   ► the best number of all of them 280. So we are trying something a little bit

00:14:03 ◼   ► different today you are we wanted to get the show out as quick as possible of all

00:14:08 ◼   ► of the information and you are now taking this drive and so many people

00:14:11 ◼   ► listen to podcasts while they drive we figured why not do a driving podcast

00:14:17 ◼   ► so here we are. That's right, double the cars. Double the cars. So you're on your way back now back to

00:14:24 ◼   ► Six Colors HQ and yes so I want to do our usual I want to talk about the event

00:14:32 ◼   ► obviously you were there it was a small small audience right this this is a much

00:14:36 ◼   ► smaller event when they do them at Town Hall yeah it's a 300 capacity I think

00:14:44 ◼   ► it's very small and it used to be sufficient for Little Apple events here

00:14:49 ◼   ► and there back in the day but Apple is so popular and successful now that it's

00:14:53 ◼   ► not really sufficient for anything but the kind of smallest of events.

00:14:58 ◼   ► And this was one of those smaller events, but still it was a tough ticket.

00:15:02 ◼   ► A lot of people who usually go weren't there. Um,

00:15:06 ◼   ► and it's probably as Stephen Hackett and I wrote about on six colors this

00:15:11 ◼   ► week. And as Tim Cook mentioned at the end of the presentation,

00:15:15 ◼   ► so that was a pretty good bit of timing. Uh,

00:15:18 ◼   ► probably the last event in that venue. So,

00:15:21 ◼   ► So did you see everybody? Like was there a good crowd there today?

00:15:24 ◼   ► Yeah I mean it's a lot of the same people that I usually see.

00:15:28 ◼   ► Jim Dalrymple, John Gruber, Matt Panzareno,

00:15:31 ◼   ► Rene Ritchie, you know Clayton Morris,

00:15:35 ◼   ► I saw Steven Levy, you know

00:15:39 ◼   ► the people that I see at Apple events a lot of them were there but it's a smaller crowd

00:15:42 ◼   ► so

00:15:43 ◼   ► obviously there are a lot of people who I often see at these events who

00:15:46 ◼   ► couldn't fit in the room so weren't there. Yeah of course.

00:15:49 ◼   ► So I have my notes, I was watching at home, I was watching on my iMac with my iPad Pro in front of me that I was taking notes on and reading Twitter, so I had a whole multi-screen setup going on.

00:16:02 ◼   ► So I figured we would go through the event chronologically and kind of talk about each of them.

00:16:09 ◼   ► So we started off with a video which was kind of a reminder that in a couple of weeks time, on April 1st, Apple is 40 years old.

00:16:17 ◼   ► old. So they did kind of a 40 second intro where they showed a lot of kind of the history

00:16:22 ◼   ► and the buzzwords and the colors and the product names of the company's history. I guess you

00:16:27 ◼   ► probably recognized quite a few things from that list including the crossed out Newton.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Haha that's the, that's how you deleted things on the Newton list writing with that way.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Yeah I recognized a lot of that stuff and I'm looking forward to going back through

00:16:43 ◼   ► the video and watching it because obviously it just shot by and there's probably I did

00:16:49 ◼   ► have an idea for a few stories based on that because I want to write about the 40th anniversary

00:16:53 ◼   ► too. I'm sure Mr. Stephen Hackett is already writing the complete annotated version of

00:16:59 ◼   ► that video and if he isn't he should probably get on that.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Yeah most definitely. I think he sent me a message I believe he said I should have made

00:17:09 ◼   ► this and it's like yeah that feels feels like this is right up your alley and

00:17:14 ◼   ► then Tim it was Tim time Tim came out and he said a couple of words about how

00:17:20 ◼   ► many Apple devices that there are and we kind of heard about this on the last

00:17:24 ◼   ► financial analyst called that there's 1 billion Apple devices in use right now

00:17:28 ◼   ► and he used this as a springboard to jump right into the FBI thing and me and

00:17:35 ◼   ► you spoke about this last week and I think we both came to the conclusion that it was

00:17:40 ◼   ► likely that this would come up in some way and Tim went at it head on and he started

00:17:46 ◼   ► talking about the way that our devices are personal to us and he was saying things like

00:17:53 ◼   ► how much power should we give the government over our data and privacy and he carried on

00:17:58 ◼   ► by saying like we did as Apple we did not expect to be at odds with our government but

00:18:03 ◼   ► We believe we have a responsibility to our customers.

00:18:05 ◼   ► We owe it to them and will not shrink

00:18:07 ◼   ► from this responsibility.

00:18:09 ◼   ► This was performed very well.

00:18:11 ◼   ► It was considered and impassioned.

00:18:14 ◼   ► How did it feel being in the room?

00:18:15 ◼   ► This got quite an ovation afterwards

00:18:18 ◼   ► to hear Tim so strongly talk about this FBI scenario.

00:18:23 ◼   ► - Well, you know, we've heard him talk about this before,

00:18:27 ◼   ► so it wasn't surprising, I guess.

00:18:29 ◼   ► And the people in the room get it.

00:18:31 ◼   ► It's the people in the room, it's the first five rows

00:18:34 ◼   ► are Apple employees or special guests,

00:18:35 ◼   ► and then the rest of the room is reporters covering Apple.

00:18:38 ◼   ► But anybody who's writing about this

00:18:40 ◼   ► and understands the technology industry knows,

00:18:43 ◼   ► knows what Apple's doing here

00:18:45 ◼   ► and knows what the FBI is trying to pull.

00:18:47 ◼   ► And I'm pretty sure that almost everybody in that room

00:18:51 ◼   ► believes that Apple is in the right.

00:18:53 ◼   ► And I was surprised, and we talked about it,

00:18:55 ◼   ► like you said last week, I was a little surprised

00:18:58 ◼   ► that this is, that it was in as depth as it was.

00:19:03 ◼   ► I sort of anticipated a nod to it, you know,

00:19:06 ◼   ► like a, you know, of course we're,

00:19:08 ◼   ► we take your privacy seriously,

00:19:10 ◼   ► you may have heard something about that,

00:19:11 ◼   ► but instead he, you know, to Tim Cook's credit,

00:19:15 ◼   ► he tackled it head on.

00:19:16 ◼   ► I feel like he is an incredibly,

00:19:20 ◼   ► I think one of his superpowers actually is that

00:19:22 ◼   ► he's a very, he seems like a very honest

00:19:25 ◼   ► and straightforward guy.

00:19:26 ◼   ► I just, I don't get any artifice from Tim Cook.

00:19:30 ◼   ► He feels like a genuine person.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And so when he says we care about this stuff

00:19:38 ◼   ► and it matters to us and we wanna,

00:19:40 ◼   ► when they say that they want to leave the world

00:19:42 ◼   ► a better place and when they say that they care

00:19:45 ◼   ► about the privacy and security of their customers,

00:19:48 ◼   ► I believe him, I don't think this is,

00:19:50 ◼   ► I mean, it is, the challenge is it is also PR, right?

00:19:52 ◼   ► This is a press event, it's a media event.

00:19:55 ◼   ► It's meant to be company PR.

00:19:56 ◼   ► It is company PR, it does make them look good,

00:19:59 ◼   ► but I also think they believe it.

00:20:02 ◼   ► And Tim Cook certainly, I think, believes it.

00:20:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I definitely stand with you on the believing part.

00:20:08 ◼   ► You can tell he does.

00:20:10 ◼   ► This did feel to me like the reason of bringing this up now

00:20:12 ◼   ► is because there has been some public pushback,

00:20:16 ◼   ► maybe from the media spinning this,

00:20:18 ◼   ► or people that just don't believe

00:20:20 ◼   ► that this should be Apple's view.

00:20:21 ◼   ► So I definitely saw this as a time where they can say,

00:20:23 ◼   ► "This is why we're doing it.

00:20:25 ◼   ► There are customers of ours that think this is the right thing to do.

00:20:28 ◼   ► We wanted to give you a little bit of like background as to why we believe this

00:20:31 ◼   ► is important, you know, for the people watching that maybe didn't agree.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Having seen that like and having seen this from Apple today,

00:20:40 ◼   ► I can definitely see why they did this.

00:20:43 ◼   ► I think that it was the right thing for them to come out and say something on

00:20:47 ◼   ► this stage because if they didn't, you know,

00:20:49 ◼   ► they would have basically just been called cowards in the press.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you.

00:20:55 ◼   ► actually, and looking at it like that, I think you're right.

00:20:58 ◼   ► How could you not talk about it?

00:21:00 ◼   ► Like, how could you not?

00:21:01 ◼   ► How could you, you know, Apple today tried to release

00:21:03 ◼   ► a bunch of products while ignoring the huge,

00:21:06 ◼   ► you know, the elephant in the room, essentially.

00:21:08 ◼   ► So, you know, I'm glad Cook took the time.

00:21:11 ◼   ► I'm glad they took the time to talk about the other stuff

00:21:13 ◼   ► that we're gonna get to.

00:21:14 ◼   ► I think it needed to be said in some form.

00:21:17 ◼   ► We know that we've seen for the last few weeks,

00:21:20 ◼   ► it's a back and forth dialogue between Apple and the FBI,

00:21:24 ◼   ► in terms of who says what to whom

00:21:27 ◼   ► and what Ovid runs and what newspaper or on what website.

00:21:31 ◼   ► This was Apple's serve.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Apple got a chance in its own event to make its pitch.

00:21:38 ◼   ► And tomorrow, you know, tomorrow we're gonna get it

00:21:40 ◼   ► on a neutral court theoretically

00:21:42 ◼   ► in the case between the Apple FBI case.

00:21:47 ◼   ► And we'll see then.

00:21:49 ◼   ► But this was their, how do you pass up an opportunity

00:21:51 ◼   ► to have your swing today?

00:21:54 ◼   ► And so they took it.

00:21:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it was the right thing to do.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And then they took an interesting move on from here.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And I wanna get some thoughts from you in a moment

00:22:05 ◼   ► as to why they may have done this,

00:22:08 ◼   ► but they went into two different areas,

00:22:10 ◼   ► environment and health.

00:22:11 ◼   ► So first up, they brought Lisa Jackson onto stage.

00:22:14 ◼   ► I believe this is her first outing on the stage for Apple.

00:22:19 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:22:20 ◼   ► - And basically this was all about Apple's renewable energy

00:22:24 ◼   ► and they're recycling.

00:22:25 ◼   ► They're kind of the two big things they're focusing on.

00:22:28 ◼   ► 93% of Apple's facilities currently run on renewable energy.

00:22:32 ◼   ► They're targeting 100.

00:22:34 ◼   ► And they were given some examples of facilities

00:22:36 ◼   ► where they're building their own renewable energy sources

00:22:40 ◼   ► where they can't get eco-power from the grid.

00:22:43 ◼   ► So that was really cool to see some of those.

00:22:46 ◼   ► And also they were showing about their efforts in packaging.

00:22:51 ◼   ► 99% of their packaging now comes from recycled paper or sustainably managed forests.

00:22:58 ◼   ► But the really cool thing that they showed off was an R&D project called Liam.

00:23:03 ◼   ► And they even created a little video about this.

00:23:05 ◼   ► Liam is a robot that is disassembling...

00:23:08 ◼   ► Or not.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Yeah, or not.

00:23:10 ◼   ► He's disassembling Apple's products.

00:23:13 ◼   ► So they showed this little system of it detecting parts with a camera which it can remove and

00:23:20 ◼   ► And then it filters them so they can harvest the materials basically for use in later products.

00:23:27 ◼   ► This thing is crazy.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I like the idea that what Apple is saying is that they're not just using their technical

00:23:35 ◼   ► acumen to build products, they're actually using some of their technical acumen to build

00:23:42 ◼   ► products that disassemble tools, that disassemble their products.

00:23:46 ◼   ► So that they're in a better, because that's one of the problems with electronics recycling

00:23:51 ◼   ► is that it's this mixed up set of waste of different kinds of metals and glass and all

00:23:59 ◼   ► these different things that go into this.

00:24:01 ◼   ► And so I think it's really interesting that Apple is now highlighting that they built

00:24:05 ◼   ► a tool, and she said it was built in California, they built a robot or not, that it's designed

00:24:13 ◼   ► to pick apart Apple products so that Apple's recycling efforts of its own products could

00:24:18 ◼   ► be more efficient.

00:24:19 ◼   ► The video is really great.

00:24:20 ◼   ► People should definitely check out the video.

00:24:22 ◼   ► It is a really impressive, cool little bit of machinery.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know where that video lives.

00:24:31 ◼   ► So I'll see if I can find that.

00:24:34 ◼   ► I assume it's in the presentation stream.

00:24:36 ◼   ► Presumably they will post all of those videos on their own at some point to Apple.com, but

00:24:42 ◼   ► uh... you know we're we're recording this like an hour after the event so it

00:24:47 ◼   ► may not be up yet

00:24:48 ◼   ► yeah but they will be able to be at least in the presentation for sure it's

00:24:52 ◼   ► not on their environment page right now but but it might be there

00:24:55 ◼   ► of kyle's the gray has uh... said just sent to me in the chat room

00:24:58 ◼   ► uh... the recycling page and the liam video is at the bottom of the recycling

00:25:03 ◼   ► page this is also a thing that apple viva revamped or they're pushing more

00:25:07 ◼   ► which is that uh... recycling

00:25:09 ◼   ► efforts bringing in stuff you can

00:25:12 ◼   ► send products to them now you can print off

00:25:15 ◼   ► uh... your

00:25:16 ◼   ► but the shipping labels for free

00:25:18 ◼   ► uh... i'd say something i like on the recycling page as you can see this

00:25:21 ◼   ► all of the images of the products they're all dinged up every single one

00:25:25 ◼   ► uh... they've all the scratches on them and nix taken out of them and it's

00:25:28 ◼   ► really fun to see apples products on their own website

00:25:32 ◼   ► uh... all dinged up like this so

00:25:34 ◼   ► that's that's really cool i like that

00:25:37 ◼   ► so you can get their really promoting this heavily

00:25:40 ◼   ► which is good stuff you know to really highlight these types of things

00:25:44 ◼   ► a little bit more

00:25:47 ◼   ► also they went into health and Jeff Williams came on stage again for this

00:25:51 ◼   ► if you remember Jeff he introduced research kit

00:25:55 ◼   ► and they had an update about research kit today they were talking about how

00:25:58 ◼   ► some of the

00:26:00 ◼   ► things that come from research kit as some of the studies have become some of

00:26:03 ◼   ► the largest medical studies in history and this had happened basically overnight

00:26:07 ◼   ► because of the amount of people they were able to get

00:26:10 ◼   ► onto these programs by offering these apps through the phone.

00:26:12 ◼   ► They showed some really great videos of some of the apps and tools that are helping discover

00:26:18 ◼   ► children with autism, highlighting data collection for Parkinson's and epilepsy.

00:26:22 ◼   ► They're really heartwarming videos, but they're a good thing to show because this is stuff

00:26:28 ◼   ► that Apple is helping create and they're helping provide the tools for people to go out and

00:26:32 ◼   ► make these apps and experiences.

00:26:35 ◼   ► They also showed off CareKit today, which is a new framework to build apps specifically

00:26:39 ◼   ► to help people take an active role in their care. So they started with a Parkinson's app

00:26:45 ◼   ► to try and help people understand how to take better care of themselves by logging activity

00:26:50 ◼   ► and logging their feelings. They also showed how you can share this information with a

00:26:54 ◼   ► doctor and they can update what medications you should be taking and stuff like that.

00:26:59 ◼   ► So again this is just another really nice thing that Apple is doing and I saw quite

00:27:06 ◼   ► a few people mention the "dent in the universe" line.

00:27:10 ◼   ► And this stuff does highlight that.

00:27:12 ◼   ► It can be easy when you're talking about these things as an Apple fan to sound sycophantic,

00:27:17 ◼   ► right?

00:27:18 ◼   ► That you're saying that Apple is amazing because they changed the world by making it better

00:27:21 ◼   ► for everyone.

00:27:22 ◼   ► But if this stuff really does make a difference in medical care, this is great because, do

00:27:27 ◼   ► you know what, they don't have to do this.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Yeah I think Apple, we're talking again, we talked about it last year too about their

00:27:35 ◼   ► core values. This is an interesting place where some Apple could just stop at selling

00:27:44 ◼   ► a phone right or a watch but it's got a strategy and the strategy involves making money but

00:27:51 ◼   ► it also involves sort of like how do we take advantage of this technology that's in all

00:27:58 ◼   ► of our pockets and on our many of our wrists right and some of that is health like health

00:28:03 ◼   ► and fitness stuff, but definitely they, and I think the reason Jeff Williams is doing

00:28:08 ◼   ► a lot of this is because he's so involved with the Apple Watch stuff, that this is part

00:28:12 ◼   ► of Apple's belief that if we've all got supercomputers in our pockets and we can start to have sensors

00:28:19 ◼   ► on our bodies that are all connected, that somebody needs to put all of that together

00:28:26 ◼   ► and all that data and be able to again make the world a better place, right?

00:28:32 ◼   ► And I think this is one of those areas where Apple's business motives and maybe its altruistic

00:28:40 ◼   ► motives are in alignment.

00:28:43 ◼   ► That this shows off and provides a use for this technology that they're building and

00:28:49 ◼   ► selling.

00:28:50 ◼   ► But at the same time, I think that there's the question of like, well, who else would

00:28:54 ◼   ► do this?

00:28:56 ◼   ► It's sort of up to the platform vendors to push forward on this.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And I don't know what Google's initiatives are in this area for using Android, and if

00:29:05 ◼   ► they work with hardware partners on it, they may, and they may have that too.

00:29:09 ◼   ► But certainly from Apple's perspective, as the platform owner, as the designer of the

00:29:13 ◼   ► hardware and the software for so many of these devices, for certainly the iPhone and the

00:29:17 ◼   ► Apple Watch, that it fits.

00:29:20 ◼   ► It fits with what they're doing.

00:29:22 ◼   ► And to me, that's what that whole first part of this presentation was about, is never forget,

00:29:28 ◼   ► It's a PR event, Apple wants you to know how great they are about doing those things, but

00:29:33 ◼   ► it doesn't change the fact that they're doing them.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely.

00:29:38 ◼   ► But why do you think Apple chose to open the event in this style?

00:29:44 ◼   ► Why not the usual retail updates?

00:29:46 ◼   ► Why this kind of messaging, do you think?

00:29:51 ◼   ► I think this is...

00:29:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:53 ◼   ► I mean, it feels a little bit like an example of Apple rethinking its sort of standard playbook.

00:29:58 ◼   ► "Yes, tell us about how many retail stores you opened. Yes, tell us again how many activations you've got."

00:30:06 ◼   ► They did say there are a billion Apple devices currently active.

00:30:09 ◼   ► But, I don't know, do you have to do that every time? When do you get a chance to talk about ResearchKit?

00:30:15 ◼   ► Is it at WWDC? Maybe.

00:30:18 ◼   ► So, I think, I don't know. I think they don't need to remind us how great their numbers are.

00:30:25 ◼   ► Also, not to be cynical, but the iPhone sales aren't exactly shooting through the stratosphere

00:30:31 ◼   ► right now.

00:30:32 ◼   ► They've kind of plateaued.

00:30:33 ◼   ► So maybe they've decided this is a perfectly good time to get the focus a little bit off

00:30:36 ◼   ► of raw numbers.

00:30:39 ◼   ► And then I'll throw in there too, when Apple is trying to portray itself in this battle

00:30:43 ◼   ► with the FBI, especially as caring about its customers, coming out, is it maybe a liability

00:30:50 ◼   ► that they're one of the most profitable companies in history?

00:30:54 ◼   ► Does that make it problematic for them to say that they have altruistic motives and

00:30:59 ◼   ► they care about their customers when they're incredibly profitable?

00:31:02 ◼   ► And could it be seen as boasting about their success if they do that versus seeming a little

00:31:07 ◼   ► more humble and giving back and taking that approach?

00:31:11 ◼   ► Maybe that's a better approach tone-wise while they're locked in a battle with the US government

00:31:16 ◼   ► over these privacy issues.

00:31:18 ◼   ► Yeah, it definitely doesn't hurt to take this kind of stance from a PR perspective.

00:31:26 ◼   ► And I agree, I think as maybe some of the sales numbers get just a little bit less crazier

00:31:35 ◼   ► and crazier every time and they become more flat maybe, it becomes less of an exciting

00:31:40 ◼   ► story to show them off, I think.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Right, well then it becomes, yep, we made more money, we made more billions of dollars

00:31:46 ◼   ► on the iPhone, yep, which is less exciting than look at the iPhone growth. It's amazing.

00:31:52 ◼   ► We're in these new countries and look at all of our retail sales expansion. Maybe that's

00:31:58 ◼   ► not as big a deal now. And people are going to be much more inclined to listen to a company

00:32:05 ◼   ► that is talking about how it wants to make the world a better place than if it's like

00:32:11 ◼   ► Scrooge McDuck diving in a giant pool of gold coins, right?

00:32:15 ◼   ► Which is being seen as boastful and rich and all of that.

00:32:18 ◼   ► Those are not good things to put yourself out as being, especially when you're really

00:32:23 ◼   ► relying on the public to get behind you.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Yep.

00:32:27 ◼   ► All right, after this break, we're going to talk about some of the product updates and

00:32:31 ◼   ► announcements.

00:32:32 ◼   ► But first, let me take a moment to thank our friends over at ITProTV for making this episode

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00:35:19 ◼   ► This special episode of Upgrade.

00:35:22 ◼   ► So we move on to the Apple Watch now. Just a very quick update on the Apple Watch. Basically

00:35:32 ◼   ► some statistics which are not very useful. Top selling smart watch number one in customer

00:35:37 ◼   ► satisfaction. Market's not huge right now. Yeah take a drink on the customer set numbers.

00:35:45 ◼   ► I guess the biggest news is the new bands. The watch does now start at $299 so there's

00:35:51 ◼   ► been a price drop which is great but you know the product is getting a bit old now so a

00:35:56 ◼   ► price drop is not crazy. This will probably help shift some of the stock that they've

00:36:02 ◼   ► got in advance of new hardware later in the year. So we have a few new bands. We have

00:36:07 ◼   ► a woven nylon band. It's kind of like the NATO bands that people were talking about.

00:36:12 ◼   ► The images that Apple showed on stage, they didn't look too great to me. The images on

00:36:17 ◼   ► Apple's website and from Verge hands-on look nicer so I'm assuming you've seen

00:36:21 ◼   ► these these bands Jason what's your opinion?

00:36:26 ◼   ► They're not I mean they're not for me but they're nice they're there I like

00:36:31 ◼   ► you know we had those rumors about that they were gonna do the NATO watch strap

00:36:35 ◼   ► style sort of thing and instead it's more like Apple's take on that with the

00:36:40 ◼   ► with the woven nylon. So if you want a woven fabric band, they look nice. That's not my,

00:36:48 ◼   ► you know, preference in terms of style, but they look nice. And then they also did... and Tim Cook

00:36:57 ◼   ► actually said, I believe, "Spring colors." These are our spring colors. So it's fascinating to see

00:37:03 ◼   ► the fashion angle here where they refresh the colors so there are like, I don't know, I have

00:37:10 ◼   ► a picture of it, like 20 new bands if you count all the different colors of all the different

00:37:16 ◼   ► styles. There's even like the sport band, the orange that I've got, that's out. There's a new

00:37:21 ◼   ► orange. So see, this is what I'm saying, it's fascinating because it's all about

00:37:27 ◼   ► personalization and style and fashion and I think that's fun. I wish Apple would get beyond the four

00:37:34 ◼   ► colors of the iPhone and MacBook. I wish we would have some more fun colors in the other products

00:37:45 ◼   ► they make. Well all of the colors, the new spring colors, are reflected in the in new cases for the

00:37:51 ◼   ► iPhone. Yeah you can put a case on that. That's fine. I just, you know, I would love the iPhone

00:37:56 ◼   ► to get colorful again. Or colorful like the Nanos got colorful at some point. I know we've

00:38:03 ◼   ► talked about that before. But yeah, it's more styles and there was a statistic too. I forget

00:38:10 ◼   ► what it was that what a third of Apple Watch users wear more than one band. I didn't catch that,

00:38:16 ◼   ► but that doesn't surprise me. Yeah, and I'm one of those people. I have three different bands.

00:38:21 ◼   ► I switch them around. I like wearing them all and it's just kind of fun. It makes my watch feel more

00:38:27 ◼   ► fun to wear because it's not the same old same old all the time. I wear the orange for a while.

00:38:33 ◼   ► I've got the orange on now, the orange sport, and then I'll think, "Oh, I'm going to switch to the

00:38:38 ◼   ► black leather now," and I'll wear that for a little while and then I'll switch to the black sport.

00:38:41 ◼   ► It's fun to have that. I am not a fashionable person, so I'm not really doing it so much to

00:38:49 ◼   ► to be seen as I am to to just have kind of fun and enjoy what I'm wearing.

00:38:55 ◼   ► And yeah, and just have it not seem like, you know, it's like you bought a new thing

00:39:00 ◼   ► except you didn't.

00:39:00 ◼   ► You just walked in a new band for a while.

00:39:03 ◼   ► So the new sport bands that I'm personally interested in,

00:39:07 ◼   ► there is a yellow, a royal blue and the product red.

00:39:10 ◼   ► So I want to go to a store and look at those.

00:39:13 ◼   ► They have the woven nylon bands, which I want to take a look at.

00:39:18 ◼   ► I'm hoping that maybe they'll be in the Apple stores tomorrow.

00:39:21 ◼   ► I'll take a look and see if I can reserve one and go take a look at one.

00:39:24 ◼   ► They have a new black Milanese loop and they for the first time

00:39:28 ◼   ► have colors in the classic buckle.

00:39:31 ◼   ► So they have a bunch of colored leather and colors in the modern buckle as well.

00:39:35 ◼   ► So they're branching out of just the standard ones there.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Yeah, there was a there was like a purpley purpley or bluey kind of.

00:39:43 ◼   ► I'm bad with colors of classic buckle that I really I thought looked really great.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yeah. And I know, I thought of you, the moment I saw this, I thought of you and I thought,

00:39:52 ◼   ► "Oh, Myke's going to be going to the Apple store and stare at the pretty new colors and

00:39:56 ◼   ► come home with a new Apple Watch band or two." I love them. I really, as you say, it's about

00:40:01 ◼   ► the customization thing and I like changing them up. I think it's fun. They're not massively

00:40:06 ◼   ► expensive. I mean, look, if you add up how much money I will have ended up spending,

00:40:10 ◼   ► you know, I could end up getting close to buying another Apple Watch. But my hope would

00:40:14 ◼   ► be that these will work on my next one too. So I think this is just a fun little thing,

00:40:20 ◼   ► I like to do it in the same way that people would buy clothes. So that's all that we have

00:40:24 ◼   ► on the Apple Watch which is not surprising, I think that was all that we expected. I think

00:40:28 ◼   ► maybe we got more band customisation than we thought we were going to get. Some of those

00:40:33 ◼   ► modern buckle and leather, the modern buckle and the clasp one and the classic buckle that

00:40:40 ◼   ► I think that we weren't really expecting to get all of those so you know there's more

00:40:43 ◼   ► there.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Then we move on to the Apple TV, not really much mentioned here, just tvOS 9.2 is now

00:40:50 ◼   ► available, it has folders and dictation, they mentioned on stage.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Was this Jaws giving this part of the presentation?

00:40:59 ◼   ► Yeah Greg Jawsiak who has been at Apple forever and occasionally appears in keynotes and other

00:41:08 ◼   ► media events and it was Jaws doing the... he did the iPhone, did he do the Apple TV?

00:41:14 ◼   ► Or was that... that would have been Tim Cook.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Yeah it was either Tim or Craig I think.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Basically the usual suspects weren't on stage today.

00:41:26 ◼   ► It was Tim I think.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Craig Federighi wasn't on stage today.

00:41:29 ◼   ► And neither was Eddie.

00:41:30 ◼   ► No, instead that was Craig Jaws.

00:41:32 ◼   ► So the Apple TV stuff, I mean, it's the stuff that was in the beta.

00:41:37 ◼   ► So people who've been following the beta know about it.

00:41:39 ◼   ► But you know, I think for me,

00:41:40 ◼   ► most notable is support for iCloud photo library.

00:41:43 ◼   ► The fact, and for every Apple TV update,

00:41:45 ◼   ► we're gonna say the same thing,

00:41:46 ◼   ► which is why was that not in there when it launched?

00:41:49 ◼   ► But it's in there now.

00:41:51 ◼   ► That was one of the great mysteries to me.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And yeah, support for dictation,

00:41:56 ◼   ► support for more data sources,

00:41:57 ◼   ► with even more on the way.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Tim Cook said, that was Tim Cook,

00:42:01 ◼   ► 'cause I remember him, he got to say,

00:42:03 ◼   ► "Great HBO, like Game of Thrones and Veep,

00:42:05 ◼   ► And then of course Silicon Valley.

00:42:09 ◼   ► So yeah, that's all good.

00:42:11 ◼   ► It's just, it's funny.

00:42:13 ◼   ► I don't want to complain about it

00:42:14 ◼   ► because I think it's great that they keep iterating

00:42:16 ◼   ► on Apple TV and they should keep iterating on it.

00:42:19 ◼   ► It's a little bit funny that a lot of this stuff

00:42:22 ◼   ► has taken six months to get on the device.

00:42:24 ◼   ► But it's great that they're doing it.

00:42:26 ◼   ► I'm very happy to see after, you know,

00:42:29 ◼   ► what, a couple of years of stasis with the old Apple TV

00:42:32 ◼   ► that the shipping of the Apple TV last fall

00:42:36 ◼   ► was not the end of the conversation,

00:42:38 ◼   ► that they're actively adding new stuff to it to this day.

00:42:42 ◼   ► That's actually great to see.

00:42:44 ◼   ► - You know, when I hear this, and we look at this,

00:42:48 ◼   ► it's like, I think it would have maybe just been easier

00:42:50 ◼   ► for them if this just wasn't called the Apple TV,

00:42:52 ◼   ► it was called something else.

00:42:54 ◼   ► Because this was a product that already existed,

00:42:57 ◼   ► we're on the fourth generation of it,

00:42:58 ◼   ► and we took major steps back,

00:42:59 ◼   ► and eventually it will be better and much better

00:43:02 ◼   ► it already is better in some instances, but we lost some features that we were kind of clawing back over time and say well

00:43:09 ◼   ► It's kind of is a different product really, but it unfortunately shares the same name

00:43:14 ◼   ► but it would be

00:43:17 ◼   ► Your comparison would be to the MacBook right where the new MacBook is not the MacBook Air

00:43:22 ◼   ► Which means that we can complain about it being slower than the MacBook Air, but it's not the MacBook Air

00:43:29 ◼   ► We can't say the MacBook Air just got slower because it's a different product with different attributes. Yeah, and then with the Apple TV

00:43:35 ◼   ► It's just the Apple TV. So it it looks like a you know, it's progress on some fronts and regression on others and

00:43:42 ◼   ► You know, but it's good like like I said, it's good to see this stuff

00:43:47 ◼   ► I can say that maybe some of it should have been there sooner, but you know, it's there now and

00:43:51 ◼   ► That's good. That's raining

00:43:55 ◼   ► It comes the rain. Yeah, this is the one thing we were hoping wouldn't happen

00:43:59 ◼   ► It is coming down hard. Don't you live in California?

00:44:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess we get all of our rain in a very short burst it's right now which is right it's funny leaving

00:44:11 ◼   ► Leaving Apple. I it started to rain and I people were scurrying and Apple PR people were like

00:44:18 ◼   ► Engage rain protocol. Hey

00:44:22 ◼   ► because

00:44:25 ◼   ► The event was, as I mentioned at the beginning when I was driving down here, the event was,

00:44:31 ◼   ► this is like a downpour, people were like stopped on the freeway. This is amazing.

00:44:35 ◼   ► The event was held in town hall, but we entered through R&D1. So they had to station people

00:44:45 ◼   ► throughout the entire center of the Apple campus to show us where to go and more specifically to

00:44:51 ◼   ► have us stay away from places the public is not supposed to go. And so those people all got very

00:45:01 ◼   ► wet. And some of them had umbrellas, but I think when they engaged the rain protocol, that's what

00:45:07 ◼   ► they were doing. It was basically trying to figure out, like, can we hand out the raincoats to the

00:45:14 ◼   ► people or do they have everybody exit some other direction or something? I don't know.

00:45:19 ◼   ► In California we don't expect the rain and so it's always a surprise when it comes.

00:45:23 ◼   ► So moving on we have the iPhone. So iPhone is up next and basically this is all about the iPhone SE

00:45:33 ◼   ► which is the product name. Apple kind of did a good job here which is something I think they've

00:45:40 ◼   ► been criticized that lately and actually they do a good job with the iPad as well and which we'll

00:45:45 ◼   ► which we'll talk about in a bit,

00:45:46 ◼   ► of explaining why this product exists.

00:45:49 ◼   ► This has been a criticism of previous keynotes, I think,

00:45:53 ◼   ► in the tech press and on other podcasts,

00:45:57 ◼   ► is they weren't doing a good job

00:45:58 ◼   ► of explaining why the product exists,

00:46:00 ◼   ► but they make this very clear.

00:46:01 ◼   ► - Well, you're going against

00:46:02 ◼   ► conventional wisdom here, too, right?

00:46:03 ◼   ► The conventional wisdom is the future is bigger phones,

00:46:08 ◼   ► so why would you do something that was not a bigger phone?

00:46:12 ◼   ► Why in the world would you go backward?

00:46:14 ◼   ► And so they have to say-

00:46:15 ◼   ► - I'll tell you why.

00:46:16 ◼   ► It's because they sold 30 million four inch phones in 2015.

00:46:20 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:46:22 ◼   ► And again, this comes back to perspective.

00:46:24 ◼   ► We tech savvy people, we're buying the more expensive phone.

00:46:31 ◼   ► We are on the cutting edge.

00:46:32 ◼   ► We want the giant screen.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Our priorities are not the priorities of everybody.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And that's what they said is like

00:46:41 ◼   ► in certain parts of the world

00:46:43 ◼   ► and in people buying their first smartphone,

00:46:48 ◼   ► there are lots of scenarios where this is the phone

00:46:54 ◼   ► that they want, is the four inch phone.

00:46:56 ◼   ► And they sold a lot of them.

00:46:58 ◼   ► And so it may be boring to us.

00:47:01 ◼   ► It may be a small part of the market

00:47:04 ◼   ► compared to the whole smartphone market,

00:47:06 ◼   ► but it's still important.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And I think the larger story is Apple needed

00:47:11 ◼   ► modern product to replace the 5S, right? Because they still want a product in that slot, they

00:47:16 ◼   ► want a product of that size, they want a product of that price, but the 5S is just too old.

00:47:21 ◼   ► It's too slow, it doesn't do touch ID, it's just like, or I mean not touch ID, it doesn't

00:47:25 ◼   ► do Apple Pay, it's like all of these things that it can't do, the camera isn't very good,

00:47:31 ◼   ► you gotta do something there. And so this is, we kind of called it a couple years ago,

00:47:36 ◼   ► I think we talked about this a year plus ago, that at some point they were going to have

00:47:41 ◼   ► to decide, does the four inch phone fall off the bottom of the price list or not, and if

00:47:45 ◼   ► not, what do you do?

00:47:47 ◼   ► And this is the answer, which is, you know, we need to update the insides and make it

00:47:52 ◼   ► a 6S, essentially, on the inside, even though it looks like a 5S on the outside.

00:47:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:59 ◼   ► So, which is essentially what they did.

00:48:01 ◼   ► From a cosmetic perspective, basically all they seemed to mention on stage was Matt Chamford

00:48:07 ◼   ► Edges and it has all the colours and they have the reflective Apple logo.

00:48:13 ◼   ► There was rumours of curved glass on the edges, did you find this?

00:48:17 ◼   ► I'm sure you've seen and handled the SE.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Yes I held it in my hand.

00:48:25 ◼   ► It is a 5S.

00:48:28 ◼   ► It is a 5S through and through.

00:48:30 ◼   ► You would not, other than some very subtle things,

00:48:35 ◼   ► I'd say most notably, very subtly,

00:48:38 ◼   ► that the Apple on the back is different,

00:48:40 ◼   ► and the fact that the chamfers are matte and not shiny,

00:48:44 ◼   ► it is a 5S.

00:48:46 ◼   ► It looks no different.

00:48:51 ◼   ► It's that style.

00:48:52 ◼   ► If you're hoping for a four-inch phone

00:48:56 ◼   ► that looked like an iPhone 6, you're not gonna get it,

00:48:58 ◼   ► because it is a dead ringer for the iPhone 5S.

00:49:03 ◼   ► - So I guess this was one of the things

00:49:06 ◼   ► from the Gorman rumors that didn't really pan out that way,

00:49:10 ◼   ► right?

00:49:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wonder.

00:49:12 ◼   ► We were also talking at the event about,

00:49:15 ◼   ► one of the challenges about not having any leaks

00:49:17 ◼   ► for this product is how would you know?

00:49:20 ◼   ► If it looks exactly like the 5S,

00:49:26 ◼   ► how would you even know that it was not the 5S, right?

00:49:31 ◼   ► That no part leak would do it justice

00:49:34 ◼   ► because all the chassis at least is exactly the same,

00:49:37 ◼   ► or almost exactly the same.

00:49:39 ◼   ► So that's a way for Apple to do things in secret,

00:49:43 ◼   ► is not change the case.

00:49:45 ◼   ► - I don't know how far that's gonna work.

00:49:48 ◼   ► - No, probably has limited usefulness,

00:49:51 ◼   ► but it worked in this case.

00:49:53 ◼   ► - So talking about the insides of this thing,

00:49:55 ◼   ► It's a 6S in a small body.

00:49:57 ◼   ► It has the A9 and the M9, significantly improved battery,

00:50:01 ◼   ► has a 12 megapixel camera, focus pixels,

00:50:05 ◼   ► true tone flash, live photos, retina flash on the front,

00:50:09 ◼   ► because the phone's thicker, there's no camera bump.

00:50:13 ◼   ► It has Apple Pay in it as well.

00:50:14 ◼   ► This is, you know, for all intents and purposes,

00:50:17 ◼   ► this is an iPhone 6S Mini.

00:50:19 ◼   ► - It really is, it really is.

00:50:22 ◼   ► And I think some people will be surprised

00:50:25 ◼   ► that it's so powerful.

00:50:28 ◼   ► My gut feeling is that it's this powerful

00:50:33 ◼   ► because they probably don't expect

00:50:34 ◼   ► to update this product every year.

00:50:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, like what happened with the Mini.

00:50:39 ◼   ► - Exactly, right?

00:50:40 ◼   ► You make it, you make it with the iPad Air 2, right?

00:50:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:50:44 ◼   ► - Where you make it really powerful

00:50:45 ◼   ► and then you don't need to update it for a couple of years.

00:50:50 ◼   ► And that's, I think that's what they're doing here

00:50:52 ◼   ► I don't think in a year we're going to see a new bumped iPhone SE.

00:50:56 ◼   ► I think the iPhone SE will be like this for a couple of years.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And then at some point, maybe, they will bump it to the iPhone 7 or 7S spec.

00:51:05 ◼   ► But right now, it's a 6S to all intents and purposes.

00:51:11 ◼   ► The processor may be clocked down, I don't know.

00:51:14 ◼   ► And I don't know about the RAM in it.

00:51:16 ◼   ► it. But yeah, I asked about the camera and they said, well, the body is different because

00:51:24 ◼   ► the phone body is different, but that the camera itself is 12 megapixel camera. I mean,

00:51:29 ◼   ► it's basically a success camera, does live photos, does big panoramas. It does all the

00:51:34 ◼   ► stuff that the iPhone 6s does, just in a smaller size. I think for people who really like that

00:51:42 ◼   ► size and are not enamored with the bigger phone other than the fact that it's the way you get the

00:51:48 ◼   ► latest greatest, you're essentially not going to get any compromise if you get the four-inch

00:51:54 ◼   ► phone right now. You're getting last year's phone, right? That is something to think about.

00:52:00 ◼   ► It's the current phone, but it's last year's phone. It's the 2015 specs in the 2016 product

00:52:07 ◼   ► and maybe the 2017 product, but right now it's on class with the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

00:52:16 ◼   ► So do you think that there's going to be a significant amount of people that

00:52:23 ◼   ► go back down to the smaller size now that the performance is there?

00:52:29 ◼   ► Oh it's a good question. I feel like

00:52:34 ◼   ► I feel like it's a lot of us are going to just be used to the size and not go back,

00:52:44 ◼   ► just because it's like once you get the bigger screen size it's awfully hard to give it up.

00:52:50 ◼   ► But I do think there's a class of user who never upgraded because they wanted the small

00:52:58 ◼   ► size and I believe there's a class of user who upgraded to the bigger phone because they

00:53:03 ◼   ► wanted the latest, greatest hot phone and doesn't love the size, but it's put up with

00:53:08 ◼   ► it.

00:53:09 ◼   ► So I do think that there are people in both of those camps, I think most people aren't.

00:53:13 ◼   ► I think most people are going to be happy with the 6 or the 6 Plus, or 6S and 6S Plus

00:53:18 ◼   ► size.

00:53:19 ◼   ► But there will definitely be some people who go back and some people who never left and

00:53:26 ◼   ► now don't have to.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Do you have any other thoughts of your own?

00:53:31 ◼   ► I assume looking at this device outside of the fact

00:53:34 ◼   ► that you've already used a 5S before

00:53:36 ◼   ► and you know what iOS 9.3 looks like,

00:53:40 ◼   ► there probably isn't much exciting going on to talk about?

00:53:43 ◼   ► - I think the excitement is if you're using a 5S,

00:53:47 ◼   ► you're using a phone that's two years old,

00:53:49 ◼   ► two and a half years old now.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And if you update to this, the excitement is,

00:53:53 ◼   ► if you draw the line from the 5S,

00:53:57 ◼   ► It's like twice as fast and has better battery life

00:54:01 ◼   ► and has this much better camera and does Apple Pay

00:54:03 ◼   ► and all these features, every feature that has come

00:54:06 ◼   ► in the last two and a half years to iPhones,

00:54:08 ◼   ► you haven't gotten 'cause you're still on the 5S.

00:54:11 ◼   ► So from that perspective is where it's especially impressive

00:54:14 ◼   ► for the rest of us, yeah, it is.

00:54:16 ◼   ► If you can picture all the functionality of an iPhone 6S

00:54:20 ◼   ► in an iPhone 5S, that's it.

00:54:23 ◼   ► That's what it is.

00:54:24 ◼   ► Like, literally, that's what it is.

00:54:27 ◼   ► It has almost nothing else about it is different.

00:54:30 ◼   ► It's this year's model in, you know,

00:54:33 ◼   ► the last two years ago model's body.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - So this phone is starting at 399 for 16 gigabytes.

00:54:43 ◼   ► Do you have any feeling about the 16 gigabyte?

00:54:45 ◼   ► - I saw people complaining about it on the internet

00:54:50 ◼   ► 'cause that's what people do.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I don't know, I feel like for the essentially free phone,

00:54:56 ◼   ► the free with contract rock bottom prices phone,

00:54:59 ◼   ► I'm kinda okay with the 16.

00:55:01 ◼   ► - Same.

00:55:02 ◼   ► - There is a 64 option for $100 more.

00:55:06 ◼   ► You know, when they make the case that this is a phone

00:55:10 ◼   ► that sells well to people who are looking

00:55:12 ◼   ► for a cheaper phone or getting their first phone,

00:55:17 ◼   ► I think this goes to that, which is,

00:55:21 ◼   ► this is the low phone on their price list.

00:55:24 ◼   ► They gotta have places where they cut back.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And this is not where I would complain

00:55:30 ◼   ► about it being base 16.

00:55:32 ◼   ► I'm gonna complain more about 16 as a base in an iPhone 7.

00:55:36 ◼   ► But the iPhone SE, I think it's understandable

00:55:40 ◼   ► that that would start at the rock bottom,

00:55:41 ◼   ► like just as low as we can possibly make it

00:55:45 ◼   ► and still sell it.

00:55:46 ◼   ► So it doesn't bother me.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Does it bother you?

00:55:49 ◼   ► In this phone, no it doesn't. Because it is cheaper and this is the phone that for many

00:56:00 ◼   ► people they want to be as cheap as possible so if this keeps the price down any then it's

00:56:07 ◼   ► every you know every penny is well saved. We did just have somebody else go over Twitter.

00:56:13 ◼   ► Does this have 3D touch this phone? I don't think it does right?

00:56:18 ◼   ► does not know. So that's the one thing that it is missing from the 6s then? Yes.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Okay. Yes. Yeah so as you said there's a 64 gigabyte which is $499 pre-orders on

00:56:28 ◼   ► March 24th available on March 31st and it'll be in 100 countries by the end of

00:56:33 ◼   ► May. Yep yeah and I think I think I think it'll do well for them because as they

00:56:38 ◼   ► put up the stats the 5s has been doing well for them and this is a way better

00:56:42 ◼   ► phone. So I think it's going to do well for them. All of us, again, tech nerds, are going

00:56:49 ◼   ► to be bored by it, but it's not for us.

00:56:52 ◼   ► This was, again, another strange thing today. In talking about the justification of this

00:56:56 ◼   ► product and then the justification of the smaller iPad Pro, they gave numbers away.

00:57:01 ◼   ► So they gave numbers away of how many 4-inch phones are sold, and they gave numbers away

00:57:06 ◼   ► about how many 9.7-inch iPads have been sold.

00:57:12 ◼   ► - I know, they're teasing us.

00:57:14 ◼   ► They love bringing out those numbers.

00:57:16 ◼   ► They know all the details, right?

00:57:18 ◼   ► And they don't have to release those in the financials.

00:57:22 ◼   ► And every now and then they do,

00:57:23 ◼   ► and this is where you see the chart from Horace Deju,

00:57:25 ◼   ► where he's gotten like three times

00:57:29 ◼   ► they've mentioned this figure,

00:57:30 ◼   ► and I can make a chart from that, right?

00:57:32 ◼   ► But it's not something we get every quarter,

00:57:34 ◼   ► so you have to do some intuiting of the numbers

00:57:37 ◼   ► and what they all mean.

00:57:38 ◼   ► So I love it when they do that.

00:57:40 ◼   ► They dropped just enough data to help their case,

00:57:43 ◼   ► but it's not data we've heard before

00:57:44 ◼   ► and we may never hear it again.

00:57:46 ◼   ► It's hilarious, but they did.

00:57:47 ◼   ► They talked about how many of those small phones

00:57:50 ◼   ► they've sold and how many of those

00:57:52 ◼   ► normal sized iPads they've sold.

00:57:54 ◼   ► - The last thing on iPhone, I guess,

00:57:58 ◼   ► it was in this segment.

00:57:59 ◼   ► iOS 9, sorry, iOS 9.3 is available today.

00:58:04 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Yes, I've been running that--

00:58:10 ◼   ► - Not really anything to say there

00:58:11 ◼   ► that we don't already know.

00:58:12 ◼   ► - I've been running that beta for a while.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Have you?

00:58:15 ◼   ► I know that there was a funny moment on,

00:58:17 ◼   ► for people who aren't listening to Canvas,

00:58:18 ◼   ► which is a great show about iOS productivity

00:58:21 ◼   ► with Fraser and Federico.

00:58:23 ◼   ► They were making statements about what the iPad can do

00:58:26 ◼   ► based on the 9.3 beta, and somebody wrote in to say,

00:58:29 ◼   ► why can't my device do that?

00:58:30 ◼   ► And it turned out, oh, that's because you're not

00:58:32 ◼   ► on the beta.

00:58:35 ◼   ► I have nothing but my highest recommendations for 9.3.

00:58:39 ◼   ► I've been running the beta on that iPad Pro for a while.

00:58:41 ◼   ► It fixes a lot of iPad Pro problems with 9.2

00:58:45 ◼   ► and has been very stable for me.

00:58:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, outside of the issue that I had with the Pencil,

00:58:51 ◼   ► which has now been resolved,

00:58:53 ◼   ► also nothing but good things to say about 9.3.

00:58:57 ◼   ► Night Shift really is a fantastic feature

00:59:00 ◼   ► and is worth upgrading alone just for that.

00:59:02 ◼   ► it really will change the way that you think about

00:59:05 ◼   ► using your device, it's lovely, I really like it.

00:59:08 ◼   ► You know, it's made me go and install Flux on my Mac

00:59:12 ◼   ► because I was enjoying it so much.

00:59:15 ◼   ► I wish that they could have done it

00:59:17 ◼   ► or could do it with the Apple Watch

00:59:19 ◼   ► 'cause now I have this bright blue light on my wrist

00:59:21 ◼   ► in the evenings.

00:59:22 ◼   ► - Ah.

00:59:23 ◼   ► - But it seems that I would assume they would have done that

00:59:25 ◼   ► if they could have done that.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Maybe the display technology is not good enough to do that.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Alright, let's take our next break and then we'll start talking about the iPad.

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01:00:08 ◼   ► You can add your company logo for that extra touch.

01:00:11 ◼   ► My favorite thing is they give you so many different ways for your client to give you

01:00:15 ◼   ► the money that they owe you.

01:00:18 ◼   ► They make it super simple to add payments by card, integrate with services like PayPal.

01:00:23 ◼   ► They have their own payment system.

01:00:25 ◼   ► They can let you put on information for checks, for bank transfers.

01:00:28 ◼   ► They make it possible for you to receive payments no matter how you want.

01:00:32 ◼   ► This will improve seriously how quickly you get paid.

01:00:36 ◼   ► FreshBooks has done some studies on this and their customers get paid 5 days faster on

01:00:41 ◼   ► average.

01:00:42 ◼   ► One of my other favourite things, you can see whether somebody has looked at an invoice

01:00:46 ◼   ► that you've sent them.

01:00:47 ◼   ► So no more excuses for lost invoices and also it just helps you know that somebody's dealing

01:00:51 ◼   ► with something.

01:00:52 ◼   ► for example, somebody has missed their payment date, you know, like I set them a 30 day terms

01:00:57 ◼   ► and it's day 31 or something and I'm going in and checking, I can go on to the history

01:01:02 ◼   ► and say, "Oh, they printed this two days ago, that checks on its way." Stuff like that really

01:01:06 ◼   ► helps me as a small business owner to also not put my foot in it with my customers as

01:01:10 ◼   ► well, which I really like. You can also set up automatic late payment reminders as well

01:01:14 ◼   ► if you want that. So it's all really good stuff. As well as invoicing, you can keep

01:01:18 ◼   ► track of your expenses, you can scan in receipts with their mobile app, their mobile app is

01:01:23 ◼   ► also really good for sending out invoices, I do that on my iPhone if I'm maybe out somewhere

01:01:28 ◼   ► and have something that I need to take care of. They have loads of third party integration,

01:01:32 ◼   ► support is super important to them, there's no phone tree, you call FreshBooks and someone

01:01:36 ◼   ► will pick up. You don't have to be a numbers person to understand FreshBooks, I use it

01:01:40 ◼   ► every day and I'm definitely not a numbers person. FreshBooks is offering a 30 day free

01:01:44 ◼   ► trial to listeners of this show, no credit card required. To claim your 30 days of unrestricted

01:01:50 ◼   ► use go to freshbooks.com/upgrade and please enter upgrade in the how you heard about us section.

01:01:56 ◼   ► This will let Freshbooks know that you've come from this show. Thank you so much to

01:02:00 ◼   ► Freshbooks for their support of upgrade and Relay FM. All right so I would say that this is probably

01:02:08 ◼   ► the main event, the iPad.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:02:13 ◼   ► So basically the kind of the spiel for this is Phil on stage doing this.

01:02:19 ◼   ► He said many people are telling us that the iPad Pro is becoming their primary computing

01:02:24 ◼   ► device.

01:02:25 ◼   ► They had lots of quotes from people about how the iPad Pro and the pencil is really

01:02:28 ◼   ► helping those who work in design.

01:02:30 ◼   ► They had John Lasseter up there.

01:02:32 ◼   ► They had a couple of other people whose names I can't remember but I just read Creativity

01:02:36 ◼   ► So John Lesnar's name is emblazoned in my brain.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Right. They had Christopher Finn, who used to be the editor at Mac format, I want to say.

01:02:47 ◼   ► And they quoted him, which was fun to see somebody I know quoted as praising the pencil.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Basically, they have introduced what Apple is referring to as the second member of the iPad Pro family.

01:03:01 ◼   ► It is 9.7 inches and weighs less than a pound.

01:03:07 ◼   ► And Apple, again, they address why are we making this, right?

01:03:12 ◼   ► They are saying that the display, the 9.7 inch display, is the display that they started

01:03:18 ◼   ► with because it's large but easy enough to carry.

01:03:21 ◼   ► It's portable.

01:03:23 ◼   ► It's the most popular iPad size.

01:03:25 ◼   ► They said they sold 200 million iPads in that size since they first started selling iPads.

01:03:31 ◼   ► So again, you can kind of work out how many, with that number, you can now go back and

01:03:36 ◼   ► work out how many iPad minis have been sold, you know, up to a certain point.

01:03:39 ◼   ► You know, there's, Horace Dedue can run around with his hair on fire with that number now.

01:03:44 ◼   ► He will.

01:03:46 ◼   ► He was there today too, so I'm sure he was writing all those numbers down.

01:03:49 ◼   ► He probably already had the chart going.

01:03:52 ◼   ► Also, this is something really interesting, but he spent quite a bit of time talking about

01:03:57 ◼   ► Windows here.

01:04:00 ◼   ► And they basically said that the majority of people that come to Apple products from

01:04:04 ◼   ► Windows go to the iPad, not the Mac.

01:04:08 ◼   ► And then they gave a statistic that there are 600 million PCs in use that are over five

01:04:13 ◼   ► years old and Apple want these people.

01:04:16 ◼   ► So I think I've seen some people saying, "Oh, that's good.

01:04:20 ◼   ► They're still running."

01:04:21 ◼   ► I don't think the point was that Apple was saying, "Look how old all these PCs are."

01:04:25 ◼   ► I think their point was these people are due for an upgrade soon and they want to make

01:04:29 ◼   ► sure that they can be that upgrade with the iPad. And they referred to the iPad as the

01:04:35 ◼   ► ultimate PC replacement in more than one instance here. This is a repositioning of the iPad,

01:04:41 ◼   ► and I am thrilled to see this marketing message.

01:04:45 ◼   ► Yeah, it's funny. They talk about it in terms of Windows PCs, because they don't want to

01:04:51 ◼   ► trample on the Mac, which didn't get mentioned at all.

01:04:54 ◼   ► We'll get to that.

01:04:55 ◼   ► I think that's good. I was talking to John Gruber afterward, and he pointed out quite

01:04:58 ◼   ► rightly that it's sort of a hard sell to say this makes laptops obsolete also we

01:05:05 ◼   ► here are some new laptops. How do you do that? That's my feeling on this as well.

01:05:10 ◼   ► So you kind of leave those as separate but yeah this is seeing it as an

01:05:18 ◼   ► opportunity I know they feel that people use PCs for you think about a five-year

01:05:26 ◼   ► older PC. These are people who bought a PC, a lot of them, because they needed something to get on the internet, right?

01:05:32 ◼   ► Again, we have to have the perspective here of not like a super tech enthusiast, but just as a regular person.

01:05:39 ◼   ► There was a time, not too long ago, where there were a whole class of things that we do that we considered computer things, right?

01:05:47 ◼   ► And we don't anymore, because we have iPads and smartphones. We don't consider those, the computer, the personal computer is not the only way to do those things.

01:05:54 ◼   ► But the people who bought these PCs, some percentage of them bought them for like email or to see the web.

01:06:03 ◼   ► And I'm sure Apple's done a lot of research on this front. Those people are ripe to replace those things with iPads.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Because they don't need anything more than an iPad to do those things. My mom is like that.

01:06:19 ◼   ► My mom had a computer, had a MacBook Pro, to do email and the web and some photos.

01:06:26 ◼   ► And it was overkill, but that was sort of like the best way to get it.

01:06:30 ◼   ► But she replaced her MacBook with an iPad Air.

01:06:35 ◼   ► And it's fine, because she didn't need a computer, she didn't need a PC to do what she did.

01:06:40 ◼   ► And so I think that's what Apple is looking at when they're thinking of that opportunity.

01:06:43 ◼   ► You could also argue, we've talked about a little bit,

01:06:47 ◼   ► I know I've said that I think Microsoft Office is really great on iOS.

01:06:51 ◼   ► There are people for whom the iPad is probably fine because their idea of why they have a computer is Microsoft Office, like is Excel or Word.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And even for those people, there's a story for the iPad.

01:07:05 ◼   ► So, you know, I think it's interesting that they're going straight at old PCs, but I think it also makes sense.

01:07:13 ◼   ► It goes back to the initial argument about the iPad, which is for a lot of people, it's

01:07:19 ◼   ► that car truck argument in a way.

01:07:21 ◼   ► For a lot of people, you really don't need to buy another PC.

01:07:24 ◼   ► If you're in the market for a new device to replace your Windows PC, why would you buy

01:07:29 ◼   ► another PC?

01:07:30 ◼   ► You don't need to use it for any of those things.

01:07:33 ◼   ► The iPad will do it all and be lighter and better.

01:07:38 ◼   ► So then they go on to talk about this product in a little bit more detail.

01:07:42 ◼   ► So well they throw in 1 million iPad apps, you know, fine.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Basically we have the same display materials here, they said as the iPad Pro 12.9, but

01:07:56 ◼   ► they have something new called True Tone, which appears to just be in the 9.7 iPad Pro

01:08:02 ◼   ► for now.

01:08:03 ◼   ► Yeah, there are a couple features that are only in the 9.7 iPad Pro, and we're really

01:08:07 ◼   ► have to come up with some shorthand for these things because 9.7 inch iPad Pro is a mouthful.

01:08:16 ◼   ► Yeah, let's see where this ends up settling down. Maybe Marco can give it a name like he did MacBook

01:08:21 ◼   ► One. Yeah, I saw Michael Gartenberg and Serenity Caldwell both were calling it the baby pro.

01:08:27 ◼   ► So we'll see. But at least for now let's continue with 9.7 and 12.9.

01:08:34 ◼   ► So there's True Tone, and then really quickly, the other feature that's slightly interesting is a wider color gamut.

01:08:42 ◼   ► So, you know, when the 5K iMac got revved and the 4K iMac came out, they had the support for this better color gamut.

01:08:57 ◼   ► They show more colors than the old 5K iMac that I've got.

01:09:03 ◼   ► That's the color gamut on the new iPad Pro, the 9.7 inch.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It's got, and not on the big iPad Pro.

01:09:09 ◼   ► So they're putting that wider color gamut

01:09:12 ◼   ► into mobile devices now,

01:09:14 ◼   ► and this is the first one to get it.

01:09:18 ◼   ► - So as well as the wide color gamut was this True Tone,

01:09:22 ◼   ► which is basically some additional sensors

01:09:24 ◼   ► that measure ambient light

01:09:25 ◼   ► and adjust the color temperature of the display

01:09:28 ◼   ► to make the display look more natural looking.

01:09:31 ◼   ► This sounds really great.

01:09:32 ◼   ► I've got to say, I'm a little bit miffed that this is in just this version.

01:09:37 ◼   ► It's interesting to me that just after a couple of months as the iPad Pro existing, that the

01:09:44 ◼   ► line has not only been duplicated but bifurcated.

01:09:48 ◼   ► That is an interesting decision to make on Apple's part here.

01:09:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess gone are the days of everything moving in lockstep, right?

01:09:57 ◼   ► Now things are just sort of like new features keep coming into the product line and then

01:10:02 ◼   ► keep moving out of the product line.

01:10:05 ◼   ► I wonder, there's a whole thing to be considered about what this means for the iPad Pro, the

01:10:11 ◼   ► big one.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Now that there's pencil support in the smaller device and all these other things that are

01:10:18 ◼   ► great in the smaller device, the iPad Pro is now a different choice, right?

01:10:26 ◼   ► choice based on wanting the size more than it is wanting the features, right?

01:10:31 ◼   ► Because the smaller iPad now has...so it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I too am kind of bummed out that my iPad Pro doesn't have this sensor.

01:10:41 ◼   ► So you know, all these devices have ambient light sensors so you can have it auto-adjust

01:10:44 ◼   ► the brightness, and I always hated that and generally I've turned that off in most of

01:10:48 ◼   ► my devices because I always hate sitting somewhere and the lighting slightly changes in the room

01:10:52 ◼   ► and suddenly my iPhone gets dimmer.

01:10:55 ◼   ► bugs me. But this is really interesting in that now it's detecting color, the color temperature

01:11:00 ◼   ► of the light in the room that you're in and adjusting the white point on the display,

01:11:08 ◼   ► which is really cool. That's a cool idea that if you're in a room with really yellow light,

01:11:15 ◼   ► what happens is your eyes adapt and your eyes do what photographers would call a white balance

01:11:20 ◼   ► in a camera because a camera is not eyes, your eyes adapt and say that this yellow light

01:11:27 ◼   ► on this white piece of paper is white.

01:11:30 ◼   ► But your iPad doesn't change color and their demo was really smart.

01:11:35 ◼   ► The iPad is always just like whatever color temperature it's set to.

01:11:40 ◼   ► So in a yellowish light, it's still going to have this really bluish white.

01:11:46 ◼   ► So with this sensor, if you're in yellowish light, it's going to reset its white point

01:11:50 ◼   ► to that and everything on the screen is going to be yellowish.

01:11:54 ◼   ► Which on one level you'd be like, "Well wait, hold on a second, I don't want that."

01:11:57 ◼   ► But in a lot of cases you probably do want that.

01:12:01 ◼   ► It probably feels a lot more natural to use the device.

01:12:05 ◼   ► And if you've ever flipped open your iPad or your iPhone in a dim and sort of yellowy

01:12:11 ◼   ► lit room and then shocked at how bright and blue the light seems. This is the feature

01:12:18 ◼   ► that prevents that. And you can turn it on and off, so if you don't like it, it's system

01:12:23 ◼   ► wide, you just turn it off and it doesn't do it anymore, just like the night shift setting.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Then we have four stereo speakers, the A9X and the M9, like the larger iPad Pro. Then

01:12:37 ◼   ► accessories. This is where it starts to get a little bit interesting. So we have

01:12:41 ◼   ► a new smart keyboard to fit the size. Did you get to try this?

01:12:44 ◼   ► I did. You know they shrunk down the keys. They shrunk down the keys. The only way

01:12:52 ◼   ► to get a keyboard on that smaller iPad is to make all the keys smaller. So while

01:12:59 ◼   ► the smart keyboard, the keyboard cover on the iPad Pro, big iPad Pro, is a

01:13:06 ◼   ► a full-size keyboard. This isn't. This is a shrunken down keyboard. And otherwise it feels exactly the same as the other one.

01:13:13 ◼   ► And they tried to make the modifier keys a little bit smaller so that they could, I'm sure, maximize the amount of keycap size for all the keys.

01:13:24 ◼   ► But if you're used to typing on a standard-sized keyboard, this one is not going to do it for you because it's not that size. It's scaled down.

01:13:32 ◼   ► For some people it won't matter. It's going to really depend on your personal typing preferences,

01:13:37 ◼   ► but it does not have going for it what the regular, you know, the big iPad Pro keyboard

01:13:44 ◼   ► cover has going for it, which is it's a standard keyboard layout. This is a shrunken down keyboard layout.

01:13:50 ◼   ► They then say that the greatest accessory Apple has ever made, the Apple Pencil, is also

01:13:57 ◼   ► enabled for this hyper pro. I agree with that. They're not making a smaller version of the pencils so that's good news

01:14:04 ◼   ► There's like the little pencil mini is not happening. It's just a regular old pencil. That would be bad though

01:14:10 ◼   ► There is a new SD card reader and a new powered USB camera adapter

01:14:18 ◼   ► But this is only half the story

01:14:20 ◼   ► Because this thing has a USB cable on and Schiller specifically called out on stage

01:14:25 ◼   ► you can do your podcasts right from an iPad Pro.

01:14:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, so he mentioned podcasts on stage

01:14:31 ◼   ► from the iPad Pro, that blew me away.

01:14:33 ◼   ► That was very interesting to even mention that.

01:14:35 ◼   ► I know, well, podcasters want to attach microphones to it.

01:14:38 ◼   ► And then I looked,

01:14:39 ◼   ► I thought about whether I should applaud then,

01:14:42 ◼   ► but I didn't want to be the only one applauding.

01:14:45 ◼   ► And then Rene Ritchie started applauding

01:14:47 ◼   ► and I immediately started applauding with him.

01:14:49 ◼   ► And we got a round of applause for podcasters

01:14:53 ◼   ► using microphones on the iPad Pro.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Let's get real here for a moment, shall we?

01:14:57 ◼   ► I mean, congratulations, we have a piece of hardware.

01:15:01 ◼   ► - Were we not real before?

01:15:02 ◼   ► - Where is the software that we need to go along it?

01:15:06 ◼   ► Now this is an Apple's thing, but like you can, you know,

01:15:08 ◼   ► it's fantastic that you can use a good microphone.

01:15:13 ◼   ► I don't know if it's gonna power the setup

01:15:15 ◼   ► that I would need, who knows, we can find out,

01:15:17 ◼   ► maybe it would.

01:15:18 ◼   ► But you know, what I would want to know

01:15:22 ◼   ► is that I have the software to use alongside it.

01:15:25 ◼   ► And what I want to be able to do is to have a call,

01:15:27 ◼   ► doesn't have, you know, in the background

01:15:29 ◼   ► and also record that call.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Now, until that happens, nobody's doing.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Well, there are people, but I can't,

01:15:36 ◼   ► just because you've given me the ability

01:15:38 ◼   ► to have a better microphone,

01:15:39 ◼   ► that actually doesn't really help too much.

01:15:41 ◼   ► I mean, it's great that you can do it, but it's one step.

01:15:43 ◼   ► The next step is being able to record the call.

01:15:48 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And you know, when you announce a product like this,

01:15:54 ◼   ► you're trying to come up with an example

01:15:56 ◼   ► of how you'd use this.

01:15:58 ◼   ► It's funny that they still call it the camera connector

01:16:00 ◼   ► and yet everybody knows and it's even recognized

01:16:02 ◼   ► on stage when it's announced.

01:16:03 ◼   ► They're like, yeah, it's called the camera connector

01:16:05 ◼   ► and you can connect your camera,

01:16:06 ◼   ► but you can connect other USB devices too,

01:16:09 ◼   ► like podcasters with microphones.

01:16:10 ◼   ► So my question is-

01:16:11 ◼   ► - Why don't you call it the USB connector?

01:16:14 ◼   ► - Well, one, why not call it the USB connector?

01:16:17 ◼   ► Two, why did you bring up the podcast?

01:16:19 ◼   ► Did you just feel you wanted another example?

01:16:21 ◼   ► Why did you bring it up on stage?

01:16:22 ◼   ► And three, if you care enough to use that as an example,

01:16:27 ◼   ► will you care enough to add better support

01:16:31 ◼   ► for audio recording into iOS 10?

01:16:35 ◼   ► I guess we'll have to wait and see for that one.

01:16:37 ◼   ► But if they do, then we'll all point back

01:16:40 ◼   ► to this announcement and be like,

01:16:41 ◼   ► "Aha, see, that's where they were going."

01:16:44 ◼   ► And if they don't, we'll be like,

01:16:46 ◼   ► you know, sad trombone, oh well.

01:16:48 ◼   ► 'Cause I'll say it, right, that people have been asking me

01:16:50 ◼   ► about it, as you can imagine.

01:16:53 ◼   ► I mean, the fact that you can power, this is step one,

01:16:56 ◼   ► this was the first thing that I wanted,

01:16:57 ◼   ► was the ability to use, hopefully, any microphone I want,

01:17:01 ◼   ► or better microphones than what's, you know,

01:17:03 ◼   ► the ones that currently don't work.

01:17:05 ◼   ► That is step one, step two is the software part,

01:17:07 ◼   ► and if that comes to bear, yeah, I would do it.

01:17:10 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think I would change

01:17:12 ◼   ► my everyday podcast recording, but on location

01:17:16 ◼   ► and stuff like that, 100% I would just use the iPad then.

01:17:20 ◼   ► And if Apple puts support for this sort of stuff into iOS,

01:17:25 ◼   ► would I have a problem with Federico doing it then?

01:17:27 ◼   ► No, I wouldn't.

01:17:28 ◼   ► My issue right now with, say, someone like him doing this

01:17:32 ◼   ► is purely because it just can't work elegantly.

01:17:36 ◼   ► There are people that do it,

01:17:37 ◼   ► but they have to do it in really weird ways.

01:17:39 ◼   ► What we're doing today is similar.

01:17:41 ◼   ► - That's exactly it. - I'm speaking to you

01:17:44 ◼   ► over your iPhone headset,

01:17:45 ◼   ► and then we have a recording at the end,

01:17:47 ◼   ► but I can't hear you as clearly,

01:17:49 ◼   ► that affects the way that I can interpret what you're saying

01:17:52 ◼   ► and I wanna hear you as clearly as I can.

01:17:55 ◼   ► - My better microphone is not attached to my iPhone,

01:17:58 ◼   ► it's attached to a recorder that is sitting here

01:18:01 ◼   ► on my passenger seat recording me

01:18:04 ◼   ► with this clip on microphone on my shirt,

01:18:08 ◼   ► but you can't hear that right as we record this live,

01:18:11 ◼   ► but in the final recording,

01:18:13 ◼   ► people will be able to hear that one.

01:18:14 ◼   ► And this is a case where if you can unify that

01:18:17 ◼   ► so that I can attach a good microphone

01:18:19 ◼   ► and record it on my end and you can hear it live

01:18:23 ◼   ► and then I can send you my recording when I'm done,

01:18:25 ◼   ► then we will have solved it.

01:18:26 ◼   ► But it's not, that requires some software help

01:18:30 ◼   ► from Apple really in order to get it to work right.

01:18:32 ◼   ► So maybe we'll get there.

01:18:35 ◼   ► And there are a few ways Apple could do it too.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Apple could do it, I don't wanna spend too much time

01:18:40 ◼   ► podcasters talking about podcasting,

01:18:41 ◼   ► but Apple could do it by changing things in the system.

01:18:45 ◼   ► Apple could also do it by supporting some of the audio

01:18:48 ◼   ► controls in the web browser that Chrome supports.

01:18:53 ◼   ► And then you could actually potentially use web apps

01:18:55 ◼   ► to do it, which would be a pretty sweet solution.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Huh?

01:18:59 ◼   ► But I would really rather Apple made it possible

01:19:04 ◼   ► to just sort of record arbitrarily from an input device

01:19:08 ◼   ► while other apps are running and using the same input devices.

01:19:13 ◼   ► That's what I really want is I want

01:19:15 ◼   ► Rogue Amoeba to be able to make audio hijack for iOS

01:19:19 ◼   ► and let me say, OK, here's my microphone

01:19:21 ◼   ► that I'm going to use on this Skype call.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Start recording it.

01:19:24 ◼   ► And then switch to Skype and make a call.

01:19:27 ◼   ► And right now you can't do that.

01:19:28 ◼   ► You can't have them both function simultaneously.

01:19:31 ◼   ► No.

01:19:31 ◼   ► And it would be lovely--

01:19:32 ◼   ► Anyway, the other piece of the puzzle was always how do you--

01:19:36 ◼   ► I in fact bought a USB hub the other week on Amazon,

01:19:41 ◼   ► specifically so that I could power a microphone

01:19:43 ◼   ► attached to an iPad.

01:19:45 ◼   ► And this will probably make that unnecessary,

01:19:49 ◼   ► which is pretty cool.

01:19:51 ◼   ► - So in the usual, what happens after these events,

01:19:53 ◼   ► little bits come out that you might not know about.

01:19:56 ◼   ► So it's an interesting thing.

01:19:58 ◼   ► The 12.9 inch iPad Pro transfers data

01:20:01 ◼   ► over that adapter at USB three speeds.

01:20:05 ◼   ► The 9.7 is at USB 2 speeds.

01:20:08 ◼   ► - Ah, ah-ha, take that, baby iPad Pro.

01:20:12 ◼   ► - You keep your display warmth.

01:20:14 ◼   ► - We got you there.

01:20:15 ◼   ► - There's also a new 29-watt USB-C power adapter

01:20:19 ◼   ► that enables faster charging on these devices.

01:20:21 ◼   ► - Huh, that makes sense, right?

01:20:24 ◼   ► Because this one's USB-C to Lightning.

01:20:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:20:29 ◼   ► - Huh, preparing us for the USB-C future.

01:20:32 ◼   ► - Yep, yep.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Then also we have the camera.

01:20:38 ◼   ► So the camera on the new iPad,

01:20:40 ◼   ► it's as good a camera as I believe in the iPhone,

01:20:45 ◼   ► the current iPhones, but it's got a bump.

01:20:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, the camera bump has moved from the iPhone 6

01:20:55 ◼   ► to the iPad Pro.

01:20:57 ◼   ► It's got a bump, it's got the same bump.

01:21:01 ◼   ► - Yep, yeah.

01:21:02 ◼   ► So did you get, I'm sure you got to handle this device,

01:21:06 ◼   ► did you get to see if that affected anything?

01:21:09 ◼   ► - I didn't put it flat down on the table

01:21:11 ◼   ► and try to write on it.

01:21:12 ◼   ► My guess is that it would probably not be a very serious,

01:21:15 ◼   ► little, you know, it would rock a little bit.

01:21:18 ◼   ► But I didn't get a chance to try that out.

01:21:19 ◼   ► I did some sketching in my hand, which is fun,

01:21:23 ◼   ► because you know, on the iPad Pro,

01:21:24 ◼   ► you kind of need to hand put it down to do that.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And I was able to just hold the iPad,

01:21:29 ◼   ► the small iPad Pro in my hand

01:21:31 ◼   ► and sketch with the other hand.

01:21:34 ◼   ► That was pretty cool.

01:21:36 ◼   ► That was pretty cool.

01:21:36 ◼   ► But I didn't lay it down and check what the,

01:21:39 ◼   ► kind of like, whether it rocks too much on a flat surface.

01:21:42 ◼   ► I imagine somebody will complain about it

01:21:45 ◼   ► and somebody else will say, "It's fine."

01:21:47 ◼   ► And that's where it'll probably end up.

01:21:51 ◼   ► But it definitely has the same bump.

01:21:53 ◼   ► - Hmm.

01:21:55 ◼   ► Don't know about that.

01:21:56 ◼   ► It's, that's upsetting.

01:21:58 ◼   ► Yeah, the camera bump is such an upsetting thing.

01:22:01 ◼   ► for it to go onto another device, you know.

01:22:04 ◼   ► If you use a case, it's fine,

01:22:06 ◼   ► but I wouldn't use a case on an iPad, like on the back.

01:22:09 ◼   ► I use a case on my iPhone, so I never notice the bump,

01:22:12 ◼   ► but I don't think I would like it so much on a device

01:22:14 ◼   ► that I very frequently have flat on a desk

01:22:17 ◼   ► and interact with it, and if there is a rock on that,

01:22:21 ◼   ► I would notice that way more than an iPhone,

01:22:24 ◼   ► because I don't think you have an iPhone down on a desk

01:22:27 ◼   ► interacting with it as much as you do an iPad.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Maybe with the smart cover flipped around to the back,

01:22:34 ◼   ► it would be fine if you use it like that.

01:22:36 ◼   ► So it could be okay that way.

01:22:40 ◼   ► I don't know if it would rock on the smart cover,

01:22:42 ◼   ► probably not.

01:22:43 ◼   ► So it might still be okay, but I know a lot of people

01:22:47 ◼   ► like to use their devices completely clean,

01:22:49 ◼   ► especially the iPad, so it's a shame, it's a shame.

01:22:52 ◼   ► But they gotta put the camera in there,

01:22:54 ◼   ► but then on the other side, for most people,

01:22:56 ◼   ► they don't really care about the camera.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Do you want to know something exciting?

01:23:00 ◼   ► - I do.

01:23:01 ◼   ► - I'm home.

01:23:02 ◼   ► - So the car cast was a success,

01:23:05 ◼   ► but you're now back in your office.

01:23:07 ◼   ► - Well, the car cast was such a rousing success

01:23:09 ◼   ► that the listeners of this podcast just accompanied me

01:23:13 ◼   ► on a drive from Cupertino to Mill Valley.

01:23:15 ◼   ► You can do the math.

01:23:16 ◼   ► You can see how it works.

01:23:17 ◼   ► I went through a rainstorm,

01:23:18 ◼   ► but I'm home now.

01:23:21 ◼   ► As you can tell, because there are no more car sounds.

01:23:27 ◼   ► So just going back a second then so we can pick back up.

01:23:32 ◼   ► I mean, I assume that Apple are aware of how many people use cameras on these devices.

01:23:39 ◼   ► So whilst we complain that, you know, now this thing might rock on the table, depending

01:23:45 ◼   ► on how you use it, they wouldn't put this camera in there unless they needed to, right?

01:23:51 ◼   ► They didn't do it on the Pro because maybe they assumed people would take photos less

01:23:55 ◼   ► on that because it's so big. I assume that they know that people use this camera and

01:24:00 ◼   ► that's why they've gone the length to upgrading it.

01:24:04 ◼   ► I assume so. I think this comes back to Apple knowing things that we don't, we may scoff

01:24:12 ◼   ► at, but that everybody else knows. And we saw this, we've seen this the last couple

01:24:16 ◼   ► of times that they've updated the iPad. It feels like they are embracing the fact that

01:24:20 ◼   ► people use the iPad to take pictures and so they might as well put a good camera back

01:24:25 ◼   ► there.

01:24:26 ◼   ► And it took some time for them to kind of come around from the idea that it wasn't necessary,

01:24:31 ◼   ► but they've come around now.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Yeah, so we'll see.

01:24:36 ◼   ► I don't know about that one.

01:24:37 ◼   ► There are colors like cases and there are also colors of the device.

01:24:44 ◼   ► So you can get the device in gold and rose gold, which you can't get with the 12.9.

01:24:50 ◼   ► And the colored cases, like the smart covers and stuff, they have colored versions.

01:24:53 ◼   ► You also still can't get those for the 12.9.

01:24:56 ◼   ► They're really, you know, that whilst this is a pro device, 12.9 is for serious business

01:25:02 ◼   ► and 9.7 is for fun.

01:25:04 ◼   ► Monochrome.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Very peculiar.

01:25:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't get it.

01:25:07 ◼   ► It may just be that it's not worth it, that they're not enough, the sales are not big

01:25:11 ◼   ► enough that it's worth having that many variations.

01:25:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess so, right? I guess so. It's just strange because they're making them now, but...

01:25:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, we haven't talked about the price. I mean, this is the aspect of it that's interesting too,

01:25:24 ◼   ► is the Air 2 was cheaper. - Yeah, so this starts at $599.32, right?

01:25:34 ◼   ► yep so that's that's an interesting wrinkle is that it's it's it's $599.32

01:25:40 ◼   ► that's where it that's where it begins and it's calling it pro all of these

01:25:43 ◼   ► things there are plenty of good reasons for it but it is interesting that that's

01:25:47 ◼   ► the case and it goes up to a massive 256 gigabytes which is now on the 12.9

01:25:55 ◼   ► which will take your purchase price over $1,000 if you go for the big iPad Pro I

01:26:01 ◼   ► I think with LTE, oh yeah, with and without LTE,

01:26:06 ◼   ► the 256 will take you over $1,000.

01:26:10 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:26:11 ◼   ► - $1,300 for the 256 with LTE.

01:26:16 ◼   ► - 256 though, that's pretty cool, huh?

01:26:18 ◼   ► - What would you do with that amount of space on an iPad?

01:26:21 ◼   ► I don't even know.

01:26:22 ◼   ► - I don't even know either photos.

01:26:25 ◼   ► - How many photos is that?

01:26:27 ◼   ► - That's a lot of photos.

01:26:27 ◼   ► - That's a lot of photos.

01:26:29 ◼   ► Movies but like do you really need I don't know. I guess you could fill it but

01:26:34 ◼   ► I'd be surprised if many people would fill it right now. All right, but we have the product line. We had the naming

01:26:40 ◼   ► So we have iPad mini iPad air 2 iPad Pro 9.7 inch iPad Pro 12.9 inch. That's what the slide said

01:26:48 ◼   ► Yeah

01:26:54 ◼   ► Yep, I don't really you know, it seems like Apple are referring to them as the 9.7 and the 12.9

01:27:00 ◼   ► I guess fine if that's how you want to do it and not something massively complicated

01:27:05 ◼   ► They they dropped the numbers on the iPad mini

01:27:08 ◼   ► I don't know why they still call it iPad air 2 when it doesn't seem like they're selling any other iPad is

01:27:15 ◼   ► Well, I mean that's the it's the version number right there. They're iPhone

01:27:21 ◼   ► Six yeah, but they don't know they oh, yeah, it's still iPad mini for it's still called the iPad mini

01:27:26 ◼   ► Well, I just said iPad mini on the slide, but okay. So there you go

01:27:29 ◼   ► They used the line at the end which they used a bunch. They called the iPad Pro the future of personal computing

01:27:36 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. So yeah, I think that really wraps into why we didn't see max

01:27:41 ◼   ► Today, I think so. I think it's a it's a different

01:27:46 ◼   ► different conversation different audience

01:27:49 ◼   ► Mac is the Mac is I would be surprised if they even I mean

01:27:53 ◼   ► I think the Mac is gonna get some people are gonna get the invites and get briefings and then there's gonna be a press release and

01:27:59 ◼   ► Some embargoes will drop and that's how we'll find out about new Macs between now and WWDC. Do you think yeah, probably

01:28:06 ◼   ► The rumors are that that stuff is ready to go. So that'll probably have maybe next month sense

01:28:11 ◼   ► I really do think that this was a this was a decision

01:28:15 ◼   ► to make a statement

01:28:18 ◼   ► about the iPad?

01:28:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I think so, and calling it pro is interesting because they're saying this is a

01:28:26 ◼   ► you know, this is a professional thing, and maybe that's also saying that

01:28:30 ◼   ► if you aren't thinking of this as a professional thing, then

01:28:34 ◼   ► um, then buy the Air 2 instead.

01:28:38 ◼   ► For less than it used to cost.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Any other thoughts on the iPad from handling it?

01:28:46 ◼   ► it? You know, it's an iPad Air, essentially. It is not that different. It doesn't seem

01:28:54 ◼   ► that different. This is something that could have been released as an iPad Air 3 and we

01:28:57 ◼   ► wouldn't have blinked, I think. Other than to say—and here's the argument that I think

01:29:01 ◼   ► somebody at Apple probably made—other than to say, "How is the iPad Pro a Pro if the

01:29:06 ◼   ► only thing differentiating it from this is the size?" I think that was the right decision.

01:29:12 ◼   ► so at that point why would you call that

01:29:14 ◼   ► "Pro" if there was another one that was

01:29:17 ◼   ► just as good but smaller. So I can see,

01:29:22 ◼   ► you know, you could argue that they need

01:29:26 ◼   ► to give the iPad Pro some kind of name,

01:29:28 ◼   ► the big one, and then what do you do with

01:29:31 ◼   ► this one then? Because now you kind of

01:29:32 ◼   ► either walled it off from those features

01:29:35 ◼   ► or you're going to have those features

01:29:36 ◼   ► and then why is this not Pro? So alright,

01:29:38 ◼   ► here it is, now it's Pro. And then it gets

01:29:41 ◼   ► back to what we were talking about about

01:29:42 ◼   ► about product lines that at that point the non-pro ones are the kind of not as

01:29:47 ◼   ► advanced but they're cheaper and that's what the iPad Air 2 is. And the question

01:29:54 ◼   ► is you know what happens to the iPad Air? Do we end up with an iPad Air SE?

01:29:58 ◼   ► iPad SE at some point that is essentially kind of a two-year-old tech

01:30:04 ◼   ► but cheaper instead of just selling the old model? It'll be interesting to see

01:30:10 ◼   ► what happens. What's the next step in this strategy beyond this year?

01:30:15 ◼   ► I'm interested to see how that plays out. So, overall, how do you feel about this event?

01:30:25 ◼   ► You know, it's a minor event in a lot of ways. It's a small event at Town Hall. These

01:30:34 ◼   ► are not other than like a couple new features these are not like huge

01:30:40 ◼   ► groundbreaking new products there's already a you know there's already an

01:30:43 ◼   ► iPad Air size and there's already iPad Pro features this is just sort of

01:30:46 ◼   ► bringing them together and likewise there's already iPhone 6s features and

01:30:51 ◼   ► there's already already the iPhone 5s design and the iPhone SE just brings

01:30:56 ◼   ► them together and so it's it's important for Apple's business. Apple wants to set

01:31:02 ◼   ► the stage for these products. These are products that actually, what's

01:31:06 ◼   ► interesting about them is they are more interesting as part of an ensemble than

01:31:12 ◼   ► they are on their own. I think, you know, what's interesting about the new iPad

01:31:16 ◼   ► Pro is that it's an iPad Pro with a big brother and that's how it's

01:31:21 ◼   ► being pitched. What's interesting about the iPhone SE is that it's the

01:31:24 ◼   ► four-inch iPhone in a family with two larger phones that are similarly specced.

01:31:29 ◼   ► I think those are both interesting, but they're both sort of supporting players.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Now, I think that the 9.7-inch iPad Pro will be the best-selling iPad of the

01:31:38 ◼   ► next year, right? I mean, I think that's the sweet spot. It's the new iPad and the

01:31:42 ◼   ► size that people are comfortable with. I think it'll sell really well. I think

01:31:45 ◼   ► that'll be the winner of the iPad line. So it's not like it's a minor iPad. It's

01:31:49 ◼   ► probably the best of the iPads and the biggest selling of the iPads. But what's

01:31:53 ◼   ► interesting about it is where it fits in the family, because it's stuff we've seen

01:31:57 ◼   ► before with a couple exceptions just not together in the same product.

01:32:05 ◼   ► So shall we move on to some Ask Upgrade questions?

01:32:09 ◼   ► Sure! We have Ask Upgrade, do I need to get back in the car?

01:32:13 ◼   ► No, you can stay where you are. Okay, okay, I will do that then.

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01:33:47 ◼   ► So we have some event-themed Ask Upgrade questions. The first comes from Rob. Who does all the

01:33:53 ◼   ► clapping at the Apple events?

01:33:56 ◼   ► The first five rows or so are reserved for Apple employees. You get Tim Cook and Phil

01:34:00 ◼   ► Schiller and Greg Joswiak and people like that in the first couple of rows, but there

01:34:05 ◼   ► are also a bunch of Apple people there. They do. And then there are also Apple-like invited

01:34:10 ◼   ► guests who are not press and those people will clap. Some press will clap

01:34:16 ◼   ► occasionally, maybe perfunctorily, but then the Apple employees will clap

01:34:21 ◼   ► loudly and they start a lot of applause and then once you've got an applause

01:34:23 ◼   ► going everybody sort of you know might politely applause. Sometimes you do,

01:34:27 ◼   ► sometimes you don't. I did a polite silent clap a couple of times, but

01:34:32 ◼   ► mostly it's the Apple employees and that's true of any Apple event. They put

01:34:37 ◼   ► VIPs and employees in the crowd and they're whooping it up and that helps make it seem

01:34:42 ◼   ► like less like a dead press conference because journalists wouldn't do it, generally.

01:34:51 ◼   ► This comes in from Jan.

01:34:54 ◼   ► About the 9.7 inch iPad price point.

01:34:57 ◼   ► So before it was $4.99 for 16GB, now it's $5.99 for 32GB instead of what was $64 before.

01:35:05 ◼   ► Why are they priced it this way?

01:35:06 ◼   ► Now my thinking would be that Apple feels that the additional features like the ability

01:35:11 ◼   ► to use the pencil, the screen stuff, and the ability to take this device, I mean, albeit

01:35:17 ◼   ► with more hundreds of dollars in accessories bolted on to another level, I think is what

01:35:22 ◼   ► they feel gives it that higher entry level price.

01:35:25 ◼   ► Why do you think it has the higher entry level price though?

01:35:29 ◼   ► I think it's that.

01:35:30 ◼   ► I think they're, you know, they've got the 32 and they have the Pro features and I think

01:35:39 ◼   ► they've just decided to embrace that.

01:35:42 ◼   ► It's a more expensive product, it's got a better screen, it's got the pencil support,

01:35:47 ◼   ► it's got the smart connector, it's got all those features that were in the more expensive

01:35:50 ◼   ► iPad Pro already and so this is an opportunity for them to just sort of go in on it and say

01:35:54 ◼   ► the people who are buying this product are people who want the Pro features and the Pro

01:35:59 ◼   ► features cost more. So I'm sure there's some buying psychology involved too, but I'm sure

01:36:04 ◼   ► some of it is the margins. This is almost certainly a more expensive product to make.

01:36:07 ◼   ► This comes in from Myke. For reading comics and magazines,

01:36:13 ◼   ► would you recommend the new 9.7 inch iPad Pro or the iPad mini 4?

01:36:17 ◼   ► Oh, for reading comics and magazines, I would always recommend the bigger screen.

01:36:24 ◼   ► Especially now with the increased color and all that sort of stuff, I guess it's even better,

01:36:28 ◼   ► right? Yeah, yeah. I had an iPad Mini for many years and you know it's small.

01:36:35 ◼   ► It was always small. Even though it's got the same number of pixels,

01:36:40 ◼   ► they're all so small. Unless you've got very good vision, you know you're

01:36:46 ◼   ► gonna end up zooming and panning and stuff. And so I think for reading comics

01:36:50 ◼   ► and magazines a bigger display is better. Mikkel's wrote in to ask, "Are we planning

01:36:57 ◼   ► on selling our 12 inch iPad Pros than a 9 inch. What about you?

01:37:00 ◼   ► No. No, I have no plans to do that. I, uh, we'll see how much, you know, I'll try it

01:37:07 ◼   ► out and I'll see. But I like the big size now. I look at my wife's iPad here too and

01:37:12 ◼   ► it looks like a toy. And split view and stuff like that is just so much better. And then

01:37:18 ◼   ► you drop in a picture in picture and it's just like, yeah, I mean, I've kind of embraced

01:37:22 ◼   ► that. I don't think I want to ever give that up.

01:37:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm all in on the size. It's not just the fact that it's the Pro, like what the

01:37:27 ◼   ► iPad Pro gets you. It really is the size for me.

01:37:30 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, plus I like the keyboard. I mean, I've got issues with the keyboard, but I was

01:37:36 ◼   ► using, for complicated reasons, I briefly was using an iPad Air 2 this weekend, and

01:37:43 ◼   ► it brought its keyboard up and I had a moment of recoil. I was like, "Ew." Like, "Ew, no.

01:37:48 ◼   ► Give me back my full-sized, lots-of-keys iPad Pro keyboard."

01:37:53 ◼   ► Yeah, so is that that keyboard is like the original iPad keyboard then? Yeah, I think so. I I

01:37:59 ◼   ► Didn't actually look but I don't see how it could couldn't be it's a 9.7 inch iPad

01:38:04 ◼   ► So it's gonna have the standard iPad keyboard. I'll take a quick sidebar about the

01:38:08 ◼   ► smart keyboard

01:38:10 ◼   ► cover

01:38:11 ◼   ► Still no international layout. Yeah, and I heard from somebody that that was gonna come eventually

01:38:16 ◼   ► But instead they made a smaller version of it Apple told Federico that it would come

01:38:21 ◼   ► They gave him that on the record.

01:38:24 ◼   ► Maybe it will come someday, but they had to build this one first?

01:38:27 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:38:28 ◼   ► It's too bad.

01:38:29 ◼   ► Or did they tell him the software keyboard would be changed?

01:38:32 ◼   ► Either or, the layouts.

01:38:34 ◼   ► Neither of them is true today.

01:38:37 ◼   ► And our final Ask upgrade question this week is, "How noticeable is the new display on

01:38:44 ◼   ► the 9.7" iPad Pro vs the 1290?"

01:38:47 ◼   ► Did you really see much of a difference from the minimal time you had with it?

01:38:51 ◼   ► you're asking the wrong guy,

01:38:52 ◼   ► 'cause it's about color gamut,

01:38:53 ◼   ► and I can't see those colors.

01:38:55 ◼   ► - Could you see the temperature change stuff though?

01:38:57 ◼   ► Like if you were to use it, yeah, you'd see that.

01:39:00 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, definitely.

01:39:01 ◼   ► Similar in fact to the night mode,

01:39:07 ◼   ► it's the same thing,

01:39:10 ◼   ► it's changing the color temperature of the display,

01:39:11 ◼   ► essentially.

01:39:12 ◼   ► And yeah, you can tell, it's pretty dramatic.

01:39:15 ◼   ► Even just in what you think of as a normally

01:39:19 ◼   ► neutrally lit room and then you press the button

01:39:22 ◼   ► and you go, "Oh!"

01:39:23 ◼   ► And everything gets a little, in this case,

01:39:25 ◼   ► a little more yellow, a little less blue.

01:39:27 ◼   ► - Something that I'd forgotten to mention until now,

01:39:33 ◼   ► which is kind of weird, I think,

01:39:36 ◼   ► that the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 4

01:39:40 ◼   ► are the same price now.

01:39:42 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:39:44 ◼   ► - That's weird, right?

01:39:46 ◼   ► - I guess.

01:39:47 ◼   ► I guess it's a they both do the same thing so they're the same price and you

01:39:51 ◼   ► just pick your poison

01:39:52 ◼   ► yeah maybe the mini will go down in price at a later time who knows it may

01:39:55 ◼   ► just be that the mini must be cheaper to produce surely

01:39:58 ◼   ► I don't know I mean it's got a smaller doesn't mean cheaper right some some of

01:40:05 ◼   ► that means many components are miniaturized and more expensive and it's

01:40:08 ◼   ► a relatively recent update and that means the margins are probably higher

01:40:12 ◼   ► right now but we'll get lower over time so probably it'll get its price cut in

01:40:16 ◼   ► six months or a year. Good point, good point. I have a couple of follow-up items

01:40:21 ◼   ► before we finish today. Yeah let's do it. Pepperoni pizza, pineapple pepperoni

01:40:25 ◼   ► pizza. Sweep in the world. Jason was right. You had some. I made some

01:40:31 ◼   ► this weekend. And then like ten other people tweeted pictures of pepperoni

01:40:34 ◼   ► pineapple pizza. Yeah we started a trend over the weekend. Some people were on

01:40:39 ◼   ► on board some people were being convinced some people really hated me

01:40:45 ◼   ► but I did it and I loved it Jason oh my word it was so good so good I really

01:40:52 ◼   ► loved it it is pizza it maybe is not the pizza that comes from places like New

01:40:59 ◼   ► York or Italy but I definitely made a pizza I put those toppings on it and I

01:41:05 ◼   ► enjoyed it very much. That's all I can ask. Everybody should just enjoy

01:41:10 ◼   ► what they want to enjoy and and if they don't want to enjoy it that's fine but

01:41:14 ◼   ► it was definitely it's one of my favorites. I don't even

01:41:20 ◼   ► remember how I discovered it but there there was. Yeah that is easily a

01:41:24 ◼   ► favorite flavor pairing because I have always liked ham and pineapple quite a lot

01:41:28 ◼   ► it was like one of my go-to's but pepperoni is my as of like maybe the

01:41:34 ◼   ► last couple of years has been my favourite. I think this might be edging it. The mix of

01:41:38 ◼   ► the sweet and savoury. Yeah. I'm a fan of that. And we mentioned about the upgrade merchandise,

01:41:44 ◼   ► all of my stuff came in. I'm so happy with it. The hoodies came out fantastically. In

01:41:49 ◼   ► so much now is that our faithful designer Frank has created an iPhone and Mac wallpaper

01:41:59 ◼   ► with the special design that was inside of the hoodie.

01:42:04 ◼   ► So there's two things here.

01:42:06 ◼   ► If you want to see what that design looked like, you can go and take a look at the wallpaper.

01:42:10 ◼   ► There'll be a link in the show notes.

01:42:12 ◼   ► And if you have seen it and you love it and you want to put on your devices with it, you

01:42:16 ◼   ► now can.

01:42:17 ◼   ► The Upgrading wallpaper exists and that design is what is printed on the inside of the upgrade

01:42:23 ◼   ► hoodies.

01:42:24 ◼   ► So if you didn't get one, now you can be jealous of all the people that did get one and you

01:42:28 ◼   ► should have listened to us when we told you to get one because we told you you'd want

01:42:32 ◼   ► it because it's also I've been wearing mine all week it's so toasty and warm I love it

01:42:38 ◼   ► and we've been getting pictures from people showing off their upgrade hoodies and they're

01:42:43 ◼   ► all members of the secret society now and those pictures have been great so thanks to

01:42:47 ◼   ► all the people tweeting at us those have been those have been great a lot less love for

01:42:52 ◼   ► the brain ball shirts but I love I think it's my favorite shirt that I've had made from

01:42:57 ◼   ► a podcast now. I wore the brain ball, I got the Raglan and I wore it this weekend for

01:43:03 ◼   ► the first time and I love it. In fact at one point I had the upgrade hoodie over the brain

01:43:07 ◼   ► ball Raglan and I felt like I was flying the flag. That was me over the weekend too. The

01:43:13 ◼   ► Raglan came out really well, I'm really happy with it. I'm pleased that we did all of that.

01:43:18 ◼   ► So again, I'm really pleased that we did that and I hope that everybody that has them enjoys

01:43:23 ◼   ► them.

01:43:24 ◼   ► So I think that wraps up our Apple event coverage.

01:43:27 ◼   ► Thank you so much for tuning in.

01:43:29 ◼   ► I hope that you enjoyed the car cast as it were.

01:43:34 ◼   ► We have a bunch of links in our show notes as always.

01:43:36 ◼   ► You can head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/81 to get all of those.

01:43:42 ◼   ► I want to take a moment to thank all of our sponsors for this week's episode, Ministry

01:43:46 ◼   ► of Supply, Squarespace, ITProTV and FreshBooks.

01:43:49 ◼   ► Jason, thank you for being on the scene and for reporting in for upgrade.

01:43:54 ◼   ► We obviously all really appreciate that.

01:43:58 ◼   ► Thank you for keeping me company, everyone, while I was driving back from the Apple event.

01:44:04 ◼   ► You will find a lot more of Jason's thoughts and opinions and feelings about the products

01:44:08 ◼   ► from today's announcement over at SixColors.com.

01:44:11 ◼   ► And I believe you'll be doing some stuff for other places, but you'll link to them there.

01:44:15 ◼   ► You should always go to Six Colors first and then go to other websites from there.

01:44:19 ◼   ► That's how I do all of my web browsing.

01:44:20 ◼   ► It's the definitive location for all of my things.

01:44:23 ◼   ► I begin at Six Colors and then hopefully find a link out to Google.

01:44:28 ◼   ► That's how I work.

01:44:29 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason on Twitter, he's @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L-L. I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:44:36 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening.

01:44:37 ◼   ► We'll be back next week.

01:44:38 ◼   ► Until then...

01:44:39 ◼   ► Oh, I won't be actually.

01:44:40 ◼   ► You have another special guest next week.

01:44:42 ◼   ► You blew it.

01:44:43 ◼   ► I'll get the week off.

01:44:44 ◼   ► Yep.

01:44:45 ◼   ► Yes, I will be back with a special guest.

01:44:49 ◼   ► Hopefully it will be Serenity Caldwell to talk about perhaps her thoughts about this

01:44:54 ◼   ► and what it means for pencil lovers to have a new iPad Pro in the family.

01:44:59 ◼   ► But we will hopefully Serenity will be here next week to fill in for you, Mr. Hurley.

01:45:04 ◼   ► Goodbye, everybody.

01:45:05 ◼   ► Goodbye.

01:45:06 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:45:09 ◼   ► [ Music ]