Upgrade - 113: It's An Honour and a Privilege to Defeat You

Episode Date: November 1, 2016

Myke and Jason are together again, and this time back in Ireland, to discuss Apple's big week. We cover Jason's time with the new MacBook Pro, Myke's excitement over the Touch Bar, Apple's quarterly results, and much more.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 113 today's show is brought to you by pingdom my name is mike curly and i am joined across the table from jason snell top of the morning to you jason snell hello mate that's. That's the wrong one. This is a podcast. We're in Ireland at the All Conference. We're back together again. Again. And we're recording. I see you an awful lot. This is like the fourth time I've seen you this year.

Something like that. You just can't quit me, Snell. No. We have some very important follow-up to start off this week's episode. We have the draft results. Oh, yes. Now, it is safe to say you destroyed me in the draft turns out i made a fatal flaw in my draft picks i expected apple would release more than one computer and i based many of my picks around that

you took many of your picks around what would happen to the MacBook and that really edged you out ahead in a very significant way. I didn't have a lot of confidence in the iMacs and the Mac Pro and the MacBook. And it turned out that was good. It turns out that was definitely the right move because you absolutely destroyed me. I want to run through them very quick so we can just talk about what you got. And there was just a couple of points that I wanted to discuss with you.

So new MacBook Pro. Yep. MacBook Pro with Touch ID sensor. MacBook Pro has no traditional USB ports. I thought I was gambling on that one, but I got it. You got it. MacBook Pro has P3 color gamut.

Another gamble. We're critiquing that. They didn't say P3, but you confirmed it you got it macbook pro has p3 color gamut another gamble ticking that they didn't say p3 but you confirmed it they did say wider they just didn't go into details i consider that a tick for you yes i agree um all updated macs have usbc or thunderbolt 3 ports that's a great one because there was only one mac uh developer api for magic toolbar touch screen on macbook pro they did mention it on stage. They did. This is the one that I wanted to discuss with you.

Now, our independent adjudicator... Mr. Stephen Hackett. ...gave you a half point. I gave a question mark for this. New Retina external display. Right, I didn't say from Apple, I suppose. No, and I don't know... I didn't know that they would partner with LG

to make a special display, basically. And once the resolution is good, it's not called a retina display, is it? It's just called a 5K display. It's a 5K. It's, I believe, the same panel as in the 5K on Mac. So I would... I mean, I agree with the adjudicator.

Half point works here. Because it's kind of... It's like a technicality. Like, this is a display, but it's not the one we were thinking it was going to be. No, I think that's fair. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. So the only point that I got was

MacBook Pro includes touchscreen function row. That was my... Right, you got the touch bar. Got the touch bar. So AirPods shipping, that was broken like two days before Apple said it was delayed. Yes.

Then this one's so close. I'm so upset about this. The 13-inch MacBook, not MacBook Air. It actually is a MacBook Pro. Yeah. The one that you have right in front of me. Right in front of me right now, yes. Which Marco has dubbed, which I think is his greatest naming, the MacBook Escape.

I think it's the best name that Marco has come up with. I'm not a fan. It's just funny to me watching it. I was like, ah! Even Apple called it out. It was like, this is the next generation of the MacBookbook air but now it's a macbook pro yeah i was like if i was so close they're very much making the argument we'll get into it later that it's sort of the follow-on to the 13-inch macbook air which is a strong it's just a bit of a straw man

several hundred dollars more that's all uh refreshed imax did not get refreshed macbook mac pro did not get a macbook adorable speed bump did not get. MacBook Adorable Speed Bump did not get. Refresh MacBook Air without Retina Display did not get. I tied with the Upgradians. Yes, you did. Because they got colors on the MacBook Pro. Which we just, I think the chat room suggested that right at the end. Right at the very end. I was terrified when they started with Apple TV.

I really thought that Joe was going to get his 4K Apple TV. So did I. So did I. But they ended it without that. I was relieved. But yeah, so I was absolutely decimated in the draft. So Jason, congratulations. You're a 2016 draft champion.

Thank you, Mike. It's an honor and a privilege to defeat you. But you tied with the Upgradians, so you got that going for you. I did. That's great your optimism your boundless optimism about a mac line refresh at that event was your undoing yeah i mean just looking at it it seems looking at it now like even back at it it still seems like i would

have made those picks again right like it was like oh you would expect considering nothing had been updated all year that something might be but no we just got the macbook pro yeah i think there's some timing issues there it sounds like in terms of intel chip availability it seems like there's lots of i'm sure i would actually say i'm sure that if apple felt like it could ship updated imax in the fall it would do it because it's done in the last two years. But I think that they couldn't. Yeah. Before we talk about the Mac event in a bit more detail and the MacBook Pro,

also last week, very busy week, were Apple's fiscal fourth quarter results. BuzzFeed summed this up in a great tweet for me. It's like they basically distilled all of the earnings into one tweet apple's annual sales fell for the first time in 15 years it's also making 100 million dollars in profit every day like i just love that it's like that is the both things is yes they they had another like was it maybe the last quarter of the quarter before like another bad record-breaking thing right like this time what was it last time was a profit decline was it the first profit decline or the first time they

hadn't like uh hadn't excelled on the previous quarter yeah and now this one is a sales fault for the first time 15 years can you explain that a little bit like what does that actually mean i well in this case it's annual sales so basically they're they're looking at the at the revenue this was the last quarter of apple's fiscal year so if you if you total up the sales Well, in this case, it's annual sales. So basically, they're looking at the revenue. This was the last quarter of Apple's fiscal year. So if you total up the sales, the revenue for the year and compare it to the previous year, it's the first time that it has gone down from the previous year in 15 years. And this is the story of fiscal 2016 for Apple. Fiscal 2016 for Apple, quarter one was slightly up year over year and then the next three quarters were way down year over year because of the huge um second

third and fourth quarters of um of fiscal 2015 owing to the success of the iphone 6 and 6 plus and that was and that was it and they um they forecast a year-over-year increase in q1 for 2017 which is the holiday quarter they think that this holiday quarter will be better than last holiday quarter for them so that's a return to growth for apple let's hope they do that i mean they know what they're doing that will be good that will be a good way to start next year right right and then their year-over-year comparisons become 2016 instead of 2015, and it gets a lot easier. Those of us who've been arguing for a while now that if you take 15 as an aberration and you map 14 to 16, what you really see is growth. Because 16 is higher than 14, it's just there's – it sort of goes 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. And then if you pretend 15 doesn't exist and then draw the line to 16, the growth actually kind of tracks.

It's that 15 was this aberration to the positive. And after this next quarter, they're going to be comparing themselves to 16 instead of 15 where they were lower. And now they'll be higher again. So they may post year-over-year growth the whole year. We'll have to see. But they're forecasting it for quarter one, which was a little surprising to me. Were there any other highlights for you? I mean, the iPad is still going down, right?

It's what we've talked about in the past. The iPad is – it may have hit bottom now. But every every time we say that i'm then disappointed the next time i would really like to see some growth in the ipad and they're they're um you know it's not its decline is not great at this point year over year um and they're still selling a bunch but it's i would really like to see the ipad reach a level where we're out of the cycle of um everybody bought them at the beginning and then they just stopped buying them because they had them and they last for a long time i would like to see signs that it's now kind of a normal product that just kind of does a even a relatively slow growth over time and it and it continues to grow

and it's still, you know, the results haven't been that consistent. That might be a better thing for 2017, because looking at the graphs, the decline is slowing down through 2016 compared to where it started to fall down from the start of 2015. Yep.

You know, like the gaps are hundreds of thousands of units difference rather than millions of units difference. So maybe 2017, I feel like we say this every time though, will be the year where we start to see some stability in the iPad sales. I agree with you and I think it goes back to saying that Apple will look a lot better year over year in 2017 because of 2016, right? And that goes across a lot of different product categories. a lot of different product categories. And I said this maybe in my article or maybe on Twitter,

and I got some pushback from somebody who was a big iPad fan, suggesting, no, no, no, it'll be fine. There's a long buying cycle, all these things. And what I had to say to him was, I agree with you. These are the things that we've been saying all along. The problem is it's very hard to keep saying that, oh, no, now it's hit bottom, and not realize after a year or two that it still hasn't.

You can have that optimism and the feeling like it's about to turn it around, but at this point, I've said it too many times, I want to see it actually turn around before I say it because how many quarters have we thought, this is the one where it's going to show that the iPad is stabilized, and it still hasn't. I mean's still dropping still dropping so like again it's like

the amount is dropping is lessening but it's still going down yeah so that's what we have to scratch for at this point this has been true the last couple quarters it's slowing down it's fall but it still hasn't stopped falling at the you know every time i think i wrote every time you think that the ipad has hit bottom you realize nope it's still got a little bit further to fall maybe it's settling down at the bottom now and we'll finally turn around but i would like to see the turnaround before i trumpet the uh the turnaround of the ipad i can't i can't the hit bottom thing isn't working for me anymore because that we haven't still haven't but like the one thing that i like to hang on to is it

sells more than the mac like and it's weird that we don't really put haven't. But the one thing that I like to hang on to is it sells more than the Mac. It's weird that we don't really put any focus on the Mac with this, because it's stable, and that's the reason with the iPad is it's not stable. So it could dip below Mac levels. It could. I bet revenue is below the Mac now, and that's a little surprising. And there's a question of where it ends up

when it stabilizes, but that's my question. We thought, if you would ask me a year ago, I said it'll stabilize to be a little bit above what the Mac sells. It's not now. Is it not? Is the iPad market actually less than the Mac market? I don't know.

To follow the meme through, the average selling price of the Mac must have gone up this year because they didn't update them. The amount of money Apple is making, their margins on the Mac must have gone up this year because they didn't update them. The amount of money Apple is making, their margins on the Mac throughout 2016 must have been fantastic. The average selling price wouldn't have changed because of that,

but the profit per Mac would have changed. I think that's probably true. That must have been the case. They continued to make all the same products with all the same components for a year. Right, and the margins. Yeah, but the sales were way down. Boy, I did a chart of the Mac sales, and it's just, you know, it was like so much of fiscal 2016 for Apple.

It was a really bad year for the Mac. Not like the sales vanished, but as we all know, they didn't release any new new mac max after uh first quarter basically which was the 4k iMac along with a refreshed 5k iMac and uh and then they did the MacBook in the spring and that's about it so I don't know we'll see what happens next year yeah um before we uh before we kick off with more MacBook stuff I keep teasing this, but as of last night, iOS 10.2 Beta 1 was released to developers, and it includes a huge emoji overhaul, as well as Unicode 9 introductions. So, of course, the guy on the scene,

a good friend of the show, Mr. Jeremy Burge, has a great post over on Emojipedia where he goes into detail and explains and shows off some of the stuff. So Apple has added, they're at parity with Microsoft and Google now in that they have Unicode 9 support. So that adds things like clown faces, avocados, foxes, owls, shrugging people, and as well as like a bunch of new professions like artist and rock star and astronaut in both genders and they've added a lot more gender parity emoji like a mrs claws for example so there's a lot more going on there but with that um i think surprisingly apple took this as a time to redesign vast amounts of their emoji so they've kind of brought a lot of the emoji

to look like the more recent ones that have been added. So they've made things a bit more shiny, a bit more lifelike, a bit more cartoony. And I've been kind of, I installed the beta this morning and I've been looking around and some of them look really, really good. And it's a new, fresh look that I quite like a lot so i'll have to check that out i i was impressed with your immediate download of a beta operating system onto your

iphone while traveling at a conference but emoji are that important to you but like this seems like you know things that i've wanted for a while are in there now like there's a whiskey there's bacon there is a green face to show that somebody is sick you know all these you know so i wanted to check out some of these because a lot of the emoji a lot of the unicode 9 is stuff that i've been waiting for for a while like fingers crossed is in there right so yeah that is i mean so when people send you emoji that look like a box that's what it is they're They're on the 10.2 beta. I mean, many people roll their eyes at this stuff.

Indeed, they're doing it right now. But this is massively important for OS adoption now. Yes. Which surprises me that Apple didn't put these in 10. It surprises me that it's taken them until 10.2. So I'm wondering what else 10.2 might include by the time it's released. Because emoji are like a Trojan horse now. Like if you want people to upgrade their operating system,

put the new emoji in there and people will do it. So I'm intrigued to see like would X-2 just be these emoji or will there be some other features in there that we haven't seen yet? Also in X-2, there's some new uh backgrounds like some new wallpapers um and i think there's a new celebration effect in iMessages so that's all there is so far but it's just the the beta one of 10.2 all right let's take a break and then we'll talk about the Mac so this week's episode is brought to you by Pingdom you can start monitoring your websites and servers today at pingdom.com slash upgrade. When you go there, you'll get yourself a lovely 14 day free trial so you can dig in and see what Pingdom is all about. And then when you enter the offer code upgrade at checkout, you'll get 20% off your first invoice. Why do you need

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slash upgrade for a 14 day free trial and use the code upgrade at checkout to get 20% off, thank you so much to Pingdom for their continued support of this show and all of RelayFM so you were at the Mac event overall opinion of the event

this is now I believe the last event in Town Hall. Well, you never know. Not until they bulldoze Town Hall. Poor Town Hall. But yes, this seems to be probably the last media event. It sounds like Apple will be ready with their new facility next year for any events that they do. But never say never. You never know.

Anything is possible. But yeah, this seemed to be the uh the encore event at at town hall so we all you know went to infinite loop and parked and walked through number one and they usher you through into the the lawn in the center of the of the the circle and you walk along a path over to number four which is where town hall is overall opinions of the event? It seemed like it was weirdly paced, slow in points, fast in others. Yeah, I often will, in an Apple event,

I'll think to myself, this is going fast or this is going slow, and I'll look at the clock and think, is there more to come? How much more is there to come? Is this the last thing? And I'll be honest, I looked down at one point and thought, is there more to come? How much more is there to come? Is this the last thing? And I'll be honest. I looked down at one point and thought, they got to have something else.

And they didn't. I mean, they usually, Apple will usually fill two hours. If you give them two hours, they will fill two hours. And they usually give themselves two hours. And this was a 90-minute event. It just wasn't enough. They were just, they were done. And you can see so all right

we could speculate maybe there were other things that they wish that they could do and the chip availability wasn't there you know maybe they are ready to ship an updated iMac and they can't get the chip availability from Intel right I mean there's we'll talk about this more in some of the reaction to a lot of this stuff that people have had out there, but so much gets ascribed to Apple and Apple's demeanor toward a product category or a particular product or a particular brand of user

that, and I'm not saying it's all out of Apple's hands, it's Apple has to own the decisions it makes about its products, the design decisions it makes. But there are some things that Apple doesn to own the decisions it makes about its products, the design decisions it makes. But there are some things that Apple doesn't own. Do we not think that there is a Thunderbolt 3 iMac using the latest generation Intel processors designed in the lab at Apple? Of course there is. Can they ship it in volume so that they can fulfill all iMac orders over the holidays I think clearly not because like why wouldn't they want to do that exactly they're

already selling this computer again I see so many people on the internet saying Apple Apple doesn't care it's like do you like you said do you really think if Apple was capable of shipping in volumes so that they don't run out and make people angry that they can't buy an iMac, an updated iMac? You know, of course they would rather do that, but that requires them to have the chips in volume. And again, there may be decisions that they made, but that iMac, you know, I'm sure they wanted to update it like they updated it last year and they didn't get a chance I'm sure they'd like to turn over their whole product line to to Thunderbolt 3 right now but um it's not always that so that's part of it for me is maybe they intended there to be more here and they just couldn't do it

I'm asking a question on that though because I majorly agree with you. It's like it's not a neglect thing. There are reasons because it's just bad business to not do this. Right. However, on the other side of it, they're selling really old computers for high prices. Oh, yes.

Well, we'll get to the other ones. The iMac's not a really old computer though, right? The iMacs were updated a year ago. Yeah, I mean, that one's kind of fair. And that's why i say apple apple's made responsible for the decisions it makes so like when we if we want to talk about the mac pro and the mac mini especially the mac pro um and we would talk about the macbook pro and why it took so long i think it's it's apple's decisions coupled with Intel's product issues.

And so it's one of those things, I don't know, you make, Mike is looking at a flying. There's a wasp. There was a wasp outside the window. Maybe we'll get visited by the ghost of Ool that we got last year too. You know, if you've ever had this in your life where you make a decision and you realize that you're sort of making that decision based on a gamble like well i'm gonna i think we can do this unless this other person doesn't come through it'll all be fine and then that person doesn't come through now is it all their fault if you could have made a different decision you know i think that's sort of where it is with apple is apple thought it

could get away i've said this before apple thought it could get away. I've said this before. Apple thought it could get away with skipping a generation in some of the Intel processors, and it would be fine because the next generation was coming, and that timing worked better for them. And then the Intel processor timeframe slipped, and oops. They made a bad gamble. Yeah, that's right. So it's a combination of things.

But I think for the iMac, it's not like that. Because for the iMac, is it a huge deal if the imac gets refreshed in the spring instead of the fall not really not really it's i'm sure they would rather have done it in the fall but i don't think it's apple saying we don't care about the imac and so we're not updating it today does apple care about the mac pro i think apple cares about the mac pro slightly more than they care about the Mac Mini, but only slightly. I think it's an edge product. The Mac Mini is way less important.

Those are the edge products, though. Those are the edge products in terms of overall Mac sales. Now, they are very important, and the Mac Pro is extremely important when it comes to a certain kind of user, and we know them. We love them.

Many of them listen to this show. And I'd say that it's important to Apple, too, to have that power computer at the high end of the line. But how many cycles do they spend on Mac Pro updates? And like I said, I think they got caught in between product cycles, between processor cycles from intel and they they thought they could skip a refresh and then get the next refresh and everything got delayed and you know i can't i mean they blew it they blew it

because there's no that mac pro should not be for sale now. It was not worth buying a year ago. And then, you know, because of things that have happened in my part of the world, they put the price up. It's 500 pounds more expensive now for an older computer. I don't know the reason they've done it. Yeah, they talked about it a lot during the financials. But it's still been done. One of the things that people hit them on a lot of their sales drops, and in some countries they said,

we're also fighting a major currency problem. And their result is that they did reprice things in a lot of markets. There's significant price increases in the UK. lot of markets significant price increases in the uk and that's you know that's apple you know the pound isn't worth what it was worth it's funny like you know what it's gone back to is interesting because it's gone back to the kind of prices when i started buying apple computers when like the economy was very different but apple just were different you know and it was closer to like take the dollar number and change the sign to a pound that's what you know and it was closer to like take the dollar number and change the sign to a pound that's what you paid and it's way closer to that again which

is it's interesting to see apple go there but if you've been buying apple computers in the uk for long enough we've had our glory days now you know we got cheaper computers for a while and so now you know like for me i'm gonna buy computers in america again right you know like i'm not gonna buy them in the again. Right. You know, like I'm not going to buy them in the UK. This is what I used to do. You know, I used to buy stuff in the States and I'm just going to go back to doing that. Or like, you know, hop over to anywhere in Europe. I saw somebody saying like you could go to Ireland and buy an iPhone and come back again and you'd still be like 80 pounds up. This is just the reality that we're in again.

So let's talk about the MacBook Pro. Okay. So you have with you the MacBook Pro with the function row. Right, the non-touch bar version. But you've tried the touch bar version. And I want to kind of get your opinion on this. You know, we spoke about this in Memphis in August, about the idea of the types of things you can do with it, and you were kind of pontificating on this you know we spoke about this in memphis in august about the

idea of the types of things you can do with it and you were kind of pontificating what you'd like to see focusing on the touch bar because it is the key thing apple announces that it's the the jewel in the crown of the product what do you think of it i think it's interesting that Apple has, and probably right, to approach it as an input device. And I talked to people at Apple who kept hammering that message home, that this is an input device. It's not a screen. Don't think of it as a display. It's an input device. it's an input device and the way it's built the coating on it that makes it kind of feel like a trackpad the you know the angle it's meant to be viewed at a 45 degree angle so it's angled

it's no so the screen's not angled but the opt like the glass and all of that is optimized your optimal viewing angle for it is 45 degrees. So Apple, right? It is so Apple, but at the same time, right? I mean, you're not going to be viewing it from above. Unlike every other screen where you're looking at it straight on, this is something that you're viewing at an angle.

So they optimize for that view. The screen itself is, you know, is not angled, but they know the eyeballs that are looking at that screen are coming from an angle so the last thing you want to do is have the optimal viewing angle be right up above so it's an input device like the first time i saw it i i really was taken aback by the fact that the virtual keys looked very much like the real keys like even almost like to having a matte kind of finish on it the way that the way that it looked.

And I was impressed by that. You can't adjust the brightness of the display. It automatically does the right thing. It uses the light sensor. I suspect it also uses the status of the backlighting and various other things to figure out how to sort of match the keyboard. It really is supposed to blend in with the keyboard. Not the screen.

Not the screen. Not the screen. Interesting. It's a, and it goes back to that whole, I wrote a piece on Six Colors about it this week, or last week, the, I don't know what week it is, Mike. I flew for a very long time. It's about perpendicular surfaces on the computer. Apple has defined the difference,

what's the difference between an iPad and a Mac? iPad is a single surface that you can touch. You interact with it directly. A Mac is two perpendicular surfaces, a display surface and an interaction surface. Top and bottom. Top and bottom. And so this is on the bottom.

This is an input device. There are now three input devices on those MacBook Pros. There's a trackpad, a keyboard, and a touch bar. And they're all, that's where your hands are. That's the plane you're reaching out with your hands and resting them on that surface. And that's where all your controls are. And then your content is in the screen up above.

And that separates them from Microsoft, which believes that microsoft doesn't have an ipad per se instead it believes that there's a commingling of pc and touch interface and that what you really want to do is be able to touch the screen yeah it's like they they see the top and bottom but they put different functions on them right so like for microsoft touch goes on the top and keys go on the bottom right where like for apple it's like no nothing touches on the top yeah but all the hands just stay on the bottom apple's philosophy is that nobody wants to touch their laptop screen and microsoft doesn't believe that now you can argue that i mean i think i think it's perfectly reasonable sometimes i get in i i people start to argue with me on twitter especially about how

it's perfectly fine to touch a screen and i have to say i i'm you know i'm open on that question i'm just trying to explain to you apple's philosophy will say you know it's almost like a dogma at this point is zombie arms don't touch the screen you don't want to touch the screen it's no good just like that's what they believe and i think there's a question and they've been saying this for years now i do wonder sometimes how often do they revisit it i hope they revisit it regularly and say they still believe it. And that it hasn't just become like, five years ago, we decided touchscreens were bad. Never speak of it again.

I think that it isn't true anymore because they sell keyboards for iPads. At the point where Apple makes their own keyboard for an iPad, then they are saying zombie arms are okay. It's like, the ipad it's okay the mac no no that's crazy talk i i think the the challenge would be that if they do it in the mac they have to revise the mac interface to have like touchable targets well i think that's what it is i don't i don't think the that the idea anymore is no one should reach out because we do that i think the idea is we don't want to redesign mac mac os for the touch because at the

point we do that we may as well just make it all ios well that and i think that is when we talk when we talk about philosophies of apple and microsoft bottom line i do believe that they believe these things internally but it is a belief that is driven by what their assets are microsoft i think it's changed yeah microsoft failed with the concept of having a separate thing for touch and for traditional computer they it failed all of their you know surface of their their arm version of surface and all of that and and a total met like the metro thing they're like oh right it's all one thing it's all one device. Apple has an incredibly successful touch-based operating system. And so Apple's take on it really is like, look, if you want a big touchscreen, use an iOS device.

Why would we make the Mac into iOS? We already have iOS. So the Mac is now the traditional computer interface for people who want it. And if you want a touch interface i mean apple is far more likely put it this way apple is far more likely to continue progressing the ipad forward to allow it to do all the things that prevent people from switching from the mac to an ipad than it is progressing the mac to be more friendly 100 yeah why would they do that i mean i wrote a piece a couple years ago

about this and i think it's still true which is you've got to view the mac and i i don't mean this to be insulting and i don't i'm a mac user i use the mac all the time you've got to view the mac as like i was gonna say legacy product but it's like classic it's like a classic interface and a classic metaphor and it's for people who want to use a computer. Adding a whole bunch of touch interface and stuff like that, they're not going to do it because it's not a computer anymore. The act there is trying to upgrade the Mac into being a new 21st century operating system with all these different interactions. And Apple's already got that operating system. So it's far more likely that Apple will build the iPad

and the iPhone to be more, to add all of these technical and flexible things that people say, but I can't use that. I have to have my Mac because, than it is that they're going to iPadify the Mac. The Mac exists to be the Mac, to be familiar, to be the thing that we know it to be. And when they add something like Touch Bar,

they're like, what can we do to enhance the Mac without breaking what makes it a Mac? It's like the Touch Bar is the continued march of the iOSification of the the mac like it is the what can we bring to it without breaking without breaking the breaking the metaphor and it was like it started with back to the mac right the back to the mac event was the first time that they did this and because a large amount of the functions that they showed that the touch bar could do were things that the ios keyboard does like quick type like

an emoji picker like that it is bringing that stuff right like there are there is a big meme right now which i can kind of see of like over time that keyboard is going to become a not keyboard right like a software keyboard or an all-screen keyboard or whatever right because it enables apple to follow through with the original vision that Steve presented in the iPhone introduction of why there isn't a physical keyboard on the iPhone. Because then you are not restricted by the keyboard.

You can do anything. You could add anything. Which is what makes the... Is it called the touch bar? Touch bar. The touch bar is so interesting to me because it makes the keyboard a more interactive experience. And with a lot of the things that I do on a Mac, the idea of having these functions and shortcuts and bars and tools available to me where my hands are and where my eyes are looking because of how I use a keyboard is incredibly exciting to me.

So much so I could never buy one of these. Like the Touch Bar is so interesting to me as a product. I cannot buy the MacBook Pro because I don't work on it all the time. And when I'm not using it, I would be very, very sad. Because this is like for a user like me, this is a fantastic product because it is something that surfaces hard to find controls and is also really really useful to somebody who looks at the keyboard a lot like i do you know so i think that this product is very

interesting so much so like federico said this i hope that they find a way to build this into a ipad keyboard at some point right because these functions are just very interesting like what apps did you play with and what sort of functions did they have oh let's see i mean i used i used like mail and and text edit um i used uh final cut a little bit briefly um photos it was all over the map and then the demo showed i do believe that this is a going to be a year of real exploration for apple in terms of what the interface of a touch bar really should do because even on screen i found like the way adobe approached the touch bar in photoshop versus the way that apple approached it or you know microsoft office or something like that was very different and i was thinking that the photoshop touch bar looked better than the uh than the uh than the final Cut Touch bar.

Why so? I don't know. It felt like... It's hard to say. I mean, it felt like they had a better sense of why you would use that surface and how you would apply commands on that surface. But what really just struck me is...

I mean, I don't want to... I shouldn't judge them. They were different. I liked the Photoshop one better, but the bigger point is they seem to take different approaches with their touch bar interfaces. And that leads me to believe that we're going to spend the next year learning what a good touch bar interface is and what a bad touch bar interface is. My only problem with that is that it is like you said going to be this subset it's going to be only the people who buy the high-end macbook pros who have this functionality and nobody else is going to have it and that will slow adoption and that will limit who gets to kind

of shape what this is like but i think i think over the next year i suspect that it feels to me like you know apple had its first take on this like oh well look you can use it to do this and this and this and then you can already see with some of these developers that they're pushing it a lot further and that might make apple revisit the dj guy was doing his whole thing like he did the whole thing like he mixed the whole track yeah he liked it or not you know it's another thing but he was doing a lot on that thing yeah and and i'm really interested by the fact that they made it a 10 finger multi-touch because that's unnecessary but what it does is it means that people can can really build some interesting things into it you know you can have like four fingers on this thing

doing all sorts of stuff and you're good how long is it going to be before I get one on a keyboard? Like an external magic keyboard or even just an external touch bar, just the bar. I, right. I, uh, I don't know.

I have, there's a lot of despair out there. And people who say Apple doesn't care about the Mac pro. Apple doesn't care about the Mac. Apple doesn't care about people who use the desktop. I don't know. I kind of don't believe it. I think that if Apple can make a magic keyboard with a touch bar, they will. Or just a touch bar.

Like you said, it feels to me more likely that they would make a magic keyboard with a touch bar um then just a bar and say good luck stick this on top of your magic keyboard but i think if they can make one they will i think the question is going to be about battery life on that device most of all i mean because they'll have to embed it'll be like an apple watch right i mean they'll have to embed. It'll be like an Apple Watch, right? I mean, they'll have to embed the processor in there. The T1? T1 and a Touch ID processor and a Touch ID sensor and all of that. And then can they do that wired or wireless? And if they can do it wireless, which Apple loves,

then you have to charge it. Can it go a week? Does it have to be charged every day? I think these are the questions about it. But I think if they can do it, they will do it. Because I think having that consistency across the platforms, letting everybody, no matter where they are, have a touch bar, even if they're at their desk,

I think that's the way that they should do it. And I don't feel that despair. I would take a wired one. I would love a wired one. be i don't have i don't have a problem you know apple and wireless keyboards one place right like it's staying in one place it's not going anywhere like it doesn't bother me like you put a battery on it it lasts for a couple of hours you charge it by lightning but just leave it plugged in like i i really want this like just looking at the the controls for Final Cut,

there's so many things that they were showing there. I was like, I don't know how to do that. I'm Googling things constantly, and the idea of creating this amazing toolbar, which is right in front of my hands all the time, which allows me gesture control, which I'm currently doing with a trackpad, but I could move everything with a bar,

it really would work for me. I was thinking of you when they were showing, and people were poo-pooing it again, about the two-handed interface, where you're using the trackpad and the touch bar together. And I thought, I know multiple people, and you were the person who came to mind who have two input devices when they're when they're working on their max so three i like when i edit the keyboard way common trackpad yeah you know and

when i'm editing i use both hands so something like the touchpad like giving me those keyboard shortcuts on a programmable bar would be amazing for me so let's throw into if you're using an if you're using a desktop computer like an iMac yep or a Mac Pro with an external monitor or whatever you're actually further away from your screen then you are on a MacBook Pro so I think the touch bar is more relevant because it's it's place in the touch in the uh input device surface of your workspace is further removed from the screen right like when uh like i would never touch my imax screen it's far away and i would never i don't even feel the thought of like oh what if it were a touch screen it's like no no i it's far away all my stuff is on my keyboard tray and so if i had a another input yep mechanism down there that would actually make more sense to me so i you know i'm really excited

about the future that means i could have this product like this part of the product in my in my arsenal because i think that it is a really exciting move for keyboard entry like this is a dynamic uh a live thing for 2016 like i'm really excited about it like the macbook pro that machine looks like a great machine but it's just not a machine for me anymore right because of how i work like if i wasn't so ios focused now i would buy one of those as my portable machine not just my travel machine but like the machine where i use all over the house and do all the work that i did like the macbook pro that i brought with me the mac pro i have with me right now that's what its function used to be, but it got replaced with the iPad.

Right. Because it looks like everything I kind of want. You have the one with me. These are the same dimensions, the MacBook Pro that you have with the actual physical keys. It's the same product dimensions as the... As the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the touch bar. Yeah.

So this thing is lighter, thinner, which is key. Looks really nice. This is a great-looking machine. It looks like the MacBook very much and just a kind of bigger version of the MacBook. But one of the things that struggles for me is the idea of using this as a desktop machine is weird because you'd want to use it with the keyboard open and visible, like the thing open, because you can use the touch bar. But then you connect it to these big LG displays.

And that's just like a weird mix because ideally you want to use an external keyboard at that point. Yeah, and they're showing it open and in front of you. And it doesn't really work. And I agree with you. The problem with this is it's a kind of interaction you want to have but the only way you can have it is with a macbook pro open in front of you like i know why that the touch bar is is on this machine first it makes sense like if you but like in an ideal world

that should have come on an external keyboard first and then it's also available on the laptop when you take it with you but like this is a thing for sitting down on the desk working like ideally and that's why apple show like in all the images like here is the touch bar as part of the macbook as part of this desk yes but that's not the way nobody works like that if you have external money i don't think so well not a lot of people even the people that work with their laptop open they still use an external keyboard which connects with that whole setup. Yeah. But I understand why they're showing it that way

because if you own that computer, you want to use the touch bar all the time. Right. But I don't know if it works that way. But let's talk about the MacBook Pro. Okay. So you have one. Right here.

What do you think of this computer? Well, it is one ounce heavier than the 13- macbook air i'm as an 11 inch macbook air user it feels heavy to me but um it is like it is only slightly heavier than the 13 inch air it is less volume as they said and that's because the footprint is a lot less that they that you know really nice size wise yeah the bezel is a lot smaller around and as a result it's a smaller computer than the air um it's and it feels denser and it looks like i said it looks like the macbook there's no you have it in the gray and it's it's really good looking because it's not too dark it still looks like a mac it still looks silvery yeah but it's darker and i really like the color i think it's

a nice color yeah it's one of the many variations of space gray color yes made space is yes space is variable color key question i can't believe i haven't asked you this yet this is what everybody wants to know key question the key question so the keyboard yeah is not the keyboard that you're it's not it's not an evolution of the macbook pro keyboard it is an evolution of the macbook adorable keyboard yes it is the second generation of that yes it is not the magic keyboard it is not it is the macbook keyboard you hated everybody you hated the macbook keyboard how do you feel about the macbook pro keyboard similarly oh no yes so apple so spent a lot of time saying that it was new and improved well you know what i don't have a macbook with me i'm touching it for the i haven't actually pressed the keys i don't like that keyboard very much um the keyboard that i'm using on my logitech create

from my ipad feels nicer than that now i personally personally could use that keyboard and would be fine with it. I think what I said when I reviewed the MacBook is, I would say again, I've had this for the last few days. I can type on it. I can type on it full speed. I don't really like it. Every time I start typing on it, I'm like, Oh yeah, it's this one again. Like I can write some emails out on that and it's fine, but it doesn't feel good.

Yeah. So what I would say is if you're a user of the 12 inch MacBook and you try this, you may say, Oh, it's different. Um, and I've seen some of that and we saw,

like I saw Stephen Hackett made some comments about that, um, that it's, it's, uh, it's better. And what Apple said was it feels like there's more movement, I think they said. It was something where they – I was waiting, right? I was hanging on every word that Phil Schiller said about like, tell me what this is because you just said it has the butterfly mechanism.

And it's like, oh, no. That means it's a MacBook keyboard. And then he said, well, but we changed the dome switches underneath, the stainless steel dome switches, to be more responsive. And it has a better feel. And it feels, you know, you feel more movement or something like that. He made lots of things. And what that sounded to me was like, oh, so it doesn't actually have any more travel than the MacBook keyboard. But there's something about it that there's more of an effect when you

press down on the key so they it's like almost like a haptic they trick you they trick you into feeling yeah because that's how i read it when they said it feels more responsive macbook pros are smoke and mirrors it's all smoke and mirrors now the trackpad doesn't do anything the keyboard feels like it's popping up more than it is. So in my briefing, I asked point blank. I said, is it the same key travel as the MacBook? And they said, yeah, it is. It's the same key travel as the MacBook. So don't let anybody tell you that the keys move up and down more on this.

It's just more of a springy feeling. Because I don't have a MacBook at home, I couldn't do a one-to-one comparison. I have no doubt that Apple is not making it up, that it is more responsive than the MacBook. But what I would say is this. If you're somebody who rejected the MacBook keyboard, I don't think you're going to turn around on this keyboard. I think if you, your feelings about the MacBook keyboard will be the same about this keyboard. If you like it,

then, or don't care, then you'll like it and not care. I can't envision more than like a very small, you know, what, 1%, 5% of people changing their opinion because of the slight variation between this and the other one.

This is fundamentally the same concept and if you are somebody who really likes the macbook pro and macbook air keyboards and doesn't like the direction apple took with the macbook keyboard um you're gonna have to ask yourself how much you care about getting a new macbook pro because you're gonna have this keyboard this is the future of all apple keyboards i think that's the case yeah like well i'm wondering now why the magic keyboard even exists that will change the next magic keyboard will be like that that that's my i would i would because this is how apple have done things over the past right like the laptop keyboards inform all keyboards that apple make yes and so this is clearly what they're doing now because it allows them to put more stuff in the case. That's what it makes it.

It allows the keyboards, it allows the whole thing to be thinner and they can still keep battery and they can still put their stuff in. So they take up less space with the keyboard. So my thinking, they find a way to put the touch bar on a keyboard. They need as much battery in that keyboard as possible.

The way you do that is by putting the really, really shallow keys in there. Like that is the future. Sorry, Casey Liss gonna lose your amazing well and i gotta tell you i if i uh if i have to choose between good keys or the touch bar i'm never gonna choose the touch bar i know ever but i will choose to touch but i know you will because and this is the traitor what do you do you write for a living i do what do i do i manipulate things for a living yeah right not people things but like ui right that's what i do i move ui around well i really want to see like logic uh you know which i use a lot i want to see what the touch bar interface is that i'm

very excited about that but but yeah if i end up having to accept now it is possible i'll just be devil's advocate here a little bit it is possible that what apple's really decided is that they have two keyboard experiences and the one is the laptop and one is the desktop and the desktop is magic keyboard and the laptop is this thing and that you know because otherwise why does the magic keyboard even why did they do that why did they make that because that's an entirely new key style from either the macbook or the old macbooks or the new macbooks so i think it makes sense in the world in which they don't need more battery inside of the keyboard yeah well i'm not sure their keyboard

needs to be thin and light so maybe maybe they will keep it that way i don't know i don't know because that was always one of the advantages like you said one of the advantages of all the apple keyboards being the same is that they were the same everywhere when you switch to a laptop you didn't go oh now i'm on a laptop it was the same keyboard everywhere so that's why that's why i think they'll do it because they will standardize the keyboard feel and the laptop will drive that because it has done over the last few years something really weird over the last few days came out the startup chime is missing from this MacBook Pro. Apple have removed the bong from this.

Apparently, there is a terminal command you can issue to bring it back. Why would they do this? I would say it fits with Apple's tendency to ask about, to question assumptions about their products and when you think that the ios devices just start up silently with a white apple on a black screen and that's now what the mac does that this is consistent i also saw several people say on twitter and i thought this was pretty good even though they knew they were being they were swimming against the tide and they were being troublemakers was to say yeah you know when i start up my iMac in the middle of the night

i totally love the loud chime that wakes up my entire family so i mean it's nice that it you know but it's just it's just weird also i think if you're living in a world where two-thirds of the macs sold are laptops the the interaction you have with a laptop is you close the lid and you open the lid that's all you do you know people don't shut down their laptops usually they just open and close them and in fact with this new macbook when you open them when you open it and it's shut down it starts up so that was a change too and maybe they decided they really liked the interaction of if you open it it starts up and they didn't want it to be if you open it it chimes and then starts up it's like it's gonna upset some people right i'm kind of like whatever but like i just think it's weird like it's just like it's going to upset some people, right? I'm kind of like, whatever. But like, I just think it's weird.

Like, it's just like, it's just a strange thing to decide to do. I think Apple has decided that the way that these devices, the right way for these devices to operate is silently. But in my mind. Because the iPhone is silent. You remove the chime when the startup is instant. Right. Well, it's getting closer, but it's still not there.

Because, like, why even do it? I know there are reasons, but it's like, why this device? Did you choose for this to be the one? I mean, because then there's this, like, the MacBook. I don't know if this does it, but the MacBook, it makes a sound when you plug it in, right? Yes, same.

Does this do this? Yeah. It's like these strange things. It's like it's still the same operating system but this version of the machine doesn't i think they've i think they've decided that apple products behave a certain way in certain situations ios or mac and they have like the apple so for every person who's saying oh i can't believe they don't start up with a chime that is the every mac i've ever owned has started up with a chime some people like finally i think well i think there are a lot of people who are like

expecting their mac to behave like their ipad and their iphone behave which is you know chirp when i plug it in and uh you know when i when i start when i when i open it up have it spring into action and not ever chime right and i i think i think that would be the argument is it's consistent across the product line of all of apple's products now and the mac you know also the chime you know the chime was meant to be a differentiator over the little stupid beeps that pc started up with it was sort of like from that tradition of when your computer starts up, it has a beep to tell you that it's now initiating the startup process and all of that.

It's an old way of approaching it. And yeah, I don't know. Apple was out of the standalone display business. Yeah, this was funny. I actually wrote a piece about all my notes of the standalone display business. Yeah, this was funny. I actually wrote a piece about all my notes of the event, and I mentioned that they had this LG display, and I asked them about it, and they said, yes, it's P3, and it's a 5K display.

It's, I believe, the same panel that's used in the 5K iMac. Just cut smaller. And you can attach it with one cable, one Thunderbolt 3 cable, and it will power your computer. It will charge your laptop. And it has multiple USB ports and a webcam on it, so that you can...

It's like a docking station. It's like the Thunderbolt display. It's like what we would have expected Apple to make. And in fact, Apple worked with LG on it to the point where your keyboard controls and stuff your system controls will control the brightness and on the lg display and stuff instead of having to press a menu button and move through the menus you can do all of that from the from the computer so i wrote that it sounded to me like this means the end for

apple being in the display business because they just worked with a partner who makes displays to have it do all the things that they would have built in and Apple doesn't have to worry about it. And Neelay Patel at The Verge retweeted my story link, which was very nice of him, and said, this is a nice story. And for the record, apple told me they're out at the display business so neil is not a surprise not a surprise i mean and people have shown this as an example of apple not caring about the mac and it's like first off the thunderbolt display i mean apple was kind of you could argue out of the display business what five years ago because they released the thunderbolt display and then that was it they haven't made a monitor in a long time they removed the thunderbolt display this year but it's been irrelevant for several years before that thing is like the not care thing you could have

made that argument when they cancelled the thunderbolt display and they said there are great options available go find them yes but this time they've worked with a company to make sure there's a really good monitor option a company that makes monitors and cares about it and will sell them at whatever their margins are and Apple doesn't have to be Apple branded, I don't know

maybe this is a silly parallel to make but did everybody freak out when Apple got out of the printer business probably probably but you know does apple need to be in the monitor business no it absolutely does not need to be in that business so it's not going to be in that business and like just imagine that this is a slightly less good looking thunderbolt display and you're all good to go

yeah put some tape over the lg if you want, but this is it. I think people should be excited because this means that when that new Mac Pro comes out next spring, let's just cross our fingers, but I think it's got to happen. And already with these new MacBook Pros, you got it now. You want a laptop and a 5K display like that 5K iMac? You bought a 5K iMac because even though you're a laptop person and you'd much rather have one computer, you bought the standalone computer because you wanted that beautiful 27-inch 5K display, and were willing to pay for it, and now you've got two computers.

Oh, well. Guess what? As of now, you can go back to being that laptop person and running it docked. You can do clamshell mode if you want and one plug and you're plugged in and you're on a 5K display that is the same display as on that iMac. It exists today. This is the dream, right? This is the dream. External 5K display with one cable from your Mac.

We're living the dream. So I think it's all good news. Last thing I want to ask you about the MacBook. Should they have included a USB A to C dongle in the box? Four USB-C ports. Yeah, or two on my 13 with a function row. Yeah, exactly. You need dongles.

Dongles are the word you know everybody's going to need them should they have like with the headphone jack put one of these in the box but the difference being there's no other option right like it's not like bluetooth there was another option it's like all you can do is plug stuff in i'm gonna say yes for one reason which is every ios device apple makes ships with uh usba and i know that the primary goal of the ipad and the iphone is not to connect it to your computer but you know sometimes you gotta and you know if you're in that situation where you've got to connect to your computer you can't now without another adapter so i think it would have been a nice thing for them to do to just ship that adapter in the box for a generation

but you can get it for whatever it costs i have the i have the thunderbolt adapter it's amazing it's like a block of cheese or something it's it's it's like a a tube attached to a wire it's fascinating the amount of electronics that must be in there is that thunderbolt to what it's a thunderbolt thunderbolt 3 to traditional traditional mini display port shape Thunderbolt. That's a weird adapter. But it works. I actually transferred my data to this computer from my MacBook Air by putting my MacBook Air in Thunderbolt target mode. And attaching a Thunderbolt cable to that adapter to the Thunderbolt 3 on here.

Let's talk about Thunderbolt for a second just because, I mean, this is true. We've been anticipating this day, but now it's here. These talk about thunderbolt for a second just because i mean this is true we've been anticipating this day but now it's here these ports are thunderbolt 3 yeah they're not actually usbc yeah i mean they use the same connector yeah and they emulate usbc in the same way and i know this is a weird parallel but i'm making weird parallels right now if you think about mini display port used to be the port on some Mac laptops. It was just a monitor port. And then it became the Thunderbolt port. But it was the same plug.

And if you plugged a mini display port monitor into it, it just acted like a mini display port. That's what's on these new MacBook Pros. They are the shape of USB 3. If you plug in – or USB-C. If you plug in a USB-C something it works it's kind of awesome yeah it's great but if you plug in a thunderbolt 3 something it gets all of the power of thunderbolt 3 which is more it's like a superset of what's in usbc and that's how you drive the 5k displays with thunderbolt 3 but what it what it does mean is like that Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter that I bought,

or Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt, like old, because I think it works with one or two. If you try to plug that into a MacBook, it doesn't work. Yeah. Because it's Thunderbolt. It needs Thunderbolt. Because the MacBook is USB-C. And the MacBook is USB-C. Now, I imagine next spring's MacBookbook will be thunderbolt will be thunderbolt

three but well maybe because the problem is the chipset and blah blah blah blah atp yes atp will tell you but i would imagine as soon as they can possibly convert that thing it will be into thunderbolt it's a bad connector they will it's just like i appreciate how good that connector is but all i know is the world the 2016 is not a usbc world yet things are moving yeah this is gonna help this is gonna help a lot i mean apple only having one usbc product for a year and a half was not going to make things move a whole lot and there's more that's out there when the macbook came out so that's a good start the hope is that apple now give um an excuse to the pc industry as well that like now the pc industry say oh well apple's

done it so we'll do it too which is how things tend to go yeah i mean it's already happening on the pc side but i think that i think that this will probably make it that much easier for everybody on the pc side to push to usbc if not thunderbolt 3 i mean they can pick up thunderbolt 3 that's an intel thing but if they don't do that then there's then there's usbc at least and it's a it's a much smaller connector and you know it's there it's reversible so you can stick it in either way as you said atp they've been talking about this forever over there for ages but that's what they do that's what they know it's but bless them i i enjoy those conversations a lot so i learned that's how i knew that the the macbook wouldn't work with Thunderbolt 3

because the Intel chip says wrong. And in reality, I don't think this is going to be a conversion nightmare because I think if your device doesn't need the power of Thunderbolt 3, it won't be a Thunderbolt 3 device. There's not going to be, if you're like a MacBook person, you're like, oh my God, now everything I have to do, everything I buy, I've got to be careful that it's not the wrong thing. I think it'll be devices that require the extreme speed of Thunderbolt 3

that will build in Thunderbolt 3, because there's a lot of overhead in Thunderbolt 3 that I think isn't there in USB-C. So most things will probably be USB-C. And on the MacBook Pro, it doesn't matter. You'll just plug them in. You won't worry about it, because they'll all work. And it'll be fine. But I think it the MacBook Pro, it doesn't matter. You'll just plug them in. You won't worry about it because they'll all work. And it'll be fine.

But I think it's good. I think it's great. That's why I did the draft pick. Apple decided to rip the mandate off and just say everything, you know, there will not be, here's another bold prediction. I'll just throw it out there. I think it's obvious.

So how bold could it be? There will not be another Mac released with Thunderbolt and USB-A ports on it. Yeah, it's all Thunderbolt 3 now. Yeah, with a possible exception being like a MacBook that might have to have a USB-C. I think they can't keep doing that because it's too confusing. I feel like this is the end of the old connections. It's the end. They are just moving on to the new world.

All right. Let's wrap up today's episode with some Ask Upgrade. Andy wanted to know if he judged your mood correctly. Yeah, I saw this picture. I'm going to put it in the show notes. You know, my mood was... This is during the TV introduction. Yeah, my mood was that I was in the third row,

and I figured I was probably going to be on camera. And so when I looked up, I would try to appear personable and not angry. I wasn't angry. I'm working. The answer to every question of when I saw you on the live video stream, what were you thinking or what were you doing or why did you look that way? The answer is always, I was working. I was doing my job and working. That's what I was doing. You didn't look very happy. The answer is always, I was working. I was doing my job and working.

That's what I was doing. You didn't look very happy. I was not angry. I was not unhappy. I was working. That's just how it is. I'm not sitting there. You know what?

If I could just lay back and enjoy an Apple presentation. Also, I will say this about these Apple presentations. I'm not usually in the third row. I'm usually toward the back. That's fancy. We just sort of ended up at the front. And everybody in front of us was Apple employees. So I can say this.

First off, all the applause that happens in Apple events starts in the first row. The first person to clap at all the clap lines is somebody in the first row. At least once I noticed that it was Eddie Q q i could see eddie q already start the clapping and i was like all right that's where it's that's where it's starting from eddie's on clap jury today and it's a little bit awkward because i will clap at an apple event for like a person who did something impressive or something like i'll do a polite clap for some things not for very long but i am not doing i do not participate in the here's a feature clap clap

clap clap especially when i'm sitting there and i can see how it's you know it's apple executives who are starting the clap so i i just you know it's it's fine it's a show it's marketing it is what it is and that's fine but so when you see me at on the video of the apple event you know, it's fine. It's a show. It's marketing. It is what it is, and that's fine. So when you see me on the video of the Apple event, you know, I'm doing my job and trying to pay attention and trying not to look like I'm rolling my eyes and being mean to them because I'm really not. I'm just paying attention and trying to do my job. Richard asked, considering the high prices of the MacBook Pro in the UK, would it be wise to buy the current imac right now um or just wait like would it be would it be should you buy that

i think it's worth waiting because the imac price will probably not go up when they reintroduce when they introduce the next one so i would wait if you can wait i would still wait because it's more expensive now for the same computer right so. So if you are able to wait, wait until they actually make that money worth it for you by giving you some new internals. And that's the same old thing that we always say, which is if you can afford to wait, you should generally wait.

And in this case... Although, you know, it's like a Godot situation with the Mac, but... Yeah, I just, I feel fairly confident that there will be an iMac update probably in the spring. So if you can wait until the spring, and to your point about UK prices price is up now so why not get a new computer without that larger price instead of an old computer lucas wanted to ask considering that you can charge

the macbook pro from any of the the thunderbolt 3 ports can you put in multiple charges for quicker charging no it it picks you could plug you can plug in four chargers and what happens is it looks for the one that's supplying the most power so if you've got like the big brick because like the 15 comes with a bigger brick than the 13 which comes with in a bigger brick than the the. There are gradations of wattage. And it will look for the one that's supplying the most power and use that. It does mean that you can charge on either side of those MacBooks that have the four ports, which is kind of flexible. If you're like, oh, it would work better in my setup

if I plugged it in the right side. You can do that now, which you couldn't do when there was only the MagSafe connector. But yeah, it will look, and if they're all the same, supplying the same amount of power, I don't know what it does.

It probably has a sequence that it goes in and it chooses which one. But in the end, that's what it's doing is it'll try to find the one that's supplying it with the most wattage and then it takes that one alright that wraps up this week's episode if you want to find our show notes for today

go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 113 if you want to find Jason online he is at jsnll on twitter he's at sixcolors.com I am at imyke thank you so much to Pingdom for supporting this week's episode Jason L, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter. He's at sixcolors.com. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E.

Thank you so much to Pingdom for supporting this week's episode. We are at the All Conference this weekend. So this is like basically these next things are if you're here. But even if you're not, Jason is participating in something called All Radio this week, which is a kind of a a interesting podcast type thing that you're going to be taking you're going to be kind of running people through um do you want to say like what can people can listen to this right yeah so if you go you can search for all radio ull radio on itunes or go to the the rss feed is at feedpress.me slash ULRadio, U-L-L-R-A-D-I-O.

Of course, that will be in the show notes as well. And what can people expect from that? Well, the conference hasn't started yet, so I haven't really decided. The goal is for me to talk to people who are here, to talk to speakers and other presenters and maybe even some conference participants and have some chats and put them in the feed and provide sort of some combination between sort of supplemental information for the conference, as well as an opportunity for some of the great conversation

that happens here at this conference to be accessible to people who aren't here. And just as another note, I wonder if people listen, who are attending these conferences, listen to the podcasts that we make at them. Yes. So the password is bananas. If you're at the All Conference and you come to me and say the password bananas,

I'll give you some kind of special prize just because I'm interested to know. I've got stickers. Jason has stickers. So come to me and say bananas and I will make sure you get stickers. There you go. so that is the secret code word if you're at the all conference i just want to see if anyone if it will happen yeah so that's why i want to put right at the very end to people get right to the end whilst here so bananas is that is the password thank you

so much for listening to this week's episode of upgrade we'll be back next week and there will be a big big ocean in between us until Until then, say goodbye Jason Snow. Goodbye Mike Hurley. The All Ghosts Returned!