Upgrade - 116: Design Team Yearbook

Episode Date: November 21, 2016

Apple’s doing some end-of-the-year cleaning, but what does it mean for the future of the company? This week Jason and Myke discuss the death of the AirPort router, the disbanding of the Mac automation team, and the release of a photo book highlighting Apple’s hardware designs.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 116 today's show is brought to you by mac weldon encapsula and ero my name is mike hurley and i am joined across a very big body of water by Mr. Jason Snell. Big body of water and then a large landmass. Yeah. Let's not undersell it. It's very far away. Hello. Hello.

Or you can go large landmass, then big body of water if you want. It just depends which way you want to go, right? You can go either way around. Yeah. Fair point. Fair point. You could do it that way. You could do it that way.

If you want to think about it. That would kind of be the far way. What you want to do is just kind of go straight here over Greenland. Fair point. You could do it that way. You could do it that way. That would kind of be the far way. What you want to do is just kind of go straight here over Greenland. Thanksgiving week. It is. So for those of us in the United States, it's a holiday week. I mean, we, of course, as I like to say in one of my other podcasts, we release Upgrade simultaneously worldwide like Netflix does with its original shows.

We don't delay it for some markets. You all get it at the same time. That's how good we are. That's how nice we are, forward thinking. But in this country, the US, this is a holiday week and Thursday is Thanksgiving day. So everybody gets Thursday and Friday generally off. And sometimes the Wednesday, my kids have, let's see, my daughter has Wednesday, Thursday, Friday off. My son has the entire week off, which is kind of funny. I guess that's, I think some school districts just give up and they realize that they're going to, in the US, school funding, a lot of school funding has to do for public school, has to do with attendance. And so if a school anticipates days that will not be well

attended, they will often just make them holidays, make them vacation days and move those days elsewhere in the year just because they can get better attendance on other days. So my son's middle school has just given up and given him the whole week off. So not eight feet away from me in the living room, my son and a friend of his are playing video games right now. He's living the life. Yeah, it's Thanksgiving week. They're thankful that they have lots of video games to play.

Which also means with being Thanksgiving week, I have some kind of weird pseudo holiday week. It's very strange because I just don't talk to anybody for a couple of days, right? Because everything shuts down. Yeah, life continues as normal. Although you could, you know, you could do what you did. You could go to an American restaurant for a Thanksgiving meal on Thursday. I'd considered it, but didn't get anything booked in.

So that means I probably won't be able to do it. But we'll see. Maybe I'll find something. There's always options. Have some turkey. And it's like a little pre-Christristmas christmas for for those over there um yeah it's it's a funny one because this is our this is the one i mean fourth of july is like this too where it's like it's a holiday only for us and it used to not matter when i was thinking about this um back before the internet i know that's kind of a

weird thing to say but let me in ye olden days and before yeah back in the old old times the old times um it's just one of those things where it as an american you didn't think about the fact that the rest of the world didn't celebrate this holiday everything you could see your entire uh your entire world was constrained to like our tv channels were you know only american uh everything is only american and you didn't have with the internet everything higher world was constrained to like our TV channels were, you know, only American. Everything is only American and you didn't have with the internet. Everything is much more kind of globally connected now. So it's only been more recently that you get that effect of knowing that life goes on everywhere else while we are stuffing ourselves with turkey and rolls and yams and things like that.

It's funny. Whilst we're talking about that, Apple is strongly encouraging that everybody gets out of the house on Thanksgiving and actually participates in some exercise as opposed to just eating. So they are going to be, they kind of announced this via push notification, I believe, today to Apple Watch users, that if you do a 5K, which is about 3.1 miles, I'm told by Dan Moore on Six Colors, that you will get a special achievement badge in the activity app on your Apple Watch, which is Thanksgiving themed. It's kind of cute.

Yeah. Yeah, I like this idea. I theme it's kind of cute yeah yeah it's i i like i like this idea i think it's a really great idea the idea to to motivate people like what motivates somebody and is a dumb you know apple watch badge gonna motivate people well maybe it will i mean i'm gonna have that moment of like oh we should go for a walk today which may be before i would be like we should eat more yams. Yeah, that's right. More big potato. And instead, go out for a walk.

So I think it's a fun idea to prompt people on a day like Thanksgiving to get out and move their bodies. We should do some follow-up. G. Llewellyn on Twitter wrote in to tell us, this is just an interesting tidbit, that in China, the MacBook Pro with touch bar is called the multi-up. G. Llewellyn on Twitter wrote in to tell us, this is just an interesting tidbit, that in China, the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is called the Multi-Touch Bar version.

And you can see it. I'll put a link in the show notes to a screenshot that G. Llewellyn sent to us, and you can see it because they translate that part into English. It's called the Multi-Touch Bar. That's just an interesting thing to me. I mean, obviously, this stuff happens quite a lot, but I can't think of anything like product naming words from apple that has

been changed when translated like iphone is iphone is iphone right yeah it might there must be some cultural reason right why it was considered or or a trademark reason or something although i'm not sure that's a huge issue but something something like that where they decided that this was a safer way to describe it. Dave wrote in to recommend a lightning to SD card adapter from a company called Lexar. Yeah, Lexar is a major manufacturer of memory cards, basically. Okie dokie. And they have an actual physical adapter that you can plug into your iOS devices via lightning. And you can pull the files straight directly from the SD cards.

So this was in response to us talking last time about having a wireless SD card. Yeah, the Toshiba Wi-Fi SD card. So Dave shows how fast things can move sometimes. I went and immediately purchased this, got it from Amazon, tried it out and discovered that it was no good. Well, I was going to write about it. First off, it uses micro SD cards. And my recorder, my portable recorder, the Zoom,

uses full-size SD cards. So I would need to get a micro SD card with an adapter and then pull that card out and then pull the little card out of the adapter and then put pull the little, you know, pull that card out and then pull the little card out of the adapter and then put it in in order to get it to work. Um, but I, I like the idea of using, uh, a wire transfer, essentially a lightning port transfer instead of a wifi transfer. And then I do actually already have a couple of micro SD cards. Um, and they're, they are readable by my devices and by my Mac

and neither of them was readable by the Lexar thing. It was like I don't know what to do and so I went to Amazon and started a return and it's in a box going back to Amazon now. So I can't maybe I got a bad one. I don't know. It works for Dave. Dave said that he uses it.

It didn't work for me and I'm pretty happy with how the the toshiba wi-fi card is working so i think i'm going to stick with that we've had a couple of people contact us um and maybe you could speak a little bit more to this jason to say this is in response to an ask up pre-question that it is possible to drive the lg 5K display via Thunderbolt 2. Now, we were under the impression that it could only be driven by a Thunderbolt 3 capable device. So since it's, it sounds like, since this is happening

where it's multiple channels of DisplayPort, what I've heard, and I can't confirm this, and I kept asking people who said that they had heard that this was possible to let me know if they ever saw it in action. And nobody has said this yet. But I've heard because we answered with some confidence last week that it was impossible when we were asked about it on Ask Upgrade. Because it literally says on the technical specifications that it works via a computer that has Thunderbolt 3.

Like it says it on the page, right? Right. as thunderbolt 3 like it says it on the page right right so and i it may be that some macs have the video out capability the the you know the the gpu capability to do it if you attach a thunderbolt 3 to thunderbolt 2 adapter to the display and then a thunderbolt cable from the display to the computer i don't know if that will work or not. But we heard from a couple people that it would. We heard rumblings that this may actually be set up in Apple stores. As a way to display these things.

Attached instead of the Thunderbolt display. Attached to like a Mac Pro. It's also possible that it will work, but it will work at a lower frame rate. It'll work at like 30 frames per second instead of 60. I don't know. So basically, we want to say we've heard from some people that it may be more complicated than simply saying no, like we did last week. So the jury's still out on this. If you have seen one of these, I mean, they haven't they haven't even shipped yet is my understanding right so it may be that the first time we see them will

be in an apple store and somebody should look and see if they're attached via that thunderbolt adapter maybe that all right that'll be thek display says connection thunderbolt 3 enabled mac the 4k display says usbc enabled yeah so they're different they are different things they are different and i'm sure that lots of macs can drive a 4K display. And yeah, so it's a mystery. So anyway, if somebody does succeed in getting the 5K display operating with a Mac that

does not have Thunderbolt 3, let us know. That would be interesting. Yeah, I'm still not holding out hope for this. I have skepticism that even if it does work, if it's optimal, that's really my my thought there is is it going to be able to drive it at 60 hertz like the uh like the modern platterball 3 max are is it going to melt your gpu who knows anything is possible anything is possible hey are you at your new house or are you at your old house

nope so you're still in micro office? Yeah, I'm still in micro office. Due to a myriad of issues last week, I didn't end up recording any shows from the flat. I actually recorded less shows last week. I had to skip some. But this week, I should be recording a couple of things from mega office. Mega office is now painted, which is great. All right.

Are you still doing your chair plan? Yeah, no furniture yet. However, I'm maybe this weekend going to buy a desk. I'm going to get a sit-stand desk, which is going to be new for me. Welcome. I'm definitely going to be recording at least one

show this week from the new flat. That's great. And just a piece of homework, next week is going to be our first holiday season, Mike at the Movies. And as we mentioned before, it's going to be Gremlins. So we will be talking about Gremlins on next week's episode of Upgrade.

So if you want to follow along with the final segment of the show, which will be our discussion about Gremlins, you need to watch before next Monday, which is also a reminder to me and Jasonason that we must watch the movie by next yes yeah i've had a lot of podcast homework lately um watching various movies for and tv shows for the incomparable and then i realized that my next bit of homework is for upgrade that's kind of fun so sometime this week though right you you agree that. Mike at the movies is the most important. Sure. Of course.

Goes without saying. This week's episode of Upgrade is brought to you very kindly by our friends over at Mack Weldon. Mack Weldon is better than whatever you're wearing right now, unless you're already wearing Mack Weldon clothing, because we all know, me and Jason, and you should know that it's the best, right? We believe this, Jason Snow, do we not? Oh, yes. Mack Weldon is not oh yes is the most comfortable i'm wearing it right now so it's not better than what i'm wearing right now that's why i said it because i knew you would you would challenge me

because i know that you wear mac walden often as i do because their products are so comfortable mac walden will give you the most comfortable underwear socks shirts undershirts hoodies and sweatpants that you will have ever experienced. They look good as well as being comfortable. You can be out on the street. I mean, as I've mentioned many, many times, I travel with my Mack Weldon sweatpants and they're the most fancy looking sweatpants that I've ever worn. I don't think I stick out like a sore thumb. You know, I don't look like I've just come from the gym. I look good. But the most important thing for me is that I feel good. I feel comfortable when I'm wearing this stuff as well. I love my Mack Weldon underpants as well.

And I find the whole situation, the whole way of buying Mack Weldon products to be so easy. They have a great website. The whole situation. The situation of buying. The Mack Weldon website situation is good is what you're saying. They can put that on the website right on the very top. Mike Hurley says the situation is good. I really do like this stuff and this is something that you know not only am i happy to tell you about it i'm also happy to put it on my body right i think that's going to be the the biggest

endorsement that a human can put that on their website too yeah i can also put i'm giving just tagline after tagline for mac it's amazing they have silver underwear and shirts that naturally antimicrobial they eliminate odor this is some cool science stuff to make sure you're also going to smell good also it'll protect you from werewolves i i they don't really promote that but it's true put it on the website mac weldon protects you from werewolves says jason snell mac weldon want you to be comfortable they believe in that so much that if you don't like what you buy if you buy your first pair and you're not happy

with it, just keep it and they'll refund you. If they don't want your underpants back, just keep them. Listeners of this show can get 20% off at macweldon.com. That's M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N dot com with the coupon code UPGRADE. Thank you so much to Mac Weldon

for their support of this show and RelayFM. Trust me, as a human being, you probably need to buy some of these products just go and get yourself some and i know that you're going to love it thank you so much to mac weldon for their support this show werewolf protection yeah it's just comes standard with silver under underpants somebody over in cupatino should have stretched a pair of silver underpants over the airport extreme in the airport so that couldn't be killed because a report from the man who has been on

fire since he joined Bloomberg Mr. Mark Gurman said today that the wireless division, the router division I don't even know what you'd call it over at Apple airport extreme and airport express The wireless division, the router division, I don't even know what you'd call it over at Apple. The maker, Airport Extreme and Airport Express and Time Machine, basically, or Time Capsule.

Time Capsule. Difficult to remember the name of Time Capsule. That they've shut that down, disbanded the team, and presumably won't be making any more wireless router products. and presumably won't be making any more wireless router products. They said that the team has been kind of slowly being closed down over the last year, and they're moving these people into like Apple TV and iPhone, and they're just moving them out into other divisions. This product is dead.

They're still on sale though, right? Like I can still today go to apple.com and buy a an airport uh for my for my sins i guess let me go and take a look see if it's still available in the accessories but whilst i do this jason's now um is this an issue in any way yes i can still buy an airport extreme and a time capsule if i want to do you see this as a as a as a problem i don't i don't i know there's a lot of people out there i i've you know anytime apple does anything there's a reaction and it's sort of like people like i can't believe they're doing this that that seems to just happen every time but i don't think it's a big deal i i

i does apple need to be in this business this is the thing that i keep coming back to with some of this stuff it's like does apple really need to be in this business? This is the thing that I keep coming back to with some of this stuff. It's like, does Apple really need to be in this business? Now, I will grant you that I think in the long run, the airport products have been pretty reliable. I still have a generation of prior airport base station that I have been using up until recently when I switched to another class of product, which we'll get to in a second. I've been using it. It was solid. It held a connection. I bought other Wi-Fi routers. They have been much less reliable as well as harder to set up. When I need to set up a Wi-Fi router at my mom's house, I got her an Apple router because it was more reliable than the one that she had. And it has continued to be so. So there are a lot of things

to be said for it. But it's kind of, I mean, they're competing with companies that want to make routers that specialize in making routers. Does Apple really need, does an Apple branded router bring a lot more to the table there are some people who are going to buy it but at this point I don't know I mean I wasn't a big fan I should I should disclose of the last generation the tall design that was basically designed so they could fit the the big hard drive in it for the time capsule I thought it looked ridiculous I never liked it never bought one but you know I don, you know, I, I don't know. It's, it's one of those things I just have a hard time being upset about because although they,

they're, they've been pretty good and they've been pretty reliable. It feels like the wifi, um, world keeps changing and advancing and that Apple reached a point where they were going to need to either put more effort into these products or just walk away. And I can really see the argument. Like, why are we doing this? There is a thriving market of companies, traditional and startups, that are making Wi-Fi products and other infrastructure products. Is this something that we need to go down in order to make the world better?

They're all compatible with our stuff. We don't need to worry about this. And that seems to be where they've ended up. And it's hard for me to fault that. I think in the world where Apple have decided that they don't want to make monitors anymore, why would they continue to make Wi-Fi-based stations and routers? That seems like a less important product even than making a first-party display.

I agree. I agree. And I just don't feel like it... even than making a first party display. I agree. I agree. And I just, I don't feel like it. I mean, the argument here is also Apple. What do you mean? Apple's got all this money. Apple's huge. Why do they need to focus?

Why do they need to eliminate jobs and divisions and move people around and things like that? There are other things that they've done this week that we'll talk about later about this too. But Apple isn't as big as you think. First off, it's big in terms of size, but Apple in terms of the core group that's building products is smaller than you might expect. And they seem culturally not to want to get much bigger. They are, and I think that stems from Steve Jobs and when he came back to Apple, that they want to, you know, hiring at Apple is a slow process a lot of the time. They only want to hire.

They definitely seem to practice that, only hire the very best. And they're very careful about that, it seems. And so they don't grow their groups very quickly. So part of this is that, yeah, I'm sure that they benefit from focus. Also, I think groups that are not in the spotlight tend to not have the... If you're somebody who wants to grow and advance at Apple, if you get put on something like airport, my guess is your feeling is that you're in a cul-de-sac, right? So they're not going to have their best people working on this stuff anyway. Whereas if you're at a company

that this is what you do, you're going to hire people who are the best and they're going to know that this is what the company is all about. So I think that there's a bunch of stuff at play here so that even though Apple is a huge company, it kind of makes sense to say this just isn't a company focus. Why are we doing this? We don't't need to do this or on the flip side of that you know because we don't know who's on the airport team they could have people that are too good that are working on that team and want to get them out you know like the the airport people could be the best in the world at solely in networking and they really want them on the iphone well that's why the slowly tearing down the team thing makes sense because that's like hey bill Billy is over there in the airport team.

And we need them to come over here and work on this thing for iOS. And Billy's like, yeah, great. iOS engineering. That's awesome. Right? And then they've just lost somebody from their team. And it just goes like that until it's a skeleton crew. And then somebody says, do we want to staff this up in order to do another revision and everybody looks

at it and goes no why and that's it billy's doing such good work on the antenna bands why would we take him away and put him back on the airport extreme exactly yeah i struggle to i struggle to to to care um about this emotionally because I've never been invested in these products. I tend to just use what my provider gives me. And in the UK, the hardware that we get given from our providers is actually pretty good stuff. It tends to be, not always, but there's some proprietary stuff that they make, but it tends to be pretty good stuff um it tends to be not always but like where there's some proprietary stuff that they make but it tends to be pretty good you make a good point um in the u.s too like cable modems now tend to come with wi-fi and we can nerds especially can be like i don't use it i turned it off and i've got another router that i'm using but you know that's us i think for the

vast bulk of people like you get Wi-Fi with your router, that's it, right? You're done. You don't need anything more. Because I once owned an airport, I think the Express, the one that just was a plug, you just plugged it directly into the wall.

And I owned that because my router didn't have Wi-Fi enabled. Right. That's why these products first started to exist. But now, as you say, that's not needed. Apple had to make these products because there was a need for them. Like they needed to exist and they didn't exist. And that's just not true anymore.

But I do have a question, though. This clearly seems like Apple is taking their time right now to pull back from some areas that they're not interested in anymore. And they're using those resources in other areas. I know that some of this stuff can upset people. I think for me, I see it as a positive because there are things in Apple's product line right now that I agree need work on.

So I would like to see Apple stopping to care about these periphery things and putting more focus on these products, right? I would love to see more work done on the Mac. I would love to see more work on the iPad. So taking talented people and putting them in other areas, that's a big thumbs up for me. But I can't understand why Apple still sell iPods. Well, Dan Warren posted a link today to a Macworld story he wrote a little while ago, which was Apple products that need love.

It was like displays and airport and the iPod touch. And he was like, it's like, do they come in threes? And I put obviously like the regular iPods too, they sell enough. Here's the thing. Those aren't ever, iPod Touch we could talk about, right? Because that requires iOS versions and all of that. And there, there's some arguments to be made there either way. But, but the iPods, the music players, they're at the end of their life, right?

There's no development going on for those anymore. They are, they're never the end of their life, right? There's no development going on for those anymore. They are, they're never going to get updated and they, they will make them until they can't sell them anymore. So I don't think there's any internal, uh, focus placed on a product like that because like literally everybody knows they're never going to be anything more. And, and you can say that because I mean, already the iPod is, I would argue, kind of irrelevant, right? Because iPods can't do Apple Music. So they're already irrelevant. They're already just a product that they sell because some people still want to buy them. But there will come a time when the cost of selling them or the money made by selling them is more

than the cost of making them uh having the production line up at all to make them are they going to run out of the parts for them potentially at some point right at some point it'll balance off and i don't know when that'll be and they'll and they'll just say okay the time has come like when i mentioned a week a week or two ago about idg looking at our magazines back in the day and saying once they're not profitable it's the jig is up we're not going to keep them around out of out of ego at some point the balance sheet goes into the red and you say that's it we're done so that you know but i think there's no intellectual energy being expended on the ipod right whereas with the airport with the airport

when you look at what google is doing um what companies like Eero, who is sponsoring, unrelated, sponsoring this episode, so we'll just try to keep those separate. mesh networks where you've got multiple stations doing coverage in houses where that was always kind of harder to do. And now they're trying to make that easier for people to buy two packs or three packs of routers. And you plug one in at the base and you plug a couple other in. They talk to each other. They configure. It's like, it's really good and much better as an experience than Wi-Fi has been up to now and much easier to set up. of these reasons for that and you're apple and you're like are we going to play that game no we're not it's fine other people are going to play that game and you know i i that that's that question is always are we going to have to spend more mental energy on this or or aren't we and the ipod is easy because as long as it pencils out there's no you know is there anybody is there literally anybody looking

at ipod software firmware hardware anything i don't think so but that's i agree with that but was anybody doing that with the airport but i still found they're still potentially finding the need to kill this well they were still releasing like software updates for it every now and then that was that was a thing that was happening and i do wonder again if there was an impetus here where they realized that beyond a certain point they were going to have to keep releasing software updates you know maybe they keep it on a maintenance maintenance mode for a certain amount of time i don't know i mean you do wonder if there's that moment where they're like oh yeah we need to we need to choose now if we're if this is going to be an ongoing concern or not and we choose not so the upgrade podcast from real afm decrees that it is not an issue

yeah i guess i mean i feel i feel for people who love these things and are sad that they're not going to continue but i really feel like there's a lot of progress being made on other fronts here and that there are going to be other options that are going to be better and that for most people probably the you know you get your router out of the box from your provider that has wi-fi and then you also have these other companies that are trying to build more robust mesh kind of networks for people who want that kind of thing and do we need do we need apple in that game maybe it would be nice if they were there but Apple doesn't think it's particularly important that they be there.

I endorse that. I just want to take a moment to touch on the Design by Apple in California book. Yes, that happened after our show last week, so we didn't get a chance to talk about it here. I feel like there's a slight tie-in here because a lot of people are looking at this and i completely understand why is like are apple putting their focus on the right places right now you know is is it worth putting time and

effort into creating a book chronicling the last 20 years of apple design when the macbook pro is over a thousand days without a refresh right like i i can see the the the idea of that for people's only the p the people involved in page layout photography and paper were instead designing the interior components of a mac pro if only they had been retasked i mean i i agree with mostly. I mean, there is definitely going to be some work expounded by the designers. But I do agree. I don't think that this is saying that Apple are not putting their focus in the right places. But I think that there is a nugget of something here, which I'm struggling to land on, which I think is a PR issue. I don't think this was the right time for this book to come out. So let me, in terms of the people,

not only, yes, people who make a book are not the same people who engineer a product. And I think it's different. But I think if I had to guess internally how this worked at Apple, they've been collecting this archive for years. They want to have an archive of their old products for various reasons, not just for the book. They didn't call Stephen

Hackett. I don't know what was up with that. They, you know, they bought, they bought these products. You know, what probably happened is that they brought some people on, on a contract for six months and paid them to make this book. And, you know, they contracted with a photographer and they contracted with a designer and they had some meetings where johnny ive or some other designers said here's what we'd like the book to be and then they paid you know they paid people to do it and then it was sign offs and etc etc it's self-published but i i really doubt they retasked key members of any team anywhere to work on this book by by far the most likely thing is they brought people in on a six month contract or something to build this book and paid them wrote a check and uh did some interviews and

did a couple of you know did some product management passes and some you know let's look at the the page designs and are they looking okay and it was not you know i i think this is a like write a check kind of a transaction with a little bit of oversight here after having collected the uh so i think you could overstate the amount of effort that was put into this by anybody who has any effect on apple's uh products and design uh really really i think it's very easy to overstate that i think it wasn't a big deal now to your point right you would say right now given all the other things that are going on the hubbub around all these other things at Apple,

do you want to choose this time to release an introspective, self-congratulatory product? Who is this book for? Who are they selling it to? Us, right? They are selling it to the people that love Apple the most. The people that

spend hours a week talking about or listening about or writing about or reading about these products. Apple must know that there is a little bit of unrest in that community right now, right? They're not stupid. It's why they discounted dongles, right? Like they're not stupid that's why they discounted dongles right like they're very aware of this i'm sorry i i had to laugh at thinking of uh wait you mean that there's unrest in the community that apple made unhappy by prioritizing other things over them that that seems like exactly consistent behavior right like they didn't care before why Why would they care now? Um, I, I don't know. It's, it's, you're, you're, I'm not sure there's ever a good time to do something like this. Um, I was on the talk show last week and Gruber and I talked about this a bit. Um,

and you can find that in somewhere an hour or two. I don't know. It was, it was a long conversation. And I feel like what John suggested is they could have used a coffee table book publisher of Renown as a front, like not even necessarily given up any control over it, but they could have like used the publisher as a front to say, you know, they're publishing it. We're not. But Apple's say uh you know they're publishing it we're not but apple's like nope we're publishing it it's all us we think we're great here is this photo book of all of our stuff um and they didn't they didn't do that either um but you know was there was there ever going to be a good time to do it this this seems like i feel like they they wanted this out for the holidays because they know that there are people who are big fans of Apple who will buy this as a holiday gift.

And it costs a ridiculous amount of money, but a lot of coffee table book kind of art book stuff, a lot of them cost what we would perceive as a ridiculous amount of money because that's how those kinds of things are often priced. I don't know. Mike, the thing that baffles me the most about this book is that it's just pictures of old hardware that there's literally no insight into john syracuse talked about this on atp last week there's no insight into what they did in detail like apparently there's a booklet that comes with the book that's got some descriptive text but that the book is basically just pictures and that you know if this is why like Literally anyone could make this book, and many have. Why did Apple make a book that is literally just pictures of Apple hardware that is publicly

available and that anyone can amass a collection of, including Stephen Hackett, and that there are other books about this? That's the part that actually baffles me because you know that's somebody saying well other people can do it but we want our we want our own and you know and that's where I what I keep coming back to is what this really feels like is the industrial design group wanted a yearbook like they wanted they wanted a collection of their work so that they would have it. And at some point somebody said, well, why don't we just sell it? Why, why just make it for us? If we're going to, you know, I'll, I'll give you the money to build this book, but you know, why don't we recoup some of that by selling it at Apple stores too? And so somebody was like,

all right, let's do that. But it feels very much like this is somebody, you know, the industrial design group wanted a pretty thing to put, you know, to take with them. Is this an example of Johnny Ive's power? Has he been able to just say, we're making this book and the book is made? Yeah, I mean, there may be multiple steps there. But my guess is that he or somebody else in his group was a proponent of this. And like I said, my theory is that they wanted to make this for themselves. And then a series of decisions was made that led to it being, well, maybe other people wanted, well, maybe we should sell it publicly because we can make some money that way and

let fans and people who appreciate our great work do it. I don't think it started as what we need to do is make a photo book so that the masses can appreciate our... I don't think it came from that direction but um but sure i i doubt that i mean who else could do who else could kick off a project like this right yeah but but johnny i but i do feel like it was very much we're proud of the hardware work we've done and we want to have something that uh you know we don't think that the existing books about our work really tell the story, or we've been building this archive for eight years, we'd like to document it, and then it sort of snowballs into

this bigger project, is my guess. It does frustrate me that there's no iBooks version of this, for a couple of reasons. One, so people that want to enjoy this stuff don't have to pay 200 for it and also too like this is a a multimedia rich platform that they could have used to create they go you could have put videos in there they could have put narration in there they could have made a really interesting ibook out of this as well like in compliment to that maybe even you got for free if you bought the real big book and and that goes back to my theory that that this project was always of a smaller scope. And then it just sort of like expanded and nobody, I mean, I've seen that happen in lots of different areas where you start with something small and it expands without anybody saying,

wait a second, if we're going to expand this, maybe we should expand the scope of it. It's like, well, no, no, no. Then the argument is, no, that doesn't work. We don't want to spend too much time on it we're just going to do what we're going to do and if you want to sell it you can sell it and nobody stopped to say well wouldn't this be a great iBook that we could build and we could throw in videos and we could throw in you know other things it's like no the whole goal here was just to have a a beautiful photography book on custom paper but then they released a big press release about it which is like yeah that's where it kind of ties together into a bit of a mess i think

yeah i i mean i agree that the the optics of it are weird but um i don't know i i what i said on the talk show i'll say here which is I feel like how people react to this book is a way to peer into how people feel about Apple right now. I feel like that's what this is. This is an inkblot test kind of thing, which is if you were inclined to believe that Apple is rotting

and doesn't know what it's doing, then you can point to this and say, see, this is proof. And if you think that Apple's fine and people get freaked out about things that they shouldn't worry about, you can point to this and be like, it's not a big deal. And so I guess that's why I'm kind of lukewarm on the whole thing is other than being disappointed because it seems like a huge missed opportunity not to actually tell the story of Apple design in some way and instead just show pictures that anybody can make a book and has showing pictures of

these products. Beyond that, really, all I have to do is sort of shrug and say, it's not that big a thing. And people who want to use it as evidence of something are doing it not because they originally thought everything was fine but because they already were worried about it and this buttresses their their case it just it seems very much like a like a an inkblot test to me yeah my overall feeling is i'm not annoyed that the book exists i'm annoyed of how they priced it and i'm annoyed at the time that they chose to introduce it right i just think that it shows a little bit of either arrogance or blindness to to the people that they chose to introduce it right i just think that it shows a little bit of either arrogance or blindness to to the people that they're trying to sell this to which is apple

but it still can be annoying i guess i think i think those of us in our um our apple focus bubble can get uh can think of the situation as being more extreme than it actually is. Sure. But you know, right. You know, we're the most likely audience to buy a book like this. And I think Apple must know that.

However, after watching Steven's video where he was able to line up the book with his own actual Apple collection, I do want the book. I honestly do want it. I'm a, I'm a huge Apple fan. Like this book is for me. I want to,

I want to look at the pictures um and with the holiday season coming up maybe it will appear in my stocking and i'll be very happy to receive it that's a big stocking it's be a big stocking but i i this is the type of thing that i know that i would enjoy like i'm not annoyed that the book exists i just think that it could have been done better and i really wish that they would have had an iBook version so more people could enjoy it, I think. I think that's the thing that frustrates me the most. It's like, you can enjoy our photos

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a man by the name of Sal Seguin has left Apple. Now, I'm sure that there are people that leave Apple of their own accord or pushed out the door every day. But it usually never meets us. It's very rare that we hear about a departure from a non-executive, right? If an executive leaves, we all know about it. But maybe it has to say a rank-and-file member of Apple, somebody who maybe is a team leader or works within a team. They leave, we don't hear anything.

Who is Sal Seguin? What did he do at Apple? And why is it important that he's no longer there? So Sal was the product manager of Automation Technologies, which he announced at the Mac Tech Conference where he was speaking that his position was eliminated for business reasons, which is, that's basically Apple code for services no longer required, right? He was told to leave. Sal's history at Apple goes back a very long way, back into the OS9 days. The first time I ever saw Sal was at a WWDC in the 90s where he was not working at Apple,

and he was demoing AppleScript support in QuarkXPress. And basically, he was a consultant, and he was working for a publishing company, a newspaper company, and they had a database of all their classified ads. And he built a script that queried the database and laid out their classified ad page automatically, which you have to, I mean, you have to see it in that context. It was mind blowing, like literally an entire page of the newspaper was made in seconds by this script. And that was, he was, he was, and is a great demo guy. He always had a session at WWDC. Apple hired him to be their scripting and automation guy, basically inside Apple. And, and he was a pretty high profile. He is a gregarious guy. You get to know him. He's a nice guy. He was very visible. And I think, you know, I'm unclear on all the details of how the inner workings of Apple work. He had a team. He was the product manager. The funding and access that his team got is an open question.

How much he got to direct what the direction that this stuff went versus what was sort of dictated to them from the OS people, I think is open to discussion. And I would say that his tenure is not without things that we can criticize about it. There are definitely some things that maybe didn't work as well as they could have but i also got the distinct impression that he didn't have a whole lot of support within apple for their stuff like they did automator which was back in like os 10 10.4 i think it was a long time ago and then they did a they did some script bridge stuff so that you could get access with javascript to scripting um you know they did some script bridge stuff so that you could get access with JavaScript to scripting. You know, they did some things, but it's been pretty limited over time. And I think I got into a Twitter back and forth with somebody who was saying, you know, they haven't shipped anything interesting.

And my understanding is they haven't shipped anything interesting because they had no support within Apple. So I think for me, the question was, in some ways, how is this able to go on for so long where Apple's OS group didn't seem to care about what Sal and his team were doing, and yet they remained to kind of twist in the wind? I wonder about that, but I just, I don't know enough about the inside details to say. Sal has always been something that I've been aware of maybe about my last kind of 10 years or maybe 10, 15 years where I've been interested in Apple products significantly

because I've seen him. You know, I remember episodes of the old Mac break video show with Sal Seguin as a guest whilst employed by Apple. I know that he gives talks whilst employed by Apple. He has his own

website multiple websites about os features that he generates that are not hosted by apple but look like apple websites sort of and and for years so he's definitely been playing by a different book than than most this is the stuff that apple people can do and i wonder maybe you could provide a bit of context on this is he kind of a hangover from the days of the evangelists well i'd say he definitely feels evangelist-y in a way that you don't see very much of anymore in the broader uh in the broader world i think there's something to that and the fact that he was given free reign i think the fact that he was given free reign, I think the fact that he was given sort of free reign for some of this stuff

also speaks to Apple's lack of interest in it. Like it wasn't important enough to not have him doing it. And he was just kind of evangelizing their technologies. I definitely felt the sense I always got from Sal about Apple stuff was that Sal was counting on us, the press and the users to send the message that the stuff that he was doing was cool and should continue because the implication there was because he and his team couldn't do it. Like they were making the case and that was just not going to do it, that we needed to make noise for it to continue.

In fact, back in the day, there was a question about whether AppleScript was going to make it into OS X. And it's funny because if you think about the darkest days of Apple, there was a while there where one of the main reasons publishers didn't switch to windows was that they had all these apple script uh automation things that that had been built to ease their production systems and they didn't translate to windows and so it kept them on the mac in the darkest of the days so um in the end apple script did come to os 10 and and they did introduce automator in 10.4 but um but yeah it's it's a i don't know it was a it was a different time and it was never a huge priority for him and he was always a good spokesman so he did end up being kind of an evangelist and they didn't seem to put the clamps on him either so yeah i you know it's uh it's interesting to ask why now and why not sooner.

And maybe this is all part of a thing. We go back to the airport stuff. Maybe this is the, you know, end of 2016 reckoning where Apple is doing some reorg and getting rid of more old stuff that they don't think they need to have around anymore. Maybe that's the thought process here. Right? I mean, I think Sal is great, but does Apple care? I mean, this is the question. If Apple doesn't really care and all that he and his group do is they are underfunded, under-resourced,

and make trouble because they don't agree i was gonna say well i would assume that inside of apple i mean i know nothing that all sal and his team are troublemakers now because they're not able to do anything else yeah sure they have no leeway they have no budget to actually do anything i mean i think that shows in the fact that this isn't really a thing that is spoken about apple script anymore so i'm sure all they do is just try and be involved and they're just seen as troublemakers well and they and they bug everybody who's building an app internally you know i'm sure gets bugged by or got bugged by sal and his team about like are you doing are you doing scriptability is there is pages scriptable is number scriptable why isn't it

scriptable you need to do that right And that's probably annoying for people too. It's also a couple points because it's also possible that they wanted to go in a direction that this team doesn't want to go in or wasn't a good fit for. It's possible. And that's my optimism scenario

that we can get to in a little bit. But I do want to say one thing about AppleScript because it's very easy to conflate Sal with AppleScript. He's the AppleScript guy. But AppleScript and automation is more than AppleScript and it's more than Automator. It's a lot of stuff. It's hooks into, like I said, you could script apps on the Mac with languages that are a

language that is not AppleScript. You could do it with JavaScript. I think you can do it with a bunch of other scripting languages too. And like I use Automator stuff every day, but most of it is actually triggering shell scripts. And Automator exists to make it easy for me to connect those shell scripts with the Mac UI so I don't have to open a terminal window and type them. And some of them are Apple scripts. And some of them are Apple scripts

and some of them are Apple scripts that build shell scripts and then run the shell scripts. So it's a bigger world. And I'm more concerned about Apple's platform having scriptability and access so that users can connect apps together in ways that the apps, you know, can't anticipate themselves separately, and do other kind of automating of simple tasks, in general, as a concept than I am in preserving something like AppleScript. I mean, anybody who's used AppleScript will probably tell you that AppleScript is a kind of a mess and a pain to use. And I don't particularly love it. If somebody came to me and and said we're vastly improving the scripting system in os 10 and maybe even like have something like that for ios but you're going to have to learn swift i'd say great like great great let's do it let's make it happen um so it's it's

a bigger issue than like apple script or automator which are not without their serious flaws. I think this might just be this whole thing of automation and scripting. I just think it might be something that Apple just isn't interested in putting the time and effort into. And I think the key for that is that they haven't hired the workflow team. The fact that workflow exists tells me that maybe they're not that interested in doing it themselves. Because if you were, you'd just buy them. I think, well, I think Workflow though, so we're talking about the Workflow app for iOS. I think the argument could be, and this is my pessimistic scenario versus my optimistic scenario. The argument could be that Apple doesn't need to make automation tools.

could be that apple doesn't need to make automation tools apple needs to make their platform have hooks basically have ways for automation tools for scripts to access the system that works for me right right so so that's that's the question now ios automation works not because of apple but despite apple like the you know workflow is cool x callback url is a nice hack that that developers have come up with but apple could have built a legitimate system of automation and inter-app communication and for ios and didn't bother and that's the question and is poorer because of it as great as, you know, and Federico and Fraser can talk on, uh, on another podcast about, uh, how great automation stuff is with workflow on iOS. It's canvas. You should check out this series is awesome.

It is canvas. Thank you. You should listen to that podcast as great as it is. It could be so much better. It could be so much better. It could be so much better and so much less of working around things in the system if Apple had a commitment to doing that. But my understanding and talking to Sal over the years was that iOS engineering, not even remotely interested. It was like a wall for the automation group. Like, nope, not just no,

forget it. At which point you've got to say, the only reason the Mac had it is because it had it in the past and that Apple has no concern about it moving forward. Because if they cared about this kind of issue, maybe they would put it on iOS. You could argue, oh, well, the Mac is a platform for more finicky, fiddly stuff. And iOS is smooth and serene and for consumers more. Although iPad Pro, what happens there? But I think that's the optimistic scenario I have is what if Apple does have a plan to make automation kind of more modern

and tie into modern scripting languages or maybe even tie into Swift and use it as a kind of a ramp up, like you scripting languages or maybe even tie into swift and use it as a kind of a ramp up like you learn swift and you can do automation in the system and then you can build an app and it's all part of a ramp up or is i think more evidence suggests that apple just doesn't care and that they look at something like workflow and instead of saying wow that's really amazing they look at workflow and say see we don't need to do anything i work again that works for me right like i've never been an apple script person uh i love workflow i've tried apple script it never made any sense to me workflow makes sense

to me it's oh and i no disagreement there and workflow does a better job of being automator than automator ever did but workflow still has some really weird things about it and the access that workflow has is limited by the fact uh that the way apple has built ios makes it hard there's stuff you can't access and i see this on the mac too like there are apps that are not scriptable and this is the thing again it isn't just apple script like i use keyboard maestro for a lot of things and it's pretty great too. But there's stuff that, you know, in Keyboard Maestro, I end up having to like open a window,

move the cursor, click on a button. And that's ridiculous, right? You should be able to have that, tell the app to set that setting. And in some apps, you just can't do it. And you have to resort to kind of scripting the UI, which is kind of dumb. So that's my issue. I would be happy if Apple got out of the tools game, but had a little bit better of a commitment to opening access for the people who build the tools.

But I'm not sure that's really what's happening here i i my my most likely scenario for me is that all the script stuff in the mac is going to be in the same deep freeze where they keep dashboard by the way there's a dashboard button you can put on the control strip in the touch bar which is hilarious i hadn't even thought of that i can't believe they made that yeah you can put that in there so if you like if you like your 2016 future technology mixed with your technology from the previous decade uh you can do it I love that they took the dashboard key away from the keyboard but now they've put it back in the touch well the touch bar if you want it it's there and and I heard from somebody who said they use dashboard every day um and never use apple

script I was like fair enough fair enough to each their own. But yes, if you would like Dashboard on the touch bar, you can make that happen. You crazy diamond. Shine on you. If you just carry on my wayward son. I feel like the theme of today's episode is Apple is killing some stuff. They are moving away from certain areas. But I think we both think that that's okay.

Yeah, I would say it's okay. I think it's healthy for Apple to look at stuff and say, we don't need to be doing this anymore. I think it's healthy for all of us to do that, right? What can we not, what can we not do? What are we doing because we many years ago decided we would do it and not because we would it would ever make any sense for us to do it it's like what i said about the ipod right at some point you have that balance of like well maybe it's easier for me to keep

doing it but at some point it's not easier for you to keep doing it the best thing to do is to stop and then it's done and then you get that time back you get that money back you get those people back whatever it is i think that's absolutely true. My question is, what comes next, right? What comes next? And in the case of the airport, maybe what comes next is, is other third party stuff that's way better than the airport was. So why should Apple bother? In the case of scripting? This is my question of automation is what comes next? Is this we give up, we don't care anymore, nothing's going to be scriptable anymore, the system, you know, we just don't care? Or is it actually what we want to do is something that's very different, but we have an idea like we do, we do care, and we are going to make some, you know, some changes there. make some you know some changes there and like i said i think that's less likely but it comes back to that as much as i feel for sal and his team and as much as i have benefited from the work that they've done if apple has truly felt for years that it was a waste of time and money they should

have done this a long time ago so why not do it now right if they if they truly have no commitment to this why put up the false front right why why why act like you do and cart out these poor people who are trying their best to advocate for their technology while knowing that they have no support internally for their technology why why do that so on that level it comes back to it's okay like if you really don't want to do this just say so it's not you it's me but we both will just underscore the point that uh you know we're not happy to see people lose their jobs of course no no and i hope that i mean sal lost his job i hope that a lot of the people on his team what what i the report i read was that it was disbanded i don't know if that's actually accurate or not but in a lot of cases the technical people at apple they don't lose their jobs they are transferred elsewhere and that that is uh and

it could have been who knows this could have been precipitated by key members of the team being pulled elsewhere leaving them with nobody on their team and somebody saying, let's just pull the plug. Why would we staff this team? Let's get rid of the troublemaker and carry on. That's right. Possibly. Possibly. And I think Sal, again, Sal was a fierce advocate for his stuff as any product manager should

be. But I can see how that could be perceived inside an organization that doesn't care about his stuff as being a pain because, right? That was his job to be a pain. And if, if people aren't listening to him, so I don't know. I mean,

I look at workflow on iOS and I think there's hope because somehow, even in a cold, unfeeling universe where Apple made no attempt to do automation of any kind, they found a way life, life finds a way. It's sorry. I'm getting all Jurassic park on you. Now they found a way. Life finds a way. Sorry, I'm getting all Jurassic Park on you now. They found a way to do it. With XCallback URLs and other wacky stuff like that,

they found a way to do that stuff. And through share sheets and the sharing extension. So there's hope, there's hope. But I would love it if Apple would give the people out there who want to build that stuff the access to do it. For me, that's my bargaining right now is Apple doesn't have to do it. Apple just has to make it accessible for other people to do the work and not shut them out and maybe give them some tools to do a better job with it.

Mike, this just in. After we recorded the entire episode, we've come back in time it's like back to the future too mike marty i need your help craig has sent an email so after we recorded but before we finish talking on the live stream craig federighi sent an email to somebody on the internet who reads nine to five mac so nine to five mac posted a story about it and basically the emailer said hey i'm sad that you could let go sal uh i like automation on the mac and craig federighi wrote back to them and said hi we have every intent to continue our support for the great automation technologies in mac os you can hear craig saying you really can uh and do we think this is good news my my thought is continued support does not necessarily mean anything other than dashboard right

it it continues to exist is there more to it do i am i being pessimistic and viewing it that way it's great that craig is reassuring somebody about it but this is you know again no talk about future product directions but continuing our support is not anything other than keeping it alive i think uh i think what this means at a minimum is that this is life support. They are at least confirming that automation is on life support at Apple. Best case scenario means that they have some other ideas that they want to work on.

And as we mentioned, Sal and his team didn't fit those ideas. But I think the fact that Federici took the time to send those emails, they do this purposefully. They know these things are going to get out there. I think it's a positive message because this isn't something worth giving a press release over.

The amount of people that actually care about this in the grand scheme of things for Apple to issue a press release, it's not worth their time. They don't have to do more explaining to try and explain what they're even talking about to the wider masses than it would be worth doing this press release. This makes sense.

They know this stuff's going to get out there. This is just a confirmation from them, at least, that they have no intention of killing this support, which is, for people that use automation, is a good thing. It's a good starting point. All right, so basically, sort of where we were before, which is a little positive signal from Craig, but you can take it as being the optimistic view

is they've got a plan and the pessimistic view is they're going to just let it sit there, but not really do much to it, which is what we thought before. I can't believe I came all the way back in time just for that. Anyway, I'm going to go back to the future, Mike,

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Thank you so much to Encapsular for their support of this show, RelayFM, and this week's Ask Upgrade. Brent asked, Jason, which product have you been the most excited to get a review unit for in the last few years i don't know how to answer this question i don't i don't um oh the last few years i don't know i, I was really excited to get the iPad. I think that that might be my answer. The original iPad? Yeah, the iPhone,

we didn't get really a review unit. We got it the day of with everybody else. The original iPad, I got a few days before. I remember vividly your iPad review. You were sitting, I watched all the video parts that you did of it. You were sitting on watched all the video parts that you did of it you were sitting on a table by a window and you were doing all these series of videos showing what the ipad was capable

of i remember it there you go i have no i have no memory of that but okay great i'm glad it's vivid in your memory that was a big that was a was a big thing. The iPad release that we had been excited for that new product for a long time. And I got it, like I said, a day or two before release. And that was pretty exciting to get that, an entirely new Apple product. And I remember little bits of that. I remember writing the review over the weekend, sitting on my bed at home, churning out thousands of words. And yeah, I'd probably say that.

That was probably the most exciting one. I wish I could find those videos. I can find your original review, but I can't find the videos. I know that they existed. I'm almost certain of it. I have a very vivid memory of it. It's possible those were Macworld videos that have now been horribly deprecated.

It's entirely possible. If anybody finds them or remembers them, please write in hashtag AskUpgrade and we'll find it and I can talk about it next week. I'm sure I have a vivid memory of this. Lucas asks, on the MacBook Pro, is the Touch ID part of the touch bar an actual physical button

does it click yeah yeah it does it is a it is a key basically it's not shaped like the other keys but it is a key uh you can push it down and in fact if you push it's the power button it is what we used to think of as the power button its behavior is very different now if you hold it down for six i don't want to, seconds, it forces a reboot. And that's so that you've got a hardware, you know, because you can't necessarily, if the touch bar doesn't work, you can't do kind of the old method of force rebooting a system because that involved the escape key, which doesn't exist anymore. So you hold down that key for like six seconds and it just reboots. It's very much like the uh the same hardware hold down two buttons on the iphone or ipad and have it reboot in the same kind of vein

brent was interested to know if you have any idea if the touch bar has generation one or two touch id i think those concepts are concepts very specifically related to iOS and don't have applicability on the Mac. There's no way for me to tell because I'd have to compare it to previous Touch ID on the Mac, which doesn't exist, or compare it to iOS. So I don't think I have anything to say about that. I think it's Touch ID on the Mac is what it is. Does it feel fast enough? Yeah. it's Touch ID on the Mac is what it is. Does it feel fast enough? Yeah, again, yeah, it seems to react quickly, but it's a very different thing because it's a Mac.

So it's unlocking. And so is that the Mac responding differently than iOS or with like one password unlocking? It's the same thing. It seems to happen really fast. I would also say this question was, does the Touch Bar have? It is distinctly, it's on the touch bar row, but it's not the touch bar. It is this distinct button to the right of the touch bar. So I think it would be inaccurate to say the touch bar has touch ID. There's a row that's got the touch bar

and touch ID sensor in it, but the touch ID sensor is next to the touch bar it's not the touch bar i really do have a sneaking suspicion that it was supposed to be but they couldn't get it to work my theory is it was supposed to be part of the bar um with the idea of that being the same technology that would implant a touch id sensor inside of the screen and I don't think they've been able to do it. That would be new tech. And instead they went with, I mean, this solves the other problem of having a physical reset button on the computer too.

So, but yeah, I know. There's a lot of interesting things that if only they release a book explaining their reasoning, but all we get is a picture of the touch bar. Interesting question from Kyle. what is the current biggest factor that makes a mac feel fast what is the most important part there jason ssd storage storage storage storage interesting that's it that's number one like if you use a use a mac with a spinning hard drive and no fusion drive,

and then go to a fusion drive and then go to an SSD at the end of it. I did this with a Mac mini, my Mac mini that's five years old now. It was a spinning drive, and I took it apart and put it in an SSD, and it's like a completely new computer. If you've been on an SSD for a while and you haven't used a computer with a spinning disk, go back and try that. It is horrific. ssd for a while and you haven't used a computer with a spinning disk go back and try that it is horrific like it is it is that is the constraint on so many things now of computer usability is

the responsiveness of the storage i feel like that is the big bottleneck right now if you're already using an ssd like say you're on an ssd macbook pro and you're getting a new macbook pro what would be the thing there would it be like the processor maybe maybe i guess the jumps aren't as big right now the jumps aren't as big i feel like that was the that was the big jump was going to ssd because it's just so much more responsive and you know the newer ssd is even faster i don't even remember it like i you know i know that i did it but like i i have no memory of how slow it was before but i bet you're right if i went to something like that i would rip my hair out yeah another question about the new macbook pro what does the function key do on the macbook pro

with touch bar it makes the top row of the touch bar turn into a function row so you get f1 f2 f3 etc yep that's what it does and you can also go into the keyboard system preferences and actually apply you can add apps that inherit the f keys automatically so like if there's an app that you have that you you really need the function keys you can actually go into system prefs and drag that app in. And then it will always just show the F keys there. And then I think if you want to see the touch bar, you hit the F key and it toggles it back. But yeah, that's what the FN key does,

is flip you over into classic F key mode. And last today, Lachlan wanted to know, what do we want to see in the next iPad Pro? Now, I have a list here. This has been a very Jason-focused Ask Upgrade now, so I'm going to take the lead on this one. So I would like to see True Tone across the line. So the 12.9-inch gets True Tone

because True Tone is, for me, as good as Retina was. You've got to have it. You've got to have it you gotta have it the the inconsistency i mean we could we could broaden that and say the inconsistency between the the 9.7 and the 12 and the uh 12.9 must go away yeah 9.7 should get fast charging and all that stuff like that that stuff needs to go but yeah but true tone on the 12.9 is imperative at this point i'm upset that it's not on my iPhone as well, but that's a story for another day.

I want the iPad Pros, both of them, to be lighter and thinner because they are products that should and can still be lighter and thinner, right? The 12.9 is too heavy. If that was lighter, that would be awesome. I don't need my iPhones to do that, but I do want my iPads to continue doing that. And then outside of that, but I do want my iPads to continue doing that. And then outside of that, like, you know, you get the usual faster, you know, more OS stuff, all of that. But iPad Pro

is not just the iPad. iPad Pro is the accessories as well. So I want to see enhancements there. I want a Pencil 2 that has a better battery life because considering Apple have embraced the people like me who like to use the pencil a lot more than intended, the battery isn't good enough. So I want to see a better battery life in there. And I would also like there to be a button of some kind which apps could take advantage of in some way, like an eraser or a button on the side, advantage of in some way like an eraser or a button on the side which could enable deeper and richer interactions so for example with my uh i use a wacom tablet it has a button on the side of it as a couple as actually quite a few buttons let's say one of the buttons if i click it it will make uh it will basically highlight select so then i can drag things around. So I would like to see the Pencil 2

have a button on it, which an app like Procreate could use to turn the pen into an eraser. Many different apps could use it in different ways. I would like to see a button added to it. I would also like a new smart keyboard. I would like there to be one of two things.

Now, Dream Scenario would be something touch bar-like. Not necessarily that it is a touch screen but a screen that brings down a lot of the things like the quick type although a touch screen would be great because you could use the emoji picker that would be amazing i think we're a way away from that right i can't imagine that happening in terms of thickness alone yes it would be crazy but i would love to have media keys on the smart keyboard. Oh, yeah.

And or make the smart keyboard more like the Logitech Create. Give me a backlight. Make the key travel a little bit nicer. But I actually think the key travel on the smart keyboard is nicer than the MacBook. I actually prefer the smart keyboard to type on. I would like to see some big improvements to the the smart keyboard make the keycaps larger um make give me some function give function give me some media keys right i want that i want a backlight i think the top row of

keys is that's missing from the smart keyboard is painful right and we've said yeah oh function keys are dumb but but apple did map those to other functions including media playback and it's painful to not have those my 9.7 has more keys on it and better features the logitech one than the 12.9 inch ipad one that apple make they need to they need to take a key from logitech and make those keyboards better so that's that's kind of what i'm looking for um os improvements though i think are the most important even though i spent the least time talking about those um a lot of the ipad features are very dated now um to the point where i can't understand how anybody ever thought that the uh app switching like the multi multi-tasking window

where you i kind of what's what do they call that the app picker the multi-tasking app picker it's the split view app picker thing i can't understand how anybody ever thought that that was the right way to design that they're just like these little things i think they just ran out of time i i think i think they didn't know it but we've been now living with it for for a year and a half. So, yeah, yeah. And I'll throw in there that OS improvements. I mean, yeah, drag and drop would be nice. A better app picker.

Yeah, there's all sorts of things. Access to mass storage so that I can attach an SD card without having to use some wacky Wi-Fi transfer app in order to see the files on the SD card and open them in an app. Find a way to make 3D Touch work. Oh, interesting. Even if it's not putting 3D Touch in the device, find a way to make 3D Touch shortcuts work because the iPad is missing them. I can't clear all my notifications. Find a way to make that work so there you go that's why i want to say i have i have high hopes for the ipad pro um and i'm looking forward to them revising the next year i will um i think this is also in the unlikely category but i'm

going to throw it in there because i i i want to which is um usbc port i was just about to say that i i i think that they really need to add it but i don't think that they will i don't think that they will either i understand why they won't and i can support that decision but i would still like it because it opens up the device to a whole world of things yeah think of it as a laptop replacement not as an iphone because that's what apple apple was saying it is and need to push it further towards that um and i think usbc would go a long way to to enabling that but i understand at the same time why they wouldn't do it because it's vastly different and incredible amount of work i'm sure to get usb support usbc support on all of the peripherals that they would need into iOS.

I understand why they wouldn't do it, but I would really like to see something like that, just to enable more expandability to the system. Oh, and I mean, part of the across the line, true tone across the line, I'll say P3 across the line because the iPad Pro 10.9 doesn't have P3. Oh, it has a wider color gamut though right no nope the 9.7 has the wide color gamut the 10.9 does not or sorry the 12.9 does not ah that's what i yeah okay baby pro has the wide color gamut the full size pro does not yes i would like to yeah so that's the trade that's the trade you get p3 you get true tone yay and leave the mini alone and you get and you get usb3 transfer speeds on the small one which doesn't have it which is you know and

the fast charging yeah revise the mini i think they need to revise the mini but do not make it a pro just leave that product alone give it a nicer screen give it a nice touch id you know make it a little bit faster but just keep that product ticking along as it is, I think. All right, I think that wraps it up for today. We've solved a lot of things here. We're helping. Just take our list up and implement those things, and then we'll all be happy.

Yeah, you're welcome. Product roadmap sorted. If you want to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 116. I want to take a moment again to thank our lovely sponsors for this week, Eero, to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 116. I want to take a moment again to thank our lovely sponsors for this week, Eero, Encapsula, and Mack Walden. If you'd like to find Jason's work online, he is

at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter, and he writes over at sixcolors.com. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter. If you would like to submit questions, feedback, follow up for the show, just tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade and we will

see it and hopefully we'll include it in later episodes. Don't forget, if you want to be up to date with the show next week, you want to watch Gremlins in anticipation of Mike at the movies. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye

Jason Snell. Don't get water on Mike or feed me after midnight. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Don't get water on Mike or feed me after midnight. All will become clear next week, I suppose. Mm-hmm.