Upgrade - 118: Missed That by 100%

Episode Date: December 5, 2016

Will Apple move the Mac to ARM processors? Myke thinks it’s inevitable, and Jason thinks it’s well within Apple’s power—but thinks it won’t happen. We also discuss Apple possibly moving some iPhone manufacturing to the United States.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 118 today's show is brought to you by pingdom encapsula and foot cardigan my name is mike hurley i am joined by mr jason snell hi mike how's it going very good mr jason snell how are you uh good we got the we got the christmas tree yesterday it is the most wonderful time of the year that's what that's what the song tells me the song tells us i started my event calendar my daughter is uh yeah she's super into it which surprises me because you know jaded teenager but she's super into it like the the day after thanksgiving she was playing uh uh various uh christmas song playlists throughout the house and uh and yeah we've got advent calendars too um this year i finally bought a lego advent calendar for the first time because i was so jealous of my friends uh who keep posting pictures of their

lego advent calendars on Twitter. And so I got the Lego Star Wars advent calendar and we've been opening that up and my son's been assembling all the little parts. So I very nearly got that. I very nearly did, but I went for a chocolate one instead. Yeah. Well, we also have chocolate ones for both of the kids from the highest quality Trader Joe's chocolate advent advent calendar but they do make them and we get them every year but we just added a little uh a little lego to it the main reason i didn't do it was because i'm packing up all of my worldly belongings now i didn't need to bring anything else into the house even lego pieces you could use that as like a check-in at your new house

is every time you go there you get to open whatever advent. Yeah, that's a good idea, actually. Start the new house with Lego underfoot. That's always a good idea. I did actually today break down and box up two Lego sets, including my Death Star. Oh, wow. So I'm giving it to my nephews.

Oh, I see. I decided not to take that one. I am taking my Ghostbusters Firehouse. Oh, well, yeah. God, yes. And the WALL-E. They're the two sets that I'm taking. The Death Star, the one that I have, is like the diorama Death Star, basically.

I don't like that set so much. And get somebody else a chance to play with it that's exactly exactly i i like uh i like i wish that they stewarded the one that was just like a model of the death star right but they don't make that one anymore right we like yeah lego it's fun there could be a whole podcast about lego but not by us probably i considered it once that that would be yeah you could do that with um with steven schepansky and uh james thompson yep can you imagine there are probably lots of lego podcasts already but can you imagine the fear the ferocity of uh response to anything vaguely

controversial stated on the lego podcast lego people take it real super seriously like and and and if you said legos oh my god don't even the podcast would just explode right then and there if you pluralized it because the plural of lego is lego as we all know yep especially us in the united kingdom know that um me and steven considered it many well because this is a thing in the u.s legos i don't i don't get it yeah me and steven once were very close to doing this and the reason we decided not to do it was because we just don't get it. Me and Stephen once were very close to doing this. And the reason we decided not to do it was because we just didn't and probably still don't have enough money to satiate what would start if you did a Lego podcast. Like the amount of money you would spend on Lego. Oh, yeah.

That's why you have to find a co-host who is already spending it. Good point. Good point. Yeah. Talking about the most wonderful time of the year the most wonderful podcast episode of the year is fast approaching the upgrades the third annual upgrade third annual are coming up and we are doing an annual tradition it is it is the most annual of traditions we are doing two things new this time around so last year we asked for category suggestions to

really help flesh out the categories we are keeping the categories the same this year because we have a lot of great categories but we're asking for uh the participation of Upgradians for the 2016 Upgrade Awards. Yes. Two things. One of our categories is favorite product. So favorite tech product. And then we do Apple or non-Apple. So it could be Apple related and then just like general technology.

We would like your suggestions for your favorite product of the year. So just tweet with the hashtag upgradies everybody obviously knows how to spell that but in case you don't it's upg radies so you can tweet with the hashtag upgradies for your favorite product of the year and we are doing for the first time we are opening up the upgrade awards for your votes. If you remember how the Upgradee usually works is we have a short list of nominees and then me and Jason will pick our personal winner of those

and then between the two of us we decide on who takes home the trophy. This year you, the listener, will be the third pick along with that. So there will be my pick, Jason's pick, and the listener pick. And then out of those three, we will decide who takes home the Upgrady award for each category. We will have a Google form available after next week's show. There'll be a link in episode 119 of Upgrade. There will

be a link to a Google form with all of our shortlisted nominees for you to cast your votes on. I'm very excited about this. Obviously. Yeah, it's going to be fun. It's the Upgradies. I know you get excited about it all the time. It's my favorite. I've mentioned this before,

and I'll mention it again before the year is over. We do two episodes that I love every year. It's the Upgradie Awards and Connected. We do a kind of roundup of all of the tech stories of the year, month by month. I love doing those episodes because they're different and they're traditions and I think they're awesome.

So I'm really, really looking forward to the Upgrady's this year, especially as we continue to evolve the Upgrady's. Which reminds me, I should ask our wonderful designer Frank to make the additions to the Upgrady artwork. Of course. So we can have the 2016 badge put on them.

And just to warn people now, you will have, when that goes up next Monday, we will do a vote for about a week and a half. And then we'll close it. So you'll have until uh a couple of days before christmas to get in your votes the upgradey episode will appear in your uh in your podcast app of choice uh around about january 2nd yes this year we're going to do it right it's going to be since the day after new year's day is uh is a monday we're going to drop that episode we're going to pre-record it behind the scenes hints here, and then we will drop it on the second.

So that will be the big upgrade-y's day. There is indeed. Will was asking the chat, is there a trophy? Maybe that's how we advance it next year, actually get trophies made. Although we have a lot of categories, and probably a lot of winners of the categories don't care. Don't care.

If we give the iPhone the upgrade-y of the the year i don't think apple will care for our trophy no that that happened with the eddie awards oftentimes oh really apple it would be very hard to find anyone at apple who would actually take the trophies after a while and the funny the sad thing was apple pr didn't want the trophies, especially when we gave them to the MinuteMac World Expo because somebody had to drive them back to Cupertino. But what I heard is inside Apple, the people who worked on the stuff that won the awards were really excited about it and wanted the trophies.

But the PR and marketing people were like, yeah, we don't. Yeah, it's funny. That's a shame. I've got an Eddie Award right behind me. What did you win it for? For running the Eddie Awards for 15 years, I think. You won Best Eddie Award Coordinator.

Well, you buy extras is what I... And this one somehow came with me. I don't know how that happened. Yeah, the main reason that I want to give the trophies is I want one. Yeah. I was thinking we should make trophies and just give them to us do you know what maybe we should just do that we'll just get one each and then we'll if you if you if you uh win one you can ask and we'll we'll send you a picture of us with your

your trophy i mean that's more worth more than a trophy, right? Picture of me and you. Honestly, yeah. Picture it didn't happen. We want to do a quick piece of follow-out. Our lovely friend of the show, co-host of both of our hosts, Mr. Stephen Hackett, he has created a book called Aqua and Bondi, and it is about kind of the iMac G3, which is the computer that Stephen loves so dearly, what led to it and the effect that it had on Apple? Yeah, and along with a hefty dose of OS X, because during the same

period as the kind of computer transition that was led by the iMac, there was this operating system transition that really transformed Apple. And so both of those stories are in there along with a bunch of photographs and Steven living up to his reputation as an Apple historian. I got to read an early version of the book and give him some notes, which was fun because I was there covering early days of OS X especially. I got to drop some knowledge about obscure Mac clones. That was kind of fun. Yeah. So it's a lot of fun. It's an e-book. I hope he makes... Back at Macworld, we would occasionally do a print-on-demand version, and it was expensive, but some people wanted to get it in their hands. And it's like, you know, I bet he could make a print version of this book for

less than $200. That would be good. But we'll see if he wants to do that. make a print version of this book for less than $200. That would be good. But we'll see if he wants to do that. I heard that Apple books can go for many hundreds of dollars anyway. Yeah, I mean, I think he could make a good profit on a print book while being

dramatically less than what Apple is charging. Just saying. If you remember last week, if you listened to the Gremlins section the uh mike at the movies uh i referenced that the uh the the outdoor setting the town that the gremlins was was located in was very reminiscent of back to the future 2 um and the hill valley town and i was wondering if uh there was it was actually the same set.

Bart wrote in to confirm that it was and he sent a Wikipedia article over for something called Courthouse Square, which is a backlot at Universal Studios. And not only was it used in Gremlins, it was used in Back to the Future 2 and many more movies. You can see a long list of movies and TV shows on the Wikipedia article that the Courthouse Square was used in.

Yeah, and apparently that set has caught fire multiple times. But yeah, good spotting. Well spotted. My affinity for Back to the Future will continue. Next week, we are doing our second of our holiday season Mike at the Movie episodes. And we are going to be talking about one of my favorite holiday movies, Home Alone, which Jason has never seen. Which is incredible. And I'm very excited for you to love that movie.

Well, I hope I do. So there you go. There is your notice. Home Alone, the original Home Alone, to be watched before next week's episode. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom. You can get a 14-day free

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and use the code upgrade at checkout to get 20 off thank you so much to pingdom for the continued support of this show and relay fm you uh decided to stir the pot a little about the arm mac argument over mac world i did this week or was it this week or last week i think it was last week yeah uh i did um it was funny uh so i listening to accidental tech podcast and they were talking about arm max and there's other people speculating about this and and the to back this out a little bit arm uh is the chip standard basically um too complicated to get into but that and uh apple's a whatever chips are based on this and it's apple has an arm license they can design arm chips uh max use intel chips those aren't arm chips those are intel chips people have been asking you know the question question, would Apple do another chip transition on the Mac

and move Macs from Intel to ARM because of this perception that one of the reasons that the Mac has been updated so sparingly over the last few years is because of Intel chip delays, which is not entirely true. It's also Apple's fault for, but, and the perception that like the 16 gig RAM limit in the MacBook pro is due to a specific limitation in an Intel chip set. Uh, then again, Apple chose to use that chip set, but anyway, Intel gets, gets raised as a, as a kind of like a problem. And like Apple is, is reliant on them and Apple's making its own chips for iOS. So why wouldn't do that for the Mac? So that that's been the question out there. And've heard a lot of people uh give this uh question some serious thought like i think that it's a this is a serious possibility and i just had one of those moments

where i thought yeah i don't think it's gonna happen i'm not saying it won't happen but if i had to if i had to lay odds i i don't think it's gonna happen okay i want to go into some of this with you um kind of bit by bit so history has shown there has been a process to change for the mac every 10 years and it's been about 10 years since the last one yeah i was surprised by this i hadn't really thought of it and this goes back to um so when the mac started in 1984, it used 68,000 series processors from Motorola. If you see 680XO, that's the 68,000 series. The original one was the 68,000. They later used other processors, 68030.

The Quadra computers were 040. That was why it was called Quadra. And so that was what powered the Mac until March 1994. So 10 years go by, and there's a switch to the PowerPC processor. I was just starting my career at MacUser when that happened. And it was kind of tumultuous product transition. They had emulator, 6800XO emulator on the Power, so that you could run your old code for a while. And then gradually over time, power max became the standard. The old ones faded away and it

was not a big deal anymore. But, uh, uh, 12 years later in 2006, uh, Apple started making Intel max. They announced it at WWDC 2005. And in 2006, they began shipping these Intel Macs in the beginning of 2006. So 12 years and a new chip transition. And again, Apple made an emulation technology. You may remember it. Rosetta was what it was called. And it let you emulate PowerPC code on Intel Macs. So you could keep using your old software as the new software was revealed. It was updated to work on the new platform. It's now been 11 years since that transition. And I was taken aback by that.

I was like, oh, so I guess, you know, all things being equal, time for a fourth Apple processor transition. And that would happen in the next, you know, year or two. And it's not like it couldn't happen i think you know i i link in my macworld piece to a a piece that death rage wrote for the back page and macworld where he said it absolutely apple will absolutely not switch to intel and like months later like not very many months later apple switched to intel it was uh i i edited that column and i was like wow that we you know missed that by 100 well i remember at the time i mean i said this before uh that was my first mac the the intel imac was my first mac i decided that whatever was going to be announced like the next imac was the one i was going to buy and they just went to intel which i don't yeah if i'm if i'm remembering correctly it was very unexpected the uh the intel announcement of wwdc was a shocker yeah yeah because you know and then

and then we got a very different time then very very different time and i was kind of i was reminiscing about something a few days ago and i was i was reminding myself of the furor that we had in in awaiting ipod announcements you know like we would we would wait for the keynotes the same way that wait for iphones and ipads but they were for the next ipod nano which like when you put it in perspective is like there weren't really that much that changed nano to nano but like that was we had the same level of excitement but it was different in those days though because it was all surprise right like that that was that was i think what made those keynotes and announcements more exciting is everything was a surprise

yeah there were part leaks and it and yeah it was the same for the intel transition um and i not really knowing enough at that point decided decided that I would buy that computer, be my first computer. And it worked perfectly fine for me. But if Apple do announce an ARM iMac, I will not be buying that and getting rid of my current iMac. That's not something I'm going to do.

Maybe if they had an ARM laptop, I might want to get it to see and to understand it, but not replace my current work machine with it. It's quite funny to think that I did that at the time. But I wasn't really doing heavy work then. I was kind of just using PhotoBooth a lot. So we're on track, as you say. History has shown, trends have shown, that we are around the time for an update to occur,

for a chip transition to occur. And I think one of the reasons, and you pinpointed this as well, that so many people are considering ARM, it's not just because of the inherent capabilities of ARM chips, but it's because Apple make incredibly powerful ARM chips. They know how to do this. This isn't like, you know, with the transition to Intel,

it was like our power PC is not getting us what we want. You know, like it's too slow. We want to move to the future. We want to, you know, do boot camp and Windows, like running natively. Let's transition to Intel. That's not the situation we're in now. The situation we're in now is Apple knows how to make chips that they want on their time scales

with speed and power and performance and energy savings unlike any other so that's why people are considering that you know especially if you look at the the uh the death of the mac that we've been talking about for the last few weeks because of intel transitions and sorry intel chips and how long they take to make and the delays moving moving to ARM would allow Apple to create these computers on their own time. Yep. It's all true. All true. These are all good reasons why Apple might do it, right?

Independence. They have the expertise. And ARM chips are very good at power efficiency, energy efficiency, and two-thirds of the Mac's Apple cells are laptops. These are all strong reasons why Apple would consider using their expertise in making ARM chips to make ARM chips for the Mac. But you still don't think that this is enough? No, and there are a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is, you know, what's the ceiling of iOS performance right now? And what's the floor of Mac performance?

One of the problems is that they would need to make an ARM processor that's more, presumably, if they spread it across the entire line and didn't limit it to like the MacBook or something like that. And I think over time, it would be hard for Apple to run a bifurcated platform with different processor types and different systems, you know, Intel over here and ARM over here, although it's not impossible that they would do it. It seems like a lot of added complexity. But to reach the higher end, that's a level of performance that Apple has not created in ARM chips. Doesn't say that they can't do it, but that would be a step for them. And

Macs are more complicated in terms of ports. Even if, even again, you go back to the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, they just have USB-C ports, but they do have USB-C ports and with Thunderbolt in the case of the MacBook Pro. And there's a lot going on there that, again, not that Apple couldn't do it is a challenge. A lot of what's the percentage? I don't know, it might be a fairly small percentage. But there are people who use Macs. And one of the one of the things that is great about that experience for them is that they can run a Windows software in it basically without emulation in a virtual machine. And you can you can boot camp it, but you can also run it in VMware or Parallels. And it's an Intel processor, so it just works like an Intel processor. And you would have to run it emulated on ARM. Now, there was a story that came out about how Microsoft is going to make an effort to do Intel emulator on ARM

because Microsoft still has this kind of on-again, off-again relationship with Windows on ARM. Because remember the Surface, original Surface came with ARM processor and some stuff compiled for it, but other stuff wouldn't run because it was Intel based. And yeah, which again, split platform, it's kind of a problem, kind of a mess. So all of these are reasons that they could do it.

They could do it, but it would be work, right? Compatibility work, work to get the level of features that we expect on a Mac, having those many ports with Thunderbolt. Not that they couldn't do it. It's just that they would be building their own system. And so it would be a big project. And Apple is completely capable of making that project. You know, the case against just just it would be hard you know

it would be hard but doesn't mean that they couldn't do it it's not a reason why they they it's impossible for them it's absolutely possible for apple to make an arm mac so something i want to come back to that you said and you were talking about um what is the the floor like what is the the performance floor that apple are willing to go to i mean so you know this is the idea of like you know what if arm chips can't be as powerful and what is like what are the minimums and what are the maximums i mean one thing to consider is like just from what you know like stuff like geekbench scores however much you want to take those into stock the the current iphones the iphone 7 has faster

geekbench scores than a bunch of macs especially the new macbook right that's my understanding you're looking at the ceiling of ios and the floor of the mac when you compare them they are comparable in that little area but that's the problem is that's where the Mac starts and it goes up from there. Uh-huh. But my point of that is like the floor of the Mac is lower than the ceiling of the iPhone, right? So like that's when, okay, these points are starting to cross. Yes. So, you know, like let's imagine the iPhone 8 scores start to rub up against the MacBook Pro. Like let's just imagine, right? Let's just imagine.

scores start to rub up against the macbook pro like let's just imagine right let's just imagine it's possible right that in a couple of generations um especially with the x chips right where they get even more powerful more faster that these lines are just going to continue to pass each other it's possible um i it's possible it it might take some time but it's possible and also again geekbench scores are geekbench scores they're not everything it's possible it it might take some time but it's possible and also again geekbench scores are geekbench scores they're not everything it's just a data point yeah and and you've got to think about the about diminishing returns that theoretically um apple's arm performance is not going to blow past intel's performance because you know they're i think that intel is eking out more performance all the time and Apple is making

a lot of big performance gains. I don't know if that continues or if it's one of those things where they keep getting closer and closer. Also, is Apple motivated by performance at that level? You could argue that above a certain level, the kind of performance that Apple needs for an iPhone is not really the same kind of performance that you need for a professional computer, an iMac or Mac Pro or MacBook Pro. And so that's, you know, the decisions they make building processors for iOS

are not necessarily the traits that we want in a computer. That said, I have to say, and this is something that came up in the chat room just now, which is, you know, all the other processor transitions were about going to a faster processor. And these aren't those.

And that's absolutely true. The caveat I would say is, is faster what Apple's looking for? Or as we saw from the MacBook Pros, is power efficiency for mobile devices what Apple's looking for? And if Apple looks at an ARM processor in a Mac and doesn't say, this will give us more power,

but instead says, this will make our computers thinner and lighter and be able to use smaller batteries for longer amounts of time, that might be a persuasive argument for Apple if we look at some of the decisions Apple has made recently. And that's interesting, which is why, I mean, which is why a lot of people looked at the MacBook when it came out and said that was the kind of computer they envisioned being

the kind of computer Apple would put an ARM processor in because it's super thin and light and doesn't do a whole lot and isn't trying to be super powerful. And, you know, that's, I think the MacBook is the kind of computer that Apple could make today on ARM if it wanted to. I don't know if it could make a MacBook Pro or a Retina iMac or a Mac Pro today on ARM. I would argue that the majority of computing users are solving for different problems now as well. Sure. I think back in 2005, we were looking for faster, but I don't think people are looking for faster on average. I'm not.

What I have right now, like the computers that I have at my disposal right now, this is as much as I need. And that wasn't always the case. There have been times in my computing life where I've wanted more performance, but really I don't feel that way so much anymore, and I'm more interested in the other things that they can do,

especially from a laptop perspective. I want a 20-hour battery. That's what I want. perspective i want a 20 hour battery that's what i want and and so you know and i want super thin and super light you know i think that there are different considerations these days which arm can provide but what i don't want is my imac to become less powerful right like you know that that's one thing in the laptop line i'm willing to look at different options. You know, I'm willing to make trade-offs in different places, which is why I have moved from the MacBook Pro to the MacBook, because the trade-offs are right for me. And, you know, as a MacBook user and a fan of that product now, I would like the benefits of ARM in there,

because what I want is thin light and even longer battery that's what i'm looking for and this is i think one of apple's challenges it goes back to what i was saying about this bifurcated platform thing is some people like joe steel is in the chat room saying i am looking for faster right and this is the problem and i think this is the core of a lot of the discontent with the macbook pro is a lot of people feel like you do, which is on my mobile device, it's got, you know, I don't need huge amounts of power, but I want it to be thin and light and have a battery. And people, other people will say, well, no, I need it to be, I needed to have enough battery, but thin and light isn't important. And I needed to have power when I need it. And I think

the challenge is, if you keep these, if you keep the Mac as a single unified platform in terms of processor type, that I think is harder to do. So does Apple bifurcate the platform or does it say we're going to choose one or the other and we're going to choose one that's better at X and not as good at Y and deal with the consequences.

And right now, that's what Apple's doing. Apple is dealing with the consequences of choosing Intel as its platform and not having that control and having, you know, it's not like Intel isn't optimizing processors for power savings. Apple is also optimizing their computers for, you know, not a lot of battery, and that's a part of it. But if they go to ARM, the opposite is true, right? If they want to do a single platform, can, you know, does the high-end, more powerful stuff kind of lose out? So Will in the chat room is asking, you know, when I'm talking about wanting more battery

life, how would ARM do that? Now, look, I don't know enough about this stuff, but I know that I get comparable usage times out of an iPad and out of a MacBook. And the MacBook is much bigger and has more space for battery in it, right? That's kind of my thinking, is that energy efficiency in the same bodies, in the same MacBook body,

could give me more battery life. Because there's more battery in the MacBook than there is in the iPad bodies, in the same MacBook body, could give me more battery life. Because there's more battery in the MacBook than there is in the iPad, surely. Also, Will is mentioning screen brightness. My understanding is that screen brightness, the way Apple has engineered the displays on the new MacBook Pro, screen brightness is actually a very minor part

of battery consumption. So that's kind of old problems that are not the current problems. I think the power usage isn't isn't happening the screen is the screen we can hold the screen the same but there's a lot of other power consumption that's happening that's not the screen i want to go move to something else that you mentioned because i think it's uh it's it's interesting um which is thunderbolt 3 uh-huh now you mentioned uh about that apple would need to consider this right they would need to consider additional input output and thunderbolt 3 might

be part of it and they would have to find a way to make that work with arm now i'm putting my dream scenario in here but you know there could be a way that apple were already working on this for the ipad i mean that's my hope right like it's my outside hope it's something that i wish is that we will see usb c ports thunderbolt 3 ports on an ipad in the future to allow for the further expansion and expandability of that line of product to push it more towards being a desktop replacement. So if they were working on that, let's just say they're working on that anyway,

that makes moving to the Mac easier still, right? Sure, although I'm skeptical. I doubt that the iPad Pro is going to add a USB-C port, but if it does, I doubt it will be a Thunderbolt 3 port. A man can dream though, Jason. Sure, dream, shine on you crazy diamond again i'll just say it i'm gonna card that one out every week this week's yeah you should dream we all should have dreams and goals and ambitions mike that's what we should have what about boot camp then so let's assume let's just assume it's not possible for apple to emulate windows efficiently on arm

right that that we can't get the the same performance right i think everyone can probably agree that like if you play video games on your imac using boot camp you won't be able to do that on arm correct if they're still running on x86 i think it has to be even if people like but microsoft's working on emulator sure emulators are always a lot slower than running natively, unless your processor is much faster. The Intel processors were much faster than the PowerPC processors. So Rosetta wasn't so bad. It was slow, but it was not terrible.

But this is a case where having emulated Intel intel on power pc before let me tell you it will probably be very slow and uh and and not a great windows emulation experience for people who need to emulate windows on the mac so apple computers existed before boot camp would it be that much of a loss to the product i mean i know that there are going to be people that it is going to be just devastating for. It's how many people do you want to kick out of your platform? I mean, this is always the question. We've talked about it in previous episodes.

Like Apple makes decisions that they think are right for the largest number of people on the platform. And sometimes that means that there's a portion of the audience that they're saying, we can't make a product. We either make a product for you and your small percentage, or we make a product for this much larger percentage and we have to choose,

so we choose this larger percentage, right? That's a decision that Apple can make. And they may make the wrong decisions, they may make the right decisions. I think that's the question here is, how important is it to Apple anymore for them to make computers that can boot into Windows or run Windows emulation? Now, there is absolutely an audience that requires some Windows program. my aunt and uncle were windows pc people and the way i got them to buy a mac was the was that they could have parallels on it and you know what they never used windows once they switched they never

used it but it got them across and there are people like that i feel like 2016 is a very different world from 2005 2006 right and so i'm not sure how big this audience is really in terms of of that i think it's more likely that there are professionals who have to have a windows environment but they prefer the mac environment so they kind of kind of keep it available for them so there's an audience here and that's the question is like how important is boot camp i don't know how i as i always assume apple has research about all this stuff like i think apple knows how many people even knew that you could flip out the little plastic things on the power brick in order to do cord control yep i think apple i suspect apple knows how many people do that i suspect apple knows how many

people on the mac are using boot camp and who those people are to a certain degree or parallels or VMware. And so then the question is just, what's it worth to you? Like, what's that trade-off worth to you? And I don't know, I can't point at Bootcamp or the ability to run Intel stuff natively and say, if Apple lost that, that would be devastating to the platform. I'm not sure I can say that. So my argument on this would be that they will inevitably have upset more people I'm not sure I can say that. about the fact that they need to buy new dongles and new equipment for their macbook pros and then as time goes on all their macs then they would upset the amount of people who use boot camp that would be i think that's i think that's a false comparison though because uh what i'm really talking about is the difference between being upset you know being put out that you have to

buy adapters or new cables and being unable to do something you have to do okay running running windows running windows you know people this is mean to say but i'm going to say it because i think it's funny people don't run windows because they want to mike well they don't if they have a must right i think if you are using uh windows on a mac that is a requirement if you if you Windows, you probably have a really good, much cheaper Windows PC. Yeah, I think that's a strong point. So I guess to me, that's the difference. If you're Casey Liss, at his old job, I believe that that was one of the ways that he was able to have a Mac, is that he was able to do his development in there.

But again, that's a very small market. And so what are those markets and are they important to Apple? Because those people will scream bloody murder if they lose the ability to run Windows apps at any normal speed on a new Mac that comes out, that they're unable to buy a new Mac without giving that up. There are those people, but are there enough of them?

I would be very willing to put some money down that the percentage of people or the amount of people that are there, Apple wouldn't be not making this decision because of that. And I know you're not making that argument, but I don't think they're like, oh, we're ready for ARM, and they're like, oh, but there's Windows Boot Camp users. And they're like, oh, okay. I don't think that that's a thing, personally.

I do have a flip side question for you, though. Okay. So we're looking at like, oh, on Intel chips, we're able to use Boot Camp and and able to you know natively run windows if we were to move to arm could ios software be run more easily on the mac i don't know i mean i i think it's i think that has more to do with talking to the operating system than it does that the chip that the chip runs on you can compile you can compile ios for intel now to to run in the simulator which developers do so i don't i i don't think that's a as big a deal in terms of the ios like ios merging with the mac i think you know running ios software in mac versions i i don't think that's a that would

be a big change okay so here's the big question, though. Does moving to ARM warrant the investment from a time perspective, a marketing perspective, or a money perspective, any of those three, honestly, because I think they're all equally important, to make the switch in today's Mac market? So this is, to me… This is the big question. This is the million-dollar question. And what I say at the end of my Macworld story is this is the big question this is the million dollar question so and what i say at the end of my macworld story that is this is the reason it won't happen not that they can't do it because i think they could do it i can envision them doing it it would be some work and there

would be issues and there would be people who would be put out by the changes but it would it would work i don't think apple will do it because I don't think it's worth it. I don't think it's worth their time. I don't think it's worth their effort. The Mac is 15% of Apple's total business, less than 15% of Apple's total business. Chip transitions are hard. And you're tying Apple's chip development group to the Mac permanently at that point. You're saying, all right, everybody, I know we're making chips for the iPhone and then the iPad, but we're also going to start making chips for the Mac and they have different needs and it's going to need attention. And we're going to, first off, first off, the iPhone is by far the

most important. Do they really want to divert time away from developing the next great iPhone processor in order to do a Mac processor to get off of Intel? Do they really want to do that? So that's the first thing. And the second thing is, if you're a Mac user, do you really want this? Because I know that there's this feeling like, oh, well, Intel can be slow and Intel's had delays and that's been hard for the Mac. But the solution there is for Apple to maybe be more attentive about just integrating the Intel stuff when it comes out. Do we think that Apple's own internal chip design is going to prioritize the Mac enough to have the Mac get new processors at the same rate as Intel provides them. I don't see

that either, because I feel like 15% of the business, it's not going to be a high priority. So if Apple even did it, I think it would be potentially bad for the Mac in that they wouldn't be particularly attentive. And I don't think Apple will do it. I think this is the number one reason is it would be a lot of effort. And it would take it would take brain power away from the incredibly important part of continuing to drive iphone performance and features and because i think it's different enough that they can't just slap an iphone processor in a mac i think that would be an unlikely scenario and so for me that's that's the thing that that clinches it is why you've got intel motoring along they're not great as a partner but the fact is the mac's not the core of your business so let

intel build their things it will mean that the mac is always more or less at parity with pcs because the pc market is all on intel so the mac's always going to be there in terms of the processor side and then apple adds their secret sauce to their hardware design around those processors. And it's got the operating system stuff. And Apple's proud of all of that. And then just let it let it percolate at 13% of Apple's revenue. That seems like a far more reasonable scenario than Apple making a huge investment to take their ball away from Intel and start building, you know, their own processors for for the mac i'm not saying they can't do it they might even do it but it seems like they've got better things to do than uh than then build their own processors for the mac i agree with that like i think that the likelihood of them making a huge change like this just for the benefit of the mac is incredibly unlikely

and the mac like what's good about the mac? Why does the Mac exist? The Mac exists as continuity. The Mac exists because people have been using it for five or 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 years. So it's one of the Macs. This is what I, you know, when we talk about like making the Mac more like iOS, I think this is one of those things that comes up. It's like, there's a certain point beyond which you shouldn't push the Mac because the Mac's greatest value is that it's familiar to Mac users and Mac users want to keep using the Mac. That's why the Mac exists is because Mac users want to use the Mac. They don't want to, they'd be iPad users. If they wanted to use the iPad, there are people who want to use the Mac.

So you don't want to break the Mac. And a processor transition is just one more thing that could potentially kind of provide a discontinuity. You got to, you know, at that point, you're like, oh, now I've got to make a processor transition and some of my stuff's going to need to be recompiled or it's not going to work. It's going to, I'm going to buy updates and all of that. And, you know, do they want to put Mac users through that level of strain? Is that, is that something they need?

If this was a product platform that they were really planning on driving growth in for the next 20 years, it would be worth it to go through that transition, as they'd done a decade ago and a decade before that. But I don't think that Apple sees the Mac as that. The Mac is about continuity and keeping an existing base using a product that they're more or less familiar with. And a processor transition doesn't do that. I think the only thing that I can think of as to why this might happen is that it benefits the iPhone in some way. That's my only thing. Why would Apple do this if putting the development of this to make it more powerful to run on a mac means that the iphone gets better right that's like what the only reason i can think right like it's it is it becomes an internal development team for the future of the iphone but they get to run this stuff in the real

world on max i think that would be the argument is um if we want to press if we want to press the growth of the iphone the way to do it is to also build Mac processors because it's going to lift all the boats. My gut feeling is that designing a Mac processor based on the A-series is more likely to be a branch that takes them in a different direction or you know, or into a cul-de-sac versus what they're doing for the iPhone. But if Apple really believes that all of their chip development is going in the same direction and that the Mac will benefit from the same things that the iPhone benefits from, then they could push in that direction. Part of my skepticism here, I have to admit, is I don't think it's good for the Mac as I use it if Apple goes to ARM, because I think it's a further reprioritizing of the Mac for thinness, lightness, small batteries, maybe longer battery

life, which would be good in certain circumstances. But I feel like it changes the Mac dramatically. And as I've been, you know, wondering about for a while now, if does Apple think of the Mac as the car or the truck? Steve Jobs famously said, you know, iOS is the car, essentially, and the Mac is a truck. It's a specialized tool for people in a particular, you know, particular, they have particular needs, or they fancy themselves a computer user, and they don't like thinking of themselves as a touchscreen device user. Fair enough. But, you know, if Apple puts the Mac on ARM, it feels like a very much like, no, the Mac's a car too, which seems weird to me because I'm not sure that there's a lot of future in that.

And the people who are going to be the diehards who stick with a computer for the rest of their lives are, seems to me a little less likely to be in that, in that, in that market. But, you know, Apple knows their market better than me, but that, so I do think my fears that an ARM Mac would not be optimized for maybe the things that I think are more important for the Mac to be optimized for. It's decision-making is not... That's an argument that Apple could make an ARM Mac, because what they're optimizing for is the same sort of stuff that an ARM-driven Mac might offer. And I don't know. We don't have a Mac Pro to point to right to say here's a counter argument and so it just kind of lays out there but again if I were betting I would not bet on an ARM based MacBook coming in the spring of 2017 but I'm not I'm not saying it's impossible I'm not gonna I'm

not gonna say that it's entirely possible it's entirely possible apple does bifurcate the market and make a low end you make the macbook an arm mac and the rest of them stay intel for a long time or maybe ever it's possible i just don't think it's likely so i do all right tell me why i think it would be because of the iphone i don't know when it's going to be i think it's down the line but i down the line is a stronger argument than than soon sure you know if let's say i'll say within the next five years then are you thinking sort of i mean one one argument here would be the reverse which is the iphone becomes so powerful that there's no reason not to pull the mac along with it because the mac is kind of fallen behind

that's kind of like the road i'm moving down It's like part of that and part of just like the idea of them being able to make the iPhone better by having the whole company focused around the ARM chip. That's kind of my thinking, is that they will eventually make iOS and iOS devices better by having everything be ARM, right? I think it helps them move towards an area is better by having everything be ARM, right? I think it helps them move towards an area where you can make iPhone apps on an iPad,

right? Like, I think that all of that stuff just helps push in that direction, which I think is the ultimate direction of, you know, Apple becoming the iOS company as opposed to the iOS and OS X company. Like, I think that that is the, I'm really sorry, everyone, but I think that is the future, right? That is the future. And this is a long way away, but I think just looking at percentages,

like it just, they're just going to keep moving in different areas. And I know if I am Tim Cook, then I want to put every dollar I have into the iPhone and to what comes out of the iPhone, what comes next from the iPhone. And if I can find a way to make that 13, 14% of my business make the 70% of the business even better, then I might be inclined to do that.

Yeah, I could see that. I don't think that will happen anytime soon. I just, I don't see it right now as being, I see it as a distraction and not as a way to further the iPhone. But I think we agree that ultimately the decision that Apple makes is going to be what's right for the iPhone. Yes. And not what's right for the Mac. If what's right for the Mac is not also right for the iPhone or doesn't matter to the iPhone. I think all decisions Apple makes today are what is right for the iPhone. Yeah. And then everything else can kind of come along if they want to. And look, if you think anything different, just look at the economics

and ask yourself, if you were running that company, what would your decision making be? And it doesn't mean that what's right for the iPhone means the Mac is dead. It doesn't mean that. Because for the iPhone to exist, the Mac needs to exist in its current state, right? Because without the Mac, there is no iPhone, because there's no software for it. Yeah. But I think, you know, it is the pyramid, and the iPhone sits at the very top, and then everything else comes out of that, because look how much money it makes. And so I think that that is it. And I think that if it ends up being that moving to ARM will benefit the iPhone, they're just going to do it. And my bet would be in the next five years, there isn't a full transition, but we see the first ARM Mac. will be in the next five years. There isn't a full transition,

but we see the first ARM Mac. There you go. Okay, we'll see. I look forward to the follow-up. Yeah. This week's episode is brought to you by Encapsular, a cloud service that makes your website faster and safer. Encapsular has a worldwide network

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Thank you so much to Encapsular for their support of this show and RelayFM. So a couple of weeks ago, I saw a little story float past that kind of, I didn't really see go anywhere, but was interesting to me. The Japanese newspaper Nikkei, N-I-K-K-E-I. Yeah, it's like a news service, I think. Yeah, news service. That's a better way of putting it. We see this name pop up every now and then,

and they seem to be a source of good stuff and bad stuff, but definitely a source of good stuff and bad stuff but definitely a source of stuff according to nikkei um apple is asking its manufacturers foxconn and pegatron great names by the way just like just super pegatron what a great name for a company is asking them to investigate what it would take to move their production of iPhones to the US. Yeah, it's pretty big, right? And apparently, Pegatron is not interested because it would be too expensive.

But Foxconn is looking at it. Now, my assumption would be that let's just say that they do this. The idea would be that they continue to work with these companies, but these companies help apple establish and run factories in the u.s as opposed to running these factories in china yeah i think uh i think so and doesn't foxconn run a factory in brazil too probably builds i think builds iphones for brazil uh which is actually kind of an interesting thought of what if you built the iphones for the u.s in the u.s which which is uh you know it's an

example of there's a lot going on here because i think the brazil factory exists because it became impossible for them to import phones into brazil without these huge tariffs that made the phones not just ridiculously priced and so instead they built a factory to build for them to import phones into Brazil without these huge tariffs that made the phones not just ridiculously priced. And so instead, they built a factory to build iPhones in Brazil. There's a lot going on here with a kind of protectionist administration taking power in 2017. And, you know, Trump has criticized Apple for making things overseas. Apple, of course, we've talked about it, the supply chains in Asia. So if you want to do kind of real-time fulfillment of products, keep the supply chain humming and keep the inventory at minimum, which is the most efficient supply chain. This is Tim Cook's stuff.

This is what he's good at. Then you want to be close to the supply chain and not have all your supplies being brought over on boats because that's really slow and you can have too much of one thing and not enough of another. And that leads to delays. And there are lots of reasons for this. So it's complicated stuff. I got to think part of this is apple seeing if you know if they need to do this because it's the only way that they're going to be able to avoid a confrontation with the u.s government over tariffs or some other kind of protectionist tactic um they might like i said they might decide to build phones for north america in north, you know, build phones for North America in the U.S. and maybe continue building all the rest of them in China. So that's a possibility.

China, Brazil, whatever, in other places that are not the U.S. It's also possible that Apple is commissioning this, is doing this work so that they have something they can point to and say we can't do this right that's entirely possible too that this is laying the groundwork for apple making the case to the new administration that what they're asking isn't realistic because of whatever the reasons are so i wondered about a couple of other ideas for this right so could this be a way to help leverage in discussions of the repatriating of funds this is something that tim cook cares about quite deeply it's politics all all things are possible right i mean this is this is it could be that this is a part of a it's a bargaining chip to say we will we will do and, sometimes it's about optics. So it may be, look, you make this deal to let us repatriate our funds at a, at a reduced

tax rate. And we'll make 10% of iPhones in the United States. Yeah. Or, or, you know, we will make, we will, we will, they're not even going to care about that. If I, if I'm reading the politics of this correctly, the way it would seem to work would be Apple is bringing x number of jobs back to the u.s from china and it's going to be like with the power mac uh or the mac pro

sorry power mac wow we talked about old things uh rather than the the the mac pro factory in texas right um it will be something you know it'll be something kind of like that where they'll say we're assembling whatever and it may be we're assembling the iPhones in the US but there are certain parts, certain blocks of parts that do get shipped

from China so that they're like partially put together in China but then the final bit is assembled. The Gorilla Glass is made in the US

so they, you know, and I believe the processors are made in the US or fabbed in the US so it's not like there aren't parts of the iPhone that are made in the US. So they, you know, and I believe the processors are made in the US or fabbed in the US. So it's not like there aren't parts of the iPhone that are made in the US.

So they could have parts of it that are made here and shipped to an American factory and then parts that are coming from the Asian supply chain and maybe are even pre-assembled there. And then they're put together in the US. So again, in the end,

it's going to be, how do we do something that makes this, you know, makes it work and doesn't harm our business. And at the same time allows us to declare along with the new administration, oh, yay, Apple is bringing X thousand jobs back to America. And in return, Apple's getting a huge tax break on all that money that they want to bring back. It's politics. It's messy. and sometimes it's more about how it looks than how it you know how it works but i expect all of that is probably going on here could this also

um help apple control leaks better maybe uh maybe maybe i mean it's not it wouldn't be a reason but it might be a nice outcome i don't know you still gotta you still gotta get parts from the asian supply chain i think nobody is suggesting that the entire supply chain from asia is going to move to the move to the us right so there's still going to be it's a it's a complex web of of uh of different companies so it's possible but um i wouldn't bet on it i mean because the price just gets higher right you know yeah although although i mean there are arguments to be made that as the cost of living rises in china um and that uh that it's it's less of a difference and that the cost difference between making that phone in the u.s and china is not

huge i i've heard somebody say it was $10. I don't know if it's, I don't know if that's accurate, but it's like, it's not what you'd think. It's not like, my understanding is the difference in labor costs and things like that between doing it in the US and doing it in China, that fundamentally doesn't add a huge amount to the price of the product, the cost of making the product. The challenge is, again, all of the other pieces of the supply chain. This is all an intricate machine that's been built in various factories in various areas, all feeding through to other suppliers and manufacturers. And you can't just kind of pop out one piece easily and set it down somewhere else because that's not how it's

been engineered. So I will say this, if anybody could figure out how to do this, it's an organization run by Tim Cook, because this is what he's good at. But I would be surprised, they're not going to pick up the whole supply chain. So the question is like, how much do they do in the US? And how much do they not? And what makes that look good? Do they, you know, not? And what makes that look good as this is a, you know, it's not 100% American parts, but it's assembled in the U.S. Designed in Cupertino, you know, or what is it? Designed in California and assembled in the United States.

Might be a thing that they're going for. Pretty nice marketing message for Apple. Just going to say, right? nice marketing message for apple just gonna say right like you know for the same reason that many political things occurred in the last few months um apple being able to say like we make our products at home well i mean apple so two things are going on with apple one is apple is an international company they believe that china is going to be its biggest market eventually. And Apple wants to be a successful global company. The other part is Apple is an American company. The vast majority of the people who are building its products day by day are in designing and creating the software and all those things are in Cupertino, California. They are, they are an American company. We have a, we have a government coming into power in the U.S.

that is, that, that campaigned on America first, right? That, that was a slogan that, that they used was America first. So if you're Apple and you're trying to be a smart business being, you know, you want to be able to continue being an international company, but it might be dramatically to your benefit to be seen as America's tech company in the United States. I think it's kind of funny, for example, that the current president and the incoming president are frequently seen using smartphones not made by an American company, right? It used to be like, if you're the president of the United States, everything you used was made in America, if at all possible. Like the president doesn't get, I don't believe to this day, the president doesn't get carried around in a Japanese car or a German car, right? I believe it's all American cars, mostly because of, again, the optics of it, right? USA, USA. So if you have the ability to do that with this and say, oh no, we love Apple. They brought jobs back to America. Apple is our company. They're the home team.

brought jobs back to America. Apple is our company. They're the home team. Samsung's not the home team. Google is. Google's a home team, but Samsung's not. And so, you know, it gives Apple an opportunity to be on the home team at a time when nationalism is on the rise in the US. So as a smart businessman, you know, as opposed as Apple is in so many other areas to things that are probably going to be policies of Donald Trump and his administration, this is a case where maybe it's the smart move to do it. And the fact is, an American company bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and questioning the conventional wisdom on that is not a bad thing to do, right? conventional wisdom on that is not a bad thing to do right i mean if apple can actually make iphones in the u.s to a certain degree and have it not not cost their bottom line and not lose their competitiveness with with other phone makers then that's a great story i think it's kind of cool i don't want them to take jobs away from uh people in china and and i hope that that's not you

know that it's not to serve one, it's just to spite another. But I think it would be kind of cool if they could find a way to make it work. You know, it doesn't annoy me. I'm kind of like, make him in America. It doesn't annoy me. And I know that it would make a lot of people really happy. So, you know, again, we're playing CEO today.

If I'm Tim Cook, this is another thing that I would do. I would look at what this would be. You know, because if you can do it and you can make the money work, why not? Why not give it a go? That's true. This week's episode is also brought to you by Foot Cardigan. Dear listener, I'd like to ask you a series of questions. Do you want to be known as the best gift giver in the whole wide world this holiday season?

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that it's foot cardigan season again me too and i i signed up i signed up this time i did you did great yeah i did i mean look we you know we have a lot of different types of sponsors here at relay fm but there is a there is quite a joy that i get in talking about a sock subscription service i get quite a joy out of talking about a company such as that well they they sponsored clockwise again this uh this season, but they did a last holiday season too, and it sort of devolved into madness because we kept talking about Sockwise,

clocks and socks and all of that. I'll talk to the Foot Cardigan people. There's a brand integration right there, Jason. I think socks with clocks. We need socks with clocks on them because they're clock socks. Socks, clocks, socks. It's like a Dr. Seuss book.

It's great our first ask upgrade question this week comes from ed ed is considering buying the studio neat canopy that we spoke about last week but doesn't want to buy a second magic keyboard jason will ed be in bluetooth pairing hell i don't know um i so i have a logitech keyboard that has multiple Bluetooth pair settings, but the Magic Keyboard doesn't work like that. And I only have the one and I only you know, or de-pair. Hell is a strong word, but it's not super ideal. Hell is a strong word, but it's not super ideal.

I wondered if the plugging in thing might help. You know, that pairing. Does that work on iOS? Oh, no, because you can't go lightning to lightning. Never mind. There's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. Toph asked, regarding iPads and keyboards,

do modifier keys allow multiple selection, for example, items in mails list as you can on mac os do you know the answer to this one i mean i've never been able no do you know what i don't think that works at all like you know like the idea of holding shift and then just hold down or holding down holding down like the command key and and tapping on multiple items no because in the way, yeah, I think you have to do the old selection thing where you choose select and tap on the items. I don't think that there's a keyboard shortcut for that. I bet someone could do it.

I just don't think it's worth the development. I bet Apple could do it if Apple, you know, put that on. I think the answer is this would be a nice wishlist item for the iPad features update that we hope is coming in iOS sometime next year. Yeah, the enhancements of modifier keys, basically. You know, like to kind of make them more of a thing on iOS

as opposed to just using the command key to hit off shortcuts. There are more and more and more applications these days that are effectively adding keyboard shortcuts. Yeah. and one of my very favorite things about ios which i mean you can tell me if this is a way if there's a way to do this on the mac i've never come across it that you could just hold down the command key and find all of the available keyboard shortcuts for an application yeah i mean the way you know how it works on the mac which is you go to the menu bar and you look at all the commands yeah it shows you what all the way you know how it works on the mac which is you go to the menu bar and you look at all the commands yeah it shows you what all the keys are that's it it doesn't have everything

though it doesn't have everything it has everything it has all the corresponding shortcuts for what you can see in the menu bars and then if you hold down like the option key you'll see like the menu changes to be what the variation is it's not quite the same but it's still a limited set it's a nice feature i like it a lot i like it a lot like that's one that i'm surprised i didn't bring that i haven't brought to the mac interesting well there you go apple there's a low-hanging fruit for you greg wanted to know on the new macbook pro when brightness is all the way down on the screen on the main, does a touch bar go dark? That's a good question. Jason checks.

I will vamp for you for a moment and say that I saw a touch bar for the first time this weekend. I was in Scotland with our good friend, Mr. James Thompson, and we went into the Apple store and they had them there. I hadn't seen them in any Apple store that I'd been at. It's very nice. It's very nice. It's very nice. I like it a lot.

But I did a thing which I've heard many people do. I touched the touch bar and immediately touched the screen to open an application. That obviously did nothing. But the idea of using a touchscreen on a Mac, it just makes me touch the screen of a Mac. I mean, I'm having this problem anyway on my MacBook. I don't know why, but I keep touching the screen of my MacBook. Yeah, you get over it.

I found you get over it. The first time you use the touch bar, you immediately think, oh, now I can reach up and touch the screen. I think it happens to everybody, but that's not the case. That's not the case. I can answer Tophph's question now or no greg's question now i can answer greg's question now here it is no oh that's the answer no it doesn't and there are a couple there are a couple reasons but

i think all is not lost for greg there are a couple reasons why it doesn't do it that's the brightness control so if you put the brightness all the way dark how would you get it back up right yeah you just once it once it goes dark that's it you're game over you have to just far as off you have no other way to do it change the language of your phone to another language you just have to keep hitting buttons until you find the right button again. Right, language. But the good news is, and I mentioned this in my review, the touch bar is aggressively power saving. So after, like even before your backlighting goes off on your keyboard, after a little bit of inactivity on your Mac, including you're watching a movie, touch bar just goes off and doesn't come back on until you do something,

you know, touch a key or move the trackpad or something, or I think maybe tap it. But so the touch bar is aggressively turning itself off when it thinks the Mac is not being used. So it's not going to be an issue for Greg because when he watches the movie, the touch bar will just go off after a little bit of an activity lucas asked do you think also go on also greg said i like to watch movies with no screen at night i don't know what that means no screen how do you watch i think what he means is like no screen brightness, maybe. I don't know. Maybe he's air playing it. I don't know. I don't know.

But anyway, it should go off. Lucas asked, do you think of Apple's focus on services and killing the time capsule, potentially, that they are close to an iCloud-based time machine service? I don't think so. I think it's too much. I don't think apple wants to be in that game and if they did i would not want to pay them the amount of money they would want to charge me i think the next step for apple will probably be something like preferences in icloud but they have so much so many issues already with desktop and document syncing. And then once you try to sync preferences and you get preferences out of sync,

I'm not quite sure whether that's a route they want to go down. But yeah, so I agree with you. I think iCloud-based Time Machine seems unlikely. It's not impossible. I don't think Apple wants to be backblazed. Exactly right. Is that a service that Apple really needs to build? Then again, Apple is backing up iOS devices,

but the data on the Mac is much more complicated. And again, the Mac is different. Apple can let some of that stuff to be third-party use, which they can't on iOS. Like literally, Apple had to write the backup stuff for iOS, but they don't have to do that for the Mac. So, and there are plenty of competitors out there fighting for that. So I think it's more likely that they will try to add more kind of continuity features

so that if you have a new Mac and you log in with your iCloud information, that it will get you closer to being up and running. So preference is an example, even if they don't sync across machines, but they sort of store the preferences and you can choose or even migrate from iCloud when you launch a new Mac, including migrating your preferences from somewhere, that wouldn't surprise me if they move in that direction. And maybe even like app installation states, which I don't think they honor right now, the idea that maybe not for third-party apps, but for Mac App Store apps, they would know which Mac App Store apps you have installed on a particular system

and it can offer to reload them all. I think they'll do, I think they'll push more in that direction, but that's not quite the same as backup. I think it's more that they will do that for migration reasons. And last up today, Reed asked, if Apple is focusing now more you know and cutting things out

could logic and final cut meet the same fate as the routers can't imagine that they make that much money i think final cut problem i think final cut probably does make money for them it's an interesting question i gotta say i think it's far more likely that Apple would do a FileMaker on their Pro apps and just make a subsidiary like they did with FileMaker when it was Claris. Now it's FileMaker. You know, people don't even know FileMaker. And it's basically a legacy product database now. But that's a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple that just runs on its own, does its thing, makes a database. That's it. That's all

that does. Seems weird, right? But as long as they're making money, and presumably they are, I think Apple just doesn't care. And that's a possibility for something like Logic and Final Cut, where they could say, I don't think they're going to kill them. They could sell them or they could just sort of like wall them off. And if you're going to wall them off like that, why not just wall them off internally and not even talk about it? And it may be that the pro apps have their own teams

and their own budget and are just allowed to do their own thing and Apple doesn't worry about them as long as they make money or serve the platform in some way. But it's possible but i guess the argument is the airport team were making money well i mean but they can't you know potentially have caught them but but the argument there is that they would have to invest in a lot

of new hardware design and there are other places they could use them i guess you could make that argument for logic and final cut that you know as long as there are other audio and video editors out there apple doesn't need to doesn't need to play this game you could certainly argue the point that apple should get rid of or divest themselves of of logic and final cut i hope hope it doesn't happen but you could make the argument um i think apple as long as apple likes marketing professional tools apple likes having final cut as an example of a professional tool. Then again, you know, so like a Final Cut had the Touch Bar demo, but Adobe had a Touch Bar demo for Photoshop.

So, you know, maybe, you know, if Logic and Final Cut Pro didn't exist, there would be Audition demos and Premiere demos. I don't know. I think that wraps up today, Mr. Snell. I think we've solved some really important things as the CEO of Apple. I'm really proud of us. Yep.

The world's a better place now. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, the fine folk over at Encapsular, Foot Cardigan, and Pingdom. If you want to find Jason online, he is over at sixcolors.com and theincomparable.com. He is at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E.

You can find our show notes for this week over at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 118. I mentioned last time that there would be a special Mike at the Movies potentially, and that is now out over the incomparable.com slash Mike. You can listen to me and the Armets

discuss My Cousin Vinny, which was a lot of fun. So you can go and check that out. I'll put a link in the show notes for that if you want to go and subscribe to that feed as well, because we do post the occasional special in there as well as the reruns. Thanks again for listening.

Thanks so much to our sponsors. Thank you for supporting them. We'll be back next time. Until then, Mr. Snell, say goodbye. Until we're home alone. So you know so much. You know so much about the movie. That's all I know. Never do that again movie that's all I know never do that again same as last time

never do that again