Upgrade - 121: All Talk and No Trousers

Episode Date: December 26, 2016

This week it’s all about the Mac, as Jason and Myke discuss Tim Cook’s attempts to reassure the concerned Mac user base, Bloomberg’s report about Apple’s Mac product-release struggles, and if the Mac is really a truck at all.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 121 today's show is brought to you by our fine sponsors smile and encapsulate my name is mike hurley and i am joined still in the festive season by mr jason snell happy boxing day mike the day of boxes in which we celebrate all of the boxes that we got the day before we uh we line them all up and we dance around them and then we punch them yep that's it's double double type of boxing on boxing and my dog is a boxer so it's her day too we bring boxers in to round up the cardboard boxes and then we find them and then that's the best day so we are recording on the 26th of december boxing day which means that yesterday was christmas and i believe that we both participated in the tradition of gift giving

so jason snell what was your favorite holiday gift this year? This year, my wife got me a... We are going to a baseball game in... I forget when it is, April or May. And it's like craft beer night or something. So there's before the game, like two hours before the game, there's like a craft beer tasting like fair and stuff that's in the ballpark and then and you get i think you get a a hat or something and then you also get to go see the baseball game and it's fun so it's like a little uh little event that i can

look forward to in 2017 so that was i would say that's probably the best i got i got some other stuff you know you get socks uh foot foot cardigan socks in this case and uh the um i got some tea and some honey which is great because i like those things in the morning and uh yeah that was that was me that was me um what about you just quickly craft brew like craft beer and baseball and baseball there is a strong chance that might turn out to be the best day of your life it's like the most no but but that's the thing mike you you know that because for me but the fact is that that that's also like the most san francisco thing ever that's true it's very it's very you know all those things that's it's just a very american thing but you have a baseball

now so i do it's sitting on my windowsill just over there i unpacked it a couple of days ago you're becoming uh more american by the day so i uh so this year because we just moved in everyone was buying us lots of practical gifts um lots of gift cards for homeware stuff and glassware you know stuff like that So Idina knows how much I enjoy toys at Christmas. So she surprised me with a drone. I saw the video. I was beside myself with excitement. I now have a Parrot Bebop 2 drone, which is, it's like a kind of middle of the line type thing, right? These aren't the drones that cost like a thousand dollars but they're very

expensive still because they have cameras in them and they're controlled with an app on my iPhone and I took it out for a couple of flights and I'm looking forward to when we get back from our trip because there's a big park near where we live because we've been at my grandma's the whole weekend and we're going to go

take it for some test flights there. I'm really excited about this because it's like, I mean, I don't expect to start incorporating a plethora of drone footage into my vlogs. But it's just like a fun, silly toy that I want to play around with. Because eventually, like, I have my eyes set on one of the big expensive ones because I just think it's kind of cool. And I was so excited to get this. And honestly, like even the footage that this thing produces, it's super impressive to me. I think it looks brilliant. So I'm very excited about this.

I enjoyed your Twitter video that you posted, which was also funny because you are looking like you're beside yourself indeed and uh adina is just amused by the whole thing like wearing a christmas cracker hat yeah wearing it wearing her hat i had one of those on last night and the one that um the thing that made me laugh is that is that the uh you know the drone rises and i just kept waiting for it to crash but it didn't no i was good i i made sure to have a good uh good air above me and i planned out the place specifically because i knew nobody was going to be around because i was worried that i might crash it into somebody's face they're actually not too difficult to control you know they have like a bunch of sensors in them and things like that to try and keep them

balanced because it was pretty windy um and you can see it like you know when you're watching it it does a lot to stabilize itself it's very impressive technology in those things so yeah that's my new toy talking about new toys i did receive a new toy of my that i bought for myself after last week's episode which is my airpods oh that's right we were waiting for them to to arrive and and they didn't they weren't delivered during the episode. They came just as I was finishing editing. I really, really like these things a lot. I've seen many people say this, and I can only agree that these AirPods is kind of Apple at its finest.

I agree. Because it's like this little box with something inside of it which you've never really experienced before in the way that they've done it. Right. Like we've all used Bluetooth headphones, but again, it's just like, there's no wire between them. And when you take one out,

it pauses and you know, like all these little things that Apple does, like just their little sprinkle of magic fairy dust that they put on their products. Like this is very much like that. And it's been a long time since we've had a product like this from apple because there haven't been many types of things that they've had to improve upon in their way i was thinking that the last time apple released a product that i think struck me as being like this like we're like it's just exactly apple um was the it was the pencil the pencil last year yeah the pencil is a good example

very good example actually right they come from that word it's like there is this thing that already exists a stylus but how can we make it our version of that right there's this thing that exists wireless headphones let's make our version of those and it feels very much like that you know it's a high-tech product that's incredibly complicated and difficult to design because it has little lights and magnets you know like this those little touches in the end the interface is is nothing is non-existent and that's uh you know that the pencil is absolutely the case right it has no interface at all and with the airpods the interface is incredibly minimal. And I think there's things to probably criticize about that.

And I did, after we had our chat, of course, I did go back to writing my review. And we'll put a link in. I posted that. But I think it's a first cut at this product for Apple and that there's a lot of stuff that they could improve. And yet, it's still like, I mean, you could have said that about the original iPhone, too. that they could improve. And yet it's still like, I mean, you could have said that about the original iPhone too,

but still you just get that moment of like, oh yeah, this is what all of us, I think, expect from Apple with every product they do, which is unfair because you can't do it with every product. But it's this combination of pushing forward technology, popularizing some stuff that existed before, but was not quite good enough and doing a few little things that add add care and uh personality to the product and uh and the airpods really have them they really do like a lot of the early complaints when we saw these things you know

like just from from observing them without ever using them was oh you know just play on pause and asking siri to do this stuff for me is ridiculous. But the fact of the matter is, like now that I've used them, I can see that the sensors that are detecting those taps are nowhere near sensitive enough. Like, I don't know how well it could detect between a double tap and a triple tap.

Like, I just think, you know, this is one of those things where like Apple obviously know what they're doing. And now I've used it, like they obviously know what they're doing. And now I've used it. They obviously know what they're doing. If they could have somehow put in a tap three times to skip or whatever, they would have done that. But these things, they're just not. You have to sometimes really give it a bit of a thunk to get it to do anything, which is actually kind of uncomfortable.

It gets you kind of smacking the side of your head. It's not really a great method like my hope would be and i'm sure that they are work trying to work on this is some kind of just very slight touch gestures you know like swipe left swipe right swipe up swipe down you know like on a small touch interface that they could build into the back of it which seems like a incredibly difficult thing to do but i have absolute faith that they would be able to pull that off at some point in the future you know like that seems like technology that exists already but it's just you know not small enough but i i believe that that would be something that apple would be able to do you know um however they would do it you know they might use some kind of light sensor

or something uh but overall like i'm i'm really you know i'm really i'm really impressed and also showing them to my family over christmas that was everybody was impressed with them as well like they loved the way it all worked like the case and the pausing when you remove one type stuff like and it reminded me of how it used to feel to be the person who had apple products before anybody else really had them you know like before the iphone or like before the iphone 4 right when you could show somebody an apple product and they were like whoa what is this like i've never seen something like this before like it reminded me of that because everyone was like like they would take it out and it would pause and it would put it back in and it was like oh my god that's amazing

right being the end user of an apple product their products still do that but you don't get to be the person to demo them anymore because everybody already has the new iphone you know so i don't know that was kind of that was cool but the consensus was and you know i think will continue to be that they look weird and a little bit silly yeah well it'll take time exactly that this will just take time and then people won't care about that anymore like i understand that right because they do i think they look ridiculous when i'm wearing them i'm like oh my god this looks so silly like just these stalks sticking out on my ears but that's just because they're new and within a couple of years time this is just how

they'll be like you know i think that maybe within the next two or three revisions they might be included in the box i I hope they are. Yeah. I don't know about that. That might take a while. That was a funny thing talking to my family that a bunch of people, like friends of my family,

thought that the AirPods did come with the new iPhone. Oh. Which is, I can see how people would assume that, right? Like, we're taking away the headphone jack. Here's these new headphones we've made. You just assume that it would be in the box? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think it's,

maybe not within the next few revisions, but I think eventually, right? Like, eventually these are going to be the things that come with the iPhone, I assume. Yeah, and everybody eventually is going to be used to little things sticking out of your ears too i think that's that's only a matter of time yeah so yeah i'm really impressed with them yeah i think uh yeah that was that was a on in many ways a pretty easy review for me to write

because i bet you know i really like i mean it's like i didn't need to search my feelings for the complexity of the like no these are really good. They've got some issues. There's not much downside at all. No, you know, relying on, relying on Siri and,

and, and those double taps being, you know, like somebody's knocking in the middle of your head are not the best. Um, uh, yeah. And like we said last week,

um, like the fact that in, in no internet circumstances, they just don't work. Like there's no, there's no capability for it to do basic processing on the phone, which they used to have. It's, that's dumb that, that, you know, there are things that they could fix with software. And then there are things that I hope they fix. Like I would love to be able to assign different gestures to the left and the right ear, for example, for those double taps, that would be

cool. But you know, it's, I don't know if any of that is possible, but it's all potential future versions of this, but for a version one product, I mean, it's great. Somebody asked me, so I, uh, I was writing a story. Uh, I was writing one of my macro columns. I decided to write it at, uh, at, uh, Starbucks down the street. And I brought my iPad and I actually tried out a new keyboard. I tried out the bridge, uh, keyboard for the iPad pro. And so I was, I was trying all that stuff out and I was sitting at the table and, and I was using my AirPods and a guy asked me, um, do you like them? And I said, yeah, they're really good. And and he said are they worth it and I said well you know you get headphones in the box right so those are free and are they worth it is such a hard question because it's like well I mean it matters like what what's it worth to you wireless headphones

are really convenient they don't get in your way. They stay in your ears. There's nothing dangling down there in certain circumstances. If you're particularly active or if you're like, for me, it's always like the cord getting snagged in the kitchen. Like there's so many things that are better about not having the cords, but you pay for it. And these are not unreasonably priced for a set of wireless headphones that sound like this, wireless earbuds. But still, you get a free pair of corded ones in the box. So that was a tough question that I didn't really have a good answer for, which is like, how much do you want to spend on having these kind of fun and more convenient, in many ways headphones and that make your own decision there i mean as with most of these types of new products i would say wait to the next one like if you're asking that question just wait for the next ones because they'll be better it'll be more worth it you know

they might be cheaper who knows but like they'll be better like if you're fine with it now like wait but if you are a person who enjoys fun technology, like most of the people listening to this show, I think you'd get a real kick out of these if you own them, in all honesty. Also, I think the argument of you can wait for the next one only goes so far because you can always wait for the next one, right? Oh, sure. But this is a version 1, though, right? But you're right.

If you want to feel like you're part of the future and you're doing something that everybody's going to be using products like this in five years, but you could get it today, but you have to pay for the AirPods to do that. And that's true. That's true. It's interesting because what's it worth to you is the answer there. You don't need to buy a new iPhone this year. You can just keep last year's iPhone. There are lots of things people don't need to pay for. Do you need to buy a pair of AirPods? you absolutely don't need to buy a pair of airpods are so you know it's just a matter of do they offer you enough to make it worth what the what the price is but for a version one product they're pretty great i mean like i don't have any of those

real wait till version two if you're on the fence kind of feels about this product it's also, I'm not convinced that there will be a substantial revision to them for a couple of years, but I think they're pretty good as is. Next week, the show everybody's been waiting for. Oh,

the Upgradees. Now we have the third annual Upgradees going out next week. We're very excited. The voting has closed. We have a good idea of who our winners are going to be. Me and Jason have our own votes, and I'm sure we're both very confident in those votes. We know what the listener votes are.

It's all very exciting. It's all coming together. And we have a little secret surprise. If you are somebody who has the iMessage sticker pack from the RelayFM app installed, so if you have the RelayFM app, you can get our iMessage sticker pack, there is an upgrade-y sticker which you will now find within that sticker pack. It appeared a couple of days ago secretly, as we were able to do, because the iMessage sticker pack stuff is actually very, very advanced.

It's pretty cool. So you can go there, you can take a look and you can send your friends all of the things that you think are winning, all of the upgradeys. So you can send them out and have fun with that. So there's a lovely little sticker with more fantastic artwork from

At Forgotten Tale, our incredible graphic designer that we work with and collaborate with. And we have some very special artwork that will appear in the show notes as well to commemorate the Upgradies for this year. So tune in or podcast in on January 2nd and

you will get that very special episode. It's a pre-taped episode. We won't be live for the people who listen live but we will be providing on that date while we're traveling we will have pre-taped that episode and you'll be able to hear it like all good award shows

we have to have a tape delay in case something happens in case we have a run in or you never know we've got to make sure we're prepared exactly is that what you call streakers run in or you never know so we gotta make sure we're prepared streaker yeah exactly exactly is that what you call streakers in in england a run-in somebody runs onto the field somewhere

is that a run-in well no i mean they're still called streakers but streakers are naked you know there might be somebody who's not naked right who just runs in and waves and it's like you know i think of kanye west holy cloth know? Yeah, I suppose that's true. Yeah. You never know. We might get, like, John Syracuse burst in and demand an award. It could happen. Yeah, it could be.

It could happen. He doesn't have enough awards already, enough upgradies. Who knows? Does he? Oh, yeah, they've won twice, right, ATP? Uh-huh. Did they Reconcilable Differences win as well? It might have done.

It might have. It might have done. It might have. Last year as a newcomer. This week's episode is brought to you by Encapsular, the cloud service that makes your website faster and safer. Encapsular has a worldwide network that can inspect every packet that comes and goes from your website, blocking attacks against your site whilst delivering your content to your customers faster.

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As a listener of this show, you can get one whole month of service for free. All you need to do is go to encapsular.com upgrade. That's I-N-C-A-P-S-u-l-a.com upgrade this is where you can find out more about encapsular service and claim your free month thank you so much to encapsular for their support of this show and relay fn so uh we have a few things that we want to talk about today a few stories a few articles that i was thinking I wanted to label as all about the Mac. We're going back to the Mac today. That's right.

Because there's been, thankfully, during the run up to Christmas, a few stories that appeared, which me and Jason were talking over Slack. We were very thankful for these stories because it gave us something to talk about and what is potentially the hardest episode to have something to talk about in the year, which is the episode The Day After Christmas. Not a lot of tech news breaks. Otherwise, this episode was going to be entirely about putting stickers on our technology

and me recommending comic books to Mike. Those topics, by the way, because I know people will now be screaming for them, they will come at some point in the future. We have, as all good podcasters do, we have a bank of evergreen topics that we can pull out if nothing has happened. So they are two of those,

and that was what it was going to be today. But luckily, there are a few things. Let's start off with an article from TechCrunch of a leaked internal memo from Tim Cook on an Apple message board it was described as. Like, what is that? I don't even know. It's some sort of internal HR memo feedback something.

It's probably heavily moderated by corporate human resources. I bet it's like 15 years old and it's got pinstriping everywhere and stuff. That's probably heavily moderated by corporate human resources i bet it's like 15 years old and it's got pinstriping everywhere and stuff that's probably um tim cook said the following i'm going to read some quotes um in a reply to a question asking about whether mac desktops are still a strategic line for apple so tim said the desktop is very strategic for us it's unique compared to the notebook. So you notice this is specifically, this person is, I think, targeting the Mac Pro in their question.

It's unique compared to the notebook because you can pack a lot more performance in a desktop. The largest screens, the most memory and storage, a greater variety of IO, and fastest performance. So there are many different reasons why desktops are really important and in some cases critical to people. Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we're committed to desktops.

If there's any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear, we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that. So before we kind of dig into some of the wording here because i think there is some interesting wording here of course what's the driving force behind a comment like this from cook do you think is he trying to talk to this person who asked him that question or is he talking to the wider enthusiast audience do you think what's the motivation behind this i think i think it's both i think i think there are presumably there are people at apple who feel as upset about the mac

not having a lot of attention put on it seemingly as there are outside of apple presumably you know you know we we aren't a lot of people at apple or at least some of the people at apple are like us right they they are they are fans and they love and they use the mac every day and it matters to them and they read what is written and they listen to podcasts and they want to know what's going on but they're also apple employees so they get to ask tim cook apparently in their their uh whatever this thing is i'm'm also really interested to know how this kind of thing occurs. Was it like a town hall? Was Tim accepting these messages?

Or can you just like any day, any time just say, hey, Tim, what do you think about this? Some suggestion box sort of thing. I don't know whether they do a regular Q&A. It seemed like that might be the case, right? Because this article had a few questions on a few things. So I guess it was like a scheduled Q&A. This was chosen and they know that this is going to leak. They absolutely know that. There's no way that any statement from Tim Cook circulated to all Apple employees is going to stay confidential. So I think that's always the secondary consideration here is it allows a message, an unofficial message from Apple that's still official but unofficial to get out.

And this is a good way to do that, right? Like, let's imagine that me and you are working at Apple PR at the moment. If I have the option here of like, you know, we kind of want to get this message out. How do we do this? We can either do this as a statement direct on the PR team or somebody can tweet something or someone can give a statement to The Verge or it can be a leaked internal memo. That kind of adds, the leaked internal memo,

kind of in my mind at least, adds a weight of like this is definitely true because nobody was supposed to see this. That's right. Well, there's no spin in that message because it's internal. What Apple didn't want to do is um give a an interview it looks like based on this give an interview to somebody talking about the you know the importance of mac desktops right they didn't want to do a

you know exclusive cnet talks to tim cook about Mac desktops, right? Because they're going to want to talk about other stuff. They're going to want to ask questions, pesky questions that the Apple executives don't want to answer. They don't want to do that. This shields them from all of that because it's just this text is not even released. This text is sent to Apple employees or posted for them to view, and then they walk away. And so it's a way to get direct quotes out that aren't, you know, leaks from sources, but are direct quotes without it being something that is, you know, that is part of a back and forth, even with guidelines, you know, part of a back and forth with journalists.

They're going to ask you follow-up questions and things like that. And, you know, this way doesn't require that. This way you do two paragraphs and you're gone. Pretty great, right? It's a pretty great idea. Like, I think it's a way to get this out. It's a smart way to get this message out. As a journalist, I would say I'd rather they actually answer questions and not be allowed

to be somewhat cryptic. And this we can generate and have already plenty of questions about what exactly he means here. But if you view it from Apple's perspective, you don't want that. It's a great way to do it purely from a, you know, being tricky PR type thing, right? Like not as in, is this the best way for the message to be distributed? But I think it's maybe the best way for them to try and get their intention across which is to be like we do care about this however sending a signal what is what is tim saying here do you think like well is this like desktop or desktops that he's talking

about one thing that's clear here is that how you review this, how you judge what he's saying here is going to be impacted by how you feel about where Apple is going, right? Because, you know, this is meant to be a reassurance, right? The headline is Apple's Tim Cook assures employees that it is committed to the Mac, right? That is the headline in TechCrunch that leaked this memo. Okay, right? that leaked this memo. Okay, right. And yet, immediately after it, I saw like Marco Arment feels like Apple's not going to probably not going to ever release another Mac Pro and is not interested in this kind of market and all that. And Marco's take on this immediately was, well, look, you see what he's saying. He's talking about the iMac. He's not talking about the Mac Pro. And he's right. You can read it that way,

right? And I think that if you're, I think if you're inclined to view this as a way for Apple to sort of like, poo-poo all of that complaining, but not really promise anything other than that there will be iMacs in the future, shocker, then in an oblique way, then I think that's a valid way to read it. So I think you can look at this and say, hey, look, it's some not official reassurance to Mac users that Apple cares about the desktop. But if you are convinced that they don't really care about pro-level desktops,

you can definitely parse this and say, I'm not sure he's saying anything about that my my take on this is that he's talking about the iMac but i'm fine with that the iMac is as pro a machine as i ever could want or need you know yeah yeah my feeling is that they've got new iMacs that are coming out soon right and he knows about them and that's the next product up so you're teasing the next product up by saying we got some great stuff you know aren't there great things when they talk about the biggest screens here like why would you mention screens because the macbook pro will will drive a 27 inch 5k display or two in the 15 inch case right so um so what they really what he's really thinking is sort

of an all-in-one with a screen i think and that's the imac so that's the um you know a greater variety of io is interesting i'm not quite sure you know you could make some arguments that when he says a greater variety of io um what's what does that mean if we've got macbook pros with thunderbolt 3 does that mean more ports does that mean expandability at which point we are talking about something that like there's no expandable desktop max at all now so i'm not quite sure what that means or does he literally mean but there will be six and that's not variety necessarily will there be legacy ports on the iMac I mean there's that you can parse it a bunch of ways but but it's hard to find um and fastest performance great right but it's it's hard to look in here and and say he's definitely talking about more than the iMac and I think that

that's what he's thinking of here just like that this happened like a year or two ago where where he said something like this where it was like you know there's great stuff on the way and people will see that shortly and it was a new you know it was a new model of something and it wasn't quite what we thought it was but it was you know it was the next product up and so why not you know what do you think is going to happen there's going to be a new iMac I think that might have been the revision of the 5k the introduction of the 4k maybe maybe maybe but it was one of those like we're you know we're working on some exciting things and this is definitely important and you know we've got some great stuff coming next year and you're gonna love

it and it's like okay um you know it doesn't really say anything uh but uh yeah so it's interesting because it's reassuring on one level which which is we have great desktops on our roadmap. We are working on desktops, which I think the real question is, were people really worried about Mac desktops? Or were people worried about the Mac Pro and maybe the Mac Mini? and maybe the Mac mini, because, because if you were worried about the iMac, I think you got your clear picture here that Apple has a roadmap for the iMac and the iMac is not going anywhere. But I would argue, um, of course the iMac is not going anywhere. Was somebody really thinking that the iMac was going somewhere? Cause the iMac is totally not going anywhere. So I think maybe this is a case where the question gets asked, it gets asked in a vague enough way or gets edited by HR.

I don't know how it works there. To be vague enough that he can answer about desktops in general without actually addressing certain desktops in particular. I wouldn't say that there was like definite need for worry or that even I was worried about the iMac. definite need for worry or that even i was worried about the imac but you know you could imagine a world in which we didn't see one for another year right like it could have i mean could have happened who knows right like well i think anything is possible but yeah anything's possible right it was impossible to think the mac pro would be unupdated for three years right so sure i think that there is at least something to be taken from the fact that they're saying that they have imax in the roadmap and assuming that there's not too

many junctions between here and there oh yeah i still i still believe there is a there is a something that's not the imac that's a desktop that they are planning i still believe that and my number one bit of evidence for that is i don't think the Mac pro would still be for sale if they were never going to make the Mac pro again. I think the reason that it's sitting there, and we talked about this before, but I think the reason it's sitting there embarrassingly long is because they want to keep it on the price list until they have a replacement for it. And so it sits and, and, um, there was, you know, we'll, yeah, we'll see what happens there. But that's the reason for my feeling about this.

And the fact that Tim Cook is saying the right things here when he says screens and memory and storage and IO and fastest performance and we care, we know this is critical to people and it's important to people and we are committed and we have a roadmap and we're going to work on this in the future. So don't worry. That is the message here. And so beyond

that, I guess you just have to say, how much of that do you believe and how much of that do you think is spin? And I think everybody's going to have a different percentage there. And obviously somebody like Marco, who is pretty down on the prospects here, is going to have a different percentage there. And obviously somebody like Marco, who was pretty down on the prospects here, is going to have a smaller percentage of reading into that than somebody who's a little more positive about that. I think, you know, I think anytime that Tim Cook says anything, even semi-publicly about how,

about the Mac and about that aspects of the Mac's business are important to Apple and they have a future, I kind of want to take that as a win. But it doesn't brush away, saying we're committed and giving a thumbs up is not brushing away the detailed questions about how the product line has been handled and where it's going.

And those remain. This doesn't really dispel them in any way. And, you know a there's a phrase uh used here uh it's all talk and no trousers wow i don't actually know what the full like meaning of that is but it's like you you can keep saying like we have great max coming but until you actually see them right like you can't see the level of commitment right like I think that's kind of what you're saying to a point, right? Which is, like, you can keep saying it, which is awesome. Like, keep saying it, keep assuring us, great.

But eventually, there has to be something to back up those statements, right? Like, that has to eventually come. And unfortunately, over the last two years, those eventualities have been getting longer and longer apart. And so at this point, it's like it is unknown how long it will be before we get another MacBook Pro even, right? It could be two years. Who knows? We'll wait and see.

Now, talking about what Macs are coming and Apple's commitment to the desktop, there is another side of this. There is leaks from commitment to the desktop. There is another side of this. There is a, you know, leaks from inside of the company. The type of person who would ask the question in the first place, the disgruntled employee. There are those people. And, as you can imagine, someone has been talking to them, and that person is Mark Gurman.

And there is a Mark Gurman report that we're going to talk about a little bit later on in the episode today. It's a big report in Bloomberg talking about talking about what the state of the Mac is. But before we do that, let's just take a little break from the heavy and just talk about something a little bit lighter, which is a really fun and awesome YouTube video that you put together about the Mac's place in the Steve Jobs idea idea of the apple product line the cars versus trucks argument okay can you sum up the cars versus trucks argument the real one or the fake one the one jobs made all right so what jobs said was and this is a 2010 at the d conference

which is uh that was walt moss and Kara Switcher's conference when they worked at the Wall Street Journal, essentially. They now, they left and set up Recode and now they do the Code conference and there's still a WSJD conference, I think. But anyway, in 2010, it was the Walt and Kara show and Jobs was there and he went on, they asked him basically, what do you think about like the iPad's future compared to computers? And Jobs went on this riff about how in the past, all vehicles were trucks and we were an agrarian nation. And then over time, people moved to cities and suburbs and needed cars, and they made cars. Now, historically, that's basically not true. It's not true. But his real point was that computers have been all-purpose taskers. All-purpose, like if you want to do

this, it used to be like get on the internet is a good example. It used to be, you had to have a computer, like computers were a thing you bought, not because you needed to do like high powered computing, but that was the gateway to be able to get on the internet, to check your email, to look at webpages and things like that. And so everybody had a computer, but now what he's saying is with tablets, he was talking about, but I think we have to throw smartphones in there, obviously. But with tablets, his thought was there's a whole class of people who will not need a computer because all they were doing with their computer is getting on the internet.

And there are more appropriate devices that let you do all of those things without having to have a big old computer, a big old laptop or a desktop computer. And I think there's validity in that statement. My mom had a laptop for 15 years or something like that. And now she just is iPad only, iPad and iPhone, but she mostly is just using her iPad. And that's, that's, so I can see it. I can see his argument there. So that's what he was saying was, it's going to be uncomfortable in this post PC world, when everybody's using devices that aren't PCs to do all of these general tasks that used to be in the computing bucket, but now aren't. It's gonna be uncomfortable for people to deal with that change. But that in

the end, the personal computer is a tool. It's a particular tool for a job. And if you need to do that job, you'll use it. But it's no longer a general purpose device where you buy it because you want to be on the internet. Like his point, if I had to boil it down is it used to be that you bought an iMac, like the i was for internet. You bought an iMac because you wanted to do email and go online. So you bought a big iMac and you plopped it down on a desk and you plugged it in and you plugged in your modem, you know, phone port to the modem plug and you went online. Yay, you're on the internet. And today you would never do that. You know, you don't need if all you're doing is checking email and keeping up with pictures on Facebook, you don't need a computer to do that. And in fact, the computer is probably a, you know, depending on who you are, it might be

the right tool for the job if you have particular needs, but it's, you know, a phone and a tablet are absolutely capable of doing all of the things that you need to do. And so that was his argument was that over time, PC people, people who came up in the computer industry were going to be uncomfortable by the fact that this device that they loved, that is the center of everything, is going to become not the center of everything because it doesn't need to be anymore. And it's just going to be more of a niche tool. It's a tool for very specific uses when, you know, instead of it being everything needs a computer, it's like some jobs need a computer. And that's really different. So that I think that's the heart of what Jobs was trying to say there. So you put this video together, which people should go and watch it on YouTube'm talking about your kind of theory on this now is that jobs's original argument which is the argument that many people still come back to today about why the mac is important because the mac is the truck it seems that there

is a change at least from apple in like what the mac is right yeah yeah i mean that was what prompted me to make the video i was trying to think about about it and i realized i need to go back to the jobs video and then i watched the jobs video and i thought oh this is like i i started to try to take it apart and first i i had to get over the fact that he he starts with this kind of fantasy of of agrarian truck nation that doesn't exist i know you were really stuck on this idea for a while you saw a version of my an early version of my script i i kind of want to do a whole video now that's just about like the history of cars and I know you were really stuck on this idea for a while. metaphor all the time, right? Because it's so beautiful, right? Like it's such a beautiful metaphor. It is. And it's not, so I think it's not quite right historically, but I like the idea as I just described it, right? The problem is, as I thought about it more and more, and as I was working on the video, that, and I think I've mentioned it on Upgrade before, and I know I

mentioned it on Clockwise at one point, is how do you square the view that computers are trucks with the fact that Apple makes decisions about the Mac that seem to be driving it away from professional use? Like if you just go straight with the metaphor of like, you know, tablets and smartphones, let's say our cars and computers are trucks. Why, you know, shouldn't the Mac Pro and the MacBook Pro be the ultimate destinations and they should be super powerful devices? Because in the end, who's buying Macs anymore? It's pros. They're the truck drivers. They're the people hauling things. They need the tools, the professional tools or the contractors, whatever you, however you want to take that metaphor, they need trucks, right? They're rendering video, they're editing audio, they're doing, you know, special effects, they're doing biotech, they're doing, I mean,

you name all the things that they're and they're developers, right? All of those things, throw that throw them in there, they all need trucks, right? But you look at the MacBook and you look at the MacBook Pro and you could even go back and say things like the iMac when they redesigned the iMac to be thinner. It's like, are these truck features? Are these truck features or are these car features? Because thinner and lighter makes sense on mobile. And that's Apple's playbook has been thinner and lighter because those seem like car features. They're like pros may want it to be thicker and heavier and have more power, but regular people don't. They need enough power to get by to do the things they want to do, but that's the end of it. So you look at Apple's design decisions with the Mac and you're like, are they making,

do they really think the Mac is a truck? And that's when I came to my conclusion in the video. And the video is definitely me asking a lot of questions and not giving anybody like the answer from the mountaintop. I'm like, what does this all mean? Because I really am still kind of wondering, but I am starting to wonder if Apple doesn't see the Mac as a truck at all, or at least Apple may see, because Jobs was talking about the whole personal computing industry. Apple may look at the Mac and say, what's the best target audience for the Mac? And I feel like it's more like an SUV or a crossover. John Syracuse gave me a hard time for lumping crossovers in with SUVs. But, you know, if you don't, I know.

But, I mean, basically, there's a whole class that's just as popular as a traditional car that was originally, you know, sort of styled or based on a truck body, but sort of styled like a car. And the idea is there's this whole new class of vehicle that's really for people who want to drive a car, but they want it to be fancier.

They want it to be bigger. They want it to be more powerful. They want it to have more space. Whatever it is, it's a fancy thing that's no longer a car, but it's not a truck. It's not a pickup truck. It doesn't have a truck bed. It's just a fancier, bigger, more well-appointed vehicle. And then there's the truck, which I would say is like, you can have a truck and not use the truck bed, but because you like to drive a truck and that's a perfectly valid use case, or you can, you need it to do your job. Right. And I started to think, okay, we can go too far

down the rabbit hole with these metaphors, which is in itself another metaphor. But what if the Mac is an SUV, essentially? What if Apple's target audience for the mac is not professional users it's people who want to have kind of like car you know or like trucky features but but still be a car and if you think about it there's probably to this day still a bigger audience for that than for the high-end you know pro user i agree like people that just want the little bit more space when they need it and more power when it matters right are not developing software like the fact that you know adina chose to go with the macbook pro over the macbook air when she made her purchase a couple of years ago because she wanted a retina screen which was a nicer feature and you know just a little bit

more power if she's ever encoding a video or something yeah it's um and and it's i think jobs some of this i think is jobs believing that the tablet thing was going to take off more than it did right i mean the fact is that the tablet market is not is not growing exponentially and consuming the PC market. Like, I think he probably thought it was. Or at least at that time doing the right PR job required for the launch of the iPad. Yeah, well, that's true. That's true.

But I do think that's a factor here because I think that if the iPad and other tablets had really consumed in the last six years, had consumed a huge part of that consumer PC market. Even more, you know, the PC market is shrinking, but it's not collapsing. If the tablet market had consumed the PC market for consumers, then the only place that would make sense for you to make computers anymore would be to make them trucks, right? But that hasn't happened. Like regular people buy computers, even now, even with the option to buy tablets and with their smartphones, people still buy computers. They don't buy them like they used to, but they still buy them. And so, you know, I think if Apple were to choose to focus on the professional market, they would lose these other sales. You could make the argument that Apple doesn't need to do that.

Apple could do both. And that's totally true. I do wonder, and that was in the video too, I do wonder sometimes if just because of the mindset required to make cars, which are the iPhone and the ipad if it isn't easier and if and actually if apple is is best at focusing on those same kind of values when they make max and therefore making thinner and lighter friendlier consumery consumer friendly not high-end devices everywhere. It fits into who they are. And the pro stuff on the Mac, just they don't think about it.

They don't understand it. They can't prioritize it. I don't know what the thought is there because it's not like car makers can't make trucks too and cars and SUVs and all of that. But Apple's a you know apple's a different kind of beast and it may be but i did have that moment where you know the the the crystallizing moment for me was when they do the macbook macbook pro and they limit the ram on it

it is hard to look at that and say that is like totally a professional product right it is a professional-ish product but they're turning you know they're turning their backs on or at least they're not catering to a portion of their audience and that's the you know that's the people who absolutely need something or think they absolutely need something that they can't get so what do you think you know like what do you think is the future here with this do you think that you know having looked at this do you think that it's gonna continue to be this like bifurcation of what these devices are capable of based upon market desire and consumer need. Like, is the iPad going to become the car more than it ever was? Is the Mac going to become less of a truck

and there'll just be no trucks anymore? Like, what is going to happen here? Well, first off, one of the places where this metaphor is fundamentally broken, because Jobs is talking about the tablet in the original context of it, one of the places where this is fundamentally broken is the iPad's not the car. The smartphone is the car. The smartphone is the

car. The smartphone is the thing that everybody has. And the iPad is also, I guess, a car, or maybe it's like a minivan or something. I don't know whether it's, you know, but it's a general purpose device like that. Even the iPad Pro, right? It's verging on being able to do more, but it's not a super high-end kind of product. And then you've got the Mac, and the Mac's kind of all over the place. My gut feeling, based on what we've seen, and again, if they offer a Mac Pro that's spectacular in 2017, then we will have to recalibrate our feelings. recalibrate our feelings but looking at the evidence of the macbook being like totally focused on thinness and lightness and not on traditional kind of professionally kind of features and then we look at the decisions that went into the macbook pro and where it is i think you know the thing i take away from all the anger from certain markets, certain audiences, certain users of Apple's products about the MacBook Pro, what I take away from that is it looks to me like Apple has decided that certain markets aren't important enough for them to prioritize over other things they want to do with their products.

And we've talked about that before too, right? Which is if your favorite maker of whatever decides that the flavor of chewing gum that you like isn't selling well enough and replaces it, you're going to be mad. You're going to be really mad. And you should be mad. They took away your favorite thing. But if it turns out that it was by far their worst selling flavor, and the new flavor that they've come up with is going to do way better, it's hard to say that it wasn't the right decision for them to make. And you could say, but you could still make that too. It's like, well, we could, but there's the packaging and there's the complexity of our business

that you don't see. And we really need to just swap it out. And I feel like that's what's going on here a little bit, which is sort of one of the questions in my video is, what if Apple decides kind of like, we're not gonna make trucks. We're not gonna make trucks. We're gonna make really nice cars

that are still gonna be able to carry a lot. But if you absolutely have to have a truck bed to do your job, to just beat this metaphor even further into the ground, then we're not going to provide that to you. Because that's not the computer we want to make, essentially. We don't want to provide that to you because we need to make these kinds of products that we think have broader appeal than that. And the question in my video is okay so you've been driving this apple truck for years and now you have to make a decision and the decision is do you buy an apple suv because you don't really need the truck bed you

just like to have it or do you buy somebody else's truck? And that's the kind of like Microsoft question. And learn how all their dials work, for example. Well, whether it's the Surface Studio, which is going to be an incredibly niche product, I think, or just in general, like it's entirely possible that Apple is going to say there are certain, and it has already said potentially, there are certain parts of the computer market that we we are not going to serve i kind of hope they don't do that because there's lots of uh you know things that happen to make the mac less important when when they do stuff like that and some of it they may not even realize at the time i would hate for them to turn their backs on markets like that, but they may be doing that. I don't want them to stop making the Mac. I don't want them to stop making the Macs that people want to use, but I don't want them dragging something along and taking up resources that could be used

on making newer and cooler technology. And I don't mean, because people always think, I'm using my biases here, I don't mean make a nicer iPad. If that's what it is, then great. But I'm well aware that the Mac and the iPad sells the same amount. But if it is something else, like the future of computing, which is neither of these things, then I want them to be focused on that. I know it's difficult, right? Because I still rely on a Mac.

My iMac is still incredibly important to me. And I consider my iMac a professional machine because it is the top of the line one. It is beefy, very beefy. And I do professional work on it, right? I do what is considered the creative professional work on my macintosh uh but i i really don't like the idea of apple has to continue making these things forever because i really need them well and and the i mean again i feel for the people who are upset about this but like how many people really do need more than 16 gigabytes of RAM?

I don't think many people. I think many people might want it. I really don't see how many people need it. With what we do on computers right now, with the things that we currently do, I'm sure that you'd listen to this in five years and laugh at them for saying that, that old thing. But the stuff that is in our current future that we can see in the stuff that we use right now i don't

know how much more like realistically more ram you need than 16 gigabytes yeah and and again somebody will say but for my particular use case it's like okay you boil it down to the people who absolutely have to have it boil it down to them how big is that market and if the difference between having more battery life or whatever in a and we'll talk about the mark german report which lends some more kind of understanding to what's going on with the batteries in the macbook pro but if making these decisions that you know 99 of the users will find appealing in the macbook pro but that 1% will find a deal breaker, you say goodbye to the 1%, right? And you optimize for the 99%. It just sucks to be in the 1%

because they've stopped making your gum and you should be angry about it. But I don't know. I just, I feel like the truck thing, the truck thing is fascinating because it goes, bringing it back around it to apply it to professional use of computers is really interesting because that's when we have to ask that question of like, well, who are the professional users?

What do they actually need? Is Apple serving them, but they're kind of like they have to adapt to Apple instead of Apple kind of coming to them? Or is Apple completely turning their backs on them? Does Apple care about that market? What markets does Apple care about? And we don't have a lot of evidence, so we all end up sort of spinning and asking us these questions.

And sometimes it drives people mad, and they go back to videos of Steve Jobs from 2010. And I think it was very good that you made this video to make that argument, because I really like the argument. I like the argument, right, that the MacBook Pro is an SUV now, because they're not so, or at least Apple probably sees it that way because they are not solving for the usual problems, right?

Like for trucks, you make them bigger, right, or give you more space inside of them. Right. And they are completely going in the exact opposite for the MacBook Pro. They are making – they are doing the same things you do for a car, that you make it prettier. More luxurious. Yeah, prettier. You give it new, fangled features,

and you streamline it. And that's what they've done to the MacBook Pro, and they're probably going to continue. So there probably isn't a truck laptop anymore, unless you want to go to the used car lot and buy one yeah or another brand or another brand so does the truck desktop exist anymore we'll find out in a year i think that's yeah that's about right that's about right because the imac you know again the imac of today thek iMac, which is the 2015 model still is the current one,

you know, that's a pretty darn powerful system, like, enough that a lot of people who only use Mac Pro switch to the iMac because it's so powerful, but it's not, you know, it doesn't have all the features that the Mac Pro has traditionally had, right. And so it's the same argument, like they're, it's compromised in some ways but it's pretty powerful so is that good enough and in 2017 i guess we'll see whether whether um apple has other parts of this story or if that's it can i continue to just make one more silly car metaphor sure all right my garage door is open go ahead i feel like the computers that we have now like these laptops they're more like electric cars than regular cars because you can't lift

the hood on them anymore right like you can't tinker around in there and replace things you can't yeah and you can most cars if you open up the hood now you'll find that there's just a big block yeah there's nothing there. And you can't... They're very similar in that way, too. So Apple doesn't make the types of cars that you can still replace the transmission on yourself if you want to. And I think that is part of the truck thing, right?

Like, I think people have long thought of the idea of the truck Mac as the one where you can pop it open and put the RAM in yourself, right? Or you can pop it open and put in a new PCI Express card. No, not anymore, right? Like these things are just hermetically sealed. And that's what I talk about the philosophy of, you know, this is Apple's philosophy and it's not just bleeding over from the iPhone and the iPad, but it's also sort of a thing that Apple has been pushing since the early days of Steve Jobs, which is we can make our computers better by turning away from, you could say this about everything they've done.

We can make our stuff better by turning away from things that are accepted as norms because we don't think they're necessary. And they have lots, a whole list of that, right? Including headphone jacks and particular ports that, oh, you've got to have that. And they're like, no, we don't need that anymore but you know what um individually replaceable parts inside of their their devices is one of those same areas and if you go on iFixit you can see the um the tone that iFixit takes with so many of Apple's products it's great that they do those teardowns but behind it all there is, oh, Apple is stupid because they're making this, they're attaching everything together and making it impossible to repair anything. It's like, yeah,

it's true. They are, but they're not doing it to be jerks most of the time. Maybe soldering on the ram is jerky, but most of the time they're not doing it to be jerks. They're doing it because it allows them to make a better product because what they define is better is that it's thinner or lighter or faster or something else that is not about popping the hood, you know, taking apart your iPhone and taking that one particular item off of it and popping a new one on. And that's the, you know, that's just how they've decided to do it. And that goes, that extends to the modern Mac too,

where there are no Macs with card slots anymore. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Smile. So we're still within the holiday season, I think. I think it's safe to say that the holidays are still here. You're probably still spending time with family. So why not give them the gift of a Smile product and help them become the most productive person that they can be on their devices and give them the most precious gift of all, that is more time.

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And whilst you're there, check out the brand new TextExpander blog where you can find out more about TextExpander public groups, which are a cool thing. I have a couple of public groups that I subscribe to in my Texas Bandit fight, comma, misspellings and stuff. And for Apple products, like if I type in MacBook, it does all the correct capitalization for me and stuff. I didn't add those, but I

subscribed to somebody's public group who did it for me. They have new snippet keys in Texas Bandit for iPhone and iPad, which you can learn about on the blog, and even how to get your hands on some lovely Smile software stickers which i have stuck to my devices of course thank you so much to smile for their continued support of this show and relay fm all right mr snell yes sir so this is i guess the main event of this discussion today i don't know is the bloomberg report from our friend, Mr. Mark Gurman, the bringer of stories for Upgrade. We thank Mark again for his commitment to giving us great topics for the show.

Great things to talk about, sure. Now I'm going to do a lot of talking here. Okay. As I try and boil down and tease out some of the more interesting parts of this article. So we'll start with some quotes. Interviews with people familiar with Apple's inner workings reveal that the Mac is getting far less attention than it once did. They say that the Mac team has lost clout with the famed industrial design group led by Johnny Ive and the company's software team. There is a lack

of clear direction from management. So this is like the kind of where this piece begins. Clear direction from management. So this is like the kind of where this piece begins. Goeman is basically saying that he's speaking to people who are telling him that the Mac is not considered as important enough or as important anymore as it used to be inside of Apple. Now, don't think this is a hard thing for us to assume, but it's interesting to hear about. However, I feel that this part

and some other parts a little bit later on in this article, taint some of this article for me. Now, a long time ago, I asked you the question, why do people leak to the press? And one of the things that you said to me at that point, kind of knowing what you know and having worked on this stuff for as long as you have, is sometimes it's disgruntled employees that have tried to make changes inside of the company. They can't do it anymore, so they're crying to the press about it. This feels that way to me.

This whole article feels like somebody inside of Apple who's super unhappy is bending the ear of Mark Gurman. Or people who were at Apple. In fact, you can look at some of these attributions of Apple who's super unhappy is bending the ear of Mark Gurman. Or people who were at Apple. In fact, you can look at some of these attributions and it's people familiar with Apple's inner workings, right? That doesn't even say people at Apple. It says people familiar with Apple's inner workings. I'm not quite sure what that means.

You know, you have to protect your sources here. But who's familiar with Apple's inner workings? I mean, there are lots of people who are familiar with Apple's inner workings, but might not be, you know, at Apple or were at Apple or are connected to Apple in some way. I don't dispute. I mean, to be clear, I believe that Mark Gurman is diligent with his sources and that these sources are legit. But yeah, this is one of those articles where I look at and I think, as you should always

do with any leaked story, which is who is the leaker here and why did they decide to leak this? And this story, I look at it and I say, these are people who want to complain about how the Mac is being treated at Apple and are unhappy with some of the processes that Apple is using in its product development. There are a couple of other parts to this that kind of speak to that argument, I think.

There's one part where they're talking about the fact that when Apple reorganizes software and hardware teams, and I'm assuming that this was the reorganization that happened after Forrestal, when they went into the big pillars, the divisions, as we spoke about a few weeks ago, of software and hardware, right? When this happened, or if there's been any since,

they've actually disbanded the dedicated Mac OS software team, and they have just one software team now that of course focus majorly on ios like the majority of those people focus on ios and this kind of is an interesting thing to look at and i can see that like you can look at this and say from a where does the company's money come from? If it's all one budget, of course it goes to iOS, right? Like 95% of the people go to iOS. But if you're inside and you previously worked on macOS or you are working on macOS, this is going to upset you, right?

Yep. And we spoke about this. right yep and you know we spoke about this my my feeling look i i can't say that i know how to run the most valuable company industry no i can't say that but having just looked and doing some armchair business stuff and reading what we've read this this one article a couple of weeks ago that fox article which was really great i can see a real benefit for apple starting to silo some of these teams away and giving them their own budgets and letting them work in their own way and collaborate as opposed to just constantly taking from this pool of people who have to be put on different uh projects because it's always going to be the project that makes the most money that gets

the most attention and that isn't always the best idea because i think it can stop some innovation occurring or just like exciting things or you know maybe it's maybe it's best to have the people that really want to work on the mac work on the mac and not begrudgingly work on ios when you're looking at the sake of the quality of the product. You know, like you maybe want less people that are just annoyed and not working in the right place. Or maybe you want, you know, if you have an engineer who's really great at iOS stuff,

he's also kind of good at some macOS stuff, but you need them on the Mac, you put them there, but then you're losing some, you know, I think that there are some real benefits to having these siloed teams again because it does seem like a lot of the stuff that we're seeing in regards to this kind of hints

towards the fact that Apple is kind of shooting themselves in the foot in some areas by making everybody work under one line of command. Yeah, I mean, I can take the counter argument there which is to say that so much of the stuff that apple does is shared that it's counterproductive to have uh to have these separate groups when so much collaboration needs to happen and that

if they're building a feature for all of the platforms that it might actually benefit the mac to have the group that's working on that feature build it for all the platforms that it might actually benefit the Mac to have the group that's working on that feature, build it for all the platforms instead of having an iOS group build something whizzy. And then a Mac group be like, Whoa, what do we do with that? But I mean, I could argue that, but I think I'm more inclined to, to agree with you that, um, the downside is that it becomes a thing that people don't want to do. It's an afterthought. And that it ends up degrading the quality of the product. The thing is, this isn't sexy, but you could have as many big companies do that work in this way, like cross-platform working groups, where you'll bring in someone from this team,

someone from this team, someone from this team. They are the team responsible for implementing this cross-platform feature and then they've managed that and look i'm sure there is some of the time right they can add time to a project because there's a lot of politics going on but it's a way that you could have these people work together and collaborate by having people that are responsible for a certain area working with their counterparts closely like these things are possible to do, but it's a company culture thing, and that type of stuff super changes your company culture.

Because I wouldn't be surprised if there is an element, like historically going back in Apple, of the idea of what happened when Steve Jobs tried to take the Mac team off, and then they had the Lisa team, right? That's what can happen, is that teams can start fighting. Because there is everything that is in here right like that's what can happen is that teams can start fighting because they're you know there is like everything that is in here of these disgruntled potentially disgruntled mac os

focused employees complaining like that's that sort of stuff can only happen tenfold right because if you're like oh well they get this and this and this but it could also end up being significantly better for the state of the products because they might get more dedicated love to them. But as I say, I can't sit here and say that I know how to run the biggest company in the world better than Tim Cook because I can tell you I do not know that. And I also assume he's considered this, right? And our priorities as users of the Mac, especially, as we've declared in detail, we've covered it in this show, our priorities and the priorities of other people who use the Mac may not match Apple's priorities to like, we can be dissatisfied and say, why aren't they taking better care of the Mac? And their answer may be, we're taking care of the Mac exactly as much as we feel we need to.

And that's not a very encouraging argument, but I can't argue with it. And you can, and you can definitely argue the other side. One of the things that Gurman says is that departures of key people working on Mac hardware and technical challenges have delayed the rollout of new computers, right? Well, one of the ways that you potentially lose good people is saying, we've got a Mac group and you're going to design

Mac laptops, and there'll be a new one every two years or every year. Good luck. Enjoy that. And if you're an incredibly talented hardware engineer in Silicon Valley, that might feel like- I want to work on the iPhone. I know, right?

And so two things happen then. One, you get a different job at a different company or another thing that I know has happened at Apple because I hear people, I have heard for years now about people complaining about this inside Apple, which is people get pulled off temporarily or permanently. Like if you're an Apple employee working on the Mac and doing hardware and you get an

opportunity at a job for the iPhone, you take it, I would assume, if it all matches up, all things being equal, it's a much more exciting product. And then who's left on the Mac? Suddenly the Mac is the B team. It's the C team. Your job's more secure if you work on the iPhone. And so that's all part of the issue here too, where if you've got kind of like a unified team and the Mac is one thing you make as well as an iPhone and an iPad, you could argue

that everybody gets a little bit more. I mean, I could also argue as a former manager that you get people who are all kind of somewhat satisfied and somewhat dissatisfied instead of having satisfied people and dissatisfied people but it's a hard problem to solve because you know the mac is not the center of attention at apple and it's not going to be so how do you structure it in a way that you make good mac products in a company that is not where it's not the number one priority it's a tough one it's a very tough one whatever it is that apple are doing it seems to be upsetting people it's not the number one priority. It's a tough one. It's a very tough one. Whatever it is that Apple are doing seems to be upsetting people.

It's apparently more than a dozen Mac engineers and managers have left for different teams or companies in the last 18 months. Which could say... Different teams, though, is interesting, right? Yeah. It's one of the two things. Either they're unhappy,

they're bored, or they're thinking about where job security is, right? I think they're the three things that could be or or apple is doing what they have definitely done through the years which is reprioritizing people i cannot tell you how many times i've heard stories about people who got pulled off of the thing they were working on because there's this other important thing at apple that you need to work on we like pulling employees from other teams and have them do this and you know if you need something that's super important for the iPhone and there's this person over here, you know, let's take them and do that.

You could also, I do feel like the story about, which I don't know what the confirmation is, that when Sal Sikoyan left Apple, that the Mac automation group was disbanded. And those people were, were I think reassigned is the assumption there but if that's the case that would be one of these examples of like those were people who were focused on the Mac who have now gone somewhere else apparently Apple wanted to create new

longer lasting batteries for the new MacBook Pro but was unable to meet a deadline they were trying to pack these batteries into the case akin to how they do that with the terraced batteries inside of the MacBook. So like to kind of fill every inch with battery by using like slices

of batteries rather than filling the whole thing itself. These batteries failed the tests required running up to the release so this technology had to be pulled to meet that deadline. It is said that this late course correction that they had to be pulled to meet that deadline it is said that this late course correction that they had to take here took engineers away from the other mac products indicating that this might be why so little was unveiled in october now this is interesting to

me for a couple of things one okay i can buy that right that they had to rush and scramble to put some other type of battery tech into this thing which required more engineers because they couldn't make it in time because they spent maybe wasted time developing this new battery technology which only failed the tests but again you know people may want to strike me down for saying this i don't know why they didn't wait like if they thought they could make this work i don't think that the holiday season is that important for the MacBook Pro line. Well, it's not just the... So, Gurman says the important holiday shopping season, but let's also... He also says earlier it's been more than 500 days, right, since the last MacBook Pro update. So, they were feeling time pressure to get something out,

and that they had already been too long in waiting before updating this product, holidays aside. And I see what you're saying, which is, well well if you needed to wait a few more months or whatever why not do it i think that's what happened essentially when you're making any of these product decisions there comes a point where you have to say this feature is going to push us back so we're just going to put it off until the next revision and we're going to move ahead without it because we need to ship something and that's well do they need to wait right and do they need to ship something new here it's like well no they could have no macbook pros for another year and then ship something but i think that at some point somebody said look let's ship what we got and

the next one we'll do the new battery in the next in the next one next year we'll do it then that'll be our you know that'll be a reason for people to buy a a macbook pro in the fall of 2017 or the spring of 2018. Goeman talks about how apple executives now ask for multiple concepts of new hardware and they pick which is more shippable. Let me tell you this this is the detail that screams of unhappy employee who doesn't like the process being used internally. This one is the, I can't believe they make us build two of these. I worked on one and my buddies worked on one. I can't believe they made us make two of these and then had a bake-off, right?

Which, you know, I can see the argument that that's dumb and that they shouldn't do that. And I can see the argument why they want to have those competing designs and they haven't made up their mind. And I can see the argument why they want to have those competing designs and they haven't made up their mind. There are two ways to spin this, but it really feels like somebody who was unhappy that they were being tasked to be a part of this process. This whole thing was when my ears most pricked up. So apparently there was a light and heavy version of the MacBook. One was called the Stealth Fighter and one was called the Stealth Bomber.

Awesome. Awesome. Codenames. I assume one had like more power to it that's my assumption it isn't gone into in the article what the differences were my assumption is that the stealth fighter was more like a macbook air and used the macbook air processor and had a fan and then the where the stealth bomber fighter is what came out is what stealth fighter is the one we know of yeah that's my guess is that that's why it's using the the the lower power processors and has that super thin fanless design obviously the lighter model won out and they pushed the project forward and because they were two because the teams were working on two different prototypes it took longer to actually finalize the macbook

they missed their shipping date because you know they had people working on different things i understand this just makes sense to me right like they then had to move the people that were working on the stealth bomber into the stealth fighter team and then they missed their deadline because maybe they were working to like their original time scales and now i've realized okay these time scales are different now this just sounds like i completely agree with you someone who is unhappy with a new way of doing things like i've worked with these types of people like i don't think that this is an inherently bad way i think it's a pretty good way like why not let people work on bunches of different things well so the argument is and i've heard it before the argument

is if you know you're only going to go with one why are we building two why don't you what you're doing this is the argument what you're doing as a manager is deciding that you are going to put off, push off a decision. And instead, we're going to waste our time. Half of our time on this project is going to be wasted fundamentally because you're making us do two different things instead of making up your mind about what you want. That's the argument. The other way to view this is we don't know which one of these will work better.

We're not sure that both of them will even work. So we need to go down this path a little bit until we get some more clarity about it. We can't just make a decision now. We need more information, and that's the value in doing this. But again, I can see both arguments, and I've had those. I mean, I had my art director make nine different Macworld cover designs before we would pick a cover for an issue. I mean, I get it. It depends on what you're valuing in the process, because everybody's learning stuff about the

product line in going through this process. Even the people whose version doesn't ship, they have found something, or they have done something differently, or there's a thing taken from that thing because that might be cool later. I can't imagine that all of these people are just creating work which is inherently useless like that doesn't really seem like a a way that these types of things would be done i don't know and i also wonder like seriously how far down the process do you go yeah and i don't think these were two teams either i think this is one engineering group that was tasked with doing

two things and they were both they were were working on different things, but bottom line, yeah, if one of them's your baby and they pick the other one, then that's not going to be great. And if you feel like it was a waste of everybody's time, because, you know, we put all this work into these two and knowing one of them was going to die. But, but also I would, my gut feeling is that the person who was upset about this the most is somebody who was working on the one that didn't get picked also let's uh let's just play a bit of a thought experiment here person who is working on the macbook who is unhappy about the current direction of apple do you think that maybe their one was the one that wasn't picked right that the person who is unhappy with apple's current direction with the mac maybe wanted the

one with the big fan in it that was more like just updating macbook air as opposed to the one that has one port and no fan and is really underpowered with the new keyboard yeah sure you know i really see that as being like a kind of like a this wasn't what i wanted look so my feeling is that i believe all of these things i believe all of these things. I believe all of these things are true. I just think that there is a lens that is being put over them, which is of anger and upset, as opposed to just like, here is a clear stating of the facts. Apple now has longer timelines because they are developing multiple concepts of new hardware.

It's very different to they're wearing out the teams because they're making make two things at once right both of those things are talking about the exact same thing but they're painted in very different lights you know because you can talk about the facts which is longer timelines or you can talk about the it's wearing us out we can't get our work done in time like they're different size of the same coin and you know that so it's a fact i believe it's factual but i think that this is really painted in a way which is and everything's terrible because of this here's something that i know you won't agree with because i don't agree with it if i don't agree with it there's no way that you will german argues

that more mac users switching because of these longer delays in product provisions will make the Apple ecosystem less sticky and suggests that this might lead to people abandoning the iPhone and iPad. I really cannot believe he believes this. Yeah, that's a stupid statement. Because the inverse is definitely true right like if people start switching to android apple might sell less max i don't you know right like that just feels more true most iphone users don't use max no of course they don't but what i'm saying is like if people if more people start switching away from the iphone they may sell less max right that that might be a thing i don't know then if they start selling less max they're not going That might be a thing. I don't know. Then if they start selling less Macs,

they're not going to start selling less iPhones. It doesn't make any sense. The numbers don't even go near to each other. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying is most iPhone users already don't use Macs. The Mac will not have an appreciable impact on people using the iPhone and the iPad. It just won't.

There's no way. There's no way. Because also, if you're upset with Apple, the iPhone is still kind of as good as it's always been. Like, if you want to get a PC, there's no reason you have to leave the iPhone. Exactly right. So that's, I mean, less sticky. Sure, in that the Windows support of stuff is not always as good as on the Mac for Apple's ecosystem, but it's all there. And if you care, you can use it. So I think that's a baffling is the company can't afford to alienate professional designers

and other business customers. After all, they helped fuel Apple's revival in the late 1990s. All right, again, I have great sympathy. I covered desktop publishing when Apple was going out of business. The professional users did help fuel Apple's revival, although that's even wrong. The professional users did help fuel Apple's revival, although that's even wrong. They kept Apple alive long enough for Steve Jobs to come in and turn Apple around and release the iMac. And then consumers fueled Apple's revival with the iMac. So even that statement is not really right. But it is right in spirit in the sense that the pros were the only thing that had let Apple have a heartbeat in the mid-90s when i was writing about this stuff they is there an argument though like because i keep rolling this one around in my brain that microsoft is going after the creative professional in the

hopes that they might be able to do something similar like the creative professional will keep them alive until they have something microsoft's going to be alive anyway because of all the all the services but but the can't afford is the part. It's like it makes us feel bad that they're alienating these core users who helped keep them alive 20 years ago. Yes, absolutely. Can Apple afford to alienate a portion of the Mac user base? 100%. Yeah.

Well, Apple could, in fact, afford to alienate 100% of the Mac user base. Really, right? They could afford that. What would happen if Apple 100% of the Mac user base. Really, right? They could afford that. What would happen if Apple just shut down the Mac business? Apple would be fine. That's the truth. Apple would be fine. I will underscore this.

We really don't want this to happen. No, of course not. But I think it's super important to understand that our own desires shouldn't be Apple's desires. Apple's desires need to be what makes them the best company that they can be to please the shareholders, right? We are little fish swimming around a whale. The whale is going to do what it wants. What is the priority of Tim Cook, right?

That's what we're looking at right now. And frankly, if you are a professional Mac user, your priorities and Tim Cook's priorities do not align. They do not align. Correct. I would be surprised if yours and Phil Schiller's,'s priorities do not align. They do not align. Correct. I would be surprised if yours and Phil Schiller's, I'm sure they align, because I bet that Phil and Craig Federighi love the Mac, but their boss, I don't think, cares about you.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry to say it. But frankly, does that annoy me? It frustrates me, but I don't think I'm like... It annoys me when Apple make decisions that seem weird, like in the moment, like when they do strange things to their products. In the broad scheme of things,

like as a fan of the company, I want them to do whatever it is that keeps them making products for longer that's what i want and making the best products that they can make as a mac user i want to continue to have good a you know a good product that i can do my job on because i'm not going to use a pc so i would i would like them to make good macs as for as long as they would like to do that that That would be just peachy, right? But yeah, this is the, I just, again, it's just a weird, weird assumptions to make in

the article that they can't afford, Apple can't afford to alienate professional designers. Of course they can. Don't, you know, don't say that. Will the Apple ecosystem become less sticky if Mac users switch? No, it won't. I mean, unless you define the Apple ecosystem in a very particular and weird way where people, you know, where the Mac is the linchpin of it, which it isn't. So I don't know. This article is weird because what it feels like is that Mark has multiple

sources of good information about what was going on inside of Apple in the last year or so, year or two involving the Mac. So we put all of that stuff in here. And then there needed to be kind of a larger story connecting it all, which is the unrest among Mac loyalists, as the headline says, which is also true. There is unrest in those areas. And then it sort of stitches it all together with some analysis and logic that doesn't really bear itself out. But there is the chaser right at the end. Final paragraph.

Mac fans shouldn't hold their breath for radical new designs in 2017. Instead, the company is preparing modest updates, USB-C ports and new AMD graphics processors for the iMac and minor bumps in processing power for the 12-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro. I believe this

and I am sad about this. Right? Like, you know, I know that my feelings are complex when I talk about them, about Apple and its decisions about the Mac, but I've really hoped that, like many people did, that the reason

that we haven't seen something is because we might have something more, right? Because I do want that to happen. I don't want all of this stuff to just wither away and die on the vine, but I can't look at that statement and be like, really? Like, really?

Yeah. The whole year? Is that all? Like, the MacBook Air, like, is that still around in 12 months? Like, are you keeping this? Like, what about the Mac Mini? Like, and the Mac Pro?

Like, are you seriously telling me that in 2017, like, we're still going to be sitting here in January of 2018 and saying the MacBook Pro is four and a half years old and it's still on sale? Because if you're doing that, if that's the choice you're deciding to make,

kill it now. Just stop selling it now. Even if you want to do one in the future, just stop it. Just stop it. There. Even if you want to do one in the future, just stop it. Just stop it. So there are a couple of possibilities here. One, I mean, could be completely right. It could be that there is a new Mac project

that is going to replace the Mac Pro that Mark Gurman doesn't know about because the people he's talking to don't know about it. It could also be that rolled, because he doesn't mention the Mac Pro at all in this. The other possibility is that it is rolled into this and that what we'll get is some perfunctory new version of the trash can Mac Pro that has new processors in it. That doesn't feel good enough, though, honestly, because of how long it's sat there. I'm sorry you don't feel good.

No, but it feels like if that's all that that's all that it's ever gonna be then why has it been waiting for so long with nothing that's what i find weird one report is that and this is in this is also in german's story and we didn't even cover this one report is that the challenge here is that this is being assembled in the u.s the mac pro and that it's become a huge problem because they've had um uh although i did have to laugh it's like the mac pro meant uh you know they had to make their own tools and train people to run them in an assembly plant this slowed production and constrained apple's ability to make enough computers to meet demand do you think they can meet demand now three years later are they meeting demand are they making enough mac pros every day in order to fill the channel for Mac Pros three years later?

One guy and one girl in a shed somewhere in Texas. That's what it is now. They've got a bunch of boxes. I mean, the scary theory here is that there's just a bunch of boxes of unsold Mac Pros in a warehouse somewhere, and they're just trying to, you know, but they shouldn't be warehousing them, right? They should be making them on demand. But what does that look like? So anyway, that's part of Gurman's story, too, is the suggestion that the mac pro is meant to be a like apple likes the usa kind of thing and now that donald trump is going to be the president of the united states

it's like oh the last thing we can do is pull the manufacturing of that back to china so what are we gonna do and you know i that's interesting detail although I'm not sure how current that is or if that's just sort of old information that's been kind of recycled here. But I don't know. That's another question mark for the Mac Pro on top of everything else. I both believe and disbelieve that final statement in equal proportions because my belief in it is like, look at the last year. Does that seem like a possible outcome? Yes. But then look at this entire article does this seem like an impossible outcome like does this seem like somebody who's maybe trying to upset someone does this seem like somebody who's maybe trying to like tip over the

apple cart a bit or does this seem like somebody who doesn't even work for the company anymore yeah yes all of those options seem true. So I don't know. However, it is fascinating. Again, I don't dispute the details and neither do you. It's the question of always asking, why this information? Why now? What's the reasoning for talking to a reporter about it?

And then I have some questions about the overall, how it's all glued together in terms of the premise that this is a big business problem for Apple as opposed to more of a frustration for a part of the Apple's customer base. I believe that there are many facts in this article. However, I believe that they are poisoned in some way. Fair enough. I couldn't think of what the opposite to sugarcoating would be.

Wow. So you went with poisoned yeah upset the poison apple cart vinegar coated like what you know what are we what are we doing to these apples here i don't know let's finish up this episode as we have finished up every single episode in 2016 with some hashtag ask upgrade pete asked does icloud syncCloud sync AirPods pairing to the Apple TVs? You know how your AirPods will have that iCloud syncing from device to device, from your Mac to your iPhone to your iPad. Does this work with the Apple TV?

I don't think it does. Although I haven't checked the latest version of the Apple TV software, which just came out, you know, where they put the TV app on there and all that. I wouldn't even know where you put headphones. Well, in the settings, there's a Bluetooth connection thing. I never looked. And so I think not, but it doesn't matter because you can still pair them using standard Bluetooth pairing.

But I don't think it syncs. I imagine it will one day. If it doesn't already, it will soon. But I don't think it does right now. Last time I checked, it didn't do that. Sounds like they need a cross-team working group for the AirPod syncing functionality. Brent asked, which device do you consider to hold

the true set of your data? The one that you use as a primary sync for conflicts and the one where you go to check for the most up-to-date data? Mine is my iPhone. Whilst it is arguably in the day, maybe most of my working day, it's my least used device.

You know, I use my iMac or my iPads more than my iPhone. I do still consider it as the hub, like the central source of information. I am going to refute this entire premise. I don't consider any of my devices to hold the true set of my data. The truth is in the cloud. And it's out there, apparently. Brent asked, in episode 19, Brent,

much respect. This is the same Brent, by the way. Yeah, alright. They're all good dogs, Brent. No. In episode 19, you both said that you really only use Siri to to set timers has that changed yes because i now don't use siri to set timers i don't use siri for anything i i don't have any standard use case for siri anymore um my my current standard use case for siri is when none of my other

like voice activated assistants can give me an answer i will then ask siri on the hope that it will give me and a lot of the time actually it does like if alexa cannot give me an answer to something siri tends to have the answer like to a question like i wanted to know how many i think it was like it was a measurement it was like a weird measurement of food like how many x's in y and the alexa had no idea but siri knew it immediately but now to set timers i either do them on my apple watch using the complication because it's super easy to do it in just a couple of taps especially with watch os3 or as i do most of the time i just ask alexa to do it yeah i do um i do still set timers using siri mostly on my Apple watch. And, uh, but I also use, it's funny for, for, um, Christmas

Eve, we, we cooked on Christmas Eve. We went over to a friend's house on Christmas night for dinner, but we cooked on Christmas Eve. And at one point I think we had, uh, the Amazon echo timer going, the oven timer going, the microwave timer going, my watch timer going we had many many timers were set although i i believe one of the nice things about the echo is you can actually set multiple timers on it can however the flaw of this is you cannot name them yes right and so it'll just can do on google home which is like the only reason that product is exciting to me is like i could say set the timer for the chicken set the timer for the potatoes yeah exactly and then it'll go boop boop boop boop the chicken timer is over or even like how long is left on my time is you have 10 minutes left on the chicken timer you have nine minutes

left in the potatoes timer that's what i want you know it's important stuff but yeah we so quite frequently set multiple timers on the alexa and then just kind of have to reconcile it in our brain yeah and simon, do you guys use or like any of the accessibility settings on iOS for normal day-to-day use? Do you trigger anything? On iOS, I don't. I don't use any of the accessibility settings. But on the Mac,

I use the increase contrast setting, which kind of makes all of the lines thicker and some of the stuff darker. And I use this purely for aesthetic purposes. There was one day, Gray sent me a screenshot

and everything looked different on his Mac. And I was like, what is that? And he said, I think it's in accessibility. It is in display, increased contrast. And I love it. I think it's awesome. I just love the way it makes everything look. And you don't get the same settings in iOS.

The increased contrast settings do different things. But it just puts thicker outlines around everything, and I think it looks really nice. That's it. That's the only accessibility setting I use. Interesting. The only accessibility setting I use, and even though they've got the colorblind stuff in iOS 10 now.

I was going to ask, actually, if you've ever tried the colorblind. Because the color because i was poking around to see like oh is there anything in here that i do have on and i noticed they had a lot of color settings yeah it's weird and it makes everything look weird and i don't i don't use it the only thing i use is on ios i use triple tap for invert screen for night mode and that is because there are there are certain apps that i will be using in the night with the light off and it will be entirely white and i will triple tap to invert it so that it's not as bright but that's it that brings us to the end of this week's episode of upgrade you can find our show notes at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 121. Thank you again to our sponsors, Smile and Encapsula,

for helping support this week's episode. Most of all, thank you for listening, especially if you've listened to every episode of the year. We very much appreciate that. Both me and Jason and everyone at the Upgradian Office of Affairs would like to wish you the happiest of New Years. And we dearly hope that you tune in to next week's show where we will very excitedly, at least 50% of us,

be giving our awards, our Upgradian, our Upgrady Awards out on behalf of us and the Upgradian, our Upgradee Awards out on behalf of us and the Upgradians to the people and creators of the universe. Okay, wow. I can't wait to hear that one. I know. If you want to find Jason online, he's at JasonL, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter.

I am at I'm Mike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can find Jason's work over at SixColors.com and TheIncomparable.com and you can find a plethora of shows that both myself and Jason host at relay.fm. We have something for everyone there. I'm sure you'll find something that you like. Until next time,

say goodbye, Jason Snell. Happy New Year, everybody.