Upgrade - 124: There Are Always Gates

Episode Date: January 16, 2017

Jason and Myke break down the second annual Six Colors Apple Report Card, as three dozen Apple watchers grade how the company did in 2016—and Myke chimes in with his own votes.

from real afm this is upgrade episode number 124 today's show is brought to you by blue apron ero and encapsular my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley how the devil are you today, sir? Very good, very good. Back another week in the saddle. Last week was tough because it was come back from vacation time, but I'm settling in now. I'm in a much better state than I was last week when we were talking after my just like the night before flown back from vacation.

I'm in a better place now good follow-up this week is really peculiar um we have a smattering of things that stretch back multiple shows well this happens this time of year where you know we have a lot of things that uh echo from when we were doing show because we did we did last week's show but then we did like we skipped a week because we had the upgrade ease and it happens that's okay it's january weird stuff happens in january so the first thing is that uh last week we were talking about the amazon echo and we were discussing wake words and that kind of thing and it turns out i saw this from a friend of the show joe steel tweeted this from amazon fire tv news which is a just a

very niche product website that apparently the amazon echo is going to be receiving an update to allow the phrase computer as a new wake word apparently there's some kind of star trek joke in here yeah well that's that's how they talk to computers right okay in star trek is it's just that it's it's you know computer and program or whatever you hello hello computer uh all of that sort of thing is a it's sort of a star trek reference computer is a terrible wake word it would be triggered constantly i i agree i agree and um it yeah it's it's really weird um i don't know whether they thought of this maybe as a as a as a joke if it's even a real thing i'm not even sure we talked about this last time the uh i i feel that two-step

phrases are the way you do this because then it's a lot easier to steer clear. Like people were saying, you know, what if you are somebody with the name of Amazon's digital assistant? Amazon's wake word is that name. There's no context to it. You literally just say the name. And there are lots of things that can set that off. At least with, and I can name them now, at least with Siri and Google, you can't just say the word.

You have to add a little greeting kind of word on the front of it. And it's that two word phrase that triggers it. And that's the way to do it. word phrase that triggers it and that's the way to do it so you know if amazon wanted to make it like hey computer or hello computer like scotty and star trek 4 or okay computer which would be very radiohead i would like that that would all be good i think amazon actually needs to provide that as an option for all of their triggers is is some some phrase that is not just a name i think that was a mistake when they did it and um at least as an option right i mean and and again the more options you've got here the better i think in letting people kind of customize for how they you know

who they are and what their names are and how they live their life but um i i think i uh yeah yeah it's it's weird though, because that's like a noun. Yeah. Well, James Thompson in the chat room has said that the PlayStation 4 uses the term PlayStation to trigger its voice control. Yeah.

And I think that Xbox did Xbox, which was the problem with that ad that we spoke about. Yeah, exactly. That's terrible. I mean, as I say, I still stand by the fact that i think that amazon got it right by giving it a name like which was which was different to the product name but i

do agree with you that it would be good to have the two step like two two word phrase i prefer single word phrases because if you're talking to this thing all the time it's just nicer to have the one word but i do agree it would be good to have the choice of things. And if Amazon seemed to be willing to add new wake words, I don't think that this would be too difficult as a thing to add. Right. And the dream is that you should be able to give it whatever wake phrase that you want, but the technology is not good enough to do that yet. I agree. Many weeks ago, someone wrote in, I think their name was Steve, and they were talking about having the larger of the Apple TVs, you know, just like the 64. I think, was it like 32 and 64 or is it 64 and 128? I think it's 32 and 64, but I don't really know because it's never mattered. gigabyte Apple TV and a 64 gigabyte Apple TV. And he wrote in kind of questioning what that would be used for. And if he was future-proofing himself,

that kind of thing. And at the time, this was, you know, maybe towards the end of last year, we kind of said, no, there is absolutely no point in having the larger of the two Apple TVs.

This has now potentially changed over the last few days. I think Taylor last week, Apple announced to the developer portal that they are increasing the size limit available for a downloaded application from 200 megabytes to 4 gigabytes, which is a significant change. We've also now on-demand resources. So these are the resources that can download when you need them,

which is great, can be 20 gigabytes. So it was 200 megabytes up front and 20 gigabytes before, as I can see from Steve Troughton-Smith, who was tweeting about this. But now the initial download of 4 gigabytes, that is a really great thing for games because it means that they can download more higher assets immediately so the game can be played for when it's downloaded as opposed to downloading a small subset and then needing to immediately uh dip into the 20 gigabytes of on-demand resources right i don't know why apple have done this specifically i think that there is a reason that they have done it um like there is maybe a partner that they want to work with because it's such a huge increase it feels like that there is a reason behind it um which do you know what i mean like 200 megabytes to four gigabytes is extremely significant as a change yeah it's it's a it's

gotta be that there's somebody either they they got feedback from some existing partners or there's somebody who is coming that they were like, okay, we can do that for you. They're being more vigilant about storage. uptake of apps on apple tv and realizing that being quite that diligent at um you know minding the storage space on these devices and being concerned that everybody's apps are going to crowd the space they may realize now that that's just not happening and that they can loosen that and it's not a problem but whatever it is um this does make it a bit more viable for games i just hope that apple is able to do something to try and lure people in because we're going to talk about this a little later on in the show. The Apple TV app landscape is barren at best right now.

So I will also put a link in the show notes to speaking of friend of the show, Joe Steele. He wrote a blog post that includes both his analysis of the change in resource caps and some what he likes to call rampant speculation about the Apple TV. And Joe's theory is that one of the things that they're going to do is that there's a new Apple TV coming and maybe this is the 4k UHD HDR capable fancier model. And it might be, uh, you know, his, his, uh, theory here is it allows them to drop the old Apple TV out of the price list, uh, move the current generation down a slot and then bring in a couple of new models with more storage and support for UHD on top. So the 4K Apple TV version, maybe that's something there. There are things about size.

I mean, what Joe suggests is maybe they actually will offer a first-party controller. I think that's an interesting theory. I think one of the problems with games on apple tv i know they they promote the steel case controller right but it's not quite the same they promote but see the thing is about the the controller and i've made this argument in the past it doesn't matter how good a third-party controller is to show you are serious about games you have to make one yourself like that is a commitment to the seriousness of video games right which is we believe in this in our platform so much that we've put the engineering time into building our own controller like it is it is a sign which is important yeah friend of friend of the show joe steel reminds us that

friend of the show james thompson is the one who originated that theory, by the way. And then Joe just blogified it and expanded upon it. But I don't know. I mean, one of the interesting things about Apple TV, like you were saying, too, is a lot of potential here, right? And it's just not, you know, Apple has been very limited in what it's doing. So if it supported, you know, 4k and what if Apple did make a, uh, uh, actual game controller and was more aggressive in getting games built for it. And, you know, there, there are lots of things they could try, lots of things they could try and they haven't really tried a lot of them yet. So maybe, and maybe this is a sign that there's movement happening on, on the Apple TV front that, that is, is you know maybe this is

happening out in front of other changes i don't know we'll see all right we also got some uh some follow-up about 5k displays now this is a conversation that has been long running on this show as to what devices could and could not power these 5k displays what dongles would be needed etc and we had somebody who wrote him wrote in us to be uh kept anonymous they're an apple retail employee and they sent us an image about how they are being instructed to swap out existing displays for mac pros for the new 5k display and he's included or she has included the uh a picture of the dongles and the cables that are happening here. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but what we're seeing is a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter of a Thunderbolt 2 cable running to a Mac Pro, and it's working with the 5K display, right?

Yeah, this is the, how do you demo the fancy 5K display and the Mac Pro instead of the old Thunderbolt display, which has been discontinued? And the answer is you use a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter, and then the Thunderbolt 3 adapter goes into the display. And that works, although I believe it doesn't work at 5K 60Hz. I think it maybe only works at maybe 4K resolution at 60Hz. I'm not sure about all the details. It's not ideal, but it does allow them to demo it in Apple stores. And I think it's also funny that we think of DisplayOut as mini DisplayPort. But in this case, since it's actually taking the... What this monitor wants is

thunderbolt you need to use a thunderbolt adapter and then it does apparently work and this person i don't actually know for sure if it is a man or a woman but this person who it's another friend of the show let's say a listener an upgradian sent this in and had been telling us that this was kind of going on in the background about how they were going to demo this stuff and with the mac pro and this is the this is the solution and we got a photo of it sort of like zip tied together this whole kind of adapter dance to get it to to work at all i think it's kind of a miracle that it works at all that you can attach that mac pro to that thing and it will drive it at all quite frankly yeah i mean again this this isn't like a groundbreaking thing but it will drive it at all quite frankly. Yeah, I mean, again, this isn't

like a groundbreaking thing, but it's kind of tying up a loose end that we weren't sure about, right? Which was, will this thing actually work? And the answer is, yeah, it will. So, at least we know now. I'll put a link to

the photo in the show notes in case you're in case you're so inclined that's good it is fascinating to me from the perspective of real world consequences of apple's product decisions like apple makes product decisions and we can say oh well that was interesting but i understand why they did that and then the the fallout tends to be that the users have to deal with the fallout right right? But with Apple Retail, Apple Retail has to also deal with the fallout of weird things happening with Apple's product line. And this is a good example of that, where they've got Mac Pros that are three years

old, but they've got demo stations with them that were set up with a Thunderbolt display. But the Thunderbolt display got discontinued. So now what do they do? And it's like, well, the 5K display, we want to display that. It's beautiful. OK, we can do that. But we can't really do how do we you know we adapt it and all of that and that it's just a kind of a funny uh example where people who work for apple have to deal with fallout from apple product decisions in a way that maybe you know the people who are on the apple campus and cupertino don't have to deal with it i just used a workflow a new

workflow that i created um for that image to remove photo metadata oh nice so i'll also include include a link to that workflow in the show notes because why not um but yeah that that was one that i worked on recently um you just just throw some photos at it and it will remove the metadata from them because i figured this person wanted to remain anonymous, and I would do my best to accommodate that. So thank you, anonymous listener. We'll call them the Upgrade Tipster. Oh my god. Oh dear.

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Yes. So customizing is a big deal because we have some particular foods that we don't eat in this family. And then we've got some particular picky't eat in this family. And then we've got some particular picky eaters in this family. And so one of the great things about Blue Apron for us is that you can go on their website and change the menu. You're not locked into two meals. For us, it's two meals a week for four people. Some people, I think you get three for two people. And so we click the change menu button and you get to choose from what the different meals are that are offered that week. And you get to build your own menu of, in our case, the two meals that we want that we think are going to be most popular.

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I'm looking at two weeks out, and my options are pesto shrimp, pimento cheeseburgers, spinach and sweet potato quesadillas, and cashew chicken stir fry. We can't talk about this anymore. I want all four. Can I have all four of those? And the answer is no. I need to pick two. But what a choice I have to make there. We're recording a little later than usual today, and I haven't had my dinner yet, so we can't talk about this anymore.

I haven't had my lunch either, so yeah. All right, just a little topic we want to touch on very quickly, because it's big news, but it maybe doesn't affect me and Jason so closely, which is the departure of Chris Lattner from Apple. Now, I will say right now, if you are at all interested in this and have not listened to this week's three-time Upgradey award-winning podcast,

The Accidental Tech Podcast, you should go listen to episode 204. They go into a lot of detail explaining why Chris is important and what this could mean for Apple and for the community of developers that are tied to Apple, right? I haven't listened to that one yet.

Should I go listen to that now and then come back? Yeah, you go take two hours and then I'll keep going. And then I'll see you at the end. Just keep talking. Yeah, keep the ball rolling while I'm gone. And then I'll come back and tell you what I think about ATP at the end of it. We're not developers either, and then I'll come back and tell you what I think about ATP at the end of it. We're not developers either, you and I. We are people who

think about, write about, talk about technical things for Apple products and other stuff, but we're not coders. We are the product-focused part of Apple, kind of observing, whilst those guys are more codey. Yeah, I'm not gonna have

a relationship with Swift and with Clang and LLVM that a developer might have. These are the things that Chris created, basically. Most notably today, he's the creator of Swift. Yeah, he was sort of the first person working on Swift as it gained momentum. And then, you know, obviously, all of these things have large numbers of people involved. And that's something that several people, including Chris Lattner, said after it came out that he was leaving, that like there are lots of people working on this.

It's not just him. You know, it's not, he said it's not a problem. And in fact, he's still going to, because a lot of this is open source project stuff, he's going to keep his hand in, but he is leaving apple and going to work at tesla to work on i believe they said the software involved in the autopilot yeah he's

going to become the svp for the autopilot team yeah so that's a that's a first off that's a pretty great step for him career-wise and he's been at apple a long time um i think uh you know again people should listen to atp if they want to hear uh those guys perspective on it because i think that's got to be i'm looking forward to doing that when i walk the dog later probably um but i do think it's worth mentioning it because this is an interesting example and there was somebody else um who left apple for tesla this week who's actually one of the this guy matt casebolt who who worked apparently on the macbook pro the new macbook pro that came out he was also the leader of the mac pro team the trash can mac pro right so

um i think there's a bigger question that we've talked about before about brain drain at apple and my first thought and and uh read Ben Thompson at Stratechery wrote a piece last week about, I think just on his email, I think not a public piece about this issue. And he said, there is the reality of the fact that Apple is a, Apple is a company where you're maintaining

incredibly profitable products. and tesla is a company where they are trying to build new things and um you know you can oversimplify that and overstate that because apple's trying to do new things the the airpods are a good example of something that's very different um the touch bar is an example of something that's got a lot of interesting things in it but apple as a company is a mature, successful, incredibly profitable company that wants to keep raking in the profits. And Tesla is a new company that's trying to do things in a category that's new. the opportunity, I mean, everybody's got different career goals and everybody has a different mindset when they're thinking about their job. But I think for some people, the opportunity to do something like work at Tesla on that new stuff is going to be more appealing than kind of, you know, working within a large Apple that is maintaining, you know, maintaining a customer

base and a code base and trying to keep everything running. It's just, it's a very different kind of environment. And I could see how for some people, they feel like the job's done at Apple in some ways, and that there's a, there's this exciting new adventure to have at Tesla or other companies like that. And that that's why they step out on their own. And I think that's a challenge for Apple is, um, and, and this is something that I know we've talked about before too, when we talked about project Titan, the idea of doing an Apple car is like, you've also got your challenge of keeping your talented people at Apple. If they want new challenges, you could put them on your new projects at Apple in order to keep them.

But even then the same thing has happened, which is the, the key products that you have that you do make money from that you want to keep making money from, the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac, the Apple TV, the Apple Watch, all of these things, there still is the potential for a brain drain. Because even if you're just moving them within Apple to special projects, you're moving them off of what they were working on before. So I don't think it's like the number one challenge facing Apple, but I think it's got to be a challenge. And when you see two high-profile Apple people who are responsible for building important parts of Apple's product foundation leaving to go to Tesla, which is also really interesting, right, because they make cars. Although, you know what, they told us that cars are the ultimate mobile device, so I guess we should listen. you know what, they told us that cars are the ultimate mobile device, so I guess we should listen.

It's enough to make you notice and wonder what the processes are behind that. We've been talking so much recently about what the future of technology is and what Apple could potentially do for growth. We've spoken about VR and that kind of stuff, but car tech and self-driving tech is another strand of technology which isn't personal computing, but is a strand of technology which is one of the things in our current purview that could be the future. It's one of the things a lot of companies are taking bets on because they believe it could be the future, including Apple.

But the company right now who is leading that charge is Tesla. And if you're interested in working in the future of technology, they are a company to move to. And one of the things that, you know, I was talking to Marco Arment about his Tesla on our trip. And one of the things that he kept mentioning to me was that how interesting a car it was because they were not held back by an existing infrastructure of building a car, right? So everything was new. And this is the same for Apple. Apple already has an institutional way of building products. Even though it's a car, it's still going to be built in the apple way and if you're bored of that it doesn't matter what they move you to it's still going to be the apple way of

doing it right like bugs for the car will go through radar right like all of this stuff is just their institutional way of building products and if you don't want to do that anymore like and you like just moving to a different team is not new and so i don't i can't reconcile in my head if this is an apple problem or just a people problem which apple could never fix i but but i can't work it out in my head as to whether it's like do people just want to work on new things or do people want to get away from Apple's way of making things? And I think it could be a little column A and a little column B, but it doesn't mean that Apple is beleaguered.

It just means that they're like, a lot of these people that came into this company may be joined when Apple's a little bit more of the scrappy underdog. And maybe a lot of people don't like that. They're like the biggest company in the world right now, because that brings a lot of baggage. And I can see why people might want to move to Tesla, who are the scrappy underdog in their world, in the car world. I think the car thing, it's also important to say there are lots of other companies that are working on car tech. The difference is what you said, which is they're car companies.

They're old car companies. And they may be trying, oh, no, but we've got this new division and we put a team together in Silicon Valley. But in the end, you're still working for Ford or Nissan or whoever you're working for. In the end, you are still working for ford yep or or nissan or whoever you're working for right in the end you are not uh working and if you're a silicon valley person like tesla my impression is is run much more in a more familiar fashion it's a silicon valley company that makes cars it's not a car company that's got an outpost in silicon valley i think the larger issue for apple yeah is these are you're looking for very talented, highly technical people who should be thinking like Apple is like the ultimate job for them.

But the problem is there are lots of really interesting companies in Silicon Valley, so there's a lot of competition for that sort of talent. I do wonder sometimes – and we've already seen it with how Tim Cook has reversed a lot of the things that were going on in the Steve Jobs era where it was like, no, no, it needs to happen in Cupertino. It's like, you can't do that anymore. You can't make everybody move to Cupertino. And they're not doing that. They've got centers in lots of different places in the world now. And they have to keep doing that, too, because they need more talent. And they're not going to get all of their talent to move to the mothership. They're going to have to be in other places. I do wonder sometimes about the

corporate culture at Apple too. And I've heard lots of different things. I've talked to a lot of people, you know, obviously the people who work at Apple are a lot more circumspect about this than people who have left Apple or have never been to apple but uh the impression i get is apple still kind of a hard place to work especially if you're in these product groups and that you know you're expected to uh to devote like your life to apple and a lot of silicon valley companies are like that but you know you know. Yeah, I don't think that that is a unique thing to them. I mean, not every Silicon Valley company will work that way. But I would expect Google is the same and Microsoft is the same.

Yeah, but not every company is like that. And I guess what I'm saying is there is a time when you can afford to work your employees to death or to near near death and you can afford to make them all move to California and you can afford to put them on projects that are not the hottest and most cutting edge products. But hey, they're they're working at Apple and that should be enough. Yes, you're working on the Apple TV, but you're at Apple and you're you know, you're in California and that should be enough. And I think it may be that Apple is not at that point anymore where it needs to be. And I think you see it with the geographic diversity, for example, that it needs to open things up a little bit because what you don't want to do is make Apple a place where the best and brightest don't want to work. But it's a challenge, right?

Because I've said this before. I know I did it a couple of years ago, and I'll say it again, with no malice toward some of my former colleagues at all. But when I was hiring people to work at PC World, it was very hard, especially junior people. It was very hard to find people. And you're like, oh, well, journalism and tech journalism, everybody wants to get a leg up in tech journalism, right? There's so many people out there. It's such a tough business to be in. We had a very hard time hiring people for PC world. Why was that? It's like, it was not perceived as a good career move to write about Microsoft and PCs. Like that was considered old tech. I could get a whole lot of senior level

people who've been covering PCs for decades who wanted to work at PC World. But in terms of junior level, entry level people, it was very hard to find people with that level of experience. They were applying to Mac World, right? They didn't. Yeah, they wanted to be at Mac World or Tech Hive, or they were going to work at a gadget or Gizmodo or CNET or The Verge or something like that, right? There was a kind of a hierarchy of how excited people were about it, but PC World was not on the list. And we found some great people who were legitimately enthusiastic. It's not like you can't find them, but it's way harder to do it. And I think about that sometimes when I think about Apple and saying, hey, we want you to work on the Mac, which is our like fourth priority here.

And have, you know, you want to get somebody who either says, hey, I'm working at Apple. This is a good place to start. We'll see where we go from here. Or they say, I love the Mac. It doesn't matter to me that you guys are working on the iPhone. Let me add it. I want to do that. I think the problem is that you're not going to get as many people who are going to say, I love the Mac.

Let me add it. And they're rather going to say, do I really want to specialize in the Mac? I hear it's kind of fading away. I really don't want to take that job. I want to take this other job. So, you know, this is, it's a challenge running a big company and dealing with talented people and trying to recruit people. And so that, I think, as an outsider, I look at it and I'm like, wow, what an incredible job it must be, an incredibly hard job it must be for hiring at Apple in general. And in Silicon Valley in general, I would say. Because you do have such competition and you're trying to make these people happy. And you can pay them well, but the problem is everybody else can pay them well, too.

So just paying them well is not enough. But the problem is everybody else can pay them well too. So just paying them well is not enough. You have to pay them well and you have to make them feel like they're doing something that furthers their career and keeps them interested. And everybody else is trying to do that too. And it's a hard problem. And when the person who created the language that you're basing the future of your platforms on leaves your company to go work at essentially a competitor before it's considered to be complete yeah even if it's all above board and and this really is like chris latner wants to make a change that's better for his family that's better for his career he

feels like there are no more uh mountains to to climb at Apple and he wants to move on to something else. Even if that's all true, that's still really hard to swallow if you're Apple and you can't look at it any other way. This is a key person building key technology who decided for whatever reason that the grass was greener somewhere else. And that's tough because for every Chris Lattner, there is, you know, there are a whole bunch of other people who are not as visible, who are in exactly the same, uh, sorts of situations at, at not just Apple at every tech company, but it's just, it's, it's tough. It's tough. All right, moving on for the second year in a row. Um, you have, uh, conducted the six colors report card of apple's year um can you explain a little bit about what this project is and why you began it yeah uh so a year and a half

ago maybe i got uh an email uh from somebody who uh well it was it was coivin the designer who i think works at adobe now anyway saying i had this idea and i've never done it maybe you could do it now that you're doing six colors and it is ask a bunch of people who comment on apple to give to give apple a grade at the end of the year like what do they do well what did they do poorly um what you know i think this would be cool and i'd like somebody to do it and if you think you can do it then um i'll i'll stop going to other people and asking them if they would do it and i said sure that sounds like a great idea and you know four or five months pass and it's november and of 2015 and i and i i do a survey and I email, you know, a couple dozen people and do a report card about Apple.

And so this year was the second year, second annual, Mike, second annual. I could think about saying that. And I was able to, I expanded the panel. I asked more people. And in the end, sort of like the people who responded are the people who were on the panel. But I did ask a larger group. I think it was almost 50 people I asked and I got three dozen responses to grade Apple on a one to five scale and also leave any comments they had.

And the comments were really voluminous and thoughtful. And so I quoted them at length this year and even had a link to like all of their verbatim comments because some people wrote a whole lot of stuff. And I thought it was interesting in just getting a read. Again, it doesn't mean anything on one level. The grades and the scores are arbitrary, although a lot of stuff gets washed out by arbitrary, although a lot of stuff gets washed out by averaging out 37 scores. You kind of get an idea of the general vibe of the group. And I got to compare it with the votes last year, which was also really interesting because we got to see for the first time how the scores changed from year to year. Now, you sent me the report card, but I told you that I wasn't going to complete it because

I wanted to give my scores on the show instead. So what we're going to do today is I want to break down, I want to go through basically all of the topics and all the categories. And I've pulled out some quotes that I think are interesting. So I want to talk through some of those and then I'll give my scores as well. I know that you are, you're kind of standing back from all of this as the overseer, the adjudicator. Yeah, that was sort of my goal was to get everybody else's scores and comment on them, sort of like round them up, but not participate.

So I didn't vote. So this year, we start with the Mac. The Mac was scored a C-, with an average score of 2.6, a median score of 3. This is down from last year, where it was scored a B overall. John Siracusa says the Mac was neglected. A horrid year, says Rob Griffiths. Hardware-wise, 2016 was an awful year for the Mac was neglected a horrid year says Rob Griffiths hardware wise 2016 was an awful year for the Mac says John Gruber

but Casey Liss our lovely friend Casey Liss who believes the situation isn't as bad as everyone thinks says that he thinks some of the angst is overblown now my score for the Mac this year I think I'm going to give it a 2 out of 5 now I do not believe that the future of the Mac is as bleak as many other commentators, many people in the list do.

I don't think that the Mac is dying. I don't think that it's dead. I don't necessarily believe myself that Apple is going to be taking any drastic course of action next year that is going to be overall detrimental. I think that, you know, I made a prediction on Connected that I will stand by that. I don't think that the Mac Pro will exist next year in the way that we know it to. But I feel that there is a chance that Apple make a significantly more powerful iMac to take its place. So I think that all of – my personal belief is that next year everybody will be served by something. You mean this year?

This year, sorry. Yeah, 2017. I believe that in 2017 there will be a brighter future for the Mac. But 2016 was a terrible year of mac product releases oh yeah there were very few there were many drawbacks and the prices were too high too many products were left basically to just die on the vine and the replacements kind of weren't sufficient so you know the fact that there were releases got it a point you know so like i'm gonna give it a two out of five uh which

i think is fair because you know i will say like mine the macbook that i bought i really really really really like it a lot but i know that it's my very specific needs for it um which you know so i can't grade it i can't use that as my overall grading because i know that most people do not find the macbook to be a sufficient replacement for any type of computer for them because it's underpowered the one a lot of comments that i got were about they you know the macbook although it was just a small update that you know it was there the macbook pro updates although controversial a lot of people have you know used them and like them or like things about them. And there were a lot of positive.

Again, nothing was universally positive or negative. Everything that I found a positive comment about, I found a negative comment about almost other than like Apple's commitment to privacy. But other than that, everything was kind of split. that I was surprised at the number of people who said, who cited Sierra as an example of positivity on the Mac, that they thought that that was also part of the sort of like among the good things Apple did this year, that they thought that was a fairly gentle software update and that they, they said positive things about it. And I thought that was interesting.

There are other comments about it too, that especially came back in the software section. I think two is a fair score. It was a bad year for the Mac. Almost nothing got updated. I think, you know fair score. It was a bad year for the Mac. Almost nothing got updated. I think, you know, the median score was a three. Most of the scores were a three because that's the median, but twos were very common as well. And the average was a 2.6. So yeah, it was what I called a C minus. It could have easily been, I suppose, a D-plus kind of thing, but in terms of a grade point average.

But last year, the Mac got a B. Last year, people were feeling pretty good about the Mac. And this year, they were not. Big surprise there. They were not. This week's episode is also brought to you by Aero. These days, everything in our homes requires an internet connection, and Wi-Fi is the foundation

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might have even boosted the scores further. Like a very long time ago. I know, it was. The 7 and 7 Plus mostly overcame their seemingly pointless headphone jack removal with substantial camera upgrades, small but welcome battery improvements, and surprisingly compelling new black finishes.

Christina Warren said, we definitely need the major redesign to happen in 2017. Apple can't count on its biggest competition blowing up upon itself two years in a row. I loved that comment. Yeah, she went on in a verbatim. She goes on in a lot more detail. But, you know, basically it's like Apple,

what she said was Apple really dodged a bullet here um the galaxy note 7 actually looked fantastic like the best phone and it blew up like literally caught on fire to the point where it is now a joke and we like we said worst product of the year uh and what she says is that was really lucky for apple to have this year where they kind of did a third iteration of the iphone 6 uh in large part and they got away with it in part because their toughest competition uh basically fell on their face but that's not going to happen again and apple can't count on that so game on for 2017 i thought that was a solid piece of analysis. I'm going to score the iPhone a 3.5. You don't get to do that.

Pick three or four, Mike. Pick three or four. Three. All right. Now, I would mostly expect the iPhone to hit a four on this scale every year. I think that in recent memory, I will have graded all iPhones a four. Right? That's where I would have gone. Because to hit a 5 out of 5 in today's market in the iPhone

would be a serious jump that I think is unfair for us to predict or desire from the company. For them to make the perfect iPhone, or to make such a jump that it would go up to a five, I think is unrealistic because of the age of the iPhone and the revision of the iPhone. Like the original iPhone was a five out of five, right? Like, because it was such a huge jump. It was the difference between, you know, the rating a product and rating sort of like Apple's performance in the product category. I think if Apple revised all the iPhones in 2017 and there was a brand new industrial design and the SE got a new design that was cutting edge.

I can see scenarios where I would give the iPhone a five out of five still if they did everything and there was a major release. But you're right, it's a hard standard. Not a lot of fives, not a lot of ones, right? In reality, most people in a five-point rating system are going to give a two, three, or a four. The median score for the iPhone was a four. It went down slightly, and I think that was sort of headphone jack and not big changes kind of stuff.

But it's still a very good score because Apple does a good job with the iPhone. I just can't give a four to the seven. I just can't do it. I get it. You'd be left with three left over. So I got a lot of great features we all got a lot of great features but i said this before um they took things away and it doesn't seem to add any immediate benefit there is no benefit for the headphone jack being removed there just isn't we were in hawaii i was i i was very clever i brought uh i brought my uh. I brought my little mini plug and the adapter for the iPhone 7, knowing that we would have a rental car that probably would have an aux jack in it.

And we could use that to listen to music while we were driving around the island. And I also brought out of our car, I brought the power adapter for the car power adapter. And I plugged them both in. And we were headed to our destination and i realized oh i can't use both of these so we listened to music for a while while we were running the gps and then i was worried about the battery so then we stopped listening to music and i charged it yeah and i just had that moment of like oh there's the iphone 7 for you i can't do both of these things with my readily available connectors. I would need to buy some other adapter for this very specific use case. And so I just didn't. And it was just one of those things. It's like most of the time,

it doesn't really bother me. But then every now and then I go, oh, right. I want to just compare that to the MacBook Pro real quick, because there are a lot of the same frustrations there, right? Like they took all of the ports away that we were used to and they replaced them. So like every now and then you'll run into a scenario where like you need a charger and you don't have the charger, you only have the old chargers, or you have an SD card, you don't have an adapter, that kind of thing. So it's frustrating. But there is an argument to be made that USB-C will be better than what we had before, right? And that it's just going to take a little bit of time.

There is no argument to be made about the removal of the headphone jack in that same way. Like, I just can't see one. It's like, oh, but lightning will be better in the future. No, like, Bluetooth already existed. Like, removing the headphone jack did nothing for Bluetooth.

The removal of the headphone jack is just a net negative. There is no deposit to it. I just can't see one. For that reason, this time, I will knock the iPhone for it. Next time, I'm not going to because it's just where we are. But I think for this phone,

for me, over the time, I'm not angry about it anymore, but I just can't objectively say that the 7 was better than the 6 in every single way because it introduced a new thing, which was weird stuff, which we never had before. So 3 for me. Plus, you know, I want a new design. I just want one.

I can't help it. Let's move to the iPad, though, because I think I'm more positive than most people, I think, in this. The iPad was graded a B-, an average score of 3.4, a median score of 3, with last year a B+, so it went down a tad. Marco says, again, the release of the 9.7-inch iPad Pro is absolutely stellar, providing a huge upgrade of no downsides to the mainstream

iPad that's ideal for nearly everyone. An important person to comment on this would be Federico Faticci, and Federico said, Apple had little to show for iPad users in iOS 10, and while the 9.7-inch iPad Pro is loved by many people I know, I don't use it, and I still think the bigger Pro is better suited for my work. Sean Blanc said, my next MacBook will be an iPad Pro, which I love that. That's a great phrase. David Sparks, host of Mac Power Users, said, having used an iPad as a laptop replacement for several months, it feels like the hardware is there, but the software still lags behind.

iOS limitations with simple things like saving multiple files needs to be addressed for the platform to move forward. renee richie of imor said while apple is finding its groove for technology like the apple pencil and the smart keyboard case they're still not telling a compelling story i don't agree with that from renee actually um i think that i think it's really interesting that he thinks that it's uh it's the story of the iPad is part of the problem. It is very peculiar for me and Rene to sit on opposite sides of something like this. I feel like I'm one of the only people that loved the supercomputer advertising campaign

for the iPad Pro. But I think that that package, the pencil, the smart keyboard, and the iPad is the ultimate computer in my mind for the vast majority of people that need a computer so i am scoring the the ipad a four so i'm going to be scoring higher than the average because the 9.7 inch ipad pro may be my favorite computer of all time uh when paired in the configuration, I have it with the Apple Pencil and the Logitech Create

keyboard. Even with the smart keyboard, though, I struggle to prefer any device more than that one. I love my 12.9, but the 9.7 is better in more scenarios for me than the 12.9. It's like I was just traveling over the weekend and I had my 9.7 with me

and I was working on the train the 12.9 on the train that i was on it it would have been too cramped like i wouldn't have really had enough space for it um on the tray table but the 9.7 fits perfectly i love it now yeah the only thing that was holding me back because i would have given it a five this year because i think the ipad took such a jump in hardware performance so in in 2016 with the the 9.7 pro which i think took everything that 12.9 had and made it better right the screen oh gosh that screen you know with with the true tone it's just incredible but the the poor performance on ios for the ipad this year held it back for me um the fact that all the ipad got was a version of uh and in some cases half-baked version of what the iphone got is not enough and i have hope for 2017 um you know i'm still holding out for the

spring event to bring fantastic new ipads, as well as new, great advancement sort of software. But I have to grade 2016 a little lower than I would have wanted to. Yeah, I think that's the challenge of constraining to a calendar year is we also don't get to pick up, you know, the 10.9 inch iPad Pro or 12.9 inch iPad Pro was last year was 15 uh was 15 not 16 so you can't you can't calculate that into it i i think it's fair to ding apple uh both years but you know now we didn't know about the ipad pro in 2015 when the first ipad pro came out but now that we we've seen it and in 2016 the 9.7 came out you've got to ding it also ding apple for being so inconsistent with that product that the two iPad Pros are both like different in a bunch of different ways. There's no top of the line iPad.

I'm hoping again for 2017 that we'll get two new versions of the iPad Pro at least and that they will be synced up on features like the True Tone display for one and USB 3 data transfer speeds and fast charging for another. But right now they're kind of like, you know, you can pick your poison. Um, and I like that 9.7 inch iPad pro, but I wasn't, it wasn't, I didn't switch to it, right? Like I I'm very happy with the larger iPad pro myself, although the 9.7 has a lot going for it. And I think as a much more mainstream product in the end, I agree with you comes down to the software ios 10 didn't do anything for the ipad essentially and you know a couple little minor features but there are glaring problems with the ipad features introduced in ios 9 that weren't touched in ios 10 and we can be hopeful for a 10 3 or whatever that addresses them but that's going to be 2017 so it doesn't count't count. I also believe if you're hoping for consistency

and clarity in the iPad line in the spring, I think it's going to get worse, honestly. But by getting worse, we'll make the overall product line better. This 10.9-inch iPad, I am very, I will use a Tim Cook term, very bullish on that thing existing. Yeah.

But that will confuse the line more. Well, if there are more options in the line, I do think that could be fine for the product line. My challenge is if you've got three iPad Pros and all of them have slightly different feature sets. That's weird. Now it may be that we end up with a 12, nine and, and the 9.7 in sync. And then this other one that's out of sync, but I would hope they all have true tone displays. I would hope that they all have USB three speed. If you know, if they don't go to some weird new USB, whatever, or, uh, you know, I don't, I don't even know what they're going to do, but I would hope that they would sync as much of that as possible so we just know

this is what an iPad Pro does instead of now where it's like a little bit here and a little bit there. So move on to the Apple Watch which was graded a B of an average score of 3.7, a median score of 3 up on last year where it was graded a C. Dan Moran said

it's a testament to 2016 as a weird year when the Apple Watch is one of the bright spots in the company's lineup. Fraser Spears went on to say that WatchOS 3 essentially delivered a whole new watch. I'm going to go out on a weird limb here, I think, and go over four for the Apple Watch for 2016. The watch still has a way to go,

but Apple delivered more than I was asking for and expected in 2016 from the Apple Watch, which is why I've gone as high as I've gone. They made some fundamental changes to watchOS that made it more usable, which clearly gave us the indication that the engineers spent time reworking after finding the pain points right like it was so obvious that watch os3 was a response to living with the watch in its guy in its like in its original form there were so many things that were improved by it and the series 2 watch which i do own now i don't know if i mentioned it on this show. I've had one for a couple of months because I had some issues with my Series 1 watch which was 100% caused by me. The screen

is fantastic. The battery life is nothing short of remarkable. And everything, everything feels even more snappy on the Series 2. So the pairing of the watch Series 2 and OS 3

make a significantly better product than the Apple Watch Series 1 running at OS 2. So I'm going to go for 4 on that. Yeah, well, it's, I mean, it is a, the median score was a 3, but there are a huge number of 4s and fives that came in because the average score is very high. And I would say this was a very popular category. It was the highest gainer among Apple product categories in the survey. And Dan's quote really says it all,

that people were, in a weird year, people were really happy about what happened to the Apple watch this year. And the answer is new hardware and a really great operating system update that affected every model. And that's the watch OS three is, you know, again, we can say the OS, they should have shipped on the watch, but they shipped the watch without it. And they learned and watch OS three is exactly what it should have been all along, but they needed to learn. And we, you know, we could have told them, I think maybe on day one, like, oh, that is not the way you want to use that, that button on that watch, but they had to learn their lesson and, and they, uh, they did and they, they fixed it. And so, yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a good story. There's much more to do. Um, Christina Warren,

you know, made, made some comments in the survey that were very much like, this is not a category I think that that is what anybody thought it would be. And it's proved to be a lot harder than people thought. And a lot of companies are kind of falling apart here. Apple is persevering and making their product better and, you know, and, and focusing it it more and that's what more can you ask for and then the last of uh apple's own made hardware will be the apple tv

which was graded a c minus this year with an average score of 2.7 a median score of three down from last year where it was graded a b yeah john gruber said i don't expect new hardware every year but i think the content situation needs to improve and it didn't in 2016 marco armand said apple tv has effectively stood still in 2016 despite needing significant attention in ui remote design performance bugs and reliability john siracusa says that the apple tv is more expensive and less capable than its competitors. And Katie Floyd said,

Apple just can't seem to bring the content deals together to make the Apple TV my primary box. I'm going to score the Apple TV a two out of five. I like my Apple TV. Well, I use it most days when I have a TV. I currently do not have a tv in our front room but when we get one and in the next couple of weeks the apple tv will be hooked up to it and it will be the main way that we consume television but our television consists of about three

applications which exist on other connected tv boxes yep the apple tv doesn't provide anything different or competitive for me that i can't get from any other device um and they have an apple has not unveiled anything in 2016 that has markedly improved my experience if you're a cable customer and use one of the very few services that have signed on for their single sign-on it might be an improvement for you but apple has done nothing like no even like just basic content deals will not improve my experience but like the there are just problems with navigation i have bugs in applications like there is nothing to make my experience any better but it doesn't mean i have any different feelings about the product but the apple tv for me is like it's effectively just a dumb box which i can get

netflix and youtube through and there are there are much cheaper dumb boxes out there that work just as well and the only the only thing it really does i mean if you're an apple user uh the reason that you buy an apple tv and not a roku or a fire tv or something like that is one you've got existing movies that you bought on itunes and this is the only way to get them or two you need to do airplay and this is the only way to do that really i mean there there are AirPlay apps for other platforms, but they're really not. I don't recommend them. So I just got a Fire Stick.

Yeah, I have two of those. I was away this weekend and needed to watch something in a hotel room. It's a long story. It's not worth getting into. And the easiest thing to do is just to pick up a fire stick from for a local store um i don't really like the ui at the fire stick any of the fire like i don't know if there's like

differences like we didn't get the fire tv i got the stick and it's not the one that has the voice remote like i don't know i just i just bought one i don't know i just got what was available the ui is not very great but frankly it has the three apps that i'm looking for plus amazon's stuff yeah so i mean i'm going to connect both of these things but it might be that for me we may use the amazon one more because it's the one thing that has everything we need yeah it's uh right and you mentioned amazon amazon and not on the apple tv so you have to airplay that if you want to get amazon stuff on your TV through an Apple TV. Yeah.

And, you know, I think this one took as big a fall as the Mac did. And it's not surprising, right? There's no hardware updates here. There's no relevant software updates here. It was already kind of behind when it shipped. already kind of behind when it shipped i mean remember we we thought it was shipping like nine months or a year later than it was supposed to already and then they didn't do anything to it again and the competitors the competition here is tough and apple tv i think more like more than any other apple product feels like a product that exists to take advantage of customers who are in Apple's ecosystem.

It feels like, you know, people who criticize Apple, they knock Apple a lot for being like overcharging suckers who use their products and are just suckers for Apple's marketing. And, you know, there's a lot of these stories that they tell about this. The Apple TV is close to being like that, though. The Apple TV is a lesser product that costs more, does less. And the only reason you really need it is because you've been locked in by some other part of Apple's ecosystem. Because Apple's devices only do AirPlay, and they won't let anybody else's boxes do AirPlay. And so if you want to do that,

or if you want access to iTunes content, these are your choices. And that's not a product. That's not a product at that point. They made a big deal of the apps, and there are some apps, and some of the apps are nice. But again, most of the apps I use on the Apple TV are video apps, and those apps exist like there's a Plex app for the other platforms. It's like you created this whole new thing called TV and couldn't get Netflix to sign on. You're failing on all fronts with this. Every advantage that Apple tried to push forward this year with the apple tv has huge holes in it right tv couldn't get netflix single sign-on basically got any cable companies and i will say one of the clarifying things about doing thinking about calendar years like this

survey does is and you've mentioned it a couple of times it it squelches all track record and optimism yep right like those are out of it. It's like, what happened in 2016? It's like January 1st to December 31st. That's all you have. You can be bullish about the future of the Mac or pessimistic about it. You can be bullish about the future of Apple TV or pessimistic about it. But what happened in 2016?

And the answer with Apple TV is nothing. So, and it was already behind. So, I think it's fair. All right. So next up, all of the categories are software services, initiatives, that kind of thing. So this is a good point to take a break and thank Encapsular for sponsoring this week's episode. They are the cloud service that makes your website faster and safer. And they do this by employing a worldwide network that can inspect every single packet that comes and goes from your website, blocking attacks against your site whilst

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some more information about what they offer. Thank you so much to Encapsular for their continued support of this show and Relaym somebody's gonna write in and say no i like the bad stuff well those people are wrong jason they're they get the enemy discount they get the enemy discount which is uh they have to pay for other people's months cloud services graded ac and the report card wait for it that's that's good that's up people are

feeling slightly more exciting excited about apple's cloud services average score of 3.1 median score of three i have my theory about this uh why is this way last year uh graded c minus or a d plus christina warren said our Christina Warren said, Christina went a bit... She started asking questions. She kind of went a bit philosophical here. Are Apple's cloud services finally good is the question I asked myself. The answer is almost.

And in the same vein, Federico said, it's difficult to provide a unifying comment on the overall state of Apple's services. They still feel too disconnected from each other with varying degrees of success. They're getting better, but perhaps too slowly. Now I have given Apple's cloud services a three. Um, and it's because I'm mostly indifferent. And I think that's why they are three because it is indifference. So I use quite a lot of them. I use calendar, mail, music, and photos primarily. Like I use those extensively. They are, they are services that I use calendar, mail, music, and photos primarily. I use those extensively.

They are services that I use. I mean, iCloud stuff is iCloud Drive when it's going on in the background, but I don't really think about those. And that's kind of the thing with Apple services is they mostly do what I expect them to do, but excel in nothing.

Like, my mail is delivered, right? But I don't get Gmail stuff for sorting things. My mail is delivered and I can enter my calendar things, but things don't get automatically added on server side. I have

to use Apple's calendar application to try and service anything, to service some appointments. But if I get a, like what happens with Google services, if I get an Amazon email, I don't automatically get a tracking link put into my Google search or now screen. They don't do any, you know, the photo stuff. I can search for horses and mountains,

but I don't get a Google assistant notification telling me, oh, here's this album we made for you automatically, which is of this trip that you just made. Or like, oh, here's a GIF we just made of these few photos. So much of what Apple does, your photos app should be giving you that, not cloud services, the way Apple structures it. Your photos app should be giving you that.

Cloud services, they can't do that that they can't talk to each other it's not surfaced and i'm not told about it right like google google does a really great way of doing a lot of this stuff and telling me about it and my feeling is because google knows they can be consistent no matter where you're looking at it and i just i'm not can't be I'm not sure that that is fair to lay on Apple's cloud services. I think maybe that because of the way Apple has structured its data, that is a software issue. And the same would go for, like, your mail client should be getting mail from your travel or from Amazon and recognizing that it's a flight

or it's a package to be tracked and doing something with it. Because that's what they have to do. Because Google is essentially running an app on Gmail that does that. And Apple isn't letting itself look at your mail. So the software needs to be able to do that. And that's the challenge is that a lot of the times that that doesn't happen either. Right. All right.

And it is magical. I just bought a flight to LA for next month. And you know what happens? I get my receipt from Southwest Airlines in my Gmail and the flight's on my calendar. That's it. It's already there because Gmail knows that that is a flight I'm taking. All right. I'll agree with that. That is a fair criticism.

But I still will stand by my point that Apple services just do what I expect them to do. They don't do anything. Apple haven't introduced a service this year which is life-changing for me. They haven't given me anything new. They've stabilized things um and they said they made some of the client stuff that are like some of the things that sit on top of our messages better but there's nothing there's nothing that's making me go wow apple services i'm just indifferent to them i think what i would i turn that around and say I would, I'd turn that around and say indifference is a huge step up for Apple.

Yes, which is why it's a three and not a two, which is why I probably would have given it before, right, for inconsistency. I would probably say that if I had to choose, I would choose Apple getting their services to be reliable. And that Apple is still fighting against the perception. In fact, several of my panelists refuse to answer this question at all because they refuse to use Apple services because they don't trust them. And my message to them was basically, I think you might want to give them a try because I have not been bitten by an Apple service in a while now. I think iCloud photo library is quite good at what it does. That said, I will also now I'm going to do exactly what you just did. Because Apple has this privacy approach to the server data that its servers can't look at it. Apple needs to be better on the software side to do the same sort of magic that Google can do up in the server. And they're not. And the example I would give from this year is, yes, photos now knows about horses and mountains. But does it sync all of that up to the cloud, that metadata, so that you don't have to

reanalyze your photos on every device? No, it just doesn't do that. And that is part of the service component of that, right? So I agree. Right, because it should sync that metadata and it doesn't. But I think this was a positive result from Apple because, and I it's a c right i mean it's not a really great score it's a passing grade but in the context of where apple has been with cloud stuff what i look at here is that apple seems to be getting out like christina said like

they're almost good at this point they're not a joke they're not unreliable they're not like well this is fine but this one you shouldn't even touch it's like there are still some rough spots but it seems to me like apple has really stabilized the cloud services stuff the next step though is it's got to be better than acceptable right it's got to do things working in in uh in tandem with the software on the devices it's got to start doing things that are kind of delightful and there's not a lot of that right now home kit uh okay okay graded a d plus of an average score 2.4 median score of d oh sorry median score of two last year it was grad graded D. Yeah, you went from a D to a D+, congratulations.

I'm not really sure how. Brent Simmons said, this is the thing I don't want Apple to spend its time on. I disagree with Brent vehemently, but I know where he's coming from. I assume that Brent is wishing that Apple would spend its time on the products that they're successful at. But I echo Mark, seriously, no pun intended, Marco's comment,

which is that HomeKit offerings continue to trickle out too slowly, and Apple has no answer in sight to the Amazon Echo and the Google Home. Apple's best hope for home automation currently is that it doesn't take off, which is a terrible place to be. And Lex Friedman said, I have various smart devices and not one of them integrates with apple stuff meanwhile my echo can control just about everything in my house um home kit for me gets the lowest score that i have given apple for this

scorecard which is a one um does home kit really exist it. I actually now have a couple of HomeKit devices in my house. I'm being facetious. You have to work at it. You have to work at it, Mike. So I check the Apple Store page frequently for new HomeKit devices, like in the Apple Store app, and it never changes. There don't seem to be new things, at least that Apple is selling, with HomeKit integration in them i

think they're falling behind um i think that they that whatever it is that apple is is making these companies do is is too much um to try and get integrations and i know it's security but it may be that they're you know they're making they're making people jump through hoops and subsequently increasing the prices of their products because of the chips or whatever it is that Apple requires. I think that if Apple is very serious about this, then they need to try and make this easier for people. And I know that these products exist. I know that they exist. But let me tell you something. A lot of the ones that exist, I can't buy they exist in the united states of america did not exist in the united kingdom

so from my perspective home kit is basically a bit of a disaster like i was talking to matt alexander and he was telling me that he's just bought these new smart plugs or something called the iHome. And the iHome is, it works with the Echo and with HomeKit. Now, I looked it up and they just don't sell them here. This is not a product that exists in the UK. So this continues to be another problem for them, I think. Well, yeah, I think that going from a D to a D plus really says everything about HomeKit, which is itself, this is better because it's a third-party initiative where Apple is just saying, we don't want to build this stuff. But I think more realistically,

and this is what Brent's getting at, this is one of those things where perhaps Apple didn't need to build its own thing and could have used some existing technology. Yes. And, you know know apple has done some things to certify the the home kit hardware that there are arguments to be made that in terms of like security of devices of the internet of things things that are not going to get hijacked and turned into botnets and all of that that apple's layer of scrutiny on home kit is maybe a good thing um but you can also make the argument that maybe apple should have just

let the market work this out and not do what apple does which is create its own spec create its own licensing system and made people basically come to apple with their products and ask for them to be approved and blessed it was like they barged their way in and said hey you have basically come to Apple with their products and ask for them to be approved and blessed. It was like they barged their way in and said, hey, you have to come to us and get certification because we've just started something. If you want access to our users. But the reality is that the users do have access to other things because you can just download apps that give you access to these other smart home platforms. Apple's leverage here isn't spectacular. It's Siri and the home app and the control smart home platforms. Apple's leverage here isn't spectacular. It's Siri and the home app

and the control center home thing. That's their leverage as opposed to just like downloading an app for some other home tech. So it's not, they don't have great leverage and their story isn't great. It is starting to take off and it may yet take off,

which is why it's definitely in that D plus of like, well, the rocket turned on, but it still hasn't left the pad. We'll see what happens next. But, um, I don't know. It's, uh, I'm with Lex too, which is that my, my Amazon Echo can control just about everything in my house and a home kit can't. And HomeKit can't. And so, and you know, that's, in this state of Internet of Things, smart home kind of devices,

I think being able to absorb and control anything is a way more important place to be than building a walled off subset of tech. And that's what HomeKit is. So if I could buy a smart home thing that was HomeKit compatible and other things, I would probably try to do that just because that gives me an extra bit. Like the Hue light bulbs I have are HomeKit, you know, and the LIFX light bulbs I have are not. But I'm not going to let it rule my world. If it doesn't work with my Amazon Echo,

I'm not going to buy it. If it doesn't work with If This Then That, I'm probably not going to buy it. But if it doesn't work with HomeKit, I'll probably buy it anyway. Hardware reliability. Apple scored highest. This is the highest scoring category overall, right?

Actually, it's the second highest after environmental and social issues, which we'll get to. Spoilers. Grade A-, average score 4.1, median score 4, down a little bit. Last year, it was an A.

Dan Morin says, In general, I feel that hard core quality and reliability has been one of Apple's strongest points. And then Susie Oaks of Macworld says, in general, I feel that hardware quality and reliability has been one of Apple's strongest points. And then Susie Oaks of Macworld says, it's disheartening to read story after story about MacBook Pros having graphics issues, iPhone 6S having battery issues, iPhone 6 Plus having touch problems.

I hope the hardware quality isn't slipping. So two very different responses there. I'm going to go for four for this one as well. In my opinion, there has been a little change in actual hardware quality year over year there are always bugs there are always x gates um every every big apple product has some kind of uh critical flaw uh but this is normal nothing's catastrophic right apple stuff has issues but the overall quality of the products

i don't think has changed like from a hardware perspective everything is fine and you know like depending on what you consider hardware reliability um i can't really personally see much of a change year over year you know there are things that maybe don't work the way that you want them to but it's not because they're flawed it's just because they were designed that way and i don't think design decisions goes goes into reliability i kind of subscribe to your theory which is there are always gates and there are always going to be with any volume like apple has there are going to be issues but it sure seems like nobody was talking about problems with apple hardware other than steven hackett and his hissinging iPhone 7 um but you know but that ended up being that actually wasn't really a huge problem with that like it blew up to be a thing

because there were like five of them out there or whatever but yeah that and that that's I think that's your point and I agree with it which is there are always little things here and there but I don't feel like that was a big story this year about apple having to deal with hardware problems and when we consider the competition uh yeah i think i think it's it's fitting that apple got a pretty good score here like steven's phone was hissing apple did take it back and they did replace it and his next one was fine he got a dud right it seems and maybe other people did as well but that happens with every product like there are always going to be those problems but it wasn't that every single phone hissed because they didn't. Software quality

was graded a B- an average score of 3.4, a median score of 3. Last year a C+, so we have an increase. Casey List said, things aren't as ugly as they were in the past but I still feel like we're not in the Snow Leopard glory days. Rich Mogul said,

there was a mixed bag across the platforms, but overall an improvement from the past year or two. Federico Faticci of MacStory said, considerably better than years ago, thanks to the optimization that went into iOS 9 and iOS 10. Still not perfect, still room to improve, but not as traumatic as 7 and 8 were. We just mentioned him.

Stephen Hackett said, that whilst Apple's core OS is stable and secure, I think the company could be doing a lot with first-party apps to make them more appealing. And the developer of Peacock, James Thompson, said improved in 2016, front of the show, over a pretty poor 2015, heading in the right direction at least. I'm going to give out another 4 this year for this because it wasn't just the same. There was an improvement, but it wasn't completely knocked out of the park.

I would say that overall iOS has been solid this year, where maybe some of the previous versions of iOS in recent years have not been when they've shipped. I feel that 10 was fine. It wasn't 7, it wasn't 8. It was totally fine. But I will underscore that I am sad to see advancement, like little advancement on the iPad. And that holds back what could have been a 5.

If I would have got what I wanted on the iPad, I'd be like, great. For me, personally, software quality is fantastic. I would just say I haven't installed Sierra, I'd be like, great. For me, personally, software quality is fantastic. I would just say, I haven't installed Sierra, and I have no intention to, because I don't like to be on the most recent version of the OS

on my production machine. I make sure that my security patches are in place, but I don't upgrade. So, yeah, I have little to say on Sierra, because I've never actually used it. well i i think apple um somebody and it might have been brent simmons said you know get let's get off the mac once a year treadmill which i kind of agree with i feel like it never we never will i feel like we

never will because ios is going to be once a year and they're going to want to sync the features up but i do think that sierra was a mild enough update that I think what we're seeing is Apple not trying to make every Mac OS release a major release, but they still have to keep pace with iOS features and try to stay in sync. There has to be a revision of macOS in some form every year if iOS continues to be that. Because otherwise, iOS will have features that can't communicate with macOS, and that will cause myriad issues and many more people complaining and saying that iOS is getting all of the attention. So there needs to be, I mean, Sierra could have and should have gone a little bit further when it comes to messages.

Stickers, at least. Maybe not apps, but stickers should have better features than it currently does, honestly, I think. Yeah. But they have to give some support. Because as somebody who is still using... What version am I using? Yosemite, I think?

It was Yosemite before Sierra, right? Nope, El Capitan. El Capitan, that's what I'm on. El Capitan. I get lost now. I'm a captain. The cats I could keep track of, but the California place names, they're lost on me. I can't reconcile them in my brain. Your mind is still in Mavericks. Yeah, I just can't get my head around them.

Anyway, so as somebody who's still using that that version was it i'm using did we establish that yes l cap yeah like messages is a disaster it's just so bad so they had to give it something because it's a nightmare um trying to use all of the features and you know i still get just blank twitter links with no expansion and stuff like that yeah so there has to be something every year but i agree with you that it doesn't have to be here's 20 new features for the mac it can be like here's this new thing wanted to add plus parity of ios and i think it's important that they continue and you're right and they can roll features out across the year like they'd i mean the touch bar that that's

hardware you know and touch id that's hardware, you know, and Touch ID. Touch ID, yep. You know, hardware-tied features. Those are OS features, too, and they rolled those out with the hardware. So they can roll stuff out on the Mac on a kind of ongoing basis, too, and then maybe have the milestone versions be really about syncing sort of the major, you know, major Apple platform features for the year. I like what, I mean, I like all these quotes. I pick them, right? You pick quotes out of the ones. I like what, I mean, I like all these quotes. I pick them, right? You pick quotes out of the ones that I picked, right? So I did the first set of picking

here. And so of course, I like what Stephen Hackett said. I think that's an important point. I think Apple's core OSs are pretty stable. Like he said, I think he makes a really good point about first party apps that a lot of Apple's apps seem kind of adrift. Like one of the things that happens when you lose focus is you lose focus on some of the stuff at the periphery and the apps. I mean, you mentioned messages, but there are lots of apps that I feel like are like that, where it's just like it's fine. alike are like that where it's just like it's fine but there are other alternatives that are that show you that they could probably be better and there could be more innovation on the on the app front too but it's fine i mean again there were a few years ago we were really up in arms about how apple software quality was a disaster and this you know it the perception seems to be in general that it's getting better.

Not like Casey said, maybe the glory days, whether they were real or not, but a perception like this is not the hot button issue for 2016 anyway. Developer relations, graded a C+, average score 3.1, median score 3. Last year it was graded D. This is the biggest gainer of any category in the survey, positive gainer yeah it went up what like a full grade and a whatever you'd call it grade and a half Phil Schiller's transition to leading the app store

has brought many welcome improvements said Marco Arment but communication is still poor the Dash situation ended poorly and search ads have been controversial and alienating for many independent developers John Gruber said I think the app store situation is improving but still has ways to go, so it's far to go. And Brent Simmons said, the Swift team is notably engaging. I'm going to give this a two. And the reason is, is I don't see a lot of these benefits in my day-to-day work.

I don't feel it, right? It doesn't touch my work. All I can comment is the things that I see. And the Dash story, which wasn't something that we covered with any significance, but it was when the developer of a documentation application called Dash, the developer of a documentation application called Dash, there was like a back and forth, which resulted in he said, she said,

and their application being removed. I think that Apple did a really bad job handling this. The phone call that was leaked, I think, was terrible and sounded condescending to me. I really think that it was a bad mark from them this year. And I, without knowing, all I know is what I feel. And I feel that Apple didn't do the right thing with this. They didn't resolve it in the way that it maybe should have been resolved. And again, all I can comment on is what I saw. I don't know the full story. But that for me was like, that just wasn't good.

They just didn't look good. And it was a big public thing. And I think that the right thing to do from a PR perception was to deal with that slightly differently to the way that they did. So I'm going to go over two developer relations. So the reason these scores are so much higher than last year is that Phil Schiller taking over, the perception has been Phil Schiller taking over the App Store stuff has made a lot of things better. Like Marco said, that the turnaround is a lot faster.

And then Brent mentioned the Swift team being very engaging and communicating in ways that maybe things were kept quiet at Apple earlier and they wouldn't speak. But I think most of the scoring improvements here are about the fact that a lot of the complaints that people had about the App Store were addressed this year. Not to say that there weren't some issues, and the Dash story is an example of that. But I think generally what used to be a major complaint point, I think everybody wanted to basically give a little bit of applause that it seems like some of the fundamental basic problems that App Store, App Submissions, and the like have had. And the decrease of turnaround time, frankly, bottom line, which should be kind of job number one, has improved dramatically in the past year. So that's what's going on here, I think. And then the final category, which I spoiled earlier,

which is the highest overall score, is environmental and social issues. It's graded an A-, an average score of 4.2, median score of 4. It has declined slightly. Last year it was an A, which is interesting to me. So Marco Arment said on this, Tim Cook's handling of the FBI phone unlocking controversy was stellar

and may well go down as a highlight of Cook's tenure as a CEO. Federico Fatici said, no one seems to care about these things as much as Apple, and he gives major respect on all fronts. John Maltz said that Apple's presentations this year were better in terms of diversity. It was nice to see, although the company still has a long way to go in diversity for Apple management.

And carrying on from this, Aline Sims said the diversity statistics seem to be barely shifting year over year, and Aline would love to see Apple implement paid internship and mentorship programs for underrepresented minorities. Even though leadership turnover is low, but Aleem would like

to hope to see more types of people represented in the leadership as well so I'm going to give this a four again the FBI case was handled tremendously and I feel if this is the place that that exists I think that Apple that they will significantly improve any score right like if this is the category that that is going to exist in, then I will say that that was a really, really big thing for Apple this year from a positive perspective. And I agree that diversity is getting better, but only in what we're seeing.

So what Apple shows us on stage, the people that they show us on stage, the people that come out to make presentations, I think we can agree that that's better than it's ever been. But the positions are the same as they were before, is my assumption. But they're just changing who they show. So where we may have Bazoma St. John

come out to talk about Apple Music, she's just replacing eddie q so like he's still there doing that ultimately but they've changed the person that they're bringing out on stage so they're doing a better job of showing us the diversity but as a lean points out the diversity statistics are not shifting um in in significant numbers so right they are they seem to be shifting but it's very slow yeah very slow so i you know i would personally say that like from what i can see in that and from what i hear uh from people that are really deep into this stuff that would mark them down but they're the way that they handled the fbi thing would mark them up and plus you know things in regards to environment,

like the actual environment of the world, Apple just remained consistent, which is consistently great, but they remain consistent year on year for that. So I'm going to go with 4. So my kind of final thoughts on all of this is that having looked at all of this,

I'm not unique in thinking that this was a weird year for Apple, but it wasn't an out-and-out disaster. And seeing things in this category, I am remarked at how many 4 out of 5s I've given. But the thing is that some of the places where there would have been higher scores didn't get those this year. And that some of the things that you would expect to have high scores had lower scores

than I would have expected to give them. But I do think that 2016 is kind of just a bump in a road in a few areas. Like I'm optimistic for a better showing in 2017. And I'm hoping that Apple will prove my optimism to be correct. Right. And that's the beauty of the calendar constraint.

Again, as you can say, say wow that was a bad year let's try another year were you um in your uh on the site you had some graphs and some charts and i'm going to include a link in the show notes of course to the report card were you surprised by any of the changes year over year not really i mean i i think this is a an interesting quantification of what mostly we knew like that the mac had a really bad year i think dissatisfaction with the apple tv i think uh if you thought about it you probably would have expected it but it was uh it was strong that was a clear signal from these three dozen people the i the friendliness toward the Apple Watch, I think, is deserved given it was a really good year for the Apple Watch. You got hardware turnover and

a really good operating system update. I was not surprised. If anything, I think I was a little surprised that it was not quite as negative as I really expected i thought i mean the mac took a huge tumble but i thought it could have been even worse and um so yeah but i i think one of the values of doing a survey like this is that you're sort of seeing what the conventional take on apple's year was because like i said you'll get people voting a one or a five but in the, it will all kind of wash out to a, you know, this average score of what most people sort of thought it was. And I think that's valuable. It's not a single personal opinion. It's more like, what's the trend? And in fact, you could argue that somebody, you know, that the average score for a particular product was such and you could say, no, no, no, that's

totally wrong. That's just groupthink. That's the that's the conventional wisdom it's like yeah you might be right but i think there's some value in seeing what was the conventional wisdom about 2016 what what in general did people think and then in the details you can see that there was a lot of disagreement on the details and that's why i put the quotes in i love it i'm pleased that you do this and i look forward to next year's already do you have like if you were gonna if you were a betting man what categories do you think would see some big change in for 2017 if you were if you were gonna put if you're gonna put some bets down on this what would you go for i'm gonna say the ipad is gonna go up because i do think they're gonna revise revise all of the iPad Pros and do a software update that addresses the iPad at some point in 2017, whether it's iOS 10.3 or it's iOS 11.

So I think the iPad has a chance to go up. I also would say that I think the Mac has a chance to go up if Apple does a standard kind of battery of Mac releases and show that 2016 was an aberration. But I think if I had to put it on one that has the best chance to kind of rebound or progress, I think it will be the iPad. What do you think about the iPhone? I don't know. I mean, it already has a very good score. I think that even if Apple comes out with a really nice new iPhone and a nice version of iOS, I'm not sure that that score is going to move particularly up. I think it could go down if there's an iPhone 7S that looks just like the 7 and there's not a whole lot more in there other than the usual kind of camera improvement,

faster processor sort of stuff. That could make it go it go down but even then the iphone's riding so high right now that i'm not sure that a boring iphone year is going to be um considered a bad iphone year by enough people for that to come down a lot all right so we're running a little bit long today so we're going to skip ask upgrade this week if you want to send in your ask upgrade questions as always we'd really appreciate it just send us a tweet with the hashtag Ask Upgrade, and we will attempt to answer your questions on the show. We'll pick that up next week. But I want to take a moment to thank our sponsors again for this week's show, Encapsular, Eero, and Blue Apron. If you want to find us online, there's a few places you can do that. You can go to sixcolors.com and theincomparable.com for Jason's work elsewhere, but of course, he has a host of a plethora of shows on RelayFM.

Obviously this one, Free Agents, Liftoff, and Clockwise. Jason is also on Twitter. He is at jsnill. I am imike on Twitter. I am yke. And I host many shows. Many shows. All the great shows.

All the great shows. Some of the great shows on RelayFM. There are many great shows. How humble. That I am not a part of. Many, many great shows. But I amM. There are many great shows that I am not a part of. Many, many great shows. But I'm also a host of many of them.

We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Bye, everybody.