Upgrade - 126: Spinny Propellery Guy

Episode Date: January 30, 2017

This week Jason and Myke try out a bunch of new Apple betas, Apple makes big changes in App review, Jason finds his favorite iPad Pro keyboard, and we get prepared for Apple’s quarterly financial report.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 126 today's show is brought to you by encapsular fresh books and blue apron my name is mike hurley i'm joined by mr jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i am very well sir sir. How are you? Very good. You know, good to have a weekend. Played some board games with the family. Saw a live podcast. Just exciting to know podcasts sometimes are presented live before an audience.

I know. I'm taking one on tour. I saw that. I heard about that. I heard about that. I heard about that. I went to the Hello from the Magic Tavern. They were at the San Francisco Sketch Fest. Oh, yeah.

I saw them in Anaheim, but it was fun. So we went and saw them again. It was just driving to the city, watch a podcast for an hour. And coming out, there was an ATP shirt. The guy was walking out with an ATP shirt. And I told my wife, look, it's an ATP shirt. He's one of us. And as I'm saying this, I turn around and the guy is standing there looking at me. And he says, I just wanted to say I'm a really big fan and I like what you do.

Hello, that person, if you're out there. And I said, and I had this moment. And my wife just starts laughing, by the way. Lauren, she just starts laughing at me, basically. And my wife just starts laughing, by the way. Lauren, she just starts laughing at me, basically. And I say to him, are you serious? Or do you say that to people and see if they react?

Because it would be very easy for somebody to be like, oh, yes, of course. My things that I do. Thank you. He's like, no, no, six colors. I was like, all right, well, thank you very much then. But it was just a funny moment of like, I did have that thought that that would be a thing you could do to people am i being punk right now it's just walk right up to them and say i love what you do and see what they say it's like oh congratulations i'm an insurance salesman i love your insurance you sell congratulations on what i don't even know but yes thank you i'm very excited about it myself oh great

yeah anyway Lauren was laughing the whole way home I was spotted I can imagine that being Lauren's reaction to just laugh at you yeah it was kind of hilarious it is a busy week for you this week

and that is because there is an Apple earnings call on the horizon it's tomorrow as we record this right yeah it's tuesday the 31st at uh well so the the results come out at about 1 30 p.m pacific time and 1930 gmt and uh how about that i can add eight to things um uh no i did it wrong 21 30 gmt that's it yeah you couldn't add eight to things. I appreciate it. No, I did it wrong. 21.30 GMT. That's it. Yeah. You couldn't add eight to things then, it turns out.

You got to add, no, you got to add, you got to add eight to, you got to add two and then, or 12 and then eight. It's a disaster. I don't know how people you live at Greenwich Mean Time. It's a disaster. 1.30 PM at the only proper time, which is Pacific Cupertino time. We've lost Jason, everyone. That's it for you. You're gone now.

You're gone to the confusion of time. And 2 o'clock is when the, what I'm saying is 2 p.m. standard Cupertino time, is when the actual phone call starts. Right, yeah, because they release, release what a press release first, right? Something like that. Yeah, they do it at 1.30, the release comes out and sort of trickles out

and it often is on finance sites before it's actually on Apple's own investor website, which is annoying. And everybody updates their charts, including me. And then at two, they have the call. And then people, analysts try have the call. And then,

uh, people, analysts try to do like Jedi mind tricks on Tim cook to get him to announce future products. And it fails as always. And, uh, usually there are a few interesting things there.

So that's a busy, that's a busy afternoon only because it's a rare chance for us to peer inside of Apple's, um, inner workings. And, youings and what we get as a combination of what's mandated legally and what they are choosing to say in order to explain what they're doing and where they're going to specifically to the financial industry, but also just to the world as a whole. So what are we looking out for with this? I mean,

the forecasts that Apple gave for the Q3 call, because this is the Q4 call where they report on the fourth quarter of 2016. Yeah, the holiday quarter. The forecast that they gave um suggested a return to year-over-year growth right so they would be basically starting the calendar year 2017 in a better position to how they started calendar year 2016 yeah their their forecast is literally and they do the forecast the previous quarter they say here's what we think will happen next quarter. Their forecast was for the biggest single quarter in Apple history. That's not a bad start for the year, isn't it? And that's year-over-year growth. And then keep in mind, last year,

last year Apple's results were hammered year-over-year-wise because they had such a great 2015, and 2016 didn't measure up. This year, they get to reap that a little bit in that their year over year comparison is 2016 and not 2015 yeah i guess we will we will learn on this call if 2015 really was the anomaly year in full right like when they give their forecasts for the next quarter if they are up then we can at that point say that what was referred to by you and many others as that anomaly year. So like, you know, when you did the graph and you'd see that if 2015 didn't happen, it always would have continued just going up.

We will know for sure if that's the case, right? Well, at least we'll have a much better idea because we'll know that Q4 was good. And then Q1 2017 will be good as well because they'll give a forecast on that. And history has always kind of well history recent history has shown that the apple is always to their forecasts they are never less than the forecast it would be shocking if they didn't make it which isn't to say they might not they might miss like it's always possible but i would be surprised because they've never uh they've always been very good at forecasting. So we'll see what they do.

But something I'll remind people who don't think like stock market people, which is fine because reality kind of, it's a little like quantum physics. It's like common sense doesn't apply. People get very upset when Apple announces, let's say record quarter, biggest quarter they've ever had

and the stock price maybe doesn't go up or goes down people be like what do you mean um and you've got to think of it again it's counterintuitive but you got to think of it this way apple stock price today is based on the fact that three months ago they said they would have a record quarter this this quarter so it's already built in so apple reporting a record quarter this quarter. So it's already built in. So Apple reporting a record quarter will not have an appreciable impact on the stock price because Apple said they would. If they fail or if they dramatically exceed, it might. But if it's in the 76 to 78 billion range, well, that's what they said it would be. That's why the stock is priced the way it is. But what will happen, and this often is the source of Apple's stock price moving around,

and I don't own any Apple stock. People who do, it's great. I don't care about the Apple stock price. That's not why I write about Apple. But their forecast for the next quarter, the first fiscal quarter of 2017, in their case, will be that which is uh what what do we do next what do we do next um and also there are there are details that can move stuff around right like the profit might be one thing but if if one product or another is not what was expected it can move stuff around right like the the stock price took a real big hit when it was kind of hinted at the fact that the iphone wasn't growing anymore yeah they said sales for iphone were going to be static in the next quarter and everybody freaked out about that i should say

also because the quarter thing lines up and i just missed misstated something what we're going to hear is the calendar fourth quarter earnings it's actually Apple's first fiscal 2017 quarter. So they're going to be doing guidance on what happens in the first calendar quarter of 2017. It's actually their Q2 2017 quarter coming up. Very confusing. Right. Calendars, how do they work? I don't know.

It's even more confusing than adding time to GMT. Yeah. Thank you for that clarification so a couple of other things to i guess we'll be keeping our eye on right um as well as kind of the guidance and whether that's going to hint that we'll be back to year-over-year growth is then when we break down in the product stuff and i guess two things more critically that we'll be looking out for because i think we'll probably be pretty sure if if the money's good it means the iphone's good um but outside of that uh ipad and macbook pro uh what difference can we can we see in the charts that may have come from there so with the ipad the hope that it stopped going down and yeah in the mac line if we see growth in the Mac line from a revenue perspective, could that be the MacBook Pro? Yeah, iPad, it is,

it has been sort of coasting down and everybody's been waiting for a quarter where it pops back up. So there's that question is like, okay, it's a holiday quarter. They have to beat the holiday quarter from the previous year. Can they do that?

Can they show an increase, a growth in either sales or revenue from iPad for the quarter? Because that would be the first time, and I did the calculation, I forget what it is, like three years, three plus years that they've had a growth quarter for the iPad. And, yeah, the Mac numbers, which, again, they don't break them out by model. So you have to guess, although they will probably make a statement about it. My guess is if the MAC numbers are up, one of the things they'll say is, you know, powered by some superlative, right? By record numbers or, you know, our customers love it and it's the best, you know, they'll find some way probably to quantify without actually quantifying the sales number. They will try to characterize the sales in some way.

And we'll look at the pure Mac number and see if the Mac number moved and is that attributable to the new MacBook Pro, which was the only, you know, the new MacBook Pros was the only new thing in the quarter. So we'll see. Yeah, so it'll be interesting to kind of see that, I guess, you know, if we see ASP in the Mac line go up, right, we can probably say it's the MacBook Pro because it's more, it was more expensive. Uh, so that might be something. Um, sure. There are ways, there are ways to analyze it, but my guess is that if, if there's good news there, well, I mean, even if there's not good news there, they will try to characterize the MacBook Pro sales. And it's always interesting to hear the way they phrase it because that goes beyond kind of the mandatory.

That's their kind of spinning the numbers, explaining what is happening, adding more color, like analysts like to have more color. So we'll see. We'll see what they say. And they may be questioned about that as well by analysts and respond that way, which is sometimes... I want to say it's a little more off the cuff. I don't think that's... I mean, it is a little more off the cuff. But even then, when they're answering analysts, they're basically sticking, if not to a script, to specific lines and facts that they've agreed that they were willing to talk about.

It is pretty locked down. I mean, this is Apple, they're disciplined. And it's a call as part of a governmental, you know, mandate as a public company. So there's a lot of regulations. And, you know, a misstep can have an effect on the stock price. So, you know, they reveal, the stuff they're revealing, even in the Q&A is stuff that they're willing to reveal and they've planned to reveal. But it still can bring things to light in an interesting way. All right, we're going to shift gears a little bit here. And I want to touch on a couple of stories that are in reflection of the current situation politically in the United States of America if for whatever

reason you do not want to listen to that whether it is upsetting to you or whatever you can skip ahead via chapters, so there will be chapters in the show you can skip ahead, we're not going to do anything else on follow up this week and we'll be jumping into our topics right after this obviously the the situation in the u.s right

now is a complicated one um it is obviously something that i do not agree with um in regards to immigration and so it's it's the political stuff is a lot more complex than than i can really explain but i wanted to kind of just touch on both Apple and Google's responses to this, because they're very different responses and they're interesting. So Tim Cook wrote an internal memo, kind of regarding his stance on President Trump's executive order on banning immigration from selected Muslim countries. And as we've said in the past, I think anytime there is an internal memo to the entire company about something like this,

my expectation is Apple are also treating this as a way to get the message out wide without making a PR statement. Absolutely. And Tim basically says, you know, in a nutshell, this is not a policy we support. And Apple is providing HR and legal support to any affected employees. Like there are Apple employees that may be on trips right now and can't get home.

Or there are Apple employees, you know, like there are anyone, you know, obviously isn't just distinct to Apple, but it's just while we're talking about this. But, you know, they will have people like any any big company right now, that are having to cancel business trips. Like I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in England, and a co-worker of his is meant to be traveling out to the U.S., and the company's canceled the trip because they can't guarantee he'll get out of the airport. Yeah. Apple has the deal. It's not just the people at Apple.

I mean, Apple's an international company. It's got people all over the world. And it's got people from all over the world. And it's not just the people outside the world. It's also anticipating what happens with their people who are in the US, if there's any need for them to travel internationally. That is all kind of, you know, been brought open to question with the fact that the executive order seems to have, although there may be backpedaling on this, it seems to have affected people with green cards. So people who are legal permanent residents allowed to work in the United States. I mean, those are people who work at Apple. There's some questions about like, it's not just can they come home, but if you've got them in working in Cupertino, you know, can you send them outside the US? Will they be allowed back in? And that's so it has a huge impact on Apple and other Silicon Valley companies because they workers and founders and key people who are not from the United States, but have come to the United States for their education and to build businesses. And, you know, my take on that is that's one of the great things about America is that it's a nation of immigrants and that people from all over the world come here to learn and to build businesses and they stay and build great businesses and Silicon Valley is a great example of that. So this is a huge problem for Silicon Valley, both in the specifics of employees and what is going to happen and their families and what's

going to happen to their lives, but also I would say to the heart of what powers Silicon Valley and more broadly the United States, but certainly Silicon Valley is a shining example of that promise and what it has done to make the United States the center of the technology, you know, advancement in the late 20th and early 21st century. And Google had done a similar thing as well. You know, they had issued an internal memo to their people. But today, via the Associated Press, it has been reported that Google have launched a fund where they're aiming to raise $4 million to donate to four immigrants' rights organizations. rights organizations. Two million is coming from Google, the company, and they are encouraging their employees to match this so they can build this $4 million fund. And they've also said that

company executives are donating separately from this fund. So the matching is not coming from the top tier executives, right? They're not going to be putting in this money they'll be putting in their own money which i'm sure they'll be doing privately um but yeah that i'm pleased to see the um as well as it just being a war of words google is also putting their money where their mouth is i hope to see all big companies including apple do something like this as well because there are a lot of charities and organizations that are trying to help people and I urge listeners if it affects them

to seek out some. I have seen the ACLU as one that is said to be the place where most people seem to be donating money to, which I think is the American Civil Liberties Union. Is that what that is? So they kind of stand up for civil rights.

And I've been seeing that the ACLU is mentioned as a charity to donate for a lot of the things that people have been protesting over in recent weeks. So, you know, for me, I am obviously outside of a lot of this, but it affects me to see it. I have often considered myself as one day potentially an immigrant to the United States. That might be something that happens in my lifetime. So I'm happy to see that when things like this, which are just morally wrong and irreprehensible, occurring, I'm happy to see the American people standing up and saying something about it and doing something. co-founder and an immigrant who built a company in the United States, actually was, as a private citizen, was at the protest at the terminal at San Francisco International Airport when the executive order came down and people were being detained. I thought that was an interesting just

tidbit of his thought process about this, that he went there and stood with those people. And again, he was born in the Soviet Union and has built an enormous international, based in the U.S., business. So yeah, we'll see what happens. There are rumors that there are other changes coming that more directly address the visas that are often used by Silicon Valley companies to attract top talent from overseas to live and work in the U S.

So this may be the beginning of a much bigger story as well. Big sigh, heavy sigh from Mike. It's hard not to really yep uh yeah but let's get back to what people come here for yeah happy place back to what people come here for let's take a break thank you capsular for supporting this week's show encapsulate is the cloud service that makes your website faster and safer they have a worldwide network that can inspect every packet that comes and goes from your website, blocking attacks against your site while delivering your content to your customers

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more about this service and claim your free month. Thank you so much to Encapsular for their continued support of Upgrade and RelayFM. Betas, betas, betas, Mr. Jason Snell. Betas! Betas, betas, whatever you'd like to call them. You get aas betas you get a beta and you get a beta i was trying to think of a line of like something along the lines of betas betas everywhere but nothing

for the ipad to drink but i couldn't really look into that no No, clearly. There was nothing. So 10.3.1 came out. I guess one of the biggest user-facing features of 10.3.1. So it's iOS 10.3 beta 1. Yes, good point. Find My AirPods, I guess, is the biggest feature for iOS devices, even though really that's kind of more of an iPhone thing. But that was there. I mean, that is a thing.

Find my AirPods. I tried it out. It just makes a super loud noise through your AirPods and or does some geolocation stuff to try and work out where it is. I think the most clever thing that it does, and it reminds me of the also, I believe, Bluetooth-based, where it drops i think the most clever thing that it does and this it reminds me of the also i believe bluetooth based uh where it drops a pin basically where your car is and it does that when you park your car it does that because it just notes when the bluetooth signal from the car

audio device uh went away and it says where did that happen it happened there and it says that's where your car is because obviously where you parked your car and turned off your car is where your car is located i think it's doing that yeah it's right where you left it's stupid so so uh i think that's also what it's doing with find my airpods or my airpods is it's trying to remember the last place it saw your AirPods and you don't remember, but it remembers, it remembers the geolocation where it lost signal from the AirPods. And so not only can it, like, if it's connected, it can make a loud noise, but it actually remembers where it last saw them, which is cool. That's smart. That's smart stuff. Yeah. I'm, I'm happy about that. I tried it out. It's fine. You know, it does the job basically. So I'm pleased that that's smart. That's smart stuff. Yeah, I'm happy about that. I tried it out. It's fine.

You know, it does the job, basically. So I'm pleased that that's there. In the last week, I have dropped one of my AirPods three times in the street. Oh, in the street. Oh, my. I just had another. I have also learned they are incredibly resilient. Yeah, I just had another, you know, sort of like first time.

It was the first time in like weeks that one of them fell out of my ears accidentally. And it's the same move. And I just have to pay attention to it, which is if I put on a hoodie and the hood kind of like flips up, you know, as I put it on, it sort of flips up toward the back of my head and I pull it back off. That move will pop an air an air pod out and that's that's what gets me is the the hood snags on the air pod so i just is more that i just keep dropping them when i'm taking them from the case to put in my ears or put in the back that totally happens i think i think um i think that is a challenge right is just in that in that dangerous moment between case and ear where they might get out of your hands.

The other thing that I've noticed is that if I don't bring the case with me, there's that sort of like, where do I put it? Okay, now I'm talking to somebody, so I've taken one out of my ears, and where do I put it? Do I put it in a pocket? Because then you're risking washing your your pants and and losing you know washing the airpod um but i've also noticed that if i sit there and i kind of fiddle with it in my hand if my hand goes over the um the proximity sensor oh yeah it starts playing the audio starts playing because it's in my hand it's like look hey i'm backing in here and it's like no that's not so you know they know, there are little quirks, little quirks. Yeah, I've noticed that, like, as the winter has been getting stronger here,

coats with hoods, with collars, sorry, have been a problem for me because the collar kind of can, like, brush against the AirPod. It's not knocked it out yet, but i'm just very aware of it um i i do wish that um and i hope that a future version could could be this way that the apple maybe made these out of a more grippy plastic you know whether it's like a soft touch or it they could somehow give it some something more akin to like the jet black you know obviously not that that in an insane amount of production but just something wherein the things are less likely to slip out of my hands like tiny thin bars of soap because that's that's my problem

is i take them out and then they just go like straight out of my hands and then onto the ground and skid along the ground a bit so yeah yeah, very resilient, I will say that. They haven't broken on me yet. But some other things that we got. NightShift on the Mac with the Sierra Beta, so 10.12.4 Beta 1, brought NightShift to the Mac, which is

I'm surprised it took them this amount of time. Honestly. I think getting it on iOS was a priority, and also they realized that you know you could run software to do that on the mac and so you know i think that was the right prioritization but it makes sense to have that feature everywhere if they think it's a valuable feature so it's uh it's good that they've got it i haven't tried it out because i have not put a beta on my mac so i haven't tried it out i, though, it does seem interesting to me to release a low-hanging fruit on the Mac

in what will be a point release. Maybe we should keep this for the next full version. I don't know. I don't know how many things are left for the Mac, and this is like if you didn't put it in in Sierra, maybe wait till the next release, and then it can be like, and we're bringing that shift to the mac like you know i don't know yeah it's it just seems like a funny thing to me

where it's like how many features do you have left like actual real achievable things that we already know about like that could possibly be done i don't think there are that many left well i like to think that maybe it suggests that they're trying to be a little more iterative with their development and roll features out across the year instead of just dumping a big load of features once. It's also, I think, entirely possible that this is just a 10.12 feature that got bumped because they couldn't implement it. bumped because they couldn't implement it and so it's still on the 10.12 roadmap and they're trying to clear off all of the 10.12 stuff before they move on to proper you know deep 10.13 development rather than kicking it all the way to 10.13 if we're by the way if we're truly doing 10.13 and not now that we're on mac os can we just can next the next one be 11.0? Can we do that? Can we move on? It's ridiculous.

And then, in fact, this could be the year, right? Because we're at iOS 10. So it's possible that this fall, I can't believe I'm talking about this now. There's, we're going to be talking about this. This is one of my ridiculous name theories that I have. You know, it's me me i do this but uh you could do ios 11 and mac os 11 this fall you could sync up the version numbers maybe i'll be surprised if they if they didn't 10.13 just seems dumb but you know that's where we are version 10 forever i guess even though it's not in the name anymore we'll see something you seem pretty excited about is that safari looks like it might be getting real-time communication features what is this yeah so i uh friend of mine that i've known for 25 years dan applequist is a web

standards guy and he retweeted uh something that i't seen covered, which was that there was a massive check-in by Apple to the WebKit code base. And, you know, it's one of these open source, like Swift stuff, right? It's like Apple working in open source is a little bit different. Like we can see in because it's open source. And WebKit drives Safari on iOS and Mac OS. And they have WebKit developers and they check in stuff and they have a roadmap and they talk about it. And they talked about for a while that they were working on a bunch of new things, including real-time communication features. So what happened is code got checked in for support

for WebRTC, which is the standard. It's in Chrome. It's in Firefox that allows browsers to do audio and video features without plugins. So it enables the browser to do all sorts of multimedia stuff without requiring you to use Flash or install the Google Chat plugin or anything like that. And what is interesting about this is that the web-based podcasting stuff like Cast and Zencaster, that are these tools that basically you give everybody a web link.

Instead of doing what we do, which is everybody gets on Skype and they've got recording software that they're also running because we want them to record their microphone locally and then send it in. So it sounds like, you know, like for people who are listening to this podcast, if they don't know, we are talking via Skype, but nobody hears Skype. Skype is actually not what you hear. You hear me recording in California, my voice and Mike recording his voice in London.

And then Mike assembles that together. And it sounds like we're in the same room, even though we're not. It sounds better than we're in the same room because we're isolated, but it sounds full quality. So to do that, you've got to record. So it's like, okay, we'll connect via Skype and that's how we'll hear each other, but we'll also run a recorder and we'll do that. And then we'll put it together and you get somebody who's new at this and you try to tell them about this stuff and especially if they're not big computer people, it gets really complicated.

So Cast and Zencaster are these websites where you sign up as a podcast host and pay them a little bit of money and you give them a link, you give your guests a link and they just show up and in the webpage, it has voice communication, you can hear each other

and in the background, the web browser is doing has voice communication. You can hear each other. And in the background, the web browser is doing the recording of their voice, the local recording and uploading it to the server. So you literally get to the end of the podcast and you press a button saying we're done and you wait for the browser. And it takes, you know, between a few seconds and a few minutes, it says, I'm uploading your file now. And then the file gets uploaded and you're done. It is, it is dead simple. I use it for one of the podcasts I do, because it's with somebody who's a little less technical and it makes it sound really good. So adding WebRTC to Safari means that it will probably be able to support those tools down the road. And while that's less interesting on the Mac, because we do have

all of these different tools for stuff like this, since Safari and WebKit are the basis for web browsing on iOS as well, it opens up the possibility that you could use those apps to record podcasts with people on every platform imaginable, basically, if it's running Chrome or Safari, including iOS, which would mean I could do podcasts with local recordings on my iPhone or my iPad, wherever I was, if I had a microphone. And that's exciting, because as we've talked about before, Apple doesn't really, has not done a good job of prioritizing, I guess I would say, some sound features. Like you can can't run a sound recorder like Audio Hijack while running Skype on the iPhone. You can't do it. It doesn't work because of OS

limitations. And maybe one day they'll fix those things. But if they build all of the multimedia features into WebKit and it's in Safari for iOS, then you kind of don't need them because you can do this all-in-one approach that gets you to record and talk at the same time in the browser. So we'll see whether that's even an iOS 11 feature. It may not be. I don't know how long it takes, and I don't know what state that code is in. But the fact that there was a code check-in, plus a lot of other stuff. If you remember the Safari is the new IE discussion that the guy, Nolan Lawson, kind of kicked off everywhere.

A lot of the stuff that he complained about has been checked in as well. And Safari, some of that stuff is supported in Shipping Safari, and then a lot of it is supported in the developer preview Safari stream that is now available. preview Safari stream that is now available. So Safari work precedes a pace and they are doing a lot of stuff, including these web standards that have been implemented on other platforms and in other browsers, but haven't been in Safari yet. And, you know, again, you can choose an alternative browser on the Mac, but on iOS, even Chrome on iOS uses the WebKit renderer because that's the law on iOS. So this stuff coming to Safari is a big deal, especially for compatibility on iOS devices.

Yeah, I'm keen to see how it would be implemented on iOS devices because it would be more than just giving this this ability right ios starves web browsers for ram and quite frequently you i'll open up a web browser and all of my tabs have been refreshed yeah so you know stuff like that they would need to also put time into if they care about you know more than just the other things that real-time communication could enable. It's hard to imagine that they would build in RTC and have it be that you could be having a VoIP conversation over a webpage and then just close the webpage

because you're somewhere else. I think that seems dumb, right? That seems counter to the entire point. So I think they will probably solve for that and prioritize that over other things if there's still audio or video going on there. But we'll see. I should say a real-time follow-up.

Kyle Seth Gray in the chat room says, browser crashing could be catastrophic if you're recording a podcast. Actually, one of the things these apps do that's very clever is that they stream your self audio in the background up to the server so i've had browser crashes using cast before and um it saves the audio it doesn't get all of it you might you might miss a few seconds but it does a pretty good job of keeping caught up

if you have somebody on a very slow connection it will prioritize your ability to hear them over the upload and do the upload later but in most most cases, it's actually pretty safe. So it's a cool, again, I would much rather just have apps I could run on my iPad, like I run them on my Mac. But the web-based stuff has a lot of advantages in that it might actually happen earlier on iOS. And for people who are not tech savvy, who do interviews or podcasts, it's actually way better because i

don't have to walk somebody through recording their own uh microphone and that's a beautiful thing thank you for addressing that rtc rtfu that was that was really good uh watch os theater mode this will be a mode that will be coming to watch os where it projects a big screen onto the wall and nope uh it lets users quickly mute all of their sounds on their apple watch and it disables waking the screen on raising of the wrist um i'm actually happy about this i was in a movie theater a couple of weeks ago i know la la land which i enjoyed immensely i know it get it seems to get mixed reviews from people that i know i loved la la Land. And every time I would move my arm, my watch face would come on. I know.

Which is embarrassing because it's difficult to get it to stop. And I know there's a thing about putting your hand over it, but sometimes all that does is just open an app and then you're back to square one again. You will still get haptic notifications. You still get notifications to still tap you, but you need to tap the screen or press the crown to see them great yep that's i i agree i i have those exact same feelings about when you're in the theater and i think anybody you know anybody who's had their apple watch in

the theater has done that where you're you get a notification and you're suddenly your wrist lights up or you just move your wrist and and screen turns on. So that's good. And I guess the biggest story here is the developer changes that seem to be coming. I don't think necessarily because... Well, some of the review changes are not necessarily because of 10.3, I don't think, but they're happening with 10.3. And there are kind of two strands here. There is changes to

the way that customers can review your applications, if you're a developer, and a way that developers can respond to written reviews of customers. So the first off will be the way that developers can respond to written reviews of customers. So the first off will be the way that customers can review apps. So there will be a new iOS API to let developers ask for reviews inside of an application. So you're using an app and it will pop up and say, hey, would you like to review this app? Now, there are many apps that do this currently, but the way that this happens is it will then launch the app store for you then to go and leave that review. But what this does is it will, it is something, is a modal dialogue that Apple will pop up to put this in place. So you will be asked to review the app. You can just leave the star rating, press,

rate this, and you're done, and it's done done you don't get taken out of the app or anything like that um and developers are able to define which parts of their application that this could occur in so for example you won't be alerted halfway through the level of a game to write the app for example which is the thing that concerned me because the way it was originally reported you know just from from what we knew is like it could just randomly just appear at any moment um which is not the way that you want it to be uh this dialogue can be shown up to three times a year per application if a customer has already rated an application they will not be prompted to see it again and there will be a master switch in ios settings to disable these prompts for all applications. And according to some quotes that were given to John Gruber at Daring Fireball,

apparently this new API will eventually become the only allowed process for asking for reviews. But this will not be an immediate change that Apple will be mandating on developers. This is all, it's great classic carrot and stick kind of things, right? Because like the ability to review an app without leaving the app is a huge motivation for people to adopt this. But if you adopt it, you also have this limitation on how much you can ask. But you also get to know that if they reviewed your app, you don't, it won't ever bug them again, which is, I think, knowledge that they don't have right now. So that's good. And then hanging over all of it is the fact that you're going to need to implement this eventually if you want to keep asking.

Because at some point, Apple will start rejecting apps if they are asking by some other means. So, you know, it makes sense. I think it gives developers most of what they've asked for and complained about for the last eight or nine years. And I think it's actually better for everybody, right? If you really are allergic to these things, you can turn it off in your settings, but it's only going to ask you a few times a year. And if you do give it a review, then you're done. And I was listening to ATP last night from last week, and they all made the point, and I fully agree with them, which is I too do not rate apps I love very often in the app store, because it is kind of a pain. You got to leave the app. And quite honestly, when I get asked in an app to rate an app, generally, I'm not at the point

where I want to do that. I want to use the app. So being able to rate an app, generally, I'm not at the point where I want to do that. I want to use the app. So being able to very quickly say, yeah, I like this. It's a five-star app or whatever, and then move on with what I'm doing and never be asked again. I think that's great from a user standpoint too. So I think this is a win all around. Are there details to be worked out?

Sure. Are there going to be things that are going to come up that people are going to complain about? Of course. But this is like an A-plus kind of thing. This seems to so many of Apple's tweaks with the App Store, we go, well, this really asks more questions than it answers. And what is it really going to mean? And then they have to come out with a clarifying statement or something. And that is not the case with this one this one seems uh pretty solid all the way around really well thought out yeah i think that this is even what they're providing here is better for customers and it is for developers like not that it's bad for developers but like the gains that you get as a customer i think are greater than the gains that a developer gets just because it's like

it is making your apps better to use because you're not being frustrated by them. You know, it's like a less frustrating thing. Because I hate those dialogues because typically it's like a multi-stage dialogue because they want to

like, you know, first ask you if you're happy and then, hey, why don't you leave a review or tweet about us? Or if you're not happy, it's like, well, why don't you talk to our supporters? I don't want to do any of this. You've popped this thing up, and now I'm being asked in multiple different ways or told how often do I want to be told about this. I'm happy and will be happy to get this pop up. I will be more willing to leave reviews

for applications if all i have to do is tap one extra button right because i'm either going to tap cancel or the review and the only other thing i have to do is just tap the star rating so it's two taps right instead of one tap so i i will be happier for that and i mean you know and i get it from developers it's like if they release a new version, they cannot give the ability for these things to come back up again, right? Unless the year has changed. And I think if somebody dismisses it three times, so say it pops up three times in a year,

and you dismiss it every time, that person will not be asked again for another full calendar year as well. So where it's like three and a year, there's a couple of different things that mean that, which is a little bit tricky to grok. But I think that it's good. I think the thing that is better for developers than it is for customers in that way

is the fact that developers will be able to respond to reviews now. I can only see this to be a good thing. I understand that it means that this is something else that developers need to keep track of. But if you can do it correctly, you know, without trying to fight with your customers as a developer and are able to kind of keep your cool about it, especially when people are being maybe mean and nasty to you

for no reason. Sometimes it can be a lot better for the, that individual customer, but also for all prospective customers of your application. You know, if they can, if someone can take a look at your reviews and they, they can see two things,

they can see like one that some of the stuff that's maybe being said about it is wrong, you know, like say bad things about your application is said to maybe being said about it is wrong you know like so bad things about your application is said to be wrong um and also that you know you can see immediately when you're buying an application oh this this developer cares about their app and cares about their customers that they take the time to hopefully respond to them you know you can get a good feeling about the application

you're about to buy. And even a case of like, yeah, let's say that a piece of functionality is missing, but you can see the developer say like, I know this is missing right now, I'm working on it and hope to have it out within the next couple of months. You can be like, alright, that's good.

I know now that I'm not going to get this thing that I might want, but I know it's coming, so I can feel good in checking and going ahead and buying this. Again, according to statements from Apple to Daring Fireball, the replies that will be pushed, the replies in response to a review will be visually connected from developer to customer. They're not going to be threaded

but visually connected whatever that means um and that they can also be edited once afterwards so the customer can edit their review once and the developer can edit their review once and i guess that would be and it's good that they're doing this so the customer can go like oh the developer solved my thing and then the developer can go thanks very much you know like they've just would put a little line in to edit them um so yeah i think that i think that the customer review part um is maybe the one that's more interesting to me because i think it's something that's more needed and has been needed for longer than the the review dialogue honestly um look the review dialogue thing is Apple's response to an ugly trend,

but the ability for developers to be able to reply to reviews has been something the App Store has needed for a desperately long time that has been around on the Google Play Store for a very long time. Long enough that it's surprising that it's that they're doing it now nothing's changed that means that they should do this now um except for the fact that i guess that leadership has changed at the app store there was no pressure put on apple more than there has been in the past like the most pressure that was put on them for this was when Google implemented it,

but they didn't do it then. Yeah, I think Apple's attitudes toward developers are changing a little bit, and I don't want to make too big a deal of it because it's still Apple, and the relationship is always going to be Apple not prioritizing developers because Apple will prioritize itself and customers

more than developers. But I think there was, I'm going to say, I'm going to try to be delicate about this. I think in the pre jobs era, there was a huge structure about supporting developers. And in the jobs era, a lot of that was changed and a lot of the attitudes changed. And I think my perception from the outside is that some of that got dismantled. But I think the biggest change in the jobs era was a little more disdainful attitude toward developers. And if, again, developers and if again armchair analyst from the outside but i can tell you with a few examples that i experienced and i saw people experience that steve jobs had an attitude that people who weren't apple who were making businesses and profits and livings off of accessories and

apps and add-ons and anything that was sort of about Apple, but weren't inside Apple, were kind of distasteful because they were making a living on Apple's greatness. And I legitimately believe that Steve always had a problem with third-party people. Not that he didn't know that they needed to exist, because they absolutely did, but that I never really thought that he treated them with anything but kind of begrudging acceptance at best yeah like it was a shame that they had to exist yeah oh yeah yeah and and then at worst it was with uh kind of repulsion and disdain and you know the fact that you're you know and viewing them as parasites and i think that

there were examples of both, I think. And you can see it in a lot of things like the existence of the iPod Hi-Fi, which really existed out of spite because they thought that Bose was making too much money with the sound dock. And they wanted to steal that money away with their great, brilliant Apple product, which failed. And I think it goes to the App Store philosophy over the course of whatever, eight or nine years, where I think that once that prioritization and thought was in there, and I'm not saying that individual people who worked in the App Store and developer relations felt this way, but I'm feeling like from the top, there was a culture of kind of not caring too much about what the developers said they needed because one, they weren't inside Apple and they should be grateful for what they've been given. And two, the app store was doing so well and the app developers were supposedly doing

so well. There's so much money there that everybody should just kind of be quiet and accepted. And as with a lot of things that, you know, Steve jobs was imperfect. A lot of things that, you know, Steve Jobs wasn't perfect. A lot of things that I think he did were, he had some attitudes that were harmful or negative about things, you know, blind spots that he had about Apple. I think getting into the whole lawsuit thing with Samsung is another example of that. But I think this is one of those examples where Steve's been gone long enough and the corporate culture has changed enough that it's, you know, it's, I don't even want to say safe. It's okay for

those precepts that were instilled in the culture early on to kind of fade away. And honestly, I think that's what we're seeing. I think that's what we've seen over the last year or two since Phil Schiller took over the group is this is an example of like, they could have done this. They could have done this eight years ago. They could have done this six years ago. They could have done a version of this a long time ago. But I think culturally, it was like, you know, not something to do. Like, let's not do that.

I don't know whether that was a specific directive or whether it was just part of the cultural feeling about like, this is how we, this is what developers get, and this is what they don't get. The only thing I would say that I feel like is still there, that is an open question. And this came up when there was a lawsuit, I think, about the App Store and about Apple, how Apple treats App Store sales. And Apple made a claim in, I think not in a legal document, but maybe in a press statement, that app purchasers are not Apple's customers. They're the customers of the developers. And all Apple is doing is providing a storefront. And I know that a lot of developers really rolled their eyes hard at that one because app developers don't know who buys their apps on the App Store.

They're not given customer information. They're not given any way to contact those people. And that's another example of this kind of approach to developers, which is, you know, you guys should be lucky that you get money from us. You don't get to know who your customers are. And will that change? I don't know. There are lots of issues about that, about privacy, you know, providing access to those people and their information is they would have to those people and their information. They would have to update the Apple privacy policy. But it's of a kind with some of this other stuff.

So maybe it will change because I didn't think that developers would ever be given the opportunity to respond to App Store reviews. And look where we are. So, yeah, some big changes. There was nothing in 10.3 for what we were really looking for, which was the iPad. I'm not really sure what that says yet,

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support of Upgrade and Reeling FM. So you wrote a review of a new keyboard that you've been trying out for the ipad pro yeah i bought um in december i bought the bridge keyboard the bridge 12.9 and bridge is spelt with a y just like all the cool names bridge keyboard is uh they make a bunch of different keyboards for ipads and microsoft surface as well and they're the way they do it is they build these keyboards with um metal clamps that are uh hinged and the idea there is you slide the uh tablet into the the clamps they're padded they're soft padded um clamps and you just slide it in and at that point it's a laptop like it's in laptop mode to and like literally laptop no kickstand or anything like that you can put it on your lap and adjust it to whatever angle and the screen which is your

tablet just sits there and then the bottom part is a bluetooth Bluetooth keyboard with keyboard movement that is quite similar, I would say, to the – it's not exact, but it's close to the MacBook Air, the kind of previous generation Apple keyboard. On those hinges, how do they react to cases? Can you keep a smart cover on? Nope. Nothing? Nope. Nothing. Okay.

Nothing. Can you keep a smart cover on? Nope. Nothing. Okay. Nothing. You got to have no case because it is calibrated for the thickness of the device. And so it goes in snugly. It doesn't mark them up or anything because there are sort of rubber covered hinges, but they are exactly the right size.

In fact, you have to kind of learn. The first time I tried it, I completely failed to get it in there. But I you kind of have to tilt it. And then and then the laptop or the iPad screen will will if you tilt it right, it'll it'll settle into the hinges and then and then it's in and once you're trained, basically on how to do it, it's super easy. So you said, in your review, I think i found the best external keyboard for the 12.9 inch ipad it's the best one i've tried so far um and it's not perfect there are issues but it is the closest i've come because one of the problems is so many of these ipad keyboard thingies are not usable as laptops they have a kickstand or something so like the the uh razor one was like this which you can't like put it in your lap and use it you really it's

like a tabletop kind of scenario because the stability is lacking if you've got a kickstand coming out the back way it requires a lot more space and then you've got this kind of kickstand edge dropping down on you know back at your knees let's say if you're using a laptop it it's not and and so many of them are also a single uh angle so like the logitech create is a single angle and this one you can adjust just like you would a laptop the other thing that it has over the Logitech Create is that the Logitech Create, you have to sort of snap in. And so I find that the Logitech Create is, although it's a good product, it's bulky, but you're committing to basically having your iPad be a laptop. And I don't like that. Most of the time I use my iPad as an iPad. I had a bunch of people when I wrote this review, they said, why don't you just get

a laptop? It's like, well, I have a laptop, but I don't use it. I use my iPad because I mostly want to use my iPad as an iPad. And occasionally I want to use it as a, as a laptop. Occasionally I want a keyboard with it. And this is a, this is a really nice keyboard that can transform my iPad for the time that I use it as that. Yeah, and also, like, that's not really, like, I get why people make that argument, but it's not always a valid argument because you maybe just want to use iOS,

which you cannot get in laptop form. I think it's rarely a good argument, actually. I think it's a question that misunderstands completely the reason that people buy products like this um i did have somebody from apple who said you know we make a 13 inch macbook air uh and my response was something like someone from apple yeah and my response was with retina and a touch screen no oh no uh yeah i mean you use this with a thriving application ecosystem yeah so ipad it's using ios and i like my ipad and so when i went to hawaii i took this with me and and most of the time it was not being used right i it was just in my bag but when i there was one afternoon where i needed to do a little bit of work and and I brought that out, and now I had a laptop, essentially, that I had converted my iPad into.

And the reality is that there are not, even on the PC side, there are not a lot of good options for a laptop that's convertible into a tablet that's good as a tablet and should be primarily used as a tablet and has a lot of battery life. and should be primarily used as a tablet and has a lot of battery life. Generally, what you'll get are laptops that can be put in a tablet-esque mode, but they're heavy or they don't have good battery life. It's not, you know, there aren't a lot of alternatives to this that are really a laptop. And again, I want to use iOS and I want to use my iPad. That's the device I want to use. So this gets me there.

It gets me something that you can close it and it looks like a laptop. You can carry it around like a laptop. But in the end, if I want it to be an iPad, all I do is grab the top and pull it up and that's it. And then I have my iPad back. I don't have to unsnap it and slide it out of the plastic rails and stuff on the Logitech Create. And I should say, the other thing I like about it is it's an aluminum keyboard. It is, it's not made of plastic. It doesn't, it looks good and matches the device. And I think that that's, I think that's good.

And it weighs about what the iPad Pro weighs. So, you know, in the end, you end up with a whatever three pound laptop. It's not super lightweight. If you want to travel light, there are better options. Just a magic keyboard and a canopy would be okay. But again, not if you want to use it on your lap. If you want to use it on a tabletop, those are better options.

And how do you find the keys? They're okay. Is this something that's very important to you? They're okay. They're not as good as the keys on my MacBook Air, let's say, but they're close. They're similar. They're not quite the same, but they're close enough. And once I start using the keyboard, I kind of forget about it.

But they are more in that style. They don't feel like the new ones so much to me as the old previous generation Apple laptop. And I think you said you had some production problems on these, which I also believe Federico did as well. Yeah, Federico did too. I also believe Federico did as well. Yeah, Federico did too. And I think that's my big red flag here is that the first one I got didn't work right. And their support was really great.

And they sent me another one. And it had the exact same problem. And at that point, I was like, well, forget it. And I said, this is ridiculous. And their support was like, I agree it's ridiculous. That shouldn't have happened. I don't know what's going on. But the support person said, we have a batch right here in our main office and I have gotten one and made sure that it works fine. And I'm going to send it to you now. Return the other one at your leisure it wasn't even like amazing support that is incredible it wasn't even like wait for we'll wait for to receive yours and then send you out a new one because we've got to do this like a hostage transfer it was it was this is really bad take take the keyboard two people meet in the upstairs of a car park and they just shift one over to the other so this. So this is the one that I have now

and that works fine. And my guess is that they had a bad batch. My guess is they had something wrong with a batch of theirs where the Bluetooth was intermittent or something like that. But I got to say, I found their support great

and I ended up with a keyboard that works really well. But if you're somebody who does, who, who, for whom that is a red flag, or you don't want to deal with it again, you know, they offered me a refund, they offered me a replacement and I ended up with what I, what I wanted. Um, and so for some, some people will go into a warning like that and be like, oh, well, so if I get a bad one, they'll just replace it. And it's like, yeah, that was my experience. Other people will be like, whoa, I don't even want to bother because that sounds like they

have production problems and I don't trust them. And that's a personal decision. I was pretty much ready to just write it off as I can't even try this product because it doesn't work right. But, you know, throughout the process, I have to give them credit. Their support was spectacular and they did make it right in the end. So I have to, you know, I have to disclose that and I have to talk about that, that they, they didn't make it right. I should also say, I bought this keyboard. I didn't ask for a review unit and work with their PR people. I bought it. I never explained

that I was going to write a review of it. I just bought it. Um, and if they knew that I was somebody who writes product reviews, they certainly never let on. So I think it was a legitimate customer interaction. But buyer beware. That said, if you're somebody who is intrigued by the idea of an aluminum adjustable, truly laptopable keyboard for an iPad, a 12.9 iPad that you can get in and out of the case very quickly, an iPad, a 12.9 iPad that you can get in and out of the case very quickly, which are sort of my priorities. This is a winner. Saranda Caldwell was telling me that other than the fact that it doesn't use the smart connector, she would be into it.

And it's true. It uses Bluetooth, which means you need to turn it on when you attach it. You need to press the power button on the keyboard in order to get it to turn on. And I wish they had re-engineered it to use the smart connector. They probably could have done that, but they didn't. And so that's one thing, but it's not enough of a deal breaker for me. And the Logitech Create, I have a Logitech Create and I literally never use it because it requires you to snap it in place on the on the 12.9 snap it in place there's all this kind of fiddly stuff in order to get this enormous you know enormous

shell around your ipad and i just don't like that because most of the time i want my ipad to be an ipad yeah i've held off from getting the create for my big iPad Pro, and it's not so much the weight, it's just the fact that it doesn't really seem to be versatile for what I like the iPad Pro for. Like, if I'm going to be strapping this huge case thing on that specific iPad, I want it to be adjustable and stuff like that. And also, not being able to put the keyboard into what i kind of refer to as media mode very easily like the smart keyboard you can like flip it around the

back and stand it up you know like like like how we've always known smart covers to be right where you can do that thing where you can stand it and it can be kind of in like in movie watching kind of mode the the create nine seven is is really nice and you've got that you love it and i think it's very good but the 12 9 yeah i think i think it's just not as good because of the many reasons but i did i did order one of these based on your review because you described a couple of things that i would be interested in so I don't like the size and weight, but basically my 12.9 inch iPad now doesn't really leave the house. Like it is my, it is the main computer I use at home for doing serious work on.

Like I use my nine seven more often, but like when I'm sitting down, like especially when I'm maybe like prepping for this show, I want to have a full window of Google Docs and a full window of Apple Notes or a web browser. So I like to use the 12.9 of that. So I've got these two apps fully side by side. So I thought it would be really nice to have the ability

to have my iPad at any viewing angle. I think that would be a really nice thing that I would be willing to try out for for what i consider to be a pretty serious trade-off of it not having the smart connector like the bluetooth and the recharging is just i consider that to be a pain now because it's not necessary anymore like right you can do this with the smart connector because logitech do like it is possible um so it's i consider that a frustration but the fact that i can have the the viewing angles to be readjusted means that that's why i would choose this one over that one and the other being that it seems like from where

you described it is easier to get this on and off than the logitech oh god yes yeah but it does still frustrate me that i would then need to then go and grab a a um smart cover yeah that's what i that's exactly what i do is i take my smart cover off and slide it into the into the hinges and then when i'm done i pull it out and put the smart cover back on so like i consider it to be a frustration, but I'm willing to try it. I'm willing to see if it's a trade-off that I consider to be worth it. And as a customer experience thing, I think is good,

which I always really appreciate. They clearly have a UK or European warehouse. So I ordered it yesterday and it will be here tomorrow. And I paid for it in dollars their color availability is hilarious i was looking at that they're like uh space gray is out of stock for u.s australia and hong kong you know silver is back ordered for u.s it's very precise because they've got uh different availability in the different regions which is uh

it's funny no the hinge thing is just very clever. That's seriously what they're, what they're staking their claim to all of these keyboards that they make have that hinge. And, you know, if that's what you want is drop it in quickly and it's a laptop and then pull it right back out. And now it's not a laptop anymore. That's what it does. And then most of the, you know, most of the use I have ever had of a laptop is not with a laptop on a table.

It's actually really bad ergonomically. It's in my lap, sitting in a chair, sitting on a bed, something like that. That is how I have always used laptops. And most of the iPad keyboard things don't do that. Just like how the Surface Pro with its kickstand like doesn't do that um and you know there's a lot of weight in that ipad and so you have to have weight and uh and size to counterbalance it um and it is the exact size of the ipad so that you can close it and it looks like you know it looks like a 13 inch laptop with a kind of a hinge thing on the running on the back but it looks like

and it's color matched too that's actually pretty great it's space gray and i have a space gray ipad so a lot of things i like about it because i'm in the uk so it's not out of stock yeah see and uh it doesn't have an escape key that's the one that kills me because i you actually can like if you if you start a spotlight search and then you want to get out you can hit escape and you can't because there's no escape key on this keyboard um which I think is a weird decision. It is backlit, I should also say, which people like. I think it hurts the battery life.

I've never run out of battery with it. I occasionally will recharge it when I think, oh, I should probably recharge that keyboard. And they claim that it's got, I don't know, weeks. If you've got the backlight turned off, weeks and weeks of battery life. So it's not that big a deal. You do have to connect Bluetooth. You have to turn it on so that it connects via bluetooth so i'll report back all right next time with my feelings maybe it's for you i mean all of these things are so because they're all about ergonomics and use cases and all that like

that's the thing i've learned in trying all these different keyboards is i can't definitively say that's the keyboard for you like if i were were writing a Wirecutter article about iPad keyboards, it would be really hard because it's just like a keyboard article. At Macworld, we struggled with this, writing articles about ergonomics. There is no one answer. Everybody's bodies are different. Everybody's use cases are different. What apps do you use on your iPad? That's going to make a difference. How often do you use your iPad in keyboard mode versus not? Do you always use a case? All of these things are combined in this.

So for me and my uses, this is the best I've found so far, but it's not going to be for everybody. Today's show is also brought to you by Blue Apron. They are on a mission to make incredible home cooking meals accessible to everyone while supporting a more sustainable food system, setting the highest standards for ingredients and building a community of home chefs.

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and we'd like to thank them for their support of this show and RelayFM. Blue Apr blue apron a better way to cook just made blue apron last night oh yeah how was it it was good uh airpods help oh yeah listening to podcasts with the airpods in while i make the uh it was fantastic it was great it was. It was a panini sandwich with, so it was melted mozzarella and roast cauliflower and parmesan

cheese and red sauce. It was like an eggplant parmesan except with roasted cauliflower instead. It was really good. That does sound pretty good actually. Blue Apron, man. they know what it's about it's time for some Ask Upgrade Chris would like a history lesson

Jason Snell can you explain the history of the command key? Chris's boss calls it the Apple key was it command or the Apple logo on the original Mac? Do you know what that command logo is all about? so the Apple logo on the original Mac? And do you know what that Command logo is all about? So the Apple key goes back before the Mac, the Apple 2E, I think.

I'm not sure if the Apple 2 Plus had one. Maybe it, yeah, maybe it did. There was an Apple key that you could use for certain functions. You know, again, like a like a command kind of thing. No, it was not on the Apple two is on the Apple two plus, or the Apple two E, which I had, and there was an open Apple and a closed Apple key, in fact, to give you even more, more options for weird keyboard shortcuts and restarting the, uh, I think it was like shift open Apple reset is the reboot where the reboot keys on the Apple two way. So it starts

there as an Apple key. And then on the Mac, they ultimately went. And again, I don't know if this actually exists. I've got an original Mac keyboard right over there. I could go look. But it's something that Apple added in as the equivalent of an alt. They had a command and the option, and the idea was they were menu bar shortcuts. So that's the idea, and it's extended to this day where now we've got command and option and control. So many. The original Mac keyboard had option and command on it. Just the spinny propellery guy. The spinny propellery guy itself,

there is a history there. I can tell you about it. It basically is a thing that I think Susan Kerr saw when she was in Scandinavia. It's a symbol that's used that means like a place of interest. When I was in Denmark, I want to say, I saw it on a sign somewhere, or maybe it was in Sweden. I saw it on a sign somewhere in a park and I was like, ah, look, they're still using it. And that was the inspiration for it was that, and I don't know why it was the symbol for a

place of interest or anything like that. But that's the short version. I think there have been whole articles written about it, But that's the short version. I think there have been whole articles written about it, but that's the short version. Wikipedia says that it came into the project, the Macintosh project, at a late stage. Steve Jobs found it frustrating when Apple's filled up the Mac's menus next to key commands

because he felt this was an overuse of the company's logos. When you'd hit menu and you'd see, instead of the keyboard shortcut, you see Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple. And see apple apple and you know i can see that i don't think i would like that i think that would be like if it was still like that now i don't think i would like the way that that looked because it's company logo overuse for sure rather than just like a glyph just like a glyph. Brent wants to know how often do we try to 3D touch our iPads? I don't think I ever make this mistake.

Never. Weird, but I never do. I use 3D touch a fair bit, especially to preview things. That is, I guess, my main use. It's a way to preview messages, it's a way to preview messages, it's a way to preview emails, that kind of stuff.

And with iOS 10, I use it a lot on notifications as well, right? Because to get to a lot of useful stuff, you kind of have to. But yeah, I never seem to 3D touch my iPad and it's kind of strange that I don't really. And I don't use 3D touch very much on my phone because I sort of trained myself out of it because there weren't that many useful things.

There are more useful things now and every now and then I discover something and go, oh, I should probably do that more often. I did that actually with the Slack app recently and I realized the Slack app has 3D Touch stuff and it lets you switch to a different slack group and things like that and it's like oh i should probably use that more but um it's not particularly discoverable you just have to try to push harder on things and see what happens and i don't know um but so my my problem is the opposite which is i forget to 3d touch on my iphone not that i um not that i try to do it on my ipad the only place where I even feel it

is on Notification Center notifications where the workflow is very simple on the iPhone where you can 3D touch on something. And on the iPad, you have to swipe and open. Yeah. Also, the clear all notifications thing on the little X, you force touch that on the iPhone and you can clear all your notifications.

I wish the iPad had that. Yep. But yeah, I never trick myself or realize, oh, don't be silly. Logan has written in. Logan is a writer, an aspiring

podcaster. Logan asks a question. It always makes me smile when we get these questions if people want us to help them with their purchasing decisions, Jason. Logan wants to know, do they get a MacBook Pro or a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil and also a Mac Mini, which would be the same price as a MacBook Pro? Now, I tell you what, Logan. For me, this is an easy answer. And it is iPad Pro and a Mac Mini.

Because if you get the Mac Mini, you will be able to do everything. Right? With also the benefit of having an iPad which for me I know that your mileage may vary on this for me, the iPad Pro is the best mobile computing device available today

from the way that I work and for the type of work I like to do I prefer it to using a Mac laptop because of versatility, because of the apps, and because I don't really bring years and years of Macintosh-based productivity. So when I was building up my own personal workflows, I was doing them with very surface-level things

on both the Mac and on iOS, so I don't need the command line for things. I wouldn't even know what to do if you. So I don't need the command line for things. I wouldn't even know what to do if you told me to do something with the command line, right? Like it's just not a thing that's in my vernacular. So with an iPad Pro, you can get all of the stuff that you want to get done for your basic work and stuff like that. There is power user work you can do depending on what your bent is, like whatever you're interested in, especially if you're a writer. I mean, you can really do everything you need to do on an iPad. But then you can use the Mac Mini for

podcasting if you want to do that. I mean, there are ways to do this stuff on iOS, but if you want to go with a more simple option there, you can do that. And also with the Mac Mini, you can leave it there and you can leave something like screens, like a VNC app. And if you want to, you can use that and go over to the Mac Mini and do other things if you have a processor you want to run. Personally, I think this is a better, more versatile solution because it unlocks you to

everything. I mean, of course, a Mac Mini is not that powerful these days, but from the very basic information you're giving me, as long as your Mac Mini has got an SSD in it, I think you're going to as long as your mac mini has got an ssd in it i think you're gonna be fine my reluctance here is about the podcasting thing because podcast stuff is just not all there on the ipad and uh the prospect of recording and editing podcasts on a mac mini does not thrill me

um and so i'm kind of on the fence about this because there's much more you can do. I mean, what will the new iPads be? Will there be changes to iOS that will make this more? This might be an easier answer in a year, right, than it is now. I think it may still be a bit early. We don't have a lot of information here. I would hate to live life without having an iPad, but if I literally had to choose Mac or iPad,

I think I would have to choose Mac because there's just a bunch of things that I have to do on the Mac. Well, sure. But Logan can have best, well, can have some of both worlds. He can have, he can have a good ipad and a really really

compromised mac now if he's already got a monitor and keyboard and everything for the mac mini and he could just like swap out an older mac with a mac mini and use that there then that maybe changes the equation a little bit but i don't know i mean i i don't know it depends it's sort of like what i said about the keyboards it really depends on what your use cases are. I think the safest thing to do would be to get a MacBook Pro. But, you know, my story would probably be different in a year. We'll see. I mean, a Mac Mini is totally fine for a podcast, like for recording and editing a show.

I mean, it's totally fine. It's going to be slow in places, but you can really get it done on that. You don't need a new MacBook Pro if the main Mac thing you're doing is recording and editing a podcast. That's the answer, I think, in a nutshell, is how much do you want an iPad

and how much do you want a Mac? Because you can get a really fast mac or you can get a slow mac but it'll do the job and an ipad and that's way more flexible i i will grant you but um i don't know i don't know or get a macbook and an ipad i don't know even i'm not sure peripherals yeah yeah you want to be full of peripherals of those two devices it's true I don't know. Even I'm not sure. Peripherals. Yeah. Your world would be full of peripherals of those two devices. It's true.

Lucas wants to know what model of Wacom tablet I use. I don't do any graphics work, but I use a Wacom tablet as my input method because it's more comfortable for me. I use the Intuos Pro, and there are a couple of different sizes for this. Pro and there are a couple of different sizes for this. I use the medium sized model but there is a small and a large and basically it's you know you get a obviously a bigger tablet size and you also get more function buttons on the larger ones. So yeah, it's dependent on what you're looking for there, how much desk space you have. Obviously, the bigger it is, the more you will have to move your arm around.

So that's up to you. But I really recommend it. And I will say to anyone, if you've never used the Wacom for input before and you're interested in trying it out, there are a couple of things that you need to know. Gray taught me this before I started using it. There is one setting that you really should follow, which is it seems strange at first, but it will really make you feel better. In the mapping section, you want to make it pen mode because then what it does is it maps it one to one so the top left of the tablet is the top left of your screen etc as opposed to mouse mode which follows kind of the way that a mouse would where

kind of wherever you put the tablet let your pen over the tablet the cursor starts from there and then you move it right like if you put your finger on the top right of your trackpad it doesn't take the pointer to the top right of the screen the pointer just stays where it is and your movement starts from that point but that's not that's not really the best way to use a a pen tablet really you should be kind of mapping the screen so if you do that like the bigger the tablet the more you'll be moving your arm around but whilst it feels weird at first is it is totally the best way to use one of these devices the other thing that i will say is if you do want to do this and you don't like it at first just try and live with it for a couple of days like because it really at first feels like something

you don't enjoy but after you kind of live with it for a couple of days, you learn how to use the device, I would never go back to a mouse now. And I use a trackpad and a Wacom. I use them for different things. But for my general kind of just using a computer, mousing around interface, I use a Wacom because it's more comfortable for me. Last up today, Jay has asked, when we record our show via Skype, as Jason mentioned earlier on in has asked when we record our show via Skype as Jason mentioned earlier on in the show that we record via Skype do we do video or just audio we do just audio

yes that way you don't have to see my pajamas well it's you and your pajamas is not I'm not too worried about that we've shared a room together I've seen you in pajamas pajamas is not... I'm not too worried about that. We've shared a room together. I've seen you in pajamas. That's true. My main thing is

if the show is intended to be consumed as audio, then we should just only hear each other, is my thinking. Because whenever there is video involved, it is very easy for if i'm describing something to jason for me to just show it to him and then i don't do a good enough job of describing it for our audio listeners or use body language or facial expressions to get it across it's a natural part of how humans communicate and if you can see other people you start trying to communicate in that way

and it's very hard i mean we've i've mentioned this before, but like being on one of the Twitch shows, you have that a lot where I think the bulk of their listeners are still listeners and not viewers. And even the people who are watching on video, I suspect a lot of them are not avidly watching the screen. They've got it on a window or a corner or something, but they're mostly listening. And you in on those shows, you very quickly start to think that everybody can see you because there are monitors all around you and people are producing it for video. And it leads to things that I will say and then I'll think to myself, nobody listening is going to understand what I just did because they can't see me even though I know that there's a video version. So it's dangerous to even people who've been doing this a while to start getting in that mode of, um, of visuals. And even if we had a video version

of this show, which I would hate because I would have to get up early on Monday morning and, and make myself presentable. Um, but, uh, it would be, even if we did it that way, I think it would hurt the audio version because we would start to make assumptions about visuals that weren't accurate all right that wraps up this week's show if you want to find our show notes today go to relay.fm oh jason just turned his video on he's now waving at me everybody see this is what happens it's a disaster when we do video disaster wearing an orange giants t-shirt it's not a jersey no not a jersey

here's the interesting thing right now is I am looking into your eyes but you can't see that because I'm just looking at my screen no I'm looking into your eyes too but it's just an icon I've turned my video on for you now so you don't feel alone oh my god this is a disaster look this podcast is ruined now it's ruined forever

look I see your Amazon box right there relay.fm upgrade 126 for our show notes today thanks again to our sponsors the fine folk over at encapsular blue apron and fresh books if you want to find jason online he's at sixcolors.com and theincorparable.com. And he is at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. And I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. We'll be back next time. Don't forget, hashtag AskUpgrade if you have any questions for us to answer on the show. Until then, say goodbye, Mr. Snell. I'm waving. Goodbye!