Upgrade - 127: Congratulations, You're an Analyst

Episode Date: February 6, 2017

This week Myke runs the numbers and shows why the decline of the iPad is overhyped and why it’s a more popular computing device than the Mac. Plus we break down Apple’s latest financial results and define what a quarter means.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 127 today's show is brought to you by mac weldon encapsula and squarespace my name is mike curly i am joined by jason snell hi mike curly how are you i'm very well jason s snail oh look at that i was a poet and i didn't even know it uh how are you fine mike hurley i'm feeling churlish nope i didn't do it sorry very close now we have a big show planned today and we actually start off with quite a lot of follow-up so we should just jump straight in. I mentioned last week that I bought one of those bridge keyboards that we were talking about. So my unit arrived and it doesn't work.

I have the missed keys issue. Yeah, so it's the same thing that I saw twice. And that Federico had as well. Yeah, they obviously just got a bad batch of keyboards and it is i feel like they should maybe test all their keyboards if this is this has happened every person that i know that has bought one of these has had this problem so i was talking with their support team they gave me some things to try which i didn't bother doing because i knew it was pointless yeah um uh i i disconnected and reconnected it but that was it i didn't bother doing because i knew it was pointless yeah um uh i i disconnected and

reconnected it but that was it i wasn't going to erase my mic network settings i'm not doing any of that this is unnecessary um i did that but it does nothing okay i did i didn't do it because i know other people have had this problem right like this isn't isolated to my ipad like i'm very confident of that so i am going to send it back to them in the hopes of trying to get a working replacement i'm going to give it one go even though this is very frustrating and i have to send it via a tracked method and everything yeah but i'm gonna do it because this is a this is a cool product like it's a us layout keyboard which sucks i'm not happy about that but they only have one layout what's wrong with the us and we weren't we

shouldn't get into it the main problem is just it's just the return key slash enter key being the wrong size which means that i hit the keys incorrectly it's the right size but yeah okay it's the right size for you i i you know i that one is better than the other. Keys shouldn't have a right angle in them. That's my opinion. My argument is not which is best. It is the fact that I am used to something. That's my argument. That's true.

You've been using weird keys your whole life. I get it. That key shape is super weird. I don't know why it's that way. It doesn't make any sense, but it is the way that it is. Anyway, also when I used it, because I did try it out a little bit, it feels like my iPad is really far away from me, which is strange. Like it's as far away, you know, as a MacBook screen would be.

Like when I use the smart keyboard, my iPad is way closer because there's such fewer keys, right? And they're all squished up. That's true. And there is a part of me that is wondering if that is intentional on apple's part like that's why there is only so few rows of keys etc etc maybe maybe i do get arm fatigue when i'm like reaching out like that and i know the arm fatigue is like a nothing but some of it is the physics of the way the smart keyboard works too right i mean i think physics comes first they had to have it be something that fits like a keyboard and that you can fold over and have it actually stand up

and all of that and and and you know they had to have the base the size that it is but it does have the uh secondary effect of having you be your you know your keyboard is very close to the screen but the reason i want this the reason i'm going through this what i consider to be massive and i hate returning things i hate returning me too and i'm i'm very frustrated that i have to do this considering that you know this shouldn't be a problem because they know it's a problem this shouldn't still be happening but it is yeah i agree that's that's why i'm so as much as i like the keyboard that i've got now why i i was hesitant about writing my review and I put in the whole thing about this problem is the same thing, which is it's great that they gave good customer support to me after the fact. why they are wasting everybody's time shipping out defective units and not just re-evaluating their entire uh their entire warehouse and uh pulling the units that are no good but the reason

that i'm going through this is because the hinge is amazing it is being able to position my ipad into any like orientation any degree, I really want that feature. And for me, it was not just the repositioning of it, which is huge, but also the fact that I can use it without any feelings of instability on my lap, sitting on a couch, sitting in a beanbag chair, wherever, not just on a table, but on my lap. And no other iPad case other than the ones where you

snap it in and turn it into a laptop like the logitech ones have given me that kind of feeling of of stability and that hinge is great right the logitech one it's still one or maybe it's got like a couple different angles you can place no no you can't because it's the smart connector actually the smart connector makes it that way i feel like there's an opportunity here for somebody um i connector makes it that way. I feel like there's an opportunity here for somebody. I hope Bridge gets it together, but I feel like there's an opportunity here for somebody else to do a design similar to this, maybe with a smart connector. You could do it. Because that would eliminate the Bluetooth issues. But having that padded hinge that allows you to hold that iPad in any angle and use it on your lap, it's so good.

And then it makes it so easy to take the ipad out when you're done with it which is also great so i'll let you know how this goes probably a couple of weeks away from getting a replacement one and i really hope that it works like i really hope they get it together when i send them the i mean i i said to them in the emails like i know this is a problem that you have so when i send them the tracking information that they want, I can be like, please, please send me one that works. That's all I ask. That's all I ask. There is a currently, if you're an education, this is a student or you're an educator, there's just a deal that Apple's doing that I think is so good.

I just wanted to mention. You can get a ton of their pro apps so logic pro 10 final cut pro 10 motion 5 compressor 4 and main stage 3 for 199 this is a saving of 430 so you could basically for the price of logic you get all of those apps i think if you are in education and you're interested in this stuff i recommend getting that because that is a very, very good deal. Don't see that stuff very often, so I wanted to mention it. Yeah, great. That's a great deal. I also wanted to do some follow-out to a blog post written by Oisin of Castro.

He has posed the idea of Apple using rich notifications for their new in-app review system over modal dialog boxes. Remember we were talking about this last week, the fact that this will pop up inside of apps and ask you like, hey, rate this app. And the argument that she makes is like, you're interrupting someone, even though you're telling them where you can place this, it's still an interruption. And if there was a notification that came up and you could pull down and then make the rating, that would be way better because people can get to it when they want to and even after like they could have closed the application and could be checking their notifications later on and then

could could rate the application so i think that's a is actually a really nice implementation of this and you know there is a radar that oceana's raisin is linked in the post so if you agree with it you can dupe it it just seems like just a terrible system for so the number one reason that i don't rate apps in app is actually that i'm doing something else in that app that i want to keep doing when i'm not just sitting and like letting the application do its thing like you're you're doing stuff it is, you're doing something. I just like to have apps open and I look at them and I wonder, I ponder them

and wonder what they might do next. And no, right? We're always using mobile apps are much more than desktop apps. You're always using them or they don't exist. Those are the two states almost always of mobile apps. So the modal dialogues are bad in any, for those who don't states, almost always, of mobile apps. So the modal, modal dialogues are bad in any, for those who don't know, modal dialogue, right, where something pops up and you

literally cannot do anything else until you dismiss it. Those have been known, I'm going to sound a little like John Syracuse here, but like, in the 80s, in the 90s, we knew that modal dialogues were terrible user experience, right? And people who remember the old days of the Mac, there was a time when a modal dialogue literally stopped everything on your computer. You couldn't switch to another app. You just had to deal with the modal dialogue. They're still bad, and they need to go away.

Now, I get how developers might be feeling like well no but i want to get in their faces i don't want to uh just be a notification that they can ignore and i see that but um i wonder if there's some sort of combination that might be good because i actually think this would be better for users and it might be not it might just be different for developers i'd love to see like either that the developers get a choice uh or that the user gets a choice or that the uh in-app review notification thing you know whatever it is the api gets modified so maybe you get a push notification uh simultaneous with the in-app and then dismissing it i don't know quite how to do it but maybe there's a way to to split the difference here uh because i do think that you're more likely to get

uh a user when they're not in the middle of doing something so a good idea very good idea post machine we have booked in our next mic at the moviesies episode of Upgrade. Yes, you sent me a message this weekend saying, I think it's time. And we have a little spreadsheet that I've been collecting of movies that you've seen, or you haven't seen and I have seen. And actually a few that you've seen and I haven't, or that we both haven't seen.

And I decided to go with, to continue with our 80s theme. And so I am happy to unveil today that for Mike and the Movies on February 20th, we will be watching 1984's James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton epic, The Terminator. So this will be on February 20th. And I would like to just state for the record right now i saw this movie when i was a kid i remember nothing yeah it is in my notes column i've got hasn't seen hasn't seen hasn't seen saw but don't remember i remember when i was a kid i

had a terminator action figure thing it was a really large very detailed action figure thing. It was a really large, very detailed action figure of like the melted off skin and you could press buttons and he would say like, hasta la vista, baby. Stuff like that. So that's from Terminator 2 though. So you may have seen Terminator 2

and not the original Terminator. Terminator 2 was a much bigger hit and is a very different kind of movie. It's sort of like Alien alien and aliens in some ways speaking of james cameron uh but we and we may get to we may yet get to terminator 2 but we must start with the terminator where where uh yes so how else would i understand terminator 2 i haven't seen terminator right i'm assuming that the lore is strong yeah unfortunately there's one of those thing crawls at the beginning that tells you the entire premise at the beginning of terminator 2 but then it turns into a pretty great action

movie so terminator is a very different feel we did this as an incomparable episode last year year before last so um but i'm fun i'm happy to revisit it as a movie that you either haven't seen or can't remember let's talk about about Apple's earnings. Now, we have one product category that we're going to take some time today to discuss in detail. You can probably guess which one, but it's worth, I think, maybe breaking down a couple of the numbers. Just to kind of follow up on us talking about this last week, Apple had a record quarter in many ways. This is for Q... It's the Q1 earnings for Q4's performance.

Yeah, first quarter of 2017, fiscal quarter, which is, in human calendar terms, the last three months, more or less, of calendar year 2016, the 2016 holiday season, which is called the first fiscal quarter of 2017 by Apple, because Apple's fiscal year doesn't start on January 1st. It starts on October 1st, thereabouts. Although therein lies a tale of exactly how long the quarter is that we'll get to. So they had a record revenue of $78.4 billion. This is the highest revenue recorded in a single quarter.

Right, as they predicted last quarter when they gave their guidance. The second highest profit of all time is $17.9 billion. And I assume there was like currency reasons and just markets and such. The most iPhones sold in a quarter was $78.2 million, beating Q1 2016, which sold $74.8 million. Mac revenue was $7.2 billion, the highest ever. Services revenue was $6.4 billion, the highest ever. And Tim claims the most Apple Watches sold in a quarter. And very strong. And Apple Watch revenue was 6.4 billion the highest ever and tim claims the most apple

watches sold in a quarter yeah and very strong watch revenue too he said he said both of those things so i updated my bezos chart to say best ever for this quarter we now know that once again the apple watches has hit a a best ever high in things so we don't know any numbers based on these numbers apple is back into growth territory it's not crazy growth but it's growth and i was thinking to myself how did they do this like how did they sell more iphones than ever before when like it was categorically known that q1 2016 performed so well because of pent-up demand for larger phones, right? So, you know, on all of the things. All of the things that they did, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Like, how did they do this? So, would you like to tell me what they did or what happened, maybe, that led to this? So, well, one thing they did is they had a good holiday quarter. It's always their best quarter of the year is the holiday quarter. They sell a lot of stuff and they sold a lot of stuff again. So on a very gross level, that's what they did. They also guided to 76 to 78 billion in revenue and they hit 78.4 billion. So they went above their guidance, which means that Wall Street reacted incredibly positively to this for a couple reasons.

One is they beat their guidance, which means the business is actually doing better than Apple said that they were going to do. And the guidance gets built into the stock price because that's not a secret. Everybody knows Apple says we're going to make between $76 and $78 next quarter. And they beat that. So they did better than Apple expected, actually, or at least better than Apple was willing to predict. And then their guidance for next quarter was good, too. So the stock goes up. One of the funny things about this is it has to do with our stupid calendar, which is that there are a couple different ways you can handle financial

quarters. You can base them on weeks or you can base them on months. The challenge with basing them on months is that the months are different sizes and the months start on different days. And so a lot of accounting, what they want to do is have every week start on the same day, and then they count weeks for their quarters. So instead of saying it's the last three months of the year, it's actually the last 13 weeks of the year. However, if you do that, you will eventually, because of the stupid revolution of the earth around the sun, you will need a leap quarter, where one quarter gets 14 weeks. Otherwise

your quarters will really start to drift away from the calendar. And so this quarter, this holiday quarter was a 14 week quarter when they're usually 13 weeks. And this happens every like four or five years that Apple has a 14-week quarter. It was disclosed in the financial statements. It was talked about on the call. But, you know, a lot of the headlines are, and, you know, I did this. All of us did this. A lot of the headlines are Apple records record quarter, year-over-year product growth on a quarterly basis. Those statements are true because this is how we define quarters and it gets reported in quarters. Quarters is the way

that the regulations dictate that Apple disclose. So this is how they do it. And in this case, and they don't get to just change their quarters willy nilly, they get to have these 14 week quarters every so often and say that they have them and they disclose them. But it is fair. And there were a couple links going around that pointed out that it is a 14 week quarter. And if you're if you want to drill down on Apple's performance during this quarter versus last last year, the year over year quarter, which was 13 weeks long, and do some division, you can say this actually wasn't a better quarter than last year. Well, you can't say that because the quarter is what it was. You could say that the contents of this quarter, on average, were actually down a little bit week by week from the contents of the previous quarter,

week from the contents of the previous quarter year over year because it was 14 versus 13. Now, I wrote about this at Six Colors a little bit. You could deconstruct these numbers so many different ways. The fact is they are reported quarterly. You could talk about the differences in the channel and in inventory management and one-time costs and all of that. The bottom line is it is a record quarter for Apple because atomically the disclosure works in quarters and this is a 14-week quarter. But yes, this was a longer quarter. So the comparison year over year includes more counting stats. Literally, even a slow week for Apple is going to add

when you add a 14th week, is going to boost the numbers add a 14th week is going to boost the numbers over the year ago quarter. So a smart analyst of Apple's business will look at this and say, it's essentially flat. Wall Street knows that it's a 14 week quarter. Wall Street knows what the guidance was, which was quarterly guidance for a 14 week quarter. It's not really a surprise. But if you're somebody who's trying to point to the raw numbers and say, Apple's holiday this year was appreciably better than last year,

you can make the argument that it wasn't really, because if you take out that, the fact that it, you know, the average per week was actually a little bit down, it was basically flat. And that's, you know, except for services, which was way up. So there it is. There's the statement. It gets muddy. It's not a scandal. It's not a misreporting. It is in some ways a misunderstanding of how this works. But there it is. So now, you know, the problem is, the problem is, is that the quarter is, is what Apple defined it to be. So we, it's, I think not very productive. If you want to start taking it apart, you can, but the fact is those are the quarterly results and all the quarterly results you see going back historically with Apple are the quarter is defined by Apple. And every

four or five years, there's a 14 week quarter there it is there it is i mean the the quarter was always going to be amazing it may have not beaten the year ago or it may have just beaten it right like but there is something to say that maybe this might be why it was record all around was that they had one one more week to do it it was it was a very good quarter in their best time of year and they got an extra week in the best time of year for them yeah it was and you put those together and that's why it's a clear record instead of what it would have been probably if they had cut off that 13th week and said that the 14th week was going to be this quarter in which case it would have been down slightly

very slightly from last year and would have been the second biggest quarter in Apple history. That it wouldn't, you know, that's, that's, it's a fine point to make, but there it is. Now, there is one more story from the earnings report, and that is the story of our friend, the iPad. We're going to get into that just after we thank Mack Weldon for supporting this week's episode. Mack Weldon makes incredible underwear, socks, shirts, undershirts, hoodies, and sweatpants that are better than whatever you're wearing right now. Are you wearing them, Jason? What are you wearing right now? Are you wearing Mack Weldon right now?

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If I had my way, I would just live the entire year in a short-sleeved T-shirt and shorts. But I'm going to need to move to Hawaii to do that. Well, I mean, you do live in California. Oh, in the summertime summertime in the spring and summer it's only in the winter that i switch to like sweats or flannel pants and uh and and uh the heavy heavier hoodies but yes i'm not i'm not complaining i mean i don't live in minnesota

but uh if i had my way i would just wear yeah shorts and a t-shirt all year long. Let's talk about our friendly iPad. All right. The iPad was the only product line that did not set a sales record in the previous quarter. That's true. Which is a bit of an understatement. But the iPad sold 13.1 million units compared to 16.1 million last year. And ASP was down two year over year. Now, I would like to

read some stats and thoughts from our good friend at the show, Mr. Tim Cook. He provided some more color on the conference call, which you collected up into tweets. Who was doing the live tweeting? Was that you or Dan? That was Dan on Six Colors Events. I was building charts

and things like that yeah he did a great job as always as always dan moran he's the man with the plan the ipod that's how i've decided to pronounce it we went through this with him when he was unconnected a couple of weeks ago dan moran just sounds more fun no it sounds more fun the ipad owns uh 85 percent of the tablet market for tablets priced over 200 apple is unwilling to make a cheaper tablet and yeah this you know this could be a problem for them this could be a good thing it's kind of difficult to know what that means but it does show that they have a large part of this market which is either a good thing because they're a large part of the market or which is either a good thing because they have a large part of the market, or the iPad owns the market because the market's shrinking around it

is another way to look at it. I mean, it's difficult to know, but, you know. Yeah, either the iPad market or the tablet market is all sub-200 tablets because they've got 85% of the over $200 tablet market. And Apple, I think Apple's not interested in that market, quite frankly. I mean, making a $75 tablet like Amazon, is that really Apple's place? Does that sound like something Apple would do? I don't think so.

But the other question is just like, is it the whole tablet market? It's just kind of not there. But Apple's doing well in its segment, but it's in a market that seems really sluggish. Now, here's something that's difficult to get your head around. But Apple made some adjustments to the amount of iPads that they had in the sales channel. So last year, they boosted it with $900 million into the channel, I think to probably meet demand for the new iPad, the channel, I think to probably meet demand for the new iPad, the big one, the Pro. This year, they've removed 700 million from the channel. So this is all inventory stuff, but it puts a 1.6 million unit swing on the channel affecting the ship number, which, you know, if they would have

had that number in there, the drop wouldn't have been as bad. And as you put out, you kind of put some commentary into your post this may indicate that apple's drawing down inventory because there are new ipads in the pipeline it might also just indicate that apple's got a lot of ipads that aren't selling now explain to me then so the number that apple report it shipped not not sold to customer yeah it's this is a point of contention where Apple seems to... Apple always says that the numbers that they give on sales figures are the numbers that they sold to customers. But it sounds like that's not entirely true, that they put them in the channel and they, and they anticipate that they'll sell and then they don't. Um, but I'm, I'm unclear on the

mechanics and exactly what they're reporting, but that's the idea is that, is that they take a hit. I'm also not sure if it's the numbers of, uh, sales versus the revenue figure, if they're taking the revenue figure and tweaking it because they've got stuff that they're that they're pulling back also sometimes what happens is that in order to move their inventory what they do is they do a discount you know they put on sale somewhere and that pushes the ASPs down the selling prices but it it moves units because they're trying to get the glut out of the channel So I'm unclear on this point because I've been told at various points that it is a sell-in number, which is essentially we put it in the store and at that point we call it a sale for retail purposes.

Or we sell it, you know, we give it a best buy and then for retail purposes we sold it. I've also been told at other times by Apple that when they report a sales figure, it means that the product actually sold. So I am not quite clear on exactly what they're doing today. Tim said that they got the demand wrong for the quarter, and apparently they did not make enough iPads to sell, which is strange because they removed them from the channel, but then said it was a very peculiar statement.

But that's really vague, right? It may be that they got demand of some model wrong that's my read on that is that there were some models that they couldn't they they've gotten demand wrong and couldn't make up and that might be the question is what are those models it looks based on their average selling price i don't know maybe it's the low-end models or maybe it's the high end models. And that's why the average selling price dipped is that they actually got demand for the 9.7 pro wrong. And, uh, so they couldn't make those fast enough. It also could be that like the mini mini headboard demand, and they stopped making those and they couldn't fulfill demand. I don't know, but, uh, it looks like there's a... What this says to me in the big picture is that even Apple is not quite sure what people want iPads for and which iPads they want.

Because they are pretty good at nailing demand. Other than when they're having issues of spinning up a new product, they're pretty good at fulfilling demand. When they spin up a new product, sometimes're pretty good at fulfilling demand. When they spin up a new product, sometimes demand just exceeds the supply that they can offer. But in this case, there's no new iPad to speak of and they just made a wrong call. And that's interesting in the sense that

it's not too often that Apple cops to being surprised about demand for a product. They did it with the iPhone SE last year where that exceeded demand for a launch product. But this is an existing product with existing trends, and they seem to just get it wrong. No new iPad could have been a factor. There was no new device in the last quarter of the year, which hasn't been that way for a while. I think we're still believing, well, we very strongly believe there will be new devices this year, the timing

who knows but spring was our initial expectation which would be the anniversary of the 10.9 inch iPad Pro, the 9.7 inch iPad Pro it would be the anniversary of the last new one the 10.9 was in the fall the late fall

the 12.9 was the late fall of the previous year so the late late fall the 12.9 was the late fall of uh of of the previous year so the ipad i mean those two ones are the only ones that have been updated anytime recently and those are both basically coming up a year plus so it's a it's it's i think that's one of the issues with the ipad is there's there's nothing. Tim did say we have exciting things coming, whatever that would mean. I mean, he always says that about the iPad. Yeah, he does.

I'm holding out hope. Also, customer satisfaction is through the roof, not necessarily off the charts, but through the roof with 99% customer satisfaction. Yeah, I mean, and the point there, I felt like he was kind of talking himself into getting to, uh, being bullish on the iPad. Like he's always said, I'm, we're bullish on the iPad. He's been saying the same thing, right. For several years now, as iPad sales have been going down, it's like, no, no, we think long-term it's great. And they would give reasons.

And this time he started out much more, almost hesitant with the language he was using, but by the end he had built up a head of steam and seems to have convinced himself that he was bullish on the iPad. And this is, this is one of those kind of examples about it where they're, you know, they're finding ways to say positive things about the product and customer sat, you know, Tim loves that. But the fact is, basically, what they're saying is people who buy the iPad love it. And then a lot of the people buying iPads now have never bought an iPad before. So his point to analysts in the call was Apple believes that this is not a saturated market and that there's a lot of potential there, which means that really when you look at the numbers, that also means that Apple believes that there are a lot of iPads that are just still in use. And so if sales

are coming from new users, that means the existing iPad users either abandon their iPads or love them and still use them and don't need a new one. And then he points at customer satisfaction and says they love their iPad. So that's not it. And, you know, and then you draw a dotted line and there's a cloud and a question mark and you move on. But that's how Tim got from okay to bullish by the end of that statement. So as is normal with the results now, especially concerning the iPad, these statistics led to a lot of people questioning the iPad's future, like what its place is and what its future is because the product continues to decline from a

unit sales perspective. Marco Arment wrote a post comparing the decline of iPad sales to the stability of Mac sales. Marco questions the idea of the iPad being the future of computing, which is something that a lot of people believe. As I've said on this show and in other places, I personally believe the iPad is closer to the future of computing than the mac is like whatever it is that replaces the mac i think it's closer to the ipad than the mac um that's my own belief on that but marco's kind of saying that the sales numbers may prove this to be inaccurate and he says what if like so much in technology

the ipad is mostly just additive rather than largely replacing PCs and Macs, and furthermore, had a cooling fad effect as initial enthusiasm wore off and customers came to this conclusion. So he's saying that people were originally really excited, hence why it used to sell so well, and now people don't care about the iPad. That's why it's continuing to decline, and that the Mac has been unaffected by the ipad from a sales

perspective as the mac has continued to sell very steadily and then similarly on atp this week the guys discussed the ipad and questioned if people are really using it for anything other than entertainment and questioned if it was possible to really for it to replace the mac or pc they that's a uh i listened to that whole episode I usually do, but that was a difficult episode to listen to at a few points because I felt like they were arguing different points against each other. And so it got really confusing because I think John and Marco were making a lot of arguments that were about specific use cases and Casey was talking about more broad use cases. And,

um, you know, there, there was a lot, a lot there, but I think it's interesting. It was an interesting conversation. And I think Marco's post was really interesting.

Um, I think there's, there's a lot to unpack here. And I, I suspect that we're about to do that because I looked at how much you've put in our show notes about this and you, you are going to go off on a rant in a little bit. Uh,

you've taken some, you've done your homework. Yeah. I to go off on a rant in a little bit. You've done your homework this week. Yeah, I wouldn't call it a rant. I would call it a researched argument. I apologize. Rant withdrawn. But I think this is an interesting issue because I do think that a lot of Marco's reaction is about feeling that the iPad was sold

as something that it didn't deliver. And it's not about the iPad and it's not about the future of the iPad. It's more about the concept that the iPad is the future of computers and that our classical computers like PCs and Macs are not. And that as a Mac user, he is offended by that. Where John, and again, this is why they were all taking different tacks on it. John says something that I think I may have said last week on this show too, which is the iPad, it's not about like the iPad now

being the future of computers. It's that there is a future of computers that we can see. And it probably has a lot more to do with the iPad in that it's streamlined a lot of junk that computers have that we don't need, as most users don't need. But that eventual device doesn't necessarily have to be an iPad or a Mac or a PC. It could be sort of anything. But how do we get from there to here? And what device is more likely to do that? And, you know, he said, you know, Windows PCs could get there, maybe theoretically.

It could be a modified version of the Mac that loses a lot of what the Mac has to offer as a unique product, or it could be the iPad progressing and adding features, which might lead to some usability issues or might not depending on how it's designed. So it was an interesting conversation that I think got to the

heart of it in a lot of ways that this is a battle between sort of pushing back on the vision that Steve Jobs, I think, had, which was pretty soon the PCs are going to be put in the corner for specialized use and that the iPad is going to reign supreme and the reality that PCs to this point still are necessary for so many different tasks, although not necessary for other tasks. And the realization that a standard PC as we view it today is not going to be the computing device 10 years from now for most people, probably. And what's going to change between then and now and what devices is that going to be? So there's a lot bundled in here. The conversations about the iPad, we got some feedback from somebody this week who emailed and said, don't talk about the iPad. And

my response was basically, we don't take requests. Thanks very much for your feedback. I think that the iPad is interesting because it's more than just the iPad. It is about where all technology goes in the future, where all interfaces go in the future, and whether we are converging on a single device kind of future, or whether we're actually leading to a point where there's just different kinds of devices and you take your pick based on who you are or what kind of work you have to do. There's a lot in this that is not just moaning about bad iPad sales figures. All right. I have a point that I want to get across,

and we're going to talk about that just after we take a moment to thank our friends at Encapsular for supporting this week's episode. Encapsular has a worldwide network that inspects every packet that comes and goes from your website, blocking attacks against your site whilst delivering your content to your customers faster. It is a cloud service that quite simply makes your website faster and safer. Encapsular protects and accelerates over 4 million websites every single day from people who have just websites. So they're like they have a blog and they want to they have some thoughts that they

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this is where you'll find out more about their service and claim your free month. Thank you so much to Encapsulate for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, so. Here we go. I feel that a lot of the commentary about the iPad in technology media is written from a Mac or PC BIOS. written from a Mac or PC bias. So lots of people that are writing and commenting about technology today are coming at this from a place of having used the Mac for a long time. So love the Mac, people are used to the Mac, they don't want the Mac to go away. I come at these topics as someone with an iPad bias. I love the iPad, I'm used to the iPad. I want the iPad to continue to get better.

bias. I love the iPad. I'm used to the iPad. I want the iPad to continue to get better. Ideally, I would like to just work from the iPad always. I look forward to the day when I am able to do 100% of my work on the iPad reliably and comfortably. And I wanted to just lay this out there because everything that I'm about to talk about now comes from someone who has a bias towards the iPad. So the argument that I'm putting forward will be peppered with that, although I feel that there is merit to it. But I want to put that out there that like, I think Marco is definitely coming to his argument from a Mac bias. And he's looking for something in his argument that says that the Mac is the best. And I'm looking for something in my argument that says the ipad is the best there are merits to everyone's arguments but i feel it's important to say that i think it's important to disclose it but

i think you're both you're both clear on that marco has said many times uh that he is relies on the mac for his livelihood and that's you know and that's where he's coming from and he's somebody who who converted from the pc to the mac because of and and saw the benefits of it. And so really loves it. And there is that saying about how, you know, people who are raised believing something are not nearly as strong as people who convert and Marco converted. Right. So he has very strong feelings about the Mac and you have very strong feelings about the iPad. I think you're right. I mean, most people, the, the Mac and the PC are a known thing. People grow up using them and are comfortable with them. And so I think you're right. A lot of people are viewing this

from a desktop. It's very much like prove to me that the iPad is something because they want to, you know, see how it would improve their lives based on the context of being a Mac or PC user. I am proudly team both still, and I use both platforms and enjoy them both for different tasks. So I try to be, I find that there are times when I listen to these arguments and think I'm a longtime Mac user. And so therefore I am biased for the Mac. But then there are also those conversations. I'm a longtime Mac user, and so therefore I am biased for the Mac. But then there are also those conversations. We just had this on Clockwise last week where somebody was listing like there are those people who try to do lots of work on the iPad. And they mentioned Federico Vatici and Fraser Spears. And then they said, oh, and Jason, you too a little bit.

And I'm like, yeah, well, that's true too, right? So I'm trying to be a little a little more impartial here but we all bring our biases to it so go ahead lay it on me so i have an argument or a point that i want to just kind of put into the rhetoric discussing these things you know i think in the little bubble that we're in there are a bunch of arguments that we make for certain things and i want to put this one out there so So it's clear that the iPad is declining right now until it finds a stable sales level. I think this is something we've been talking about quarter after quarter. I don't think anyone feels that the iPad will go to zero. I don't think that's

what we're thinking. It's just that it's going to find a stable level like the Mac has. And then when it gets there, it will stay there. And I believe, just for whatever reason that I believe this, probably because of my bias, that the iPad's stable level will be higher than the Mac's current level. So maybe it will take a couple of years to get there, but maybe it will stop at like 7 or 8 or 9 million units a quarter on average, as opposed to the Mac's like 5.

And right now, I think that it's really worth remembering that in unit sales the ipad is currently outselling the mac on a quarterly basis by at least a factor of two sometimes three i think this is a forgotten thing yeah this is this is um a lot of the feeling about the ipad to do with revenue comparisons. I mean, you can make charts. Hey, I make charts, right? There are a few different ways you can make charts. And one of the ways you can make charts is to look at the revenue number because Apple gives you a quarterly revenue number for each product line. You can also do unit sales. And if you want to make the iPad look worse than the Mac, focus on revenue because the average Mac sells for 2.7, so almost three times the cost of the average iPad. And it's $12.50. The average

Mac selling price is about $12.50 US dollars, and it's $4.50 for an iPad. So if you want to compare units, the iPad looks way better than the Mac. So if you want to compare units, the iPad looks way better than the Mac. And if you want to compare revenue, the Mac looks a little bit better than the iPad. So my argument on this is that I would say that in these product lines, Apple probably cares more about people with the devices

and the revenue they generate just because the revenue they generate is so far away from the iPhone. Like just having more, having people with more devices in the ecosystem could add to the services. They're like,

I know revenue is of course very important, but with the, at the level that these products are, I don't know how important this actual dollar number is to Apple. Like that's something that I scratch my head over because the iPhone makes

so much money that the money made from other things is maybe not as important, but businesses work on money, so I'm very likely wrong. However, it is the unit number that has led me to thinking, because I don't know if the argument that people are trying to make is that the iPad is dying because of the revenue. I think that the argument that people are trying to make is that the iPad is dying because of the revenue. I think that the argument that people are trying to make is that the iPad is dying because there are less people buying them, that the market is shrinking. Yeah. If you look at my four-quarter rolling average unit sales or revenue sales graph for the iPad, you can see that there's a run-up and then there is a long tail down that continues. And it is that long tail down that got my wheels spinning. So the general argument is that people do not use the iPad for work.

This is an argument that is both sides, right? Lots of people say, like they were talking about it's an ATP, that nobody uses this thing for work. And when we see people using them for work, we'll know that the iPad might win, or that the iPad might replace the Mac. But until then, it's just an entertainment device. It's just a consumption device, not a creation device. Let's assume this is true. I would ask the question of how many people use the Macs that they buy for work. We don't know this figure exactly, but let's assume it's a majority.

that they buy for work. We don't know this figure exactly, but let's assume it's a majority, right? So we will assume that a minority of iPad users use their device for work and a majority of Mac users use their devices for work. But the thing that I would wonder is, how many people that want or need a computer at home are buying it to do all their work on?

Like, I would say that most people these days that use a computer for work, that computer is provided by their employer and is most likely a Windows PC. Yep. So then let's assume that people want computers at home or for their personal uses for entertainment, surfing the web, email, and maybe some work like spreadsheet stuff, is for entertainment, surfing the web, email, and maybe some work like spreadsheet stuff, document stuff. This is the basis of the argument in which people say that the iPad can be a computer replacement. Because if you think of what most people use computers for, it can and does all of those things perfectly fine or great, depending on how you approach it. So there is some work being done on these machines,

but it's also entertainment. And as I said, this doesn't encapsulate the whole market, right? Because the Mac is in the professional world and it serves that much better than the iPad can. I think there's a lot of examples too. And I think this is where a lot of growth comes from. But I think it's also a reason why the buying cycle is so long for these devices, is that lots of computers are sold to do basic functions. This goes to what you're saying about why do you buy a computer at home if your employer provides one for you when you're at work. And it's to stay in touch and it's to do kind of like fun stuff. And so much of that, that used to require a computer doesn't now. And this is when I always talk about my mom who had a MacBook Pro at one point,

right? And an iBook for a long time. And the reasoning was that she needed to do email and wanted to look at websites. And for a long time, those were the options. But there are other options now, devices that do that. And now she's iPad all the way. She has an iPad Air. And that is her device that she uses. And she doesn't use a Mac anymore. So that's an extreme example.

She's retired. She doesn't have a job that she's going home from at the end of the day and needing to check in on or anything like that. But I think it's a good example where, and I think you're right about this, that there is a large segment of people for whom a device they would buy and use at home is not being put into heavy computing use, but it used to always be a computer because you had to have a computer if you wanted to be on the internet now you could argue that the bulk of that can be taken care of via a smartphone and that for a lot of people the smartphone is enough and that they don't even need a computer at home i think there are some issues with like screen size and stuff like that that that um fit

into it not everybody's the same but i do think that that's there's a fundamental question there about the pc in general and whether most people who are coming home from work really need a traditional pc for they might want one or feel comfortable with one but do they need one for what they do on it and you know it is good to bring up the iphone but it's not the only option. Like if all anybody ever needed was the iPhone, then no iPads or Macs would be sold anymore, right? Like the iPhone does most of this stuff for most people, clearly. But it's not all that there is. And there are people that have additional needs, whether it be that they want bigger screens because they're more comfortable, etc, etc. So if we return to the premise that home computers cater for that set of tasks, right? So like entertainment, surfing the web, emails and work, which device

out of the iPad and the Mac is better? Now we can't answer that question because it's a matter of personal preference. The only indicator we have for preference is sales numbers. So if we want to look at what people at large tend to prefer, let's look at sales numbers. So if we want to look at what people at large tend to prefer, let's look at sales numbers. So what we know is that the iPad sales are currently declining. So there are fewer people buying new iPads every quarter. And I would think that given the way that the conversation has kind of turned over the last couple of years, there was just something that had been playing in my mind. I was like, well, what is there more of? Are there more Macs or are there more iPads that are currently being used? We know what the refresh rate of the Mac is

because we can see that the numbers are stable. So it's a strong refresh rate. It's not declining. People are just buying new Macs when they need them, and that works out to be $5 million and a quarter. It's a known entity at this point. But the iPad is going down, so does that mean that people are abandoning the iPad? So I thought to myself, how can we know

which device currently has more units in active use? Are there more iPad users or more Mac users? What we can look at are sales numbers. This is the only thing that we have. So let's assume, play along with me here. Let's assume that a machine that is currently defined as being in use is a modern machine. So it hasn't been replaced. It's therefore inside the refresh cycle, so it hasn't been replaced yet by somebody. It is a modern machine. And we can assume that a likely cutoff for people to update their computer is when the current one cannot run the most recent operating system.

Some people will keep it for longer. Some people will refresh it faster than that, Like people like who really care about this stuff, like we do, we buy these things on a faster basis because we want more and more and more. But I feel like a good cutoff point is can it run the recent operating system? So let's start at this point. The oldest Macs that can support Sierra go back to 2009-2010. And these were a version of the MacBook, I think it was the unibody MacBook, and a version of the iMac at the time. So 2009-2010, they're the oldest devices that can support Sierra. The oldest iPads that can run iOS 10 go back to 2012, and that's the fourth gen iPad. And then in early 2013, sorry, then in 2013, the iPad mini 2.

fourth gen iPad, and then in 2013, the iPad Mini 2. So due to the release dates of the final devices for in each of these categories, I'm going to take sales data on a quarterly basis for each of these devices and cut it off at Q3 2009 for the Mac and Q1 2013 for the iPad. Within these date ranges, Q1 2013 for the iPad. Within these date ranges, Apple sold 133 million Macs and 252 million iPads. So on a raw figure, there are twice the amount of iPads

that can run the current version of iOS than there are Macs that can run the current version of macOS. So this is even cutting out everything from 2010 to 2013 sold in the ipad where there are assumed more people still living you know working with those devices in the same that there are probably older macs as well but i'm kind of for for this the purpose of this argument because you have to

stop at some point we will class these as modern devices so they can run the current version of the operating system. So it's six and a half years of Macs and four-ish years of iPads. Yeah. So, if even though you hear these numbers, 133 million Macs and 252 million iPads, you may still assume that the current Mac user base, people currently using the Mac, is bigger than the iPad market. If you make that belief, you have to make some assumptions. And these assumptions may be as bold as every single person that's bought a Mac since 2009 is still using that Mac. And also 50% of the iPads sold in this period are no longer in use.

They're like the only ways that you can bring those numbers to break, right? And you can change things around. You can say you maybe 10% of the Macs are no longer in use and 60% of the iPads. But it feels unlikely to me that all of those devices, all of those iPads are no longer in use, right? It would be over 50% of them are not used anymore. So if I was going to pull a number out of the air as to where these devices sit, I would maybe say that of those devices, those modern devices, maybe 50% of the Macs are in use and 60% of the iPads. Because iPads, people seem to run these for longer and

there's less need for replacement. They typically tend to not be worked very hard or whatever speeds they are can cope with things. You know, there are iPads that my family members own. Like, Adina uses an iPad Mini 2 just fine. She has no reason to want to change it, right? So these devices, I think, run longer than Macs do. And also, the Mac market is more likely to refresh their machines because it's an enthusiast market and a professional market.

So if you were to say that the numbers that i pull out of the air are accurate so 50 of max and 60 of ipads of the modern devices that i've established you'd be left at 66 million max and 151 million ipads in current use so so um i checked your math against i mean this is all guesswork based on figures right we're trying to make some guesses here, this is all guesswork based on figures, right? We're trying to make some guesses here. And this is analyst stuff. Yeah, I'm just making some estimates of this stuff.

You can become an analyst now. Congratulations, you're an analyst. I am an analyst. What do you get for being an analyst? Nothing. Benedict Evans wrote a piece in the summer last year about this that I found, and we'll link to it in the show notes, the platform war's final score. And he's doing a larger bit about who's got an install base

and what platforms. But he used some different metrics. He basically guessed the estimated years of life of a product. And I think what he's saying there is that the average year of life of a Mac is probably not seven years, which is sort of where your cutoff is. And the

average lifetime of an iPad is less than your cutoff as well. But his numbers are different. Yeah, I think actually, I think he ended up with more Macs and iPads than you did. So he thinks that the life is longer, although of course, you know, percentages dwindle and all that. Anyway, he looked at how the sausage was being made and came up with some different numbers and said that he thinks that there are about, at least last summer, 250 million iPads in use and 90 million Macs. And for perspective, 880 million iPhones. We'll just throw that in there too. But his ratio of iPads to Macs is pretty close to yours. It's similar to yours. And that's because they're both based on the raw numbers, more or less, of the sales figures of iPads and Macs.

So this is the thought experiment that I'm posing here, which I have no doubt is giving many people conniptions. Even the chat room right now is very upset at me. But the reason I'm making this argument is to try and understand where should Apple place its resources? Should they be working to make the iPad greater or the Mac greater or both? Or if they have to prioritize where? And there are a bunch of arguments for each of these. But I would say personally that there being more potential modern devices to almost a factor of two is a pretty good one for the iPad. And let's throw out my modern devices to almost a factor of two is a pretty good one for the iPad. And let's throw

out my modern devices argument and just look at 2016, where Apple sold 45 million iPads compared to 18 million Macs. Throughout all of 2016, we had the exact same conversation about the fact that the iPad was failing. This was the thing that we were talking about constantly. But it still outsold the Mac over a factor of two in the year. So the iPad continues to fall, but it has a long way to fall until it is selling what the Mac sells every quarter. And even though this current belief is that the iPad is dead or not the future or just plain terrible, if this is the understood, why does it still sell twice the amount of the Mac? And again, you can say,

oh, these are iPad minis and they're being given to children. Nobody's doing real work on them. Again, is that over half of them that are being done? I don't know about that. And I don't think that's... Personally, I just don't think that that is the case. And even at the prices these days as well, iPads do start bumping up against the Mac,

so I don't even think that this is necessarily a matter of cost that people go to the iPad over the Mac. And nobody truly knows what people are using all these devices for, but as it currently stands, it's clear that more people want to buy iPads than Macs for whatever reason they're buying them for. And I think, for myself, after looking at this, I would argue that the current total active user base for the iPad exceeds the Mac.

Sure. And I don't think that this is necessarily the argument that a lot of people would expect. It wasn't the answer I expected to get. I was just wanting to confirm them. I wanted to kind of just see what it looked like. But I think I'd gotten so eaten up in the idea of the iPad as being a failing product that I had just assumed that it wasn't doing well overall. And there is undoubtedly a difference in what people use these devices for. But even if you assume that just a quarter of the people that bought iPads in 2016 were using them to get work done,

it would be pretty close, I reckon, to the amount of Mac users doing the same. Because not every Mac is bought for work. People buy Macs for the same reasons they buy iPads. And that reason can be to watch movies, but it's just a device that they prefer. So basically, all of this is because I think that the general tone right now is to call the iPad dead or a failure because of declining sales numbers.

But even though it's going down, I'm actually becoming more and more okay with the fact that these numbers are going down because I think it will stabilize. And I think that it's going to stabilize at a higher level than the Mac will. And I'm comfortable with that now. And I do think that Apple need to keep working on the iPad,

especially if they consider that they want to keep working on the Mac. There was Mac hardware, new hardware, new places that they were going with the Mac towards the end of the year. A lot of people didn't like it, but they were doing some interesting stuff. The Touch Bar is interesting to me. So in my opinion, the iPad deserves this focus, the same focus, if not more focus, because the iPad has more places it can go.

It has more potential pitfalls than the Mac does. There's more low-hanging fruit to address. And if Apple are currently able to achieve these numbers, like looking at 2016, 45 million iPads, 18 million Macs, if Apple can achieve these numbers with the iPad now, I think that they can do more if they keep pushing it. All they need to do now is find a way to stabilize these numbers build on it and then i think the ipad continues to have a good future there are a lot of things

that can be done i think the biggest issue um i think you make some good points it is very easy for people to dismiss the ipad and not understand that more people use the ipad than use the mac and that's i think that is hard for Mac users to get. I mean, I had this conversation sometimes when we talk about iTunes and what's to be done with iTunes, the idea that more iPhone users use PCs than Macs, but just do the math, right? I mean, of course, more iPhone users use PCs than Macs.

Look at the Mac market share. Look at how many iPhones are sold. It can't be like looking at your numbers or Benedict Evans' numbers. I mean, it's not physically possible that even if every Mac user had an iPhone, that, you know, look at all the other iPhones that they sell. So, right? This is like that in a way where it's hard to grasp the idea that the iPad is Apple's second most popular computing platform, not the Mac, the iPad in terms of popularity, right? I think the growth is where this all comes apart because that's where we have to say,

when does it stop? And I think you are right to make your defense of the iPad, but this is the open question is where does that number stop? Because it keeps going down and everybody, you know, all of us expect it to stop and turn around and we will find out what the buying cycle is of the iPad. But until we do that, it's an open question about whether what's really happening here is a rejection of the tablet market, that that big bump was people trying it out and realizing that they didn't really want it. Or whether it is this extension of life that an iPad Air is great, and you don't need to buy another iPad for five years.

And that's just how it's going to be. And Apple will tell you, as they did at the analyst call, that that's what they think, is people love them them and new people are buying iPads all the time. And therefore, this is going to be a great business going forward. It's just not the numbers that everybody expected. That, I think, is all a nice argument, but it's going to be met with skepticism until that quarter arrives and probably several quarters where the iPad shows stability and perhaps starts returning to growth. I don't think anybody's even expecting or wanting exponential growth from the iPad. But right now, it looks like the water is draining out of the bathtub. And that's a problem of perception for the iPad.

And it's a problem when you're trying to gauge the size of the iPad market. If you're somebody who's a software developer and you're trying to guess how much effort do I put into the iPad version of my software, you're looking at the sales figures going down and there's a real question of like, how many people could I sell this to? And you kind of don't know what's that number. So I think as much as I understand your points and I think that they're good, I think that there is always going to be skepticism applied to the iPad until we finally see some stability. And the fact is this quarter's numbers did not give us that. And in fact, I would turn it on Apple too, which is this is not just the market's fault.

This is also Apple's fault because I feel like Apple's attention to the iPad has been sporadic. I mean, I think they took their eye off the ball completely when those sales figures were doing really well and they just didn't bother doing anything on the software side and they've been trying to catch up, but even that has been sporadic. And I think it's going to take multiple years of Apple really paying attention to iPad hardware and software, iOS software that unlocks the power of the iPad. Marco mentioned on ATP, and he's absolutely right. The iPad hardware, the iPad Pros are really great. And the software kind of lets them down because it's locked into some of the assumptions that

we made about what iPhones were supposed to be like 10 years ago, almost, you know, eight years ago. And so this is this is where Apple has to step up to and show its commitment to the iPad and growing the iPad. And, you know, it's not just Apple sitting there tapping its feet waiting for the iPad sales figure to turn around, they need to put in the effort to turn it around. Yeah, and the Mac doesn't need to and shouldn't try to do everything the Mac does, but it needs to get a little bit closer towards desktop than smartphone. What, did you mean the iPad there?

Yeah. You said the Mac doesn't need to do everything. Yeah, I mean the iPad. The Mac doesn't need to do everything the Mac does either, in my opinion, but the iPad needs to get closer to the desktop than it currently is, and it has done. iOS 9 made that happen. Yeah, and that's something where i've heard people say

including that atp episode boy big footnote for the atp episode here um that's something i hear a lot about like what can apple do for to make ios more like this and and the skepticism about that and and you know just windowing and things like that's like i don't know as somebody who uses an ipad a lot to get stuff done i can tell you there's a lot they can do. There's a lot that Apple can do. And they're on their way with some of it. Like the existence of the iCloud Drive app, right? It is, when people tell me now

that the iPad doesn't have a file system, I'm like, well, it does. It does. There is one now. It is sort of weird in that it's a synced with the cloud file system, but it totally has a file system. Plus it's got plugins for other services to act as again, cloud synced, but file systems. So, but it could be better. It could be a lot better. And multitasking could be a lot

better. The split screen views could be a lot better. There's so much there that they can do to your point of it being kind of low hanging fruit that I don't, I am not a believer that you look at the iPad and say, well, they can't really take it that much further because it'll break it. It's like, I don't, I don't agree with that. I think they could take it a lot further. And I think I really do believe this one, that that mythical computing device of the future is more likely to come from something like the iPad having features added to it than it is to the Mac having it being changed into it. And two, I don't want the Mac changed into it because the Mac is strong at what, you know, it's good at what it's good at. People like it for what

it's good at. I am really reluctant to see Apple take the Mac and try to iOSify it, right? Where it's going to be like more locked down and things are more obscure and all that. Like that's not what I want the Mac to do. So for both of those things, I feel like the iPad is the product to really drive this stuff forward. And if your argument is that people really just care more about their smartphones than tablets, I think the same statement goes, which is the improvements that Apple can make to iOS to make it more functional for people who want to do more with it. Some of those things may be based on the iPad because it's got such a big screen, but some of those go to the iPhone as well. So that's my argument. And it's more

that I'm attempting to just point out the fact that the iPad sells better than the Mac and what that might mean. And again, it's so easy to point to the decline of the sales numbers, and I agree with that. But as I said, my personal belief is that that will stop. It's not going to stop next quarter, but it will stop. And I think it's going to stop higher than the Mac currently is. And it's got a long way to fall before it reaches that point. And I would maybe argue that the Mac starts to sell less before that point as well.

Yeah. So when we talk about the future, I think what we, it's careful to say, don't say nobody uses the iPad because it's not true. But being concerned about the iPad's falling sales numbers and what apple's putting into and all that i think is valid but but you make a good point which is there are a lot of ipads out there and people seem to be using them and you know this is a muddy world where new devices are coming in and old devices exist and it's and it's unclear what the mix of uses is going to be. But I think it's fair to say that for some people, the tablet is the right thing, and for some people, it's not.

And that's for today. And ask us again in a year and see how it's changed. Thank you so much to Squarespace for supporting this week's show. Enter the offer code UPGRADE at checkout, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace. They let you easily create a website for that next great idea that you have and with a unique domain,

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and show your support for this show. Thanks to Squarespace for supporting RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. It is time for some Ask Upgrade. Thank you for the lasers. Brent wanted to know, will developer responses to app reviews be public?

This is something we spoke about a little bit last week. And again, Apple have not made public statements about this. They have not yet updated developer resources. But from some of the quotes that they gave to people like John Gruber, it would appear that yes, they will be. That developer responses will be public, and they will be lined up in such a way that you'll be able to see developer A is responding to customer

B and the response that they had. That's the idea. It allows the public response. If somebody says it doesn't do this, that the developer can say, actually, it does. And that's, you know, it reminds me a little bit of like Yelp reviews where somebody says, Oh, I didn't, you know, I didn't like this. And they're like, well, we're sorry, you had a bad experience. And they put in the boilerplate responses. But it does allow you to, as a developer respond to a review that's got false things in it and say, this is not accurate. We do this or we can't do this because of X.

And then people can sort of judge that back and forth. Richard asked, how sure are you about Thunderbolt 3 or USB-C iMac refresh in the spring? I'm excited to join and promote the new USB-C world and And just one confirmation, I'm making the right choice by waiting. I also maybe would expect this iMac update to be the most compatible of any future hardware features, such as Touch ID and or external touch bars. Jason, what do you think?

I am sure we answered this fellow in email. I am sure that there is a new iMac coming. Spring is a question. I would think so, since that should have been out in the fall. I think by timing-wise, I'm more confident about that than I am about new iPads in the spring. I think they could possibly slip, although I hope they don't. But new iMacs, I think they've got to be there in the spring. Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, yes. So I'm very confident.

I think if you're ready to buy a new iMac, you should wait because there's got to be one coming soon. And it's going to be the new generation with all the new stuff, which is going to be a pain to adapt to right now. But in four years or three years, when you're still using that great iMac, the last thing you want is to be on the last generation of the old ports. Frank wants to know, what apps or workflows do you use and or recommend for creating podcast show notes? So I'm not 100% sure what exactly Frank is referring to. So if Frank is asking, how do we display our show notes? Well, that's a custom CMS.

That isn't really something that we can help you with. But if you're referring to the notes that me and Jason share with each other, I would recommend Google Docs. Like we have a big outline. Jason saw all of my crazy ramblings today. Well, there's a lot of it. In our Google Doc that we share.

And I would say that with most platforms, most publishing platforms, whether it be like a Squarespace or a WordPress or whatever it is, or like Simplecast or something like that, however you're getting your podcast out to the world, they usually have, or Fireside, there are usually entries for Markdown, and that's a good way to do it as well and it's just right as a markdown

and publish them and we have some hosts at relay fm to do that as a choice you can even use our bookmarklets that we have created for our cms or you could just type all of your show notes in markdown right yeah and i i use those bookmarklets when i'm doing clockwise for example somebody will mention something and i can look up the page and tap the bookmarklet and it's added to the show notes the incomparable i need to do that by hand um and you're also writing down on a piece of paper time codes and things so that if you if you're going to do chapter markers for an episode or there are things you need to edit out that um heaven forbid that we pause the show at some point to talk about what we're going to do next, which we did earlier.

Secret. You write that stuff down, and then you go back and do it. So that's part of the process, too. But, you know, the fact is podcasting, in the end, you're feeding things out in an RSS feed. There's no unified way to get it in. It all depends on what tools you're using. And, you know, so those are the tools we use for this. Richard wants to know if we use Apple News.

I actually opened it last week because I was shamed into it by Richard. And my problem is, I feel like I need to do a lot of work to get it to be what I want it to be. And I might give it a try on my iPad because I have other sources that give me the news I want to see, but I should probably give it another run. And that's going to require a lot of customization because a lot of the stuff it shows me, I just don't care about. I don't want to see it. So I think I need to do a

lot of work on Apple news. And this is actually the reason why I never got into RSS, which is people love RSS feeds. And I never got into it because it felt like an awful lot of work to curate feeds and to mark things as unread and all of that just seemed like an awful lot. And I got my information by other sources. So I'm not using it, but I did use it last week. I may go back to it and sort of force myself to use it just to be able to get an idea of how it works today and whether it could potentially work for me if I put in that work. But I don't know. I mean, I used it a lot when it first was coming out and in beta and it didn't thrill me, but that was a while ago now. So I should probably give it another chance to at least

so at least I can talk about its current state of affairs and not have it be kind of carbonite frozen at 1.0, which is my last view of it. So I know Federico's been using it again, and I haven't spoken to him about it, but I'm sure he's happy with it because he keeps sending me

links to Apple News links. So, you know, he must be getting some utility out of it now that he's back using it again, but sending me links to Apple News links. So he must be getting some utility out of it now that he's back using it again. But I also know he uses RSS, so I haven't spoken to him about it, but I know he uses it. I have literally zero interest in getting my news in this form, so there's no point in me doing this.

I could try it out to see what it's like, but I'm not going to use it because this isn't what I do. I get my news from Twitter, and I get my news from people sharing links with me. That works perfectly fine for me without having to see a bunch of stuff I don't want to see. And that's how it works for me. I don't want to see world news stuff all the time.

I get enough of that from where I need to get it from. And technology news, anything that's important, I will see it. And this is just through Twitter. This is how I get my news in this way, and that's important, I will see it. And this is just through Twitter. This is how I get my news in this way, and that's perfectly fine for me. Chris was wondering if the theater mode setting for the Apple Watch could be leading to an always-on watch or just solving a problem. I don't necessarily follow Chris's thinking as to why theater mode would would call for an always on

watch because it kind of does the opposite of keeping it off if it's always on then a theater mode would would dim the screen or in theory yeah or shut off the screen except of during on demand i think that's his his thought here is that if your if your watch is always shining then you still need a theater mode yep um. And I don't think that, I don't think it's like a tell because I do think it's so clearly solving a problem, but you would need a theater mode for an always on watch. Yeah.

And I think that Apple have to make an always on watch. This is the next really big thing that Apple must solve. In my opinion, for the Apple watch is making that screen on all the time because all of their competitors do it. I'm a little disappointed that the watchOS 3, as much as we've praised watchOS 3, I'm a little disappointed as far as I can tell. The algorithm about sensing when your wrist is moving and turning on the screen hasn't changed. wrist is moving and turning on the screen hasn't changed and given how much battery life they saved by going to watch os3 and especially on the new models that have better battery life i'm disappointed that it isn't erring on the side of turning on that screen when it senses movement

even more but it's not so like if it if it you know if it detects that my wrist is moving a little bit it should turn it on. Just benefit of the doubt, right? And it kind of doesn't do that. And in the long run, I agree with you 100%. I think number one thing that they need to do with future Apple Watch hardware is get that screen on all the time. Even if it's not animated all the time. Even if it's not updating the contents of the complications all the time, even if the second hands go away and

the blinking stops until you move and it can tell that you're looking at it. It should be on all the time. And Reid asked, do you think Apple would ever introduce an iPad upgrade program to encourage users to upgrade sooner and increase sales numbers. So, I was talking through this argument with Adina just to see if it would make sense. So, my original argument that I made today. And she pointed out the reason that

there are so many iPhones sold is because so many people get them on plans, as some description. So, people aren't paying $1,000 a year to get an iPhone, but they do to get an ipad and i do wonder why apple doesn't try this seems like a smart move to me yeah i i think i mean they they have done like installment sales of expensive products yeah you can get anything on financing with Apple, but this isn't the same thing.

Yeah, and the idea here would be that if you got, well, first off, are they committing to a new iPad every year in the model that you want? Whereas with the iPhone, they kind of are. But I'm intrigued, like if you had a two-year plan, let's say, for iPad where you stay current on the iPad, it's an interesting idea. What you do is you turn in your old model. So there's a resale value. The idea is they refurb

that and they sell it again or they sell it used or whatever they do, those go back, those get sold somewhere else and Apple gets that money back. So you're really paying like you would for an auto lease or something. You're paying for using that period of time, but any other residual value goes back to Apple. And on one level, I'm intrigued by that. I think maybe even some of the cellular models, the carriers offer something like this. They do. Right? For the cellular iPads, right? So i think it's possible i i think the question is does apple feel like there's a market where somebody would subscribe to an ipad and if that's the case why wouldn't apple do that to everything i mean why wouldn't

you just put a macbook subscription program to available where every two years you get the newest macbook and you just pay a monthly fee and it it's in the end, you're paying the equivalent of buying a new one every two years and selling your old one at market price, but it's spread over. It's put in your bill as a monthly thing instead. And now you just are on the MacBook subscription plan. I'm a little surprised that they haven't done that, but maybe some of that is just going into the iPhone, which is their key product and doing it there and then seeing what happens but uh it's an interesting idea it is i mean it you know i find maybe something about that being interesting in which there is clearly like the move to services one of the things about services is

recurring revenue and this would do more of that, right? There would be more recurring revenue if you had all of your customers on plans. It wouldn't be service revenue. It would be hardware revenue. But yeah, it's that idea where you're doing it as an ongoing. People on the plans are getting a little bit of a deal. But what they're really getting is this kind of Apple will take care of it for you but what Apple's getting is a guaranteed new sale

every year or two so there you go alright if you would like to get in contact with us send all of your email to Jason that would be really great send it all to Jason if you want to tweet Jason is

at jsnl and he writes over at sixcolors.com and theincomparable.com you can find our show notes today at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 127 thanks again to our friends over at Mack Weldon, Encapsulate and Squarespace

for supporting this week's show we'll be back next time, until then say goodbye Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.