Upgrade - 128: Is It Any Weirder than Dashboard?

Episode Date: February 13, 2017

Jason and Myke deal with a mountain of follow-up from last week’s episode about the present and future of the iPad, and then ponder what Apple’s long-term strategy for the Mac might be.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 128 today's show is brought to you by fresh books blue apron and encapsula my name is mike hurley i am joined by mr jason snell hello mr jason snell hello this is episode 128 so shout out to the original Mac, which had 128K. Congratulations, Macintosh. Congratulations. Congratulations. Let's go straight from the Mac 128

into iPad follow-up. Sure, why not? We got a ton of iPad follow-up. As was foreseen, I think. But I will say that on the whole, the follow-up was was foreseen i think but i will say that on the whole the follow-up was very considered and thoughtful and i was very happy with it like it was it was all good there was a lot of really interesting thoughts that came from people there wasn't really any of anybody saying to me you're crazy like i think that people took in the argument that i was putting out um so i've got some snippets

that i would like to go through, some interesting tidbits and some stuff that I hadn't considered because I didn't really know about. So I think we'll start off, though, with as is something that happens quite frequently on Upgrade. We record something, we have a really good conversation, and then it sparks some thoughts for you to write a little article. And you did.

You wrote an article about the reasons to be optimistic about the iPad for Macworld in your column for Macworld. And there was just a part that I wanted to pull out of that because I think that it was an area we didn't really spend too much time on last week. And so you say, to create the future of a computing device that we believe that the iPad could be,

iOS needs better peripheral support, more sophisticated windowing and multitasking, improvements to file handling, better support for application and system automation, and a whole lot more. And I think that this is well put. I think that there are a lot of caveats to this. My feeling on windowing is not Windows

like you see on the Mac. My feeling is new ways of doing Windows, like how Picture-in-Picture is a window, you know, stuff like that. Yeah, I was actually thinking, I had a moment, one of these days I'm going to write about it, I had a moment where I was thinking

about a tabbed interface for apps where you could put different apps and different windows from apps in tabs or split sets of tabs and things like that that are not arbitrarily positioned windows on a screen maybe like we have now, but are something more than that. I had two purposes in writing this part. One is this idea that this is what we're talking about, about everybody kind of arguing slightly different things. I wanted this to be the acknowledgement that iOS is not all the way

there, right? Because some of the arguments are like, come on, you can't, you know, it doesn't have this, it doesn't have that. And it's like, yes, it doesn't have those things. And so I wanted to say, it needs a lot more work for it to get to this in the article. It's sort of like, what's that future? Imagine a device in the future it's sort of like what's that future imagine a device in the future you know an awesome mobile uh productivity device in 2025 with a big screen what does that look like um and it's like well you know that's not that far away when you think about it and how many ios versions if apple's going to skip ipad features every other ios version and be very slow to add them it's not going to get there right so that i wanted to kind

of use it as a as a little stick to poke at Apple and say, you know, if you really believe the iPad to be this thing, you have to invest in it to get it there because there's a lot of work that Apple still needs to do. We do work on it now, right? But even those of us who do work on the iPad would not, like, it's great that Federico could do what he does, right? But even Federico would argue it could be a lot simpler. It could be a lot better, you know, and, and the onus isn't just on people like the guys who do workflow to do this, right. It's on Apple to build foundational

stuff that makes the act of getting work done on the iPad, something that can be done by more people without having to jump through more, as many hoops as maybe we have to do now. So that was, that was, uh So that was my point number one. And my point number two was to say about this stuff that one of my thoughts about the iPad in general is being a part of this is screen size. And that what comes with windowing and multitasking and file handling and things like that, one of the things is my belief that ultimately in 2025, we're not going to be using a device that's four inches, five inches, six inches diagonal. I just don't believe it.

We'll have smartphones, and they're the winners of all of this, right? There's no doubt about that. But I have a hard time imagining that people are going to get work done on a little screen like that. So the question is, what do you do when you want to sit down at a desk or put something in your lap and have it be a big screen that you're doing your computing stuff on? Is that a traditional PC in the year 2025? Or is that something that's sort of like your smartphone, but a lot bigger, which is basically what a tablet is. And it comes back to this point, which is, you need more stuff if you're going to be that kind of if you're going to be that kind of uh if you're going to be that kind of device and how does how what product gets there how does the ipad get there because you know computers have a lot of advantages in that regard they do all that stuff although

they're very complex yeah we carried this conversation onto connected a little bit last week and federico brought up an interesting point in regards to Windows and applications and advancements of file systems and that sort of stuff, which I really thought was interesting and is tracking some of the way that I'm moving, which is that a lot of this stuff is moving to web apps and to web services. So there are things that are becoming less

and less important. And I know he's kind of going along the lines of Zapier and Workflow with this sort of stuff, which is roots that I'm starting to go down as well. I'm realizing how people tend to be productive on the Mac by taking advantage of scripts, right? And I'm finding out that as I'm becoming more demanding

on my iOS device, I'm doing the same thing, but using the versions that work on those devices. And they are Workflow and Zapier. And it's very interesting to see me going down that route, because I'm tracking with what I see Mac users doing. But frankly, I can understand how to build workflows and Zapier tasks. I cannot understand how to use Shell Script and to use apple script like these are things that don't track my brain but the others do and it's just interesting to see me moving down that route a little bit more as well so there there are i agree there are definitely things that apple need to do i think we all know that this is one of the things this is one of the whole reasons for my argument

last week was that apple needs to move ios advanced ios and the reason they should do that is because there's so many ipads yeah i i think we both might even agree that the the ipad's biggest uh hindrance to growth and success as a productivity device is not the market being cool on it especially since a lot of the feedback we got was from people who work on ipads and you know apple talks a lot about lot about their iPad enterprise deployments and things like that. But the hindrance is Apple's software commitment to iPad features. Because the hardware is great and there's a lot of opportunity for users, but the iOS on an iPad is not good enough.

I mean, it's good enough, but it could be much, much better in order to reach a much broader user base. So regarding this idea, Roman wrote in to ask if we think that Apple should fork iOS and create a beefed up version, a more professional version of iOS for the iPad.

And this is something I've seen many people argue, like there being an iPad OS and what that would look like. And I don't want that to happen. I think that a lot of what the iPad benefits from is that it is a shared operating system with the iPhone. And I think they both benefit from each other for that. What I want to see is just more device-specific features like split-screen multitasking. You can only do that on the iPad. And I want to see just extra things continue to be added for iOS for the iPad to take advantage of rather than Apple to kind of spin out iOS and create a new version for iPad.

I don't think that is a good idea. I mean, I'm sure that with the way that these things are developed, it's kind of made that way, right? There is a version of iOS that goes onto the iPad, but it isn't positioned as such. It isn't marketed as such. I don't want to see that happen. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's, I mean, there's a version of iOS for every single device. I think the way most of it works is that it's all just device specific. If I've got a screen of this size, then this behavior is available. And I agree with you. I think, I think the great advantage the iPad has is that it is running the same OS as the iPhone. And, uh, that makes every iPhone user, basically a potential user of the iPad because they're comfortable with the concept. It means

that every, you know, it means they can take advantage of app development and all of that. So I, I, yeah, I think that I think this is the way forward for the iPad. And if these rumors that we've heard from time to time are accurate, that what Apple's going to try to do is unsync iPad changes from iPhone changes and do iOS releases in waves where there's a big iPhone release in the fall, it's iOS 10. And then in the spring, there's a big iOS release that's 10 point something. And that's got the iPad features in it because, you know, that was the spring focus. Then great, right? Like, great. That is what the iPad needs. Because I think the iPad needs features that take advantage of the screen. Although I will say a lot of the features

that I complained about, those are also, there are people doing lots of work on their phones. Whether it's the big one, hashtag Mike was right, or whether it's the smaller one that is actually the one I like. I was going to be more insulting there and I'm going to let it go. It's not like I don't need better file handling on my iPhone when suddenly I've got a file I need to get from one place to another from out of a Dropbox into an app or out of an app into the Dropbox or however I want to do it. It's not like my iPhone couldn't use those features too. A lot of these features are not screen size dependent. System automation like workflow works on the iPhone. I don't use it on the iPhone nearly as much as I do on the iPad, but it benefits both. Yeah. So, you know, maybe windowing and multitasking is a place where

if you've got a 27 inch iPad, let's say that's like an iMac, but it's on your desk, that maybe there your apps are broken out as windows, essentially as tiles that you can float around on the screen because it's so huge that you need to use the space for that but um you know an iphone would never do that so sure there are some but you know a lot of this just these are benefits that roll up to everybody because there are people all over the world using their iphones maybe not as their primary work device although some of them are but as a work productivity device, and it makes the iPhone better too. Yeah, I mean, there are many things, there are many features that the iPad benefits

from because they're made for the iPhone. And I think it would be nice if there was some more that went the other way as well. You know, the iPhone benefits from some features that are primarily made for the iPad, and that would be like better file management and stuff like that. primarily made for the iPad, and that would be better file management and stuff like that. Many people pointed out that iPads are cheaper than Macs, and that is a potential reason for the sales numbers to be the way that they are. And I agree with this. This is 100% a reason that many people would buy an iPad over a Mac for having a device at home. But my point wasn't really last week, the iPad is best because it has more units. That wasn't really the point that I was trying to make.

It wasn't about why people spend their money the way that they do, but more because they have, what should that mean? People buy iPads because they want to get a computer, and it's the cheapest computer they can buy that Apple makes. Okay, that's a thing that has happened. And they don't necessarily do it because they love iOS. But my point is, because people have made those purchasing decisions, and there are that many iPads out in the world, that's why the focus, I believe, should be heavily on the iPad as a thing. And as you so succinctly

pointed out last week, which I really loved, the iPad is Apple's second biggest computer platform. And although I do understand that there's going to be a change in purchase behavior for a product that's half the price of the other product, the problem I have with that is people don't buy bad products. People don't buy useless dud products because they're cheaper. If the iPad didn't have appeal, they wouldn't buy them. And yes, what they're buying is, you know, maybe not the high-end iPads Apple would like, but the cheaper iPads. But I feel like that argument can be taken to an extreme that is not realistic because, yes, the iPads are cheaper.

Although, you know, my iPad Pro costs more than the MacBook Air. But in general, they're cheaper. And that was a high and a low, right? They do cross over a little bit right at the top and the bottom. But the larger point is if the iPad were useless or a dud or something like that, it wouldn't sell. And they still sell twice as many, more than twice as many as the Mac. So there's something there that is lost if you just look at the revenue. I do agree with that.

We had some anonymous feedback from somebody who works at a company that supports iPads in education at scale. So they have lots of customers with many, many iPads. And they made a great point that there are lots and lots and lots and lots. I think they said huge numbers of iPads in use in education. And these will typically be used for long periods of time before they're replaced. iPad 2s are pretty much the most common iPad in use in education right now, with the iPad 4th gen being in second place. I know the iPad 2 sounds old, but I believe Apple was still selling iPad 2s like two years ago.

So yeah, five years ago, it was a perfectly fine machine. The typical turnover rate in education is about five years so these devices these ipad 2s they're ready to be replaced but an issue that schools are having right now is that they don't want or need the pro devices right and that these are more expensive and it's not what they're looking for like the features that the ipad pro the 9.7 inch ipad pro has that make it a pro device make it more expensive device is not necessarily what schools are looking for. And that an Air 3 could help sales again, at least for the education sector. There may be, if Apple either bump down the current Pro into that market or revamp the Air 2 into make it an Air 3, so it's kind of in line with that

$499 that it used to be, this may push a lot more salaries into education, which could be significant. So that's an interesting tidbit that I had not really considered. Yeah, my son's school, they have iPad Air 1s, I believe, but they started their program last year. There you go. Well, there you go, right? They started it last year,

and that's the devices that they were going for. Yep. John wrote in to say that for him, iOS had not been a viable option for a long time as his company had a bring-your-own-device program at work in which you would log in via Citrix to access your work machine. This is exactly how I used to log in when I was at the bank. All of our terminals, there wasn't actually anything on them.

Every machine that was physically in the company has nothing on them. You logged in via Citrix always into a virtual terminal. Many security reasons for why something like this will be done. And when I was at home, I used to log in on my MacBook Pro, and it was perfectly fine to do, and you had all the authentication stuff that you needed, and passwords, and those little dongles and all that stuff. Citrix is on the iPad and has been there for a while,

but trying to use your finger in place of a mouse pointer is a nightmare because you're typically using Citrix onto a Windows environment. So as John pointed out, there are many people who have been forced into buying desktop or laptop machines because it was the only thing they could do to fulfill this need to log into their work machine. However, John told me about something that I did not know existed that I think is incredible. In 2015, Citrix released something called the X1 mouse, which allows you to use a mouse of an iPad that is running either Citrix

desktop or the Citrix applications applications or go to my PC. So you connect it via Bluetooth and it moves the mouse in the virtual environment with your iPad. It's amazing. And John has said he now basically can move to an iPad Pro and it's like a 13-inch laptop. And then when he's not using that, he can use it like an iPad. And this is a massive opportunity for large corporations to move towards the iPad

because they have a way to allow people to use their Windows environments and also to take benefit of all of the great things that iPads can do. I had no idea this thing existed. Naturally, the Citrix page for this is horrific. There's barely any product pages. It's just support pages to find out anything about it

because it's like an enterprise thing. So it's like, whatever, people are buying it. And I wanted to see if I could try and get one of these. Not easy to get. Like, it's not like on Amazon or anything. You have to buy it direct from Citrix. And then I can't really use it of anything because I don't have a server anywhere that I can log into.

However, there are videos on it on Citrix's website, and I think this is awesome. Like, just as somebody who worked in this type of environment, I would have used this, like, for sure. I would have bought one of these and then used my iPad when I was working at home. Yeah. I just think this is an incredible piece of equipment. Well, I think, and this is a conversation that we should probably have another time but i think one of the the things about the ipad that i heard from some people about was this whole idea of the problem with when i wrote about the bridge keyboard right

they're like yeah but no trackpad and you got to reach out and all that and it's like i don't believe that apple is going to support like a cursor an arrow on the screen of your ipad that you can move with a trackpad or a mouse however you can already 3d touch on the phone or two finger tap on the keyboard on an ipad and get an ibeam cursor for text editing and my feeling is as soon as that came into existence, Apple should just build in Bluetooth mouse support for iOS because it's, and basically say, look, it's for text editing. It only works in that one context. It doesn't work anywhere else or apps can support it like the Citrix app and just basically say any Bluetooth pointing device will work with iOS,

but it'll only work in the context of text editing or specific apps. There's no cursor per se. And would most people use it? No. But it would have great edge case uses like this. And so why not? I would love it if the makers of Bluetooth and smart connector keyboard shell things could include a trackpad just for text editing. I would love that. That would be awesome. Yeah, I don't know

about i mean i can see that it's just not a use case that i have too much well yeah i know it's not it's not your thing but my argument is basically if i can put two fingers down on my on my keyboard to move a cursor around on screen and edit text emulating a trackpad at that point you might as well just let me use the magic trackpad if i'm sitting somewhere at a table right i mean why not why not let me do that i was yeah okay i just think this is a this is something that's interesting right and obviously apple is weird pushing into yeah it's very weird apple is pushing into corporate it right like ibm and all that stuff and they're really pushing ipads into that and this will be a product that can help big

companies move to a more ipad environment right what what if what if citrix didn't need to make its own mouse right yeah what if what if anybody who is doing a terminal virtual terminal like this and this also goes for like your various uh vnc clients and things like screens where you could say well you know if you're in screens now you're driving a mac from your ipad if you've got a bluetooth pointing device connected it'll move the pointing device on the screen like that's not again not a super mainstream use case but it would help out a lot of people especially in uh work environments you know business and enterprise. And in some hopeful good news, we received some anonymous feedback from somebody who works at an Apple authorized reseller.

And they told us that they have not been able to order any new iPads for about two months. So the stock that they are ordering keeps getting pushed back. So they'll be like, oh, it's going to come on this date. That date comes. It's like, oh, it's going to come on this date that date comes it's like oh it's going to come on this date this reseller is not in the us or europe so they said they tend to see these shortages first even though other places around the world will still have stock of the devices because apple kind of uh they will stock their bigger markets more right so they have stuff in the us they have in Europe. But it's a sign of the channel potentially draining. Yeah, which they said tends to mean new device, new hardware.

So I hope that that means that, and that there's going to be new iPads soon. I wonder if this is connected to something Tim Cook said on the call a couple weeks ago, when he talked about how they had some issues meeting demand for some ipads and um you know there's speculation that that meant that they were ipad models maybe it's the air 2 maybe it's the air that they um that they just assumed people would buy the pro and and people instead really did want the lower cost devices and they didn't make enough of them and i i saw this note and i thought or the other possibility is that they have they have stopped making the air one entirely or maybe even the air two entirely but they've stopped making some of those older models now and are re uh positioning the production line and are making new models

and so you know they got they got stuck, you know, they got stuck. Is it possible that they got stuck not being able to fulfill demand because they were already kind of like moving along to the next model? I don't know. I don't know. But it's interesting to get that hint

that perhaps this is, I mean, it could be some weird quirk, but it could also be a really early sign that there's new iPad hardware coming. We can only hope, right? Yeah, there's got to be, right? Sometime, hopefully soon. Yeah, like eventually there will have to be.

There will always be, yeah. All right, so the last piece, last thing I want to mention, obviously, as we mentioned ATP on our last episode, they took all of our stuff, and it's in their current episode of ATP, episode 208. Somebody referred to this as like a comic book crossover event where you have to read the issues of all the different comic books

to know what the story is. So because of this, as this conversation just keeps going from show to show... And everybody's saying, hey, Mike, Marco, get a room, right right so we are going to uh later on this week me and marco are going to go head to head uh i don't even know what exactly we're going to address but i think maybe we're just going to shout at each other or past each other we're not sure yet um it will probably be a relay fmb side i'll put a link in the show notes if you want to go subscribe there but if you follow me on twitter i'll tweet about it when it goes up so we're going to record

just a little special something uh which will basically uh i think marco referred to it as a top two computing platforms i will be bringing ios and he'll be bringing mac os and we're just gonna we're just gonna talk it out and possibly, try and put this thing to bed. And, of course, I'll talk about it next week. I'll put a link in the show notes for next week's episodes where you'll be able to go and find that. So we're just going to bring this together and finally try and get some closure on this deal. But we'll see what happens. Maybe I can switch him to iOS.

What do you think? Nope. No? You don't think it's going to happen? Well, I mean, one of the things that made me laugh about it is, you know, iOS developers cannot switch to iOS. So it's just not going to happen. Yeah, I wonder about that. I wonder about that. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks.

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between the ARM and Intel chips. This is something that Mark Gurman spoke about a couple of weeks ago. Can you give a refresh? Yeah, we bumped this story last week because we talked for so long that we were done. And so we are going to talk about a little late. Mark Gurman wrote a story at Bloomberg, where he works, about Apple developing a new Mac that involves ARM,

but not in the way that sort of the conventional wisdom had described it, which is Mac's running ARM, like ARM processor, an A-series processor, like in the iPhone or the iPad with a version of Mac OS on it that is compiled for ARM, uses the ARM instruction set instead of the Intel instruction set and runs on that. That's not what he reported. What he ended up reporting, although the initial headline basically suggested that, and then they had to change the headline because I think the person who wrote the headline kind of didn't understand or read the article, which is bad, but they fixed it. And it's interesting though, because this is the, and the way I refer to it is it's the coming of the hybrid Mac. It's the idea that, in fact,

the hybrid Mac is already here in a way because the Touch Bar, right, the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro is running a version of watchOS, you know, a version of iOS, a couple of levels down. And it's got, so it's got the Touch Bar, Touch ID, and the webcam are all running through there. And the rest of it's an Intel Mac, right? But it talks, you know, those two parts of the system talk to each other. And Gurman's report suggests that that's actually the big clue about where Apple is taking the Mac in the future, which is not just compiling macOS for ARM, but instead, moving functionality to arm or adding functionality on more capable arm processors that run side by side with the intel processor so it's a really interesting idea that you would have an apple design chip that would be running alongside the intel chip to do

who knows what he suggests, he suggests some sleep based functions where you know, in laptops, there's this power nap feature where it makes it basically power nap is a feature that was introduced a few years ago that makes your Mac behave more like an iPad or iPhone in the sense that when you've got it closed, when you've got it asleep, it can still be like doing work in the background because your iPhone and iPad do that, right? When your iPad is locked or your iPhone is locked, it's not like they aren't able to check your email and stuff so that it's there when you, or receive push notifications, right? But it used to be that Macs, when they were asleep, they were dead, right?

They didn't do anything. And with these features, they've been able to do that. So Gurman's report is, well, what if those got offloaded instead to this ARM chip? They would be much more power efficient. And that's almost like a beachhead of like, what features can we transfer either while they're in use or while your computer is asleep? while they're in use or while your computer is asleep. And the net result, I think, is interesting because what other computer, like this makes Apple capable of making a computer that's unlike any other computer out there in terms of features because they get to use Intel like it's a stock Intel PC, but add this Apple

chip that makes it different from any intel pc because no other intel pc has the ability to run this arm hybrid thing and that's so that's that's the idea so as as uh gorman pointed out like it's running the stuff that we see in your new macbook pro right like we see that already like the touchpad touch, and apparently the camera as well, right? They're powered by this chip, which is called the T1. Outside of PowerNap, what other things could conceivably be run

by a second chip in this? Like, because, I mean, when I first saw this article, I was like, oh, this seems exciting. But PowerNap wasn't that exciting to me yeah it's very low level and and okay it may get better battery life which is awesome well that's and that's that's it right is is it's not yay power nap arm right it the answer would be what if your battery lasts that much longer you know what if your computer is able to, while you're sitting there, like just go to

sleep and it looks like it's still running, but it's asleep. And, you know, there are, there are potential uses here that are more like it allows them to eke out much better battery life. But I don't know. I mean, this is the real question is what else can go into this? I had a few people say to me well one thing you could do is you could run um you could run ios apps yeah i thought about that and i wonder what you thought about that because i mean it would make it easier to do it right look i i've been a supporter of the idea of running ios apps on max for a long time now and i know that it would be weird but i think the idea is um you know is it any weirder than Dashboard?

Right? I mean, Dashboard was essentially a separate platform of apps. They were web apps, JavaScript apps, but that was a separate platform and they ran in a separate layer, although there were weird ways you could get it to appear in the one layer. And so, you know, could you not do that? I'm not sure Apple likes that from a bunch of strategy levels, but it's something that you could do. It could be for developers that they have the ability to run ARM code instead of compiling for Intel and running it there. I don't know. And the real question is, what else could you offload there for security reasons and for performance reasons?

Could there be other stuff that runs, you know, if the ARM chip is available, that it runs on the ARM chip and then other stuff runs on the Intel chip? It's like an extra set of items. I don't know, right? But I'm intrigued by the idea that it's at a fairly low level. know right but um but i'm intrigued by the idea that it's at a fairly low level that that this isn't necessarily like oh well you have two processors and sometimes you're in arm mode and sometimes you're in intel mode that it's more like at a very base level in the system certain devices can take advantage of this chip being there in order to be much more efficient in some way and as a result apple's laptops are more impressive than they would have been

otherwise and more different you know different from the competition because i assume it would be pretty difficult to run the code kind of on you know switching between one or the other like you'd have to the code for whatever's going to be written going to run on arm would have to be rewritten for arm right because i'm sure that if you were doing emulation, you'd only burn through any battery savings or efficiencies you're going to be keeping. Yeah, it's a weird story. And it may be that this is, as David Schaub in the chat room points out, not that much in the way of news, because everything that's embedded, including dongles, have ARM chips in them, and that this

is a detail that Gurman got that has potentially been blown out of proportion that the you know, but the idea here, is it news, for example, to say, well, you know, that ARM chip that runs the touch bar, well, the next generation MacBook Pro will it'll do a little bit more. I mean, that may not be a big deal. That may just be like, well, yeah, of course, if you've got, I would imagine that Apple's designers are saying and their engineers are saying, once we've got an ARM processor, we can make that whatever we want. We're experts at that. Once we've got it inside of MacBook Pro, what could we do? What could we do that nobody's thought about because they've only been using the Intel chip. And now we've got an Intel PC that also has this, potentially as powerful as we want it to be, ARM processor running a different operating system if we want, with security features and all sorts of things like that.

What would that be? I don't know, and it may not be that big a deal. In the end, it may just be, they'll quote better battery life, or it'll be a big deal for developers because they'll need to write some arm extensions for their apps in order for them to be the most awesome on macbook pro but nobody else cares i i don't that part i don't know but i the back of my mind the thing that gets me about this is that this i wonder if this is apple's take on what the future of the Mac is, which is not to say

we have so much prowess in making mobile devices and building ARM processors and doing touchscreen interfaces that we're going to just keep pushing the Mac until it's an iPad, right? It's not that. Instead, it's saying, let's take, as they've been doing the last few years let's take everything we learned from the ipad and the iphone and use that to give our computers our macs advantages that they wouldn't otherwise have because we spend so much time on on this right down in this case right down to the hardware right down to the existence of another parallel operating system that they can embed in an input device in a computer, right? And that is why I think this is interesting because that seems to be Apple's playbook with the Mac. And it gets the Mac to

an interesting place because, like I said, it makes the Mac unique in that it's not an Intel PC anymore. It's an Intel plus Apple custom PC that is different in some ways. Now, can that differentiation be enough? Is that enough to make any difference? Who knows? Who knows if anybody actually cares or if it's a distinction without a difference. But it feels right to me that that feels consistent with Apple's approach with the Mac over the last few years, that they would take it to this level where it's like, we're not going to undo what the Mac is, but we're going to use all of the stuff that we learned from the iPhone and the iPad and pour it into the Mac so that the Mac becomes more than it is now, not like less and more like an iPad.

So let's play this out in the route that the article on Bloomberg seems to suggest that this is, or hint at, that this is like Apple is working on the underpinnings of macOS and starting to move a lot of that to ARM, right, to make it more efficient. If that is the

case and they are starting with stuff like low-level stuff like power nap and you know they're going to continue to move through until they're able to to run a lot of code on arm to make it more and more efficient and over time they move more and more and more and more over to arm chips what is the end game here do you think that this is the beginning of a move towards an a mac that runs entirely on arm processors or is it unlikely that in the the future of the mac existing you know i keep imagine it's 20 years from now right until the the mac is is replaced or 30 or 50 years even let's let's keep pushing this out i'm not saying that it's happening. Please, I'm not saying it's happening. I'm just, this is a theoretical argument.

On an infinite timescale, yeah. Would there be advancements in ARM technology to eclipse from a power perspective what Intel is able to do at the same rate? Because that's the issue right now, right? Is that Intel chips are far more powerful than ARM chips. Yeah, this is the question. I know, I think a lot of these arguments get mixed up.

And you heard it too, the most recent ATP, they talked a little bit about this other thing that was posted on like Reddit or something that was, or Slashdot, that was somebody saying, oh, I've seen ARM Macs at Apple and their prototypes and they're totally locked down and it's App Store only and there's no terminal and they're like iPads except they're Macs. And there's just a lot of stuff being conflated here, which is one that ARM Macs would be – there's ARM in a Mac is not the same as ARM Macs. And another one is that an ARM Mac would be an iPad, you know, would be totally locked down and they would change all of the security model that they built up over the last few years, like Gatekeeper and signed apps and things like that, which I think are totally separate issues. It could be, but the existence of an ARM Mac does not force that to happen. So there's all of that. I think in this case, the two parallel tracks are

Intel Plus ARM and ARM. And I'm sure that Apple is compiling macOS for ARM and running computers running ARM chips in their labs just as they ran Intel for years as a hedge against the failure of PowerPC, which is kind of what happened. PowerPC let them down, Intel was blowing PowerPC's socks off, and they made a switch. So I'm sure they're doing it now. And I'm sure there are conversations inside Apple that are very much, And I'm sure there are conversations inside Apple that are very much, what kind of ARM chip could we build for a Mac? And what would that get us? And then there are also conversations about, would we be willing to have different chips on different devices in the Mac line? In other words, your laptops are ARM and your desktops aren't, or your MacBook is ARM, but the rest of them aren't.

I'm sure they're having all those conversations, right? I feel like in parallel, there's this other track, or the outcome of that conversation was, nah, we're just not there. We don't want to try and compete with Intel at the high end. It's easier to just let Intel build those chips. Let's focus on making our iPhone and iPad chips the best we can. And let's not worry about it. But let's take, you know,

let's take this other hybrid approach. So it may be that they're connected in that way. It may not be that it's more like the time is not right. Maybe the time will be right later, but it's not right yet. But in the meantime, let's not be so focused on it's either ARM or Intel that we miss an opportunity to roll all of our ARM knowledge into the Mac while keeping the Intel processor there and basically saying, hey, Intel, your chips are great. We're going to keep

using your chips, but we're going to do some other stuff too, because that makes our computers better. I think that's where Apple is today. That's my gut feeling. Or, you know, it's a little like physics. You know, it's what we see today at Apple seems to be that that's their point of view. It's possible that behind the scenes, they totally changed their point of view. And we won't know for a year or two when those hardware decisions end up happening. Because remember, there's always kind of a delay. But based on today's evidence, that's what I would say is that the Apple is keeping ARM around as a possibility if Intel lets them down like PowerPC did. And if they feel like the Apple chips are going to beat Intel, they're going to make the

Mac better. So why are we bothering with Intel? But Intel is a pretty sweet deal. I mean, they just, Intel does all the work and Apple buys the chips. And Apple doesn't have to invest their chip designers in any part of that process because somebody else is doing it. And that's pretty sweet. So the hybrid Mac, I is a is a sweeter deal so that's my my gut feeling is that this is not a step toward a uh an all-arm mac necessarily um they may yet go there but that this is more like this other path of what can we do to make intel it really is like intel plus it's intel's

processor and we know how to do that. And then we add features on with our processor and our operating system that is running on that processor, even if it's not technically macOS at that point. And that seems to be what they're doing. So I don't think this is proof that eventually there'll be ARM Macs, like pure ARM Macs, no Intel, because I think it's on a different track it might still happen but i don't think this is going to be the reason it happens if that makes sense it would surprise me if the mac was able to go through a transition from intel to arm as successfully as it went from PowerPC to Intel. I would be surprised if that happened. It just seems like it would be a lot to ask of the community.

Well, that's, I mean, I hate to say it, but the number one reason I said this, I don't hate to say it that much. I said it on this podcast. I said in that Macworld article, I wrote about it too. But I think the number one argument against Apple doing a chip transition, a full-on chip transition for the mac is that's a

lot of work and um does apple want to do that work does apple want to put developers through that work doesn't apple i still believe apple sees the power of the mac being it that it is 30 years old and it has an installed base and people like the Mac and they like what the Mac is. This is its benefit as a platform. Yeah. Yeah. So undercutting it by making it less stable and weird and new at a point when people could just go to Windows or go to iPad, go to iOS, but just go away from the Mac to make a weird Mac. mac even if it wasn't limited in all the ways that that one rumor slash speculation post was uh even if it was just a mac on arm going through a chip transition it's like it's a lot of work

it's not that they couldn't do it but would they do it and my feeling is they wouldn't my feeling is that apple has decided the way forward for the mac is not uh to to spend effort on that it's instead to spend effort on these kind of hybrid, sprinkling in hybrid features that push the Mac to be... I mean, in some ways, it's sort of like Apple is setting expectations with iOS, right? Like iOS devices. This goes back to PowerNap, actually. iOS devices don't behave like computers. And they create expectations in users for how a device

behaves. And then the computers don't behave like that. And the users who might have been perfectly fine before are now like, why doesn't it do this? Right? Why is my email not there? When I open my computer, it's there when I open my iPad. The answer is, well, it was asleep, and it doesn't work like that. And it's like, that's not a good answer. So maybe, you know, that's Apple's tack with the Mac at this point is what do we need to do to keep advancing the Mac? So it's the Mac, but without, but fulfilling the expectations that our mobile devices have created for that platform that it wasn't designed to, to fulfill. that platform that it wasn't designed to fulfill. Yeah, I think it could be interesting to think about what are the things that Apple can do that are new or to change the Mac in some way by moving things to ARM.

So when they bring out the next MacBook Pro, it won't matter so much that it's running the same Intel chips because it can do all these things that it couldn't do before or can get all these performance increases it couldn't do before because they're enhancing what the ARM chips can do, you know?

And then that could be a way to continue making the Mac appealing even when Intel's missing their timeframes, right? Right, right, exactly. Well, that's exactly it. Like how Intel's chips are going to come when they're going to come and everybody in the PC market is going to get them. And Apple will decide whether it's going to turn over its, its devices then or not. But, but that's Apple's decision to make because the chips are going to come. So what can you control? And the answer is, you can, you can add all of these other features that nobody else gets to add because they don't have, you know, they don't, short of Microsoft doing what they actually did at one point and it didn't go anywhere. But the idea of, you know, short of Microsoft saying, well, we've added this whole other spec now, which is this mobile OS inside and you can, and here's a chip, a low power chip from intel or qualcomm that you can put in and short of a platform wide uh reaction from microsoft on windows for this apple will be able to differentiate in this way and and that that's good that's good because you

know otherwise they're just being compared to um a dell orvo laptop. And if Apple's a step or two behind on the Intel generations, the comparisons are difficult, right? But they're less difficult if you've got something that is a differentiator that is entirely designed by Apple. Last thing I'll ask about this, because my initial thought on this was thinking about corporate land and wondering if something like this would upset Intel and could potentially lead to problems between Intel and Apple. You know, like Intel, I'm sure, would prefer to sell Apple their versions of these chips because try and... They make small chips, right? I don't know if they're ARM specifically.

I don't know enough about this stuff. They make mobile, their own mobile processors, yeah. So I wonder if something like this could upset Intel and could cause problems in the Apple-Intel relationship, because Apple will, like... You know, because they will be touting, like, we have these amazing chips that can do things that no other chip can do.

And our computers still run Intel, but we need to add this other stuff because the Intel chips are rubbish. Could be. I just wonder about that. I wonder if that could cause stickiness between the relationship and or if anybody would really care. Because it seems that Apple is a relatively, in regards to the rest of the market, small customer for Intel. They're a big customer, but there's something like 10% or something of the chips that they sell, I think it said in the Bloomberg article. And I just wonder if this type of thing could rock the boat in any direction. Could it make Intel step up, or could it cause problems between Intel and Apple?

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. could it cause problems between intel and apple i don't know yeah i don't know i i think from intel's perspective if intel feels like it's doing a good job at fulfilling the pc market that apple will be a fairly satisfied customer right intel's kind of competing with apple on chip design internally at apple but the rest of the market, it seems unlikely that Lenovo is going to be tapping their watch and being like, come on, Intel. It seems unlikely.

It's possible. So I feel like Intel can just sort of stick to what it knows and try to do its best. And then Apple will just have to make a decision like these guys are messing this up. We could just do this now or not. Intel doesn't seem as, as invulnerable as it used to.

There was a time even like three or four years ago where people looked at Intel and were like, nobody is going to catch Intel. Intel's chip making ability is so far ahead of everyone else that they have this huge advantage. And I feel like, you know, it's, Intel is still the leader there, but people don't feel that it's quite as invulnerable as it was. And so, you know, it may also be that Apple's chip designers are like, we could do we could totally do it. We can totally beat them. I can make a high end iMac with an ARM chip. Let's do it. Let's do it. And somebody in Apple management's like, hold on. Just because we can. on like just because we can exactly i mean how much in life is like that right which is just because you can do it i was talking to somebody about um another project that i work on that uh

that everything everything on their website is built uh custom and we're talking about doing a new version of that website and and several of us in the tech industry were like, okay, this is, this is the point where you need to take your, your, uh, your own in-house developers and say, yes, I know you can implement your own forum system and like every single bit of architecture for your site. Uh, just, and this happened to Mac world too, uh, just because you guys are good programmers and you could build, it does not mean you should build it, right? There are other things we can do. Where do we use your talent in the way that has the best net benefit? And where can we take something off the shelf? And it's not quite a perfect parallel, but it's not far off of saying Intel's going to hand us processors. going to hand us processors. That's like taking an open source package and deploying it on your website instead of building something that does the exact same thing, but building it in-house. You can build it, but imagine all that time that you won't spend building it if you can just take

this perfectly good thing off the shelf. Maybe it's not perfect. Maybe it's not exactly what you would do. Maybe it doesn't fulfill all of your needs, but it's free essentially, right? Because somebody else developed it and all you have to do is license it or buy it. I do think that there's a parallel there. So much of life and work is about saying, just because we can do it, maybe we should not. Maybe there's something else we should do instead. This week's episode is brought to you by Blue Apron, the number one recipe delivery service that has the freshest ingredients. For less than $10 a meal, Blue Apron will deliver

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good it feels and tastes to create incredible home-cooked meals with Blue Apron. So go to blueapron.com slash upgrade, and we thank them for their support of this show and RelayFM Blue Apron, a better way to cook. All right, so Tim Cook has been doing the rounds in Europe over the past couple of weeks. He has been popping up all over the place.

He's been visiting schools, and he got an honorary degree in Glasgow. Yeah, from James Thompson's old stomping grounds, no less. My brother as well. My brother went to the University of Glasgow. I actually have been in the room where Tim was given his honorary degree, where I went to see my brother's graduation. actually have been in the room where Tim was given his honorary degree, where I went to see my brother's graduation. And he's been giving lots of quotes about certain topics. And one that kind of came a little bit out of left field for me, he gave an interview to the Telegraph in which he

spoke out very harshly against the idea of fake news and what fake news means. And I think it's surprising because it just doesn't necessarily feel like something that Apple has too much of a issue with. You know, I would maybe expect something more like this coming from a company like Facebook or Twitter, right? It's like, we need to stand against this because they are kind of a place where this news gets spread. And Apple, maybe not so much, but Tim Cook believes in this very strongly and the idea of fake news basically being news that is incorrect

or through bad reporting or that is created to be incorrect to spread mistruths in whatever side of the political fence that you may be sitting on so I want to read a couple of quotes from Tim he said that he believes this has to be ingrained in schools,

it has to be ingrained in the public, there needs to be a massive campaign. We have to think through every demographic. We need the modern version of a public service announcement campaign. It can be done quickly if there is a will. All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news. The outcome of that is truthful, reliable, non-sensational,

deep news outlets will win. Jason, what should Apple's role be, realistically, in trying to help stop what fake reporting is occurring, which is, you know, I can't really think of words to say that aren't going to bring up emotions in people. I think there are two issues here. One of the issues is let's differentiate between news that is wrong because somebody well-meaning got it wrong and news that is inaccurate because it was made up or it was intentionally false. Two different issues, right? And one of

them has been with us a very long time and the other one, probably a little bit less. But certainly that's part of the debate here is there are, the argument is lots of stuff gets passed around on social media, especially on Facebook, that is from these websites that their whole goal is to inflame people of a particular political viewpoint. And it works on both sides of the spectrum here in the US. We've seen examples of both, where the goal is create headlines that reinforce a worldview. And they're made up, but they reinforce a worldview, and then you get people to share them on Facebook. And people come to those sites to view, and they get page views, and they make money.

That's the whole purpose of it. It's generally not even intended to be. There are sites that fabricate things or that speak to reinforce a worldview that are doing it knowingly and to make money, and then there are a worldview that are doing it knowingly and to make money. And then there are other ones that are doing it, not that they care about the politics of it, but they just want to make the money. And they know that those clicks are there for the taking. So the challenge with that is how can any gateway to news and information sharing

doesn't want to be a gatekeeper and if it does how does it do that and how does it differentiate between items that are factually incorrect and items that are opinion and there's no such thing as a wrong opinion they're just there are such things as wrong facts but everybody gets to have an opinion um you know in other words you can you can have the opinion that uh the is flat, but it's not, right? And if you say it is versus I think it is, that's a different quality. I mean, I would say your opinion is dumb if you're saying your opinion is a fact doesn't exist, but people get to have their opinions and that's an extreme example. People get to have political

opinions. So one of the ways that people are talking about this is like Facebook. Can Facebook say, this is not a trusted news source. This news source has been known to post things that are false and like label things, not censor them in the sense of like, you know, oh, you posted that thing and it went straight down the memory hole. But instead, like, this is a questionable article. You know, in other words, a an apple news falls into this too right do you do you have some sort of system that is able to let people flag stories and say i don't

think this is real which is different from i don't like this this makes me feel icky but it's like i don't think this is real i think this is made up this is provably false do you have people who are checking things and flagging sites and individual stories and saying these aren't real. It's a little bit like dealing with spam or something like that. If you flag a site, that site will just maybe go away, but they'll put up a duplicate of it at a different name. And then you have to flag that site too. You know, there's an arms race that has to happen there. I personally think that that is one of the jobs of these conduits of information to let their users know that this stuff is junk if it's junk.

But you got to be really careful, right? Because the trick is that what you're trying to do is give people a warning that that source is not credible. But people are going to argue about what credibility is. Like, is Breitbart credible? Is Newsmax credible? Is Fox News credible? Like, there's a spectrum of conservative media. And, you know, I would say that at the extreme, there are a lot of stories that are posted that are just made up, that are entirely fabricated. But somebody might also point to a story here and say, well, they're, you know, that person that they're quoting is lying or is not, you know, is not. It's shading the truth there a little bit. And it's like, well, is that fake?

Probably not. That's probably not accurate. There's the other dimension, too, which is what about a story that's wrong? Like, and people argue about them and there are are all these definitions of where we draw the line. So it's a really hard problem, but I do think somebody like Facebook needs to make an attempt to, at the very least, push the worst stuff, the stuff that is just spam, essentially. Spam in the guise of news and market and say, this is not a trusted source. But I think in doing that, they need to be really broad about what the trusted sources are. And that's going to make people angry that their pet issue of this news source on the other side of the political spectrum

is all fake and yet isn't marked as fake and facebook like that's gonna happen but too bad you know right i do think that that there's a responsibility there to maybe be helpful without being like without picking a side and how far do apple go in this is it just apple news or is it more i well i think i mean i think at apple in terms of being a conduit it's got to be apple news um just like that's their thing right so if apple news uh if apple news can work on this i think the reality is like wow this is a tough thing for apple to bite off on in addition to everything else versus something like Facebook. Facebook, you've got the whole social graph. People are pouring things into your feed. You don't know

where they came from. I would actually argue that something like Twitter is actually a better example of a service that should probably worry about this. I think Twitter has other things to worry about than something like Apple News, where it's mostly curated and from your own choices, which is a little bit different. I think where, where what cook was talking about and this, and this backs it up to something that maybe Apple could do, but it's also sort of a call to everybody, which is,

which is this, what he said, public service announcement campaign. It's like, we need to educate people, especially kids, because that's where most of us get our, most of our education.

Right. But everybody to be way better consumers of information, to not see that email or that Facebook link and take it on, take it on its face. The, I think older people are actually more vulnerable here because they remember when there were gatekeepers. And so they ascribe a level of credibility to headlines that they see than I think a younger person would, because younger people know people can do anything on the internet and is it real or not? And apply some, ideally they would apply a lot of skepticism to that because really you can say anything on the internet there's no truth detector right um but older people and i'm not saying like retirees i'm saying people who are who did not come of age in the internet age and did not get those antibodies like anything on the internet could be fake and i think most of our

our listeners are tech savvy enough that they probably have some of those antibodies, right? But those people, it's a real challenge trying to educate them on this issue. And I don't know if they can be. The idea that you can't trust... There was that story about... Well, I can't remember. It was a completely false statement. And there was a woman that they were interviewing on, I think it was like ABC News. And she said this false statement that had come from one of these, um, organizations. And I think it was, I think it was about the 3 million, um, 3 million illegal immigrants who voted in the California election or something like that, which is, there's no proof of that. It didn't happen. Um, and when they asked her, where do you, why do you believe that? She says it was in the media.

asked her where do you why do you believe that she says it was in the media and i think that's a perfect example of like uh somebody who has who who is seeing something that reinforce reinforces her own personal beliefs and has this added benefit of being in the media and therefore that that that that makes it okay uh and true and you know i think I do think it's a huge problem for society that people are being manipulated by very clever internet people, people like us, right? I feel like a lot of this is people like us are using the technology we love and the systems we love, like the internet, to troll slash manipulate lots of populations of people who aren't as savvy and this is not the first time in history that this sort of thing has happened but it's happening today with our technology and it's our tools and it's the stuff we understand

and i think that may be where tim cook is really coming from is we gotta those of us who are tech savvy need to grapple with the fact that people who are less savvy are being um are being fed bad information and and the problem with it is they're being fed bad information that they that they accept because they want to feel good and it reinforces their worldview and you know what if you want to feel good that's fine have whatever political views you have it's fine but this is the the road this goes down is this complete distortion where there's literally nothing connecting uh two sides of any issue because the facts are not agreed upon you can't argue a point if you can't agree on the facts about the point so tim is kind of

stepping up as you know the guy in charge of the biggest company in the world and he's throwing around so i guess some of the political power that comes with that in trying to affect some change which is not the first time that he's done something like this you know he tim cook and it's one of the reasons that you know i've mentioned this in the past and i still believe it that apple is a more responsible company under tim it's kind of in its mark on the world it is more responsible and i think this is another example of that where if tim cook really believes in something then he molds apple in his image and i think mostly that is a good thing i think so so here's my wacky idea which will never happen but i'm going to mention it which is either a company like facebook should fund this like internally or the tech

industry especially those that have vested interests in information should fund a super snopes basically snopes is the fact-checking website essentially create a non-profit entity Create a nonprofit entity and fund it, tech companies, that does nothing but fact check, truth detect, spam watch. Make sure that they are overseen so that what they're not doing is picking political winners and losers, but are very much trying to verify information. very much trying to verify information and create a an open system of scoring websites and articles for truthfulness so that the facebooks and twitters and apple news of the world can use that information in order to prioritize what floats to the top and to label things yeah um i don't think it'll ever happen but i feel like that's basically if silicon valley threw some Yeah. do this, to do truth detection. Like I said, I think maybe Facebook is the only one that is. And even there, we see Facebook's history with this sort of thing, and they kind of don't want to spend money on it. Part of that is that there's some institutional arrogance that their software

can figure out this stuff better than paying human beings to do legwork and other journalistic work. Facebook kind of doesn't believe in that. But I don't know. I do feel like this is not a... It's not a solution without some... Not a problem without some solutions. But I do feel it's a little like spam email in that it's all about mitigation, making it less terrible,

not making it cured. But still, one would actually need to try to make it less terrible. And maybe Apple's going to start that that i hope so yeah maybe i don't know i'm skeptical i feel like this is tim cook sort of uh making a statement of of uh of belief but i have a i have a hard i don't know it did feel very non-committal yeah right like all of us technology companies need to create some tools that help them okay why don't you all get together and and that organization, build that nonprofit that's funded by tech companies with a huge commitment that's going to hire, you know, a bunch of people, both technical and editorial people to build verification tools to create a sort of like, this is not a fake site. This is not a, you know, fake.

This is a real story. not a fake site. This is not a, this is not a, you know, fake, this is a real story. This is a fake story that's been disproven so that you can have ubiquitous fact check links that will pop up and say, this story is disputed, or this story is wrong, or this story has been revised, but this, this news, you know, this news entity hasn't done the revision. I mean, there are lots of approaches here, but, but, you know, saying here, but saying all of us technology companies need to create some tools is great, but what then? This week's episode is brought to you by our friends at Erding Capsula, a multi-function content delivery network that boosts the performance of your

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for their continued support of Upgrade and RelayFM. Ask Upgrade. Brent asked, if you could use an Apple Pencil on the iPhone, would you want to? Be honest, have you ever tried? So, I have tried. I tried when the Apple Pencil was released, right? Like, does this work?

Outside of that, I've never tried, right? Like, I know it doesn't work, but I wanted to see if it would work, right? I didn't know. We didn't know enough about it.'ve never tried right like i know it doesn't work but i wasn't going to see if it would work right i didn't know we didn't know enough about it i wondered if it would and it didn't um i would use it maybe in certain circumstances like i feel like there would have to be more added to the uh software on the iphone to make it really worthwhile something that i always kind of liked and do like on the Samsung phones is that you can just pop out the stylus and just write

on the blank screen and it starts writing. You just start taking notes on it. I always thought that was kind of cool. I'd like to see something like that. There are a lot of little features that the Note series that have that I wish that Apple would find a way to implement. You can just select areas of the screen

and create screenshots or like make GIFs out of areas of the screen by using the styluses. So yeah, stuff like that I would like for the Apple Pencil. And maybe it would be useful on the Plus where you've got a big screen, you could do some stuff. But yeah, I think I could find some use for it.

I'm sure Jason has no use for it. Not really. No. But I could find use for it because I'm sure Jason has no use for it. Not really. No. But I could find use for it because I love the Apple Pencil and I love my iPhone. Reid asked, do you ever use the 3D Touch app switching gesture? So this is where you kind of like squeeze on the left-hand side of the screen. Yeah, and then slide it. And slide it. I never do because it doesn't work for a lot of cases. I almost never do.

I will occasionally remember that it's there and use it, but most of the time I'm still doing the double tap, and I don't know how much of that is that I don't think of it, and I don't know how much of that is that I use my iPad so much that I end up using the same gestures I use on my iPad on my iPhone. You use the double tap of the home button for your iPad to multitasking. Yeah. Even though there's a touch gesture, I usually don't use it.

That's what I do. If I'm not using a keyboard, like if I'm not using to spotlight or command tab or something, which is what I'm usually doing because my iPad's usually connected to a keyboard, I do use the software, like swipe up with four fingers thing, or like swiping left and right with four fingers.

I do that a lot. I will swipe left and right to go back between apps. If I'm multitasking, I will do that. But I won't do the reveal the switcher gesture. Usually I double tap and that's just, I think it's just habit. Also works on both devices, right? I mean, that's think it's just habit also works on both devices right i mean that's the other thing it actually works on both devices as opposed to saying well on my ipad i'll

do this but on my phone i'll do that i just end up using the button yeah justin asks why do you think it would be an improvement to have an always on screen with the apple watch which is something that we were talking about last week i don't want other people seeing my messages. So I get where Justin's coming from from this, right? Like, what if the screen was always on and everything that came through lit up the screen? I can say from experience having used a Pebble

and LG watch for a while. I tried out the LG watch when that came out with the Android Wear on it. It sucks to have your messages just automatically displayed because people will read them uh which used to happen to me all the time because my lgg watch would light up and people would just read the message because it was in full color um in my mind this isn't the same ui like to see a message you'd still have to raise your like raise it to to

see it right you raise your wrist to like look at the message you raise your wrist or you or you tap or pull down or something but you you do something to switch it off of the um the the watch face yeah but the always on watch face would be the time and maybe there would be some new indicators right so like you'd get a tap and you'd maybe look at it and there would be something that would indicate that a notification you just got was a message or something. There would be some new level of UI on the watch face that would indicate this so you can get a very brief idea of what has just happened. That's something that I would maybe kind of like to see. But not to display the entire message for everyone to see. Of course, that would be upsetting.

Richard asked, do either of us have AppleCare on our watches? Just wanted to know if it's something worth getting. I don't think I do. No, I don't. I didn't buy it for my Series 2. Do you? No, I don't have AppleCare for any device I own. Okay.

Why is that? What is your thinking there? i own okay why is that what is your what is your thinking there um my failure rate has never been enough to justify paying apple care for my devices uh the amount of money i've saved by not paying for apple care has more than covered the few times i've needed to replace or repair a device. I have moved to this thinking over time. Like I used to buy AppleCare for my devices, but I've never had a problem in which I've needed to take something in to have it fixed under an AppleCare warranty. Plus, because there is the, you know, there is an excess on those. I've just stopped getting it and I'm fine. access on those uh i've just stopped getting it and i'm fine but if you are a a person who breaks stuff a lot richard then yes get it if you know that's exactly it if you break stuff

then get it if you don't break stuff then don't get it and just hope that you'll win out over time and brent asked uh asked me as an activist for the multi-pad lifestyle, how often do you use both of your iPad Pros at the same time? Not very often, honestly. I don't. I mean, I have done that. Like if, you know, there have been times where I've needed to have lots of information, you know, like I'm using two applications and I also need to look at a PDF or something for whatever reason it might be for some planning. I have used both iPads. There are times where I might crack out my iPhone to use a calculator when I've got two applications open and need to see them both. But it is infrequent that I will use more than one iPad at a time,

mostly because Split View has really helped a lot. I have kind of multiple screens in my mind, two apps running side by side. helped a lot you know that you know i don't i have kind of multiple screens in my mind to apps running side by side there are times when i'll do it but it is it is infrequent that i would need to have more than one ipad uh at a time yeah yeah it's more about like what's the context of what you're doing i would think like this is a this looks like a job for big ipad that sort of thing yeah which is how it tends to be for me all right so that wraps it up for ask upgrade this week it is worth just reminding you that there will be a mic at the movies next week and we are

going to be watching the terminator i'll be back we will be back and we'll be talking about the terminator this is the first time that i've realized that the movie is called The Terminator. I just thought it was called Terminator. No, that's Terminator 2. The Terminator. The Terminator. Is the original from 1984. I've also just realized how peculiar that word sounds when I say it compared to when you say it.

Yeah. Terminator. Terminator. peculiar that word sounds when i say it compared to when you say it yeah terminator i say every every syllable every every sound every consonant is is said in with quite sharp tones from terminator if you want to find our show notes for this week head to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 128 go to sixcolors.com for jason's awesome. Go to theincomparable.com for his many podcasts on pop culture items, and he also hosts a bunch

of shows over at Real AFM as well. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter. Jason is J-S-N-E- double L, he's J-Snell. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, the five folk over at Encapsular, the great people over at Blue Apron, and the quite lovely fresh books

we'll be back next time until then say goodbye mr snow we'll be back next time goodbye oh i wonder if that's gonna get old