Upgrade - 132: Extra Lasers

Episode Date: March 13, 2017

Would Apple ever make iOS devices larger than the the 12.9-inch iPad Pro? And what does Apple need to do to make iOS excel at multitasking and large screen sizes? And Jason and Myke answer your questions in a mega-sized version of #askupgrade.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 132 today's show is brought to you by fresh books in capsula and squarespace my name is mike hurley i am joined by the one and only mr jason snell hi mike hey snell zone how are you i'm very. How are you? I'm very good. How are you? Oh, good. Good, good, good. Monday morning, time change. Everybody up an hour early. What could be better? My kids are off from school today,

so they're still waking up. But I'm here. Some of us have to work. This is the good time change for me. Really? Yes. I get two weeks of bliss here oh well yeah you're in the two we're an hour closer for the next two an hour closer so all of my shows are earlier in the day

i am recording upgrade and the sun is still up that has not happened in a long time well that's pretty great i have that going on for me so i I'm feeling good today. I'm feeling good today. I'm glad. I'm glad. This is a tough one in the sense that we have to give an hour back. Like the weekend was an hour shorter. But I got to say, beyond, again, getting my kids up to go to school tomorrow, which is going to be brutal, beyond that, the light in the evenings is the best. that's i'm i'm loving it and we had a good weekend it was warm here yeah over the weekend

it's the first uh first days over 70 degrees uh since like november or october so uh that's really nice for for us so that was great starting to get a little bit warmer here too that's great which is also good i'm still gonna have to bring my coat oh most definitely you'll need a coat yeah i would i would recommend that severely when you come to this country which is very soon we broke 20 c for those international listeners out there we broke 20 degrees celsius summertime yes i'll be there in uh with three weeks Three and four weeks from now will be the upgrades that are in person. The physical high-five versions of upgrade. Happen every time.

You can't miss the high-five. Bring the portable lasers. The whole thing. So you reviewed another keyboard. Yeah, I wanted to talk about this. We debated whether we needed any follow-up at all. But I did review another keyboard. These people contacted me with this product called the Lofree Bluetooth Mechanical Keyboard.

And it's adorable. It's this... It's beautiful. I want it just because it's so pretty. It is. And I've got it here. It is really cool. It is a mechanical keyboard.

It sounds like this. Good sound. But it is... keyboard. It sounds like this. Good sound. So it's clicky. It's very small. It's actually narrower than my little mechanical keyboard is. But the thing that I think is most notable about it is it's a Bluetooth mechanical keyboard. And there aren't, believe it or not, there are not very many of those. The people who are into mechanical keyboards will know that most of them are USB keyboards. They're not Bluetooth keyboards. So this is compact. It's Bluetooth. It's got Mac keys on it. So it's got a Mac mode and a PC mode. So it's switchable. But it's a Mac friendly keyboard, which most of the keyboards, mechanical keyboards, including mine are not. I have an alt and a windows label on my keycaps which

makes me sad but that's just how it is um it's got a function row so it's actually more functional than my keyboard which does not have a function row um so it's a little taller and it's in this and it comes in these like uh it's got this plastic shell that's really adorable and curvy and there's a white one and a red one and a black one i think it's white blue and black white blue and black no there's a red one it's not on their page oh okay there is there i think there's a red one they have a black one with a red key no there's a red there's one that's like a red shell at least the photos that they sent me cool so anyway um there are a lot of things that are great about it it's got round

keycaps which is a little weird but they want to give it that typewriter feel it also makes it look extra pretty it does make it look pretty and the other thing that makes it look pretty is that um you know it's it's all all the keys are basically well the f keys are slightly oval but all the keys are are perfect circles except for the space bar the return key and the shift key which are kind of the space bar is a space bar, and the return and shift key are sort of two circles kind of melted together to give them extra width. And so it's a beautiful look. It's also what makes it unusable for me

because all the modifier keys are one key width instead of being wider. Like, you know, normally your command key is wider and the right shift key is wider and the tab key is wider and the backspace key is wider. And on this keyboard, nope, they're not. They're one key width. And for me, that's like a deal breaker. Like I could get used to the round key caps, but the small modifier key is just, I can't, I can't do that. I just can't. So sadly, I'm not going to use this keyboard, but it's a neat, fun, pretty keyboard.

And I think they're doing, they're doing a crowdfunding thing. It's on Indiegogo, but they're already making them. It's not one of these wait eight years for it to ship kind of things. And Indiegogo, there's a discount and then they'll be for sale on Amazon eventually. And there'll be like a hundred bucks and just put it in context.

Like I spent 130 on my weird wired PC formatted mechanical keyboard that I bought. So, um, it's a pretty good price. You just have to deal with the fact that it's kind of an unusual key layout, which if you can get past that, um, it's, uh, and the, the key switches are sort of like uh they're not cherry blue they're uh like a gateron blue which is a like kind of a knockoff of the cherry switches but um so it's super clicky um so it's neat um not going to replace mine i did it did send me in a keyboard spiral though mike where i was um looking at keyboards on the internet it happens from time to time covet Coveting other keyboards.

I'm interested in this keyboard because I think it's so beautiful. Yeah, it looks great. I like the size of it too. I don't like keyboards with the number pad or extra width because I want my trackpad as close to my keyboard as possible.

And it's got that. Lots of nice things about it. It's just for me, the key layout doesn't do it. By the way, my status report about keyboards, because somebody asked on Twitter, was asking, why does Jason keep changing his keyboard? Which is not really true. I've used the same keyboard style for a while until about a year ago when I decided to try a mechanical keyboard. And I bought like three or four different kinds of mechanical keyboards over the last year. And what I've settled with is this 10 keyless. So the small keyboard, it doesn't have a function row. It doesn't have any, uh, uh, key pad, but it's still got arrow

keys. Um, and, uh, you know, that that's good. Cause I need, I need the arrow keys. They actually sell keyboards that don't have the arrow keys. And I can't even imagine what life would be like with that. And it's using, um, Cherry Brown brown switches which are more of a uh clack clack clack clack kind of sound instead of the click click click kind of sound i don't know they sound different they feel a little different and i like it better um so that's what i'm using right now but you know there's there's i would be I would be intrigued about a, a small keyboard, like the size of the Lofree that was wireless and mechanical. And let me choose the brown switches. I would be intrigued by that, but it's a, it's a niche market and it's dominated by gamers.

So it's like us using logic, which is made for musicians, but podcasters can use it. gamers so it's like us using logic which is made for musicians but podcasters can use it keyboards are kind of like that where if you want to use them for writing you can but they're kind of marketed and designed for gamers so yeah i don't know stuff yeah exactly so i'm i'm uh i'm pretty happy with the leopold's weird keyboard that i have but uh it's not for everybody and neither is the low free it's not for everybody but it's it's pretty i i really want them to make a variation that's a slightly more traditional layout because i would totally buy that because i love the size of it and the uh and the look of it today's episode is brought to you by squarespace use the offer code upgrade at checkout and you'll get 10 off your

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credit card required to do this. Just go to squarespace.com, sign up and play around with it today. And then when you decide to sign up for a plan make sure that you use the offer code upgrade to get 10 off your first purchase and show your support for upgrade thank you to squarespace for sponsoring this week's show squarespace make your next move make your next website all right should we talk about big ios devices and windows do it um this is sort of a topic it's sort of follow-up from max and old tech podcast last week i wrote two articles kind of touching on this on mac world i wrote the imagining uh imagining the next 10 ios devices or whatever it was where i was trying to that was a concept article when there's not a lot going on you start to write weird columns because you need to write a column every week so that they pay you to write the column. And then I followed it up with the idea of what interface improvements does iOS need to have to make functionality on large screens

better? So when ATP was talking about it last week, I was like, hey, I wrote 2,000 words about that, 3,000 words about that last month too. And I don't think we ever talked about it. So I thought maybe that would be as a couple of people who do use iOS a lot. I thought maybe we could talk about sort of like places that iOS could go and the shape like literally and figuratively that that could take. Because I think that's kind of an interesting subject. And I was kind of, I wasn't mad, but I'm like, hey, ATP's talking about that. That should be, that should have been an upgrade topic. So I'm making it an upgrade topic.

Well, John decided he needed to follow up on a two-year-old show, I think. Yeah, I was going to say. It was a two-year-old episode of Cortex he was following up on. For those who don't know, John Syracuse has a very strict start from the beginning policy with all podcasts you start from the beginning and you work through it and i get that from a continuity standpoint like nobody is going to be able to experience i'm doing that with hello from the magic tavern which really requires continuity but um john does that with everything and it is uh it can be a strong strategy in getting it sort of like as uh as all the listeners would have gotten it from the very beginning and and getting those nuances over time

it does have the disadvantage of if you've got a a little bit of a soapbox to talk about what people are talking about on a podcast and you begin commenting on the podcast when you're still two years behind. That is a little bit of a problem. So he was complaining about past Mike and past Gray and a past episode of Cortex. Oh, well. You should do some follow-up on Cortex and then send it through a time machine back in time two years and post it as. So the big, I mean, in in my mind there are two issues here one is how does ios need to change and the other is where might apple take ios hardware i think those are if i

had to put two buckets down i think those would be the two the two buckets um so i don't know what do you want to talk about first what do you think what intrigues you let's talk about like improving uh what we already have like what what what do we want to see basically in a in a fictitious ios 11 right yeah i i think that's a good place to start because it's all about um like ios is on a path toward productivity and we can talk about bigger iOS devices. And I'm including like the 12.9 is a bigger iOS device. It's here, but it's still on the large side. Even the 9.7 is, you know, for now the second largest iOS device.

And there are issues like in our current screen sizes with how things are working. And, you know, Federico has written about it a lot at Mac Stories, and we've talked about it some, but there's a whole category of things that Apple needs to do. iOS has a lot of work to be done to it in order to make it something that can approach the Mac, honestly,

in terms of some of its functionality and some of its usability in these areas. And multitasking is, we are still using the first blush multitasking feature, right? They didn't change it in iOS 10. It's the same as when they introduced it in iOS nine.

We're all hoping there might be an update before this fall. That is a second draft of this, but right now that's what we're, that's what we're dealing with. And it's very clearly broken. Like it app picking is very hard. Like how many times do you realize you need to put an app in split screen,

not remember how long it's been since you've used it and just decide to hit the home button, search for it, launch it, then close it, then go back to the app that you were using, then bring open the picker. And now it's close because you just launched it i i don't know do you do that i do that all the time do you want to hear my my hot tip for how to deal with this yeah so let's say that you want to have two apps open let's say one of them's airmail and one

of them's bear right so you open airmail and then you pull up the multitasking thing and you can't see bear right like you scroll you scroll and scroll and scroll and it could be a million miles away. So what I do is I then will just hit a spotlight search. You spotlight search, yeah. If you're using a keyboard, that's more straightforward, but yeah. Yeah, I know.

Let's just assume that I'm always got the keyboard because I always have the keyboard attached, right? All right. So this is the way that I do it because I'm keyboard. So yes, if you're touching, then you go to the home screen. But what I do is then I open Bear, the app that I can't find, to make it the most application. Then when you pull in from multitasking,

the app that you were on previously is usually the fourth one up. I don't know why this is. Yes, I know. That's totally infuriating too, right? It's not the first one there. don't know why this is yes i know that that's that's totally infuriating too right it's not the first one there i think those are recent i always know it's there so i tap the bottom of the ui right there's a little bottom of the square and it just opens it up so i get it done quick yeah so this is this is what i'm saying is that's ridiculous it's madness it's madness i should be able to pull down from the multitasking thing

and either have a fixed set of applications like my home screen, or I should have fav applications, or I should have a search box, preferably all three of them. Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. So here's the thing, right? When they introduced this, it was great. It was perfect for what we needed at the time.

But we outgrew it quickly. I think iOS 9 was really the fork in the road for when more people decided, I can work on the iPad, right? Because it added so much to make it more possible, especially multitasking, right? Being able to have two apps open at the same time was incredibly important. So they made it, they put it out there and it worked for them, but it quickly became a clunky system once more and more applications adopted it

and you started using it more and more. Like when you only had a couple of apps that could do it, it was fine. But as things started to get couple of apps that could do it it was fine but as things started to get added and added and added it got really hard to to kind of manage yeah i mean that's i think your perception as a user as the apps came out it was that way but in hindsight it was not great ever it was it was we we were glad to get it because we wanted multitasking and i think it was clear to all of, maybe most of us, that the moment we saw it, that like, well, that won't scale. That's not going to work over time. I mean, it was very clear from the beginning.

It was just a compromise and it still hasn't been fixed, which is frustrating. So that's a clear one. which is frustrating. So that's a clear one. Drag and drop is the other one that keeps coming up, which I feel like is an obvious one that inter-application data transfer, if you've got two apps on screen to be able to select something

and move it to the other one. And this is something that people maybe don't think about as much, not even when you're in split screen, but when you've got an app in slide over, the idea that you could drag something to the side of the screen and the app would slide out and you could drop it.

I love that idea too, right? Just ways of transferring. You could potentially use this gesture to switch to a different app and drop it. It doesn't necessarily have to be all on screen at once, but that is the most clear and painful part of this is I've got these two apps and they're running next to each other, and they don't know that they exist.

Like, I'll tell you something I was doing today. I was preparing a contract. So I have PDF Pen open on the left and Air Mail open on the right. So I'd sign the contract, save the contract to Dropbox, right? Because that's where I'll save it. Save is my file system. It goes there. So it's kept there. Everyone can access it. I write the email

and I want to attach the document. I'm looking at the document, but I can't drag the document from PDF pen, right? That's all I want to do is like maybe go back a page. So I see like a list of all my documents, press and hold and drag it onto airmail to attach it. Instead, whilst looking at the document on the left-hand side,

I had to hit airmail's attachments, go to Dropbox, go to the the document on the left-hand side, I had to hit Airmail's attachments, go to Dropbox, go to the folder, go to the subfolder, go to the subfolder, and attach the document. And I'm looking at it, like I'm looking at the document. So, I will just take a moment to say,

please, whatever you do at this point in the show, do not contact me to say to me how easy this is on the Mac. I'm perfectly aware. But I was sitting on my sofa on my iPad the way that I like it with my two apps side by side. I love iOS for the way that iOS works. I find PDF Pen and Air Mail to both be nicer apps to use on iOS than the Mac. So I'm trading some ease of use for what I consider to be a nicer user experience.

It's my preference, you know? I think we could say also that Apple's solution to failings of iOS can't be, oh, for that, you should go back to the Mac. In the long run, right? In the long run, if we believe that iOS is an important platform for Apple, and it's their most popular platform, okay, because of the iPhone, it is the most popular platform. And even just the iPad, there are more iPads in service than Macs, right? So it's a very important platform for Apple. Macs, right? So it's a very important platform for Apple. Criticism of iOS needs to not ever go to, well, you should just fall back to the Mac, right? If we're legitimately criticizing, we can talk about use cases and would people really use it for this? And we can argue that and debate that. But in the end, if we're analyzing iOS and trying to say what's wrong with it. It works on the Mac is, you know, is not a place you can go.

Like you're exactly right. You're in a context where you want to use iOS. You're on your couch. Your Mac is nowhere around. Why does it work this way? It needs to be better. And yes, you could have a MacBook on your lap instead, but you don't at that moment.

And you'd prefer not to because the experience is better. And this is Apple's next generation operating system. not to because the experience is better and this is apple's next generation operating system presumably it should be better at this so i get i get that you will always get people saying you should just use a mac for that but you're you what you would say is yes but the apps are not as good on the mac as they are on ios and it's just not what i like what i like is ios yeah you know that that's what i want to use um so the i think that these are two good things to point out i think that the ipad needs a lot of work to be more productive but two things that are would make things a lot better and also seem within reach are

improvements to multitasking and drag and drop, right? Like they feel like two things that adding them, I think, especially drag and drop, because it would be a new feature, would make as big a change as the original multitasking did for people that use iOS.

Yeah, I'll throw in that I would really like Apple to add an API that lets apps have access to clipboard in the background. Only because it turns out that it snuck up on me because it's an extra feature thrown into LaunchBar. But I use clipboard history all the time. use clipboard history all the time like having multiple items on my clipboard the current item and then a list of past items is a huge productivity booster for me on the mac and on ios there are apps federico has written about them there's some very nice apps about clipboard

management but all of them you have to explicitly yeah yeah attach something to the clipboard and then go back and get it later and it's again a little thing but it can happen in the background where apple says guess what now you can you can ask permission to view the clipboard and store it as something you can do i would love to see that i don't think it's going to happen but i would love to see that because that actually is a huge productivity thing for me too. And that's one of those cases where the Mac just lets you do it and iOS does not. And it's one of those walls that you do end up hitting, but it's a little one. So I wanted to mention, at least in passing, this idea of what, from that article I wrote about about future iOS devices like there will be future iOS

devices there's a rumor about that iPad Pro that's got the screen of the you know the pixels of the of the 12.9 in the body of the 9.7 with small bezels that's out there but when we talk about like down the road for iOS like I fully expect there to be more iOS devices in the future. Now, maybe I'm wrong about that, but I keep thinking there might be a larger iPad because there's probably a niche market for a 17-inch iPad. Maybe, maybe not. There will inevitably be a desktop iPad at some point, something that's larger and that's not intended to, you know, carry around in a backpack or even fit in a backpack. Something that's like an iMac of iPads. Now, maybe, maybe not, but it's hard for me to see Apple continue. And this gets to the future of the Mac, too, right?

to continue and this gets to the future of the mac too right it's hard for me to see apple continue this path with the two operating systems forever that it seems more likely to me that they'll evolve ios to be more mac like since it's the newer operating system and it's the most popular one and let the mac just sort of continue being what it is then evolve the mac to to meet ios somewhere and touch is what for me touch is where it comes down to, which is, I just don't see them adding lots of touch stuff to the Mac, if any. And, you know, touch apps is what iOS is all about. So I feel like they're inevitably going to need to make iOS devices that fit these physical niches that are not being filled by iOS right now. And that's like laptops or convertibles,

something that's more explicitly a thing with a keyboard than they currently offer. And desktops, which is a big touchscreen, a big, beautiful multi-touch touchscreen running iOS and running those apps on it. And what do you think? How positive are you about that as a future for iOS? How positive are you about that as a future for iOS? The fact that we have a 12.9-inch iPad tells me that it only feels like a matter of time until we get a 20-inch iPad that goes on a desk. I really see it as a strong possibility because it feels like, what next would you do? That Surface Studio, I think, points the way, too, where it's like there is a product to be made

that is a touchscreen desk thing. And I don't think Apple's ever going to make that. If I look at the Surface Studio and say, what's the Apple version of this? It doesn't run macOS. It does not. Because they would have to introduce touch, and it would be a huge project, and the they would have to do they would have to introduce touch and it would be a huge project and the apps would have to support it and it would be this huge thing

they've got a touch os right so it's much more logical that that's a that's an ios device that you can put on your desk and that you can put down in a touch uh orientation and you can maybe pop it up and use a keyboard and maybe even a pointer and do work in a more traditional way and and whether it's 20 inches or 24 inches or 27 inches or however they do it a big a big touch device yeah i mean i feel like they have to do it and i'm starting to warm to the idea of a laptop or it might just be an ip with a more fully formed accessory, if that makes any sense. Because Windows have these convertibles, right?

Which are like, they're tablets, but they're also laptops. And Apple doesn't make a convertible. They make the tablet part and say, good luck accessory makers, essentially, or use the smart keyboard. And I do feel like maybe there's a product there too part and say you know good luck accessory makers essentially or use the smart keyboard and i do feel like maybe there's a product there too that's like um an ipad that's more like a laptop i see it as more like an ipad attachment that makes it more like a laptop right like as opposed to like a

device that they would like fix into a keyboard but like you would buy this you know maybe aluminium body case or something or like a a nice plastic case with a good keyboard attached to it right like i can i can see that they tend to build something on the ipad that makes it more dockable than it is now i mean the smart connector might be like the first step but we've seen like the limitations of that that most of the smart connector accessories you've got to sort of snap them into a shell or the bridge keyboard you've got the big metal hinges that you have to kind of stick it into and it and it doesn't use the smart connector at all because it's got a it's got a tilt on that so that it's like they might be getting there i don't know whether you know i think you might be right that the answer may be a super accessory um that's built

to work with the ipad to make it feel like a laptop that comes from Apple, because right now they're just not quite there yet. But I do, sometimes I do wonder if like, well, yeah, but what if they just did it? What if they did a super simple 9.7 inch laptop or 11 inch laptop that was an iOS laptop and it was different materials and, you know, not what we expect. And it's just a laptop. I don't know. You'd still kind of want to be able to turn the screen around or pop the screen off, but maybe not. Maybe, I don't know. But the desktop, it just feels so obvious to me that you would want a big screen. Because I find myself wanting that now. I find myself imagining my 27 inch iMac and thinking such a beautiful

screen, but it's not touch. And then I've got my 12.9 inch iPad and like, it's nice, but I can't put it on my desktop because it's too small a screen. And so we're in between now. Yes. Yeah.

I imagine a world that like we're not at in many ways where I have a product exactly like the Surface Studio that runs iOS and has a really good audio editor on it. Because I currently use a Wacom tablet. I would prefer to be putting that pen on the screen. You're already using touch on your desktop with a Wacom tablet. So, yeah. Yeah, I can see it.

So, if we go down the route of a bigger iOS device, me and you will assume that that is a thing that exists, then the software would need to continue changing because a 20 inch iPad would not have two apps on the screen,

right? It would need more than that. It could, but I've run split screen on my Mac, and granted, it's 27, it's much larger, but it's like, it's kind of full screen and split screen on the 27-inch iMac. It could. It's a joke. But I think we would very naturally assume they would put more on it. Like, I believe, honestly, that in the not-too-distant future,

the 12.9-inch iPad will be able to run three apps at once because that is definitely possible because it would be like how it is to run two apps on the smaller iPad. And I feel like tiling breaks down above a certain size. That like they're tiling now. It's like you can run two and they can be in a couple of different modes.

But in the long run, and this is sort of what they were talking about on atp and you know they were they were talking about um you know i've got multiple ipads they were joking about past mike and past gray and i've got multiple ipads doing different things and john it was it's a classic john syracuse rant a classic people should go listen to it but there's sort of like that's why we have windows is we can have apps running in different sizes and they're all in one thing instead of having different devices and and he's not wrong about that i was reminded of there's a uh meme uh image of uh captain picard from star trek the next generation working on his desk and he's got like the on star trek they were called pads but they're

basically ipads and he had like a big stack of them on his desk. I'm pretty sure this was exactly what we were talking about on the episode of Cortex that John is referencing. See? So we've come all the way back around, right? Like I've got a bunch of different pads and we look now and you're like, well, no, you just have your iPad and they'd send you the file. You wouldn't have like an e-book on each different pad. You just have the one with the e-book reader in it. But John's not wrong in that above a

certain level, the tiling doesn't make sense. And you know what's good is Windows. And he's right. Windowing above a certain level is not a bad idea. They were referencing the same thing that I was looking at, which is Steve Troughton Smith's kind of mock-ups that he did of sort of like windowing inside an app in iOS. And the fact is, iOS apps live at different shapes and sizes already, right? They have the five, they still, I mean, a lot of them, you know, they support the 4.4s size. They've got the five size. They've got the six size. They've got the six plus size. They've got the iPad 9.7 size. They've got the iPad 10.9 size.

And then they've got those fractional sizes for when they're running in slide over or split screen with one thirds, two thirds. And then they've got the 50-50 size. And that means they also have the two thirds size if they're the big app in the little split screen view. So in so many ways, iOS apps already support multiple window sizes. And I don't think that a windowing system on iOS would necessarily do what the Mac wanted to but um it just seems kind of logical right that above a certain screen size what i really like to do is run my apps in little windows and let them and put them where i want on screen um okay right i need you to explain to me in your mind what that looks like are these like free moving windows that can overlap yeah well so there's a couple i also want to talk about my tabbed theory of apps which just but uh but that's more for small screens yeah if you look we've got a link in the show notes if you look at steve

trott and smith's um mock-up uh you know it's uh it's like little windows i mean he's got them with the clothes he's got mac style windows right But the idea that you could drag windows around and you could dock them, but you could also let them float. And so if you imagine like an iPhone app sized app on your iPad, and instead of having it scale up and run in the center of the screen and look like a kind of a laughable, like a weird mockery of an iPhone app in your in blown up iPad mode. Imagine it just runs in a window at iPhone size, an iPhone size window, and you put that on the right side. I mean, like, when I use my Mac, I've got, I've got Google Docs on the left and, and and the chat room on the

right right now. And when I'm doing my normal work, I'll have like Twitter on the right and Slack on the left and my text editors in the center. And like, I'm doing window management there, app management, basically, to get it in the optimal location for me. So yeah, I think this is the thing. This is the thing that like, it's funny to me, because the way that I feel about this, it seems to be very different from you and John, I can't imagine anything worse than window management for free flowing windows on my ios devices and it was funny to me because i wasn't necessarily expecting for you to just be like well yeah it makes perfect sense to me it makes literally zero sense and and it was funny to hear john make that the argument of like why would they use two ipads

like obviously what they want is windows but no me, me and Gray, or at least I will speak for myself. I know what window management is look looks like because I'm doing it right now. Sure. I hate it because for example, I have all my windows laid out and some of them cannot be resized to the level that I want. So they slide underneath each other, which is like, I hate that. I want all of my windows to be in their exact positions so what i like about steve trout and smith's thing is that in some instances he shows snapping so like they take certain physical sizes now that i don't really think of that as windowing that just feels like an advancement of ios multitasking the idea of overlapping windows

and free moving windows seems like hell to me on i don't know about overlapping so here's the here's the thing i'm not what i'm not saying is here's what apple should do they should replicate mac windowing on ios i don't think that i i think every the reason you go with ios with all this stuff is because you want to use your next generation next generation interface to take advantage of all the knowledge that has been built up over the years to do it differently than it used to be done in a better way, right?

And so what Steve is showing where you can dock things and they snap, I think is smart, right? And that's, I think Windows does some of that stuff too. Windows the operating system, not Windows the concept right and i think that's a good approach me too so what i'm saying what i'm saying when i talk about

tiling is on a large screen what i don't want to do is play like one of those games where you keep like moving that one tile around to try to get the picture to resolve one of those puzzle games like that's what i hate about tiling above a certain level is i want to be able to arbitrarily say i want that to go over there and not have like no but it has to be half the screen or it has to be a third of the screen i want a little more flexibility about like where i put something when you have a touch screen with 10 finger multi-touch you can very easily move things around right like if you want to drag one window up to the right-hand corner, then you just pull the other thing and just drag it from underneath it.

If you're using both hands on a 20-inch touchscreen, your ability to move stuff around becomes greater. But when I think about tiling, and this is my issue, is if I want a big text editor window in the center of my screen, what I don't want to have to do is have it either be full screen or i have to put like filler to the left and the right in order to get it to live in the center right there should be some ability to position it arbitrarily um that doesn't necessarily mean i want to float on top of something else or anything like that um i just i

feel like you want some flexibility there because tiling implies to me that there's content on the entire screen. And honestly, on a large screen, sometimes I don't want content on the whole screen. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I just want my main content in the middle and in full screen. And this is depends on the full screen implementation. But a lot of times the full screen implementation is ridiculous because it stretches everything to fill the screen. And I actually, on a big screen, I don't always want my attention focused on the entire width of the screen. I want it on that little bit in the center. And then that gives me the freedom to call up an app on the right or to dismiss it and have there be nothing.

So this is, I mean, this is why this is a multi-year process if you're developing this for iOS, if you're Apple, right? Because this is incredibly complex stuff. I'm sure they've messed around with all of this internally, right? Like, oh my God, what are all the issues about how people use this? But I would not advocate for replicating what the Mac does. I would not replicate for that or advocate for that. But I do think the ability to place apps in arbitrary blocks and move them around is generally a good idea for the future of iOS. We can debate like, do they have to be, you know, does it have to be, what are the rules of tiling and things like that? Because geography is a weird thing, like user interface geography. Like I was talking

to somebody about this a few months ago, the idea that, you know, for me, Slack lives on the left and Twitter lives on the right. That's a real thing for me most of the time. And when I move Slack to a different place on my screen, on my big 27 inch screen, it feels weird. Like you shouldn't be there. You should be over there. and everybody has their own geography for their for their computers and so the challenge of a windowing system is to allow people to be productive and also take advantage of our internal you know computer geography as a part of being more productive and you know that's when Syracuse talks about like where he puts his finder windows and things like that it's the same kind of idea yeah but to me that a lot of that a lot of the window management stuff the window management stuff that John cares so deeply about it seems

like a relic of computing to me well some of it's got to be let go right some of it absolutely has to be has to be let go because it needs to be simplified because most people don't want to fiddle around with windows and move them a little bit and size them a little bit and i'm on board with that right i'm on board with that i i just i want more control than um this playing this tile puzzle with you know which is currently and again it's a small sample size because it's the ipad and it's two apps right but the idea that if you want to add a third app, what do you do? Well, you add that third app and now you've got three apps on the screen in their little places. And okay, then what if I have a bigger screen and what if I have a fourth app?

And I feel like that gets complicated over time too, to the point where having them float in their own little boxes in space at some point might actually be easier to use to a point but again the question is what the rules are because what i'm not saying is i want to arbitrarily move everything around and have it be any size at once and oh look i've got a mac again because i think that's i think that's too far there was one last thing i want to touch on this all came came from the fact that Steve Troughton Smith had submitted this app that he's working on. I guess it looks like there's files because there's stuff moving around. It's either a demo or an app, but he submitted it to Apple. And he had a test flight review on it. And he was contacted by Apple,

and they kind of said to him, these are the things that you can and can't do on iOS. And side-by-side Windows was fine within the application. Being able to resize the Windows was fine, but they didn't like overlapping Windows. And this is kind of where the conversation begins on ATP. And it's just really funny to me. There were just a couple of things

that John and the guys were talking about. John kept talking about that this is innovation. Apple is stopping innovation. And it felt so funny to me, with my mindset, that John considers overlapping windows to be innovative. To me, that is the absolute opposite of innovation. Innovation is everything else that Steve had done. So on iOS, these windows that are moving around and resizing themselves

based upon what is being dragged on top of them, that is innovative for iOS. I agree. Overlapping windows is actually, for me, I consider like a relic that would be brought in and would make things messy. Like, the idea of being on iOS and there being, and I understand why Apple doesn't want this, because you cannot hide things behind each other. I know, right? That's not how iOS works. You don't ever hide something. I agree with you. I think that this is one of those cases where we have this assumption that we make about Windows

from the classic Mac OS that looked through a lens of 2017 or 2020 iOS. You'd say, when you drag a window around or want to resize it, we will do the right thing about what happens there. But if you try to drag that window over another window, that's not a thing that we're going to let you do.

We're going to either try to intuit and preview that you're going to dock it or it's going to move or something like that, right? But the interface should be, if they were designing windowing today, would they design it so that you can literally lose a window behind another window? Probably not. And if people love that because they like to have a thousand windows open and then have to use the app switcher to bring them to the front, then I guess so be it. This is why there's a strong argument that Apple should keep the Mac the Mac and not mess with it too much and just let it be there. But for iOS, I would not replicate that.

Like, no, don't do that. Do it in an iOS-like way, but with enough flexibility to let you use that screen and put your stuff where you want it to be. Because once you've got a big screen, there's room for you to, you know, not have everything filling every pixel of the screen all the time

so this knuckleheads made his point uh should we move on uh you knuckleheads yeah i i had one last thing before we go which is just to say that that um the argument is uh to come back to the Mac again, right? Is why not, if we're trying to make iOS into the Mac, why not just have the Mac? And I really do believe that there are two user bases for Apple, the Mac and iOS, all those iPhone users and iPad users. I don't think Mac and iOS are interchangeable parts. I think they're very different platforms.

iOS is the modern one. It's more popular than Mac, like I said. And I have to ask, what is Apple's long-term strategy for devices with those shapes that the iOS platform doesn't currently support? I feel like all of those places are places iOS will probably go, because I do think ultimately that iOS is the future computing platform of Apple and that if Apple wants to have laptops and big desktop screens and all of that just saying we're going to have non-touch Macs out there is not likely and I don't think Apple's going to also in addition to developing iOS retrofit the Mac to become very much more iOS likelike because, I don't know, it seems like they've said consistently

for a long time they're not going to do that. And they've got iOS, which is their modern operating system. So yeah, I do think that ultimately iOS is the max replacement everywhere and that Apple believes that and that they will go into all of these places. But in order to go,

and this was part of the point of the ATP conversation too, in order to go to those places, iOS has to do a whole lot more than it does now. And that's on Apple. And it includes all of this interface stuff where once you break out of that 12-inch screen, it becomes more and more complicated to do this. but I feel like the touchscreen ends up being the place where this all breaks down. Like touch interfaces are great. The Mac doesn't do touch interfaces. Apple says the Mac doesn't want to do touch interfaces because Mac users want to use a keyboard and a trackpad. Fair enough. But then what happens to people who are in a desktop mode

and want those iOS apps and want to use touch? They have to be served too. And so how do you serve them do you i don't i just don't see them retrofitting the mac to turn it into another ios when they've got ios you've begun the wrong way you're better off putting the time into making ios better than than trying to make the mac more like ios right and the mac users don't want that right mac users mac users don't want the mac to turn into iOS. They already are grumpy about the fact that most of the Mac innovation that happens is just stuff that syncs with iOS.

So you leave the Mac as the Mac. You let it be what it is. You keep updating it and let it kind of run as long as there's a market for that sort of computer. And you put all your energy into making iOS its replacement so that Apple can stand on stage at a future keynote sometime and say, we cannibalized the Mac. Those are all iOS devices now. So good for us. And I feel like that's where they're going. Whether they succeed or fail remains to be seen.

They've got a lot of work to do. We can agree as iOS users and iPad users, we can really agree. They've got a lot of work to do on the iPad front to get to that world. And that's the challenge. I'd say that's Apple's number one challenge right now is what do you do outside of the smartphone? Okay, you're really good at the smartphone. What about bigger devices?

What's your strategy there? And if their strategy is very slowly to improve iOS to make iPads better and very slowly keep the Mac around in sync with iOS, you know, they're kind of abandoning screen sizes above the iPad or the iPhone 7 plus, right? And that, that, I, I am not a believer in Apple abandoning everything, but the smartphone. I think that Apple wants to be everywhere. And that means they have to have a strategy to get everywhere. And I don't think the Mac shows it and I don't think their iPad R&D

that we've seen the results of supports that either. But if I had to pick, it's iOS. My feeling about the iPad inside of Apple right now is they will keep working on it because it's the only thing that they've got. It's the only future of computing PC replacement device they have, right? They have the Mac. The Mac is done mostly, right? Like it is what it is. It's great as it is. And it needs to just be kind of just carried through to the future as opposed to mind-blowing innovation because big innovation to the mac is most likely just going to upset and alienate current mac users

because big innovation to the mac will be changing it in ways that might be uncomfortable right arm may be something that they could do without completely destroying everything but you know we'll have to see what will go there. But that's kind of my feeling on it, especially software. iOS has a lot further to go than the Mac does. So considering the iPad is all that they have, I think that's why they continue to work on it and continue to put effort into it,

because they have the iPhone, they have the smartphone, the smartphone's done. They have the Mac, the Mac is done. They've got those. They are working as they are. They're great. But they have nothing else in the middle. Yep. And that middle section right now is the iPad. And that is like the what is like the smartphone because the smartphone is so popular, but is closer to the desktop. Well, we have the iPad for that. OK, the iPad isn't working. let's keep working on it. And I think they'll keep working on it and keep improving it until they come up with something else, or the iPad

turns a corner and breaks through. Yeah, and just one final note, which is nobody, because we do hear from a lot of people who are like, well, you know, but the Mac, but the Mac and all this, it's like, nobody is more aware of the limitations of iOS than people who use iOS, especially to try to get a lot of work done. Like, I feel like a lot of the criticism that people who use iOS to get work done receives is a criticism of, but, but iOS doesn't do that. But iOS doesn't do this. It has this failing. It's so hard to use. It's like, you are talking to the people who are doing that. So they are well aware of all the failings of iOS. When we talk about what iOS needs to do, there is definitely a level of frustration there about the fact that,

for example, as we said earlier, that they introduced a multitasking feature with obvious flaws. And a year later, when they did the next update, they didn't address a single one of the flaws. Whoops. So there's a lot of work for Apple to do. In fact, another way to have cast this whole conversation, and I didn't want to go down that route, but we'll see over time what Apple does. And maybe they will need this criticism at a later date is if the future of every Apple device, essentially above the size of a phone is basically iPad software development stuff, where is it? Because that, to me, is the big question is,

why does Apple look like it's so asleep when it comes to the iPad? If they really believe that the Mac is not going to have a touchscreen or anything like that, where's the future of iOS on larger devices? And are they giving that away? Because right now they've got two options. Microsoft only has one. Microsoft is building a toaster fridge. Fair enough.

But what Apple's doing is building two products that are kind of like not getting any attention. So what's their strategy above the seven-inch screen? What's their strategy? I would also just like to state for the record that no matter what he says about the way that I use my devices i will always love john siracusa yes of course meatspace windows is one of the funniest things i've heard in a long time to be honest knuckleheads today's episode of upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at encapsular

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That's I-N-C-A-P-S-U-L-A dot com slash upgrade. As a listener of this show, you will get one whole month of service for free. Thank you so much to Encapsula for their support of this show and RelayFM. So, Mr. Jason Snell, in the absence of exciting news this week, I decided to turn to our listeners and ask them to give us an avalanche of Ask Upgrade questions. So, can you please give me extra lasers,

Mr. Jason Snell? Mega Ask Upgrade. Perfect. Wayne starts off today. Do you think that Apple might add remote controls to the AirPods case as an alternative to try and squeeze them into the airpods themselves no no no i don't think that would help the situation because the airpods case is in my pocket like my phone is and it's harder to get to than my

watch will be and i don't need to bring the case with me but i do need to bring a device that plays music or other audio on them which means i have my phone or my watch with me and that is uh that that's enough like i i just squeeze i don't know if you do this i just do the the squeeze the volume button in my pocket thing do you know i can never remember which side the volume is though yeah i have that because sometimes my phone is one way sometimes the other way you know like i don't know which what way it is i just feel for it you can figure it out maybe my jeans are too tight i don't know john asked if the power in your homes went out unexpectedly would you be able to keep up running your businesses and he said he gave us the idea of two days two days of no power would we be able to continue running our businesses uh that's a good question i mean i wouldn't be able to record so somebody

would have to stand in for me but i think that there would be enough people that could stand in for me like i've been you know i've been sick and that and i couldn't record and couldn't work and people could stand in for me you know and uh it is something i think about a lot having having things in place for something happened so uh i'm getting there i'm doing a lot of like that kind of thinking and planning right now um i think that we wouldn't the business wouldn't go bust though if two days i think i'll be okay yeah and in terms of getting work done, I always charge my iPad Pro overnight. And so I would have, and my iPhone, right? So I would have an iPhone and iPad Pro fully charged.

So I would have battery to work at least for one day. And assuming I could go somewhere and recharge and or work nearby um i could do that and uh assuming there was cell service i would also have some internet and i could i could get by with that my laptop has a charge so i could bring that out i have a um i have a power supply an uninterruptible power supply it doesn't have a big battery in it so it doesn't last very long but it would potentially allow me to um you know first off shut down my computer but it would potentially allow me to um you know first off shut down my computer but it would potentially allow me to um start up my computer even with the power off and get some files off of it if i had like files i needed to transfer out i could

do that too so i feel like it would be an inconvenience but it would be okay i don't have like a big battery that i keep around to recharge my ios devices or my laptops if there was a huge power travel travel is uh is preparing me for this inevitability at a point because i have those those big anchor batteries you know like i have one i think that will charge my phone five times do you leave it do you leave it charged though are you sure it's got charged at all times okay well that's pretty good i i have i have some smaller rechargeable, you know, smaller batteries for travel. And I'm not sure those would help too much. One of the first things I do when I return from travel is to charge up the batteries I've used.

So they're ready to go. Just like part of the unpacking, you know, part of my unpacking process. I charge the Mophie or charge the Anker battery or something. So the next time i'm ready to travel they're ready to go because because you know i keep those in my bag that i might take out with me like on a day trip or a weekend and i still want those batteries to be ready to go if i need them right and as uh david in the chat room points out um my ups if i don't drain it down while getting files off of it onto my mac my ups would would still have battery in it and i could plug in like an ios charger to it and

charge off of that battery even after the power's out that's absolutely true so there's some options we'll run for fun it's like you have a car, right? Charge it in there. There are lots of batteries. That's true. I got USB chargers in there and that would be a possibility too. So, I mean, the short version is, yeah, I think we'd be able to keep running our businesses. If I really had to,

I could probably even record podcasts because I could do it over cellular and make it work. It would not be great, but I could make it work. So if my internet went out for days i could probably still figure it out and then if i could also drive somewhere and and where there was power and internet and stuff i i could make it work too so i think it'd be okay but it's an interesting thought process when you know people have weather issues especially

that knock out knock out power and internet and things like that. Brent asked, do people get upset at the change from MagSafe 1 to MagSafe 2? Yeah, well, people get upset when Apple does anything. But in that case, they were compatible with each other via an adapter that Apple sold that was super cheap. It was the cheapest thing you could buy.

I still have them around somewhere because I think I still have one device in my house that's a MagSafe One laptop. And there's just, you know, you... Actually, it's my son's laptop that he uses. It's an old MacBook Air with the MagSafe One. And the cord died on it. And I had to go on eBay and buy a new cord because it's a MagSafe One and I don't have any MagSafe 1 cords around, but the adapter lets you use a MagSafe 1 cord with a MagSafe 2. So people who had an investment in extra cables could just buy this $6 adapter and then they would still be able to use them. And it really didn't get, it was a strong magnet. It actually worked perfectly well and it was would it was it was fine so it was not that big a deal but of course people were upset about it people are always upset

also the change of a cable on an apple laptop is nothing like the change on an ios device right like the amount of people it impacts the frustration that people cause like well it's not an accessory magsafe's not an accessory yeah it's you don't the only thing you could possibly have bought as a magsafe accessory would have been other chargers all of which use that cable all of which would work with a little adapter so it's very different yeah it's not it's not as much of a thing i don't think that the magsafe but good question right it's like what is what is the the the range of frustration when Apple changes cables and connectors? And I think MagSafe is probably at the bottom of that range. Jeff asked, if money and time were not a concern,

what university-level work would you undertake to support your creative work? Now, for me, university-level work, what I'm taking from that is, would I take a course, right? I can't think of what else university level work would be personally, like research, I don't know. But I'm just going to take this question as like, if I could just go back to school, right? What would I learn? Well, I mean, I'll be going to school, that kind of school for the first time as I don't have a degree. But right now, like if you said to me, what would you want to do? I'd probably want

to take like a filmmaking course for a couple of different reasons. I mean, one, because I am interested in video. But, you know, filmmaking, I'm sure would also include some element of storytelling, I would assume. And I wouldn't mind to learn some of that, too. So something kind of focused around film because it would touch on a couple of different areas in my life from the practical to also just like, you know, understanding a little bit more about telling great stories. I think that's where I would go with that. Yeah. And for me, I mean, money and time weren't concerns is a funny one. So I've got two answers. I thought about taking astronomy and other science courses, which I suppose would support my creative work on the Liftoff podcast with Stephen Hackett.

And the other answer I have is there are a lot of university level kind of writing programs where you spend a few weeks doing intensive writing, usually fiction writing. And I would love to do that sometime. I've thought about applying for some of those programs where I would go for six weeks in the summer somewhere and do a super intensive creative writing program. So those are the two. Those are my two answers. Although I would say if money and time weren't a concern I wouldn't go back to school I'd find something else to do there's not you know it's not for me I mean I just didn't do it anyway so yeah I I did I did school straight through from when I was not not quite five years old until I was 23 I went straight through I I went through all the way from kindergarten to graduate school without a break. And when I was done with that, I said, that's it. I'm done. But the fact is, yeah, I would, I mean, so what I end up doing is like podcast courses of things. Like I've done

several of those astronomy courses as podcasts and iTunes U and things like that. And that's great. And that expands my horizons and it doesn't cost money and time. I just have to fit it into my podcast listing. So that's probably the answer. When I think about money and time, the writing stuff is the thing I really think is that I could probably benefit greatly and it would be a wonderful experience to leave all of my other work aside for six weeks and just focus on writing. But who's got the ability to do that? Fortunately, Jeff has a magic wand that makes money and time not a concern.

Thanks, Jeff. Anytime that you want to wave that over here, Jeff, we'll appreciate it. Seth asks, is the Nest still the smart thermostat to buy, or is Siri nice enough to consider the Echo B3? Now, my feeling on this, I don't have any of these products i have no experience of any of them okay well i reviewed them all for the wire cutter brilliant so i'm gonna get to you in a moment but here's my my opinion on this all right let's start with yours man who doesn't have them exactly so but well because mine is it's not about the quality of the product right yeah my feeling is even if jason says the nest is still the best i would i would not want to get a nest because they seem like a troubled company um maybe a company without

focus um and it's it i don't know whether google are really going to keep them around or not. It all seems a little bit up in the air right now, to be honest. So I might look at some competitors whose business is maybe more tied to being successful. They only stay in business if they do good stuff, which I think maybe Nest doesn't have the same thing because it has a big company. Nest is just protecting it until it's done. So I might look at something like Ecobee or The Hive. I don't know if you're familiar with The Hive,

but I think it's British Gas in the UK who's using them. I've heard good things about people that have them. We'll put a link in the show notes. I think that's Europe only. Okay, so there you go. So yeah, I've heard a lot about Hive. People seem to like Hive. But again, I don't have any personal experience with it. So there'll be two links in the show notes.

I will obviously put a link to Jason's Wirecutter article in the link, in the show notes, sorry. And I'll also put in a link to John Voir. He's at Mac Stories because he reviewed the Ecobee 3 so you get some other opinions. So yeah, as the man who's tested them all. So Ecobee 3 has a relatively new version that supports home kit um and honeywell lyric has a second generation model that supports home kit nest does not support home kit so if home kit support is important to

you if you're you know which i think at this point i would say it's even important to me because there's enough convenience and having that all integrated into Apple's stuff that I'd rather buy a product that had it than that didn't have it, that was outside of it. And the Nest is outside of it. So that's unfortunate. I have a Nest. I still have a first generation Nest on my wall. I reviewed all of these.

I think the Nest is the most attractive of all of them. The latest version of the Nest. What I don't like about the Ecobee is that it is a plastic slab. Based entirely on the placement of windows in my house, it's got some glare issues where it's like, I find it harder to read than either the Nest or the Honeywell Lyric, which is another one that I tested that's a very nice thermostatostat actually um it also feels like uh you know it's like an app on your wall and the the nest feels a little more like it's trying to be an appliance whereas the ecobee is like a touch screen app interface that stays open on your wall um so there are things i

don't like about it it It works with HomeKit. It's got a lot of features. It's got remote sensors, which the Nest doesn't have. There are a lot of things to like about it. So I think the Ecobee 3 is probably the best thing for people to look at for if you're in the Apple ecosystem.

But I'd also throw a note out for the Honeywell Lyric, which is around pretty. It doesn't look quite like the Nest, but I think it looks more attractive and is more readable than the Ecobee. And Honeywell makes a lot of heating and air conditioning units. So if you have a Honeywell central heater, this is a really good choice, but it will work with just about anything. And it works with HomeKit now too. So I would shop for those. I'd probably steer away. If I was buying one today, I would probably steer away from the nest just because of the home kit reason. Um, and because they do seem troubled and have not really made a lot. I mean, the nest

is not that much better than it was when I bought it, quite frankly, even if I bought the new model now, it would not really be much better. And although I love it, they don't seem to be making a lot of progress there. So I think it's worth looking at the Ecobee and at the Honeywell. I'll also say that if you've got a system that you've had installed in your house, one of the people I talked to, I talked to an HVAC expert when I was writing that story for Wirecutter. He said, if you've got a system that was installed in your house that's from a particular manufacturer, contact that manufacturer and see what they have. Because these are all generic. They're meant to work with everything. And every manufacturer has their own special settings and knowledge about their equipment.

And so the best, if you've got a relatively new system, the best replacement for your thermostat would probably be something that is made by the manufacturer if they offer a smart thermostat. So that's something to look at too if you've got a very particular brand. Why can't it still pick the nest? It may still be my story i don't know they've updated it yeah took a look they've updated and they still pick the nest yeah see it's it's nice it's really nice i think the fact that it as a troubled company and that it doesn't have um it doesn't have home kit support are problems if you care about home kit support especially. Oliver asked, could this next rumored fancy iPhone be the first one to lose the eye and be the first Apple phone?

I mean, I've said this in the past that I believe one day Apple will go here. I don't think this will be that, but I do think that this third iPhone, this unicorn iPhone, would be the first iPhone to get a new name that isn't just the number that it is?

I mean, I'm currently leaning towards iPhone Pro but it could also get the X, I don't know but I don't think it will be called iPhone 8 personally

I but uh i don't think it will be called uh iphone 8 personally uh i will limit my reaction to oliver's question to be the specific questions he's asking and say no i i don't think i think iphone is too strong a brand but like mike said you know he's predicted that Apple phone is inevitable, and I don't think that. I think it will be iPhone. We've got more Ask Upgrades after this break from our friends at FreshBooks. I want to talk about them for a moment because they help me support this show, but they do so much more than that. They don't only support the show, they support me

because they help my life be a little bit easier. I run my own business fresh books is very important for that because i need to uh bill people and send them invoices so we can get paid so the business keeps turning and fresh books is the system that we chose when we first started with relay fm and it has continued to be the system that we are incredibly happy with because they are always adding new features they think very clearly and it's obvious in the product that they want to make life as a freelancer life as a self-employed person easier and this really comes across with their new design that they've put forward recently they have it's they worked tirelessly freshworks told me to make

this new version of their cloud accounting software. They redesigned it from the ground up. It's very pretty. It's beautiful. And it's been custom built to work with people and for people who work online. So, for example, they have a new all new notification system, which is like a personal system. Every time you log in to Freshworks, it tells you exactly what's changed with your business since the last time you logged in. Maybe somebody's late for payment, like later than usual, or somebody has paid something.

So you can get exactly what you need to know when you need it. FreshBooks is focused on providing you with the answer to the question, how is my business doing? All of their invoices that you will send out are beautiful. They're really easy to put together. It's super, super simple. You can get an invoice out in less than 30 seconds. Your clients will be able to pay you in a myriad of ways. You can set up online payments.

They can pay you by card. You can integrate with Stripe. It's super simple. And this is why FreshBooks customers get paid up to four days faster. And then those invoices, you don't need to be chasing them with your client because you can see if they've seen it. You can see if they've printed it. You can see if they've printed it. You'll know what's going on with that invoice. And you also get told, like, this client usually pays in 35 days.

So you'll know when it is weird for them to have not paid you. And then maybe you can send them out a reminder, which you can do from FreshBooks. Or you can have FreshBooks do it automatically. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to listeners of this show. Just go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and enter upgrade in the How You Heard About Us section so they will know that you came to them from this show.

Thank you so much to FreshBooks for their continued support of Upgrade and RelayFM. All right, so we go back to Ask Upgrade. And first off from Lucas, do you still use Apple Watch apps, Jason? Well, sure, of course. In fact, I'm using them a little bit more. Me too.

Because I use the new, I find I use the new Overcast app more. I have actually added Overcast as a complication to my default watch face and number one reason for that is actually um sometimes i've been playing music or i or i played a video or something and my iphone no longer remembers that i was listening in overcast and so if i just press you know double tap on my on my airpods or whatever it doesn't do anything because overcast is no longer the most recent thing to have played and i tap on the overcast

app and it allows me to explicitly press play on overcast and start the playing going so i use that all the time i use um i use the weather apps i use the the the health app i use the workout app and i use i'm doing um the i'm i have a 5k trainer app that i'm doing again and uh i use that so that while i'm running i can see exactly where i am uh in the in progress so yeah uh i i have like a problem with with the apple watch at the moment and trying to get it to resume playback or something. You press play and just nothing happens because it's falling out of memory or whatever. That's frustrating to me.

That's just something I wanted to mention. But yeah, I am still using apps. I use the Workflow app to stop and start my toggle timers. It works great for that. I still use Due, Carrot Weather, Todoist, and Fantastical. They're the third-party apps I use a lot. And I use the Home app an awful lot now, as well as the workout apps as well, and the timer.

So I'm still using quite a lot of the stuff on my Apple Watch. All that stuff that I just told you about is in my dock as well because they're the apps that I use the most. Yeah, makes sense. Ryan said, one thing that he's never heard us talk about is what our music listening setup is like. Speakers, stereo, vinyl, digital? Those are the questions that Ryan asked.

So I will go through mine. Okay. I have a record player. I've had a record player for many years. I have a selection of records that I enjoy. Some of my favorite albums. And it's a nice little thing to have in the home, I think. It's a nice collection to have your favorite music on these beautiful records.

And sometimes if we're hanging out around the house or whenever we have company, that's how we put music on in the front room. I have some nice speakers and a nice record player. And that's how we listen to some music. And I know it's not the best way to get the most high quality music but i like it i i like it uh this this all started when i was like 18 and i was starting to get in to find like what my music was a lot more and then i bought a record which was signed from a favorite band of mine then i I bought another one for similar reasons.

Then I started building a collection just for just having a collection, like you would collect anything. Then I decided, well, I'm collecting these records. Maybe I should get something to actually listen to the music on them. And I did that. And I love my collection of records.

And I add to it. I don't add to it as much anymore. I do want to. There's just some of my favorite albums of the last couple of years that I don't own. But that's the thing that I have. I don't listen to a lot of music on my own at home. Other than that record player, everything's digital for me, and it's all through Apple Music. That is my streaming service of choice. So typically, whenever I do listen to music at home, it's on the device that i'm using right whether it's on my mac the

iphone or the ipad it tends to be through the speakers of the device um unless i'm on the go and then that's right now the job of my airpods you got something to say snow i uh sure i have uh so my my tv is hooked up to it's a 5.1 audio system. So all speakers can also be, I can play through, I have a Sonos bass and then I have a Sonos Play 1 in my bathroom

that I listen to sometimes. At my desk, I have the classic iPod Hi-Fi. And actually I listen to probably most music through that because it's hooked up to my Mac and I sit on my Mac and write and play music. Trading size back to you right now, you know? Yeah, fair enough.

Yes, it's a speaker, Mike. Amazing. Many of my speakers are as old as the iPod Hi-Fi. The dock connector is covered. I use that dope. I play a lot and it's generally Apple Music through iTunes on my Mac playing through that speaker. And yeah, that's it. I mean, so I can listen in the living room. My family actually listens a lot on the Amazon Echo because they can just tell it to

play things and it plays. And that's pretty great. So even though it doesn't sound great, they listen to that a lot i'm hoping one day to have the amazon echo be able to control a better speaker than the one that's inside it but right now that's what we got jeremy asked uh you know this is me what benefits have you seen from using devices such as the wacom tablet um and then also maybe for you, Jason, something like the Touch Bar or other non-traditional input devices. So my use of the Wacom tablet for my Mac and the Apple Pencil on my iOS devices and my iPads, mainly I started using this as a way to hold off RSI problems. Before I got the Wacom, I was starting to suffer in my right hand from using a mouse and then I got the Wacom tablet

because I am left handed I was able to rest my right hand for a while and use the Wacom tablet as my input device and since then it's been pretty much fine I get flare ups every now and then it tends to be my right hand that's the problem I might start to get some pain it's been pretty much fine. I get flare-ups every now and then, right? It tends to be on my right hand that's the problem. I might start to get some pain.

But it's very rare and overall is significantly better. So the Wacom for me and the Apple Pencil, really I use them as a way to try and keep my hands healthy. But ultimately, I just find them to be, for me, more natural ways to use the devices. One of the things for me with the Wacom tablet that just makes a lot of sense is that with the way that I have it set up, so it's in pen mode, the screen is mapped to the size of the tablet. So when I hover the pen over the top right corner of the tablet, my mouse is in the top right corner of the screen, right? It's not like on a trackpad where you put your finger wherever it is, the mouse pointer stays where it is, and then you move from there. To me now, this one-to-one

kind of mapping makes a lot more sense to me. And think it's because well that's how it is on ios as well right like it's it's one-to-one wherever you put your finger is what's being manipulated you don't put your finger and then move it up to get to that point in the top right hand corner you're already there and that's one of the things that just makes a lot more sense to me as being a wacom user all right for me i mean really the only thing i have to say here is that i like my magic trackpad because i use gestures on it all the time me too um uh not just the traditional kind of scrolling but in i think we mentioned this last week but like in logic when i'm editing podcasts i can't imagine what it would be like if i had to zoom in and out

on tracks and slide around in the timeline and all of that without being able to just do the hand gestures on that. It's great. The idea, you lose sight of it sometimes, that so many parts of our user interface we used to interact with by literally moving our mouse and clicking and dragging an interface element that we don't now. and dragging an interface element that we don't now. Like so much of what we do, even if you're just using the scroll feature, so much of what we do is not, you know, clicking on UI elements to move other UI elements on the screen,

but instead just physically doing a gesture and having it move. And I couldn't, you know, I couldn't be as productive as I am without that. I would never go back to something that wasn't a multi-touch surface as my pointer on my Mac. So for me, that's the big one. I also use a Magic Trackpad, right? I use both devices. So the Magic Trackpad is operated in my right hand, and I use my Wacom tablet in my left hand. And so I use the gestures for moving around screen to screen, for using mission control, that kind of stuff, but also for logic, for like panning and zooming.

A couple of weeks ago when I was playing around with that Citrix mouse, I was seeing if I could just edit an episode of the show on my iPad with the Citrix mouse. The problem I quickly ran into is I had no idea how to zoom because I never do it I always do the zooming on my magic trackpad so I had no idea how to zoom in and out or move it around without dragging around the little scroll bars and that was horrible so yeah, thumbs up for the magic trackpad too

Daniel asks, I have an 11 inch MacBook Air was horrible. So, yeah, thumbs up for the Magic Trackpad 2. Daniel asks, I have an 11-inch MacBook Air and a Thunderbolt display. I need more RAM, hard drive space, and speed when at my desk for Xcode. What should I buy, a refurb iMac or a MacBook Pro? What do you think? Huh. Well, if you need more hard drive space

when at your desk. Oh, I don't know. And it's a Thunderbolt display. Man, I would say if you can get a Retina iMac, you know, as a deal somewhere, a used original 5K or a refurb or something like that. I think that's what I do because then you get the Retina display instead of the thunderbolt display that's getting up there and you will have a faster computer than your 11 macbook air and you'll still have a that macbook air for when you are not at your desk that's what i would say i might too because if you would probably continue using the thunderbolt display with the new macbook pro

that you get and then you're not going to be getting the benefit of Retina. So provided that you're not really super need portability, I would say get an iMac. And I'm sure you can get one of the versions of the Retina iMacs, right, for refurb, and you'd probably get it for a half decent price. So that's the route that I would go down as well. Yeah. And then you still got your laptop for when you're not at your desk. And the way this is phrased is, I need this stuff when at my desk. So maybe uncoupling is the right thing to do there

and keep that laptop around for travel, but get an iMac for the desk. Robbie asked, my gray nylon watch band is dirty. Any suggestions as to how I get it back looking good as new. Robbie, warm soapy water on a sponge. That's all you've got to do. Clean the thing.

Come on, Robbie. Why are you writing into me? Clean it. Come on, Robbie. Robbie, I would require a follow-up from you as to whether you cleaned your watch band or not by this time next week. Ooh, before and after picture.

Before and after pictures. I want to see them. Before and after picture. Please, Robbie. want to see them before and after picture please robbie come on sort it out chris asked i have been convinced to try growing a beard i've never done this before does mike have any tips on what i should or should not do uh you should do it is my opinion i think you should try it if you've never grown a beard before you might like it uh you also have to get past the point where it's itchy. So it's going to be itchy for a while, Chris. You're going to get that. It's going to be itchy. But if you really want to see what it's like, you've got to just let it go past the itchy phase. And then after that,

look into some beard oil because you can keep it nice and soft and then it'll get less itchy. And maybe use some moisturizer whilst you are going through the itchy phase to try and help with the itchiness. But you've got to keep pushing it through don't listen to jason snell don't listen to his size don't listen to anything he's going to say next chris if you want to try a beard or if people in your life that you care about want to see you with a beard just give it a go what is the worst that could happen the worst that could happen is that you're going to look more handsome. Andy asked, what apps do you use for text editing on iOS or the Mac, and how do you sync changes across devices?

I found out two things about myself today when getting ready for this question, Jason Snell. Thing number one is that I use lots of different text editing apps for different purposes interesting thing number two is that i use icloud a lot more than i thought i was so apple notes right i consider that as like it's it's the the place where text begins for me in a lot of instances um and that is all synced with iCloud. I use Bear, the application Bear, on my iPhone, on my iPad and my Mac. And I use that just for writing and formatting our sponsor copy. It's like this whole little silo. That's where all that writing happens. And Bear uses iCloud syncing, like CloudKit stuff. I've recently got into using ulysses for long form stuff so uh i just

did a youtube video about the nintendo switch and i wrote the script for that in ulysses because it helped me it made sense for me because you have like these kind of like folders like these sheets right is what they call it in ulysses and i was able to have like the script and production notes and like an outline i could i could have them all kind of nicely pushed together i tried scrivener and and scrivener just didn't work for me um scrivener's keyboard shortcuts are really peculiar you and the keyboard shortcut yeah well i use a keyboard all the time right we can do uh keyboard shortcuts on scrivener are very very very weird uh I don't understand a lot of the decisions that they made. Like, for example, if you would like to tab, like you want to make an indent or an outdent,

you do not use the tab key. I believe it's command and then left and right. That makes little to no sense to me. So me and Scrivener did not get on uh but ulysses i like very much um on my mac uh i use byword sometimes as like a little scratch pad type thing um and i never used byword on any of my other devices but but it's there like i prefer byword to text edit basically because if i'm writing a markdown i still see the formatting you know i've just had byword forever it's just an app that i open if i need to just jot something down real quick like because if I'm writing a markdown, I still see the formatting. I've just had BioWord forever. It's just an app that I open if I need to just jot something down real quick. For example, one thing that I do when I'm editing a show

and maybe I'm working on chapters or title suggestions or something, if I'm just listening through, I'll open BioWord and just put them in there. And the last place that text goes for me is Google Docs or Quip, and they're all for show collaboration. So basically, it's all iCloud really, which I was very surprised about, obviously, except for Google Docs. I would say,

so for me, it's different. I do use Apple Notes for some things, but on the Mac, if I'm using Scrivener on Mac and iOS, it syncs to Dropbox and they talk to each other and that's how that works. And in terms of other writing I do in BBEdit on the Mac, what I do is I have a folder called stories on Dropbox and BBEdit's default save location is in there. And on iOS, I'm still using OneWriter, and its Dropbox sync is set to that same Stories folder. So if I write something on OneWriter,

it pops up in, you know, I know where it is in the Stories folder in BVEdit. And likewise, if I'm writing something in BVEdit and I save it in Stories and then I switch to my iPad, it's there in Dropbox and it opens it up and it auto- syncs back and forth and that is most of what i do and then yeah show collaboration all happens in google docs and google sheets and that's all that's that folder in dropbox is how it used to be for me and if you would have asked me just off to like to just say it off the top of my head about thinking about it that's what i would have told

you where everything was like oh it's all in a dropbox folder but funnily enough it's not anymore because so many applications are using cloud kit syncing now between them uh and a lot of applications are offering more features if you do that right like they're able to do more with it like versions and stuff like that more easily i believe i believe that's one thing that they're able to do. But it's just becoming more and more of a thing to use iCloud and Cloud Kit syncing. And it turns out that that's what I'm using, right? I'm kind of just being like, okay, application, if that's what you want to use, I'll use that. And because most of the writing that I do, most of the writing, like a good 90%. It's not mega critical. It's not like you, right?

So yeah, I'm finding it to be a lot better. I'm finding it to just work for me. Interesting. So I think that's it for today. All right. If you want to find our show notes for this week then go on over to relay.fm upgrade132

Jason is online at sixcolors.com and jsnell on twitter jsnell I am at imyke thanks again to our lovely sponsors the fine people over at Squarespace, Encapsulate and FreshBooks.

But most of all, thank you for listening. And if you have any questions for us to answer on the show, just send a tweet to us or just out into the wild with the hashtag AskUpgrade, and we will pick them up into a lovely Google Sheet, which is powered by Zapier now because it's great so thank you so much for listening we'll be back next time until then

say goodbye Jason Snow bye everybody