Upgrade - 134: Steal Its Bezel Thunder

Episode Date: March 27, 2017

The revival of the iPad name leads us to speculate about a new phase in Apple’s product approach, and what it tells us about the future of the iPhone. We also discuss where the iPad Pro might go next, and what Apple’s acquisition of power-user app Workflow means about the company’s approach to iOS for professionals.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 134 today's show is brought to you by encapsular text expander from smile and squarespace my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hello jason snell hello Hurley. Last week on the show, I decided that I would like to try and introduce a new segment to open Upgrade every week in which we go through a different small talk question with you. You know, as I mentioned on the show, usually the show opens with you telling me how the weather is

or by telling me that it's Monday. Or something that happened over the weekend, which I totally have a story about this weekend. But yes, it tends to be the same thing, which is I say, like today I would say, it's sunny and the sky is blue. So much better than last week. But do people want to hear the local San Francisco forecast for a day that has already passed by the time you're listening to this podcast? I don't think so. Maybe. But probably not.

Unless they're your next-door neighbor. But anyway, we're veering off course already. So we are now going to institute a new segment. It is a small talk segment, so I have decided to call this segment Hashtag Snell Talk. That is the new name of this segment.

It's just fine. So you can send me questions to Ask Jason in the Snell Talk segment, which will open the show with the hashtag Snell Talk. And they will be questions like this, which was submitted by Bozy. Jason, what did you have for breakfast today? Well, not to bring us back to English muffins, which we already talked about on a previous show. But I had an English muffin with peanut butter and blackberry jelly on it.

I'm sure that would be very nice. And it was actually because I put it in the toaster right after my son toasted his toast for the morning. It kind of burned. So the whole house smells a little burny. But it was still good. It was just extra crunchy. So if you would like to send in a question for us to open the show, use the hashtag Snell Talk on Twitter

and it will go into a lovely spreadsheet and then I will be able to ask them to Jason. And don't spoil me with them. Don't include me on them. I don't want to know. I want it to be a surprise. Just either tweet them to me or just tweet them into the wild.

As long as you use the hashtag, I will find them. thank you very much to bozi for suggesting that we would like to know what jason had for breakfast it is follow-up time mr snell um you will remember we have been tracking a story for a while or at least i have and you've been relatively coming along on this ride with me um which is about amazon prime air which is amazon's drone delivery well um in the past couple of days amazon prime air made its first us drone delivery um this if you remember last year they completed the first ever in the uk and a conference called mars 2017 which stands for machine learning automation robotics and space exploration i'm sure this has been on your radar because of Liftoff

it has a fitting name and space exploration is somehow involved this drone was set off to deliver a conference goer some sunscreen to actually make this project a reality in the US outside of the Mars conference

Amazon still needs FAA approval and regulation stuff. And apparently this demo was completed with the FAA's assistance. So there has been an Amazon Prime Air drone delivery in the United States of America. USA, USA, USA. Something like that. Did I do that right? I think so. I think... Ask Casey. He's good-hmm. Something like that. Did I do that right? I think so. I think...

Ask Casey. He's good at that. All right. Last week on the show as well, we spoke about our home screens. We have been receiving lots of home screens, as was predicted. But Seth wanted to know what widgets we use.

So I said, okay, Seth. Well, I'm saying okay, Seth, right now. We'll tell Seth and tell the world. I'll run through my widgets. I'm going to put some links in the show notes to some of these applications because they are cool apps and they have cool widgets.

I use the workflow widget. I use that to trigger off a lot of things, including my timers. Of course, we're going to talk about workflow a little later on in the show. Fantastical for my calendar. I use Todoist as well on the widget so I can see what's coming up in the day. I have the Hue widget there. I tend to use the HomeKit control center stuff, but I have the Hue widget there in case I need it because you can turn on scenes and stuff like

that. Carrot Weather, that's my favorite of all of the weather apps i love the watch app and i love the uh widget in the notification center it nicely displays information clock with a k k l o k um which is a time zone converter widget and then at the apple notes and apple batteries widgets and then Canary right in the bottom for my home security needs. Sure. Makes sense. Mine are also workflow. I actually wrote last week. It's a slideshow, but it's a good one.

It's a content-filled slideshow. It's 25 different things that you can do with workflow. And we'll talk about workflow more soon. Workflow mo. Workflow mo. Mo flows. Mo flows. So that widget is amazing because the widgets now have the ability to run code in iOS 10, and workflow takes advantage of that.

Like running workflows from the home screen it launches workflow right and like kicks you into a series of things there's a lot of stuff that when you run it from the widget it just runs in the widget it's amazing how it does that so yeah like so i have like um ones that will launch that do todoist they launch todoist templates it doesn't even open todoist like i just hit the thing and then the tasks are in there it's it never even opens the app it's magic yeah it's very very good stuff i also have um on my phone weather underground and on my ipad wonder station because they've split those apps for ipad and iphone and that basically tells me the temperature um in at my house and also um if i'm out and about it will auto if i'm in a

different city it will tell me like me the local temperature and forecast too. But when I'm at home, it is my weather station that's feeding it. And I have dark sky on in the winter on my iPhone. Overcast, because the new overcast widget is helpful. I can very quickly play Overcast, which seems like I might as well just run Overcast. I think the thing with that and also on the watch

is sometimes your phone is not playing a podcast. It's playing, it just played a video or it played some music. And now when you press play and you want your podcast back, they don't come back. And the widget is one way to force Overcast to start playing. That's a really good use case.

Where the system won't do it, right? Because I have that and it really annoys me. My number one, so I now use the Overcast watch complication, which seems stupid, right? Because it's just the Overcast icon. But I do it because I'll get in the car and music starts playing sometimes. And it's because I was playing either because I was playing music earlier or because I was playing something like a YouTube video. And now it thinks nothing's playing. And when you press play on an iPad or on an iPhone when nothing is playing, it's like, oh, I'll play you some music, which is not what I want.

I want podcasts. I want to go back to the podcast I was listening to. I can tap on the watch complication and tap play and then start driving. And it will launch Overcast, start playing Overcast. And it's great because that's the way to force your phone that doesn't think its current audio context is Overcast back to overcast it's great and likewise on the widget um and i have mlb at that which has like baseball score on it which is great and fantastical um i don't use that a lot but it's there for like what's my upcoming event when what's my next event what's going on next in my life lots of things are happening next week mike things are happening next week oh yeah we

got a we got a really big week next week so huge week next week's upgrade we're going to be recording on tuesday and we're going to be recording it in person in mega office in your office and one of the things that we're talking about is mike at the movies and we are going to be doing alien next week yes we're so we're not watching the movie together it's not the flop house no although you know if you weren't recording another podcast right before that i would be sorely tempted to have mike at the movies involve us actually watching the movie together but you've got to record connected that afternoon if you want to come over in the morning like if you want to come over earlier if you want to no it's it's you're you live a long way from where i'm staying and

then i would be there the whole day and i i gonna I think that would be too many trips on the train so we'll just do it separately but we are gonna talk about the movie Alien the original after we finish the regular show as we do with Mike at the Movies but we'll do it in person

I'll see the look of terror on Mike's face after he's seen Alien. I don't know how I feel about this one. I don't like scary movies. Well, I recommend you watch it in the dark. Well, I'm not going to do that. If you're a terrified person, then watch it in the light.

I'm going to watch it in the middle of the afternoon one day. I recommend you have a blankie and a pillow. We should watch it together. I need a Jason, I think. I'll come over in the afternoon, but you're doing Connected on Tuesday, so it doesn't make sense.

I know. Joe's saying it's not that scary. You don't know my levels of what is considered scary. You don't know my levels of what is considered scary. We'll see. I mean, we'll see. If I'm a trembling mess next week, then we'll know that I haven't

gone over it. Fantastic. That's Mike in the Movies next week. It's going to be Alien. So buckle up, I guess, for that one. Sure. Alright, we have a quite big week this week. I guess all of it unexpected news, honestly. I don't think this was the news that we're expecting to be talking about this week, but

we'll get to that. But we do. Let me take a moment to thank our friends over at Smile for supporting this week's show. Today's episode is brought to you by TextExpander from Smile. TextExpander for Teams is quite simply a productivity multiplier. smile. TextExpander for Teams is quite simply a productivity multiplier. You will get a shared knowledge base with TextExpander for Teams that you can have set up in your business to ensure that your team communicates quickly and accurately. How did they do this? Because with TextExpander, you'll be able to set up some immediately accessible and searchable text all through

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faster, and more accurate service. You'll be able to ensure that everybody treats their customers consistently because everything's worded the same, and any change in messaging will be updated seamlessly and immediately in the background. So you'll be able to change some stuff. You've got a new campaign. Maybe you've just got something you want to be worded slightly differently, and it'll all be changed. All your team members need to do is remember the keys that they need to pull up the information they're looking for, Or they can just search for it in the great TextExpander app. One of my favorite things about TextExpander is to fill in snippets. So you can do this as well where you can, you know, maybe say you're writing some customer service email. You know, everyone's got like the main

bulk of the email that they need, but you can be able to change some stuff. You can add some text in or drop downs and you're able to do all of this. You just type in what you need. It jumps the cursor to the appropriate places. You press return and everything's filled in. It's really incredible. Teams of all sizes can harness these productivity benefits. Just go to textexpander.com slash upgrade FM and sign up for a free trial. Then you'll see firsthand why companies like 1Password, WordPress, Shopify, and You Need a Budget all use TextExpander. Thank you so much to TextExpander for their support of this very show.

Woo! Alright, so, the $329 iPad. News! News! We got news! Everybody news! News happened!

But it wasn't what we wanted but we got it anyway well there were press releases released with new things from apple and uh and i feel like i've just crawled into an oasis from out of the desert it's amazing so there were press releases no event um we kind of got tipped off to the fact that the store was going to be down right like there was there was like uh some postings on apple's internal state not internal but they're like their status boards they're like system status boards you know there was going to be something happening yeah the apple store was going to have some maintenance happen overnight on uh on last tuesday so we knew that was going on and we were expecting a myriad of things you know we'll talk

about that a little later on but one of the things that we did actually get was ipad this is a continuation of the line that was the ipad air and ipad air 2 so the ipad air and ipad air 2 are gone away right like apple do not not make the iPad Air line anymore. That is not the line that is continuing. And the new iPad features an A9 processor, most of the features of the Air 2, and a new lower price of $329, right? And trapped in the body.

Most of the features of the Air 2 trapped in the body of an Air 1. Yeah, because it is, what is it? Thicker, heavier. A lot of the air 2 trapped in the body of an air 1 yeah because it is what is thicker heavier a lot of the new features i went back and looked at my review of the ipad air 2 and um it is you know when you write a review of a product what you do is you say here's what's different from its predecessor and it's true most people aren't upgrading from the predecessor but that's sort of like everybody's mind about what state of the art and so you want, what's new? What haven't we seen before in this product? And in my review of the Air 2, I listed all these things that are new about it, like the fact that they have a laminated screen.

So there's no air gap and there's anti-glare coating. And there are, let's see what else. So it's thinner and lighter. And the new iPad is essentially none of that. it is back to the air one it is that screen so the screen anyway is and the thickness they've backed it out to the air one presumably because it's a lot cheaper to make a screen like that than to have this fancy laminated screen with an antique layer coat on it and when they're trying to get the price down to $329, that's the stuff that has to go. So it's a little bit,

it's fascinating that they've done this. And I'm sure we can go into this a little bit more, but it's a lot like the iPhone SE in a way where it's kind of a new product, but it's got a bunch of old tech that is being repurposed and then some new tech in it as well. But I would say the basis of

it it's basically an upgraded ipad air air one like what if we took the ipad air one and upgraded the internals a little bit and it certainly has none of the ipad pro features that's that's not happening this is this is a a base model it's a it's the equivalent of what if we took the ipad air one and then upgraded a little bit so that we could sell it in 2017 and beyond for a low price. I think for me, what this iPad is really doing from a product line perspective is separating the iPad Pro. It's helping, in a way, make the iPad Pro stand out more. in a way make the ipad pro stand out more right because this ipad has kind of taken in some aspects a step back from it right i mean the ipad air line itself was impressive and the air 2 is an impressive upgrade and that was because they were on the line of what's the state they were the the

ipad air and then the ipad air 2 were state-of-the-art ipads they were they were the top of the line exactly right and they were moving on this track and then the iPad Air 2 were state-of-the-art iPads. They were. They were the top of the line. Exactly right. And they were moving on this track. And then the iPad Pro was essentially the iPad Air 3. You know, you could think of it that way. It was the next progression there. And what Apple's doing now is it's tearing down the airline.

Turns out the MacBook Air has survived the iPad Air. Who knew? And they're tearing that all down. And're going back to the ipad line and they're going back with something that's kind of like the air one and you're absolutely right by doing that they have ipad and ipad pro and there's much bit a much bigger gulf between them in price and functionality because the ipad this new ipad is not intended to be the top of the line of anything. Like the iPhone SE, kind of. It is that same kind of thing.

And the iPad Air 2, it was weirder, right? Because it was really just a previous generation top of the line product that was now a year old. And this new iPad is not that at all in any way. So, like I was thinking about this. How are they separating these devices? What do they look like now? So one of the big things is processor differences.

So whilst the iPad got a processor bump, it's now on the A9. I think it was on the A8 before, right? But the iPad Pros both have in them, when they were launched an a9x right so it had a more powerful processor and i think a lot of us were kind of assuming that the air 3 would probably pick up that processor right like i think we were all assuming the continuation of the airline would have seen it get even closer to the pro right and if they didn't rev the pros right so what they've done is they've separated them. They're also marketing them significantly differently.

Like you can just see it on Apple's website. The iPad Pro, the tagline is supercomputer. And the iPad is, the tagline is flat out fun. One of them is all about consuming video and listening to music and playing games, right? And shopping across the whole page. The other one is editing photos in Photoshop, creating websites. It shows the internals.

It shows some CAD program, Excel, Word, very different marketing strategies for these products. One is an addition to the other products in your home, the other computers. The other is a replacement for a computer in your home. That is how Apple is marketing them. That makes me very happy to see this maybe a more clear message for the iPad line as a thing in a way that I actually don't really think that they do for the Mac. I don't think that

there's so much of... I feel like they just show a lot of the same sort of stuff and then the Pro does more on top. But it's not like they show... The MacBook isn't the watching Netflix Mac. That's not how they market that. I kind of like that because it's like

understanding what the products are. The iPad, this iPad, that's not how they market that so i kind of like that because it's like understanding what the products are like the ipad this ipad is more of a consumption device and then the pros are more of a working device um so the marketing differences trying to differentiate them and the names make sense right this is the thing of like air and pro was weird but now it's just ipad and ipad pro which is much clearer like macbook and macbook pro exactly right like some some we've we're getting to the other side of apple's weird name transition when things were really confusing and people quite rightly pointed out boy this is really confusing they're like they're trying to get it settled they're trying to get this clearer distinction that the error name doesn't help with that that now they're they're they're trying to get which is just it's high endend or it's low-end.

And then within there, there are the sizes. I'm a little surprised that the iPad Mini 4, other than that it's not new, I think if it was new, they would just call it iPad Mini. So do I. I would be willing to make a bet that the next version of the iPad Pro is just called iPad Pro,

like it doesn't get a number yes anything yeah and it would be the ipad pro um whatever size it is 2017 in the same way that i think the unicorn iphone will just be called iphone right like or it will be called iphone pro or something i really think that apple is going to get away from these ever increasing numbers because i just don't think i just don't think it looks very good in the abstract. I think that you can come up with more interesting names and maybe just focus on the numbers a little bit less. I don't think that the numbers are very...

They just don't really say much, I don't think. Just like, oh, this is the next one. I am a believer. Now, not from a nerd perspective of we need to define, if you're doing support or if you're in IT or anything like that, and people like us, where we need to talk about, well, which one are you talking about? And that's when we do, like for this one, that's when we do, it's the iPad fifth generation. Like that's not a name that anybody actually wants to say, but it's like a footnote. But you have to, for us, we have to say, oh, it's the fifth generation iPad.

It's not the iPad Air or Air 2 or the fourth generation iPad way back when it is this new model. But from a consumer standpoint, I think it's absolutely the right thing to do to say, this is the iPad Pro. It's always the iPad Pro. We have a new model this year. This is the 2017 iPad Pro, but it's still just the iPad Pro. And this is the iPad. And this is the iMac, right? I mean, the iMac is a good example of that. The iMac is the iMac. The MacBook Pro is the MacBook Pro. It isn't the MacBook Pro 6, right?

It is the MacBook Pro. And the argument could be made that the iPhone is the same way, that this should be this year's iPhone, the new iPhone. I want the new iPhone. this year's iPhone, the new iPhone. I want the new iPhone. The challenge is when you're selling the new iPhone and the old iPhone and the older iPhone, right? I think that's the issue is you'd be better off differentiating by having it be iPhone, iPhone Pro, iPhone SE, than you would be saying iPhone 7, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6. Yeah, I think so.

And that may be where they're going. That rumored $1,000 plus iPhone 8 that we've been talking about absolutely could be the iPhone Pro. And it could be followed sometime the following year by an SE-like revision of the iPhone 6 or 6S that they call iPhone. And that's the new model, right? Which is top end is cutting edge. And then the lower end phones are, you know, or devices are much less likely to be dramatically changed. Occasionally they'll have a revision. Like I would imagine that the iPhone SE will not stay looking like an iphone 5 forever but it may do it for a long time i don't know um oh i wanted to mention something about the se also is that the ipad the new ipad actually shares the same processor as the se it's an a9

so that's like apple's this is our kind of it good, but it's like the base level of it's good enough for us to sell this in a new model, but a low cost model. And a lot of arguments can be made that the A8X that was in the iPad Air 2 is actually a better processor than in the A9 because of all the graphics performance enhancements that they make in the X models that aren't necessarily there. But the old iPad Air 1 had an A7. So that's the, if you want to think of it that way, that's the step up here is they wanted to get away from like an A7 processor. So they went to an A9. It's in the same family as the iPhones and the iPad Pros, but it's a, you know, it's not as souped up as that.

And that's a price and differentiation thing that they're doing there there was one thing i wanted to just touch on before we wrap up the like ipad versus pro line which is the the features right they i think that they've done a better job now of like pulling the features apart like by by kind of taking a step back on the display so you know it's not a white color display and it's not a laminated display anymore right yeah it's and basically they're saying no that's a that's a that's too expensive a feature to be in a 329 tablet yep that's that's our high end that's our cutting edge right when they're when they're driving to the cutting edge with the air 2 it was worth the extra cost to do

that but as a 329 product it's not and then it also has speakers the pro line and the ability for the pencil and smart connector right so you can right put the keyboard your stereo and your or your your four speakers and all that and that's all not there this is this is i think i don't know which i was gonna say phase two but it's maybe not phase two but it's a phase of tim cook's product management philosophy, like not like product management, but like the offerings, managing Apple's offerings and managing how Apple creates different products

at different price points. I feel like we've entered this new phase now and phase one, we'll call it, I don't know, again, I shouldn't be counting phases, was what if we keep the old products around and drop the price? So instead of making a low-end whatever, we're just going to keep the old products around. The longer we make them, the cheaper they are to make. We can just keep them around for a while. The downside of that is you sell an iPad Air 2 to somebody, or I mean an iPad 2, second generation iPad,

right? iPad 2 to people four years after it was introduced as a new iPad, which they did. And then you are saddled with these, you're saddling people with these old processors, your app developers, your operating system supporting these old devices that really shouldn't be supported. So there are a lot of downsides to doing it that way, but they're way cheaper to make. You just keep them in the price line. You don't have to make a new product. You just keep making them. You've gotten really good at making iPhone sixes, just keep making them. And they're cheaper to make every month

that goes by. They're cheaper for you to make. So your profit margin goes up or you can cut the price. Great. Phase two, right, is saying, okay, that's not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to just to have a clear lower price line that we can update occasionally so that there's clarity, that there's the high end and the mid range and the low end or however you want to define it. And that there's less confusion at that point because you don't have last year's model and this year's model and two years ago's model all on sale.

And it lets you take that mid-range model and make some tweaks to it. Like they're not going to upgrade the iPhone 6, right? They're not going to put a better processor in the iPhone 6. It wouldn't be an iPhone 6 then. But they could potentially do what they did with the SE and what they did with this new iPad, which is just refresh it a little,

but still keep most of the things that make it cheap to make. And so that's why I feel like that's the new phase we're in now, where it makes me think that we will see this on the iPhone at some point just because it makes more sense to do it this way given that they they clearly have a preference to keep old product designs around that are cheaper to make. And you know you could really argue that people are much more are going to be much more inclined to buy a new ipad than buy a two-year-old ipad that's at a low price right it's a new ipad at a low price even though the specs might be the same or worse it's new and and it's just in their price range and and that's you know if you went to a car lot if you went to a car dealership and they said well i know you want the 2018 model but i do have a 2015 are you trying to sell me a used car no no it, I know you want the 2018 model, but I do have a 2015. Are you trying to sell me a used car? No, no, it's new. It's just the old model. I don't know. You

know, would people be enthusiastic about that instead of just saying, well, you know, it comes in this year's model comes in two different price variations and one of them is a little bit less powerful. I was like, oh, well, that actually fits my budget better. I'll just get that one. That psychologically, that feels like it way better to me to buy today's model than to buy two years ago's model, which is the problem with the Tim Cook approach of letting your products just kind of keep being sold and aging out and going down in price until they're finally irrelevant. So I think one of the key indicators here, I mean, I think Apple is making it abundantly clear that they have done this to the iPad line to sell an iPad for a lower price. I think it's clear, right, that the price is lower. It's lower than any 9.7-inch iPad price has ever been, right, for a new product.

And they've clearly made some decisions on this product to make it cheaper. So I think we can see that. clearly made some decisions on this product to make it cheaper. So I think we can see that. And one of the key reasons that may have done this, as well as just trying to drive general adoption in the iPad line, is to target education. I think education is really clear here.

And you wrote an article on Macworld kind of outlining some of this. And one of the things that Apple may be trying to defend against is Chromebooks. Sure, absolutely, because Chromebooks have been incredibly successful in education, especially in the U.S. Yeah, and they're selling well just in general, right? I think in the article you cited, another Macworld article that talks about last May, Chromebook sales surpassed Mac sales just in general. And education is where a lot of these are being sold into. So the new iPad, I mean, Apple, again, like Apple is telegraphing their decisions on this one. The new iPad has an education discount that you can get. And it's then priced at $299, which makes it incredibly competitive with good Chromebooks. And then again again they've worked with logitech

and logitech have got this bundle that they're selling well like apple is selling a bundle right with a logitech case um which is it's not a good looking case uh no it's not called uh what is it good the rugged the rugged combo and it's like this really square, like blocky keyboard case. But like, you know, it looks like that thing would take a beating, hence why you'd put it in schools. Yeah, and that's all part of their story. And again, I don't think,

I was looking at Fraser Spears' tweets about this because he obviously cares a lot about education. He's a teacher and he's got a school with an iPad program and he is observing this and observing what's going on with Chromebooks. And what this seems to do, and Fraser thinks this, is it's not going to make the iPad price equivalent to a Chromebook. The iPad alone doesn't have a keyboard. The iPad in this case with a keyboard, you're adding even on more the price of the Logitech stuff. What it does do is get the iPad

a little bit closer with inhaling distance of the Chromebook. And once you get close, then you can compete on other issues, right? I think that's the idea here is that if they're only going to compete on price, let's be honest, Apple's never going to win if you only compete on price with anyone. Because you can get really cheap crap Chromebooks. You're never going to get a really cheap crap iPad. So Apple's, and this is true across Apple's product line. So Apple's strategy is always to tell you it is a little bit more expensive, but you get more out of it. And we can argue about whether that's true or not. I find a lot of people immediately want to jump in and say, but but but but but with Chromebooks, and it's

like, yeah, okay, that's the argument that the schools have. And that's the argument that the that the salespeople for companies making Chromebooks and for Apple have to have to make to education, they have to make their sales point. But the problem is if the price gulf is so wide that you can't even make the arguments. And I look at this product and I say, this gets Apple back in the game of being able to say, look, I know the Chromebooks are cheap, but let me tell you why ours are better and the last longer and they'll be better for your students. And they're more versatile because they're a tablet and you can get it with the keyboard, all of those things. So and Fraser Spears has done the math.

And, you know, this could depending on how you deploy it, these could be especially if you're not doing a one to one, but you're doing like a like a smaller group, like a one to six kind of deployment. You know, the iPad could be very, very cheaply deployed. And that's all, you know, you have to be part of cheaply deployed and that's all you know you have to be part of the conversation if you want to sell your product and apple i think is is you know they're closing the gap enough to be part of the conversation here you remember a short time ago when we were discussing kind of the ipad its place you know and we were looking at all that data right about sales figures we were hearing from a bunch of people that was like in education and they were waiting, right?

They were waiting for the next iPad Air. And I think they've gotten something even better than that, right? So like there is a strong chance that there are going to be a bunch of schools that are like, awesome. We finally have that machine that we can buy. We can get a new one at a great price.

That's the iPad for us. Exactly right. Exactly right. And I wonder if we're going to see an impact on unit sales. I think that would be really interesting to see what the results look like at this quarter.

Well, we haven't even talked about the, I mean, we mentioned it on a previous show, the average, if you look at the average selling price for the iPad, so when we get the quarterly results, one of the things you can do, they say how much iPad, how many units they sold and how much money they made or money they, revenue they generated, right? Well, you divide those and what do you get is the average iPad sold for this many dollars. And it's very clear that after a brief bump when the iPad Pro was released, the average selling price has gone way down.

And like the last two quarters so the last six months what ipads have been selling the cheapest ipads the cheapest ipads have been selling the average selling price of the ipad is quite low and so it is not hard to look at that and say huh that's uh maybe a market that Apple should find a way to serve. And this is the answer, right? This is the answer is they built a product for that market. And they're allowing the iPad to be both of these things to be a 329 bare bones iPad that sold to somebody who just wants an iPad or sold to education at a further discount, you know, because it's an education price they have.

So it would be even less than what a consumer would pay for it. And then up at the high end, you can buy an iPad Pro with cellular, you know, with a lot of storage for more than $1,000. And then, you know, you can just choose which path to go. And the iPad can serve both. There was... Let's just say, you know, we're focused on education a little bit here,

but of course this iPad is for anyone, right? It's good. It's a good machine. It will run kind of any app well. I think it's perfect for the tasks that most people use their iPads for, like games and browsing and video, like exactly what Apple is showing on the marketing pages. Yeah, I mean, right? A lot of people, that's why i think the numbers are the way they are is for a lot of people the ipad is not this is the great argument right when you get in an argument

about um ipad suitability as a pro device right it's like there is a segment of people who really care about the ipad as a pro device And then there's another segment who does not. Who looks at the iPad and it's like, yeah, but it's just an iPad. All I really want to do is watch some videos and play some games and check my email. Like, all right, here we go. We've got some clarity here about this. That we've got 329 iPad. And then 599 iPad pro. And that, that is pretty clear, right? $270 difference

between those two. So that's what it's like. You can save $270 if you don't care about all that other stuff. And the reality is that somebody who cares enough about the iPad pro, I find it actually a little curious that the iPad Pros still offer a 32 gig version. Because at some point, you could probably take that away, or increase it to 64 and increase the price a little bit, because you're no longer trying to get the iPad Pro down to the low, low price to get people in who don't care about that stuff and if the ipad pro is serving a more professional power user uh specs focused market then you have the freedom and we may see this in the new generation of ipad pros you have the freedom to raise the price and raise the specs because they're paying for those specs so does you know does anybody really want a 32 gig 12.9 inch ipad

pro probably not so get it out of there. You don't need it now. Yeah. Other iPads serve that market. A couple of just tidbits about this iPad. Jason mentioned fifth generation. So I want to kind of run through what this product line has been called. Like if we call it a regular iPad.

So like the kind of evolution of the original iPad. This is what it's been called over if we call it a regular ipad so like the the kind of evolution of the original ipad this is what it's been called over time ipad ipad 2 the new ipad with retina display ipad air ipad air 2 and now ipad and apple is calling this the fifth generation ipad in technical and support documents yeah it's actually ipad ipad 2 ipad with retina display well or the new ipad with retina display ipad with retina display right did you say that twice oh because there's the third and the fourth right because they did the quick turnaround where the third generation ipad was the first retina ipad and they said this is just the new ipad but really what it was is it was an ipad third generation and then like not very long, nine months later, six months later, they came out with the fourth generation model because the third generation model, which we had one of those, really struggled to drive all of those pixels.

And then they did an upgrade and the fourth generation model was a much more capable Retina iPad. And then they went Air and Air 2. So in some ways, this is the seventh iPad, mainstream iPad, or even arguably the eighth, but they're not counting it that way. They're counting it as the fifth. The iPad Air was a divergence. The iPad Pro was a divergence, but this is the fifth model to be called just iPad. iPad 2 got retconned it's ipad 2 means second generation ipad apparently but they they steered away from that pretty quickly on the ipad side ipad mini still has a number i don't know it's inconsistent i i i get the feeling that they're calling in all the debts and going to the mattresses and pretty soon uh all the numbers are going to be gone

and one last little tidbit. I'd have to mention it because everyone in the UK will be super mad if I don't. So this iPad is, I think, the first product to actually cost more in pure number value in pounds than dollars.

So the $329 iPad is £339. So the actual currency conversion makes it $429. That's what £339 is. So it's just an interesting thing to see that not only is it, you know, it's always more expensive, right? Just in like currency conversion. But now just like the actual numbers,

it is a £339 ipad and that's brexit so yeah i was gonna say just just to put this in perspective when i uh last went to the uk it was about 1.6 um dollars to the pound and it's 1.26 dollars to the pound now yep and we see this a lot in which is great because i'm going to the uk next week so yay the whole country is cheaper um but the so thank you for that thank you for your economy being potentially destroyed mike uh it makes it cheaper for american tourists anyway um apple has to deal with this worldwide right because apple deals in american dollars and so apple has this challenge overseas. And what they don't want to do is have fluctuating prices where depending on the day you walk into an Apple store in Australia or in the United Kingdom or anywhere

else, that iPad costs slightly different because of current currency. They're not going to do that, but they've been burned a bunch of times. So they, they, I think they want to be competitive. They don't want to be priced out of markets. We've seen that. Actually, historically, Apple has been really bad in Australia, where they've overpriced their systems in Australia because they claim because of conversions, but it ended up being way more expensive than it was to buy it in the States. And that's still true from place to place. But this is an interesting example where Apple's just said, no, we're going to protect ourselves. I think this is Apple, to your point um i think this is apple protecting against more um drop in the pound because it's going to happen from brexit and and so they're

just pricing it where they think it's going to go the end of this week is when we trigger article 50 which is right the uk saying to the EU, oh, you know, we're definitely going. So it's very likely that the pound will take another hit at that point. So Apple, I think, is quite rightly for a business. They are forecasting that it's going to be more and more expensive for them to sell products here. So they're preparing for it.

Yeah, and Apple would rather not change the price of this product later. That's really what's going on here. Let's say that something happens in the UK and the strength of the pound goes way back up. Then, yeah, then maybe in six months or a year, Apple goes, okay, we got to change the price. But right now they're anticipating

it's going to go the other way. And what this, so they're placing a bet and this allows them to not change the price. Whereas on some of their other products if if the pound keeps going down they will continue probably to reprice every so often but i i know they hate to do that right you want to be consistent the last thing you want to do is do a price hike in a country but you know but those valuations eat into their profit margins you know right because in the end they're um you know, but those valuations eat into their profit margins, you know, right? Because in the end, they're, you know, they're paying what they're paying, and it's a consistent amount. And then suddenly the money that's coming back to them, if they bring it back, of course,

they leave a lot of cash outside of the US. But I think that, you know, they're thinking in terms of the dollar. And so they want it, they want it to be the price consistently around the world. Yep. This means the net result of this is that if you wanted one of these, you would buy and so they want it they want it to be the price consistently around the world yep this mean the net result of this is that um if you wanted one of these you would buy it when you're in the u.s right i'm going to be reverting to a lot of my decisions that i made a few years ago yeah which was to pick up some devices that were you know not critical uh when i'm making u.s trips well

and an ipad you could get... Of course, and then I will pay the taxes at the border. The challenge is with you can't buy a laptop in the US, right, because you're going to get the ridiculous US keyboard. I've done it. Can you do... I wonder, can you buy a UK

keyboard at the US Apple store? Not at the store. You might be able to buy it online. Online, I mean, and then have it shipped to wherever you're going to be. Maybe. I mean, you can buy US layout keyboards in the UK.

Of course. I expect you could probably do it. USA. USA. I'm sure you could probably do the same in the other way. Let's just talk real quickly about the missing iPads

from last week's announcements i mean i think that we are all pretty much expecting an ipad pro bump not happening yet so these aren't it rightly these are not that no so where are where are they jason where is the 9.7 and 12.9 inch where are they i have some theories uh one theory is that there's an ios update that's required for them that isn't ready and so they are saving them for another it could be an event in april it could be another press release in april or may they could save them for wwdc in june um they could save them for the fall for iOS 11. There's a lot of things that they could do that they're getting a little long in the

tooth in the sense that the iPad Pro 12.9 was announced in September of 15, but didn't ship until like December of 15, I think, or November of 15. Late, anyway. But still, it's been more than a year, and it's been about a year for the iPad Pro 9.7 now. So if they're keeping that on a year-ish schedule, you would think that there would be one soon. And there are rumors out there about them,

but we don't have them yet. I mean, the thing about Apple doing things by press release is that it doesn't take a long Apple doing things by press release is that they, it doesn't take a long time to do a press release. I mean, there's a lot of work in the background. I had this conversation with Michael Gartenberg on Twitter the other week because, you know, he used to work at Apple. And, you know, there's work that goes into product launches, right?

It's not like they can flip a switch and launch a product. There's not just the product, but the crafting and all that. But the work to release a product by press release is less than the work to release a product by event, because then you have to set do event planning and that takes time. And if it's not on an on-campus venue, that takes more time and there's more opportunity for leaks and things like that. So this is, you know, I think it's an open question will apple even do an event between now and wwdc it's possible that they won't and they don't need to right we we all covered and are still covering those press releases from last tuesday it'd be very easy for apple to do that or

to brief some key journalists beforehand although they very rarely brief journalists on unannounced hardware um but they could try it apple's doing a lot of things that they didn't used to do so you know and not a lot of things that they used to do and the new ipads like those new ipads that we're talking about are not new right they're they're speed bumps like we would call them they're pro they're they're internals upgrades right there's probably not going to be a new now if that 10.5-inch iPad exists, I think they would want to introduce that in an event. Yes. But they could rev the iPad Pros now if they wanted to, like by a press release tomorrow or in two weeks if they wanted to, whenever, and hold that 10.5 for the fall.

That's a big step up for that product line. So maybe that's a fall product or maybe it's a wwdc product um they could totally do that that's that's i think for me right now that's my best guess about what the the dividing line is between we need to have an event and not is if it's an entirely new product that's a that's a computing device it's not like a new trackpad or something like that an entirely new product i think you want to have a stage for it and not just do that by press release so i've been thinking a lot about this right about the ipad pro and i'm thinking that the expect what our expectations of what the next ipad pros were going to be um if that was what it was we would have got them last week which was new processors and like

the 12 like in the 9.7 because we were expecting there to be a 9.7 um and then maybe new processors and the true tone and the 12.9 right so like they basically are the same but they just have some speed bumps and some slight changes to them but we also had this rumor right of this magical 10.5 inch ipad pro so what i'm starting to think now is that the rumor was always from the supply chain that there were going to be three ipad pro sizes right right i don't think there ever was going to be i think what now like more i've been thinking about this what the supply chain thought was the 9.7 inch iPad Pro was the iPad we got. Is this one. And that we'll get an iPad Pro announcement in June

or at some point this year. But there will only be two of them. The 10.5 and the 12.9. Yep. And that hopefully, maybe, and I think John Gruber said this in a piece which I haven't actually read yet, but it's in my queue to read, that he thinks that the 12

9 would get the same kind of design as the 10 5 and that maybe they wouldn't do any of this until after the next iphone is released because the iphone probably go bezel is first so i mean i don't you know i don't know about that but i do think that they would release two of them together that look the same, I think. It could happen that the iPhone gets released first, this rumored bezel-less iPhone, followed by the iPad. I don't think I believe that Apple wouldn't release a bezel-reduced iPad in advance of the iPhone because they're afraid that it will steal its bezel thunder. Right. Yeah, yeah. I don't think that, right? advance of the iphone because they're afraid that it will steal its bezel thunder right yeah yeah i don't i don't think that right i mean like well it stole the true tone thunder of the iphone there's still no the ipad has features the iphone doesn't have and it's okay right it's okay they're

different it has it has the smart connector it has true tone uh i also think that this ipad will not be as bezel-less as the iphone will be i agree with that right yeah yeah and it also won't be an oled screen i don't think exactly right so i i just i i don't believe that one that's an argument it could it could be true but i i don't see any evidence that apple is going to withhold oh we've got this great new ipad ready to go but it's got kind of really reduced bezels. And we've got another product coming in six months that's got some reduced bezels too. And so we better wait and hold this product back while the other one premieres. Nah, I mean, I just don't.

I have a hard time believing that that is reason enough to hold that product back. That maybe there are other reasons, but I think they could absolutely release that product. And maybe it's a hint of things to come. I think Apple could get away with it easily and they wouldn't hold it back. So I'm skeptical about that approach, that thought about Apple's approach. This is where I think we are, right? about Apple's approach. This is where I think we are, right?

I think that there is this new design coming to the Pros which will even further push the Pro line away from the regular iPad and that there was never going to be a 9.7-inch iPad Pro. There was always just going to be this 10.5 and the 12.9, but they're not ready yet.

And the 9.7-inch iPad Pro was actually an iPad. And that's what we got. Makes a lot of sense if you think about, like, why would we have two iPads that are the same size but have different screens, right? Now we know the answer. Well, that was always the weirdest part of the rumor.

The only explanation was that it was like what the iPhones are going to be like, where the iPad Pros stay the same, but the 10.5 is this more expensive model in the middle. But even then, it was like, well, that's muddying the iPad Pro line past the point it needs to be. So they could just have two of them, you know? And it makes me feel better about this idea that the 9.7 or the 10.5 in case,

that size is the iPad mini of the 12.9. That in the end, what are the iPad Pros? The iPad Pros are this higher resolution they're the big screen and there's a big one and a little one that they have the same resolution the apps look the same on both of them they have the smart connector presumably they'll both have p3 color gamut they'll both have true tone that you know they will have we will have finally after a year plus of weirdness a a rev of the iPad Pros could get them parallel, where the features are the same.

Like, all the features are the same, except the physical size of it. And I think that would be great. I think that would be really good for the iPad. And as we said earlier, I think you call them the new iPad Pros in these sizes, and you don't call them generation whatever. And you don't age out the

old ones for cheaper you do it like you do a laptop which is old ones are gone the new ones are here and if you want cheaper get an ipad don't get last year's ipad pro get an ipad if you want cheaper but the ipad pro costs what it costs yep which i think just did that yeah right like they've shown that they're willing to do that in the iPad line. You can't buy an iPad Air anymore. That regular 9.7-inch screen iPad, there's one of them. They just cut out the old ones, put in the new one, job done. And that's what I think we both think and hope they'll do with the iPad Pro.

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i think ios 10 3's big consumer feature is find my AirPods, right? Right. That's it. Adding AirPods to find my iPhone. They say more ways to use Siri with pavement, ride booking, and automaker apps. And APFS, right? I think the new file system happens in the background, too. But it's out now.

So we have nothing to report about it. These are basically minor updates. Oh, and the Mac OS update should add Night Shift. I believe that's a Mac OS. I think that's a Mac OS feature in that update too.

But those are all coming out this week. Funnily enough, it feels like the Mac OS is getting the biggest feature out of both of these releases. Yeah, but it's a feature that was already in iOS. I know, I know. It just got delayed. I know, but you know. That's really cool for the Mac, I think.

You know, I'm excited about that. Not that I'm going to be running Sierra on my iMac because I'm a scared person. I did just put it on my MacBook though. I did. I just, so i'm bringing because i'm doing many many many many podcasts while i'm traveling i all the great shows you might say all the great shows turns out so um i updated my macbook air my trusty 11 inch macbook air will

be joining me in europe and um sorry in europe and also in the uk oh look what i did there um this is not you just i know i know we're not being thrown out of the continent you know well i think geography kind of threw you out of the continent right there's some water in the way there but i know it's painful so um macbook air is updated to sierra which i didn't do for a long time do this right i mean you're hardly in the best political climate oh no i was gonna say that the dark dark humor black humor is the is the uh order of the day mike that's all i can do um so my macbook air my trusty 11 inch macbook air that i didn't take on my last trip to europe because i had a test macbook pro right but But I'm back to the 11-inch air and I'm going to bring it with me. It's great for podcast editing and

it's a little more versatile. And I'm doing a lot of podcast editing when I'm there because I'm doing all radio. And so I want to have logic. I don't want to use my iPad for that because I don't want to stress it. I'm concerned that I might, I might let down the good people at all if I have any technical problems and I don't want to do that. And the MacBook Air is very small, but I did upgrade it to Sierra finally, because I just decided now is the time I, you know, I was using it as the compare device of compare. If I, if I look at something and say, was in el capitan i could open my laptop and see and now i i can't check that anymore because i'm i'm running sierra everywhere

but so i'm uh yeah so i finally did the same thing you did it's laptop laptop is on there but my mac's been on sierra for almost a year now because you know really since last summer so uh last friday um it came out via tech crunch that apple had acquired workflow um the application that i use a lot federico uses a lot and then you use some and you know i know that like you know we spoke about it at the top of the show that you use it i use it um it's an application that many people use to help them do additional things on iOS, some power user things, some stuff that otherwise iOS struggles with. Kind of for anybody that uses iPads or iPhones to get their work done, Workflow is a really, really useful tool. Workflow is a really, really useful tool. In fact, it's a useful toolbox of little things that you can do that are made easier on iOS because Workflow exists.

Apple has bought the app and the team. So I think the three founders, and then they had one engineer who was going to work with them. I believe a team of four were all going over to work at the mothership. And the app is still around. It's actually free now. I think it used to be like $2.99 or $4.99, something like that. And it is remaining in the store.

We don't know how long for, but we assume for a significant amount of time because they changed the business model for it. They made it a free app. Apple also made, not Apple, but the workflow team made an update as well, which removes some features, change some features, add, fix some bugs. There's some stuff going on.

So I wanted to ask you, Jason. Now, you've, I'm sure, over time, have seen Apple acquisitions of services of teams of applications you know you've seen apple sherlock things sherlocking is a little different but i know but yeah i mean sherlocking this is somebody could argue that workflow being bought by apple is preventing it from being sherlocked because sherlocking is the approach where there's a feature we mentioned night shift earlier, right? There are, there were some like jailbreak apps that did that.

And on the Mac, there are apps that do that. And now Apple with this Mac release, Apple is Sherlocking the night shift like apps on the Mac by building a feature that was previously in a third party app into the operating system. And there are extenuating circumstances there. And that's a good example. But of course the Sherlock app was a great example of that, where there was an app called Watson that did a lot of web queries when you typed in search, and then Apple released Sherlock, which did the exact same thing and did it in the system.

And that was that, you know, so you could argue that maybe if Apple felt like they needed to move down the path of doing iOS automation, that they would have to Sherlock workflow. They would have to make workflow basically irrelevant by building their own integrated system level automation system. And so you could maybe make the argument that this purchase saves workflow from being Sherlocked. So based on your history, what do you think is going to happen to workflow?

Well, I mean, there's the pessimistic view and the optimistic view. I choose to be optimistic, Mike. I choose to be optimistic. If you look, and there are examples, Siri has been brought up that Siri was bought and integrated into the core OS. TestFlight was bought and integrated into the core OS. Test flight was bought and integrated into the core OS.

The core workflow of what it was meant to do. Like test flight still does what it did before. In some ways, it does it way better because it's got the power of Apple behind it now. So I'm choosing to be optimistic. I'm choosing to decide that the reason Apple bought workflow is not because they thought the workflowflow engineers were really brilliant and they always are in the market for more brilliant iOS engineers and they don't really want Workflow, but they want the people and it's an acqui-hire, right? And the people who Workflow like couldn't make the business work and were seeking an acquisition and this was a lifeboat for them. That's the pessimistic view here. I choose to be optimistic and think Apple liked workflow, was well aware of it, has been working with those guys for quite a while on getting them approved, right? Because I think it was unclear whether this was an approvable app to begin with. They want an ADA. And they want an ADA, right?

All of these ties there. So I choose to believe that Apple is well aware of the power of this and when you're looking at the ipad pro and you're looking at the future of ios as a an environment that needs to offer more to people who have more needs the power users of ios and that that may not all be doing automation but like if you've got a product like the iPad pro, and you're really trying to push people on what the iPad pro can do, and you think it's the future of your, of your professional computer platform in, you know, in the long run, which goes back to something we've talked about before about like, you know, is the Mac around 10 years from now as anything but a legacy product? What is Apple's focus on what the replacement for the Mac is in five or 10

years? The answer is probably iOS because that's their new, their modern next generation operating system. And it's already here, but this is a missing piece, right? It workflow works within the context of iOS, but it does this thing that the system should probably do and doesn't.

And that they looked at this and said, why would we, you know, if we could buy these guys, we can integrate this app into the system and give them access to stuff they don't have access to now. And we can keep it from having access to things that are, you know, security problems,

but we can give them access to things that other apps don't get access to. And we can use this as the foundation of our automation strategy on iOS and maybe on Mac OS too, but certainly on iOS that this it's proven to work and people love it. And so why not pick it up? Like,

like how Twitter picked up at replies and hashtags and said, Oh, that's a great idea. People who are not a Twitter, let's do that. That Apple's like, Oh, workflow X callback URL.

These are all the look, everybody made it work. We're's like, oh, workflow, X callback URL. These are all, look, everybody made it work. We're going to authorize it. We're going to make it official. We're going to consecrate that and say, yes, this is how you do that and then build on it. So that's my optimistic view is that this will turn into something that will be different and will potentially have limitations that workflow on the outside didn't have, but will potentially have limitations that the that workflow on the outside didn't have but will also have a whole lot of power that workflow on the outside did not have access to and that apple will have people internally who are pushing to open that's the part that really excites me pushing to open stuff that's just been barred that like you can't do that apps can't do

that but that the system can do and that like apple's apps can do that potentially workflow could do to make this all um you know better for people who want to to connect this stuff together and i feel like this is one of the great things about workflow is that workflow is all about connecting apps and you know the apps have been so successful on ios and workflow is all about connecting apps and, you know, the apps have been so successful on iOS and workflow is fits into Apple's view of the world on iOS, which is workflow is a tool that lets your apps talk to each other and talk to workflow and build things out of the power of all of your apps that the individual apps can't do themselves. Like it's a good story on top of it. So that's, that's my optimism is that, is that Apple will actually keep doing

something like workflow, maybe even keeping it called workflow and have it be much more of a central part in the operating system going forward because, um, or, or next to the operating system like Swift Playgrounds is not quite in, but it's adjacent and have the ability to broaden and have Apple bless their approach for power user stuff on iOS. Do you envision that some of this advancement will occur like advancement to workflows previously occurred with like updates to the application? Or do you think it's going to be kind of like all quiet on the western front until a version of ios in which workflow is part of the system or is like how you can download

something like itunes u but like it's all redesigned it's part of the apple system and it has more features like all in one it could be that workflow is um its own thing and it could be that workflow sinks beneath the sea and it's replaced with some automation settings somewhere i feel like just like with automator there will be an app and it might just be called workflow yeah um it's a good name it's great i think it's a better name than automator it's way better um maybe it'll get a more boring icon yeah it probably will right but you know i think i think it i think it works all right so let me ask you a question assuming that apple bought this app to enhance automation on i and maybe on macOS right they might bring something like this to macOS

why was Sal Seguin let go well I mean who knows Sal maybe doesn't even know people at Apple know I look at this and I think Apple wants to change its approach to automation that

the Apple that sal and his team you know somebody could make the argument they were rude in an apple script which is you know typing in typing in big uh you know scripting language stuff like that that you could somebody could make the argument is a very kind of 80s and 90s approach and that they did automator but that you know it's still based on you know on apple events and scripting and things like that and then maybe apple has a new approach it could be politics it could be literally like these guys are going to fight us on keeping all this old stuff around and we just want to clear the board and do something new i don't know i really don't know um it doesn't make sense. The narrative that Apple doesn't care about automation, and that's why they killed the team, doesn't really follow if they buy workflow for automation.

And the issues with Sal and his team were not about automation per se, but about maybe their approach or their political liabilities in the organization. I mean, it's entirely possible that there's just groups within Apple that said, I don't like those guys. I don't trust those guys. And clearly they had a, from what I do know, is that you know a problematic relationship between that group and and other parts of apple and they were frustrated frustrated by it so i don't know um that it's all speculation that's all that's all i can i can say is that i don't i literally do not know the backstory about why they did it um but that's my my gut feeling is it has something to do with that they either didn't like their approach or didn't believe them when they said

that they embraced other approaches or there was some political issue where that you know they're like i don't i don't you know want those guys around anymore i don't but i don't know i i i can come up with a menu of sure possibilities but that's about i think the logic is sound though right like that there was somebody disagreed with someone when it came to looking at the future of automation on mac platform on apple platforms right like however it was done right like we've whether like it was apple didn't agree with where sal wanted to go or sal didn't agree with where apple wanted to go and then maybe the workflow thing was also built into it. It looks like that there was a difference of opinion because as you say, clearly Apple has not said

we don't believe in automation because they just bought an app that does it and are keeping it around, right? And for what we've seen so far, continuing to allow the team to support that application and have set it up so it can continue, right? So they clearly are not against automation, but there was something about maybe the old ways of working

that they didn't want to continue with, or whatever it might be. Pure speculation, of course. I will say that something kind of cool, I think this is very cool actually, Sal Seguin was on Mac Power Users this week on episode 370. I'll put a link in the show notes in case you want to go and check that. But I will ask, Jason, would you want to see workflow for Mac? Yes, in the

long run, because what I try to do is imagine what that might look like, and I think what it might look like is Apple saying, here's what we're going to do is Apple events are going to be deprecated. And we're going to do everything through URLs like we do on iOS. And you register for URLs, custom URLs, and data gets passed in a URL string. And you have access to the share buttons in apps. And you have access to the share buttons in apps and you have access via widgets and you have access via items in the finder that basically are running the background workflow service. And it basically replaces Automator and maybe it has hooks in it for more traditional scripting stuff like shell scripts or Apple scripts or whatever.

But that really what you're doing is saying in the long run, this is how we've decided across all platforms to connect apps together. And most modern app developers on iOS have embraced this. So Mac developers embrace it, too. I don't know whether they would do that or not. It depends on how much of a legacy they feel, a legacy system they feel Mac OS is. You know, they might be like, you know, you got Automator, you got Apple Script, whatever. I do wonder if there is another shoe to drop here. And Swift is what I keep coming back to, which is it wouldn't surprise me if Apple pushes Swift as the next generation of user scripting for Mac and iOS, that they go beyond,

you know, Swift Playgrounds. They say, you know, when they, they talked to Chris Lattner on ATP, I think he mentioned this at one point that, you know, Swift is designed to be everything from, you know, server development environment to app development, to user scripting, to, you know, to a much simpler sort of scripting approach it should be able to do all of those things ultimately and so i do wonder about that if if maybe that's their that what they're really doing here is saying look we're gonna we're gonna kill apple script um we're gonna we're gonna maybe kill uh apple events on the mac or deprecate them so because every app uses it now,

but like in the long run, instead we're going to use this, this other protocol or even if they keep it around, like, but, but the story is going to be swift. That might happen on both platforms. I still,

part of me just thinks, are they going to want to bring that to the Mac? Are they just going to let the Mac? This is that, this is a small version of the larger argument, which is why break things on the Mac? If the Mac is your legacy platform and people use things on the Mac? Are they just going to let the Mac? This is that this is a small version of the larger argument, which is why break things on the Mac? If the Mac is your legacy platform, and people use things on the Mac, because they have worked that way on the Mac for 20 years. Why break it, just leave it there. Maybe add the new thing, maybe don't even add the new thing.

And just say that's a that's one of the great things that's on iOS now, and then walk away. And so I guess, I guess we'll see what they're feeling about that. But, um, but you know, I feel like you can do everything you can do in workflow on the Mac now. So you don't need it there. It's just a matter of Apple wanted to come in and say, no, from now, you know, now this is the thing everywhere. Um, and I don't know, I would say if Apple's going to take iOS or Mac OS to a lockdown place in the future that feels much more like iOS where you can't run arbitrary scripts and get to the terminal and things like that,

if they go there, then they have to have something like Workflow. Workflow on iOS is now free and seems to be at least for a while sticking about. So if you haven't tried it, you should. And as we said earlier in the show and in the show notes, Jason put together some of his favorites, some of his favorite workflows. A couple of weeks ago on Connected,

me and Federico and Stephen shared some of our favorite workflows. Ironically enough, on that episode, we spoke about what would happen if workflow ever went away, and I think we came to the conclusion that we didn't think it would happen if workflow ever went away and I think we came to the conclusion that we didn't think it would happen and I believe we may have mentioned the possibility of Apple acquiring them at some point but kind of all roared by us if it hasn't happened by now

surely it's not going to happen and if you want to hear me and Federico especially I guess commiserate and kind of hope we're going to be talking about this more on Connected this week Federico, especially, I guess, commiserate and hope. We're going to be talking about this more on Connected this week as well, if you want to hear more on the subject.

Because it is so important to Federico, especially. So I'm interested to see how he feels on this. I feel like I've been going through the seven stages of the grieving process. um and and i honestly i don't even know how i feel about this right now i really don't like i i will say i don't feel very hopeful um i i just don't uh yeah that's kind of how i feel about this right now like i'm kind of using workflow still every day and i'm like thinking about like what do i have anything that can do the stuff that i'm doing here like what do i have you know and I'm like thinking about like what do I have anything that can do the stuff that I'm doing here like what do I have

I'm just thinking about it I'm preparing because no matter what it's going to be it's not going to be what it is now that could be good or bad but it's not going to be what it is now in two years time that I agree with I think it's unlikely

although you know test flight is not very different than it was when apple yeah and it's better right so i mean i'm not saying it's necessarily going to be worse but it's going to be different and i think some of the things that i do right now i won't be able to do anymore like i wonder will apple embrace web apis like workflow if they take workflow away and say like here is our version to go forward? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I know Federico spent a lot more time thinking about this than I have so I'm sure you have some stuff to say as well. We'll see. I choose to be optimistic but you are right things will be different almost certainly but the the trade-off of having a an automation utility

that is already right on the edge of like what an app should be able to do, have access as a blessed Apple app to potentially do things that no app store app would ever be allowed to do. The upside for that is huge. And so, you know, would I, would I make the gamble if I had to choose of like, all right, well, you can put out, put workflow inside of Apple and see what happens. And there's a chance that you're going to have access to all this amazing stuff, but they might also ruin it totally or make it go away. I don't know if I would take that bet. You know, I might just choose to say, let's let it ride. Let's leave it where it is. It's all good, right? But the potential for iOS, thinking not just about workflow, but thinking about doing work on iOS, the potential there for workflow

or something that is based on workflow to harness core operating system functionality that nobody has access to is huge it's huge like it could potentially be a game changing feature for ios and yeah it may not be the same and for tasks, it may may cease to be functional. But if they do it right, I might be willing to make that trade because of the power that you can get once you're inside Apple, and you're vetted by the people at Apple, and you're granted access to things that nobody outside of Apple can grant access to. And by putting it in workflow, you're granting access to the users to those features and that makes ios better so that's why i choose to be optimistic is that if done right this will make ios i would love that i would love that but like i just can't

get it out on my head that there's also a bad part and if that bad part does happen it seriously affects the way that i get my work done i feel like what i'm telling you mike is workflow is dead but it's going to a better place is it going to the app farm no i i think yeah it's going to a the app farm upstate the no i think the better way to do it would be to say like actually i'm going to take it back to the segoian family so like chris segoian sal's nephew was at the aclu he He was their security and technology lead. And he left there to work in Washington, D.C. at a, it's hard to even explain what it is, but it's like a policy seminar kind of place. And the idea there is he is going behind the scenes. He's not going to be able to tweet anymore.

He's gone behind the scenes. But he is, I'm going to assume he's doing good. He is teaching people in Washington about security issues so that we don't look at politicians and their staffs in Washington, DC in a few years and say, they literally have no idea what they're talking about, which is kind of how they are right now. And that's the trade-off is like, we lost access to this great voice who has lots of smart, interesting things to say to the public, but the world may be better off because of what he's doing now. So, you know, it's a little bit like that, which is workflow is maybe going to go away or

at least change, but it may make iOS a much better place in the end. And I'm not saying in jest that they're going to take the engineers from Workflow and have them work on a new springboard or something like that. That's not what I mean. That would be a complete failure and a crushing disappointment if that happened. But if Workflow, the spirit of Workflow,

affects iOS to make it far more powerful than it is now, then that'll be awesome. So hold on to that, Mike, as you're in your acceptance phase. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace. Enter the offer code UPGRADE at checkout and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. Hey, make your next move with Squarespace.

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So we start the show with hashtag Snell Talk. We end the show with hashtag AskUpgrade. Lucas wants to know, do you think there will be a new iPad mini? Yes. You do? I do. I think there will be. I think it will be the iPad mini without a number, like we said earlier.

Fifth generation. And it will be down there in the iPad line. It's like there'll be the iPad and the iPad mini, and they'll be buddies. I think that's probably the case. I think there's still people out there who want small. iPad minis are great for kids. They're great for kids. My son still uses an iPad mini, and he's 12 now, but he has grown up with the iPad mini size. He has small hands, and it works great for him. I do think there's a place for the iPad mini. I'm skeptical about whether there's a

pro iPad mini that needs to exist, but now that we've got the iPad back, I feel like there will still be an iPad mini as well to run on side it. But that the next version might be, you know, might be in the same style of like cheaper and maybe not as cutting edge. The iPad mini has kind of already been there. But also it's very weird. Can I say that with the new they've they're only selling 128 version of the ipad mini 4 it's weird that's weird that fact makes me think there might not be any more after this one

they're just trying to try trying to trying to get them out the door and then close it off i feel like there's a use case for it. Why would you do that? It seems so strange, like from pricing and stuff. Like it's just really weird. Yeah, I don't know. It is weird. Yeah, it costs more. It costs more to get an iPad mini than an iPad,

although you could argue like it's a specialty thing and it's like you're paying for the smallness of it. You get in a big story. There's a reason, but it's like it just seems, yeah. I would have expected them to have it be like an ipad mini for 32 only yeah instead they went 128 only but i do if i had if i had to bet i would bet there will be a new ipad mini at some point that will be maybe drop the number entirely and we'll just be a you know a buddy to the ipad fifth generation tim wants to

know if we use a VPN to protect browsing privacy. Jason, do you? I don't. I'm open to the idea because there's a lot of talk, especially in the U.S., that there might be legislation to change what your internet provider is monitoring from your browsing information and selling that. Um, so I've thought about it. Although of course the VPN provider can, can look at your traffic too. Yeah. So, um, uh, so I don't know. I, I have a VPN if I, uh, so I have tunnel bear and one of the features that tunnel bear has is it's got a Chrome extension. I don't think it has a Safari extension.

The great thing about the Chrome extension is I can VPN my web traffic only. I can just turn on the Chrome extension and just use TunnelBear to tunnel my web traffic. So it would be fine for this Skype call. Exactly right. So there wouldn't be any encryption overhead for skype that's really cool my chrome thing has it yeah i don't think they can do that in safari but they can do that in chrome and so i use that not all the time because i don't use chrome all the time but i use that sometimes and have it set up to just go to. But, you know, I, I'm open to this idea, I feel like we're

gonna, we're gonna get to the point when when we might all need more of stuff like this. But right now, the issues are it does, it can really slow things down. And I have podcasts and things to do. And so that makes me if I could set up my router to just encrypt everything before it even gets to the cable modem to like encrypt it out somewhere else and then everything on my house would be encrypted, I would consider it. But, you know, I don't really want to do that with my Netflix streams and my podcasts and things like that. streams and my podcasts and things like that. So I feel like the technology is going to need to be more sophisticated or at least come down to products that make it easier for consumers to tie into a VPN and encrypt their traffic that's going out past their ISP. But then if enough people do that, the scrutiny will just move to the VPN providers because

they become, you know, that's where the tunnel ends and they become the people who have to safeguard your privacy. I use Cloak on my laptops. So like on my MacBook, I have Cloak and I use that for kind of when I travel or when I'm on like unsafe Wi-Fi, you know, Wi-Fi that I don't trust.

I also have the app installed on my iOS devices in case I ever want to do the same for that. Yeah, I have that with TunnelBear. I have those both set up. And yes, when I'm out in the world at some random Wi-Fi hotspot, that is what I generally do, is I trust having just,

don't trust the free Wi-Fi. I've got to say though, I'm super intrigued about that TunnelBear thing. I mean, I used TunnelBear a long time ago before I found Cloak, and then I found Cloak to be a nicer app, nicer experience. But that browser extension, that is really intriguing. If I was ever going to run something like that at home, I don't want everything going through it. I want my browsing history to be hidden if I'm doing it at home. don't want everything going through it like i want my browsing

history to be hidden if i'm doing it at home like i'm not worried about like the network itself but i wouldn't want my streaming services or my skype or anything to be going through it because it would everything would be slower so exactly that's really really interesting it's really interesting i might look into that a little bit more. Mitchell asked, well, they said they're ditching their 15-inch MacBook Pro because they don't need a real computer anymore. They want to know, the age-old question, should I get a 9.7-inch or 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and should I wait for the upgrade?

So I'm going to answer this in two parts. If you are coming from a 15-inch MacBook Pro, you should get the 12.9-inch iPad Pro because clearly portability wasn't a thing that you super cared about in the past, right? Because there were like multiple screen sizes smaller than that. And also I think going from 15-inch to 9.7, you would feel that. I think you should go to the 12.9.

Plus as well, if it's going to be your home machine, the 12.9 is a nicer machine for the home because it's bigger, it's heavier, but you don't need to carry it around all the time um should you wait for the upgrade i think probably yeah i mean if you're willing to wait a year because we don't know how long it's going to be but i would expect within the next 12 months there will be new ones because who even knows anymore nobody knows no one could tell i would say but there will be something within the next year. I would say, wait. Otherwise, 12.9, I use it

every single day. It's an old machine now, based on kind of iOS device refreshes, but it's still fantastic. Mine works great, and it works great every single day. You could probably get a decent price on a refurb one now. That might be a good route to go down.

Yeah, but we do have hopes that there will be a new one soon so i say within the next three to six months so if you can hold out if you can hold out i would hold out for the new one because the old one is more than a year old now yep chris asked what is apple doing on the 18th of April? Now, this sounds like a very peculiar question, unless you know that at WWDC last year, there was this big wall of text, right? And it had all these little phrases and funny things and jokes and inside jokes and that kind of stuff. But one of the kind of small sentences said, Hello Tuesday, April 18th, 2017.

It was the only reference to any date on this huge wall of code, is what Apple called it. But it was there. Tuesday, April 18th, 2017. I'll put a link in the show notes. Federico tweeted it. He took a picture of it. Federico has many feelings. I think his one has been

that that is when Campus 2 will officially be declared open. I think he said that for a while as well like that was one of the big things many people think that there might be an event on that day that apple was been thinking about or some big product introduction that they knew about was definitely going to be on that date basically 10 months before what do you think i mean that whatever it is apple is surely sure about something happening on that day i mean why it would be such a like why would you say that day why would you not say the day that it was that wwdc opened or whatever tuesday april 18 2017 what do you think's happening jason i think it's somebody's birthday or somebody's anniversary and they they picked a

date in the future for that phrase i think it's that simple i don't think there's anything going on you don't think they just picked it yeah that far in advance apple doesn't do doesn't schedule stuff that far in advance no way so you think that will come to april 19th and nothing would have happened on the 18th well i'll put it this way if something happens on april 18th it is not going to happen because apple knew that they had text on the wall at wwdc 2016 that mentioned that date and boy they have to do something that date or it'll disappoint all of the conspiracy theorists on no but like what if it was something that that like i mean you know it's not impossible that something could have been set a year in advance to happen it is it's not necessarily a product launch but it could be anything i i i don't it could be anything but what

would it be what would it be that Apple cared enough about to put in secret text in the hello banner at WWDC that they knew about months in advance? 10 months in advance? It could have been the day that they declared open campus to It's a construction project

But why would you do that 10 months? No, yeah, construction projects slip Everything slips Okay, No, yeah, construction projects slip. Everything slips. Okay, well, all right, fine, fine. I think that it is not impossible for a company to assume something, a date of some description 10 months in advance. I don't think that is an impossible thing to do.

But we'll find out. Brent asked, unlike last week's Brent, I have too many podcasts that I listen to. The Brents are fighting now. How do you decide which podcasts to drop from your queue? Now, I take this not so much as a podcast to unsubscribe to, but just like episodes I see and I don't want to listen to them.

I don't have as much time to listen to podcasts as I used to. This is something that has started to happen to me gradually over time. When I quit my job, I was still listening to lots of stuff, but I don't know what it is. But in the last maybe six months or so, I seem to have less and less time to listen to podcasts, and I don't know why, or at least have less and less time to listen to podcasts and i don't know why or at least less and less consistent time to listen so these days i tend to for a small handful of shows that i listen to every single episode of and then outside of that i just look at the descriptions and choose if i want to add it to my queue in overcast queuing feature that I use and really like a lot. I do the pretty much the same thing, which is I will take shows. I have a priority playlist that some shows, and then I have a list of all the episodes and I will go in and add things to the queue. And if

somebody says, this is a great episode, I'll add those to the queue. And then eventually, if there's a podcast that I like episodes of, but I find that I'm never getting to it, unless there's an extraordinary circumstance, I will turn that to don't, you know, basically don't add new episodes, but I'll keep it in my overcast list. And I will occasionally pop in there or somebody will say,

oh, did you hear this episode? And then I'll add it in that way manually. So there's like a set of levels that go down of like priority one, two, three, four, in terms of like how I approach them. But I have way too many shows too. And I decide, bottom line is, how do I decide? I decide what are the ones that get me excited when there's a new episode

and they go to the top of my queue. And then I put those in as like, yes, those always go in this queue and they always go to the top if they're that. And then everything else is just fighting for when i look at my queue and nothing is moving me or there's nothing in it then what do i what do i go to next if you want to find our show notes for this week's episode head on over to relay.fm upgrade 134 thanks again to our sponsors this week the fine folk over at text expander from smile encapsulate and squarespace if you want to have your question week, the fine folk over at TextExpander from Smile, Encapsular and Squarespace. If you want to have your question answered on the show,

you can always tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade and we'll grab it. And if you want to suggest a question for me to ask Jason in our new Snell Talk segment at the beginning of the show, it can be fun little questions, little esoteric things, just stuff that you want to know about Jason Snell's day or week or weekend, use the hashtag SnellTalk, and I'll pick those up as well. And we appreciate your participation on the show as always.

Any follow-up and stuff that you send, we always love it, and thank you for continuing to do that each and every week. If you want to find Jason online, he's over at sixcolors.com and at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L, and next week he'll be in my office. I am at imyke, I-M-N-E-L-L and next week he'll be in my office I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E and we'll be both back next week in person for the beginning of

our European tour which we seem to be doing on an almost yearly basis until next time, say goodbye Jason Snell goodbye from sunny and blue sky California you had to get the weather in, didn't you?

I did.