Upgrade - 137: iTunes on a Shelf

Episode Date: April 17, 2017

Serenity Caldwell joins Jason to discuss the possible disassembly of iTunes, the rise of the iPad Pro, and the teaser trailer for "The Last Jedi".

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 137 brought to you by encapsula ero and mail route i am jason snell your host as always though i don't usually read that part because Mike Hurley does, Mike traveling back from a weekend away. So he said to me, get a guest. And I said, sir, yes, sir. And I got a most excellent guest, Serenity Caldwell from iMore. Hello. Hi, Jason. Welcome to Upgrade.

You get to be one of the upgraders speaking to the upgradians this week so the upgradians do i congratulations congratulations do i have to speak in an english accent do i know do i have to pretend to be mike no because i'm not sure i can do that no you you you don't want to do that you it's not i don't think anyone wants that i think you need to be yourself. I think that's the joy of having the guest spot that isn't Mike is that it's not Mike, right? I am not exclamation point Mike. I am now pondering what it would be if I hired like a Mike impersonator and gave them a script, but I think that would be,

I think that would be bad. So, yeah, I think we'd cross into the darkest timeline that way. Exactly. No, we want you to be you. So it's upgraded with a little twist this time.

It's because it's a no mic episode. This happened. So we did two in a row where we were together in London and then in Ireland, which is fun. And so we're just going to go off even further off the format this week with no mic. But he'll be back next week. And I'll be back. And you won't be back. You'll be free to go about your life instead of being on a podcast on a Monday. I'll do different things. Yeah, exactly. So, we like to start with follow-up. I think I might be contractually

mandated to place a footnote here pointing out the John Syracuse invented follow-up, but there it is. So, one thing is I did mention Ireland. I was at UL again. I found the video of our radio theater performance from two years ago, by the way. What? Can I see it? A source provided. Yeah, I'm working on doing some, getting that available for people to see. But that's exciting. Anyway, I did, so two years ago when you and I were there, we did the Incomparable Radio Theater and some other stuff. The last two ULs, I've done podcast interviews with the people who are the presenters, like whether they're speakers or whether they got sort of feature presentations that they do in different rooms around the venue. And that's actually been a lot of fun. And so I did 10, I think, this year. There's a podcast feed that's got all 17, 18, whatever it is, interviews with people from this year and last year. We'll put a link in the show notes to it.

There's a Six Colors post that links to it. You can also search, if you search iTunes for UL Radio, U-L-L Radio or Overcast or anything like that, you should be able to see it. It's just a regular old podcast. And they're really interesting interviews. So full credit, I just did the interviews, the full credit to the UL organizers for picking such fascinating people that I just all I had to do was chat with them about sort of like the topics that they discussed. And it's a fun way for people who were there to kind of get more and for people who weren't there to get an idea of what the uh what these interesting people were like and what they were talking about so check people should

check it out check it out it's a podcast you listen to podcasts right 100 of the people listening right now haven't listened to at least one podcast are aware of podcasting yeah exactly um mike mentioned that he uses clear in the last week's show for his packing lists when he goes on uh on uh on trips including the one he's on right now just getting back from right now and he was expressing fear this is going around a lot lately fear that it it hasn't been updated lately and maybe it's going to go away, that it got acquired and all of those things. But Mike wanted this piece of follow-up that, according to, we saw a note on Twitter about this,

according to responses from developers to reviews, a new version is forthcoming. So it looks like they are under development and doing other things. And there's a tweet from Julian that he linked to that quotes, actually screenshots a review. So that's good. I'm always concerned when an app I love seems to be put on a shelf somewhere that it's going to die and I'm going to have to get something else. So good news for people who use clear and uh last bit of follow-up is about so we talked about apple pay without a card that that um apple pay is great and uh and i use it a lot and in some places you can really get by with with just apple pay as i found out when i was in

the uk that the contactless infrastructure is so much better there because they have contactless credit cards, which we kind of had and don't really have now. Do you have any contactless credit cards? I don't have a contactless credit card. I have a couple of chip credit cards, but they took away the contactless payment. Yeah, I feel like they maybe cheaped out and said, okay, well, we won't do contactless.

We'll do the chip instead. But the contactless in the uk it's amazing like most places with car that take cards take contact list not all but almost everywhere i went and for me it was an unbelievable because i thought oh well basically they all do apple pay and so i bought lots of things with apple pay at one point last week we had that moment where my host, James Thompson, who I was staying with in Glasgow, we were buying some dinner takeaway, and the person behind the table at the takeaway place got out the little card reader, and he was kind of getting into his wallet to get a card out. And I noticed that there was a

contactless symbol on it. And I did the quick draw thing where I double tapped my Apple Watch and stuck it out and went bing and paid for it before he could even get his hand back out of his pocket with his wallet. And yeah, it was pretty awesome. So I love that.

I hope that there's more contactless support and Apple Pay support in the US over time because it's really so great. But we speculated about could you have Apple Pay without a credit card? Like, do you need a credit card? Or is there some way to just say, look, here's my bank. Here's my watch. I just want to buy things. And we heard from a bunch of people. There are a bunch of options out there, including Boone and square cash actually square cash lets you tie a virtual debit card to apple pay and listeners wayne and andreas sent those in so there are some places that are offering

the sort of like next generation using the credit card infrastructure but it's a debit card and and then it's uh it supports apple pay and then all a sudden, you've got no credit card, but the ability to buy things with Apple Pay, which is cool. That is fascinating. Like, I knew that Square Cash had a virtual card option, but I didn't even think about the fact that, oh, this could be a good way for people who don't have a credit or a debit card to make it happen. Right.

You just connect enough of the dots. And then all of a sudden, I think it just kind of flows from your bank account to Square and then from Square to Apple Pay pay and then you've got it which is uh it's a cool idea because i do hear from people who are like i don't have a credit card i don't want a credit card um it happens i actually hear a lot from people in europe um that there are because in the u.s they want to give you as many credit cards as possible. Because that's how the business works here. And you shouldn't live your life on credit. That's absolutely true if you can avoid it.

So this is an interesting approach, which is it's debit. And in Square's case, I think you move the money in or maybe it kind of auto. I forget exactly how that's set up. But in the end, you don't have to have a credit card account per se. You're instead using Square, which is neat. The magic of Square. It keeps on being handy. Do you use Apple Pay a lot?

I do. I try and use Apple Pay anywhere I can. Usually, I end up just using it to pay for groceries because my local Whole Foods, of course, accepts it. And my local pharmacy accepts it. But beyond that, it's really hard to find contactless payments around here. Like I end up using like, I end up using pseudo Apple Pay. Like I will use Apple Pay via the web, via the Panera app to like order Panera. Oh, yeah, right.

Or I'll use the Starbucks, you know, the Starbucksera app to like order panera oh yeah right um or i'll use the starbucks you know the starbucks refill option to refill starbucks with apple pay you know i just never i just did that too i just ordered chinese food the other day um and i used uh eat 24 and i i apple paid it so that you know literally sitting in bed i ordered chinese food paid for it and then like half an hour later there was a knock on the door with the food. And that's not quite the same as the contactless Apple Pay, but that's like using Apple Pay on the web to get things that you can use in the real world, right? It's very fun.

It feels very futuristic in a way that a lot of this kind of not quite gimmicky technology feels, but you know what I mean, right? Where it's just, it's something that could be either really useful or could just be something that you see and then never use again. Do you find yourself using it with the watch or with the phone more? I use it with a watch all the time. I never Apple Pay with the phone because like the phone's in my pocket and the

watch is not yeah okay so that's i think that's the trick when i'm waiting in line for things usually at the grocery store i usually have my phone out because it's just me and so i'm just like i'm looking at twitter or something while i'm waiting in line and i'm like well i already have the phone out i might as well use the phone. It makes sense. But yeah, I've used the watch a lot for when I'm going through the drive-thru of Starbucks because it's like, it's right there. It's right there. My arm is on the right side. Maybe not going to work for people in Europe, but for me, it's great.

Yeah, I love the watch for Apple Pay. I do that whenever I can. It is funny. I mean, whenever I can. It is funny. I mean, you mentioned it. There are the places that are the reliable ones. I have built a map in my brain of the local merchants that I know support it. And I always use it with them. And then I'm always keeping my eye out for the other ones to see if I can add them to that list.

So I'm making a little, like I'm constructing a little list of where I want to use it because I'd always prefer to use it, honestly. So there's an ice cream shop, a couple of exits up the freeway in Larkspur that I know has Apple Pay. So if we go there after we see a movie or something like that with the kids, I know I can Apple Pay there. And I can, you know, there's a burger place downtown in mill valley that that does apple pay and you know i love it it's great but then i i it's definitely a case where it's still i know the places where you can do it instead of assuming that you can do it everywhere and then marking off the places you can't because you can't that's not i wish we were there but we're not and the main grocery store we shop at you know does not support anything like like uh contactless although i think their terminals support it it's just not turned on

which is incredibly frustrating but maybe maybe they'll get there i also realized the other day since i since we got an electric car which i mentioned on the show before we got a used nissan leaf um uh i i what i've discovered is Whole Foods is really leaning into the Whole Foods, uh, stereotype because I've discovered that in addition to Whole Foods supporting Apple Pay everywhere, many, not all, but many Whole Foods locations also have, uh, have to have, have the level two electric car chargers out front. Cause I was looking at a map of like, where are the car chargers? And, and there are a lot of Whole Foods parking lots that have those car chargers out front because i was looking at a map of like where are the car chargers and and there are a lot of whole foods parking lots that have those car chargers too so uh yes why not just embrace it embrace what you are uh everybody already thinks that that it's the uh it's the uh people with electric cars and and iphones that are going to whole foods to buy their granola i guess i don't know. Home roasted granola, Jason.

Sure, that's it. And also their kale. They buy some fresh kale there to do whatever it is one does with kale. Yeah. I like to fry it in bacon grease. Yeah, lots of butter to make it edible. Exactly. You know, Blue Apron does things with kale.

I have no idea how you cook kale in the real world, with blue apron recipes yes i'm trying to figure it out if only they were they were a sponsor that would be a perfect segue um i know they're not only not this soon instead let me tell you about one of our other sponsors this week this episode brought you by encapsula which is a multi-function content delivery network it boosts the performance of your website protects it from denial of service attacks and secures it from bad guys while ensuring high availability. More than 100,000 organizations trust Encapsula every day. And that goes from huge Fortune 500 companies all the way down to, like me, one-person websites, right? It doesn't matter who you are. Encapsula can help protect you and your stuff. They have all the resources you're ever going to need to help your website load quickly,

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for their support of upgrade so one of the things that i wanted to talk to you about is itunes oh boy because last week an interesting thing happened that might, you know, it might not mean anything, but it feels to me like it means something. And I wrote about it on Six Colors. And I know a lot of people have thought about this. And I'm curious what you think about the future of iTunes. So, last week, what happened is that the iTunes podcast directory that's existed for more than a decade now, or about a decade. I'm not sure if it's more, but it's about a decade at least, if not a little bit longer.

Around that time. I was actually at the D conference when they announced this feature, when Steve Jobs went on stage. I think it was the same year that he and Bill Gates were on stage together, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, that sounds right. But five? Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah, I don't know. I didn't write that part down for the show. Sorry, everybody. Don't email me. I'm sure we got it slightly wrong. But in general, it was a while ago. And it was actually, it predates one of the trivia things that I enjoy about this. So Apple builds this whole music sales infrastructure.

And that's iTunes. They build the whole thing because they want to sell music for the iPod. That was the whole idea. But now that they've got this whole digital sales infrastructure and they're taking credit cards, they start to think, what else could we do with it? And one of the first things they do with it is they want to get on the podcast bandwagon because that was the period in 2005-ish where people thought podcasts were going to be big. And it turned out that was maybe five, seven, eight years too soon. So they applied the iTunes backend and made a podcast directory where people could submit podcasts and podcasts would be there.

And they tied it into iTunes. And it has remained kind of the iTunes podcast directory ever since. Even though, you know, more famously, a couple of years later, they made the app store out of iTunes. And that was a real, a big win for them that they already had that in place. So all they had to do is sort of turn their music sales product into an app sales product. Magically. It was, yeah. Well, I mean, I do wonder sometimes about how much longer they might have taken to do the app store

if they had had to build it from scratch. But they had iTunes, so they just repurposed it. So everything, this is one of the backstories about iTunes, is everything has been poured into iTunes because it was there and it was convenient. So last week, they changed the branding on that. itunes is everything has been poured into itunes because it was there and it was convenient so last week they changed the branding on that they said we don't want to call it the itunes podcast anymore get this on itunes used to be like the button they provided it was like yay itunes which is already a problem right because the podcast app is not itunes on ios it's podcasts it's it's already not using

that branding so last week it officially became apple podcasts and the itunes brand was removed from an existing apple product just replaced with this trend in apple product naming which is apple followed by this sort of generic name of what it is so the question is outside of just you know the wisdom of of rebranding this as Apple Podcasts, which I think makes a lot of sense. If the majority of your users are on iOS, which they are, they are using the Apple Podcasts app. They never see iTunes. The iTunes app on iOS isn't for podcasts. It's for selling, it's for buying music and other media. So, okay, that makes sense. But what does this mean for iTunes? Is this step one in the demise of iTunes as we know it? I actually think it's more like step five, if I'm looking at this from a larger picture.

I like it. And let me tell you what. Back me up. I want to hear. Yeah. Tell you what. Back me up. I want to hear.

Yeah. As you pointed out, a lot of people on iOS, iTunes is not their first, their second, or even really their third interaction source. On iOS, you've got the podcasts app. You've got the music app. You've got the videos app, right? You've now got the TV app now. TV app, yeah. You have all of these applications. And App Store, of course, is its own separate thing. iTunes is actually almost impossible to get to from the music app, which I found when I was trying to help somebody on Twitter where they're like, hey, is there an easy way if I see an a functionality to be like, buy this song. In fact,

there's really no way to get to the iTunes store from the music app and Apple Music. So people coming into the iOS ecosystem who don't know that iTunes is the place to buy, like they just go into the music app, right? And it's like Apple Music like apple music subscription music okay let's do that they don't think about the fact that there's this whole separate app here that can actually have you buy songs or interact with them they're they're almost completely separate on this platform um and almost the same with the tv app they're still that's still a little bit of a bridge if i I go into, I'm trying to think about the most recent update to TV here, because you've got your watch now, but yeah, you've got your store button and the store will actually let you grab the apps and it will sort

of let you look at new releases on iTunes. I think you can, yeah, you can buy, you can buy movies from inside the TV app. So you don't actually even have to go into iTunes anymore to get that stuff. So really the only time that you'd ever be using iTunes on iOS is if you specifically knew you wanted to buy a song or buy an album and you went out of your way to go in there and find it. It's not on the, like, is it even on the front page anymore of the default app? Like the icons? I don't actually know. I don't know. Yeah.

I don't know. I mean, it's always been kind of an afterthought on iOS. Like, oh, there's an iTunes app. And what does it do? Well, you can, it's a la carte music purchases that you can do there, which you need to have if you're trying to wean people away from um syncing with a computer which they are absolutely are they don't want people to to have to do that they want people to you know optionally do that so no you're right you're exactly right like the move away from itunes has been happening on ios for a long time because we have these standalone apps that do what on the Mac and Windows, but I focus on the Mac, so I think about the Mac,

and the Mac version is more important to Apple than the Windows version probably. But it's still monolithic there, but when they made the decision on iOS to build this stuff, they built it all in separate apps. There's a music app and a TV app and an iTunes app that is just the store iTunes store app really um so that's that's step one so so what's the well let's let's say there are a bunch of issues here so so many overall like iTunes brand like iTunes as a brand does it have value today or is it just kind of old and you know reminiscent of the mid-2000s when downloading music to your iPod was a thing. Well, let's think, I mean, the iBrand in general, is there anything outside of iTunes and the iMac that still has the iBrand?

Oh, the iPhone. iPhone. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It's like hardware. Yeah, hardware. Existing hardware that's popular. Yeah.

Existing hardware that's popular. Yeah. But if you think about, like, you have the Apple Watch and Apple TV, right? And anything that they have branded since the late 2000s, they've really gone heavy on let's brand with Apple as opposed to branding with i. Or just take the Apple away from it entirely, the TV app tv app the music app because it's part of your iphone um it is interesting to me from a mac perspective as you said because if you look at the difference between the way that you manage your media and your various things on iphone versus the way that you manage it on the Mac. iTunes is and has been for about six years, a big bloated craptastic piece of software. At least six years. It's it's probably

in its best shape that it's ever been in. But I'm looking at like I'm staring at iTunes right now while I'm while I'm on this call with you. And the way- Don't look directly into the face of iTunes. No, you'll hurt yourself. Oh, my eyes. Yeah, like iTunes has, in lieu of having different apps, it just has this very long drop down menu, which if you ever press edit menu, you can actually see all of like the hidden ones. So you've got music and movies and TV shows and podcasts and also iTunes U, which is still a thing and apps and audio books and ringtones, which I completely forgot that you could still get on iTunes for the Mac, internet radio and shared libraries if you use

home sharing at all. So you've got all of these things smashed into this program that's trying to be everything for everybody. And at its heart, iTunes is a music player. Like that's what it was designed to be. It was designed to be a place where you can easily manage your music library. But it over the years has started, you know, basically being a holding facility for where you put your music and your movies and your TV shows and your podcasts and your apps. Although thankfully, fingers crossed, hopefully many fewer people are syncing manually to iTunes with their phones. They're all using iCloud at this point in time.

I don't know. I have heard from people after I wrote about this last week, I heard from some people and there are definitely people who still sync, especially like their music libraries. They've got a big music library, and they don't want to use iTunes Match or iTunes in the cloud, which you can do, right? You can do that and not do Apple Music, and you can still pay Apple for the cloud syncing service,

and it works fine most of the time. Sometimes it breaks, but it's better than it's been in a while. I use it for a long time, and I still have a very large library that uses that functionality sort of in parallel with Apple Music for stuff that isn't in the Apple Music library. But I hear from those people who are like, no, we still use it. And it's like, I get that you still use it, but I think that kind of use is no longer – It's not the mainstream. I think it's no longer mainstream. Yeah the main longer mainstream yeah right and i think apple

really doesn't want it to be mainstream so one of the things i think it's hard to get over when we talk about maybe the you know the end or de-emphasizing of itunes as a as an app on the mac is this idea that just because apple may i keep referring to quicktime 7 i've been referring to quicktime 7 a lot this last week which is like QuickTime 7 does things that the QuickTime Player X doesn't do. And will never do. And will never do. And it's more functional. And as a result, it's still kicking around.

And I use it all the time. But it's just put in a little case somewhere by Apple that like, you need it. It's right there. But we don't care anymore. And I feel like that is the most likely trajectory for iTunes if Apple decides to sort of do on the Mac what Apple does right now on iOS, which is not to say to these people like Kirk McElhern, who has all his classical music collection, he syncs it all through iTunes, like not to say you can't do that anymore or you have to use itunes match but to say you can still do that but it's over there in that case right like with quicktime 7 it's over there

we're not going to promote it we're not going to really update it other than to make sure that it still works and if you really need to go down that path and sync and maybe even like if you really need to go down that path and sync, and maybe even like if you really need to sync anything via a cable with your iPhone, it's there. But we don't consider that the mainstream anymore. And then, and I, my feeling is that that's what they probably should do. And the only thing that gives me hesitation is it seems like it's a lot of work. Like it's a lot, it's a big project to take that stuff apart on the Mac and do something new on the Mac. And the podcast thing makes me think

maybe they're ready to do it because it is a huge project and maybe that's the reason why iTunes has kind of lingered in its weird state for so long. But maybe this is the beginning of the, or as you said, the next step in the transition away from this monolithic iTunes. The slow dismantling of the iTunes empire. Yeah, because they like it to be parallel, right?

Just like Address Book is now Contacts because they want as much stuff to be parallel between iOS and Mac as possible. iChat as messages. Exactly. And then there's the media stuff, which is not remotely parallel. No. Exactly. And then there's the media stuff, which is not remotely parallel. how they will do it. Because I do think that eventually music is going to split into its own app and the TV app is going to like the TV app is inevitably going to end up on the Mac because it is the only device saved for the Apple Watch where it doesn't exist right now. I know, right? I mean, it would be funny if that's the thing that pushes it over the edge is we got to do this because we

want that TV app to be everywhere. Can you imagine if Apple launches their, you know, their TV streaming service, their rumored TV streaming service, and they have to launch it through iTunes? I can't, I can just imagine somebody like Phil Scheller just blowing a gasket and just being like, no, this is happening now. I refuse. Yeah, it is not very strategic, right, to have one of their major platforms be so far behind on this stuff. If they've got new initiatives, right, if it's just the old stuff, they can kind of hand wave it. And with Apple Music, that's what they did is they just sort of retrofitted Apple Music into iTunes, which I use iTunes with Apple Music every day. And I have come to terms with it.

Like, I know how to get what i need out of it but it's super weird and like the the fact that you i don't know if you've noticed this like depending on where you are in the app the search box searches different things because if you're in a store context you will search the store but if you're in a music context outside of the store you will search apple music or your own library like how weird is that and you can't do like choose no no no i want to search in apple music if you're in a place where it's searching the store it's like apple music has ceased to exist it's so strange or if you're in your library yeah it's so yeah so they drop it all in there and it's kind of a mess. So, yeah, the name itself, right, is pointless.

As we said, the icon is pointless. It's got musical notes. It has not been about music or tunes in so long. And I don't think, you know, there are a lot of things that have names that are not great fits. You could even argue the iPhone is not a great fit. We call all these things phones and that's not really what they are, but you just kind of have come to accept it. I've come to accept that MacBook is a fine product name, even though I always hated it because I liked the PowerBook so much. Of course. But it's just, you know,

it's sort of a mismatched brand. It doesn't really mean anything except when it means everything. So the hurdle to me has always been the desktop app and and then we talked about that a few minutes ago the idea that um that there's stuff that that app needs to do and the argument i get a lot from people saying it's not going to happen is but they can't do it because on the mac and especially on windows they have this whole you know syncing system and all the stuff that's built in. And they're not going to put the effort in to build a new Windows app and all of that. And I feel like some of that I can just go back to saying iTunes will remain on a shelf really boring.

And maybe that's what's on Windows too or maybe not. those two or maybe not but um but i i feel like the existence of a few outliers is not is not enough for apple to have its strategy not come to the mac that it puts everywhere else well yeah and at a certain point as you said it's going to become a hindrance um it's not something that they can do you know exponentially until the the you know they can't they can't keep putting it off and being like, well, maybe this is the year that nobody will use Macs anymore because that's not, like, that's not how this works. It's not how it works. I, you know, of like far out ideas, one of the ones that I kind of tossed in my head is maybe they'll turn iTunes into a desktop iCloud

application, kind of like what they have with iCloud.com. But if they did that, they'd have to link in photos and all of that. So what I really think is going to happen is that if they have to have the syncing component, if the syncing component has to stick around with the next iPhone, and who knows,

maybe the next iPhone has a technology where it can just, you know, we already have Wi-Fi sync. Maybe it will magically, just can automatically connect to your Mac via continuity and pull everything automatically. Everything's in sync magic. Yeah.

I can dream. By the way, that's one of those great missing pieces of handoff is that you still can't hand off the music you're playing in the music app on iOS to iTunes on the Mac or vice versa. Because of issues in iTunes. I'm going to blame it on itunes even if that's not true because that's the most natural thing in the world yeah i play music on my desktop and then i'm about to go for a run and i just want to keep the playlist going and it's all apple music and i can't do it there just maddening there was an app in 2010 named Seamless that did this. Yeah.

And it was beautiful. And for Pete's sake, like the first ever iPod commercial basically not quite advertised this, but was basically like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if you start listening on your Mac and then you could pick it up on your iPod? And obviously the wireless part wasn't in context but people have been wanting to do this to move their music from where they are to where they're going for for years so yes i i share your frustration with that um yeah so go ahead no i was just gonna say i think what will happen um my prediction hat on here, is that we get a drastically simplified syncing app. And maybe it's called iCloud. Maybe it still stays as iTunes.

Maybe it's just sync. You know, do you remember mobile sync? The long, the late-grade mobile sync? Yeah, exactly, and iSync. Yeah, a sync app. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A sync app that syncs your data between your Mac. I mean mean at that

point i'm not even sure that's an app that's like a utility preferences panel or something yeah well i mean i can i can see it being an app because you need to have something pop up and just be like hi you've connected your iphone but it's true like that's right yeah simple yeah exactly you already have like when you connect your iphone to you to itunes you already have hooks going into other programs via you know like the contacts app doesn't live in music and the photos app doesn't live in itunes so if they can hook into outside apps with those they should be able to hook into an event inevitable music app podcast app tv app it's just a matter of time and whether or not they're actually willing to devote the resources to it. But hopefully they will. One of my favorite things that iTunes does that people don't know is if you're not using iCloud Photo Library and you want your photos

from photos for Mac to show on your Apple TV, how do you do that? The answer is you have to go to How do you do that? And the answer is you have to go to iTunes and configure photo sharing in iTunes and select what photos, albums you want to make available. And then those are made available to the Apple TV, which is just bananas. But that's how you do it. Because again, somebody said the only, and I don't think somebody said the best place to put this as iTunes. I think somebody said the only way we can really do this is to just throw another thing into iTunes. And so, and that's the story of that whole app. In terms of what's missing, you mentioned ringtones earlier. That's a good example where

I have a lot of custom ringtones and they are only, I think to this point, still only accessible by syncing from itunes which is ridiculous and um and there are a couple things like this where i feel like the last missing pieces unless they they do the thing where they point to itunes on the shelf and say just if you need that feature go get the old app and use it and good luck but uh ringtones is one where it's like shouldn't this be easier to send a file an an audio file to your iPhone and say, use this as a ringtone from your Mac or or just add a file on your iPhone and say, I want to use this as a ringtone. And the other one is transferring large files, which I do when I edit podcasts. I actually plug my iPad Pro into my Mac and I take the big audio files off my Mac and you have to go.

It's a thing people, a lot of people don't even know about. Like you go into the apps section of your device in iTunes and scroll down to the bottom and you can see every app that's got a little, its own little storage area. And you can click on that and then you can just drag files in from the finder and they transfer into that app storage area, which is great. But it's a terrible interface, but at least it lets me do it. And I had that thought of like, maybe you just keep that in iTunes, but it would be really nice. And hear me out here.

I know this seems just like a crazy idea to do this, but imagine if you could attach an iOS device to a Mac via a cable and the iOS device just showed up in the finder and you could drag files into it like imagine right no that sounds crazy doesn't sound like anything i mean yeah right i mean the iCloud drive is great but like i'm not going to do iCloud drive for my giant media files because really all i want to do i don't want to launder them through the cloud i just i have them here i want to put

them there and i realize this is kind of an esoteric use, but, and we're going to talk about the iPad pro in a little bit, but if you're going to use iOS devices for professional purposes to having the ability to drag and drop large files and load up those devices before you leave the office is probably a feature you want. And it's there now, but it's buried like five levels deep in iTunes. So I do wonder if part of the story is not just coming up with some new apps, but it's also syncing some Mac and iOS things so that some of this stuff just doesn't need, like, why is that in iTunes? It doesn't need to be in iTunes. It's arbitrary file drag and drop.

It doesn't need to be synced. It doesn't need to be managed. You know, you literally are just dragging from point A to point B. Why not make it easier? That's a great question. And it's funny because Apple already does a variation of this. Anytime you connect your iPhone to your Mac, you can pull all of its media files, its photos and videos that you shoot off via another long winded application of Apple's that they don't really update, which is image capture. You know, if there was an image capture type app just for the entire system of the iPhone where it's just like, hey, here's here's all of your, you know, your accessible stuff. Go at it. Have at it. Drag things to your folders. Be done.

Right. folders be done right well maybe we'll see some of this although i do feel like the reason i keep talking about the um the itunes on the shelf like the alpha on the shelf itunes on the shelf oh god we got itunes again where is it today i don't know is that it frees apple from some of this right it allows apple to say hey kirk uh we love that you've got all that classical music that you sync directly. Keep doing that over there. Take it over there. It's fine. We're not going to tell you not to do it anymore.

But this music app that we're doing is not going to do it because it's all about Apple Music and whatever you've synced using iTunes Match. Or maybe it's just Apple Music, right? Although, I mean the on ios it supports that apple music is but the whole point of apple music is that it is your streaming library but also your home media library the fact that you don't have to consider what is what or move things certain places i just i just had that moment where i thought like i'm in the position apple's in where you start talking about itunes match and you think okay well are we building itunes match into the music app on the mac or are we going to point people at itunes and say go over there which is a bad it's a bad experience what you want to do is

say yeah if you've got mp3s on your hard drive just point them to the app and we'll take care of it um and we'll match them or we'll upload them and then you'll be fine. I think that's ideal, right? Although that's extra features that they could potentially say, no, it's really just about Apple Music. I don't know. I hope they don't do that.

That's the challenge in building all these new apps is that you do have to make these decisions because you don't want them to turn into iTunes again. Of course, you don't want it to be too big. But I mean, that's another thing about iTunes Match is that iTunes Match is technically just iCloud Music Library. And in fact, that moniker has taken over in quite a few places, where the idea of having all of your music that you've downloaded in one central place, just like iCloud Photo Library, is part of the Photos app. just like iCloud Photo Library is part of the Photos app.

And the only differential between iTunes Match and Apple Music's iCloud Photo Library is that one you get automatically with the purchase of an Apple Music subscription and one you get if you don't have Apple Music and you still want to sync your music. But there's no, since Apple removed DRM files for iCloud Music Library on Apple Music subscriptions, there is literally no difference between an Apple Music iCloud Music Library subscription and an iTunes Match iCloud Music Library subscription. It's the exact same service.

It's just one gets a little bit more things and you pay a little bit more for it each month. Yep. And that's what I do. I used to have both and then I dropped one. And now we're in that point where that means what's in the cloud, you can retrieve and take away and it's still yours. Because the old approach, the fear was you got all your music, you upload it while you're an Apple Music subscriber,

you cancel Apple Music. In the meantime, you've deleted your whole, you upload it while you're an Apple Music subscriber, you cancel Apple Music. In the meantime, you've deleted your whole music library because it's in the cloud and you can't get it back. Just don't do that. But that's not true anymore. It is not true anymore. And you shouldn't do that, but it's not true anymore. You can actually get it all because it's not DRMing it on the way back down to you if it's matched it. I don't know.

So what do you think? If you were told to predict, you got that predicting hat? Put it back on. All right. What do you think we'll see at WWDC, which is presumably this will be a feature of the next version of Mac OS? What do you think we will see? Well, 100%, I think we're going to get a TV app, unless Apple just decides that no one's allowed to watch anything on their Macs, which I think is probably a strong move from them.

I think we're going to get a TV app, which means at the very least, we're going to get those functionalities and those features separated from iTunes. separated from iTunes. I would like to say that we're also going to get a music app that basically just chunks all of the new work they did and puts it into like a redesigned library. As for what's going to happen with the syncing service, I don't know. Maybe what you say is true and that like they carry on iTunes as kind of like a bedraggled stepchild for a few years while they figure out things but they might also just you know a lot has been made of the fact that google offers a lot more storage space for a lot less money um and amazon does now too um apple might come out and also be like hey you know you know, iCloud, we're using more and more stuff here. We've just slashed all of our prices. So now you can get a terabyte of storage for like,

blah, nothing, right? And now anybody can sign up for Match and it makes perfect sense because you're not like, and your libraries aren't restricted, right? Those are more pie in the sky versus what is actually going to happen. But I wouldn't be surprised if Apple found a way to make iCloud more affordable, so as to make it more appealing for those people who are still kind of harboring on their regular old sync systems. The more that Apple can move the iPhone away from the plug and cable that Apple can move the iPhone away from the plug-in cable aspect, the better it'll be. Same thing with, you know, oh, we've made, you know, wireless AirDrop really, really simple for big files. So if you want to move like this, this brand new, this big, you know, project file that you were working on in iMovie to iMovie on iPad, you literally just pop open

AirDrop and it'll drop it in right in the iPad app and launch it for you automatically. Magic. We can hope. I do. Yeah, if they do a music app, I think for me, the big question is, will it try to do a lot of the things that iTunes tries to do, including syncing? Or is it or is there a separate, you know, because one way to do it is to have that be sure you just manage your music library in the music app, and then the separate syncing thing will kick in if you have an iPod Nano or an iPod shuffle, or you want to sync your library directly to an iOS device, it'll do that. The alternative is the point of point at the cabinet where the old software lives, which is not as that's not the ideal solution, right? I'm not saying that they should do that. I'm saying that they may do that because it's expedient. And

because they don't think that sync by wire is really something that's anything but a maintenance issue for old, you know, old ways of approaching it, which is, you know, and it wrapped into that is Apple's view that is always pushing users forward. And, and I don't always, because I understand it, it doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with it. Like, I don't believe that Apple should drop support for syncing big libraries to iOS devices, but I can see how apple would not prioritize it because that's that is what not what they want people to do they want to use the cloud to sync all that stuff yeah absolutely all right well we will see i mean

my prediction is is i'm going to just kind of go with go with you too which is that i think i think we'll see something because i think this podcast thing is a canary in the coal mine and that we will see more even if it's, like you said, the TV app is kind of critical. But I hope we see the whole story that this is the year that the Mac syncs up to iOS in terms of media apps and that there are some pro things in there too. Like I said, I want file transfers and things like that because that would be nice to have a better interface for that. All right, we will talk a little bit more about the iPad

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And to celebrate its first birthday, the price has been permanently lowered, you can get an arrow three pack for 399 $100 off what it used to be a two pack is 299, which is $50 less than it used to be. You can get them at this lower price right now at arrow.com eero E-E-R-O.com, or just go to Best Buy or Amazon. Thank you, Eero, for supporting this show and all of RelayFM. So Mike put a thing in the document, and we never talked about it. And I thought you would be a great person to talk about this with, which is about the iPad. A couple weeks ago, Jean-Louis Gasset, who used to work at Apple and then worked at Bee for a while and was almost the new Mac OS X until they bought Next, which was run by this other guy, Steve Jobs. Maybe you've heard of him.

Anyway, Jean-Louis Gasset writes a blog called Monday Note. And he wrote a piece called The iPad Turnaround is Coming that I think does a really interesting job of summarizing sort of where we are to the iPad, the initial fast sales, the fall in sales, Tim Cook continuing to say that this is Apple's vision of the future of personal computing. Jean-Louis Gasset cites specifically in this piece, which we'll put in the show notes, how the iOS update that brought in the new file system is a great example of how iOS is absolutely Apple's future operating system and that it offers Apple an indisputable technical advantage, he says. And in true Mike style, he put the quotes in, I'm going to read them. iOS, not Mac OS, will be the software engine of

Apple's future. Mac fans, I'm one of them, might disagree with Apple's strategy, but here it is in plain view. This leads us to an easy guess for future iPad Pros. We're likely to see linear hardware and software improvements, keyboard, screen, stylus, more independent Windows, plus others we can't think of, immersed as we often are in derivative thought. All will make the Pros more Pro, powerful enough to take business away from the Mac and Windows PCs. I like my MacBook, but I can see an iPad Pro on my lap and desk

in a not too distant future. Next Sunday AD, probably. The iPad turnaround is coming, he says. So, Mike obviously is excited about this and put it in the document and wanted to talk about it. He doesn't get to, but we do. What do you think?

What's your feeling right now about sort of where the iPad and iPad Pro are going in particular? I have great hope about the iPad. And I mean, I've been on that bandwagon since the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil were released, because it finally like, again, this is in my opinion, a justified use of finally. But you know, since 2010, I had been excited about the prospect of the iPad as a as an in between as a as a portable computer that really took advantage of the multi touch interface. And up until the iPad Pro was released, I was like, you know, I like the concept, but the execution is not so great. Like I didn't have apps that I was regularly using on the iPad, and the styluses,

you know, I tried very many of them, and none of them were to my liking, either for virtual writing or for drawing. They just weren't good enough, no matter how hard the stylus makers tried. So to have the iPad Pro come in and basically completely change the game and just be like, hey, you know how Wacom's been developing their drawing and writing technology for 20 years? Here's our first attempt at this. And our first attempt is pretty much on par with some of the best hardware technology and software technology that's out there. So that indicated to me that Apple actually was putting some serious thought behind the iPad Pro and not just throwing it away as like, here, you guys wanted a stylus? Here's your stylus. You know, like, are you happy now? Not that I think Apple ever does that, that they ever throw out things half-assed. as as guess a highlights in his piece given the sort of meteoric fall of ipads when people are like we all bought them and then we didn't know what to do with them um this is a like the pros

are a are an ipad that have a distinct audience in mind um and they didn't do the best job of selling that at first but i think the audience kind of like the people who knew that they wanted it, found it. And now Apple, especially with the, with this latest iPad announcement, um, I, I feel like Apple is really taking a good hard look at iPad and saying, okay, we're re gearing this so that we really are focusing on the things that people care about. Like the low end iPad is a great low end computer for a lot of people. A lot of people don't need the whiz bang of a full Mac. In fact, my mother uses her iPad, I would say 75 to 90% of the time, like my dad bought her a new touch bar, um, Mac, and she,

I think uses the laptop maybe one day a week and she uses her iPad her iPad Pro, the other, you know, six, and she uses it for her for her work, too. She's a musician. And she has switched entirely to digital music. And she uses a Bluetooth paddle or a Bluetooth pedal to change pages while she plays. like a huge, huge deal for my mother, who's in her 60s, who used to have to lug around 40 pounds of music, and now lugs around a, you know, a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, and an iPad pencil. Like she doesn't even use the keyboard, she doesn't need the keyboard, she uses the onscreen keyboard when she wants to write emails. So it's like little, little things like that. And that's why I even, you know, asked all those people about iPad Pro stories. I'm like, how are people actually using their iPads? And the responses I got were incredible. Like, I wish I wish I've had I've had time to put them all together. I'm in the process of working on this. But I got 200 responses from people, you know, some people who are aviators and using them in the cockpit, which of course, we've heard about in various news stories. But I've also

heard from lawyers who where it's almost completely replaced their like big hulking Dells that they used to drag around. Or people who are studying like ancient cuneiform who use the iPad because it's much easier, like they can go to a site and use the rear camera to take a picture of the cuneiform and then translate it on the fly with the pencil so they can like trace shapes and figure out how it like, like really crazy stuff, right? Like, I don't think Apple had any of that in mind when they're like, let's make an iPad with a stylus. So as these as these people are coming out of the woodwork, and and as people are really

gravitating towards iPad on the pro end, Apple has also, I think, figured out what makes iPad successful on the low end. It's like they wanted it, I think, in some cases, I almost think that the 2010 iPad was supposed to be the alternative to a Chromebook, but it wasn't anywhere near where it needed to be. Now it's ready to be a low-end computer for people like now it is ready to be like the the computer for everyone and 329 is a computer for everyone like if right as a i could afford that as a teenager i could have gotten myself an ipad as a as a 13 year old um and then i would have had a fully functioning computer and that blows my mind like that that shows that apple is actually paying attention to like these are what the low end want. And then the high end, we're really

going to focus. And I mean, we don't, we haven't seen the next iPad Pro yet. So I could say all this and then Apple comes out with like a minor rev. But, but honestly, like looking at where everything has been going, looking at the, the marketing and marketing and the talk that they have put out specifically regarding the iPad Pro tells me that they now understand the market that they're in, and they now understand what the Pro users want and also what the general iPad population wants. And hopefully that will result in really awesome software this June. Well, you pointed out something that I think is the core to all of this, which is

the split in the product line, that the iPad is no longer a product. It's like two product lines. And there's the one that is the lower cost. We're not going to push technology on the cutting edge. We're going back to the iPad Air 1 design to get the price down for something that is going to be good for education or for people who just want to do email and watch some videos and things like that. And then they're not going to do the Amazon, you know, six for $100 low-end tablets, right? right but but it's going to be in it's going to be like you know in that mid-range in that sort of like i think maybe initial vision of the ipad as like a a a utility computer for people who don't need a full-blown like a mac or a pc and then they got the pro and and it lets the pro be more expensive have better features and and in order to follow that up they need to continue to add features to ios and software not just to the iPad Pro

hardware to take advantage of that, which, you know, I know you and I have both been beating that drum along with a lot of people we know for a while now. And with iOS 9, we saw some of it. iOS 10 kind of didn't do anything. I think there are a lot of hopes being pinned on. Originally, it was on an iOS 10.5 kind of update. Now it's, you know, WWDC is in two months. So it's probably an iOS 11. Now at this point, with more pro features, and I feel like it's going to happen. But Apple has to, it's on Apple, like it's really on Apple, this is not on the users, I think users are already pushing the iPad Pro in a lot of places way further than anybody really anticipated and it, and keep getting bumping up against the edges of the OS because Apple has not done enough

yet to unlock, you know, even more professional uses of iOS. And, and now I, I feel like it's safe for them to do it now because they've got a story with the iPad pro. They said, we're doing this because our iPad pro users want it, which before it was like, eh, you know, Pro users on the iPad are weird. And now it's like, no, we have a whole product line for them and we are going to serve them. And I hope we see that at WWDC because that's, as somebody who uses an iPad Pro a whole lot, that's what I want to see. Yeah, absolutely. And based on the various rumors and whispers I've heard, and other folks have heard coming out of Cupertino,

whispers, secrets. No, I mean, I, I have a pretty high level of confidence that those software features have been in the works for a long time. It's just been a matter of like getting the resources and the manpower to

make them work effectively. Cause if you think about like everything that would go into a really good hardcore ipad pro software update you don't want to just release one feature and then just call it a day and be like see pros we got your back like if they're gonna if they're going to say we have a basically a pro level of our software or we've released these like really awesome pro features they want to bundle it into a couple different features and i from what i understand they only really had like one two features semi-ready for ios 10 and that was kind of and that was like uh we don't we don't want to launch this half-assed like if we're going to do this we're going to do it i i can see that point from

the perspective of the people building those features but you know it's not like prioritization is something that's an act of god like no apple apple as a company has to prioritize this and not just say well we'd like to do it but we just decided not to and the fact that you know they did do a few features in ios 9 and then iOS 10 had almost nothing. And so basically it's back in Apple's court. You've got to put up here, or shut up, I suppose, is the alternative. If iPad Pro is going to be Pro,

where are the Pro features? When are they going to come? They didn't come in iOS 10. It looks like it's too late for iOS 10 now, unless there's a big surprise in the offing. Presumably all of Apple's engineers are working on the next versions of iOS and macOS now so that they can do a developer preview in two months at WWDC. So what will we see there? I think that's the big question. Will they tell that story? I really hope they do because it will have been two years since split screen multitasking got introduced and we need more there.

I saw, so yesterday, I saw the Windows Surface Studio for the first time at Twit. Leo has one on his table at Twit. And it's funny because when i saw it the first thing i thought was see that's what i want in a desktop ipad i want a 20 inch 24 inch thing that's sort of down lower with a keyboard he has keyboard you know and in his case a mouse and that weird circle thing that you can stick on it and and i just i looked at the ergonomics of it and I thought, I don't know if the ergonomics would work or not in a, in that down position, but the idea of kind of like having the touchscreen down and having it be a

true, I, I'm, I'm intrigued by that. But what I didn't think is I want an iMac that does that. That's not what my thought was. My thought was, I want an iPad that does that.

Maybe not as big as the surface studio, but something like that. I want a big honking iPad. Yeah, right? Because I don't always want a screen that is in my lap. Like sometimes I kind of want to sit down at a table and have a little more space to organize things. And so I tweeted just off the top of my head, I tweeted about that. And Leo retweeted me, which is that's always a problem, right? Because now it's the Twit audience is going to see this tweet. And I got educated by a lot of people who don't know who I am, I guess, about what the state of the iPad is and why iOS is a toy operating system and things like that.

I'm like, thank you for teaching me your strange computer ways. I didn't understand that before. Also, the knives that are out among a techie even windows oriented techie audience for the surface studio are i i was surprised by that too that there are a lot of people who think that it's kind of a a stunt product and it's not real you know a real pc and it's weird and all of the there's a lot of weird kind of hostility toward this product and all i literally all i meant to do was kind of observe the fact that when I think about iOS productivity, I inevitably think that that's what I want to see is a desktop iPad, or whatever they would call it. Because, you know, I could use that that could be that could

be the replacement for my iMac potentially. But to the point of some of those people who replied to me on Twitter, is iOS there today to do that? No, it's not. It's not. And that's on Apple. Apple has to go down, further down that professional path,

feature-wise on iOS, for it to be a reality in the future because it's not there yet. No, it's not. And it's funny that you bring up the Surface Studio because when I first saw it announced, my jaw kind of dropped to the ground. And I was like, this is perfect. Why didn't Apple release it? Which I'm pretty sure was many people on my Twitter feeds.

Like, why? Why? But actually, I went into a store pretty much as soon as I could to play around with it. went into a store pretty much as soon as I could to play around with it. And like many of Windows' products, you know, Microsoft's products, I found myself being less than thrilled with the execution, which only honestly made me want an Apple version more. But I completely agree with you with the concept of, no, instead of it being an iMac that also turns into a desktop drawing interface, I essentially, you know, that second screen Apple's talking about, that 5K screen they're going to make for their Mac Pro, I want an iPad Pro that can also use software like AstroPad or something to now become a beautiful second screen. And, you know, I've been testing – Elevation Lab has a new iPad standout that basically tries to make your 12-inch – 12.9-inch iPad Pro into, like, a mini Cintiq. It's designed to sit next to your iMac so that you can

have a second screen. And it's, and it's quite good. Like for, for what it is, um, the stand construction is really well-made and the, with the iPad pro, it really does. And something like Astro pad or, or air display, you know, your, your choice may vary. Um, it's really, you know, it really is quite functional, but it's not big enough. Like it's, I would want a little bit bigger for my, for my like second screen, or even just using the iPad at a desk. The 12.9 is like right on the edge of being too small. I think a 15 inch version would be more preferable. Yeah. I do when i i wrote a piece about this at macworld a little while ago the future like the next i think the premise was like the next five ios products

and and and that was my thought was we will see bigger ios devices like we will see bigger like lappable devices that are that are in that 15 17 kind of category where it's like a tweener and then i do believe that ultimately they are going to have to do it and this this requires software support right because even split split screen multitasking at 24 inches is ridiculous so they're going to need like tiling or windowing or something that allows you to kind of move things geographically on that big screen but uh but yeah i i feel like that's an inevitable direction which is not to say the mac is going to go away but i think apple needs to build out uh build out pro features and build out sizes in ios too

because people who once you're into ios you're like okay this is great i i want my ios there comes a point when all of us who are using the iPad pro for this stuff say, great. Now I almost want, want one of these on my desktop. How do I do, how do I make the complete switch? And can you do that right now? You can't, but maybe down the road. The only thing that gives me pause is that question of like, what if Microsoft is right? What if the product that people want is a computer, a computer with a touchscreen on their desk? Now, I don't know if that's true or not, because mobile devices are really what everybody wants. But there's always going to be certain work modes that require something larger,

at least until maybe augmented reality gets to the point where it's so advanced that you don't need a big screen anymore, because you can just look at a virtual big screen but we're a ways off from that and then there's virtual touch issues there too like tactility of your hands on the screen is a part of it too so you're going to have a virtual kind of surface that that it's complicated it's going to take a while so let's put that aside for a moment and just say you know i think that if microsoft is right in the in the sense that people are going to want desktop interfaces that are touch, it's going to be iOS that provides that from Apple. Because Apple is adamant that macOS is not going to be retrofitted as a touch interface because Apple already has a touch-based OS. Why would they do that? But that makes it incumbent on Apple

to then expand, to build out iOS to have those pro features too. Because if all Apple's got is kind of not pro feature touch OS and pro featured desktop OS, and the future is pro featured touch OS, then Apple has fallen in a hole, right? So that's the,

and that gets us back to what we were talking about earlier which is this is why we need to see pro features in ios asap and my yeah like june yeah my nightmare scenario is we don't see new ipads until the fall um and i am praying that they decide you know screw the screw the product lineup in the tradition of let's release iPads in October. Because if they really are marketing it as a pro device, right, and they're saying, all right, we're going to launch all of these pro features,

a developer conference is the right place to do it. And be like, so not only are we releasing these brand new iPads, but, you know, come iOS 11, you'll have all of these cool features to play with. And it wouldn't surprise me. This is the wild card of that conversation. Because, yeah, there is a pro conversation that happens because developers are pro users, right?

Wouldn't surprise me if there's some aspect of Swift Playgrounds or something. It's not Xcode per se for iOS. per se for iOS, but if they'd made some sort of announcement that was like, there are certain kinds of apps that you can generate on iOS in a development environment and release or test or something, maybe this year, maybe not. But I feel like Swift Playgrounds, they're starting to head in that direction and complete Xcode on iOS is probably not realistic anytime soon. But some sort of Swift development environment on iOS, like Swift Playgrounds, but, you know, more. Supercharged. Goes into that story, too. Like, as part of, again, they're not going to solve everything. If our dream is they're going to solve everything in 2017, it's not going to happen. But,

you know, progress, right? Forward motion is really what is required. And on adding to that, my, my crazy idea is Xcode projects where you can import an Xcode project from your Mac, work on little bits and pieces. You're still going to have to compile it on your Mac, but now you have a full fleet feature development environment on your iPod. So you could go write code on the go that'd be a little like scrivener right like that's how i use scrivener where you know it's syncing it all and and then i can i can work on my novel on my ipad and on my mac and they kind of you know you take a project with you and put it back maybe i mean we'll see um well yeah that's it we will we will

get a we will get a sense in june of of what the forward motion is or not and then we can all we'll just regroup and get back here and talk about it again let's take another break this episode of upgrade also brought to you by mail route a secure hosted email filtering service that you can have up and running in just minutes mail route gets rid of spam and viruses so you don't have to you don't need to install hardware or software to use mail route there are no costly upgrades or updates that you need to worry about. They take all of that stuff into account so you don't have to. They have a 24-7 support team. So there's always somebody to help you if you need help. They have a fantastic set of reporting tools and notifications. I love the

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slow data line. If I had had mail route in that scenario, I could have kept doing my email server because mail route would stand between me and them. All the spam connections, all of that stuff would go to MailRoute. MailRoute would only pass on the good stuff. So my little mail server at home would continue to chug away just fine. My network connection wouldn't be saturated by all of those connections. And if you're in a situation like this, where you're trying to protect your server from load, both network load and processing load,

you can do it by keeping the bad email out through MailRoute. Find out more about MailRoute today by going to mailroute.net slash upgrade. If you sign up, you'll get a 30 day free trial and 10% off the lifetime of the account. And if you need it, MailRoute will even price match a competitor's contract. Thank you MailRoute for your ongoing support of upgrade. Before we go, we have some Ask Upgrade, but I also wanted to ask you, since I've got you here, and I know how much you love Star Wars, what you thought of the Last Jedi teaser trailer. Stephanie asks, this is an Apple Pencil question, maybe you've got an answer here, should I let my pencil die or recharge it all the

time? I only use it periodically. Which is better for battery health? Oh, this is a great question, Stephanie, and one that I do, one that I encounter fairly regularly. I am of the opinion that in general, battery technology has gotten good enough that you can pretty much use things incrementally for a while. I would encourage you probably to let your pencil die and fully recharge it maybe once every, you know, every other month or so, just to make sure that you're, you know, that the battery is not constantly in a state of, you know, 15%. But overall, I think it's not going to, it's not going to kill it if you're keeping it at, you know 15 percent um but overall i think it's not gonna it's not going to kill it if you're keeping it at uh you know middling under 50 for a month or two before you do a complete

recharge and discharge yeah it's not like the old days where you were told like you've got to do these these discharge recharge every so often but that's not i just and i also say you know keep it around so that you can like use it like there's nothing worse than if it's totally dead i've had that happen where then it takes a little while to get it back kind of up and running so keeping it not totally dead is not a bad thing but jeffrey asks any thoughts about what the heck is going on with airpods manufacturing four months on and it's still a six-week back order do you have any perspective into this i mean my my initial thought

was that they're hard it turns out that airpods are hard to make yeah i i kind of am on that that bandwagon too and maybe demand is greater than they than than they thought i mean that's the old story right yeah well is we can't make them fast enough. I think it's a combination of the two, right? Because if AirPod demand was so extraordinary, Apple could probably rent some more time at their factories and just be like, all right, we're just going to expand manufacturing.

But from what I understand, like, demand is pretty good, but it's not like so, it's not blockbuster iPhone demand. It's just really good demand. And because the demand is pretty good, but it's not like so it's not blockbuster iPhone demand. It's just really good demand. And because the circuitry and the specifically the quality assurance for AirPods is so high, because think about it this way. Like, do you really want to go in and accidentally get a set of AirPods that just doesn't like you've waited six weeks and then you get a set of AirPods and like the left earpiece doesn't work or the right earpiece is tapping isn't working regularly.

I think they are very like with the pencil. Apple is very aware that a first generation product in a completely new product category needs to kind of be flawless in some ways. So my perspective on this is the same that I had when the AirPods were first released and had this huge delay, which is, hey, I'd rather have the product right than have the product quickly. As much as it sucks to see your friends all rocking AirPods and being like, I really want one. But Apple gets new shipments to the retail stores on Thursdays. So if you show up really early on a Thursday to an Apple store, chances are you can get a set of AirPods even with the six-week manufacturing delay for pre-orders. So, fun tip. Yep, and we'll see.

Maybe they'll get better. It is a difficult-to-assemble product. It's made with very small things. It's got very tight tolerances. I think that it's definitely a manufacturing uh bear for them so that's probably part of what's going on too is just it's hard to make these things but that's what makes them good is that they've crammed so much in those little tiny little tiny plastic uh shells um johnny asks hey i just got a new 5k imac can i connect to the 5k lg monitor if so how uh johnny you're not supposed to be able to you can if you use a thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 adapter but you can't get a 5k resolution on it. I believe. I think that's, if you go into an

Apple store and you see that what's attached to a Mac pro right now, I believe the Apple stores are attaching. We had a listener who wrote in about this. They're attached to those LG monitors, but they can't do the full bandwidth. So you'll be disappointed is basically what I'm saying. They're not, they're're not it's made for a thunderbolt 3 connection and the bandwidth that's available on thunderbolt 3 and my understanding is that thunderbolt 2 you may be able to connect it with an adapter and get a signal but it's not going to be what you're hoping which is full-on full frame rate full resolution 5k yeah yeah unfortunately sadly the next the next round of imax that have thunderbolt 3 will be able to drive that monitor i'm sure but not the current

round um let's see jorge asks i'm going on a family trip to Europe this June, London, Paris, and Rome. Very nice. We're a multi in Jorge is in California. We're a multi-device family. I have an unlocked iPhone 6S Plus and an LTE hotspot. What's the best option for a carrier that will work in all areas? Can I buy a SIM before getting there? And is there a good hotspot option? So I just came back from Europe. I would say that if it's just you and you just want one device to be on the internet which is not what you're saying here i had great luck in just buying a sim in country in fact if you get if you're flying into heathrow in london at baggage claim there are vending machines with sims i just did this last week i got a three that's the name of the company

three prepaid sim it's like i think it was like 25 pounds, something like that. And it was 12 gigabytes of prepaid data. And stick it in your unlocked phone, job is done. Now, if you don't have an unlocked phone, or you want to have sort of like more access for more devices, I have never done this, but I did a little very brief research. There are a few companies that will rent you a hotspot and that's probably your best bet. I don't know what the details are of what your LTE hotspot is and if you could get a SIM for it and if it would work,

but there are companies that will rent you a hotspot. I found one called Keepgo, K-E-E-P-G-O, and one called Skyroam. It looks like the standard rate for these things is like $10 a day when they're active and you're using them. So not that expensive for a vacation, right? And then with their battery operated and you recharge them. And then when you're out and about, if you've got multiple devices around, or even if you're in the hotel room or wherever you are, as long as they are on the cellular network, they'll put out a wifi signal. It's a wifi hotspot.

You connect and you're, you're on the internet. So you've got some options there, especially if you've got locked phones and iPads and you want to use them. So I'd say look into that since you're not going till June, and it's now April, you have the opportunity, you have the luxury of time to order this and, and get one and have it ready for your trip. So that's, that's all I got here. For me, I've got an unlocked iPhone, and I get the prepaid SIM, either at the airport. And if I'm going to London, or in other places,

there's usually a store like in Ireland. When I go there first, I go to a three store and say, I want your prepaid SIM and there do some research about whatever country you're starting your trip in. A lot of them, three has roaming built in. So I can, I was able to buy my SIM in the UK and still use it in Ireland as part of the, of the, of the trip. That's what I got. And last question is angelo who asks do you do any audio processing and audio hijack compression noise gate anything as you record podcasting question or do you apply it all during editing this is an easy one i don't process anything in audio hijack i just record and reason is, if you have a problematic recording, you want to have the

full recording. And it's easy to compress and noise gate and do other things later. But if you burn that into your recording, you can't ever back up if something isn't quite right. And I will give you an example, which is I have a friend who I sometimes do a podcast with. And when he sends me his file, it's been pre-noise gated and compressed. And I once got a file from him where his mic was a little quiet and it was unusable because he was over gated to the point where like, if he was sort of quiet, his voice would just disappear. And we couldn't go back to the original because that was the original and it was pre-processed. So I say my recommendation, if you're recording audio, record it as it happened. Process it later.

That's my podcasting advice. I agree. 100%. All right. Endorsed. Yes. Excellent. Okay.

Let's turn to Star Wars business. We're going to talk about the teaser trailer for the last jedi and for those who are spoiler averse i guess what we should say is it's a pretty good trailer at leaving everything open like literally it seems to be a trailer it's like there's some explosions and some vehicles and stuff but it's basically reminding you where the last movie left off which is ray finding luke and then what happens next and this trailer is like hey remember that what does happen next and that's it so if you're spoiler averse i would say you know john syracuse watched it it's fine you don't want to watch the real trailer maybe but the teaser trailer

it's fine it gets us excited about star wars so what did you think that's um what i really like about this trailer is as you said it doesn't really reveal too much it's not um it's showing us you know new new outfits for the characters maybe um it gives us a little hint that bb-8's still gonna be around yay buddy um overall, it continues the feel that the new trilogy is kind of developing. And what I appreciated so much from this was that like, the second that I watched this trailer, like two, two, three seconds in, I immediately got chills because they know they just know how to frame everything and time it perfectly. And it's just, it is a perfect example of a trailer playing and preying on your emotions in exactly the right way that a trailer should. There was this sort of, I don't want to say false trailer comparison going around because it wasn't made up shots. But someone was passing around basically a comparison of promo shots from the Force Awakens compared to the straight run through of this last Jedi trailer or this teaser trailer. And the shots in Force Awakens are not in order.

They're not from any specific trailer. The shots in Force Awakens are not in order. They're not from any specific trailer. They're all shots that were used as promo material at one point in time. kind of side-by-side comparisons and framing in that there are some very, very smart pacing choices and framing choices in terms of setting, again, setting the stakes, making us excited, making us fearful or aware, otherwise anticipating what's going to come next. And that's what I really appreciated from this. I appreciated that it made me wish that it was December already. And it reminded me how much I really enjoyed the first one. It was like, oh, hey, maybe I should go watch The Force Awakens again.

I really like these characters. Yeah, exactly right. I think one of the tests is, are you excited to see ray and finn again like do you do you look at that and say yay or poe right you go yay i i saw those it's my old friends and they're back or not and that's that's it's like a delayed test of the force awakens and yes i was excited to see ray again and and and finn briefly uh and poe and say and bb8 and so yes we're excited to see them again because that's the trick right is this needs to be not just a nostalgia trip you need to care about the new characters and um i was fascinated by the question that you know the force awakens and the last jedi as titles also bring up, which is, what is the nature of the Force? What do we really know about the Force and how it works? From the previous, you know, now seven movies, what do we think we know about how it works? How do the Jedi work? How do the Sith Lords work?

what this trailer does is ask is is ask us if we you know if we really know what's going on and i find that really intriguing the idea that what this movie may tell us is a lot more about what's sort of like what's really going on with the force there's a great shot of a of like an old set of books uh in the trailer that's followed by a close-up of one open like open page of an old book that's got this thing that looks like a yeah i mean it's really like a line with a star but to me it's like that's a lightsaber kind of thing representation there and the implication here is there are ancient secrets um which you get some of that from rogue one too right where they're on the planet that was like the original jedi temple jedi implication here is there are ancient secrets, which you get some of that from Rogue One too, right? Where they're on the planet that was like the original Jedi temple, Jedha. So, I think that's exciting too, because it suggests a mystery about a world that we've been living in

for our whole lives, really, since 1977. And yet yet it's not something that we've necessarily given a lot of thought to that may be important like a new way of looking at an old universe which i think is that's the most you can really ask for a star wars trailer is to start making you rethink um your assumptions about star wars yes i um i also really it intrigues me a lot to see like those are that's the um the old jedi order symbol the the little the lightning uh the the lightsaber yeah um and the fact that they there was such i want to say a disservice to the mythology of the force done in the prequels where it starts making everything. Oh, it's midichlorians. You know, everybody has beef about midichlorians.

But the thing I think that really kind of bummed out everybody is it just took away the mysticism that's kind of present in that, you know, hokey religions and ancient weapons, that kind of spirit that was so prominent in the original trilogy. And I really like the idea. I mean, we got sort of a touchback at it with Maz and Jedha in Rogue One. If they continue doing that, I think there's a lot of potential interesting story there. It also reminds me a little bit, you know bit of the best parts of the movies of the 80s, right? Not just Star Wars, but I think about Dark Crystal, right? I think about Neverending Story and the mythos and the fact that it's ever so slightly confusing and murky and you don't have all of the answers, but we're just going to, you know, surround you in a cloud of mysticism. I'm kind of on board for that. I think it would be neat. And then also, I'm really kind of excited. Everybody's like, no, the Jedi, you know, the ending line,

and I don't know if this is too much of a spoiler, but the ending line in this teaser is Luke Skywalker being like, it's time for the Jedi to end. And everybody's like, what does that mean? But honestly, following the line of the, even the prequels to the original trilogy, you know, you can take away from that, that the Jedi Order and the battle between the Sith and the Jedi and even all the stuff that happened in Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels in the cartoons, this is all – like, the Jedi maybe weren't the best thing for the galaxy and maybe didn't use it the way that the force intended it to be used. Like maybe they made this all a little bit too bureaucratic. Maybe there shouldn't have been like a temple and an order and a giant library and Jedi's being the peacekeepers of the universe.

Like there could be something to be said about, you know, rebalancing everything and taking a step back and looking at things as shades of shades of gray instead of all black and all white and what happens when your hero looks at that at shades of gray i don't know i'm just i'm spitballing at this point but i'm yeah i'm excited about it i think that i'll give you another theory which is that that scene where he says that line is when he's initially resisting training her yeah and it's moved to the end it's moved to the end to make it seem like it's like a plan to eradicate the force from the yeah and it's moved to the end it's moved to the end to make it seem like it's like a plan to eradicate the force from the galaxy when it's really just luke at the beginning going no no no i already was betrayed by kylo ren and all the other people and it's very sad and

it's just let me die out here on the on my rock i'm done and uh and that we're meant to believe it's something much more meaningful than that but I'd be okay with that, too. They trick us. They do. Trick us. Stupid trailers with shots not being in the real movies. Grumble, grumble. Well, that's true. I don't love that.

But it is nice when trailers try to trick us and not just tell us the entire plot of the movie. Agreed. So, there's that. Well, I want to thank all my sponsors for this week as we reach the end. Encapsula, Eero, and MailRoute. I want to thank Mike for doing some follow-up remotely so that I could put that in the document. And most, of course, most importantly, I want to thank Serenity Caldwell for being my guest on this special upgrade. Thank you for being here.

I really appreciate it. It was nice to chat with you. We used to chat all the time back in the old days. And now we don't do it so much. So it was nice to get a little time to talk tech with you on Upgrade. It warms my heart that I could be not exclamation point Mike for you today. Not Mike. Yeah, you're American not Mike today.

Very much not Mike Hurley. But, you know, we're good. It's great. We can't all be Mike Hurley. Thank goodness. I don't think the world could handle more than one Mike Hurley but you know it's great we can't all be Mike Hurley thank goodness I don't think the world could handle more than one Mike Hurley one

one is enough but Mike will be back next week thanks everybody out there for listening we will see you next week bye