Upgrade - 146: It's About the Journey

Episode Date: June 19, 2017

The new iPad Pros have arrived, and Jason and Myke have spent the last week with both the 12.9- and 10.5-inch models. We give our reactions to the new displays, detail what’s new with previous versions, get excited about one day using iOS 11, and offer advice about which iPad Pro model is the right one to buy. In other news, we also ponder a grim future where an Amazon robot allows you to squeeze Whole Foods produce in virtual reality.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 146 today's show is brought to you by mac weldon encapsula and fresh books my name is mike hurley i am joined by the man behind six colors.com jason snell i'm peeking out from behindsixcolors.com right now. Hello, Mike. How are you? I am very well, Jason Snell. How are you? Good. Very good. Busy. Been busy. Lots going on. I've been doing lots of podcasting this last week. What with Apple News and also Leo Laporte went on vacation,

and so I'm going to end up filling in four times for him over the course of eight days. It's a little exhausting. I spent three hours straight just talking yesterday. It's a lot, but I'm here. I'm ready. Maybe that's more Jason than people can handle. Who knows?

Well, I take some solace in the fact that that's these are sort of like non-jason channels they're not used to me so that if somebody is listening to all of those channels and all of my usual channels bravo i apologize for the excess of me the snail-a-thon that you're a little too much the snail zone expanded a little too far there yeah but jason nobody cares about this no we're gonna do our hashtag snail talk Talk question this week. And it comes from Matthew. Matthew wants to know, do you listen to the radio? Well, Matthew, the short version is not really. The slightly longer version is we have, I listen sometimes in the car.

I listen to the radio. We have, I'm not a big fan of the radio in general. And I haven't been since I was a teenager because I like to hear the songs that I like. And if I hear a song I don't like, I don't like the fact that I can't skip it. I also don't like chatter, not only the commercials on radio, which I find like really in your face and annoying, but the chatter where a DJ will tell you about whatever thing they're interested in that it's like not why I listen to the radio. Unless I'm listening to a baseball game or something, I'm probably there to listen to the music on the radio.

We have satellite radio in our cars, which has a bunch of specialty stations that are actually, a lot of them are pretty good. But even there, and they don't have commercials, but even there they have DJs who occasionally come on and say, let me tell you this news about where some band is touring. And I'm like, nope, turn the channel. I was thinking about this yesterday because I was listening to one of my go-to playlists now on Apple Music, which is the A-list for, they have these A-list playlists. I've talked about them before

where some editor at Apple Music is curating a list of sort of 50 recent songs that are really good in a particular genre. And I listen to the alternative A-list playlist a lot and then pull songs out of there for my own playlist of like, I really like that song. I'm going to put it in my favorites too. And I was thinking about how that is the ultimate for me expression of the radio because nobody talks. It's just the songs. And if I don't like a song, I skip it and I go on to the next one.

I love it. And I can control which ones I listen to and I can go back because in the end, it's just the playlist that somebody selected. There's still a music mind somewhere listening to all these songs

and picking ones that they think are good and putting them in rotation just like you would on a radio station playlist. But instead, it's just an iTunes playlist that I can play. And that's pretty great. And I've discovered a lot of great music for that. So it's actually a little bit like I'm back into listening to the radio again, in a way where I can discover music that's not just music I've already, you know, music I've already listened to, and I'm going to listen to again, which I did for a long time um or you know with with a little

more control over it than something like pandora yeah so you can find those a-list you can just search for them a-list but they're always there was floating around in the discover section or whatever it's called in apple music and they're really good at least the ones that are in genres that i like they're they're really well done and i was just seeing somebody i want to say it was cable sasser who was tweeting about how it doesn't get promoted in the u.s but like he's a big um japanese pop fan and there's a j-pop a list yeah a j-pop and a k-pop i think he was talking yeah yeah right and not all the songs are available for people in the u.s market but um they've got you know genres in the u.s and elsewhere um curated way. And it's a lot of fun. I still hear

things. I listen to the alternative station on the Sirius XM radio a lot. And the overlap is fascinating with the A-list and the lack of overlap sometimes is fascinating where I'm like, I've never heard this song before. Why? And sometimes I will actually, heard this song before why and and sometimes i will actually um i will take note of what the song is and search for it later um if i hear a song i really like that so i do occasionally discover things on the radio on the satellite radio station that i don't find in the a-list so it's kind of fun to have a second opinion but um but that's one of the ways that i've been really happy with what apple music does i know there are other streaming music services that do this but that's the one I'm using.

So that's the one I'm talking about. Don't email me. Don't, please don't. If you would like to submit your question for the opening of the show, just tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk and it will go into a list and maybe it will be picked in a future episode.

And thank you to Matthew for sending in his hashtag Snell Talk question. It's been really hot, Mike. It's been really hot here. Nope, we can't talk about it. Nope, not allowed to allowed to no i got one of the pride bands the nylon bands the six color band did you get it i'm i got it i'm wearing it right now i love it i love it so much it's a great it's a it just looks great right i've been wearing it all the time it's vibrant and uh this is the first nylon band i've worn and i don't love the nylon band um i think given my druthers i prefer the sport bands but um this one is is uh fun and beautiful uh in a chat

room last week we were it came up and i didn't say it in the show and so i wanted to do a correction i i i made it i overly linked the apple rainbow uh logo to the to the pride band which is not appropriate so the the uh the color is not my strong point um apple's rainbow in their six colors starts with green and and goes to blue which is not how rainbows really work but that's the that's the apple rainbow the pride rainbow is more like the actual rainbow it goes in order from red out to purple. And the shades are a little bit different, which again, I'm very bad at. So just to be clear, the Pride band is a Pride band. I enjoy the fact that a six color rainbow- Is evocative. Is resonant in terms of Apple's corporate history. I like that combination. It's like,

it is Apple history plus Apple supporting pride. I love how those go together. And it's really fun. And as somebody who has staked a portion of their professional life on the concept of a six-color rainbow, I enjoy the fact that I get to wear not only something that is supportive of pride, but also a six-color rainbow because i am in favor of all the six-color rainbows so anyway just to be clear about that it's not an apple rainbow band it is a pride band and it's beautiful it is i love it so much and as you said right like i get to wear my new favorite

band which looks awesome and i also get to support something that I support. So I love that. And I'm really happy with it. And it's awesome. It's funny. I showed it to Adina and she's like, I'm not sure how that will look, right? Like a rainbow band. And I bought it and I put it on. She's like, oh my God, it's amazing. So it really like the pictures don't do it justice.

Like the vibrancy of the colors. Like it really is fantastic. That's it. They're super, super vibrant. That's the thing that really struck me about it is these are not muted colors. In fact, my understanding, somebody was telling me that these are actually much more vibrant than the colors that were in the pride bands that Apple gave to its employees that we talked about last year. It may be that in wider production, they able to um brighten it up even more yeah so uh we spoke a bit last week about podcast analytics and we got a lot of follow-up like a lot of feedback i

mean which we asked for right we asked people to tell us do you like us to talk about this we did we got some people that said that they didn't enjoy it like good i'm pleased to know that right like i'm pleased to know if you don't but honestly we got inundated with people telling us that they enjoy it now again like i know this is slightly self-selecting right that i think people that enjoy it are more likely to tell you that but basically i just want you to say to all of the people that did enjoy our discussion last week we hear you and we are going to come back to this discussion i think as it progresses everything we spoke about last week that stands i don't have anything that i feel like i need to add to it um i was pretty happy with how the conversation came I think as it progresses everything we spoke about last week that stands I don't have anything

that I feel like I need to add to it I was pretty happy with how the conversation came out there is an episode of Exponent which is Ben Thompson's show which goes into this in some more detail as well and they

so I encourage people that are interested to maybe go and listen to that too and I'll put a link in the show notes and for the message for the people who didn't like it I think I, which were that we heard from fewer of them than from other sources.

I think, you know, we hear you too. I think we've always tried to be erring on the side of, of not going too far down that, that path. And this is not going to turn into a show about podcast industry mechanics. Right.

But from time to time, I think we will talk about it because it's of interest to us and it is an emerging digital media form and Apple is a major player in it. And I think for all of these reasons, it's worth us talking about it, but we're also going to try to be cognizant of the fact that that's not the core focus of what we do. And when we do talk about it, we'll probably talk about it later in the show and not that often because again that's not the primary focus of this show yeah so we'll come back to this discussion as more news or information emerges about apple's podcast analytics because right now there isn't anything more than we found out

two weeks ago no in in fact the new tags i actually built a bunch of the new itunes tags into the incomparables rss feeds and um the ios 11 beta uh version the the um developer beta um the version of the podcast app on there totally doesn't support them yet so even though they announced them the build that actually supports those tags is not running externally i don't think anybody's supporting them yet i think people are working on that sure sure so my feet my feet is there and i'm looking forward to a first release of the podcast app that actually uh supports it because that'll be interesting to see sort of like how it works and um and i'm looking forward to that and giving feedback to apple where appropriate there are some things uh o'Shane, who does Castro, wrote a blog post where he was sort of like, I have some questions about this.

Like, he's very happy about it. And I think most podcast app developers are because this is how you move the whole industry is to have Apple say new tags and then everybody builds them in. And then so O'Sh Shane can do that with, with, with Castro. But when you move through it logically, there are a bunch of like, how does this get implemented? And how does this work? I suspect in the end, what we're going to find is Apple does have some specific ideas about it. And we're going to see how it's put into practice in the podcast app. And that will, that will make it the, you know, that will solve a lot of these questions. But I had a bunch of questions, too, about the details of it.

So it's summer beta season. This stuff gets worked out this time of year. Jason, do you think that at some point in the future, you may be getting your peanut butter manchego via Amazon Prime? Mike, this doesn't go far enough. Why didn't you ask if I'll receive it via an Amazon drone? That's a good point maybe even by drone because uh in a very surprising turn of events amazon have acquired whole foods yeah

apparently so did not see this one coming no 13.7 billion dollars it took to secure whole foods this is very interesting i think it's just another case of Jeff Bezos deciding he wants to own everything he can. And I'm very intrigued to see what this could do, not only to the U.S. but also in the U.K., where Whole Foods has a small presence. I think there's four Whole Foods stores in the U.K. And I'm probably never going to do my grocery shopping from Whole Foods,

but there are specialty items that we will sometimes pick up from one if we're ever around because they do some great stuff, right? Like if we wanted to eat a pumpkin pie, Whole Foods is a great place to get one of those in the UK because it tastes real good. It tastes like what I've tasted from America. So they do a lot of like specialty stuff, but their food typically is a little bit higher priced, especially here. Oh boy. because it tastes real good. It tastes like what I've tasted from America. So they do a lot of like specialty stuff,

but their food typically is a little bit higher priced, especially here, especially here. Oh boy, oh no, it's expensive. It's an expensive market. As a person who has the closest market, the one within walking distance is a Whole Foods, it's expensive to be, it's convenient to have that market there.

Boy, is it expensive. So, and some of the stuff is not, some of the stuff is very good and some of the stuff is of mediocre quality and that's the that's the the thing about whole foods is that it's not like oh it's all so good it's like well some of it is good and some of it is overpriced and fine but this is an interesting deal for amazon um the i mean look it's all been analyzed there's so much conventional wisdom here uh but. But I think it does make sense to say Amazon's been experimenting with retail. They've got experimental bookstores. They've got that experimental, I drove past it with Glenn Fleischman when I was visiting him in Seattle, that experimental checkout-less Amazon store where you just go in and it knows who you are and you take things off the shelves and leave and it charges you, which is so totally wacky. So I think Amazon, on one level, Amazon's experimenting with retail as a place to, and these physical extensions inside, just how do those work? Because Amazon doesn't have as much knowledge of that. I think also this is about locations. By buying Whole Foods, Amazon gets these locations thatically in terms of the income of the people who live there.

That's sort of where Whole Foods has gone. And so it gives Amazon a physical presence that they didn't have before. Is that for doing their deliveries? It remains to be seen. Also would say, because Jeff Bezos is crazy like a fox, that sometimes I think maybe an acquisition like this happens. And I know it's easy to say, like, talking about $14 billion, it's kind of insane to suggest that this is just a lark. But I think one of the brilliant things about uh about somebody like jeff bezos is some intuition about like this seems like a good idea and we'll find out what exactly how as we go like maybe the physical presence in the markets will be helpful maybe learning about retail will

be helpful maybe this becomes a way that uh you get faster deliveries into all of these neighborhoods and drone deliveries and all that kind of stuff that they do. But maybe it'll be something else. And maybe they'll find out that it's a good business to have around and there are some synergies, but they're not going to completely swamp it. That it's more valuable for them to own it and not have someone else own it and have a presence in those markets. It could be as simple as the physical presence of being able to have a place where you can stock items and that you can have drivers come from and stuff like that. So it's kind of a wacky kind of play. But Jeff Bezos does that.

He's also building rockets and drones for people. And he bought a newspaper in 2017. also building you know rockets rockets so and drones for people and he bought a newspaper in 2017 so you know what the washington post got to do was have uh some freedom to explore what a newspaper would look like in the 21st century instead of trying to stay alive and and that's interesting right it's not necessarily directly related to amazon's business and amazon i think that's jeff bezos owns that amazon doesn't own that but it's that idea too this is an amazon purchase but um but there's that too it may be more about how can the amazon approach inside whole foods try to define like what retail supermarkets are for in the modern era with some freedom to do that because they got amazon's backing i don't know it's interesting i'm not

like i i saw somebody's analysis who said well you know this wraps it up the future of grocery stores is that people will just bring a box full of groceries to your door it's like you know i can see that for some stuff but like i'm an amazon prime member i don't have i don't have toilet paper and and cans of beans shipped to me via subscription from amazon or something like that i we don't i don't do, and so I'm, I'm skeptical of that. I think that some stuff could be simplified and automated, but you know, I think, I think Amazon's explorations in retail suggests that even Amazon understands that there's a limit to what you can Amazonify. I don't even think Amazon believe that, right? Because otherwise they never would have started building their own retail stores. I mean, they've just started building their own bookstores. You think that like of everyone in the world, Amazon would know that there's no point for bookstores,

but turns out they think there might be a point. Right. And I think the argument is, what would a bookstore look like? This is like the Washington Post argument. What would a bookstore look like if it was designed in a world where Amazon dominates, rather than being an old bookstore trying to fight off Amazon in a world where Amazon dominates. And those are different, right? Like a bookstore that accepts that we live in an Amazonified world, but that there's still a place for a bookstore. And who can do that?

Well, one company that can do that is Amazon. So they're trying it out and they're experimenting with it. I think there's something to be said for that. When you dig into the location thing, which I think is a really great argument that you posed about, like, you know, if they wanted to do this, Whole Foods is the best company to buy because they get access to all this fantastic prime real estate, right? Like, if Amazon decided that they just wanted to open their own stores, it would be way harder for them to find this real estate in these locations than it would have been to just buy Whole Foods. this real estate in these locations than it would have been to just buy Whole Foods. And the reason I think that it's interesting is when you look at where a lot of Whole Foods stores are, are in big metropolitan cities, right? In and around those areas.

Yep. And it makes me think of me here in London. I don't have a car. So I can't do grocery shopping like people who have cars can. So we get all of our grocery shopping delivered by a company called Ocado. And all they are is an online grocery delivery service. And they get food from our favorite supermarket, which is Waitrose, and they get brand stuff, and we just order it all online, and they bring it all. And that's where Amazon could could do this right certainly in those cities where people can't drive to the grocery store in big cities where transit is is dominant that's definitely um an interesting wrinkle i have friends who live in in new york city who it's

the same thing they don't have a car and the many, I mean, some places do it where you, where there are lots of different ways to do it. You can do it online and they'll get your stuff and they'll bring it. There are also places in New York, which I find fascinating, where you go shopping and at the end you check out and then you give your cart to them and then they will come in a delivery window later that day and bring you your groceries. That was my first job after school was being the helper boy for the delivery driver who would take home people's groceries. Right, right. And the advantage is like I had this with my local grocery store where if you use one of those affinity cards they know um they know what brands you buy which actually means that you can very quickly generate a menu

on a website that is here are all the products you buy check the boxes for the ones you want i mean you can do that and there is some intelligence there oh it seems like you buy this every every three weeks every four weeks and one thing amazon would like and my local grocery store would like is only shop with us because that gives them the ability to raise prices and you still buy them. It's like the Amazon dash buttons are like this where there's limited number of products. Like I just bought, I have a dash button

and it's for a laundry detergent. And they only have certain kinds that are available via the dash button, but includes one that is one that I want. And I enjoy every month or two, I enjoy pressing that button. It's very exciting. My wife said that she and my daughter were up at Costco and they were looking at laundry detergent and they were going to buy some new laundry detergent. And they said, no, we're not going to do it. My wife said, because your father really likes pressing that button. And she told me the story and I said,

yeah, I do. It's true. In fact, I pushed it earlier today and it was really awesome because you push this button in your house and then you walk away and you get an email from Amazon a few hours later that says, we're sending you your laundry detergent. But what's the price on it? When I press the button, I don't know. And I'm in their world now. They can raise the price. They can drive me toward their very particular product that they want me to buy, which is what they have done with the dash button. And there are great advantages to that.

Realistically, you know, as a consumer, we shop at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and Costco and Safeway. And so I get that they all want me in their universe 100% of the time. It's a little bit like computer industry lock-in, right? It's the same idea. It's like Amazon wants you or Safeway or Whole Foods, they want you in their ecosystem. Because sure, why would you not want to consume all of a consumer's money? I get it. But I don't know how realistic that is.

So it's messy. There's a lot going on here. But it's hard not to think that brick and mortar retail is not going to continue to transform because of the existence of the internet. And yeah, if we have self-driving delivery trucks and robots that'll roll the box up to your front door or whatever, you can extrapolate out that this is going to be a very different kind of scenario. Like you can extrapolate out that this is going to be a very different kind of scenario. That said, I think there's still a great deal of value in walking into a store and talking to the butcher or squeezing an avocado to see if it's ripe, that kind of thing.

The robots will squeeze our avocados for us in the future, though. The Amazon drone will squeeze all the avocados and choose the right one for you.'ll be a vr headset that will allow you to take a look at the food oh yeah you got to have the the uh fruit squeezer glove though yeah to get the proper tactile response to say if it's a good melon or not jason you know that's not this is not a completely out of possible i know mario we'll be we'll be dead and gone i'll be dead and gone. I'll be dead and gone by the time that's out. You'll be just a cranky old man being like, in my day, we didn't have virtual melon tapping. And, you know, that'll be fine. Apple have hired James Ehrlich and Zach Van Amburg to run video programming at Apple. This report comes from Recode. They both come from Sony, Jamie and Zach,

where they were top TV executives. These two were responsible for helping shows like Breaking Bad, Shark Tank, The Shield, and The Blacklist happen, and they will be reporting to edEQ. Yeah, it's big news. They were the co-presidents of Sony Pictures Television, and I asked my friend Joe in the chat room, I asked him, is this the well-run part of Sony or the badly run part of Sony? He said, no, this is the well-run part of Sony.

Sony Pictures Television is that Sony doesn't really own an outlet. They don't own a TV network. And these days, generally, the most common thing that happens is you own what you show if you're a network. So if you're Fox, Fox makes the shows, the studio makes the shows, and then the Fox channels air the shows. And it's a much easier business if you've got that vertical integration than if you are Sony trying to hold on to a show that's an NBC. And NBC is looking at the shows and there's like, well, this show we make and this show Sony makes. So we're going to keep the show that we make.

It's a challenge. Joe in the chat room points out Sony does own Crackle. Crackle's biggest show is is leaving crackles is leaving for netflix yeah that's that's true the jerry seinfeld show so it's a big deal though because these are well respected tv executives and uh what it does like number one is i feel like this stops all speculation about well maybe apple is not going to jump in all the way into making original video and having a video outlet. They'll still tinker around the edges with Apple Music, but we don't really know if they're going to go into TV in a big way. We know now. We know now.

Put a pin in it. You don't hire the co-presidents of sony pictures television to sit around and tinker around the edges with some shows on apple music you hire those guys to build you a competitor to netflix that's what you do that's i i to make original programming for apple's outlets that they're going to create probably. Yeah, I feel like the jig is up. This is it. Apple's all the way in on video now. More than just what we see on Apple Music is what you're saying. You think that this is precursor to Apple television.

I think, so we talked about this on the, it was a weird turning of the tables episode of my podcast TV Talk Machine that i do with tim goodman who's the chief tv critic at the hollywood reporter he had lots of questions for me last week about about this but i think we both agree that um this is this is a precursor to apple getting in the in the content game that like this fall when when these guys start they start at the end of august um the they're going to make deals with creators and they're going to produce shows and those shows are going to air somewhere and almost certainly it's going to be on an apple something whether it's

rolled into apple music or i think more likely an apple tv service another service that you can subscribe to from Apple that's going to have original content. And everybody can roll their eyes now and say, but I already pay for Hulu and Netflix and Amazon Prime. Why would I pay for Apple Music or Apple Video, Apple TV service? And my answer is because they're going to sign some famous creators and famous properties

and adapt famous books and things and and create a new hbo if you signed up for netflix and amazon they'll use the same reason to get you to sign up for this right they're creating tv shows that you might want to see that's that's what if the next game of thrones the next westworld the next breaking Breaking Bad. What if something like that is on the Apple platform? That's how they get you to subscribe. And I think that's where they're going. I cannot understand how else this hire makes sense. I'm also really excited about it in the sense that my confidence in these two gentlemen to understand how television works much higher than my confidence in eddie q right eddie q i always was like yeah eddie q's there

but this isn't his world and you know who so who's going to do this and it's a little bit like they have they have music people who do apple music it's not eddie q there are music people yeah um these are tv people and they're development executives and guess what this is what they're this is what they're going to do highly highly thought of in contract negotiations with their existing employer and then they jump and what tim said last week on tv talk machine is he he he suspects at least that one of the reasons here is that lack of an outlet the fact that this deal is going to give these guys the ability to put their shows on their outlet which will be this new apple video service and so yeah i would expect

that they're gonna they may license some catalog stuff like you know because in the early days the last thing you want to do is say hey new apple tv service um pay us ten dollars a month for one show or three shows right they're gonna need to find some non-exclusive catalog stuff, old TV shows that they put in the library that you can watch. In terms of the transition, it'll probably be a little bit like what Amazon did where they started with an all cart TV service, which they've had for a while now for digital. And then they kind of overlaid their free for Prime members stuff on top of it. In reality, what was happening is there's two different things there. There's a streaming service and there's an all-cart service, but they kind of put it together.

I don't know whether Apple will do that. Apple sort of did that with music, where there's sort of the Apple Music and the iTunes Store. My guess is it's going to be a little bit like that, where there's going to be TV shows on iTunes that you can buy, and then there's going to be TV shows that you get uh with your with your uh your subscription to apple service so it's going to take them time i don't think we're doing the math like it takes a long time for shows to uh be made so like they're starting to to do production on the expanse which is a show that i like and i follow their production office twitter account they're starting to do production on that show that will debut in like january of next year

right so it's six months to make a 13 episode cable series and that's after they've already started the writing and they and in that case they've got an existing cast so they don't have to do a lot of casting so you back it up from there and then you have you gotta you've gotta write the the show and get the green light for it. And then before that, you've got to sign, make the deal with the people who are going to make the show. It's a long process.

So I would imagine that there'll be some really big announcements this fall about deals being signed with creators, maybe even from script to series, like no pilots, just we like your idea, we like your script, go make it here's here's money go make 10 episodes or eight episodes or whatever even so i doubt we'd see anything before fall of 2018 you know what you were saying about how it might be enticing to them to go to somewhere where it's an outlet right where they can actually have their shows on this

company service it might be even more enticing when that company has basically infinite money for you to get to get it right you know like i yeah you know apple are gonna probably be able to throw more money at this than sony could or like anybody else because they will if they want to do this they want to get it right and the way you get it right is to have all the money, and they have all the money that they can spend. Right. Like Amazon and Netflix will both spend several billion dollars on content this year. I think it's $6 billion for Netflix and $4 billion for Amazon or something like that.

In that range, though, of many billions. But they've already got the money coming in, right? So they're doing it now to spending billions, and the money's coming in. Right. But this is how it starts right is you start by spending money on creating content and you have to you kind of have to bootstrap it i think ultimately apple doesn't necessarily want to be netflix i think maybe they want to be hbo i think they want to have ultimately they want to have a stable of really good original programming that people want to

subscribe to and maybe they'll commission some movies and they'll go to Sundance and buy some feature films and put them on there. And they'll make some film deals like Netflix is making some film deals and create a service. But given Apple's brand, I think it's more likely that they want to see themselves

as a premium, high quality content brand where really good stuff that people like, not stuff that's high quality, but nobody watches. They want crowd pleasing stuff too, not stuff that's high quality, but nobody watches. They want crowd-pleasing stuff too, but of a perceived high quality. So I think less likely that they'll do what we said on TV Talk Machine was Fuller House,

which Netflix is doing. I think Netflix wants to be more like for everyone. And I imagine Apple doesn't want to do that. I think Apple would much rather be seen as a prestige, high quality thing, like HBO, which is to do that. I think Apple would much rather be seen as a prestige, high-quality thing, like HBO, which is successful at that. So something like that, I think, is what Apple probably wants to do. Apple already have a television show out right now called Planet of the Apps,

which we've not spent any time talking about on this show. That's true. But I will provide some follow-out to Connected, where on last week's show, we reviewed it. So if you want to go and find out mine and Stephen's thoughts on Planet of the Apps, you can go there. I got to be honest. I watched the first four minutes of episode two, which was the father and daughter coming down the escalator and explaining their app that shows things on your backpack of your kid's backpack. And I just couldn't i

just couldn't go on one of these days i'm gonna have to force myself to watch a whole episode of it but that genre that genre does not work for me i'm not a i i stopped watching reality tv basically a long time ago um and the stuff that i did watch was not stuff like this i've seen one episode of shark tank um it does not appeal to me. It appeals to other people. I suppose I will have to force myself to watch an episode at some point, but it's fine. The Incomparable's got a whole show about reality TV that Monty Ashley and Raius Hall do called The Villain Edit. A little plug for that. They love that reality TV. I think it's great. It's just not for me. I prioritized in my life what TV I wanted to watch,

and reality TV fell out of it. So I'm looking forward to listening to your connected review of it. Maybe then I won't have to watch it. Yeah, listen to that, and then once you hear what we say. I'll just take your opinions. Yeah, you can take my opinions. But once you hear what we say, you will make your mind up on whether this is a show for you or not, I think.

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inch and the 12.9 and i want to break them down to kind of section by section and talk about them and i think the thing that is worth talking about when you're thinking of both of these iPads, not just the 10.5, which is arguably the newer because it features a revised form factor, but they both share a lot in common. But I think the thing that they both share in common, which is strikingly different, is the display technology. And the thing that is new for both

is this ProMotion technology that Apple has been talking about, but the thing that was really worth focusing on is the 120 hertz display. Now, this is one of those things that I think is very difficult to explain, because it's something you have to see. With Retina, it was easy to explain because it was everything is crisper, right? Like, just imagine everything being crisper, or it looks like a sheet of paper, that kind of thing. These are things you can explain. The problem with the 120 hertz is it's, I think it's more tricky to explain it because what it looks like is something that's not real. And that's harder to explain because there's, i don't really know if there's anything you can compare it to in real life

because nothing is like that in real life there aren't real life apps that fly around right like this isn't a thing that you can say oh it's just like the app window that we have outside of our homes like the thing that is closest to me that i think is, you know, when you see a TV ad or Apple do this in their ads, when you're watching somebody use a device, but they're not actually using it, right? They're pretending to use it. And there is a computer animation going on, which is green screened into the device. That's what it looks like.

So if you've ever seen an app or an iOS device or any type of device on an ad, and you're like, that looks too smooth. It looks weird. It doesn't look right. That is what the 120 hertz display looks like. It is not right. This is actually the same way that I described Retina to people, is there used to be lots of TV ads.

Google did this where they had ads where uh they would they would show you what was going on a google search or whatever music's playing they do a whole ad and you notice that everything is perfect type like perfectly smooth no dots and you realize oh this is what the internet would look like this is what a computer would look like if it actually had like a print resolution screen which nobody had at the time and you could tell like this is fake but uh but beautiful but fake because nobody actually has a screen like this and then the retina screen came out and you're like oh yeah look it's that thing from the tv it's a little bit like that it's it's um yeah i i i am not one of those i was listening to ATP last week and Marco was saying about how it's

incredible it's incredible and he's right it's really good I would back off a little bit and say I don't think it's as impressive as Retina is in terms of being an upgrade I don't think I necessarily believe that if you use a screen like this and you go back to another screen that you're ruined necessarily um but i would say that the people who tell you that it's not a big deal and that uh if you weren't looking for it you wouldn't notice it are wrong that it's it's noticeable the first moment i picked up one of these devices at the Apple event at WWDC, I immediately thought, oh my God, what is going on here? And I wasn't even thinking about promotion in general, just how smooth everything was. And that was the gut feeling was, look how smooth everything is. Look how smooth scrolling is, bringing up multitasking. all of it just feels smooth and i think that's the power

of this is it's not um like the p3 color gamut stuff and the brighter colors you you get that feeling of like whoa look at the bright color and i had a moment like that this week too by the way where um i was looking at somebody's uh instagram stream and there was a picture and i was and i thought to myself not thinking about the color gamut or anything or the fact that I was on a new iPad I saw it and I thought I thought oh these colors are really bright oh you know this is that this is the screen that's doing that but um this feels like this is just a thing that's kind of holistic that with the retina screen and the 120 hertz what you get is the whole experience just feels smooth and that is a little bit intangible i realize but whether you're scrolling or kicking off an animation um you can feel it and it's quite it's very it's just pleasant

it's a really nice feeling there is a spectrum of of where people fall on to how close so if you take true tone and retina as your points, so how much of a difference true tone makes and how much of a difference retina makes, that is kind of like the spectrum here. Like true tone is really nice, but it doesn't break you. Like it's just really nice to have that on a screen and it's a really lovely enhancement, but it doesn't make other screens worthless. Retina does, right? Like it breaks you. You have a retina does right like it breaks you you have a retina to screen you don't want any screen that's not retina and there is a spectrum where people fall on where 120 hertz is and i am more towards the retina end than the true tone end um i i don't know if i'm as far as as marco is

because he's like every other screen i don't want anymore but i'm very close that like if if the next iphone doesn't have this i'm going to that like if if the next iphone doesn't have this i'm going to be really disappointed if this doesn't come to every computer like like like retina did if this doesn't come to everything apple makes i would be very disappointed because i absolutely love this and when i use my iphone now i'm like what is going on this is so janky so so this is this is what i would say is i feel like i feel like this feature gets rolled up into our perception of the speed of the product that um and and the smoothness of the product so what i don't when i go back to an older ipad

what i don't feel is ugh look at that slow frame rate, look at that choppy animation. No, it just feels slower. Everything feels slower. Yeah, even on iOS 10 on these new iPads, everything feels incredibly new. Even if it isn't actually any slower, like literally, you move your finger and you go from point A to point B and it's the same on both devices, that's not it. It isn't actually slower. It feels slower. Why does it feel slower? Because it's juddering through that lower frame rate as it does the animation of your swipe. And the juddering effect in your brain feels like, oh, it's struggling. It's struggling to keep up. Because

we've seen lots of devices, when they're slow, when they're struggling, they drop frames, basically, right? And so our brains, I feel like, as computer users, especially technology users, have been calibrated to be like, oh, it's struggling. It's not, the illusion is breaking here. And once you've seen this new illusion, the old illusion is more obvious that it's there so so i would not i mean i i'm trying to put this specifically that like i don't think this is one of those things that people are going to single out and be like oh the frame rate i think it's more like it works holistically it's part of this you know you've got powerful hardware it's drawing the screen fast the animations are smooth everything kind of works together to just make it feel smooth and on the older hardware it doesn't feel as smooth and therefore it feels

less nice and less uh less fast even though it's not about the actual speed of getting from point a to point b it's about it's about the journey mike it's about the journey from point a to point b and how smooth it is the overall display of the 12.9 now is just it's the best screen i've ever used it because now the 12.9 gets true tone and the p3 wide color along with the 120 hertz stuff the promotion yep and like it is just this glorious screen because it's the biggest, right? It's this huge screen when compared to where you're using it, right? Because you use it like right in front of your face. So it is this massive screen with these beautiful colors.

Like I remember saying when I got the smaller, when I got the 9.7 inch iPad Pro a year ago, 9.7 inch iPad Pro a year ago, looking at my home screen was glorious because the colors of the app icons, like they never looked like that before. Like that was honestly one of the places I noticed it the most was looking at my home screen because it's a screen that I see so often, but it looked different again because it was more vibrant than before. And I feel the same when looking at my 12.9 inch iPad I'm like oh wow because that's the iPad that I use the most and so I get the joy whenever I was using the smaller iPad when I would travel but the 12.9 now I get to see it every day and it's just it's fantastic like this screen with true tone and the 120 hour stuff and the white color stuff and like oh i love it jason

it both screens are brighter now as well so you can see them better outside these displays on both of these ipads i mean it's no joke that apple say these are the best they ever make and usually you i don't know if i can tell that right like like this is the best we ever made i'm like okay right like it looks really nice but these i can hold them and i'm like yeah they're right because i've never seen computer displays like this before the uh you mentioned the brighter screen there's also on the 12 inch i i should mention i wrote a piece 12.9 inch ipad pro um since i use it all the time and nobody seemed to write this article because all the reviews were about the 10.5 inch understandably because it's the newer size plus it was what apple was giving out

yeah although that's not i asked for a 12.9 and a review unit and that's what i got for embargo i believe all they were doing was giving out the small one maybe um i i don't i i can't say that for sure um maybe that's true i i would assume that everybody who was getting an embargo would want the 10.5 because it's a more mainstream product than the 12.9 and it's the new one in terms of the size. So why would you not want that one? I asked for one, that one too. And then I changed my mind when I saw all the reviews were of the 10.5. I was like, let's go the other way. So I wrote this story about the 12.9. I will write more about this in the weeks to come. But my first story out of the gate about this was, what's different with the 12.9? Because there are a bunch of differences. And the brightness and the anti-glare on the 12.9 are way up from the old 12.9.

Because remember, the 12.9 first edition came out and then the the 9.7 ipad pro came out and it was better and brighter and more had the anti-glare stuff on it and the true tone and the p3 color gamut right so for this is a like a double step for the 12.9 display and yeah can you work on it in sunlight uh outside because it's so much brighter and because it's got the anti-glare coating? I say you can, which is a big step because it used to be that you really couldn't. I cranked up the brightness all the way and I was in a text editor and I could read it and I could write on it in direct sunlight.

I will say all your fingerprints light up when you're in direct sunlight. I will say all your fingerprints light up when you're in direct sunlight. So bring a rag to wipe down your iPad screen because when you're in direct sunlight, your fingerprint, your finger oil is everywhere. But you can do it because that display is so much brighter than it used to be. So part of the reason that this thing feels so smooth is probably also because of the A10X, which is an incredibly powerful new processor. It has three cores, 33% faster in single core, 89% faster in multi-core than the chip it was replacing, which I think was the A9X. The real world benefit of this, it doesn't necessarily come now, like some of these benefits come later, but there will be applications that you use that will be able to do things quicker.

Yeah, there are some, there are not a lot of them right now, but there are some, like Affinity Photo, which just got released and Apple demoed on stage, is like Photoshop, basically, and they've got a bunch of things that they're doing that there's some stuff they can do real time, and there are things that if you've got a filter that you want to do that, you know, like any other computer, it will do it faster. But I feel like yeah, for most use, what this what this increased speed is really providing is more, I try to struggle to describe this in the article. If you imagine like, there's the base level of performance that people on an iPad pro have today, right? And it's, it's plenty, it's plenty. So what's happening is behind there,

imagine sort of like behind what you're doing now, there's some room. So if you push it a little bit more, there's room because you're not taxing that system. I feel like what this new model does is expand the room that's behind a lot of the current performance stuff. And that that that's the best way I can come to describe it, because really, it's not going to make as big a difference until you've got software that's really pushing it. And most iPad software doesn't really push it in that way. But we're seeing more of it all the time. I was exporting audio from Ferrite on the iPad with a plugin, which I bought and put in a compressor plugin. And I thought to myself, this is one of those examples of where the faster iPad is going to do this maybe twice as fast or almost as my older 12.9 inch. And that's just, look, oh, look,

I hit a processor constraint. It doesn't happen all the time on the iPad like it does on the Mac, but it's going to increasingly. And so this, it's a big jump. In regards to new hardware, kind of new hardware design, obviously the 12.9 is unchanged.

It's exactly the same, right? I don't think there's any change at all except for the antenna bands. No, the microphones are in a different place, and the camera is slightly bigger, although the back shell that I've got still fits it. And there's a flash, which didn't exist on the 12.9 before. So those are the hardware differences, really,

is that the antenna lines are less noticeable, and there's the flash, and the microphones are relocated so if you've got one of those silicone back cases for your 12.9 inch ipad pro and you move it to the new model and you try to shoot video um your microphone will be covered by the case it's a very esoteric thing but it'll fit otherwise it's exactly the same but the new hardware really the big hardware changes are in the 10.5 because the case got bigger kept the same. But the new hardware, really, the big hardware changes are in the 10.5 because the case got bigger, kept the same weight, which is, I'm really pleased they did that,

but it got a bigger screen. Now, what does this bigger screen practically bring to the table? So software doesn't take advantage of it in any real meaningful way. There isn't a... The larger screen thing didn't pan out the way we hoped, as we've spoken about, right? The applications that you see on the screen, they're partway between iPhone and iPad.

They kind of sit in the middle of it there. They're not the full iPad apps in portrait that you get on the 12.9 when you put them into split-screen mode. I guess one of the big things that is the reason they did this, I expect, is that it's a differentiator from what is now iPad, the 9.7-inch, because it's the only one that

they do. I think surprisingly for Tim Cook's Apple, they do not sell the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. You can't buy it. So now, if you go into an Apple store, you can look at three iPads on a table and you can see distinctly which one is which. There aren't two 9.7 inch iPads that look exactly the same. There is a 9.7, a 10.5 and a 12.9. You can stack them up and you can see how

they're different. I like the larger screen because it's a larger screen, right? And I like the way the iPad looks. I like the thin bezels. I think it looks really great. I did wish for more, but I'm happy with what I got as well. Because it doesn't feel bigger. It's bigger, but it never feels like it. No, it doesn't feel bigger. It doesn't feel heavier.

It still feels like that smaller iPad for better and for worse, right? As a 12.9-inch fan, I look at it and i think you know it's the it's the 9.7 grown a little bit it's not it's not like the 12.9 packed into a smaller case which was kind of what i was hoping for but uh it's fine i'm kind of resigned now to the fact that it's not for me like the 12.9 is the one that i still like, and I'm not going to switch to the 10.5. It's not going to happen because I like the bigger screen. The bigger screen has a lot of value to me. I do wonder if app developers of pro-leaning apps on the iPad may tweak their settings.

I don't know the details of how this is actually set up in the OS with a 10.5, but I do wonder if they might try to put some more information on screen when you're in a 10.5 split screen. Right now, by default, using the old sort of size classes for apps, the old breakpoints for how an app gets laid out. This is following the same rules as the 9.8, right? So 9.7. It's sort of two phone app layouts when you've got it in side by side. And I wonder, I don't know this, so developers can tell us, but my understanding from a couple of years ago is that there are various sort of

size families and there are breakpoints. And it's a little bit like when I build a website and I've got breakpoints for different browser widths that the layouts change at certain breakpoints. I don't know if they can. I would assume they can target this particular size of a split screen 10.5. And it would be nice if they could because they could maybe put some more stuff on it. But, you know, it's not that big a screen. So there's only so much stuff you can put on it. And, you know, it's not as nice experience to have split screen apps in the 10.5 screen as it is on the 12.9. That's just the bottom line. that's just how it is but you get a much lighter thinner uh smaller

device in exchange so you you made reference to the cameras the cameras are different now hold the the current iphone cameras i believe 12 megapixels on the back with support for 4k video and an led flash this is the first time a flash has been on an iPad. And there is a 7-megapixel front-facing camera as well, but of course it brings with it a camera bump on the back because I guess there isn't enough space. I'm very happy to have Touch ID, the version 2 of Touch ID on my iPad now. That's brilliant.

I'm very happy to have that because it's much faster and nicer. And there is also the ability in the larger iPad now. That's brilliant. I'm very happy to have that because it's much faster and nicer. And there is also the ability in the larger iPad now, two things that it didn't get before, to have the Apple SIM. Apple SIM is great if you're using cell. Apple SIM is awesome because you can just choose from providers no matter where you are in the world. I love the Apple SIM on my iPad. And you can, I didn't know this, you can trigger a Hawaii telephone, which is the wake word for Apple's digital assistant. It's not actually a Hawaii telephone. We just won't say what the real one is

because it will set off everybody's devices. You can now do that when your large iPad is not plugged in. I didn't know that was a thing. It turns out. Yeah, that's a little odd thing that the 9.7 could do that when it was unplugged and the 12.9 for whatever reason couldn't, so now it can. So like when we had the very great iPad Mini,

which I think was the iPad Mini 2, which was the iPad Mini's high point, what made it so great was that Apple removed all of the reason that you would choose one iPad over another except for the size, right? So the internals of both the regular iPad and the iPad Mini were exactly the same, as they are here with the 10.5 and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Everything is the same inside of them. The only differentiator now is which screen size do i want do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing i think it's great love it i think it's great confusion is not

good the other two models were obviously built separately on different tracks it's very strange um in fact i think the speculation at the time was that the 12.9 was built as an ipad pro and the 9.7 was built as an ipad air 3 basically and at some point they decided no no we're this is an ipad pro 2 and they're not the same and it was really weird and i always use the millionaire question which is if a millionaire walks into an apple store and says give me your finest ipad the answer is we don't know which one you want because they're both differently good and now that millionaire walks into the apple store and says give me your finest ipad and they say which size because otherwise they are identical and that's i think that's great so but i guess this is hardware and and

the physical things but the other difference is software right and and so that is one of the other things that goes into this is that there is differences in software and we're going to come back to that in a moment actually i did just want to say at this juncture before we take a break that these ipads are just the best computers i've ever used i love them so much i think they're fantastic uh i'm so i'm so so happy and i and i'm using 10 on these and i did put ios 11 on both of them and had to restore both of them uh because at different points over the space of 36 hours i got absolutely absolutely crippling home screen refreshes, right? Springboard

crashes, and the iPads wouldn't come on anymore. They would not boot further than the Apple logo. So don't put iOS 11 Beta 1 on your devices right now, which is exactly what we were talking about last week, and it's because I've had to restore

both of these iPads, which is fine. I got to go through the restore thing. I share your enthusiasm about these devices. But when iOS 11 is on them and working well, that's the stuff. I'm so excited. That's when it's really...

I don't think I've ever been more excited for an iOS release. I'm just like, just give it to me now. Like, I need it. Oh, I'm'm so excited i was pretty excited about about ios 9 just because adding multitasking at all was such a huge deal but this is uh this is this is huge here's the difference right then it was like oh this is exciting what could it give us but now we are like heavy ipad users right yeah it's already transformed us and now they're giving us more things. Yep. So that's why I'm so excited for it.

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Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show. I get lots of questions. We get lots of questions about what computers people should buy. But in the last couple of weeks, I have had an increasing amount of which iPad should I buy?

And I wanted to just spend a moment, Jason, giving a mini iPad buying guide for the upgradians out there. I think this question comes down to one other question, right? So the question you give me, I give one question back to you, and this is what should answer it. And it is, what do you want to do with it?

So these are what I believe the two iPads are suited for. 10.5-inch, so the new iPad, the newest new. I believe that the 10.5-inch is the iPad Pro that is best suited for consumption first. So if you want to be reading or browsing or watching stuff, I think this is maybe the best iPad all around for that with work attached, right? So it's like both of these iPads do both of these things, but there is a leading use case. And I think the leading use case for the 10.5

is for media and entertainment first with light work, like maybe writing in a text editor because the keyboard is bigger now, or maybe doing your email, maybe doing some spreadsheet stuff. But I don't think that it is the best sized iPad for long periods of multitasking work because you don't get the full app sizes, right? So you don't get these full apps.

So there are more compromises that you have to make. It's easier to travel with because it's smaller and lighter. But I don't think you would really want to be if you are intending to start working all the time from your iPad. I don't think that this is the best one to move to for that, purely because you don't get the best of multitasking. So in the inverse, the 12.9, I think that this is the iPad that is suited best for working first. It has, you get the ability, so when we talk about these two apps, I'll say this again.

When you go into multitasking mode on a 12.9-inch iPad and you have two apps side by side, what you see is effectively an iPad application in portrait mode. You get two of those side by side. So if you turned your iPad around, that's what the apps would look like. It's two iPad apps side by side. When you've got the iPad in landscape, you see two portrait apps side by side. It is also a huge canvas if you're illustrating or doing design work. And you also get basically full-sized keyboards, right? So you get full-sized keyboards you can attach to it,

maybe in cases or the smart keyboard, or you get a full-sized on-screen keyboard. Video looks great on it, right? Because it's a nice big display, but it can be a little too large and maybe a little bit unwieldy or heavy for browsing Twitter or watching video, right? If you're holding it,

or if you've got it on the couch, it's kind of a bit big. It's a bit big on airplanes. Like sometimes it doesn't really fit on the tray table very well because it's a big thing, right? It's like a 13-inch screen, basically, with this border around it.

It's a very big device. That also makes it heavy, especially when paired with a keyboard. Depending on the keyboard you put on this you're in laptop weight so it's also tougher to travel with so my conclusion of this and then I'll throw over to you Jason

is that the 10.5 inch iPad I think is the replacement for your current iPad if you maybe want to step up what you're doing on your iPad so if your current iPad whatever you're doing on it if you just want to take the next step it's on your iPad. So if your current iPad, whatever you're doing on it, if you just want to take the next step, it's great for that because it's great for reading stuff, it's great for writing,

it's great for getting some work done like email, and it's great for browsing things like Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and that kind of stuff. It's a great iPad for that. The 12.9-inch iPad is if you want to buy an iPad to replace your laptop. That's the one that you want to get. If you want to replace everything you do on your laptop with an iPad, you should get the 12.9 because that's the one where you can get all your work done easily or easier than you can the 10.5. What do you think, Jason? I think that's not a bad breakdown. It's funny because I was thinking this,

Um, it's, it's funny cause I was thinking this, it sounds a little bit to me like, should you get the 13 or the 15 inch MacBook pro, right? Like you could have that conversation and, and what, what is the conversation at that point? One of them's a little more expensive and gives you a bigger screen. Which one, which one do you want? Which one do you prefer? You want to save some money and also have the smaller screen? Or do you really want that extra screen?

Yes, there's some power, there's some processor differences there too, which this does not provide. But it's a similar argument, which is like, how are you going to use it? How much do you care about the added screen real estate? Because there is a cost in terms of weight and size to doing it. I think, yeah, in terms of getting worked on the 10.5, I mean,

I think it also is about how much you work on it, especially if you're traveling. Look, you can be a dedicated road warrior with a 10.5 inch iPad Pro because you could be with a 9.7. with a 10.5 inch iPad Pro because you could be with a 9.7. You will, everything will be a little bit cramped. The keyboard is a little bit smaller on the 9.7, right? But 10.5, they've made it that it fits within the definition of a full-sized keyboard. Plus the 10.5, at least in iOS 11,

will get that cool swipey keyboard where you can access punctuation by swiping down on the keys. Sure, right, when you're using the software keyboard and then the smart keyboard uh that that you can get is the keys are a little bit bigger so they can call it a full-size keyboard turns out there is a definition for what a full-size keyboard is and it's uh it's a certain amount with a range of like a millimeter and they're in the range it's a little on the small side but it's in the range of being called a full-size keyboard which is why they call it that i did notice immediately that the keyboard was bigger just by using it like i could feel it yeah i don't know if everyone can

but i i really could feel it yeah and they've been aggressive with all the edge keys being a little narrower but it gets those main keys to be the the qwerty keys are full-sized so i guess what i'm saying is as an 11 inch macbook air user from way back um don't let anybody tell you that that device is too small to get work done i've edited many many podcasts in logic on an 11 inch mac screen right and people would say well it's impossible you just just can't. It's like, well, I did. I don't think I would have wanted to edit video on it, right? That would have been hard. But for podcasts, I could do it. So what I'm saying is like, the 10.5 can be used for all the same things that the 12.9 can. It's just going to be a little more cramped, which is why I think your advice is pretty practical. Like if you are

prioritizing the, like you said, the consumption stuff and just sort of like some light work and not a lot of multitasking. And then you know that sometimes you're going to be in a situation, whether you're traveling or even when you're at home, where you are going to need to do some multitasking and do some more heavy work, it will do it. It is entirely capable of doing it. It might be a little cramped, but you could totally do it. And what you get is that lightness and the thinness out of it. But I do agree.

Like, for me, I love the bigger screen. I do actually love it for reading Twitter and Slack and things like that. I love it for reading comics, although the 10.5 is much better at reading comics than the 9.7. It's still not as good as the 12.9. And so for me, I'd rather have all of that power there for when I need to do multitasking work and all of that. But I still, 90% of the time I use it. I'm using it just as a, as a, in that sort of more consumption mode mode and I'm very happy with it so either of these can be either it ends up being about what you want to spend how much weight you want to carry and how much the extra pixels mean to you because they all do the same things it's just you know that for me I look at it and think I'm willing to spend

the money to have that bigger screen and I don't mind that it's it's bulkier and heavier because it's just so nice and that's funny coming from somebody who used an 11 inch macbook air but that's where i am now well yeah i mean the 11 inch macbook air right like it had a lot of convenience to it but the screen was smaller than than you know it could have been like if you look at like the 11 inch macbook Air and the MacBook, the MacBook screen is bigger and it's also smaller. That was the screen size they could fit in a product of that size at the time, I guess. Yeah, I agree. Both of these devices can do all of these things.

I think there is just a way that they skew, and I think one skews more towards work than the other. I will say what we haven't thrown in here, which we should, if you plan to do absolutely no work on your iPad, you should probably get the $329 iPad. If all you want to do is just read Twitter and watch a movie, get that one. I will say that the screens are so good

that if you have the money and the desire, maybe you should get the 10.5. But like, if that doesn't bother you, then you should get the regular one. And I agree. And I'll also say, sometimes I hear people, they get confused about the smart cover and they think, oh, well,

but what if I want to have a keyboard? It's like all Bluetooth keyboards work with iPads. So you can buy that cheap fifth-generation iPad and pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard and go to town. So that's not enough of a reason. So I agree that Apple has done a good job of splitting this iPad line in two. this iPad line in two. And if all you're doing is really light stuff and browsing Twitter and doing email and stuff like that, you don't even need the iPad Pro.

Have you used any accessories with your iPads? A few. I used the Apple leather sleeve thing, which is interesting. It's nice. Yeah. it feels like i'm an art student i think that's actually kind of what it's designed for it's like you've got a a naked ipad probably it doesn't have to be it can have a cover on it but a naked ipad in this sleeve with with the apple pencil at the top and you carry it around with you and it's like oh i'm here i'm ready for art class that's how it sort of feels like to me it's really nice it is not cheap but it is really nice nice leather nice stitching it's a

it's a beautiful um enormous in this case because it's for the 12.9 uh sleeve but it's nice i will say super quick on that it's an interesting tidbit uh it's actually designed to hold the ipad with the smart keyboard attached to it so that is not what I was told by Apple. And I asked specifically what they told me was it is designed to not be used with the case, but it will fit with the case in it. However, your case will stretch a little bit. And over time, it will create a little bit of a shape either will fit but my understanding is that if you put it in with the thicker case then over time like as leather does it will expand a little bit it'll fit it just fine and you may see a little bit of a stretch mark on it so i will say

having used i've only seen and played with the one on the 10.5 if you don't have a case on it it kind of flops about in there a little bit in a way that i'm uncomfortable with so like i i think it's maybe nicer if you do have the keyboard on it because it has a bit of friction in there do what you have to do but your mileage may vary i guess yeah i i've been i've been using it just completely uh caseless and sliding it in the the little uh thing and it it it worked fine with me but it's not it's not a i'm not gonna be keeping it in there right like i i i got a i got a smart cover and i got a new smart cover because one of the exciting things is they now make a leather smart cover for the 12.9 and it means there's finally an apple accessory for the 12.9 that comes in colors that are not gray and white so the leather smart cover is in brown

or midnight blue or i think black um and so uh at last the hegemony of gray and white ipad 12.9 accessories from apple has has been broken so that's uh that's nice. Yeah, I don't own any of the smart covers. I have an old 9.7-inch smart cover, which still works. I haven't tried it with a 10.5, but it still worked with my previous iPad Pro. Like I'm talking, it was like an iPad. Would it not fit at all?

Well, give it a try. It won't be a good experience, though. Well, I mean, I only ever use it to prop the iPad up on a plane. That's all I ever use it for. Because you have what? You have the smart cover on? Well, I was using the Create case before, right? But I'm not doing that anymore.

So actually, it's not an issue for me now because I've moved to the smart keyboard again. My primary use of my 12.9 has always been with a smart cover. And then I will add a keyboard when I need it. But I don't live with it in the... That would be a way to get me turned off on the 12.9 pretty fast if it was always in a bulky keyboard case, right? That's not what I want.

Yeah, I am a smart keyboard person. So I use the smart keyboard on my big one I always have. And I'm going to use it on the 10.5 because Logitech's case, I hate. Yeah, I haven't tried it, but it's not a style that I particularly like. I'm really skeptical about it. Did you get one?

Yeah, and I hate it. It's terrible. I find it terrible. I haven't done a comprehensive review, but Serenity Caldwell has, and I'm going to put it in the show notes, and she didn't like it either. I haven't done a comprehensive review, but Serenity Caldwell has, and I'm going to put it in the show notes, and she didn't like it either. I mean, honestly, Jason, I'm going to return it.

I haven't yet. I used it for 20 minutes, and I was like, I am not going to get on with this. Everything I liked about the Create is not in this one. I really, really didn't like it at all. But again, I'll put a link to ren's review because she does a better job of talking about the positives and negatives about it but it's really not for me yeah i uh i really like the 9.7 create and i am i am disappointed me too

that that logitech didn't take what they learned from the 9.7 Create and use that in a 10.5 Create. Because I think it would be a really good product. And maybe they will do that down the road. Who knows? I hope so. Because what they've got right now is not the Create at all. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah. iPadsads very excited about them i believe everybody should buy them so apple can keep making them fair fair point good that's just uh let the word be known everybody go buy buy uh buy an ipad or go buy go buy today's episode is also brought to you by mac walden they make the most comfortable underwear socks shirts undershirts hoodies and sweatpants that you're ever gonna wear mac walden is better than whatever you're wearing right now and they're so confident of this that they have a no questions asked return policy they're so sure that you're going to be super comfortable in whatever you buy that if for any reason you don't like your first pair just keep it and they'll refund you

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thank you so much to Mac Weldon for their support of this show and RelayFM alright Jason Snell it's time for some Ask upgrade all right let's bring it chris asked i'm a first time true tone user do you guys use night shift in addition to true tone or is true tone enough for the night i i have not been using true tone long enough to have an opinion about it i really um i mean oh yeah you didn't use the small one right okay so maybe i should be the one to answer this uh yeah i use them both because i actually think that night shift and true

tone are a beautiful pairing like when it starts to get late in the day that true tone screen looks even better because of night shift so i recommend uh having that turned on i love night shift personally i think it's a great feature yeah one of the challenges with night shift and true tone if you if you just use true tone is um it works if it's the evening and you've got the lighting in your room because it's going to make everything match the lighting and that that's just that's enough But if it's dark, True Tone won't help you. It won't help you because there's no light in the room other than your screen light. And that's why Night Shift is extra valuable because then it's going to push things into that gentler, yellowy-orange tone even when there's no light in the room for the True Tone sensor to find.

Michael wants to know, if I'm embracing the multi-pad lifestyle, do you recommend getting both with cellular or just one? So the multi-pad lifestyle is the life that I lead, which is to have multiple iPads that I use for different purposes. In my experience, the way that I embrace it is that I use the big iPad at home, and I use the small iPad when I'm out of the home. So I just have cellular on the iPad when I'm out of the home. That makes the most sense for me. I'm going to be traveling this year differently,

and I don't know how I'm going to deal with this yet, in that I'm going to be away from the UK for a month in August. So I'm thinking I'm probably just going to take the 10.5 and deal with the crampness because I only have Solera on that one. And I do like on my iPad, the ability to not have to worry about tethering and things like that. Like if you can get, if you can get Solera, go for it. But I do recommend just work out what you want to use your iPads for, and then decide if you want to get sold on on one or both joshua asked i'm looking to upgrade from the early 2010 imac and 2011 macbook pro to a single machine what should i do i think in that in this example you should probably buy a macbook pro and an external display

so you get the best of both. What do you think, Jason? Yeah, I think that's the right answer. Yeah. Just get a MacBook Pro, and if you need that large screen, then buy an external display. Yeah, I think that makes the most sense. Tom asks,

Any advice on cases to increase grip on a slippery iPhone 6? So, I mean, I can't speak to every case. I mean, I really have just been a user of Apple's cases for a long time. And I use the silicone cases, which I find add a sufficient level of grip, the silicone cases that Apple make. I used the leather case on the iPhone 6 6 and 6s and from apple and uh loved it but i was happy to get rid of it when i when i went to the seven with the jet black yeah okay because now i've got i can i can touch the edges of the phone again yeah uh ghanai asked just ios

11 on ipad have keyboard shortcuts related to multitasking or is it still touch only? Jason? I don't understand this question. Okay. Because command tab has always been a keyboard shortcut related to app switching, I guess. So if you mean very specifically, like, can you pick an app and put it into a place with keyboard shortcuts? No, you can't do that. I was trying to imagine this.

It's like Mission Control on the Mac doesn't have keyboard shortcuts either, right? No. So I could imagine having a system-wide keyboard shortcut to show and hide the slide-over window. I think that would be kind of fun. But there isn't a slide-over window on 11, right? It makes sense on 10. Sure there is. Sure there's a slide-over window.

I mean, slide-over is still there. I know what you're talking about. I was thinking of the app switcher. Slide-over is when the little app peeks in from the side. Yeah, right. So I could imagine doing a keyboard shortcut and having slide over pop over and then dismissing it and all of that.

But in terms of like, I would like a keyboard shortcut to go into the multitasking view, for example. I think that would be useful. There are some things they could do, but a lot of it's not practical. Phil is asking, I have upgraded from an Air 2 to a 10.5-inch iPad Pro. The Pro attracts more fingerprints and it's harder to clean.

Do you find this to be the case? Yes. So the iPad Pro's screens, the coating on them is different because of the pencil. And whatever the coating is, whatever it is that they did to it, one of the downsides is that the Pro line attracts significantly more fingerprints to the screen.

You find that to be the case as well? I can't compare. I haven't used a non-Pro for so long that I can't say, but there's I don't know a non-pro for so long that I can't say, but there's, I don't know. Like I said, in bright sunlight, there's a lot of fingerprints that are visible, but I can't compare it, so I can't tell you.

From my memory of when I changed initially, I can say that this is the case. Those, especially the, I mean, the bigger the screen, the more you're going to see as well, because there's more there, but I do find that to be the case. And finally today, especially the, I mean, the bigger the screen, the more you're going to see as well, because there's more there. But I do find that to be the case. And finally today, John asks, do you have any suggestions for bags for the iPad Pro 12.9 inch? Jason, do you have any bag other than your trusty backpack that you love?

I don't have a specialty bag for the iPad because I don't live my life in a way that I'm just carrying an iPad around. I have lots of other bags that I use. I have a shoulder bag, a messenger bag that I use sometimes. And I've got my trusty backpack. So yeah, I have no opinions about bags either. So take us home, Mike. So I have two.

The Tom Bin Rostretto is a great shoulder bag, messenger bag that will fit a 12.9 inch ipad that they have uh the laptop compartment fits laptops or tablets up to 13 inches it's a great bag and i own one and i really like it and then i will also throw in uh my cause and the pen addict brad dowdy he has a company called not co and they recently made a briefcase like made of a nylon material called the lanyard um which will fit an ipad pro and is great if all you wanted to do is just carry it in your hand um you can also fit a bunch of other stuff in there as well it's and it comes with a little small bag too but it doesn't have any straps or anything it's purely like to

carry around so when i go to like a conference or something like that i'll put everything in my rucksack and i'll put everything in my suitcase and i put the lanyard in there as well so when i'm going backwards and forwards from my hotel room during the day i'll just be carrying my ipad in the kind of the briefcase it works really well for me so they are my suggestions there wow that is people wanted answers from me today, Jason. They did. All the answers from me. I can't help you. I'm glad that you were here because those would not have been questions that I would have picked if I was the one who had to answer them. What can I say? I have some wisdom to give. It's not a lot. You do. But I have some. Yeah, I don't know. You proved that. You proved that you have a lot to give today with all of that. This is your iPad.

iPad is on the brain. This is one of your favorite subjects, and it's coming out. It's showing itself. I do love my iPad. If you would like to suggest some questions for Ask Upgrade, maybe some specific things that only Jason can answer, you can use the hashtag AskUpgrade on Twitter. If you'd like to find our show notes, you can go to

relay.fm slash upgrade slash 146 and I would like to thank Encapsular, FreshBooks, and Mack Waldom for supporting the show. Most of all, thank you for listening. As always, you can find Jason online at sixcolors.com and theincomparable.com. Jason hosts a selection of shows at RelayFM

as well, including the fantastic Download, which you should be listening to if you're not already. Jason is at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. And I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Keep cool, everybody. Hydrate.