Upgrade - 184: The Claim Chowder Secret Society

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

What are our top five Apple products of the past five years? Jason and Myke list their choices in something that is almost, but not quite, a draft. Also: Did Jason accurately predict the extended surv...ival of the MacBook Air? A watchful Upgradian provides the answer. We also muse about the future of keyboards and discuss Netflix as a future home for a former president.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 from relay fm this is upgrade episode 184 today's show is brought to you by squarespace fresh books and ero my name is mike curly i'm joined by the wonderful mr jason snell hello wonderful mike curly how are you i'm very well we're recording earlier today because it's Daylight Savings Time's time. I don't know what you're talking about. It's exactly the same time as always. Why am I so tired? We're in that two-week span until my time changes. Your time's changed. My time will change later. But Mike, nobody wants to hear about the curvature of the earth. It's time for Snell Talk. Our question this week, I really like the lore of this question it comes from Mike Mike asks Jason
Starting point is 00:00:47 if you were the focus of a police manhunt which of your tech products should the bloodhounds smell to make sure that they can track you down why am I helping the police Mike why am I helping them in advance yeah you should be maybe you want to throw the bloodhounds off the scent
Starting point is 00:01:03 with this answer I don't know it's one of my favorite Snell talk questions because it's thrown all kind of just like preconceived notion out of the window and has created this world that we now live in. So I guess really the question that Mike is actually asking is which of your technology products do you have with you the most like would be my expectation but i don't know i feel like there's a whole angle here which is what up what he's actually asking is um what tech products do you own that most carry your scent and i have an answer okay um although i think maybe the Apple Watch is the answer. My guess is that I'm going to be wearing my Apple Watch during the manhunt. During your fugitive runaway. So they're not going to be able to see it. But it's highly unlikely that I would leave home with my AirPods. Because, I mean, first off, you got to be on your toes when you're the subject of a police manhunt. And the last thing you need is to put in headphones,
Starting point is 00:02:10 unless you're talking to a collaborator or something. But I think you'd want to be in airplane mode. You wouldn't want to be tracked. And you certainly wouldn't want to cut yourself off from sounds that might allow you to evade capture. So I would probably leave my AirPods at home. And you know what? They get stuck in my ears when I listen to them. And I would bet you that there is on my AirPods enough
Starting point is 00:02:32 of a residue for the bloodhounds to follow me and find my ears, which hopefully would be attached to my body during the manhunt. Although you never know. You never know. Who knows what might happen. So I'm going to say AirPods. That's my answer. Final answer, Mike. Thank you so much to Mike for sending this question in. I encourage people to take a lesson from Mike's wonderful question to try and build out the lore of Snell Talk a little bit more.
Starting point is 00:03:00 Oh, God. Build a whole thing going on. So you could just send in a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk that get dropped into a document for me to pick up at a later date thank you to mike for that suggestion some real-time follow-up joe steel in the chat room did suggest that you could also use my mechanical keyboard as a as a place to get my smell and then they would find my fingers um that's not a bad idea not a bad idea thank you don't relay that to the police there are some crumbs in there you know yes so they might the bloodhounds might be attracted to my pantry instead if they smell the crumbs i don't know but yeah anyway um i'm gonna say the crumbs don't
Starting point is 00:03:37 carry my dna do they that's how that works maybe if they fell out of your mouth who knows i don't know how you eat i like how you said that. You said, I don't know, DNA. That's like a magic wand that police use to find people. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. All right. The DNA magicians. Let's start with some follow-up.
Starting point is 00:03:56 In regards to Apple's laptop lineup, I had a couple of questions that I wanted to ask you. We were talking about the Air last week, and it's kind of failed attempts to replace uh well the macbook it's it's failed attempts to replace the air right and that the macbook air is sticking around the macbook has not kind of done a job in getting rid of it um so we had oma ask isn't the macbook pro the non-touch bar the what is lovingly known as the MacBook escape, the actual spiritual successor to the Air, not the MacBook. Yeah, I think he makes a great point. It depends on how you view it. I actually wrote, after our conversation last week, I wrote a piece for Macworld that we can put in the show notes called MacBook Air, Why Won't It Die? This is the grand cycle. We've talked about
Starting point is 00:04:44 it before, the grand cycle. I write something, we talk about it, I write something else. It just keeps on going. I got an angry email from one person who was like, why are you advocating the death of the MacBook Air? It's great. No, no, no, I'm not. I'm just wondering why Apple has gotten to this point. We talked about that. So I think omar makes a good point i think there are two successors to the macbook air i think the macbook is its successor in the sense of let's make a thin and light laptop for people that that is like thin and light laptop is part of the charter of the macbook air if you look at tech specs the macbook escape which is this weird let's also mention weird computer in terms of where it's positioned
Starting point is 00:05:26 because it's like the other 13 inch macbook pro which i has always been strange but if you look at its specs it's using the what 15 watt intel uh core processors that are that's the equivalent of what's in the macbook air the macbook air is using the fifth generation, whereas the MacBook Pro is using the current generation, which is, I think, the seventh generation. But they are using those processors. And it weighs, and I looked it up for my article, it weighs less than an ounce more than the MacBook Air 13-inch. And I believe the MacBook Air's thickest point is the consistent thickness of the MacBook Air 13-inch. And I believe the MacBook Air's thickest point
Starting point is 00:06:05 is the consistent thickness of the MacBook Pro. They're kind of around the same size and width at that point. I think the MacBook Escape is actually thinner than the thickest point of the MacBook Air. But obviously the MacBook Air has that wedge shape, which the MacBook Pro does not. But still, it's three pounds. It's a three-pound laptop.
Starting point is 00:06:24 It weighs the same. And since they cut its price by $200, it also costs $1299. So I think they are dual successors. And it depends on what you're looking for in a MacBook Air that leads you down the path of the thin and light laptop or the one that's got comparable processors and comparable weight than a light laptop. Say, a pound, it goes from three to two if you get the macbook but i think omer is absolutely right that that macbook escape is uh also a successor to the macbook air and that makes it even weirder that it's called a macbook pro yeah and yet there's also another 13 inch macbook Pro with Touch Bar that has completely different features and different port configurations and all of that.
Starting point is 00:07:09 And it's just something happened. A series of things clearly happened in product development at Apple that led that product to be labeled the way it is and yet designed the way it is that has led to the MacBook Air lasting suspiciously longer than Apple, I think, intended it to. I got a good piece of feedback from somebody after I talked about this with John Gruber on the talk show last week, who said, you know, Apple sold old laptops several times before. And my response to him was something like, yeah, but they sold the old laptop to, if this rumor is true, like to continue updating the old laptop and like keeping it alive and updating it. That's the part where it gets really weird.
Starting point is 00:07:54 Instead of it being like, also old laptop is available. But they like, they gave it a processor boost last year. And now this rumor is that they're, and it's a rumor, but that they're updating it again and maybe cutting its price. Like, that's the weird part about it keeping an old product around just available it's not the same as Iran is it at this point right you well and that's that's the speculation part of this but that's the thought is it doesn't seem like a dead product because there's some stirrings there and that's the weird part is like that they they can't get rid of it and in fact they may be forced to update it and uh you know that's that's a weird thing too but i think you
Starting point is 00:08:31 know i have recommended that macbook escape to people because it is the 13 inch macbook air successor in many ways and it's the same price as the macbook so literally you can say which do you prioritize do you want a little more powerful laptop but it's a pound heavier it's the same as the 13 inch air or and it's got two ports or do you want the one port but one pound lighter thin and light macbook and you know then you have to choose your your priority there but i i in a in a parallel universe in an alternate world, I think that MacBook Escape is the all-new MacBook Air. And the MacBook is the MacBook. But I think Apple decided that the MacBook Air was a weird name. And that the MacBook, if there was a MacBook Air, it would be the MacBook.
Starting point is 00:09:18 But then they called the MacBook the MacBook. Maybe they should have called that the MacBook Air. And the MacBook Escape should have been called the MacBook. Well, this is the MacBook. Maybe they should have called that the MacBook Air and the MacBook Escape should have been called the MacBook. Well, this is the problem. And I suspect that this is what happened in a meeting at Apple. Right? This exact... It's like, well, wait, what? Huh? This is way too complicated. And somebody
Starting point is 00:09:36 probably said, this is way too complicated. Let's just sell two MacBook Pro 13 inches with completely different specs. That's much less complicated. And the answer is, it's not less complicated. But anyway, Omer's point is well taken. It's a weird situation. I am positive that somebody at Apple really views the MacBook line as someplace where they're getting their product line in order and their naming refined, and it's going to be clear eventually. And they're probably frustrated that because of the way the the product line has gone it hasn't
Starting point is 00:10:06 gotten there yet unlike like the ipad which is resolving itself the macbook line is still uh confused so maybe this year we'll see it is worth noting as well that like they are not comparable in price but the the the 13-inch macbook pro1,300, but it has some specs that kind of sit it in between the two current MacBook Airs, right? Like I think it has like a 128 gigabyte SSD where the 1200 MacBook Air has a 256. So like obviously it's a more powerful, more modern and better in a bunch of ways machine.
Starting point is 00:10:42 Like it has a retina screen and stuff like that. It wouldn't, I don't know if you could really think of it as a just a flat out replacement because the bottom of the lime one is like 300 more expensive exactly exactly and if they do it if they if they were to take it down to 999 let's say one of the things that they and and get rid of the macbook air one of the things they would probably have to do is reduce the specs further. And if you look at the MacBook Escape at 128 SSD, it's like, I'm not sure they really want to go down below that to like a 64 SSD. Apple is trying to balance out what's available with their profit margins've realized they can't get away with saying our laptops start at $12.99. And education is a good example of that. Apple's having a tough time in education anyway, because Chromebooks are doing so well. The iPad is doing less well in education because Chromebooks
Starting point is 00:12:01 have been so successful. And then there's MacBooks, which probably aren't great, but I know a lot, especially in individual students in higher ed and even in high school do like Apple laptops. And so they sell some there and they're, you know, and they're probably other industries too. And there may be even a general sense that at $9.99, they will get people in the door and at $12.99, they won't. So they're grappling with that part too, which is just how do we set the base price for getting into the Mac ecosystem and the Apple ecosystem with a laptop? And clearly, if they thought $1299 would do it, the MacBook Air wouldn't exist anymore.
Starting point is 00:12:38 But it does. So obviously it matters. And I also want to talk about this wonderful piece of follow-up from mac who i am dubbing a super upgradian for max work that you will find out in a moment just what makes mac a super upgradian but this is we got this email from mac and mac says on episode 29 of upgrade in march 2015 during a discussion of the ipad mini continuing to be sold with outdated internals. Jason says the following,
Starting point is 00:13:07 this is a ghost product in three or four years. There'll probably still be a 13 inch MacBook air in the product line. And we'll say the same thing, which is why is it still there? And the answer is they can sell that for $799, but it's cheap and it's old and it's fine. Now that is unbelievable what makes mac a super upgradian is mac heard this then set a calendar event and that's for three years three years time
Starting point is 00:13:34 and that's how this came up so bravo mr snell you did it um what i replied to mac and i said if if if the cutting the price rumor is true and it ends up just being the same old 13 inch air but now it's 7.99 then i am going to take a victory lap but you know it is look apple does this stuff so it's not super surprising that i would extrapolate something like that um you know and it felt at the time when the macbook came out right like wow that's 1299 and the air still exists that's quite a gap for them to close so here we are i i just i think it's amazing and a little disquieting that the stupid things we say on podcasts somebody's out there going oh yes in four years i will ask you about this it's the it's the claim chowder uh secret society something like that.
Starting point is 00:14:25 I would like to, you're not going to like this, I would like to propose a name for this. I follow up this way as Fortune Snelling. That is what I would like to call when you make claims for the future, Fortune Snelling. So there you go, that's what I'm going to attempt to roll with against Jason's absolute disdain. Is it the first annual Fortune Snelling. So there you go. That's what I'm going to attempt to roll with against Jason's absolute disdain, as usual, for my names and things. But you know, history has shown that I can wear you down over time. Let's take a break and thank FreshBooks for supporting this week's show. Our friends at FreshBooks can save you freelancers and business owners time with their cloud accounting software because it is so easy to use. They have observed that it can save you freelancers and business owners time with their cloud accounting software because
Starting point is 00:15:05 it is so easy to use. They have observed that it can save their customers 192 hours, as many hours that you could be doing way better work than being knee deep in invoicing because FreshBooks makes it easy. They make it easy for you to send your invoices out. They make it easy for you to track expenses and also maybe most importantly in getting paid online. FreshBooks has drastically reduced the time it takes for their over 10 million customers to deal with their paperwork. It's not all about invoicing, right? This is what I love. It's great. You can send invoices so quickly. It's so easy. They have a great system for it. But FreshBooks is just a great accounting tool for you. Like for example, they have a new feature called the projects feature. And this you can share files and messages with your clients directly,
Starting point is 00:15:50 even with contractors and employees. So you can see how things happen when everything all lives in one place. You can keep track of the invoices, the time, all of the files and messages of people all within FreshBooks. So you have just this one hub to get your best work done. If you're listening to this and for some reason you've not yet tried out FreshBooks, trust me, now is the time to try. I cannot tell you how much time and frustration I save every single week when I'm working in FreshBooks. I really, really, really love this product. They're offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial to listeners of this show with no credit card required. All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and enter upgrade in the how you hear about us section so they will know that you came to them from this show.
Starting point is 00:16:36 Once again, that is freshbooks.com slash upgrade for an unrestricted 30-day free trial. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. So last week we spoke about the sequel to Alien, Aliens, and I had two little pieces of funny follow-up that I wanted to talk about that we got sent in. The first came from Vincent about the way that James Cameron actually pitched Aliens to the studio. Apparently apparently this comes from an article in cinema blend he james cameron took a pen and wrote on a whiteboard the word alien then he put an s next to it then he drew a vertical line down the s turning it into a dollar sign so it's alien dollar and that was how he sold aliens to the studio And it seems like that ended up working out pretty well for everyone involved.
Starting point is 00:17:30 Yep. And we got an email this very morning from Listener Douglas, Upgradian Douglas, who is from London. And said his first job out of college, he was at Pinewood Studios. uh his first job out of college he was at pinewood studios and wandering around the film lot at lunchtime he stumbled on the full-size aliens tank which is mostly made of plywood because they made a full-sized one for the people to be but then when you saw it driving around it was a remote controlled one so um and he said he saw also various marines from aliens walking around in their costume but full metal jacket was also being made at the same time so there were various eras of soldiers wandering around pine wood studios which is a pretty cool story from douglas i saw this uh article on the verge about an apple patent
Starting point is 00:18:17 now patents are patents of patents right they're going to be what they're going to be but i found it interesting to show some potential future product development from Apple in the keyboard department. So this patent was filed in 2016. So it is not a thing that has been done because of complaints about current keyboard reliability, right? Like this was probably just something Apple was maybe aware of and were thinking about. This is about creating a keyboard that could resist debris. And there are two possible methods that Apple have outlined in this pattern. One is pretty boring and one is more interesting. The boring one is just sealing off gaps. And my expectation is they would maybe try and do something more akin to a smart keyboard, right? That there are no gaps because there are no gaps
Starting point is 00:19:01 and the key switches are all kind of hidden. But the better one that I thought was kind of hilarious is by using some kind of membrane underneath the key switch that when you press would force air to blow out anything hidden in the keyboard every single time that a key is pressed. Every time you type, you compress the air that blows out the dust from your keyboard. Yeah, it's funny i don't see how sealing off a keyboard um so that nothing can get into it is patentable isn't that something that people have been doing for ages like well it's like there are these obviously with all
Starting point is 00:19:39 patents it is like if you do it in this one very specific way in this one way i think it's funny that there was also that patent that was reported recently which was um which made everybody freak out which was what if uh instead of a keyboard you just had a screen and you typed on that and that was the keyboard and there was no zero the zero travel keyboard um i what i like about this is that apple has somebody in their input devices group who is thinking about innovation in input devices including keyboards yep what i don't like about this is that i worry that apple is going to get really excited about a new keyboard innovation that just makes a lousy keyboard now some of you will say they've already done that. Maybe they have, maybe they haven't, but I do, I do worry a little bit about
Starting point is 00:20:31 that, but I like the fact that Apple doesn't look at something like the keyboard and say, oh, that's a solved problem. We just are just going to use the same keyboard forever and it could never get any better. The downside of that is if they do something they think is better and that uh that we don't think is better but what what this what this this this patent could have come from was a directive of we need to make these keyboards thinner and thinner and just find ways to do that and then they come up with stuff like this as opposed to like we need to make the thin keyboard better do you know what i mean it's like not necessarily trying to improve the keyboard but just to stop them from going wrong in the future and while this might not be about people's complaints about the macbook keyboard and the new keyboards in the macbook pros too it it's also possible that in their work on those keyboards
Starting point is 00:21:18 they noticed that there were issues with that the thinner you get it, that, um, the smaller amounts of debris can cause problems. And this may be the result of them saying, okay, how do we solve those problems so that they don't affect us and that, that they are related. It wouldn't be related to the complaints, but it might be related to the awareness that it could be a problem. I told Casey lists that,
Starting point is 00:21:42 um, he should take this, uh, article and hold it at a 70 degree angle and blow compressed air on it in that it could be a problem. I told Casey Liss that he should take this article and hold it at a 70 degree angle and blow compressed air on it in order to clean out the patent. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Interesting. Like I said, it's kind of a two-edged sword, but I like that Apple is trying this stuff. I'm not entirely convinced that the touchscreen keyboard idea is a worse idea than an increasingly thin physical keyboard i think at some point it's wild that to even assume that that is not an inevitable future like because everyone growing up now types more on glass yeah so and and there are there are you know haptics and it's if it's a
Starting point is 00:22:26 large space and you can and you can find a way to set your fingers and and i mean that that's the challenge is like and the touch bar fails at this right so this is this is one of the challenges is having a touch screen where you have to look down to orient because you can't do it on feel because your feel will activate it right so i think that and i don't know if they filed patents on this but that's the kind of stuff you need to think about in patent which is okay a touch screen that you can type on yeah we can do that but like how do you do how do you design a touch interface that allows you to touch it in order to orient. And that means like by feel and not visually, because that's what is the great thing about physical keys
Starting point is 00:23:10 is you can orient. So if they can figure out ways to give you feedback, not just while you're typing, although that's useful, but also while you're looking at a screen while your hands are laying down on a surface, if you can provide a way to get those things oriented properly and i don't know it may be this is just i'm throwing this out there i'm not patenting this idea but it may be that the
Starting point is 00:23:31 future is not um finding a way to create some sort of surface that you can activate to make it have a texture in certain points so you can put your hands on it it may be like the sensor in the camera above the screen sees the position of your hands and knows what the home position is so wherever you put your hands on it is right like right i mean they could do that that that actually is not an impossible thing somebody may write in and say well they've already shown that somewhere somebody has demoed that but like there are ways to do it and so i don't think it's out outlandish or that predictive texting just gets so good that nothing needs to know it just they just work it out right it just could just end up getting better right now sore spot right now but you're right it could be and the other thing is then you also have alternative input methods like keyboards have
Starting point is 00:24:24 alternative methods like uh cording keyboards or Dvorak keyboards or, you know, ones with different shapes. But once it's a plane of glass, you can do things like swipe keyboards is an example. But there are all sorts of things you can do with that space. Plus, you can use it as an interface space. You could use it as a drawing space. But as a person who types words, for me, that would be the biggest issue is I can type pretty fast on an iPad Pro 12.9 keyboard. But there's this issue of like having to look
Starting point is 00:24:53 down at it because I don't know where my fingers are exactly on the keyboard. And most of my typing errors on an iPhone or an iPad come because I just didn't press the right spot. I was slightly off. And part of that is it's small enough on the iPhone that a small error will get you the wrong key. But part of it is that I don't know where my fingers are on the screen because I can't orient by touch. Because if I touch, I'm setting off an interaction. That's another thing where you think about 3D touch. That's another possibility with something like this is you could have a surface that is not instantly activated by touch in all modes and then like for typing you might actually need to apply slightly more pressure to an area and that way you could actually do some kind of touch
Starting point is 00:25:37 orientation get a little haptic or something and then start typing and and with a little extra force i mean there are lots of things it's yes I guess what I'm saying is in an alternate life, I was apparently a, uh, a keyboard researcher somewhere. Cause I think it's fascinating. I I've talked to people who work in the input device, uh, group at Apple and like, they're really into it. And I, and bless them because I think, uh, I want them to investigate other ways of input because this is not the be-all end-all. A keyboard, which was invented not too long ago, is not the be-all end-all of input. I mean, there is an argument to be made
Starting point is 00:26:13 that having a physical keyboard in a laptop is as wild as having a physical keyboard in an iPhone, right? As you go into the future. The fact that you have this whole space where it's just one fixed input method is potentially not the best thing going into the future yes you may have a
Starting point is 00:26:30 worse typing experience by traditional standards, by traditional means, but what if it enables new ways of manipulating software and computing that we don't have right now in the way that we didn't before the iPhone the iPhone not having a fixed keyboard
Starting point is 00:26:47 has enabled so much innovation that could potentially happen in a laptop form factor if there was two screens instead of one. Yep. Should we do some upstream news? Sure, let's do it. Barack Obama is reportedly in talks to create content for Netflix.
Starting point is 00:27:03 According to a report from the New York Times, Netflix is currently negotiating with the Obama family to produce a series of exclusive shows for their platform. It is said that they are not planning to use this as a political platform per se against the current administration, but to highlight inspirational stories that could have an angle on them,
Starting point is 00:27:22 which carry some of what Barack Obama was attempting to do in office. So giving the Obama family a platform to talk about their views and opinions on immigration, nutrition, foreign policy, climate change, and healthcare are some that the New York Times report outlined. Apparently, both Amazon and Apple have also, as you can imagine, voiced similar interest in talking with the Obama family about this project. Yeah, second acts for former presidents is always a, you know, it's a challenge. Like, what do you do? They do speaking things, they do books, loads of books, they do books and things like that. I think this is interesting in the New York Times story story put it up against sort of like the idea of the speaking tour, that what if in the 21st century, one of the ways that presidents have their post-presidency career is instead of having the big speaking tours where they get paid a lot of money, they have a media platform. And Obama seems like the kind of person who would be good at that. And I don't
Starting point is 00:28:26 think we're going to get like the Obama show. I don't think that's going to happen. But I think the idea that this might be where he makes his money and also feels like he's influencing conversation. I don't think that what this is going to end up being is something like the Obama News Network, right? Where it's like instead of Fox News, there's Obama News. Like a series of documentaries about life in America or something. Yeah, you look at what I'm going to – it's a funny parallel. But if you look at what David Letterman has done – and actually the David Letterman-Barack Obama interview is funny because Obama himself draws some parallels between them, which is, hey, we both had jobs for a long time and we don't have those jobs anymore.
Starting point is 00:29:10 Now what do we do? I guarantee you that that special is what led to this conversation. It would not surprise me if they were looking at what Letterman was doing because he signed his deal for his show for a lot of money. I love that Letterman show, by the way. It's so good. I wish there were more and more and more i love it i love it i that's good especially since david letterman is not a uh a name in the rest of the world like he is in america i think it's great the first episode okay we're going to take a little sidebar here the first episode i was really disappointed we talked about i was really disappointed in some of the production values
Starting point is 00:29:43 of it i thought the sound wasn't very good. I thought the way it was shot and the and it's got the interstitial things where he's out in the world visiting like george clooney's family in his hometown in kentucky or uh he goes to oxford with malala i haven't seen the malala episode yet oh yeah because the show seems to be on such a really weird schedule i just like catch it i think it's like the first of the month yeah basically it's like a first friday of the month is when they're dropping them i feel like i don't have a concept of it you know yeah i only noticed the new episode was out i mean this is the challenge with netflix is they're like how do we do something that doesn't drop in a binge but drops weekly weekly
Starting point is 00:30:37 or monthly they're doing this with the the joel mckale show is a weekly that is um but they want to get into this right they want to have the john oliver style weekly comedy commentary thing they've signed a bunch of deals for that so netflix is going to have to figure out how they promote things that don't drop in a binge and how do they do that but i to back up i think obama looked at uh the letterman thing and also letterman like the first thing he did when he retired is he did a National Geographic documentary about going to India and talking about climate change and talking about solar power and all sorts of things in India. But it was also sort of his, he went to India and it's kind of interesting to see him interacting with people in India and also
Starting point is 00:31:21 learning about what's going on in India. And he talked to the prime minister and all of that. And, and I looked at that and thought, you know, I think, I think this is the kind of thing that Obama might look at and say, that's actually not a bad analog for what I might want to do and why not do that? So I think it's a fascinating thing.
Starting point is 00:31:39 And he is young enough and entertaining enough that it could work. that's, that's, that's exactly it is that he's he's a um he's a relatively young person especially for an ex-president and he's good at that stuff he's good at media even even the people who don't like him would have to admit like he's a he's great at speaking he's he's an interesting personality he's got that going for him so and michelle does too right she's really great at you know
Starting point is 00:32:06 communicating and expressing herself and she's a very interesting person and i think just judging them as media personalities i think it's an interesting it's very interesting so um the fact that amazon and apple and netflix are talking to them like 21st century man all the rules are different so it's fascinating kenneth lonigan signs a first look deal with amazon lonigan is the writer and director of the oscar award-winning manchester by the sea which was an amazon films production that won an oscar then they put it in theaters and then they showed it on amazon but amazon was the releasing studio for that film uh lonigan also wrote analyze this and co-wrote the screenplay of gangs of new york uh what is a first look deal sounds like um they pay him to let amazon
Starting point is 00:32:54 get the first chance to buy anything he does right they get right at first refusal then on any project that lonigan's doing okay right so right so that's We want to be in the Kenneth Lonergan business, but we're not going to agree to buy everything you do. That's probably what the conversation was. But this is something we're seeing a lot where you've got Netflix and other companies making deals with creative people. It's not just buying shows, but Netflix made their deals with Ryan Murphy and Shonda shonda rhimes and uh you know amazon making a deal with a with a director writer uh this is all like let me get good creative people on our team and and studios do this studios have deals with people and now we're seeing streaming services make those deals too and that's part of this uh arms race almost creative arms race that's happening and john
Starting point is 00:33:47 favreau is going to executive produce and write a live action star wars series for disney's upcoming streaming platform does this get you excited um no too much star wars i'm starting to think now well it was always there was always going to be a live action star wars series and and and that that was going to happen it was inevitable it's funny it's never happened before uh it's going to be on disney's new streaming service i was talking to somebody about disney streaming services and and they're like how many are they going to have and the answer is so far as we know three they're going to have disney streaming service which is going to have marvel and star wars content on it and disney movies and stuff like that they're going to have Disney streaming service, which is going to have Marvel and Star Wars content on it and Disney movies and stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:34:25 They're going to have an ESPN service and they're going to own most of Hulu, which is probably where all of the adult content, the FX shows and things will live, is my guess. But that's this. Jon Favreau, it's interesting. Definitely heard from a lot of people who are disappointed because it is a, to put it bluntly, it's another white guy being handed the keys to Star Wars. And at a time when I think a lot of people were hoping that there would be more diversity in the people who are making Star Wars. Yeah, because it seems like every multi-year future project that Star Wars related has got a man behind it right now a middle-aged white guy yeah uh well ryan johnson's pretty young but so here's the thing um what's interesting about this to me is that john favreau is you know he's got like two writing credits substantial writing
Starting point is 00:35:19 credits to his name so they say he's executive producing and writing. My guess is that this is going to be like Joss Whedon with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where Jon Favreau is going to come in and maybe write or co-write and direct the pilot. But I'm skeptical that he will even be the showrunner. My guess is that he's going to be more like J.J. Abrams with Lost is a good example. There are other examples of this where it's like he's going to be overseeing it to a certain degree. But my guess is that he's going to hire a showrunner or showrunners to do the show and do the heavy lifting day to day beyond setting the initial concept. He may be involved in the initial casting and concept and character development and writing the pilot episode and all of that and building the writer's room and hiring all the writers. But I have a hard time imagining Jon Favreau just saying, oh yeah, this is going
Starting point is 00:36:16 to be my job day-to-day, super intense as a showrunner. That's a huge job. And he's like a film director slash actor with some writing background. I don't, that doesn't seem like a showrunner job. I could be wrong. Cause that's not all the report says is he's going to write and executive produce this series, but I don't believe that he's going to be the showrunner per se. I think that there'll be somebody else who is in there day to day.
Starting point is 00:36:54 And, uh uh and yeah so i hope i hope that perhaps that is an opportunity for him to to hire uh some uh more diverse faces and voices to create a uh uh some different takes on on star wars because i think we saw with the success of black Panther, especially that, um, different perspectives bring different creative work. And it's exciting when there's something that feels different and that is coming from a different perspective. And I think that that would be good for Star Wars, but he's a, he seems like a very, you know, solid guy creatively. And he's also a company man, which we have to say he directed Jungle Book. He is directing the Lion King live action movie. Another reason why I don't believe solid guy creatively and he's also a company man which we have to say he directed jungle book he is directing the lion king live action movie another reason why i don't believe that he's going to just become suddenly become a tv showrunner even for a star wars show yeah when
Starting point is 00:37:34 like he's he's in a position right now where they are handing him every single big movie they've ever had right or like do you want to just do them you can just do them if you want to yeah all of all of these new like live action versions of uh animated disney classics that he's done and then before that what did he do well he directed iron man one and two and basically has he he could take a lot of credit not all the credit kevin kevin feige you know is the guy who's mastermind the whole thing but like he's an integral part of the launching of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He made superhero movies legit movies. A many billions dollar business for, as it turns out now, Disney, right? So he is a company man in those ways. So to have him be involved in this other leg of Disney's empire is not surprising, but I'm going to apply a little skepticism. I think there's still opportunity here for some other interesting creative announcements,
Starting point is 00:38:32 and I'm hopeful of that for the live action series, because running a TV series is a really tough job. If he ends up being the showrunner and is going to put the whole thing together, then bless him. But I have a hard time seeing that that is, that's a weird career choice for him, given his career arc right now. Today's show is also brought to you in part by our friends over at Squarespace. Use the offer code upgrade at checkout,
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Starting point is 00:40:03 They start at just $12 a month. And if you use the code UPGRADE, you will get 10% off your first purchase and also show your support for this show and RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So there was every now and then on Twitter, there are like these kind of quote tweet memes that go around, kind of just for an evening and they disappear. And one of the ones that happened yesterday was people naming their top five Apple
Starting point is 00:40:32 products of the last five years. And I thought, what a great topic for a podcast. So here we are. This is not draft rules. We're not doing a draft. We're going to save the draft because we're probably not that far away from a draft, really. It gonna be you know a few months but uh yep gotta save them drafts for the heavy hitting um but i saw this flying around and i thought we should do this so we'll go from five to one our personal favorite apple products of the last five years jason do you want to go first with pick number five yeah i and i misunderstood when when this was this was in there uh the first time and i didn't realize you were counting down and so i had these in a different order and then i flipped them and that was kind of fascinating because i wasn't uh even though i saw your picks in our shared
Starting point is 00:41:18 document i um was trying to ignore them and then it turns out that was great because i had also misread them misread the rankings so then i had to flip everything around so this was trying to ignore them. And then it turns out that was great because I had also misread them, misread the rankings. So then I had to flip everything around. So this was going to be my capper weird bottom pick. And instead, it's going to go first. But here it is. I'm going to say, get ready for it, people, the MacBook. Yeah, I know.
Starting point is 00:41:38 People are like, oh, it's got a weird keyboard. It's got only one port. It's two pounds. My daughter, I bought um when her chromebook was finally dying i bought her a macbook uh refurb um 2017 i think macbook and it's great it's great it's i i admit at 12.99 like it would be nice if it were cheaper which is why i bought a refurb because i wanted to save a little bit of money. But as somebody who always loved the MacBook Air and I like thin and light laptops, I love the MacBook.
Starting point is 00:42:11 Now, I'll grant you, I wish it had two ports. I think it's silly that you can't charge and plug in USB on it. But she doesn't care. And she loves it. And I can see why. I like the screen. The keyboard isn't great, although the new keyboard is better
Starting point is 00:42:29 than the original keyboard. And it's two pounds. And yeah, it's not super duper speedy in terms of the processor, but for most uses, it doesn't matter. And if I were buying a new Mac laptop today, I would be really torn between the MacBook Escape and the MacBook,
Starting point is 00:42:48 but I would be leaning toward the MacBook, and I like that this is Apple saying we can push what we did with the MacBook Air even further and also have the Retina display, so I want to give Apple credit for that. I think it's a really fun product. I'm going to go with the watch series three um as my number five pick i wouldn't say that like i am smitten with the apple watch i i really like it as a product
Starting point is 00:43:15 it has a long way to go like for a product that i like as much as this i can't think of anything that i can still say it's not good enough right that you know if i think about like the home pod i know the home pod isn't good enough but i don't have affection for the home pod in the same way that i do my apple watch it's like it is a product that i really really appreciate and it has made a big difference to some of the way that i interact and work and use my technology but it has a long way to go still. But I believe in the product's ability going into the future because what they've done so far, I've enjoyed a lot.
Starting point is 00:43:54 And I've gotten a lot of use out of it. The software has gotten a lot better. And the inclusion of LTE holds a lot of promise for what I really honestly want to be as a mini computer on my wrist is ultimately what i want and the i think the lte watch has shown me that in a way that no other watch did before like an apple watch's ability to be an independent computer is a very interesting and powerful thing but the current way that the software and the product is built does not easily enable or enforce that with developers, even with Apple themselves in some places.
Starting point is 00:44:30 So I see the Series 3 as like the first step towards what I think this product could eventually become, which I think could be really interesting. I do not ever believe that they will replace what we consider to be our main devices. Smartphones and smartphone replacements will be a whole different thing. And I don't believe that a wrist computer will do that, but it can be a very interesting and compelling secondary device. And I really, really like my Apple Watch
Starting point is 00:44:58 for what it provides me on a daily basis, which is like notifications, basic tasks, timers, all that kind of stuff. Having a little computer on your body can be really useful. And it's not there yet, but with Siri and let's say AirPods, a cellular Apple Watch can be not maybe your primary device, but can do a whole lot potentially more than you might think in terms of just kind of wandering around and doing stuff um i agree this is not i didn't put it on my list because um this
Starting point is 00:45:33 is not a list of my like the most the apple products that have made the most impact on my life in the last five years that would be a different list um and we gave we talked about this in terms of the life-changing product and the upgrades last year. Yeah, and I think my take on that is going to become clear as we go on. I'm kind of in the same boat that this is the products
Starting point is 00:45:55 that I think are the best, not necessarily what's made the biggest impact on me because I think that they would be different. And we can talk about that as we go through, actually. So do you want to go with your number four? Yeah, it is AirPods, which I mentioned before.
Starting point is 00:46:11 I think this product was maybe the origin of this entire thing, which is how great the AirPods are. And some people are like, oh, well, the AirPods are great. But think of all these other amazing products that Apple has done. But yeah, AirPods is a quintessential Apple product, right? It is this amazing thing that you kind of can't believe exists, and it can pack so much tech into such a small space. And I think not only do I love them, and I did not expect to love them, but I think it's in many ways the perfect example of what kind of products apple is best at making so my uh number four is the ipad pro 12.9 inch and for me i'm kind of like
Starting point is 00:46:56 both of them they're they're in the same here i'm not really pulling out a specific model because they both kind of serve the same purpose because Because honestly, like the iPad Pro 12.9 inch is probably the Apple product that's made the biggest significant change in my life in the last five years. Yeah, me too. Because it was the product that upended how I think and use computers. Like that is wild that it did that. I was kind of, you you know throughout my history of the ipad i would go in and out um sometimes i didn't use them for long periods of time sometimes i had like bursts of time where i used them but from the day the 12.9 inch ipad pro came out
Starting point is 00:47:37 to today um the ipad has been my most consistent computer device and I think that the 12.9 inch iPad allowed Apple to think about the iPad differently. It allowed customers to think about the iPad differently. As a device, whatever it was, going to a basically a 13 inch screen allowed people to seriously think about an iPad as a device to do work on.
Starting point is 00:48:01 And I think that the significance of this product will continue into the future as like this was a turning point for computing like that that one specific ipad the ipad pro the big ipad pro will be i believe considered a a big turning point yeah it's not the what's funny about it is it's not the product for everyone right it is not the mainstream product but it's the one that has the most impact on me personally and so even though i just said this isn't a personal list like i think it's a big the um i'm going to mention it later but the thing that ticked it over for me is that
Starting point is 00:48:37 uh i even though it's not for everyone and the 10.5 is more for everyone than the 12.9 what what makes me put it on the list is that it's a large ios device and i think there are going to be more i think that pushing ios forward into new places including things like laptops or desktops like bigger screens is is the future of ios i think that Apple will go there eventually. And so that's one of the making an iOS, the first iOS device to be kind of in the space where a computer belongs is why I put it on my list too. So we'll get there.
Starting point is 00:49:16 What's your number three? I decided that I was gonna put the iMac Pro on my list. The one I'm sitting in front of right now, I, for many reasons, um, it's a really good computer. Like I,
Starting point is 00:49:32 Stephen Hackett and I talk about this now and I hear Marco talk about it every now and then. And like, I see other people talk about their, their iMac pros. It's like, it's been a little while now. It's really good.
Starting point is 00:49:42 It's fast. It, first off, I love the 5k iMac and I would have said the 5k iMac were it not for the MacBook Pro or the iMac Pro. Because I love that. I love the screen. And it's a great machine to work on. And then the iMac Pro does all of that and has this incredible power that even the powerful 5K iMac didn't have.
Starting point is 00:50:03 And I know it's pricey, but it's a heck of a computer. And it also represents Apple paying attention to pro level needs and pro level hardware, which hopefully is a beginning of this kind of Renaissance that will continue with the Mac pro. And I wanted to make sure that I had some Macs on my list. So that's another reason that I put it here, but I love it. I keep loving it more the more I use it. It's funny. You have that buyer's remorse moment
Starting point is 00:50:33 where you spend $5,000 in computer and think, should I have done that? And I don't have that anymore at all. Like that evaporated quickly and has not returned because it's pretty great. I had to really spend some time thinking about my number five wherever it was going to be the apple watch or the 5k iMac like yeah which would have been a great pick and the 5k iMac is awesome like i love my iMac it is but a product that i choose to put on every day and that many people choose to put on
Starting point is 00:51:03 their bodies every day i don't know it kind of felt like a little it just like maybe a bit more different to me and plus you know if we think about the last five years the Apple Watch was a brand new product category whilst the 5k iMac was a a very good advancement of an existing thing so that was why I kind of considered it maybe to be a little bit more important in the grand scheme but i will you know whilst i've never used an imac pro and probably i don't expect will um i can definitely say that like the imac line that ended up leading to the imac pro is a just a fantastic computer more computer than i need which is it's already saying something considering there's something even more powerful out there um i'm gonna go with airpods for my number three there you go purely because they are you know when people say like you said it right
Starting point is 00:51:51 they are like this this quintessential apple product and for me it is the of course factor when you use them it's like of course of course this is what yeah headphones should be right like this is of course like they are independent little things that you keep in a tiny case so they stay away from lint or whatever in your pocket and they don't get tangled up you don't have to spend five minutes untangling the cord before you start listening to your music and all you do is just pop them in your ears and most of the time depending on how you use them and how many devices, it's just ready to go immediately. Or like, okay, you're playing something on your iPhone for the speaker whilst you're getting ready to leave the house.
Starting point is 00:52:30 You put your AirPods in and then the audio transfers over onto your AirPods and you just put your phone in your pocket. There are so many, of course, moments with the AirPods. Like, for example, that the battery basically never dies because you charge them pretty infrequently. I mean, I've never had a battery die on mine because it just never gets to that point. At some point between those two charges, I've just decided to plug it in again for no particular reason, really, because the battery lasts a really long time on these things. It is a great product, and and i think will only continue to get better especially when the case gets g charging because you then like all you do is just put it down you never even have to think about plugging a lightning cable in anymore right like they become
Starting point is 00:53:14 even more of course as time goes on and as a 1.0 product there is very little wrong with them like really there's kind of nothing wrong at all i mean i i have one thing that i want which is like more fine gesture control but that's it right like they are an incredibly good 1.0 in a in a quintessentially apple style the airpods are a fantastic product and if you're skeptical of them, I recommend if you have the means to just give them a try because I think they make fans of users very quickly. Yeah, and I was not expecting to like them
Starting point is 00:53:56 as much as I do because I'm finicky about headphones and they're great. They're great. What is your number two? My number two is the iPad Pro 12.9, which we already talked about. So we don't need to talk about it again,
Starting point is 00:54:08 but it has dramatically changed how I work. And I like how it points the future for what's possible with iOS. Do you have an iPad Pro you'd like to talk about now, Mike? Yeah, the 10.5 inch. It is not the iPad Pro that I use every day. It is the iPad Pro I use when I travel.
Starting point is 00:54:22 But the 10.5 inch iPad Pro is the closest thing to a perfect I travel. But the 10.5 inch iPad Pro is the closest thing to a perfect iPad that Apple have ever made. Because the 12.9 is great for people that are sitting and using their devices all day every day. But the 10.5 gets close enough in so many areas. You know, like it is a just good big enough screen. And screen is fantastic and it's thin and light and very portable and very powerful like it is so much better than the 9.7 inch ipads and not that much worse than the 12.9 i i really think of it as like this is the the best ipad um and i think that it makes fans of lots of people and the 10.5 the 10.5 still sits in the place of like entertainment and people that want to do a
Starting point is 00:55:14 little bit of work and stuff on their ipads because the 12.9 is is difficult to deal with at times because it is a it's a big it's big thing and it's heavy um for a mobile computing device so you know the 10.5 is basically nothing when you pick it up you can you know my wife has the 10.5 and every now and then i pick it up it's you know i gotta pick it up to move it somewhere or whatever and it's so light it and it's gotten to the point now where i pick it up and i think maybe next time i should really consider the 10.5 because it's got all the power of the 12.9 and just the smaller screen and maybe it would be enough for me do I really use the screen um in split screen with a bunch of apps moving around enough to make it worth the weight of the 12.9 and the answer is
Starting point is 00:56:00 probably yes but I every time I pick it up, I think about it. It is an absolutely wonderful machine. And I think we go into our number one, and it's pretty obvious where we're going to go because neither of us have spoken about an iPhone yet, right? So I feel like the iPhone is the product, and what is the best iPhone of the last five years? The most recent one, right? It's probably the way that it tends to go with this stuff.
Starting point is 00:56:27 And we're both going with the iPhone X for what we consider to be the best product that Apple's made in the last five years. And I'm intrigued, Jason, to understand why you feel that way. Well, I mean, a lot of what I said for the AirPods actually goes for the iPhone X. It's got a bunch of new tech in it.
Starting point is 00:56:44 The new tech in it, we all lifted our eyebrows and said is it really going to work and it really works like it really works it does face id works uh the oled screen is beautiful um the as a non-plus user the dual cameras on the back and the quality of that camera is spectacular the front facing camera is good um i i i love it i think it's i think it's great it is my favorite iphone um it's so good and the fact that we all kind of like looked at the possibilities and the specs are like wow this is a really weird decision on their part to do this and bifurcate the line and all of the things that they did and they nailed it and i like to see that kind of execution from apple that says something when they took their most important
Starting point is 00:57:31 product and really challenged themselves in terms of the technology and they stuck the landing i consider technology impressive when multiple months after using it every single day there are still times where i pick it up and I'm like, wow, look at you. And I still get that with the iPhone X. I'm just like, look at this thing. It is beautiful and it does wonderful things and smart things and it has technology that I couldn't have expected.
Starting point is 00:57:59 It is just a superb Apple-y design thing. They really have kind of made the best possible iPhone in a way that I'm so intrigued to see what comes next from it because this was such a big jump based upon what iPhones have been previously. And there's a lot of technology in here, which is Apple's first attempt at doing it. And I'm'm really really intrigued
Starting point is 00:58:25 to see what this year's iphone lineup looks like i've been thinking a lot about what a bigger iphone 10 could be and i'm very very intrigued and excited about the the prospect of a even bigger version of this which i know is is a is a me thing and it's not a you thing, and I get that. But the idea of what is version 2 of this even? I'm really, really intrigued to see what the iPhone 11 or whatever it's going to be ends up looking like. So this list is really heavy on iOS devices from both of us, or things in the iOS ecosystem.
Starting point is 00:59:03 I don't know. I mean, I've got two Macs, a desktop and a laptop. I've got an iPhone and an iPad. And then I've got an accessory. I feel pretty good about the spread of mine. Fair enough. And you, I'm not surprised for you that it tilts toward iOS. That makes sense.
Starting point is 00:59:17 And also, you know, my thinking is that's where the majority of Apple's product focus has been, right? Like that's kind of where that goes to. So if that's where they're putting most of their efforts, it's probably where a lot of the most exciting stuff is going to be. So yeah, that was a fun exercise. I'm keen to know from our upgradians
Starting point is 00:59:34 what they think of our lists and what their lists are as well. So you can send them to us over Twitter. I'd be interested to see what people think. Today's show is brought to you by Eero. Never think about Wi-Fi again Twitter and be interested to see what people think. Today's show is brought to you by Eero. Never think about Wi-Fi again because Eero have created the dream Wi-Fi setup. It is a fast, reliable connection throughout your home, even out to the backyard. And now it's time to get on board with Eero because they have some great products available. Their second gen system
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Starting point is 01:00:26 They have a thread radio, which will allow you to connect to low power devices, some smart home stuff such as locks, doorbells, and more just from the Eero device. And the Eero beacon is what allows you to stretch your Wi-Fi connection throughout the home. So you have the one Eero main device, and then you take the beacons. And the beacons can be just plugged straight into the wall and they will expand the coverage throughout your home. You can have as many Eero beacons as you want so long as you have the one main device and they even include a built-in LED nightlight with ambient light sensor as well. The Eero app lets you manage your network from the palm of your hand and you can also easily create and share a guest network too.
Starting point is 01:01:06 I'm wondering, Jason, do you use the Eero app? I know that you have Eero devices at home, and I wonder kind of what information you get from it. I mostly just use it to do administrative stuff like do the software updates or do a restart on the network. I had to do that because I had weird things happening with my cable modem. on the network. I had to do that because I had weird things happening with my cable modem. So I unplugged my router and I restarted all the Eero's and all of that.
Starting point is 01:01:30 You can do that from inside the app. I like the idea of not having to get up and go and flick some switches to restart the Eero. I don't have any Eero here because I'm in the UK and they're in the US and Canada right now. And if I have a problem, I have to leave the office and go and track the thing down and turn it off and wait for the lights to come on.
Starting point is 01:01:49 That's not good. I want to do it from an app instead. The Eero system starts at $399 for a second-gen Eero and two beacons, which should be everything that you need to get started. But the Eero system is flexible and you can expand and contract as you need to. Listeners of this show can get free overnight shipping to the US or Canada when you go to Eero.com, that is E-E-R-O.com, and use the promo code UPGRADE. That is Eero.com with the promo code UPGRADE for free overnight shipping.
Starting point is 01:02:16 Our thanks to Eero for their support of this show. So it's already started in the chat room and I've just realized how many questions we're going to get about like why not this one. So I want to just address the first one. Pura Vida in the chat room. No Apple Pencil on the list. I really love the Apple Pencil. I don't think that it is as important as anything else on that list in the grand scheme of things.
Starting point is 01:02:41 The iPads are more important and the Pen pencil can kind of go along with them. When I think about the iPad Pro, I personally think about with the smart keyboard and the Apple Pencil, but I don't want to dictate that on top of people. But for me, the iPad Pro is all three of those things together as like a system. So that's kind of my thought on that,
Starting point is 01:03:02 but I didn't want to prescribe that to everybody. Should we do some mask upgrade,ason let's do it our first question comes from francois francois says i'm stumped how can i save files locally to the files app without having a third party document provider installed surely this should be possible. I think you can, from the share sheet, you can save to your iPad and you can also save to iCloud. And I know that iCloud, this frustrates me because you should have more access to on my iPad,
Starting point is 01:03:38 I think is what they call it, or on my iPhone in files because the difference there is what you're saying is save this in a place that I can get to it but don't sync it over the internet like I don't need this in iCloud I just need it saved on my device for later and some some apps are better than others at doing that but you can also save to iCloud and iCloud drive is spent essentially is also your local file system yeah you can save locally to the iPad if the
Starting point is 01:04:07 application that you're using has a container folder that it sets up, but not all apps do this. Some apps will do this in iCloud Drive, or some apps just won't do this at all. But, you know, obviously, I don't know what your connection situation is like, and maybe you're tethering or whatever, so don't want things syn syncing but if you do have no problem about that my advice is to basically just think of iCloud as the local file system and just save everything there that's what I do if I have something I don't need to go into Dropbox like I'm just maybe taking something and doing something to it and send it somewhere else I just save it into iCloud Drive as basically the local file system. But yeah, it would be great if you could save things directly to the iPad itself without needing to have these container folders. Like let me set up my own file structure in there,
Starting point is 01:04:54 which you cannot do right now. James wants to know, why wouldn't or hasn't Apple bought a cellular network like Verizon or AT&T? Surely there'd be many benefits for iPhone buyers and it seems characteristic of Tim Cook's Apple. Jason, what are the problems with Apple maybe trying to buy a cellular network that may have stopped them from doing that so far? I mean, number one is that it closes them off from presumably from all the other cellular networks
Starting point is 01:05:22 who they're now competing with. Yep. And also it would be a US only play. presumably from all the other cellular networks who they're now competing with yep and the also it would be in it would be a u.s only play are they going to do this in other countries too um can they can they run a cellular network better than the existing carriers maybe is that in their core competent competency probably not um it i think apple likes having i i get what what this is about it's like it's what you can control but i think apple in this case likes the fact that it's got multiple players i think if there was one dominant cellular carrier and they were putting the squeeze on apple and apple felt
Starting point is 01:06:00 like that carrier was or could potentially threaten Apple's business. I think they might behave differently, but as it is, there's competition to a certain degree in the US in terms of the providers. And that works for Apple. That works in Apple's favor because they all want Apple stuff and they're all going to play ball with Apple because nobody wants to be the carrier that doesn't have the iphone it's a very popular and apple's customers are people with money and are willing to pay for data and use a lot of data and all of these are reasons so i think they don't need to buy anything i don't think apple has anything but great
Starting point is 01:06:40 relationships with these phone networks i think yes i think it's a mutually beneficial partnership right like apple customers are great customers for these companies and that means that apple gets to do what it wants to do and you know we're never going back to the days where they've got to put junk on phones and put silk screens of like the carrier label on the back of the phone or the front of the phone or the front of the phone like the apple's never going to have to do any of that stuff um they broke that like apple everybody wants apple and apple benefits from that and i think it's going to be fine so i i don't see any benefit in getting in the mire there plus even if they did that and even if it got approved by regulators that would be for the u.s then what what do they do for the rest of the world?
Starting point is 01:07:25 So I just don't think it's necessary, and it's way too complicated. And you jumped over a point there that I think is super important. I don't think any regulatory body in the world would permit this sale. Probably not. No one. No one is going to let Apple restrict the market like that. Lobbying groups for the other cell carriers would just go wild. They're going to overdrive. Theo has a question, which is good, related to our iPad topic from earlier on when
Starting point is 01:07:51 we were talking about the differences between 10.5 and 12.9. How do you feel about multitasking in split view compared to on the 10.5-inch iPad Pro versus the 12.9? Doesn't the 12.9-inch have two full iPad apps and the 10.5 have two iPhone apps? Okay, so there's a little bit of yes and no in this. The 10.5-inch has two apps side-by-side, which sometimes look like iPhone apps. It depends on how the app has been developed, depending on kind of what view sizes that it has.
Starting point is 01:08:22 Like, what are they called? The screen size things, like compact mode and stuff like that. I don't remember the actual term from the top of my head, but like the size classes, that's the one. So there are a bunch of different size classes and sometimes you get something
Starting point is 01:08:36 that's smaller than others. But honestly, in using both of them, after a little while, it actually kind of doesn't really matter that much because two iphone apps side by side in a lot of cases is perfectly fine even if that's what it is uh it works really well i've worked for very long stretches like an entire month where i moved from the 12.9 to the 10.5 when i was in in america last year you get used to it really quickly because it still works very very
Starting point is 01:09:02 well and the most common use use case i have on the 12.9 is to have a second app open i mean the most common use is that i don't use multitasking like that's the most commonly i'm still not using it all the time when i do use it my most common use case is to have an app in the narrow view on the side right not to split side by side it's like the third and two thirds or something or yeah yeah it's like a little little sidekick buddy app that is living over there and so you know it's an iphone app at that point and the other one still has lots of space which is really nice and on the modern you know ipad pros the latest generation you can also have a slide over app that runs and it's great right like you slide over some too but mostly
Starting point is 01:09:45 it's that two-thirds one-third or whatever and uh and so yeah one of them's already in kind of like mini view mode and that's okay it's it's fine like i i think you give something up um for sure but i think it's fair to say that maybe it's it shouldn't be overstated you do give something up but it's not like the multitasking goes from great to garbage when you go from 12 9 to 10 5 because that's not true you still get the ability to have three apps on screen it's like you know that would be one thing i call they take away one but no it isn't that you there are trade-offs but there are trade-offs on both sides like you still get very competent multitasking in a much smaller device. So there are benefits. Bozy asks,
Starting point is 01:10:27 does an SSD have any significant benefits to a non-power user over a Fusion Drive? I already plan to follow Jason's previous advice about maximizing the RAM in my future Retina 5K iMac, but I haven't yet decided on the internal drive. You know, Fusion Drive, first off, the big question is Fusion Drive or not? And the answer is yes. Yes, get the Fusion Drive because SSDs are so much faster than spinning disks. And the Fusion Drive, that's the whole premise of it is how do we make
Starting point is 01:10:58 something that's not as expensive as a pure SSD, but still lets the files you use most of the time move quickly because they're kind of cached on the SSD rather than living on the spinning disk. So that's the first thing. For a regular user, Fusion Drive might be enough. Although I have not used a Fusion Drive system enough to have explored like when it breaks down, when you suddenly are like, oh boy, this is slow because it's a big file or whatever. And it's not on the SSD portion. It's on the spinning disk portion. It definitely, you know, ideally you would always feel like you're using an SSD. And then in the background, stuff's getting moved back and forth across the devices.
Starting point is 01:11:48 The real significant benefit is that SSDs aren't going to die like Fusion Drives, which is not to say that SSDs don't have a lifespan, but spinning disks crash, spinning disks break. They are a fundamentally unreliable technology. And you might skate away for one year or two years or four years or five years, but it will die. Guaranteed. And SSDs don't really. Certainly not in the way that spinning disks do. And for me, I'm going to prioritize SSD because it's 100% speed, not, you know, speed except when the Fusion Drive software system lets you down and the reliability issue is there.
Starting point is 01:12:35 But, you know, Fusion Drive, that's the nice thing about Fusion Drive existing is Apple is trying to make the speed of SSD more affordable for people who don't want to spend on the pure SSD. the speed of SSD more affordable for people who don't want to spend on the pure SSD. And Michael asked, if you've never owned a smartwatch, would you buy an Apple Watch Series 3 today or wait until the next release? And I'm assuming Michael was asking for us to make a recommendation for them about that. So what do you think, Jason? jason um i i don't have a good answer here i mean i i guess if if the question is should i wait because the next watch is going to be totally different i have a hard time believing that if apple does a major revision to the software that it's not going to run on the series three right like that's not going to happen it's possible that apple will redesign the hardware and that the bands might not be compatible.
Starting point is 01:13:26 That might happen at some point. And that would be sad if they come up with a totally new looking Apple Watch in the fall and you're on the older model. But I think the older models are good. They're solid. And that the most of the progression that needs to happen on that platform
Starting point is 01:13:39 is the OS and enabling third-party apps too. It's not the hardware. We've said it before. The hardware is great. The software needs work. So I don't think waiting is going to buy you much. I mean, it'll buy you something because there's always a new model with new stuff in it.
Starting point is 01:13:57 But the place where you're going to see the biggest improvement is on the software side, I think. So it comes down to a personal decision, which is, can you wait? Can you bear to wait? Because there will almost certainly be a new Apple Watch this fall. And if you can wait, you've waited this long.
Starting point is 01:14:13 Can you wait further? If you can, you can get the latest and greatest for probably the same price that you'd pay for the Apple Watch Series 3 right now. Or if you really, really want it and you've waited long enough, then go ahead and buy it because I think that it's going to serve you well and you will, you know, you will have been, you will get that thing that you wanted. So I could go either way. It really,
Starting point is 01:14:37 not to be wishy-washy about it, but I do think it comes down to that, that it really is like, can you wait or not? Because I don't think you will be, I'm not waving you off from buying an Apple Watch today. Like, I think it would be fine if you bought one today. But if you can wait, because you've waited this long, then, you know, there will be another Apple Watch. All right, if you want to send in a question for us to answer at the end of the show, you can send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade
Starting point is 01:15:04 and they get collected into a document so you can have your questions answered by me and Jason at the end of every episode. I want to thank everyone that has sent in submissions for AskUpgrade and SnellTalk. We love those submissions every single week.
Starting point is 01:15:19 Our thanks again to Eero, Squarespace and FreshBooks for supporting the show. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com. He is at jsnl on Twitter and Jason hosts a selection of shows at theincomparable.com and here at relay.fm. Like me,
Starting point is 01:15:35 I host many shows at relay.fm and you can find them at relay.fm slash shows. I am imyke I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter and we'll be back next week with another episode of Upgrade. Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.
Starting point is 01:15:51 Show over, man. Show over!

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