Upgrade - 185: The March 2018 Apple Event Draft

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

Apple’s holding a media event at a school in Chicago, and next week Jason will be there to report back about what got announced. But in the meantime, it’s time for another draft, as Myke and Jason attempt to predict what will be shown on stage in Chicago. Apple also announced WWDC dates this week and made some more moves to grow its unannounced video service.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 185 and today is a draft day it is the march education event 2018 draft this episode is brought to you by squarespace text expander fresh books and sanebox my name is mike Hurley, and I am joined by, I'm assuming, an equally excited Mr. Jason Snell. Who is not excited about going to an Apple event? I would say, well, probably there are plenty of people. I'm excited, Mike. I'm excited. Good. I have a hashtag SnellTalk question. I ended up writing one in myself this week because relevancy for this episode. Because when we were originally going through the dark and putting this all together, nobody knew that we were going to be going to Chicago this week.

But here we are. So I have a question for you. Jason, you're going to be heading out to Chicago next week. What food are you going to hunt down when you return to Chicago? Well, we were just there, which is kind of funny to go back to Chicago. Exactly. We were there in October. And I was thinking about this.

I'm not there very long. This is one of the things that we could talk about it in a minute or we could talk about it now. But I literally woke up on, when was that? Thursday morning. And I had a whole stream of Slack messages in Notification Center on my iPad from you. And it's like 7 in the morning. And I didn't even understand what I was seeing because you were talking about a draft. And you had a Twitter link.

And the Twitter link expanded in Slack to explain what was going on. But in Notification Center, it only shows the Twitter URL. And so then I open Slack and I read it. And again, I'm waking up and i'm like oh there's an apple education event and we'll be doing a draft and we'll then have to do a post event uh thing so i i'm from bed while wearing my pajamas i made plane reservations made a hotel reservation talked to alex cox about using the chicago Co-op Recording Studio, which is the place where we ate pizza, as you remember, Chicago pizza for Dubai Friday, episode 47. All of that in my pajamas.

But as a result, it is a whirlwind trip. I decided I'm not going to stay. I'm going to fly in on Monday evening and go to the event and fly home Tuesday night. So I'm not hanging around Chicago. This is a less than two weeks notice kind of quick trip. So what time will I have? I'm like, the apple feeds you breakfast at the event. And they might even give us food at the end of the event for kind of a lunchy thing. So I'm unsure whether I'm going to need any

lunch. Although if I do need lunch, I probably will try to get some pizza somewhere because I do actually like the pizza that's in Chicago. But I have to make my way quickly to the studio in order for us to do our thing. And then that leaves me with whatever happens afterward. And that's just a question of timing because I have to get back to the airport. If I have time, maybe my vaunted Chicago pizza drop-in happens then. Otherwise, I will be doing what has become a custom for me and is also a custom for our friend Dr. Drang, actually, when he flies through Midway Airport in Chicago, which is you get yourself a Chicago-style hot dog in Midway Airport and you eat it and then you fly away. That may be what it is. It may be the old airport hot dog again,

but it's sort of a kind of a fun tradition to go to a, that is a place that prioritizes hot dogs is what I'm saying. I've had many a hot dog in Chicago. So I'm leaving it open. It may be the airport hot dog. It might be some pizza because I do love the pizza.

We'll just have to see. If you'd like to send in a question to open a future episode, just send a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or if you have access directly to our google document like me and jason do you can just put one in on your own but unfortunately that is a very that is very specific and small group so hashtag thanks to listener mike thank you to listener mike for submitting that question yeah listen listen jason next week is going to ask snail talk like why what is the secret to your success why are you so wonderful how are you so handsome how do you do that so um we've

we've made reference to it we've spoken about it but complete directness there is going to be an apple event next tuesday the 27th in chicago at a high school which is a extremely different uh venue and apple are calling it a field trip. Let's take a field trip, it says the invitation. We have a list of picks. We're going to do our draft. I'm going to explain the draft rules in a moment in case this is your first time coming to a draft episode of Upgrade.

But I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on this event in context or as a whole. Why are they doing this now why not just press releases for whatever products that they've got why are they doing this in chicago why is it at a high school what is going on here they just opened an incredible theater right like why are they doing this yeah i i think i think the idea here is apple previously did an event in New York City that was an education-themed event. But that was like an event space or something, though, wasn't it? It was like the Guggenheim. My understanding is that this high school has a couple thousand person auditorium, probably slash basketball court you know if it's a high school i assume all the

auditoriums are also the where they play basketball because schools uh like to double team a lot of this stuff but um they have a they have a space to have an event and they're going to have an event in it so uh some of that i i think this is a high school that has worked with apple on tech stuff before so it's a chance for Apple to, okay, let's back up. Also, I'll mention Apple does have this Chicago on the brain because they just opened their store on the loop in Chicago. And I suspect that you'll see them do

some like special stuff in the Apple store in Chicago around this event too. I wouldn't know what it might be because I'll be eating a hot dog at the airport at that point probably. So the idea here when Apple ever does an event really is that they're telling a story, right? The whole idea with marketing and the way they do it is they're telling a story about a product or many products. And I think Apple maybe saw a way, given what products they've got ready to go this spring, a way for them to tell that story in the context of Apple in education, which is an important market for Apple and also a market where there's some really fierce competition, especially from Google with Google Classroom and Chromebooks in general. Even my son's school, which is iPad one to one, they're all using Google Classroom with it.

So it's like it's it's that's that's an interesting part. It may also be that they just looked at the the products that were available and thought there's a there's a story to be told here there's a a story we can we can build we can weave around education and it makes apple look good and we could even hold it what if we what if we held it at a at a high school and they're like well we you know we work with this high school in Chicago. And I think it was a series of events that leads to this. But I think it's all about the story they want to tell. And presumably we will see in the products that they discuss that they're all around this kind of theme of using Apple stuff in education.

So it's a high concept thing. And I think that one of the challenges for Apple is that putting it in a different place means the people who do Apple's events have to spend time in Chicago instead of in their homes in the Bay Area, which is where they all live. And so that's more expense and time for them. And, you know, the people like me who have literally never flown anywhere for an apple event before like an apple media event i've flown to like macworld expo in new york and boston but like to just a random apple event and i realize you know many of my colleagues always fly to apple events so the shoe is on the other foot especially the ones who live in chicago i suppose um but you know

it's they can call an event almost anywhere and people will come and they'll do it this time. So I think this was a good place for them to show off their concept. And I guess as well, if they are going, as we expect, for like, you know, not whiz-bang huge stuff, but, you know, maybe some just more focused education products, by setting it here, it kind of sets people's expectations going into this that you know that this is going to be a specific event for a certain thing they're not going to show off the next iphone like by surprise you know it's going to be a more focused event than it would be maybe if they did it in the steve jobs theater yeah i think that may be true also the

i don't know what what do they think of the Steve Jobs Theatre? Maybe they feel that it is an event that is more appropriate. I don't know, but there is that thought of like, well, we only have this to announce. Do we really want to call everybody to the Steve Jobs Theatre? Maybe I thought it was only getting announced there, right? Like it might just be the September event that happens there and nothing else. I think that would be unfortunate because it's a great venue and it's a venue they control. Also, I will point out that people are moving into Apple Park. Like, I think that process is still going on. We've been seeing tweets over the last few months of people saying, well, here's my last day at the Loop. I'm going in Apple Park. And people are moving in and getting settled there. Maybe they also have this feeling like, let's not complicate things at Apple

Park right now. That's also a possibility. But you're right. It may be like, oh, well, we don't want people to get really excited about an event at the Steve Jobs Theater and then have it be like a minor update to an iPad or something like that, right? But I think more likely it's the idea that this is a great opportunity to weave this education story and really put a point on it. And by doing that at a school there, there, that, you know,

that, that allows them to emphasize that. And it's a, it's a high concept kind of thing that somebody in Apple's events and marketing group, you know, whether it's like, I'm, I'm sure Phil Schiller gave the thumbs up,

but whoever came up with the idea of like, well, what will you do this in a little bit of a different venue um it could also be that it is specifically like uh stemming from some unavailability on the apple campus of like well no we really can't do it at steve jobs theater in this in this window because or we prefer not to let's get creative who knows i'm this is also a question that hasn't been seemed to it doesn't seem to be a clear answer for it yet for many reasons but my expectation is it will be but will we see it like outside of the people that are going to be in the room is there going to be a

live video i would be very surprised if there wasn't one just because that's how things have been for a long time now yeah i think that's the standard but but you're right one of the things that we that i always remember from the european buena uh events that they used to hell hold up in um in san francisco the european buena theater is near mosconi west but it is a different venue and for that they would have like a bunch of trucks outside that was basically their video production and they would have to set it all up well in advance this is the advantage of something like steve jobs theater which presumably has a lot of that equipment built into it they will they will presumably need to do that kind of thing at the high school in chicago it's a it's a i think it's a technology magnet public

school in chicago by the way that's my understanding and it it apparently is a very impressive campus looks like almost like a college campus in in and it's a a showpiece which i would expect nothing less for something picked by apple to be their you know promotional uh venue as useful as it is for me to be able to watch the video especially as we're going to be recording straight after there would be something kind of fun and nostalgic and following along with live blogs you know giving live blogs a reason to exist again uh you know like most most websites and including you like continue to do them even though most people just watch the videos now but it would be kind of funny to to follow along with a bunch of live blogs again although i would

prefer to watch a video but anyway i think i think we don't live in that world anymore. We do not. Alas. So, let's do the draft. These are the rules. We're going to do eight rounds in this draft, which will be 16 overall picks, so we pick eight things each. We have a list of items that we're going to be drawing from, although Jason likes

to throw a spinal tap in whenever he can. I expect that to occur. The winner of the previous draft gets first occur. The winner of the previous draft gets first to pick. The winner of the last draft that we had was the September draft, which Jason won, so he will be picking first. For an item to count as points being able to be scored against it, it must either be clearly announced on stage or featured on a slide during the presentation itself.

Stephen Hackett will be adjudicating in case of a scoring stalemate between me and jason we prefer to score ourselves but when we can't we ask for outside help no half points awarded it is pure points and none or none and there could be adjudication and discussion over those on our next episode and no points are awarded for anything pre-announced so So if something gets pre-announced between now and the event, it does not count. Unless it's mentioned on stage.

Unless it's mentioned on stage. Yes, right. So there has to be something on stage. Which is probably unlikely. But if they said, oh, yes, by the way, we announced last week this thing that happened.

I guess, you know, you get the point for that because we can't see the future. But it doesn't count if it was, just as it doesn't count if it was not announced during the event but snuck out in our press release. It also doesn't count if it was pre-announced and not mentioned at the event. The points that are awarded on the next episode are final. Yes. And there will be a scorecard in the show notes for you to play along at home.

So let's get started with our picks. But before we do, let me take our first break. Today's episode is brought to you in part by SaneBox. Every person listening to this show has something they don't like about email. I've been going on like a horrific email vision quest right now where I've decided that all email apps are ultimately bad

and I'm just struggling with that. But one of the great things in my email toolkit these days is SaneBox. Because SaneBox helps me tackle email before it ever reaches the apps that I don't like. So with SaneBox, you can set up a bunch of filters and a bunch of interesting triggers. So your email is sorted and dealt with in some part before it ever reaches your inbox. All email looks exactly the same. Like if you don't have anything like SaneBox enabled, all this email just hits your inbox. All email looks exactly the same. Like if you don't have anything like SaneBox enabled, all this email just hits your inbox and it could be anything.

It really helps to have some kind of pre-sorting. And this is what SaneBox will do. It will sort through your email and move trivial stuff to different folders. So only the messages left in your inbox are the ones that you need to deal with. So for example, I'll give you some ideas of the things I use. I have a couple of the things enabled in SaneBox. They have loads of different amazing options. I have one called SaneLater, which so an email pops in and SaneBox deciphers that it's someone who is

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Just go to SaneBox.com slash UpgradeFM, and you will get a two-week free trial and an extra $25 credit just because you listen to the show. That is SaneBox, S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com slash UpgradeFM and you'll be able to get that two-week free trial and $25 credit. You don't have to enter any credit card information as you decide to buy. There's nothing to lose. So check it out today and get your email finally under control. Our thanks to SaneBox for their support of this show. Okay, you ready, Jason Sason snail as i'll ever be okay so you get to go first what is your first draft pick your first prediction that you think is going to happen at next week's event well i think

a no-brainer and i'm going for the points here gotta go for the points well you gotta play for points you gotta play for points that's why we do this i think that um on stage at a school when apple is talking about education which they undoubtedly are that one of the things that they're going to talk about is apple classroom which uh for people who don't know, there's a whole suite of features that are available for education from Apple. You may not like the best example of a weird one is the ability to have different users on an iPad, which is not available to regular people, but is available in education. I'm going to predict purely because it seems logical that this will happen, that Apple will announce and potentially even show, but they will mention new features to Apple Classroom. I'm not going to pick just Apple Classroom will be mentioned because I think that is a little bit too easy, but I'm going to say that they will announce some new features. All right, that is a

very good one. I must say that is a very good one. I have something that I think will be mentioned. She's akin to this but i'm not going to pick it just yet um i'm going to go for hardware because i expect there to be some hardware and i'm going to take a cue from the invitation and i'm going to say that there will be a new ipad a new basic level ipad the 9.7 will receive a refresh of some description um and because that is the ipad that gets sold into schools like that's the popular one um so i expect that we will see uh some kind of ipad revision um the bottom end of the line uh announced at this event the plain old ipad plain old ipad that they brought

back after the ipad air uh went away and then came back so which would this be like the sixth generation ipad is that what it would this be like the 6th generation iPad? Is that what it would be? Something like that, 6 or 7. I feel like this one is pretty good as a lock, right? Like it's a year since they updated it last time, right? It's an education event. That is the one that we heard from so many people

when it came out. Like this is the iPad I've been waiting for for schools. There's a lot of discussion about maybe that iPad was one of the reasons that we got the turnaround right because there was finally an ipad that could go in on like mass purchasing in schools again right this one and you know the the invitation itself is uh kind of a swirly apple logo right which could kind of hint towards apple pencil we're going to get to that maybe in a little bit. I feel like we're pretty good at thinking that there will be a new iPad announced. Yeah, I think that there's a good

chance of that. And it is the one that they will be selling into education. It hasn't gotten an update in a year. And you're covering all the bases by saying it'll just be new. What's in it? by saying it'll just be new. What's in it? Well, it's still to play for, but basically updating that base iPad that's not an iPad Pro. Yeah, because there are still some picks that we have available on our list,

which we'll get to, which are features for that iPad, but they are specific things that I think is good to separate from the fact that they're being an iPad or not. I agree with you. Why don't I pick one of those now? Go for it.

I'm going to predict that because you mentioned the invitation, which has that writing that says, let's take a field trip with an Apple logo. I'm going to say that the, that new, that new basic iPad that you just mentioned will support Apple pencil, which would be the first non-iPad Pro to support Apple Pencil. Because it's hard for me to look at that invitation and think

that Apple is going to withhold the Apple Pencil from their education story. Yeah. I mean, I'm really intrigued to see how this one works. This feels like something which every now and then, and especially in the events, there can be teases in the events, right? Think about the iPhone 7 with the bokeh effect in it and stuff like that. But just from a pure logical perspective, Apple Pencil support on an iPad in education does make a lot of sense. I'm just really intrigued to see what happens to the iPad Pro line after that. to the iPad Pro line after that. But I think that one of the things that we're going to see for the time being

is the iPad Pro this year will probably get Face ID and thinner bezels and all that stuff. So maybe that kind of helps differentiate it more as a Pro for a while and the Apple Pencil can start to find its way into new devices. There could be a new Apple Pencil

with the new iPad Pro, which has more features, but this regular iPad gets regular Apple Pencil features. I think in the past, it has been maybe a risk to put the Apple Pencil down on the lowest iPad because what differentiates it from the Pro? But I think depending on the other things that we're probably going to see later on this year, I think now could be the right time to do it. on the other things that we're probably going to see later on this year i think now could be the right time to do it yeah i think the basic ipad is different enough now unlike the ipad air 2 perhaps that get giving it pencil support is not necessarily confusing whether it's an ipad pro or not yep um i think a more interesting question and maybe we'll pick it later is would the smart

connector come down because a lot of the education applications a lot of the education uh you know cases and stuff like that and they have they have keyboards that they use would they consider a smart connector to sell smart keyboards into education uh or or not i don't know how i feel like education feels about the ruggedness of it yeah it might i i think i'm inclined to think it is too far but i just throw it out there because one of the feels about the ruggedness of it yeah it might i i think i'm inclined to think it is too far but i just throw it out there because one of the things about the ipad that uh in education is that they all want keyboards they don't use them all the time like my son's school he doesn't have a keyboard here but they have keyboards that they use in certain circumstances

with their ipads at school and it may got me thinking like keyboards is still a thing for text input at school and i could see the argument for smart connector then again i can also see the argument for nobody doing the smart connector anymore other than for the smart keyboard will get you what you need right but when it comes to the apple pencil there isn't anything nearly as good as that i I agree. Right? So I think they might stick to Bluetooth for now. That's why I picked the Apple Pencil. Yeah.

So my second pick is an iBooks update. I think that it will become books, right? This isn't necessarily in the pick. So my pick is iBooks update. Yep. I think that it makes perfect sense. I mean, honestly, I see them trying to go the textbook route again right which kind of didn't work the first time you mean a few years ago when they totally revolutionized textbooks and textbooks have never been the same except that they didn't and they are um but yeah i i'll give you credit for anything that they they mention on stage that

is something new in iBooks right as long as iBooks gets a change of some kind. I mean, because, you know, we saw this a bunch, right? Like in some of the 11.3 betas, the name changed to Books. It's back to iBooks again now, but the name changed to Books for a while. So they're probably just going to call this Apple Books. Now, if all they do is mention iBooks and don't actually change anything about it, does your pick count? Something has to change that an update something has to change like when i mean update like i don't just mean like hey here's how ibooks is doing right now like something's going to change in ibooks or ibooks get some time so they show off some new features that or that kind of thing which could be from the store side um it could be from the app functionality side but but i believe that there will be something on stage because really this you know textbooks and books on ipads should be a really really big deal and i think that ibooks author in

its first in like its first kind of life didn't do that i think the focus on trying to make them all interactive was probably a bad move and honestly i would expect to see them kind of just be like here what you know here's just books right like it's like books but on the ipad i i i would be surprised if they continue to push down the interactive route because i don't think that that works ultimately all right do you want to go for pick number three yeah pick number three again Yeah. Pick number three. Again, this is one of those that I think I just have to pick because it's an education event, which is there's some beta stuff in the iOS 11.3 beta that is called ClassKit,

which basically is new tools for third-party developers to build in classroom features into their apps. And I've got to to think since that's in the beta yeah that they're going to spend time talking about how now and perhaps even demoing some samples of now you can have apps that do all these amazing things with uh so this is a little different than the apple classroom this is uh this is third-party developer tools to make education apps that tie into all of uh all of the stuff that teachers need so i just want to throw that there like a couple of features they have like an exam mode so an application can't be quit during a specific period of time this is one

of the things that's been found and also some evaluation features so like a teacher can mark i would assume from from third-party apps and this is all third-party stuff right so if you made a test exam application you know it could go into an exam mode so kids couldn't go and surf the web and cheat right for example so that's right what this stuff looks like um i am i'm looking at my pics here and i am going to rearrange okay so you know i mentioned you know when you said you stole my ibooks update by the way i i was i had that on my list i just just i i had it right there but you got it so you mentioned something about apple classroom

features right focusing on classroom um i expect there to be a focus of some description on family and that apple to reference and and kind of make a point about kids and device time and stuff like that because this has been a bit of a hot button issue recently apple created a page on their website about kind of how to live a healthy digital family life. I expect that if this is an event which is focused on kids, right? This is what this is for. This is for kids in school. I expect them to talk something about like, you know, being considerate,

being conscientious of how much time our kids use on devices, that kind of stuff. I would be very surprised to see this event go by without them touching on that i think that's a good call because it's like oh look at these new devices your kids are now going to spend time with ipads all day in school and then at home so i expect there to be like some some focus on a little bit of moderation or whatever however they end up phrasing it um but i expect that. Like they have a top level, it's apple.com slash families that launched I think last week.

So this is Apple trying to showcase what they already have. And it's already rumored quite heavily that it's going to be more parental control stuff in iOS 12. So I expect this to become part of the discussion point for the rest of this year as Apple tries to just make sure

that they're considered as being conscientious with how much time people spend on their devices yeah it's not quite education but education is a lot about younger people and it's so i can see how they might sort of segue into it and say all right also here's a here's an issue not just for schools but for parents in general right and then talk about it because you all right also here's a here's an issue not just for schools but for parents in general right and then talk about it because you're right it is a hot button uh topic i i feel like it would be a little bit tone deaf if they didn't at least mention it right like i think it would be a very it would be a bad omission i think that they would probably

get a bit of flack for it's a good even if there's nothing new just to talk about like what they do and what they what their philosophy is and maybe make a commitment to doing some new stuff but also just sort of defending their existing stuff since it's become somewhat controversial yep all right pick number four all right uh for my fourth pick i'm going to pick something that's kind of weird but um i'm gonna i'm gonna put it's it's like a uh well let me explain what it is i'm going to predict that a new apple ios app debuts what is it i have no idea i just i'm i just have this feeling like maybe as a part of this event there'll be some app that we've never heard of

that apple says oh and there's this new app that we wrote that does this thing that's great for education or kids or whatever um not a new version of an existing apple app but something new and this is a shot in the dark but it's at the same time like i said i i just kind of get this feeling like this might be an appropriate time for apple to unveil something like you know remember when they unveiled clips like something like that we're like oh we have a clever idea and this is going to be great in schools and it does this and here it is so i just want to i want to cover that part of the of the event like if there is a new apple ios app um that is debuted i want to i want to have it i want to get credit for that so that's

what i that's what i'm choosing something probably educational related maybe tangential um but you know they do this from time to time like clips is the best example which is like and now we have this app called clips like whoa where did that come from so that's um i will i will also say that if they decide that they're gonna do like uh final cut for ios uh that counts of course because that's not that's not currently there but a a new version of iMovie doesn't count. Any Apple-made app that doesn't currently exist on iOS. It has to be a brand new title. That's what I want. Okay. I'm gonna go with a rumor mill.

I'm gonna say that the MacBook Air will get a price cut. That's next on my list. Good job. If the MacBook Air is going to have its price cut, if that is going to happen, it will happen next week right like this the macbook air is the student's computer right like if you're looking at mac like that's the one it's the cheapest it's rugged it's got all the ports that it needs um i'm actually

starting to believe that this won't happen and we might get to that in a little bit but if it's going to happen it will happen next tuesday that's my feeling on this yeah i it's a good it's a fresh rumor right but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not going to happen because this is a rumor that doesn't need supply chain stuff right like it doesn't it can have been a very frequent rumor and the reason it may have come out is because they're getting ready to do it next week right so you know what soon be the sooner things get the more likely they are to leak out because more and more people start to learn about them um i think that if they're going to do it this would make the perfect time this would make perfect sense to do it right now i can't see why you would do this later on in the year right like if apple were going to do it

with an announcement of some description, it doesn't make any sense for WWDC. It's the wrong audience. And it would be wasted time in September. So I think if they're going to do it and they're going to do it on stage or with a press release, I would expect that it happens as part of this event.

Yeah, I really want to pick something that is related to a laptop and to the Mac. But I'm having a hard time doing it for similar reasons, which is I'm not entirely convinced that the time is right. You're right. Price cut is a good way to slice it because they can do that anytime. What I want to do is pick something about the MacBook Air's like getting rumored actual update or a new MacBook model or a repricing of the MacBook Escape or something like that.

The problem is that I believe all that stuff happened in June last year and I'm not entirely convinced that Apple would go back nine months later and make changes. I might be doing a disservice to myself with points here, but just because they announce it doesn't mean it has to come out yet. Well, that's true.

But generally, if you're going to replace something, you would do it. You wouldn't replace the MacBook with a new model and not have it ship for three months because nobody's going to buy the MacBook in the meantime. them well i bet it could ship in a month right and then it's like 11 months from when it was revved i don't know i don't know um it's tough i'm gonna i'm gonna keep thinking about it and instead i'm gonna pick something else i don't know you don't might not want to think about it for too long jason i'm just going to say that you might not want to think about that for too long you might lose it but go on pick number five uh oh boy now you're now you've made it really now you're in my head you got me you got me you got me um uh all's fair in love and drafts.

That's true. It's very true. I am going to pick, I'm going to go down a few items from what I thought would be my list. I would say, real quick on that, I have done more rearranging of my draft list than any other draft that we've done. I came in with my five,

and I have picked two of them so far yeah right yeah i hear you i hear you so i'm gonna i'm gonna pick the thing that i really want to see which again timing wise i think is not gonna happen um but i'm gonna pick changes to the macbook okay this is what i was talking about by the way i don't know if that came across but what i was referencing is i think it's this i think that this is that this what I was talking about with like, you can announce it now and it can come out later. You maybe thought I was talking about something else, but I was talking about this. Yeah.

So what I want to believe, I think, is that they'll do make changes to the 12-inch MacBook, including a way to get the price down a little bit. And it'll be as part of their kind of push into education and it may be that they just reduce the specs on it and and get it down to 1099 or something like that but uh they you know an update to the macbook would be great it doesn't necessarily have to be what i would like which is that they have i know it's hard to believe two ports instead of one. But I expect Apple to keep updating the MacBook. This might be a June thing. This might be a fall thing.

But why not now with some laptop news? So I'll toss that one out there. New MacBook. Did you see that there was a rumor about this last week? That there was going to be a lower cost but 13-inch Retina MacBook, which reported to be debuting in June. but i think that that could have been missed you know i i think personally i think that if that product does exist if they are going to make a new macbook which is 13 inches that it will come out macbook air exactly so but what i'm thinking is like if they do that it could be that

next week and they get rid of the mac and the Air and they have one product. Because apparently the rumor is saying that it will be cheaper than the current MacBook and probably be around $999. And I think if they do that, if they make a 13-inch laptop, which looks like the current Retina MacBook and it's $999, I think that that's the only option going forward. So I'm really intrigued to see what they do there. That was going to be my next pick. That's what I was thinking about. I now know what you're thinking about and I wasn't thinking about that.

So we'll see if you get there. But hey, new MacBook. If they come out with something entirely new called MacBook, I'll take that. But I was thinking update to the 12-inch MacBook to get it down closer in range to the MacBook Air. Both of those things make perfect sense, right? And I think that they're both possible, that they'll do something to bring that down or they'll just come in and replace them both at the same time. So we're into my pick five. This has put me into a bit of a sticky situation now, looking at my list that's left.

And I am, again, going to pick something that wasn't very high up originally, but I think is probably a lock. iOS 11.3 to be released. Because if they do any software stuff, that's where it's going to be included. So I expect that we'll see 11.3. Especially 11.3 feels like it's around the corner. It's been in beta for quite a while. And it includes some stuff,

which is probably pretty important, right? Some of that, all that battery stuff. And I assume Apple probably doesn't want to hold onto those things for too long. So I would expect to see 11.3 coming out. And maybe one of the reasons that they've held 11.3 is it might give away too much about some of the reasons that they've held 11.3 is it might give away too much about some of this stuff that they've got coming next week. So there you go. Right. That's five

picks we're up to now. We have three picks left, and then we're going to talk about some of the things that we didn't pick. But before we do, let me thank FreshBooks for their support of this week's show. I love FreshBooks. And trust me, if you send invoices to anyone, you would love FreshBooks too, because they know how important it is to make smart decisions for your business. And I'm telling you right now, one of the smartest decisions you can make is to use FreshBooks because they simplify tasks like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online. Some of the most important things that you would do if you work for yourself. FreshBooks has drastically reduced the time and effort it takes

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Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. So we're on to pick number six, Jason. Oh boy. It's getting harder, Mike. It's getting a lot harder, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to say it's fun to talk about Mac laptops. I placed them lower down on our lists here because my feeling is that ios and the ipad is going to come first um and so i'm going to go back there for a quick one which is you you mentioned a new basic ipad i'm going to go out on the limb a little further and say it's going to have a lower price than the current basic ipad has yep okay just cut push it down push it down 20 bucks 30 bucks whatever it

is i think apple is feeling serious pressure to get that thing as competitive as possible especially with chromebooks and so push it push it down further uh again i i i'm just crossing my fingers here but let's uh let's make sure we clear this one up so you can get your points. Are we talking about there being an iPad with a lower price or the new iPad, if there is one, will debut at a lower price?

Oh, that's true. How about this? I'll phrase it this way. I think the base price to buy into the iPad product line with an iPad that is currently shipping will drop from 329 yeah the ipad will have a lower base price let's go with that that's a good way of saying it they could take the the sixth what fifth generation model right and keep it around

and lower the price or they could introduce a 6th generation model at a lower price, I would like both of those options. I want them to drop that $329 is the thing. Get that down to $299 or something like that. But if it was $328, it would count. $299 for an iPad, that would be excellent. That would really start

to help them an awful lot more. Alright, I'm... Okay. So, if we're thinking that this is going to be pretty iOS focused, which I think we both do, and it's in schools, and you think about some of the applications that Apple would be trying to promote, I'm going to go out and say that there's going to be some iWork updates as part of this.

You know, like iWork is their word processor. You know, it is, you know it is you know they keynote right they have numbers something's going to happen it's going to be some new features hopefully better collaboration tools um what did i say pages no no you you just listed two of them so i mentioned the third one because there's the the panoply of i work apps the the numbers the pages the keynote um yeah it's possible although i mean they've got some of the collaboration stuff. Now, so are you, I mean, the challenge is going to be, is it new? Are there new features?

Or are they just going to extol the virtues of iWork? I think new features. New features. You say new features. Yeah, new features to iWork. I mean, honestly, that could be as simple as adding ClassKit to iWork, right? There could be some stuff there where they're like, oh, and you know, this is this class kit thing and we've added it to pages.

So et cetera, et cetera, you know, like so your people can turn in their essays, you know, however it's going to be. But I think iWork will get some attention and it will get something new that it didn't have previously. Just because if I'm thinking about, you know, any software that Apple makes, probably iWork would make the most sense to get some time um because it generates stuff that would be used in schools i guess okay so i want to pick number seven oh it's so hard um

i'm gonna take a flyer on something that is one of these things that's probably going to be announced in a press release but i think they might mention it on stage and that's air power ah darn it okay which air power which is supposed to come out this year hopefully soon what's the education story there i'm not sure there is one but it is a mat that you can put like your phone and your apple watch and you know another phone or whatever this is nothing to do with education but nothing at all but they but if all they have to do is mention it yeah i mean what i'm saying is we've got a bunch of other great updates today this is just a pending thing which should happen probably should have happened already if they've got

people's attention i get a point yeah i mean that's this is good i mean okay so my next one is new airpods because if they do air power they've got to have the new airpods case to go along with it so i expect that airpods will get an update too purely because like these two things should exist in the market now they they will i reckon they will be available next tuesday whether they talk about them or not but it's time to put them out there and i guess this would be the right time to do that yeah i think so and so we're both taking a chance that they will mention that they're also releasing some other stuff even though it's not part of their education story and a lot of times

they do that not always but a lot of times they do that just in passing since i since i've got your attention we all did a bunch of other updates today uh and other times they just don't mention it and they they are released entirely separately so that's good we're both we're both uh it's probably likely that they either do both or uh none for pick seven all right so we have our eighth and final pick and that's okay what we've got left we going to get to it in a minute. But basically what we're left with is a bunch of things that could happen. There is maybe a case for each of them, but none of them are really that likely. And there's a strong case against each of them, I would say, too.

But this is stuff that people want or there is a general conceived notion that should exist, right? And that this could be a time for that. What we don't have in this list is iPhone 11, right? Right. But it's stuff that you would maybe expect Apple to do now, and is maybe on the B side of their products. Sure. Okay, so here's mine, which is, I think this is going to happen this fall as a part of a new generation of iPad Pro models, or maybe this summer if they don't wait till fall. given some of the invitation and given some of our other picks,

I hold out a small chance that a new version of the Apple Pencil will debut next Tuesday instead of waiting to debut with the iPad Pro. I feel like the most logical place to debut a new version of the Apple Pencil is not now but with the iPad Pro. But there are a few things. First off, it might be required for a new iPad that supports the Pencil. Although I've been thinking of it more as like fancy snazzy new features for the iPad Pro, it's also possible that it is a new Pencil that's required in order to work with the existing models. But since the Pencil, you know, there's handwriting in the

invite, we're talking about iPads, there's handwriting in the invite we're talking about ipads it's not beyond the realm of possibility that there might be a new pencil model even though you would think they would save that for the ipad pro there may be a reason for them to just get out ahead and release it now so i'll throw it in there i bet it's an apple pencil with g charging could be and then it would go with the uh go with the air power and the air and then i get a twofer there oh that would be the the uh exact uh that would be great does q charging go both ways like i don't know how it works uh no okay because i was wondering like could you have an apple pencil that charges because it's touching an ipad that would be freaking amazing uh but you know that that

that would be really great maybe sometime in the future yeah maybe all right so oh god i've really got slim pickings here uh okay um i'm i'm gonna go safe and i'm gonna try and just make sure i've got some some stuff across the board here we We have a pick, which is MacBook Air receives an actual update. Yes. I'm going to go with that one. So this is the MacBook Air as it currently exists. This is that rumor that they're doing something to it to make it different and keeping it around. Like not just a price change, but that something will happen to it. So this can be basically if the MacBook Air has some kind of different specification some different tech spec than before then i get my point it's not a good pick right but i feel

like i'm just trying to play it safe yeah well and you'll get um you'll get repricing you'll get a point for repricing if they just reprice the existing one if they if they change the specs you get a point too so that's the idea there is that basically there needs to be a macbook air that we refer to as the macbook air early 2018 yep um it needs to change like that and it could i i had that pretty high up and then i just kept thinking about it and thinking about it and i i decided that it was more likely that your price cut pick would happen than this. But I think it's good. Look, we just picked 16 things that might happen in an event that was just announced

that there's not a lot rumored about. And that is probably not going to be a major event with huge announcements in it. So I think we did a pretty good job of ginning up 16 items that might come true. I have six more. Okay, let's go through the stuff that was on our big list that we didn't go through. iBooks author update. This is probably something

that will happen, but I don't think would get a stage time. I mean, they might mention it in passing. My guess, the reason that I liked this one is that I get this feeling

and I didn't know how to pick it, but like, if they're doing an education event, and they are going to be very tempted to talk about reinventing education again, one of the things that I feel like they could do is talk about how to make it easier for teachers or college professors to send items to the students to read or things like that. And they might have almost like an Instapaper-y kind of thing where it's like, oh, well now in the new iBooks author tool, you can bring in an article and then send it right back out or something like that. And

it's possible. Um, but it's also possible that they will, they will release an update to iBooks author and not mention it on stage. I think it's also possible that they'll just say, forget it, forget about iBooks author. I don't know. But yeah, it's certainly relevant in a way that these other items that we had on our list are not. I wanted to mention the iPhone SE update. It's time for that one too. And that really has no relevance to education. There's no education story there at all, but that's a product that's hanging out there that we keep thinking they're going to do an update to and it's it's time you know it is exactly the right time to do an iphone se update so they could it could happen uh we have a new ipad pro i believe this is coming this year but

i think we're gonna i think june would be the earliest for this yeah and i understand why people think this is coming because it's a pencil right because if apple decide not to put the apple pencil on the lowest end ipad then in theory there would be an ipad pro update right if if we're going to believe that this invitation is trying to show us something it seems pretty clear that this is apple pencil related so maybe it's a new ipad pro because that's the only place they're going to put the pencil. It's a possibility, but I think it's too soon. And I just don't think that the iPad Pro is for this market.

I don't think it's an education tool. I think it is a professional tool, clue in the name. Then we have two revisions to two products, which are very old. The Mac Mini and the iPad Mini are two things that were on our list.

Both possible. Both could fit in this event. Could? A very old, the Mac Mini and the iPad Mini are two things that were on our list. Both possible. Both could fit in this event. Could. But I think that neither of them are going to get anything, maybe ever. We lack faith there. I think I would say the Mac Mini is more likely to happen only because it really needs an update. And they could plausibly make a case about, oh, well, you know, a lot of schools like to have the Mac mini because it's low cost and they can put it in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Like I think they could do that one and I hope they do. iPad mini, I'm just a little less convinced that it has a future, but it's entirely possible that they could do something with that. So these are two that we might end up kicking ourselves but probably not and then the last one is something that i believe will definitely happen but won't get any stage time which is new apple watch bands anytime they update the store with a bunch of products they put new apple watch bands because it's a new season so i just don't think there's any there's just no apple watch story for education which is why they probably won't have a segment where they talk about Apple Watch in order to mention that there are also

lovely new watch fans now on sale for spring. But they will undoubtedly, I would say, be available for spring after this event because that is what Apple does because Apple's smart and they sell a lot of watch bands. So that's the draft. We've got our eight picks.

There will be in the show notes, you will be able to find a scorecard. So you'll be able to score along with us as the event is happening next week. And this should have been obvious by now, but Upgrade will be out on Tuesday next week. We won't be on Monday. We'll be recording on Tuesday the 27th, of course, the event's in the morning, and then I will make my way to the Chicago Podcast Co-op where the very nice people there and Cards Against Humanity and all of that, they have reserved a space for me to talk to you, Mike. And that lets me travel a little bit lighter and sound like I'm a professional and not wandering down the streets of chicago which would be a very different sounding podcast and something to note because i didn't realize this until jason mentioned it just so everyone can synchronize their watches whilst this event is at 10 a.m as usual it is central time yeah because i'm used to events being at 10 a.m pacific but it's not going to be because that's not where the event is so just in case you know make sure you've put it in your calendars right because i would have been waiting there 10 a.m pacific and that would not

have been a good idea so uh 10 a.m central is when that event is going to happen right so two hours earlier than an apple event usually happens um of course we just hit daylight savings time here so uh that's an extra complication for people who are in places that did not that do not be fine change the clock it changes it changes next sunday so oh good okay everybody will be saving the daylight time oh good that's how you get the most daylight you save it all together oh that's good we still have a bunch of stuff to get to today so uh let me thank uh smile for their support of this show and talk to you about TextExpander. With TextExpander,

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their continued support of this show and RelayFM. So Apple had like a super busy week because they also announced that WWDC is happening. It kind of came out of the blue again but i think everyone's in agreement that we're really really happy to have been told about this in march rather than in april or may um it's going to be back in san jose which i think pretty much everyone is excited about because it was great last year um from june the 4th to the 8th at the as expected we act yep yeah we actually had that question a couple weeks ago

about when WWDC was going to happen. And we said probably that first week of June because that's what we'd heard. Like people analyzed things. And it turns out, yeah, that's it. In San Jose, it's exactly when we wanted. But it's nice to get that locked down because people are reluctant to buy flights

and reserve hotels, especially if you can get a deal, if you have no cancellation and then if they moved it and all of those things but it is it is when we uh when we thought and as a parent i have to say it's not my kids last week of school that week which is the first time in many years that i have not had all the end-of-year school activities happening simultaneously with WWDC. So, as usual, I'll be flying in. I'm going to be spending the entire week. And I'm wondering what you were planning to do.

I know, like, last year you came in San Jose for a few days. Because previously, you know, you could just drive in to downtown San Francisco every day. But you can't do that anymore. Same as last year. I'm going to... I got a hotel room uh the it's the it's the motel next door next door to the motel i stayed in last year excellent that one sold out i think word spread that that place was relatively cheap and had been

completely redone inside so it looked kind of sketchy from the outside but inside it was really nice um and so it was all it was all all gone. But the place next door was there. And basically it's there for me to sleep for three nights, I think. And then I leave open whether I'll be there on Thursday or Friday because I would just drive down for those. And I think I drove down on Thursday last year and was there again and then drove home again. Because it's drivable. It's just a very very long drive and uh we're very excited to announce um that we uh relay fm have teamed up with alt conf and atp to create the first ever uh wwdc podcast festival so what we're doing is over two

days so on monday uh the fourth and wednesday the sixth there are going to be live podcasts so on monday the fourth it's going to be atp live at altconf and altconf are next door to the convention center they're in i think it's the marriott hotel like next door and then on wednesday there's going to be relay fm live which is going to be uh a lot of really cool uh things they're going to be i don't to, I want to say too much, but I will be there. You will be there, Jason and a bunch of other relay FM hosts are going to be on stage.

We have some fun stuff currently in the works for that, which I'm really excited about. So if you're going to be in San Jose, you can go to all conf.com and you can get tickets for those shows. They're $5 each for each night and all of that money goes towards supporting the work that Alt Conf do. Alt Conf is amazing. They put on a bunch of free activities and workshops and stuff like that for people that are in town who maybe couldn't get themselves a ticket or just want to experience something a little bit different.

So we're going to be doing those live shows. If you are going to be in town, trust me, you want to go to these two shows. They are great ways to spend your time in San Jose. And if you're thinking like, oh, I don't want to get a WWDC ticket, but I want to be around. These are the types of things that are so much fun to do. There's great stuff. There's loads of great conferences. It's like kind of like sub conferences that happen around WWDCc now and there's so much great stuff to keep yourself occupied with that it is worth making the trip i am not even going to attempt to get a pass as i have never needed to never wanted to because there was just more and more awesome stuff happening and i'll tell you like last year san jose was so much fun um it

really kind of felt like a more of an event town uh And it's going to be great this year, and we're doing some live shows. So go to altconf.com, and you can get tickets for RelayFM live on the 6th, on Wednesday the 6th of June. Really excited about that. Shall we do some upstream? Talk about some stuff that's going on in streaming media right now? Yeah, really quickly. We'll blow through some streaming news. There's always more there's always more uh upstream mainstay

reese witherspoon uh she has a new show with a hello sunshine production company it's been sold to hulu this one stars witherspoon again alongside carrie washington who's best known for starring rowan scandal this is an adaptation of a book called Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. This is going to be going to Hulu. I expect it was probably shopped around to a bunch of people, but I just find it really cool to see what Reese Witherspoon's

doing. I looked into Hello Sunshine a little bit, and basically it was created because she wanted to be able to help more women get starring roles in shows and in productions and it seems like she's doing a pretty stand-up job so far it's like the third or fourth show that we've spoken about that she sold recently it's yeah really really interesting company going on over there yeah for sure um apple has ordered an animated comedy show from the

creator of bob's burgers um it is called Park, and it is a musical comedy. Lauren Bouchard, who's the creator of Bob's Burgers, has teamed up with Nora Smith and Josh Gad on this project, and it's described as telling the story of a family of caretakers who live and work in Central Park, but the twist of the show is that they somehow end up saving the world. I'm very intrigued to see how that comes together. It's going to be produced by 20th Century Fox Television, which is really weird.

So they're producing it and Apple has bought it. And this is because Bouchard has a deal with 20th Century Fox. Yeah, he has a deal with 20th Century Fox, right, which will be owned by Disney at some point. Yeah, yes. But they're still a studio and they still sell to other providers and that's where Lauren Burchard's deal is. Interesting voice cast too, right?

Really good. So Josh Gad, you mentioned. Leslie Odom Jr. from Hamilton. Titus Burgess from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Kristen Bell from The Good Place. Daveed Diggs also from Hamilton. So it's quite a thing. And I don't know,

have you seen Bob's Burgers? Do you watch Bob's Burgers? So Bob's Burgers is a show I've seen a couple of episodes of and really liked, but it's not easy to get here. It's really good. It was mismarketed in the US because it airs on Sunday night in the animation block on Fox. And as a result, I would say,

and my apologies to those who enjoy Family Guy. I don't really enjoy Family Guy. I think the mistake was that it was marketed to Family Guy viewers. So the original marketing for Bob's Burgers was, I'd say not in keeping with what the show's actually like. It's brilliant. It is a brilliant and brilliantly funny show. So if people haven't tried it, you should give it a shot. And I think Lauren Bouchard, before you did Bob's Burgers,

didn't he do home movies? So he's a very talented person. And it's interesting that Apple, this is Apple's, I think it's smart for Apple to do this, for Apple to get into some animation stuff too. It's like, again, what we said before, like try to diversify the content of an Apple service.

It can't all be sci-fi series, right? You need to keep on diversifying and have it appeal to a wide range. And a new show from the guy who does Bob's Burgers with an all-star cast. Great, great, great idea. It looks like I can buy Bob's burgers on amazon now it's previously has been really hard to find so i'm gonna put that on my on my list for the future um maybe i'll pick it up okay it's not on netflix or anything here it's it's it's typically been pretty hard to come

by i expect it's like uh sky bought it and sky can be pretty tough for that sort of stuff um and this was one that i missed this happens i don't know how this happens like i try and follow this stuff as close as i can now but every now and then something from apple sneaks under the radar this is a an immigrant anthology series called little america which is an order by apple it is a half hour episode anthology series by the oscar-nominated writers of the big sick kumail nani and emily v gordon um it also comes from lee eisenberg of a show called smilf which i i'm not familiar with an alan yang show uh master of none of master of none yeah so this is a show it's based on true stories um as described as a small collection a small collective portrait of america's immigrants and thereby a portrait of america itself it's a

straight to series order uh that they've picked up oh and by the way the the central park show the animated show 26 episode order split into two 13 episode seasons right that's what they're doing with that one so yeah there's there's more kind of like documentary style drama as well um coming from again excellent creators like a really great kind of cast of people apple uh this one sounds like apple um said half hour anthology series not sure if anybody's gonna watch it but you know what it sounds like it will be high prestige and working with really talented creators and that and and probably my guess is they were like yeah it's worth being in business with these people even if um sometimes you look at a project and you think that sounds like it could be really great i'm not sure who's gonna watch it

but it sounds like it could be great and uh again you know apple's still writing checks sounds good sounds good these people are all they want the next big sick they want the next master of none right so like working with these people now on something that they are probably very passionate about even if it won't get a lot of traction because it's maybe not going to be high profile and flashy enough, it is still something that's going to get those people into the fold for maybe their next project. I think anthology series, it's not really even the subject matter, I think anthology series are a hard sell because people really like having… Characters you can latch on to and like black mirror has broken through but it's it's hard to do and black mirror's got a a uh you know it's got a sci-fi premise and it's got controversy and all of that but it's still i think i people don't understand black mirror either black mirror is

like clickbait right that's fair you know and i'm not saying this i'm not trying to class aspersions on the show's quality but like it it is popular because it's like oh what are they gonna what are they gonna make me feel bad about now right like it's kind of got that that feeling to it of like people want to just go and see it to see what's happening um so yeah and also it's like it's complete fictiony type stuff right where this one is going to be based upon true stories. So it is different. But I think Black Mirror is more of a... It is like the exception to the rule, I think, for these types of shows.

Yeah, I think so. I think people are not really programmed to do anthology series. But that is two anthology series at Apple, right? Because they're doing the Spielberg one. That's true. Yeah, Amazing Stories, which is more of a Black Mirror except not because... That would be higher profile.

Right, yeah. Just because Spielberg's attached. Should we do some Ask Upgrade? Yeah, I think we should. This episode and Ask Upgrade is brought to you by Squarespace. Use the offer code UPGRADE at checkout and you will get yourself 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace.

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you wear every day uh i much to my shock if you had told me before the Apple Watch shipped where I was really concerned about the fluoroelastomer sport band. I wear a sport band almost the entire time. And lately I've been wearing the Nike sport band with all the holes. Yeah, they're cool looking. It's the kind of like light gray with the black, I or dark gray rings i like that one i have a black one that i wear a lot i have an orange one that i also wear a lot i kind of retire that uh is that just a regular orange one there isn't a nike orange one right yeah it's just a regular one okay um and i bring that out sort of uh during the warmer weather and when the the it's baseball

season my my favorite baseball team's colors are orange and black so having orange stuff then it's like i don't know it feels it's fun to do that and watch bands are all about the fun i have a leather band i have a black i the original black black leather band which is not as good as the black leather band that came later and i put it on sometimes um when i'm maybe trying to trying to dress it up a little bit but the surprise to me is that i always wore a leather band on my watches before and um i find that i end up gravitating toward the that sport band because i really like how it feels so it's weird and unexpected but there it is do you have any dreams for watch bands is there anything that like you specifically want that they don't have uh i don't know um i i think there it's possible that i would see something and it would speak to

me um i i you know the funny thing and i don't think apple's gonna do this is what they really ought to do i mentioned my baseball team earlier is i i feel like apple needs to start actually coming up with, and again, they wouldn't be branded in the sense of like a visible logo, but like, if you're in, you know, if you're in Chicago, can you get the Cubs colors or the, the, the, uh, you know, if you're in San Francisco, can you get the Giants colors or the A's colors? I'm intrigued by that idea of like, can we find color combinations? If you're in a big college football place, can you get the local team's colors? Could they do some color combinations that were inspired by sport or

something like that? I think it's probably impractical because there are so many. And yet, I keep thinking that would be a winner if people could basically wear the colors, fly the colors with their watch bands. So that may be a future. Maybe that's something that they do a limited supply of that's only online ordering or something like that. I don't know. But that's the only thing I can think of. I want to say like a nice new leather band or something like that. But fact is i don't use the leather band that i've got i'm gonna go one step further on your colors thing i i would like to see apple try and do something like nike id one day do you know what nike id is oh is that the uh build order yeah like the full customization thing like you have a bunch of options and you can change all the colors and change different materials to match your own thing.

And you pay more for it. And I would love that, right? It's difficult because it's, especially if a watch band, because it's small, but you would probably pay two to three times the price, but you could get exactly what you wanted. So if you wanted your sports team's colors in a sport loop, you could get that.

I would love that. That would be really great. So then I could get the exact band that I want in the exact colors that i want you know you know how i love customization stuff and that's kind of like the ultimate um my current favorite um watch band is the black sport loop which is a terrible name for what this product is because whilst it is predominantly black it has little flecks of rainbow colors all throughout it which i love um and i love the sport loops because they're really comfortable they are infinitely adjustable right because they use that velcro not velcro um i wear these when i swim and i wear these when i'm just every day like the black

sport loop is my favorite apple watch band like i liked the sport the regular sports um then i really like the nylon and this is like the best mix of all of the stuff that apple's made because i always had my eye on the millenials but never went for it and this gives me what i want from that which is the really great like when i'm swimming i can tighten it and but i can tighten it to the way that i want and then i can very easily adjust it um i really really love the sport loops if you've never tried one go to a store and try one go look at them like they are surprisingly nice i really really like it so the black one is my favorite one because it has these little colors in it which is a nice surprise um bozy writes in do you know of any smart speakers that have a digital out, either optical or coaxial,

suitable for connection to a high-end DAC or ample speakers? So Bozy said, like, the Echo Dot has an aux out, but the internal DAC is low quality. I have no idea about this. I assume probably Sonos, right, would be what you'd want? I think Sonos has a product that is designed to... What's the name of it? But yeah, Sonos has a product that is designed to, what's the name of it? But yeah, Sonos has a product that is designed to go to an amp and has coax out and optical out and all of those things. It's not going to take your voice control unless you're using an Echo with a Sonos integration and the right music service but if you're doing that you could

tell the sonos connect it's called yeah they have one called the connect and the connect amp connect amp it's is its own amp right and the connect you attach to an existing amp so if you've got powered speakers this looks like the original sonos, the Kinect. Yeah, so the Kinect has optical out, coax out, analog out, and you attach it to an amp. Or if you have speakers that require an amp to be powered, you can get the Kinect amp, and it'll do the powering for you. And then what you would do is you would pair that with an Echo that has the Sonos thing, and then you would tell it to

play and you have to and it's limited to i think like spotify and the amazon music service and that you would have to have on the sonos it doesn't do even though the sonos does apple music you can't voice control apple music from an echo but you could do that and at that point you're using voice control on like a little echo dot to get music to play through your um through your speakers through your amp uh via optical or coax out from the sonos but that's i think that's what you have to do right yeah you have to daisy chain in a bit but like that is a pretty cool solution you get the best of everything right you get the best sound quality that you want because it's clearly important to to this person right like to have great sound and i'm assuming they already have great equipment and you also get like for 35 or whatever it is

you get voice control too so you know it's not the echo dot is an easy purchase when you're going into this stuff anyway right like it's so cheap i wonder if they're how cheap they're going to get that and i still don't know why they don't just give those to prime customers like i'm surprised they haven't done other than other than controlling controlling the demand a little bit because i i thought that they would start giving kindles to prime customers too if they asked and they instead they make a cheap kindle but they it's an opportunity for more revenue and it limits how many of them they they make and sell because if you get they probably sell a lot of them for free to people and who wouldn't use them and that doesn't benefit them so sure they probably

tested it because it's amazon chris has written in i have a one terabyte hard drive in my imac would i get better performance by booting from a usb solid state drive or would it be worth the money to get a thunderbolt solid state drive to boot from? The computer is mostly used for stuff like Final Cut and Plex and gaming. And so I guess I have a question that goes on top of this, Jason. Is this even a good idea to boot from an external SSD? I wouldn't boot from an external drive purposefully, only because you're... I don't know, somebody out there will probably tell me, I don't have, you know, I didn't see this question before we started, so I didn't do any research on this.

But personally, I don't do that because I find that booting from external drives tends to be sluggish because you tend to get better performance out of your internal drives than you do going through a bus to the external drive. than you do going through a bus to the external drive. That said, there are probably extreme examples where you've got a really slow spinning hard drive and a really fast external bit of storage, and it might be able to eclipse it. But I... I get nervous about it. Like, I don't understand enough about it,

but it feels like you could be introducing some interesting errors here and there. Also, you're increasing your boot, or you might even arguably speed up your boot time but then you're using the computer and like final cut and plex server and gaming gaming is constrained by probably your gpu more than anything else final cut and is going to be constrained by your um your, your disc speed. And I don't know, is the spinning disc going to be faster or slower than a, an external USB,

USB. Again, I would have to do the math and then there's, then there's theoretical speeds and then there's real world speeds, which are different. I don't know. It's possible. I don't want to give some advice here because I haven't done the research

other than to say that I would, um, I would never boot from an external drive. That's just, I, that's just a rule of mine and maybe, maybe things have changed, but, um, I'm, I'm a little skeptical. I, there is probably an external super fast storage that you could boot from, but, um, even then, um, I don't know. I don don't know i don't have a good answer to this question uh rick has written in do either of you have a strategy when your podcast queue starts to get too long um i just don't listen to those podcasts like i i prioritize the ones that i i have the ones that i listen to every episode i have the ones that I like to listen to when I want to listen to a podcast and they're available. And, you know, at that line, if there are episodes that are unlistened to, I mean, it happens.

I'm not going to name any names, but there are podcasts hosted by friends of mine where I just don't listen to every episode. I listen when I can, but they're not all on the, like, I will listen to every episode. I listen when I can, but they're not all on the, like, I will listen to every single episode of this podcast list. And so they, and then also there, I have some podcasts that come and go because they're the more storytelling, like Hello from the Magic Tavern or Dragon Friends or the Adventure Zone, where I will listen to, I'll get on a kick and I'll listen to a bunch of them and then I'll leave them there because they're not going anywhere and they're not topical. So it's a combination of those. But okay, I'll mention one like Reconcilable Differences I really like, but I don't listen to every episode. Cortex I really

like. I don't listen to every episode because I don't have enough time. I don't have a lot of podcasts listening. And then all of a sudden I'll have a couple of things I have to drive to. Like next week I'm speaking at a user group in Sacramento, so I'm going to be spending a couple hours in the car each way. Well, I'll be listening to lots of podcasts on that trip and so that'll be a chance for me to get caught up a little bit but you know by the time i do that there will have been like a bunch of episodes that i haven't heard of some of my friends podcasts that i will just have to skip and so i triage it yeah mine's very similar i i if i get my list starts to get too long i just start start cutting out stuff that's topical.

So if I have a show that is news-based and a second episode comes in, well, the first one's going to go now because it's old to the point of there being a new one. So all that old news is gone again. So that's something that I do. It's kind of just triage. And then I let things just go into a long list

and I can pick them out when I want to if I want to get to them later. But typically i will listen to shows that i really love that are news focused will get get hit first or just the stuff that like i want i'm like waiting for the episodes always right like to the point when i see them i'm like that is going straight to the top of my list um because i can't I must listen to it today. Keegan says, do you think that Apple's competitors like Microsoft and Samsung know more about Apple's future plans via supply chains or espionage than we hear from rumor sites? Like, is that something that we believe happens in the technology industry? And do we think that they probably know more about it than we do

or at a faster pace what do you think jason i don't know for sure my guess would be that they know differently my guess would be that some of the stuff they discover from reports and that maybe some of there's also stuff that they that they glean um from the supply chain or from, you know, from sources or friends or all of those things. But I would bet that mostly it's from media reports, actually. Yeah, I would, I would,

I would agree like the majority in the pie would be, they know what we know, but every now and then these companies are going to have their own sources because that's just a thing, right? You want to know what your competitors are up to. And sometimes that means corporate espionage or whatever, which I'm sure does happen in this industry,

but it needs to happen less because there are people that make websites about it. I bet this needs to happen more in the oven world than it does in the computer world, because there probably is an oven rumors site, but it's not going to be as heavily focused on. I think about video games quite a lot with this because it's something I find really interesting

that a video game can be basically completed before anybody knows about it. It stays under wraps really well. So I would expect that there's a little bit more of this corporate espionage stuff in the video game world because it seems to be that video games are able to be kept under wraps for longer. Like, you know, for example,

Super Smash Brothers just got announced as a game that will be coming this year. This is a game that people have been going crazy for, like hoping that it will come out. It's obviously been in development, but we didn't know until it was announced like a week or two ago. But I expect that Sony probably knew

because somebody was able to get that information to them. Who knows? It's very interesting. Last question from Keith. Do you use any charging stations to keep your devices tidy? If so, which one? I use the Studio Neat material dock on my bedside table, which is an iPhone and apple watch combo thing which i really like um but that's all i have kind of charging station wise what about you jason

i have that uh funny little apple watch charging dock that looks like a classic mac is that oh okay yep yep that i can put it in and and you know it's in it's in the watch mode or clock mode alarm whatever that's called is that made by elago night yeah i think that's right okay um i have that on my bedside i don't keep my phone by my bedside so i don't and i just have a lightning plug for my ipad and the phone's laying out in the kitchen on a chi charger so nothing. If you want to send in your questions for the end of the show, just send us a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade

and they'll go into a list for us to pick from in a future episode. Thank you so much to everybody that did that. Just bear in mind, we will do AskUpgrade next week, most likely, but it will be focused on the event.

So if you have questions after Apple's event next week, just send a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade and I'll try and grab a selection of those for us to talk about on the show. So if you have questions about what's happened, maybe there's specific things you want to get Jason's opinions on, having been in the room, having maybe seen whatever new products are released, if any, just send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade. But if you have other things you want to know about in the week, just send them in as normal,

and they'll probably be picked on a future episode. And also, if you have a question you want to hear us open the show with, the hashtag SnellTalk is the one you want for that. Don't forget, there will be a scorecard for the draft in the show notes for you to follow along at home. And if you want to come and see us at WWDC, tickets to get for the RelayFM live show or conf, there's links in the show notes for that too. If you want to find Jason online, it's at sixcolors.com.

Jason, will you be doing any event coverage next week? Of course. Whatever it is, I don't know, but something. Yes. Are you going to be doing live? I'll probably leave the live tweeting to Dan and focus on paying attention. And what is that Twitter account for people to follow?

That's a Six Colors event is the Twitter account or you can just follow Bleed Six Colors and we'll link to it from there. I will put Six Colors event in the show notes so people can follow along. Dan and Jason do a great job with that. I always keep that one going when we've got something we've got an event going on.

But Jason is at jsnell on Twitter. I am at imyke. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. Thanks again to our sponsors Squarespace, Smile with Text Expander, FreshBooks, and SaneBox. And we'll be back next week

from new and exciting locations. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. See you on the other side.