Upgrade - 186: Black Market Crayons

Episode Date: March 27, 2018

Jason attended Apple's education event and reports live and direct from Chicago to discuss the new sixth-generation iPad, Apple's place in the education market, the relevance of the Apple Pencil for education, and the whole scene at Lane Tech College Prep High School.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 186 today's show is brought to you by anchor mac walden and simple contacts my name is mike hurley and i am joined live and on location by mr jason snell hi jason snell hello from Chicago, Mike Hurley. We're going to get to all of this in a moment, including the special location that you're in. But I have a Snell Talk question for you, Jason. And we're going completely off reservation today with a question from Corey.

And Corey wants to know, Jason, The Office or Parks and Rec? I'm going to say that one's actually pretty easy because Parks and Rec. Because I find The Office makes me, I like The Office, makes me a little uncomfortable. It's my daughter's favorite TV show. But for me, I would choose Parks and Rec because it's a little less cringy and painful. And I never had a boss like Leslie Knope, but i did have a boss who was kind of like michael scott so parks and rec that is interesting to me because uh i love the off i love parks and

rec but the office wins for me um i'm a huge fan of the office and i actually wanted to provide a piece of follow-out here jason to a new show on the incomparable that features micah surgeon and tiff arman it's called somehow i. And it's all about The Office. They're doing a rewatch of the entire show. And it's adorable and wonderful. And I think everyone should go and listen to it because it's great. And I'm now slowly rewatching The Office along with them.

Yes, I agree. People should check it out. Without further ado, we should probably get into today's proceedings. You are calling in from Chicago. You are in the Dubai Friday slash Roboism slash Cards Against Humanity studio. Yes, the Magic Tavern, indeed. Indeed.

And we have a producer today, which is a wonderful thing. We're so professional now. Finally. Hi, producer Alex Cox. Hello. This is a thing. This is quite a thing. I feel like we've

ascended to the big leagues now that we have a producer for an episode yeah with there's like a big glass window with somebody sitting behind it who's who's uh listening and occasionally laughing but you can't hear it because it's soundproof and then they can press a button and they talk at any moment and uh it makes me feel like i'm on a like a tv show about radio like uh like frazier that's hello seattle i'm listening except we're in chicago you are i'm not listening because today you attended uh apple's education event and listeners of our previous episode will know that we took a draft as we always, for our predictions of the event. And I guess we should run through how we did.

And it was a disaster, I think is probably the best way to put it. I feel like we may have, in the past, scored similarly, but not so badly because there were so many of these picks that weren't even close and like sometimes what happens is we score you know we get about half of the picks right but kind of we're in the ballpark with some things right but we just missed the exact answers um but for this draft about two-thirds of the things that were on our list were just not even not even close no i in fact i i am at some point late in the event when they were showing a video i flipped over to my apple draft uh scorecard and i looked at the ones i didn't go back and forth. I just looked at mine first.

And I thought, oh, my God, I got destroyed. I only got four right. Then I looked at your side. It was like, I am going to wear the crown for this draft, but it is a crown of shame. I kind of scored it at like 4-2. Yeah, it's arguably 4-3, and it doesn't really matter because I got four. But Stephen Hackett, our adjudicator, the rules, the constitution, the bylaws of the upgrade draft say,

one, Stephen Hackett will make all decisions where we can't agree. And two, no half points. So Stephen, give a half point for one of your choices. That's not how it works. It's not. It turns out our adjudicator doesn't know the rules. So the things that I kind of scored you was correct. New Apple Classroom features, Apple Pencil support on non-pro iPads, ClassKit, and a new Apple-c created ios app that's what i scored

your four on yep i had a question mark on the lower base price for the ipad but i don't think that we can count the education price really no it already existed that that price was already the education price so look at that i didn't know that yeah so that's definitely not not it no at least i prioritized my picks right my first four picks are right and then there were the four i threw away at the end yeah that that's actually pretty good pretty good skill from you there uh i got new basic ipad um first pick good pick i work updates which if i remember rightly you thought was never going to happen which is hilarious i was very impressed when they announced that i was just thinking it was like a picture of mike appeared above the screen and angels sang like i work up i was very impressed when i saw that i was like oh i'm

gonna clean up um so yeah the other one there was a question for me was an ibooks update but that didn't really happen which is a surprise because that was the one that literally everyone thought was a lock right like everybody figured it was a look and the only reason it was a potential half point is that they did basically it seems like kill ibooks author and roll it back because it actually was an adapted version of pages back into pages on mac and now on ios for book creation inside pages but that's not actually an update to iBooks. And if one of us had picked iBooks author, which was actually on our list and didn't get picked,

that would have been the one that would have gotten, I think, credited. So I think in the end, it's four to two, I would say. Yeah, I still think that like 11.3 is still gonna change the name, but that nothing was even mentioned close to that on stage. So you take away the first win of the year which is it's a strong point to have right because you're going into wwdc with a point in your pocket so you could take what you could potentially take the entire year um at wwdc so yeah i could basically just pick spinal tap for

all my picks and still be okay, as long as I do well in the fall. I feel like you've misunderstood my point, but sure, you can do that if you want to. Do you know what, Jason? Do it. I would like you to go for that, because there is literally, any chance of there ever being Spinal Tap has now passed, right? You're right. Because

Eleven has come up, and they did a Jet Black phone. That's what they want you to think, and that's when they get you. That's when Apple truly surprises you. That is what they do when on stage. True surprises. All right. We should talk about the whole event and some of the announcements from today. But before we do that, let me thank our first sponsor. And today that is Simple Contacts. It is amazing when an app can take a tiresome task, a thing that is a frustration in your life and make it completely fuss free. And that is what Simple Contacts does by being the easy way to renew your contact lens prescription. You'll be able to reorder your

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$200. Simple Contacts can save you money and time, but I do want to let you know, and I have to, this is not a replacement for your periodic full eye health exam. This is just so you can get the contacts that you need. Now, Jason, I understand you have downloaded the Simple Contacts app and taken the vision test. And I kind of just wanted to know what that experience was like. Yeah, it was very easy. You set it up and it takes pictures of your face, of your eyes. And it's trying to make sure that you can read. Basically, it wants to make sure your prescription hasn't drifted because this is not a replacement for that eye test. And they want to make sure everything you can read. Basically, it wants to make sure your prescription hasn't drifted

because this is not a replacement for that eye test. And they want to make sure everything is okay. And then at that point, you're done with that. And then you just go on and put in what the contact brand is that you use, which mine is I have a really obscure prescription with an astigmatism correction and all this stuff. And they had it. It was right there.

It was not a problem. It showed up the first thing. They had it which i i was not convinced was going to be the case but it was there they surprised you as a listener of this show you can get 30 off your contact lenses just go to simplecontacts.com slash ahoy a-h-o-y or you can enter the code ahoy at checkout that is simplecontacts.com slash ahoy. Or simply use code ahoy at checkout for $30 off. Our thanks to Simple Contacts for their support of this show. So today I was following live blogs like it was 2009. There was no video of the event.

So I had Twitter up. I had the live blog up. I had the Verges live blog up. And I was following along in the Six Colors Live Events Twitter account and was kind of just tuning in and seeing what was going on. It was really weird for me to kind of know that stuff was happening, but all I could do was wait for things to refresh.

Like every time I saw, oh, it's a video now, it was like, okay, well, I'll wait for a minute. It was very strange. But I have, okay, well, I'll wait for a minute. So it was very strange. But I have to say, I did enjoy the nostalgia because I would say overall, the event was a whelming event. Like there wasn't a ton to it. It wasn't a lot of excitement,

kind of got a bunch of stuff that I was expecting that you were expecting. So I don't know, to have there be some kind of nostalgia to it gave me something. Having been in the environment, having seen the event event jason because you were there in person today uh in chicago at lane tech high um do you think that there was more of a reason to not have the live video than just a technical one do you think they were handling expectations like why do you think that there was no live video today? I, it's a good question. I think my number one theory is that it's a new place with new equipment that they've never been before and that they were reluctant to do it because it could not work.

And then they would have people complaining and there'd be a stream failure. And, you know, it is a minor event on their calendar. So perhaps investing money and frustration potentially in getting it to go live when they could just make it live an hour or two later maybe wasn't worth it for them. So that's my number one is just it was that. that they couldn't do it and feel like they wouldn't run into trouble and didn't want to spend the effort, you know, to double and triple protect so that it worked right the first time. And this is the only time they're probably ever going to do an event here. So do they really want to do that? That's my number one. Number two would be, I suppose, yes, since it's a minor event, doesn't matter as much. I guess you, though, you know, it's an Apple Media event. People are going to pay attention regardless. I think any Apple event is going to get attention. So if they could stream

it live, I don't think they would be like, eh, people aren't going to be happy about it. I don't think that's the case. I think they want people to see it. That's why they call the event. My third wildcard theory is that there may actually be something specific, and I don't know what this would be exactly but it is a chicago public school and i don't know if there potentially is some weird regulation about uh about live you know performances or on the internet or something i honestly don't know but my guess is it's the first one max max says no by the way mass friends of friend of the show max temkin has just emerged from a uh a secret location

behind producer alex cox to shake his head so i think it's i think it's just they didn't want to screw it up i think i literally i think the simplest explanation the occam's razor explanation is they couldn't guarantee with the level of precision they can do for the the venues that they're familiar with that they would be able to make it work live okay so they just decided not to worry about it and it wasn't as an important enough event that they felt like they had to like control 100 of what was being said about it right like you know they weren't unveiling anything here that was gonna like shut our headlines around the world no it's not an iphone announcement and the iphone announcement is the big one and it wasn't that and they'll be they'll be sure to do that one live everywhere.

I have to say, while we were walking in, I had several people say to me, like, this is like the old days, right? I'm like, yeah, it's pretty funny that we're back doing this. And I was reminded, I said, I remember when we were told as we were walking into an Apple event at I think Town Hall, although it might have been at Moscone, no live blogging, no blogging, no blogging. That was actually a thing. And I said, oh, I'm not going to do any live blogging. And instead what I had is I had an iChat window open to Peter Cohen, our news writer back at the office. And I would just give him the play by play. And then Cohen would turn it into a news story with quotes and paragraphs and stuff. And we weren't live blogging.

We were doing a continuously updated news story. Totally different. Anyway, they got over it. Yeah, they got over it because they realized that the live blogging was actually good. And then they did get to that moment where they started doing it live.

And then all of us live bloggers were like, why do we exist anymore? And I actually think that the live commentary stuff is better. I actually kind of like – I prefer when we're there to give analysis to what we're seeing on stage beyond like the – because there's probably – in terms of news breaking at any of these events, even the most laden with information events, there's probably a good, what, eight tweets in that, if we're live tweeting an event. And the rest of it is all quotes and details and things like that.

I think it's kind of nice to stop having to do that because people can watch live. And the people who really want the breaking news can get that. And then you can also add this other layer, which is I'm no longer transcribing what, uh, what Greg Joswiak is staying, staying on stage. Now I'm saying, here's why that's an interesting point. Here's their, their, their, you know, referencing Google there. That's interesting because of this and all of that. And I think I actually kind of like it better that way. Um, now that everybody can see most of these events live, but this was a throwback and that was fine.

So I want to ask you like a kind of an overarching meta question for this entire event. Having seen it all and being in the environment, why did this event exist? Why did Apple not do this stuff with press releases? Like what was happening that really required bringing all of these people together today uh apple wants to tell wanted to tell a story about education bottom line they want to talk about how awesome their products are in the education market especially the ipad

they really want to push further the idea of ipads in schools. And the fact is there is a narrative out there that is about the success of Chromebooks in schools. Chromebooks have, I think they have more than half the market now in education. It has been a huge success for Google and its hardware partners for Chromebooks. These cheap laptops that don't run any operating system, which also means that they need much less maintenance because they're just Chromebooks. They're basically browser tabs. They all get updated automatically. They can be very easily controlled by administrators. And so put the ease of control and the limit to what you can do with them to screw them up together with a low price.

And you can see why those would be successful in schools. So Apple is fighting against that perception and wants to tell a story about why they're, again, people who were expecting Apple to, I kind of hope they would cut the price a little bit, but expected Apple to compete on price down at the level of a Chromebook. I think that was unrealistic. In fact, if you look, the first Chrome OS tablet just was announced, and I think it costs what the iPad costs. I think it's a $329 or maybe it's a $349. It's not unreasonable for a product with these specs to have this price. I think what Apple wants to tell is not that we're going to be your low price leader. We're going to compete with this cheap, crappy, but cheap laptop.

And you get what you pay for, but the advantage is it's cheap, a cheap Chromebook laptop, right? What Apple wants to do is tell the story of why you pay more for Apple, because you get more. And you get more because you get these apps, and you get the now and you get these apps. Again, these apps, you get AR, you get like they're trying to tell that story about why even though the Apple stuff is more expensive, it's better as a way to get some segment of the market to be willing to spend that money to get the better thing or to feel good about it or to give ammunition to the people who are arguing that this should be what we buy instead of the Chromebooks. And so by adding the new iPad with the pencil and all that and the AR apps and the improvements to their software, including the expansion of the iCloud story space, which is a big thing today, they're able to tell that story.

And that's why this event exists is essentially instead of just rolling out the iPad with a press release and saying we also have a couple of changes to our education stuff. Like most people don't even know that they mentioned the multi-user login stuff today for iPads. And I will guarantee you that somebody wrote that up as a brand new feature. They mentioned the multi-user login stuff today for iPads. And I will guarantee you that somebody wrote that up as a brand new feature. And I think it's existed for two years now. But people don't know about it because people aren't really attuned to the education market. So this was a chance for Apple to devote some time and show some love for education. And I think also saying we care about education and we love teachers and all of these things makes people who are in the education world feel better about Apple too. So I think that's part of it.

It's Apple selling itself to education. So it's about all of that. And they seem to bring a lot of teachers in. And if I'm correct in kind of following along from home, it was all female, all the teachers. All women, yeah. Which was great right there was i think just uh joss and tim cook were the only guys on stage and yes was all women from there yeah the teachers and also the apple uh some apple people yeah and i you know just wanted

to shout out it was great to see uh app camp for girls get a mention on stage as well which is a yeah that was that was exciting that was tim cook just saying you know here's app cam for girls is using swift to teach girls oh he actually said it that's amazing because we don't get it all i saw i saw the i saw their logo on a slide but he actually spoke about it oh no tim cook said app cam for girls out loud yes wonderful those i'm sure i'm sure they will when the video comes up then they'll be even more excited. But yeah, it was an example in how different education groups are teaching people how to code. That is amazing. I'm really pleased about that. That was pretty cool.

They did a great job with the whole highlighting education stuff. And we all, especially in the media, have to look at it with that layer of remove, which is what is Apple selling here? And why are they doing what they're doing? But on the base level of how they showcased education and how technology is being used in education, they did a great job of showing that. And then people can criticize that and say that it was, you know, they can say it was cynical or that it's not realistic. There are lots of things that I think your experts who are educators, who are people like Fraser Spears and Bradley Chambers and people like that who talk about this and write about this a lot will have their takes on it. But I did think Apple did a great job of expressing a love of teachers and students and a pride in the fact that like the everyone can code stuff has been so

embraced in a lot of places so you had a whole day of school today turns out yeah i went to school had to get there you know got there a little before 8 30 got a had to wait in line to be left in the door which is unusual i think for school. But then we were in this huge, it's a huge building with these long halls, and there's lockers, and there's an auditorium, and there are classrooms. And so we started in kind of a holding area, which was in this big, sort of a wide spot in the hallway, quite frankly, but it was in the middle of a hallway right by the teacher's bathrooms. I went in the teacher's bathroom at one point, Mike.

It was very exciting. I kept waiting for a teacher to come in and say, hey, you don't belong in here. Get back to class. But it didn't happen because it was spring break, so there were no teachers there. There were students. There probably were some teachers there,

but a bunch of Lane Tech students were there. They had to get a permission slip signed because I actually heard somebody say, if you're a student, bring your permission slip, sign, and we'll let you in. And they got to see the event, which was cool. And they were running around. At one point, there were a bunch of them running down the stairs from upstairs where we weren't allowed to go. And one of the people who was there, because the Apple staffs these things, incredible. There were like hundreds of people there lining the hallways saying, do you need any help?

Where would you like to go? And they said to the – there was like five girls coming down the stairs. Do you need any help? And one of them just says, no, we go here. We know where everything is. And they left. It was pretty great. But they were at the event, which was pretty cool.

So after all of that, sort of like the preview stuff where we get there and they serve coffee and they get breakfast and stuff like that. And journalists are never going to turn down free food. So that's very popular. Then they lead us into the auditorium. We have the presentation, which was about an hour. And then actually, as we were checking in, we were told, check your email. You just received your class schedule. And we all got this little thing that said, here's where you're going. You're going here for orientation, which was the breakfast, basically. Then there's the presentation. And then you're going to go, there's a classroom and there's a hands-on lab. And there were multiple rooms, so they were kind of scheduling different people to different places.

But after the event, that's what we ended up doing is walking down many of these very long hallways into these classrooms, these amazing classrooms. these very long hallways into these classrooms, these amazing classrooms. There's like an arts section in one classroom and there's like a science section in another classroom where the people are like using Swift Playgrounds to fly drones and to roll around little Sphero balls. A lot of really cool stuff. And then also like a classroom demo

and an iPad cart demo and administrative and IT for that stuff. So they had multiple classrooms and then these three big hands-on areas with people showing off apps and different technologies. So they put a lot of effort into getting just a huge amount of samples of what people are doing with educational apps and also maintenance and rollout of these devices. So there was an awful lot of other stuff in this huge venue. They took over many, many classrooms. It seemed like that they really leaned into the theme. Right. These were hands-on areas, but they gave them a fun flair, right?

And I think that's kind of cool. And I think they want to leave the impression with everybody involved that Apple is serious about education, which I think they did successfully. And I think there's a point of pride here too, which is Apple feels that they are really innovating in education stuff. that they are really innovating in education stuff. And that when people write about, I think maybe they want to change the narrative from Chromebooks are selling well to be, well, Chromebooks are selling well, but look at all the amazing things Apple is doing. Because honestly, that's what they want to do.

They want to be the people who, you know, they want to be the company that is viewed as being the better answer. They don't, they're not going to be the cheaper answer, but they want to be viewed as the better answer. And so by setting all this up and telling the story and showing the richness of it and then relaying this event and all the other work they're going to do, every other conversation they have with somebody in education now, they're going to point at this and say, see, did you see our event? Do you see how many things? Did you see the story that came out of it? All of that is going to do every other conversation they have with somebody in education now they're going to point at this and say see did you see our event do you see how many things did you see the story that came out of it all of that is going to factor in but isn't there like a weird kind of duality to this type of thing like apple are on stage talking about like all of the tools that they have and how amazing it is and how it helps kids learn but it is priced at a point where many many maybe most schools can't

afford it like isn't there like a weird thing to that where they're like oh our tools are better but not for all kids i mean it's all i don't know right isn't it it's kind of an awkward thing to say like to stand on stage and say like how much better your tools are and how much more they can help kids learn but then it's priced at a point which they choose and that point that they choose whether it's through what they want their margins to be or what they want their hardware to look like but it prices it prices schools out of the equation. Yeah, I think that's the underlying tension in any conversation about Apple and education. And I see a lot of criticism of Apple for it,

and I think some of it is justified, which is Apple is trying to do both. It's trying to be what it's always been, which is this kind of luxury brand. We always talk about how it's never the low price leader. Apple's never going to make a $400 laptop, right? They're just not going to do it because Apple's not going to play in that market. Apple's going to always be in the mid to high end. And you get what you pay for. You get quality. And they're not making a completely despecced

device so that they can sell it for $300 and you've got a lousy experience and it doesn't last and it feels flimsily. They're just not going to play in those areas. And that's been their game for a long time. And they're very successful with it because they're playing in areas where the margins are better. Same on phones. Same on computers. The problem is that schools are not, a lot of schools anyway, and certainly public schools, are not places where purchasing luxury products are particularly common, even if it's affordable luxury products.

It doesn't really fit with that part of Apple's brand because schools, especially public schools, have very small budgets. They need to get stuff that's cheap and they need it to last, which is very hard. So if you're Apple, you have a choice to make. You can forego margins on education products. And I believe that back in the day, they did more of that. Back in the day, the education prices for Apple stuff was a lot lower than the regular price. And they don't seem to do as much of that anymore. And I don't think Apple

has cut its margins that much to regular people. I think it's just reduced the margin cuts that it offers to education. And that's just something that they've decided is that they're not willing to sacrifice margin in order to increase their market share in education. And as a result, you end up in the situation where Apple is making the case saying, yeah, our stuff's more expensive, but it's better. And if you can afford it, and it's better, and it lasts longer, and the apps are great, and it will be an overall better buy for you. The funny thing is, the complaints I hear from educators,

talk to Fraser Spears about who does out of school with Bradley Chambers, right? They do a podcast about education tech. Did it ended last week, but yes. Oh, they did. Well,

yeah, it came to an end last week, but there's still a lot of information there if you want it. That's true. That's true. It was a bad timing. I would say they need to, they need to bring it back for one more episode. Now the that's it's complete now you can listen to the whole thing

and not worry about it uh so so fraser's comp complaints about this about apple's present presentation in schools like he's not complaining about the hardware he's not complaining about the prices he's complaining about the software and the cloud services and all sorts and the administrative overhead and managing apple ids and things like that so again yes it's true apple has chosen not to build the the uh you know the low-cost technology solution that will get them to maximize their market share in education. But their argument is very similar to the argument in the rest of the market, which is, no, we're not going to give you a $150 iPad, but when you buy our stuff, you get what you pay for. You get value that you're not going to get. And as long as that's true, I think it's okay.

The challenge is if somebody looks at a Chromebook and looks at an iPad and says, this costs half of what the iPad does, and it basically does everything I need. And this other AR and the pencil and all of that, that's great, but I can't afford it, and would we really use it? And it's nice to have, but it's not in my budget and I'm not going to prioritize it and forget it. And that's where the rubber meets the road for Apple and education is, can they do enough so that people see the value in what they're doing? Do they have that value there to make that argument that you get what you pay for? And even though it's more expensive, there's a whole lot of advantage to

using the Apple stuff. And, you know, you talk to people in education, some of them say that's true, and some of them say it's not true. And I think that's behind the rise in Chromebooks. And I'm not convinced that this is going to be enough on its own. But the rising chromebooks has lit a fire under apple in terms of education and this is the first real sign of it uh then great if apple walks away and says we've done enough now and the and the market says forget it you have not then they'll feel it yeah i i definitely can't detach myself from the like the weirdness that i feel with with some of it you know like i know where i went to school and i know my school couldn't afford wouldn't have been able to afford this

right where i grew up in london and i know that they still wouldn't be able to now you know and and so it is awkward i find it an awkward thing at times you know like you look at that school that they picked out today it seemed like that that is a very very well put together school that they chose like from a financial perspective you know and and i think that it is awkward to kind of be like we're enabling this amazing stuff for the future you know the future of today but like only in areas that can afford it and and i don't know there is there is a there's an awkwardness to that to, but we don't need to belabor the point anymore. No, I think it may be worth talking about at some point. This is a criticism that our friend Andy Anotko, late of the Chicago Sun-Times, but no longer, by the way.

If you are somebody who wants to hire a great tech writer, Andy is available, and you should talk to him. I saw him today. He's great. is available and you should talk to him. I saw him today. He's great. He brings up this point a lot, which is there is a debate to be had about whether Apple,

if its goal is to make the world better, should be saying, well, we want to make the world better, but only for people who can afford the, the lowest level to which we're willing to stoop. And that if you can't afford a laptop that costs more than $799 or $699, if you can't afford an iPhone that costs whatever the base price of the cheapest iPhone is, sorry, you can't afford us. And I think there's an argument to be

made that Apple has standards and that they don't want their brand connected with products that they don't think are good enough but i have heard and i can understand the other argument which is it is apple saying um basically our stuff is for schools that have money and then if you don't have money find a lesser product to use instead that and that's the that's the dark way of painting that yeah all right there is there were a bunch of announcements today and there is a bunch of interesting stuff in that so why don't we put a pin in this topic we'll move on to this but first uh we'll take our second break and thank anchor for their support of this show anchor is the easiest way for anyone to make a podcast if you've seen this event today and you're like, I have some stuff to say,

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briefing show hosted by RelayFM co-founder Stephen Hackett. It gives you the latest headlines on technology to help keep you informed. And we chose Anchor because they have fantastic tools for this hosted by really FM co-founder Stephen Hackett. It gives you the latest headlines on technology to help keep you informed. And we chose Anchor because they have fantastic tools for this stuff. They were able to get us onto Amazon Echo and Google Home really easily because that's something

that's really, really difficult to do. And Anchor's method of distribution is great. And they give you an RSS feed and all that kind of stuff and also give you a place on the web for your shows to live. If you have something you want to say, if you have a podcast you want to start, there's nothing stopping you because Anchor makes it so easy.

Go to anchor.fm slash RelayFM to check out more about what Anchor has to offer and also to subscribe to and check out Subnet. Our thanks to Anchor for their support of this show and RelayFM. So the iPad was the big news of the day in general. And I want to ask you some questions about the lack of the Mac in this event a little bit later on. But the iPad was what we expected. The iPad was what was focused on. We got the new 9.7 inch iPad. Well, is it? Is my question to you, Jason. What is this device? Is this an update to the 9.7 inch or is this just a slightly hobbled iPad Pro? What is this device? It's the sixth generation iPad, Mike. I mean, it is a 9.7. It's got the updated processor. It's got the A10, you know, Touch ID, all of those things.

And it's got really the thing that is different is that it's got Apple Pencil support, which, you know, is a no-brainer. I think that's why we all talked about it last week. Like, that is such a great thing to offer to education to have a pencil support. to offer to education to have a pencil support. Just you can think of it like students using the Apple Pencil to write and draw and take notes and do all of those things. Like, yes, they need to do that. So they added that in, which means that they had to upgrade the digitizer and do all the magic that they need to do to get the Apple Pencil to work on it.

But otherwise, it's just a step forward for that base model, sixth generation, 9.7 inch iPad. So it really is better to think of this as a 9.7 inch with a pencil, right? Because it has no smart connector. It doesn't have Pro Motion or True Tone or anything like that, right? Exactly. And is the processor, is that an update, the A10 processor? Is that an update to this line? Yeah, I think so. Okay, but again, it doesn't have the A10X like our current iPad Pros do. Let's talk about the Apple Pencil, right? Because really, that's what's going on here.

You can get it in a gold, that lovely gold color now, which is like the gold that you get on the iPhone 8. But really, this is just an iPad at the same price point, but it's got Apple Pencil support. So why now? Like Apple Pencil support is now clearly not seen to be a pro thing anymore. This is what we were speculating on. But Apple have made that the case, right?

Apple Pencil support doesn't mean that your iPad is a pro iPad anymore. Yeah, I would say, and we talked about this last week the pro ipad pro doesn't mean what it meant when the apple pencil came out like ipad pro used to mean it has um a smart connector well first it meant it's 12.9 inches right yep and then the 9.7 came out ipad pro and we're like oh well what they've got in common is they've got the – with the 9.7, it was they've got the white color gamut and they've got the pencil and they've got the smart connector. And that's what it is. That's really what separates them. But in the intervening year, the 9.7 got turned into a 10.5.

And then they also updated the 12.9 to bring it into spec. So they're both with bigger screens and better specs. And there's enough room in there for them to push the pencil down and say, the pencil is not what makes an iPad Pro an iPad Pro now, which would have been a harder case to make when they introduced the iPad Pro. But I think that was the right call. I think if you look at this, if there's one thing to do, it's to bring down the pencil to this. Because this is such a great market for it in education. And that's probably the core of why this event happened.

That's probably the little seed at the center that said, okay, what story can we tell around this? Because we want to bring the pencil to the low end iPad because it's going to be great in education. And then from that, they, you know, they built an entire education event. Yeah. Cause like, it really did feel like the pencil was the star of the show. Like it appeared to be that every slide was drawn with an apple pencil right it looked like

that and all of the marketing on apple's website is very focused around handwriting so like the apple pencil is is is right there it's like right front and center in all of this yeah that's the that's the story but there was no new apple pencil is the Apple Pencil that we know and love, right? It's the same one that there's always been. Yeah, it's no different. There's an $89 education price, which I assume was there before, but now it's more relevant.

But it's just the Apple Pencil. Nothing new. That was a draft pick. It didn't go. Do you think that adding an Apple Pencil to a regular iPad makes it an easier purchase for people? Do you think we're going to see even more sales of this $329 iPad, which is what it's priced at for consumers, because it now supports the Apple Pencil?

Yeah, I think it makes a better product in general. I think that's true. I don't know how much, you know, how niche-y is the pencil. Like, is it the product that, like so many people, I just want to draw things on my iPad. I don't know. I don't know. But I'm sure it will sell more of them. I think Apple is confident enough that any lost sales to somebody who was going to buy an iPad Pro just for the pencil will be made up by the fact that they are going to sell a lot more iPads. And there are plenty of other reasons to buy an iPad Pro. Yeah, I do think it's interesting, though. Like, you know, I definitely believe that this year, the iPad Pro takes more steps into its future, like what makes it a pro device you know we spoke

about that like the way we think it's going to look and it is interesting to me that they haven't got that to show now but they have brought this the lower end ipad closer to it right so they've made the the ipad pro less competitive right at this point right now. So, you know, obviously our assumption would be that they really believe that this is going to be a net positive thing for the iPad line to add the Apple Pencil to the lower-end iPad now, potentially at the detriment of the iPad Pro, which is a much more expensive device. I guess it depends on how much you love the Apple Pencil, because as somebody who loves the Apple Pencil, you may feel very strongly that it's a huge asset for the ipad pro i don't as somebody who doesn't use the apple pencil i think it's i think it's there but i think it's i think it can

survive without it i don't think i think apple believe it though you know like they've put a lot of marketing weight into this at least well sure but sure. But I think Apple believes that it's not the pencil support is no longer required to drive people to the iPad Pro, that there are plenty of other reasons to get an iPad Pro. And presumably there'll be a new iPad Pro probably, you know, later this year that will make it even more of a stark difference between them. And that's enough. But what do you think is more important though apple pencil or smart keyboard two schools uh good question now the smart keyboard is not cheap um i'm a little surprised i i i wondered about that i think the smart connector is not great. I think maybe it's not as much of a driver as we thought it might be.

I wonder what research Apple did about the smart keyboard in schools and whether they would buy smart keyboards if those were available versus the pencil and realized the pencil is cheaper and the potential applications for the pencil are so strong that it's more important to get that on there than the smart keyboard.

I'm still a little surprised that they didn't have like, well, we've added the smart connector to this thing and there's this fancy Logitech case. I also heard from some people who said that in some schools for certain tests, a wired keyboard is required. Like they don't trust wireless keyboards, which is kind of wacky, but that would be an application for the smart connector. So I don't know. I mean,

I think the answer is probably that if you look at the, the cost of the Logitech case, they mentioned when they rolled this out, that there's a new Logitech like rugged case for it. Yep. That the whole goal there was kind of to optimize for price um and building in a smart connector does not do that so i think i think it's an arguable thing for the future that bringing a keyboard down for schools is going to be also a use case but as we

found out it's not the end of the world to use a bluetooth keyboard you know that's what i use most of the time on the screen right again i feel like it cannot be okay i know that there are some schools and some school districts that require keyboards in the u.s which i know is why it's an important thing and maybe for some older students but unless that is a requirement i i really really just feel like we have to remember that kids are used to glass like this is yeah that's right this is what this is what we do now right like they may not have any problem with the i i i'm still not convinced that there are schools out there that are saying write a whole essay on your ipad's keyboard but um it's less of an issue over time. So we mentioned it, but I'll reiterate it.

This iPad is at $329 for consumers and $299 for schools. Is this the pricing you would have wanted to see? Would you have liked to have seen? I mean, everyone would have liked to have seen this be less, of course. Why not? Make it $50. You know what I'm saying, right? Everyone would like it to be less.

But was this what you was expecting? Did you think Apple were going to try and price this more aggressively than they did? I, you know, will refer back to what we talked about a little while ago, which is I would like to have seen them be a little more aggressive. Yes. I think from Apple's perspective, maybe what they did was say, OK, we're not going to lower the price, but we're going to add pencil and we're going to do it that way. Like, which would you prefer? An iPad that was $40 cheaper or an iPad with pencil? Because I don't know how much the pencil support adds to the cost, but it definitely adds to the cost of the hardware. hardware. You could also argue, though, that you could afford a lower price if you're selling a certain number of $89 pencils along with those iPads. So yes, I would love Apple to be cheaper because I want schools to have the option more easily to buy iPads. I think that would be great because as you said earlier, it opens up more schools to this product. But Apple's got its pricing philosophy. And as we've

said many times on this show, if you have an imaginary price that you would love for an Apple product, it will be higher than that. It just that's apple 329 for this ipad for consumers is pretty good though like it's a great price it was a great price last year and it's still a great price and that's why that's the funny thing when we talk about quarterly results for apple one of the funny things that comes up is they've had quarters that show the iPad Pro strategy. Now that they've bifurcated the line and there's iPad Pros and iPad, and the iPad's cheaper and the iPad Pros are more powerful. What has happened is that sometimes we get results that say, oh, the iPad Pro is really selling well. And other times we get results that say, oh, that low-cost iPad is really selling well. And other times we get results that say, oh, that low cost iPad is

really selling well, which I take away to mean the iPad's doing well. They split those things in two and they're both successful at what they're trying to be. One is the very expensive, cutting edge tech iPad Pro. And the other is enough iPad for most people for three 29, which is down from what it used to be. And if you look at the tablet market, there's nobody in the tablet market anymore. That new Chromebook tablet, um,

Chrome OS tablet is basically the price of the iPad. It's the low end. It's three 29. And then there's Amazon with their cheap tablets. And that's basically it. Like that, that market has just died. Google has abandoned it for Android. And there's just not a lot of, I mean, the iPad does incredibly well in all the segments that it plays in, in the tablet market.

So by pushing it down to 329, Apple has already opened the door there. And it's great. Again, I keep thinking to myself, if it was $299 for everybody and $279 for schools, would that make the iPad even more successful? But at the same time, I get that Apple has the cost of building these things and they have a profit margin they want to hit. And they may feel like they came down enough to go all the way down to $329 for them. So let's move into some software related stuff so i work received some updates to give it more pencil features one of these things there's two things there's like a reports feature where you can annotate on it and there's a there's a feature coming for teachers called smart annotation did you have any chance to play with either of these i didn't get to play them i

got to see them but i didn't get to actually use them. Smart annotation is clever because what it does is it attaches your pen marks to the text on the document. So if you circle a word and say remove this or cross it out or whatever, and then they're inputting changes into the document in pages and the paragraph rewraps, the pen overlay moves with the word that it was over, which I'm sure they're going to be interesting issues there. It'd be interesting to see how it works in practice, but it's a, it's a clever idea because that's a real thing that happens where somebody gives you a file and what you have to do is sort of have the file over here

and make the changes over there and track like, oh, now this is different. So where's that comment again? And all of that. and the idea here is that it all just is happening live and it moves with you so it certainly demos well we'll see how how it works in practice but that was uh i thought that was pretty clever it feels like nice additions right and being able to like create reports of numbers and and keynote and write and scribble and you know that kind of stuff feels like just good additions.

In general, saying, look, iWork's going to be better with the pencil, that we're going to make iWork a stronger citizen in terms of the Apple Pencil, I think it's a good move. And it was funny to me where I was like, oh, they didn't have stuff like this before. Interesting. Yeah, giving you more reasons to use iWork. I think that's, I mean, that was one, that was part of this story, right? During that iWork section, I kept thinking to myself, well, they've got the software, they ought to leverage it to do whatever they want. And so they said, we're going to leverage it for pen markup in schools,

and we're going to leverage it to use iWork to build books. And, you know, it's like, we've got this software that we own and control and can build to our latest and greatest hardware. That's kind of why it exists. So let's do it. And it's funny that they're doing that now and that they didn't necessarily do that so much when the pencil came out originally, but it's good that it's there now. So Pages has now seemed to have swallowed up iBooks Author, and you can create digital books right in Pages. I don't know this. I don't know if you know this. Is iBooks Author dead? Is it done with? I think it is. I don't know that. I assume it is. I'll put it that way. And one of the reasons I assume that is for people who haven't used iBooks Author, iBooks Author was based on pages.

It was based on an old version of pages. And so it was always this weird thing where it was kind of like this is kind of pages but kind of not. But I'm sure people like David Sparks and Serenity Caldwell are going to be investigating quite what has changed. People who have spent a lot of time using iBooks Author. be investigating quite what has changed. People who have spent a lot of time using iBooks Author. But my guess is that this is iBooks Author getting pulled back into pages, which is going to be good because iBooks Author didn't get a lot of love. And if those features are just nice book creation features inside a core iWork app, it probably bodes well for the product because iBooks author would sort of like sit out there

and not get any updates and you know and get old and creaky while iWork was moving ahead and so if it's all just back inside pages that's probably all for the best okay that makes sense then um and also I guess it has that has some extra features though like you can collaborate right like there is collaboration of sorts built into pages, so multiple people can work on a book at the same time, which is not something that can occur with the current crop of tools, right? Sure, yeah. iBooks Author, yeah, doesn't do a lot.

I have a question for you on this, though. I was thinking about this. Does taking iBooks author away, like removing a standalone product and making it a feature of pages, does that emphasize or de-emphasize the feature? Like, does it make it more important because it's part of pages

or does it make it less important because it doesn't have its own app anymore? I think in the long run, I think it makes it more important because it's part of the core functionality and not a strange side project that gets less love. And then let's not forget the major thing that's happening here is this is on iOS and Mac, whereas iBooks author was Mac only. So that's a big step forward that you can do book creation on iOS. You don't need to go to the Mac for it.

And what you did mention there about being in the core product it means it like it forces them to update it because if they put something whiz bang into pages that you can't export as a book well that's a problem isn't it you know so right if it locks the team into making sure that the digital book creation tools as apple called them are updated with all of the new stuff, which is a good point. I'm expecting that you will be happy anytime that iCloud storage limits are updated and they've increased it from students

from five gigabytes to 200 gigabytes for free for all students as part of the school, which is great. Can we get that for everybody? But they were like just for students. gigabytes to 200 gigabytes for free for for all students as part of yeah how about that great can we can we get that for everybody but they were like just for students everybody else like can we does that mean that i get free five no you don't get you don't get 200 free regular people just get five but for students 200 which is that is that is a case where apple is foregoing profit margin in order to tell a better story for education that's a case because that was a huge complaint in education for this five

gigabyte iCloud storage per apple id and so to take that to 200 gigs that is a place where they're being aggressive and saying you know we don't need to this is not a place where we need to squeeze profits out of this where and we can make this a much better experience for education. I wish they do that for all their customers, but for education, it's a very good move. More sort of late-breaking news sent to us by Stephen Hackett.

The iWork updates are out on iOS now and they have a feature to collaborate in real-time on documents stored in Box. I don't know what these applications are called. Cloud Storage. So if you have documents in Box, you can collaborate in real time on those documents. So that's basically a business enterprise kind of feature.

Which is cool. That's cool. I wonder if there's any different… Yeah, for all those enterprises that are using Pages. Yeah, for all those enterprises that are using Pages. But if you use Box, though, and you maybe now have a really good application for it, it's going to require testing, right?

Like, how real-time is real-time? Is it more real-time than the iCloud stuff? And if that's the case, that could be a really good reason to use it, which could be cool. I think that could be cool. Apple Classroom, which is a administrative tool for uh teachers and administrators that are managing lots of devices is coming to the mac now in june now friend of the show guillermo rambo pointed out which i thought was very interesting that this is an existing i iOS only application that's coming to the Mac in June.

And he says, hmm. Thinking emoji. Yeah. Yeah. The joke being here, is this a hint of some of these cross-platform Marzipan tools? We don't know. Possibly. Potentially.

But it is interesting that this stuff is coming later there's a lot of things actually that are coming in june with 11.4 which is which they mentioned and is mentioned on some kind of asterisks on apple's website today yeah i think marzipan if it even happens there's a question of like will apps be able to be built back for older versions or will this be for new versions that come out this fall but of course it's apple so they could build something using it as a test case even and then um have it be compatible with current versions even though other people's apps might not be i don't know uh it's interesting my uh semi snarky take on this is like oh look an ios app coming to the mac

why would they do that in education and the answer is it's the app for teachers because teachers are olds and they like computers instead of ipads and the fact is it's true like oh teachers are older than students right and old people who are older are more likely to be comfortable with personal computers than they are with ipads and with a touch interface and i've seen it in my' schools that, you know, in my son's middle school, they've got iPad one-to-one and the teachers have laptops. They have Mac laptops on their desks and they're comfortable with the laptop. So this is smart because this shows that they're hearing the feedback that teachers would like this on the Mac. But it is a little intriguing. I will admit

that an iOS app being brought back to the Mac, what's happening there? How is that happening? But you know, it's not as if, like you could argue that iWork and iMovie in their latest Mac iterations are the same in a way where they re-architected those programs and basically rewrote them so that they would work across iOS and macOS and that they were doing some of that work. So it's not unprecedented, but it is worth a thinking face emoji. I have more real-time follow-up from Stephen. Does he want to be on the show? Should we just dial him in here?

Pages does not open any existing iBooks author files, and you cannot export from Pages to the iBooks author format. You can only export to EPUB, but I believe it is to a newer version of EPUB, which allows for a lot of these digital things in it. So this may be the ultimate deprecation of iBooks author as a concept, and instead just kind of getting on the more elaborate EPUB train which is the right thing to do right it kind of seemed a bit pointless for Apple to maintain their own file format but I bet that that's going to take away all of those weird

restrictions about not being able to sell an iBooks author file outside of iBooks, right? So now people could make these files in pages and in theory sell them because they're not locked down to Apple's file format. And potentially, I mean, I haven't looked at what the legals say, but it may change the situation a little bit. So that could be-

I don't know. I mean, in the vast array of non-Apple EPU epub ebooks readers and stores that are out there i mean there's not that's the thing is great but kind of irrelevant because the big book juggernaut here is amazon which doesn't even support epub yeah for sure um there was a new app announced which is an ios app and a cloud service called schoolwork what is schoolwork schoolwork is it's kind of like an aspect of google classroom it's a like let's uh teachers manage what is it they let teachers manage and homework and stuff handouts and homework and track progress and

also apps yeah you can assign specific things in applications right like this week you have to do this and it's from a third party yeah and it uses the new class kit framework so you have the ability to say you know do this segment of this app this this class this coursework and then it'll actually send back data of the student's progress, which the teacher gets to look at and say, they completed it, they're halfway through it, whatever. They did this well on it, they did this poorly on it. So it's more tools for teachers to communicate with students in Apple's administered environment, which is one of the places where Apple is really fighting against Google because Google Classroom stuff is available on iOS.

And like I said, my son's iPad one-to-one program at the middle school uses Google Classroom to administer it. And that's a challenge for Apple because Apple would like to control that and not have Google control that. And the last piece of Apple's puzzle is providing resources to teachers. And they do this and they highlight something called Apple Teacher, which is not a new thing, but it is an online learning kind of suite of tools to help teachers understand how they can integrate apps and devices and services into their classes,

into their classwork. classes into their classwork but apple also creates curriculum and they have a new curriculum set called everyone can create which focuses on music photography video and drawing and has a bunch of like lesson plans and stuff like that that teachers can use uh for creating new i don't know classes I don't know, classes. I don't know. I don't really know how to describe it, but you probably know better than me. Yeah, I think for a company

that's at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, doing everyone can create alongside everyone can code is a nice idea because it's the other, you know, I don't know whether it's the other half of the brain, but it is a nice idea because it's the other you know i don't know whether it's the other half of the brain but it is a different set of things that are great for education you know music and art and and stuff like that that that they're doing with that curriculum so it's not just apple would like a new generation of app developers to develop for its flat plat its

platform thank you very much right it's also yes also perhaps you could be learning about music and and drawing and painting and stuff like that video making so basically everything that we've spoken about the the hardware um basically all of the software all of the videos that you saw, all of the slides, very heavily focused on the iPad and on iOS. Before the event, you tweeted, and I will read this tweet to our audience here. As an iPad fan, I am always hoping for iPad news, and I think we'll get some. But I do hope the Mac gets a little time too. If it doesn't, I think that will be telling about the Mac's place in the Apple landscape. My feeling was that when you wrote that, you were at least a little bit hopeful. if it doesn't i think that will be telling about the max place in the ample landscape i my my feeling was that you when you wrote that you were at least a little bit hopeful that you were going

to see some mac stuff and there kind of wasn't really anything um what does that tell you i can tell you the two two places where the mac really played in this presentation one is they had a picture of a Mac and announced, oh, and now you can do this on iOS. And the Mac swiped away to be replaced by an iPad. And I thought, okay. Because the Mac was up there and I was like, ooh, look, they're using a Mac as an explanation of, oh, no. Get that thing out. Get that smelly thing out of here. And the other one was what I said earlier, which is, yeah, we're bringing this app from iOS to the Mac because teachers are old people who use computers instead of iPads. And fine, teachers.

Fine, you're fossils. You're old. But, yeah, we'll give it to you on the Mac. And those were the two places that the Mac appeared in this. That says, like I said, I think that tells you what Apple feels the max place is in education, which is it's not their area of emphasis, especially in K through 12, which is really what this was about, not higher ed. I think higher ed is a different story entirely. But they're viewing this as being a place that's mostly – it's funny also because I have to say in one of the areas where we were doing after the event, where we were doing these, you know, hands-on and demo areas, one of those rooms on the second level, it had like a little kind of mezzanine above the main lab area. There were, you know, a couple dozen iMacs all in a row. And I imagine that they're doing like video editing or audio stuff up there was

in the kind of creative space. And I sat there and I thought, well, they're the Macs in this school. There are lots of them and they're using them, but not part of this conversation. So for whatever reason, and we can come up with lots of reasons, but if you're taking the temperature of what Apple's really pushing in education, that's the answer is that it's, it's iPad and it's not the Mac. The Mac is not part of the story. The Mac's there and people who want the Mac for various things. And for some stuff like video editing right now, at least until, you know, final cut comes to iOS and logic comes to iOS, you know, for now they've got some reasons why you would still have Macs in school, but you get the distinct feeling that once Apple can get those reasons out and into the iPad,

they'll do, they'll do that too. So that's, it does. I think I stand by my statement that it is telling that how exactly how the Mac played into this, which is almost not at all once for old teachers and once as a as a before shot in a before and after like i'm not trying to like lead the witness here but does this fill you with any negative feelings do you feel any like unease or may i even say dread at this if if you made me choose between would the ipad be all there was or would it be Mac and iPad, I would probably have chosen iPad would be all there is. I think it was clear the iPad was going to be the bulk of it. And it was really about like, will the Mac get mentioned? And the answer is no.

Basically, no, it didn't get mentioned. So it's what I expected. And I think I love the Mac and I think the Mac has its place, but I totally see why Apple, first off, the Mac starts at $999 and the iPad starts at $329. You want to talk about price,

like the Mac's not even in the conversation. iPad for this market, especially like that's the product. That is Apple's lowest cost straight up. Let's leave phones and subsidies like aside. Like that is Apple's entry into computing is the iPad for 329. That's it. The Mac's way up there. Forget about the Mac. And I think that's why the story is what it is. The Mac still has its uses, but this is part of that, you know, truckification of the Mac as for very specific jobs and very specific plays. And it's not like it doesn't have its uses. Like I said, I bought my daughter a MacBook

for her birthday. And she's a high school student, and she'll presumably take that MacBook to college. And I think it's the right decision for a lot of reasons. But I also understand exactly why my son's school has iPads for all the students. And I'm pretty supportive of that. I think that they have good reasons for doing that. And if I'm Apple and I'm building a foundation for a long-term future in education, price aside, of course, every long-term future in education price aside of course every long-term future decision apple's making has to be rooted in ios and not the mac because it's their newer platform it's their more popular platform and it's the one that is more um positioned to move forward into the future whether it gets new features or it kind of like leads the way into a,

you know, a new Apple platform down the road. So it all makes sense to me. It's, am I a little wistful about it? You know, I think I'm over that too, just because like I said, when you can get a MacBook Air that's old tech for $999 or you can get a brand new iPad for $329 that I'll grant you is not the latest and greatest processor, but it's way more latest and greatest than the MacBook Air is. I think the writing's on the wall there. I'm just going to say like at this point, I do not believe we're going to see that cheap current MacBook Air. I don't think that's going to happen. I feel like if it wasn't happening today, it's not happening. I think what we will see is a cheaper current version of the

Retina MacBook was the next product in that line. Given Mark Gurman's report and the fact that it didn't get mentioned or announced today, even in a press release, it makes me think that the report of a cheaper MacBook is a weird misunderstanding of what Gurman's reporting. A cheaper MacBook Air, it's a misunderstanding of what Gurman's reporting. A cheaper MacBook Air, it's a misunderstanding of what Gurman's reporting, the fact that there's going to be a cheaper MacBook, that Apple's going to try to take the MacBook and push it down in price so that they can replace the MacBook Air. And they may not push it down to $999. They might push it down to $1099 or $1199, but it would still be down. And they may keep the MacBook Air around for a little while. But, yes, I'm with you.

I think this makes that story seem less likely because why wouldn't they have done it? If the whole reason that product exists is to reach people in education and other places that just are not going to spend more than $1,000 on a computer, then they would have talked about it today. Like with all big events events we have lots of questions from the upgradians so we should move to hashtag ask upgrade but before we do let me thank our final sponsor for this week and that is mac weldon who make the most comfortable underwear socks shirts undershirts hoodies and sweatpants that you are ever going to wear mac weldon is better than whatever you're wearing right now and they are so confident of this. They have a no questions asked return policy.

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can get 20% off at macweldon.com that is M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N dot com. Just use the code UPGRADE and you will get that 20% off. Our thanks to Mac Weldon for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. So, we move into hashtag AskUpgrade, and our first question comes from Victor.

Victor asks, now that the base 9.7-inch iPad has pencil support, who is the target audience of the 10.5-inch iPad Pro? It's nearly double the price and almost no significant features above the base model except the display. and almost no significant features above the base model except the display. Do you think that there are still people in this segment that this product is targeted at before there's an update? Do you think that there are people that this product is really made for? Do you think it's keyboard people?

Do you think it's people who just want the latest and greatest and best? Or do you think that basically everybody could be served by this 9.7 now yeah it's bigger screen smaller bezels it's faster it's thinner uh it's got the keyboard support it's got the display and it hasn't even had its update this year so that's my answer i agree with you i think that like you know I understand why people are like, it's double the price. But really, like, you are thinking of the iPad Pro as just only having a pencil. Like, that's kind of like, if that's the way that you look at it, that's like all you think the iPad Pro has. But it is more than that. It's all of those things you earlier, which is if the only reason you can think for buying an iPad Pro over this iPad was the pencil, then yeah, sure. But I don't think that, and I would imagine that it's a fairly small group of people. I will grant that this brings it closer, but keep in mind this is now the 2018 iPad and the 2017 iPad Pro. And what's going to happen later this year, maybe in June, maybe in September, maybe in October, is those iPad Pros are going to get updated.

They're going to get Face ID probably. They're going to lose the bezel even more. They're going to get the latest and greatest processor. They're going to have other whizzy new features. And so they've gotten a little closer today. They're going to have, you know, other whizzy new features. And the, you know, so they've gotten a little closer today. They're going to spread back apart. And that is the way it works. So, Stay asked, today's events seem pretty heavy on the creative side.

Were there any updates or hints of updates to apps like GarageBand, iMovie, or other consumer-level creative apps other than iWork? There's a GarageBand update that's got, like, education, wacky stuff, wacky sound packs and stuff like that in there. There was a Clips update. There's a Clips update, too, yeah. But I did want to note that something that wasn't mentioned on stage, I don't believe,

or at least I didn't see it until the release notes. GarageBand on the iPhone X uses the TrueDepth camera to allow you to control instrument effects with your facial expressions. Like synth parameters and wah pedals and stuff like that. You can make a face and make, like if you open your mouth uh like with a like producer alex has doubled over with laughter in the booth at this point alex uh what is your opinion of these true depth uh instrument effects is he you on board with this idea i mean i'm sure that i'm gonna have a lot of fun with it for about 15 minutes.

It's going to be great with Animoji and similarly used probably. Hey, try stuff out. See what happens. Maybe that's great. You're DJing. You're playing stuff. And then you stub your toe when you grimace. And it's like, oh, that was a pretty good sound.

And then that makes you smile. And then the sound goes away because you're not grimacing anymore. You're smiling. Just imagine the possibilities there. The better your music is, the better it will sound, right? If you're happy with how your music's sounding, then it's going to sound better. I think that's what they're trying to do. All right. So basically, I'm going to have a GarageBand project and I'll be like, okay, I got to

smile while I'm exporting this or it'll sound bad. So going back to the new iPad, Matthias asked, does the iPad, the new iPad, have the laminated screen from the iPad Pros? Or is there like that gap like there is on the previous iPad? I think it is like on the previous iPad. I think that's the deal. Yeah, the tech specs do not say fully laminated display as it does on some of the other products including including which

is hilarious to me the ipad mini has it uh but the the 9.7 inch ipad does not so it's still a product still a product line still more expensive uh it's still there still kind of doing whatever it is it's doing whatever that is they did they make too many of those and they've got them sitting in a factory most definitely did they whoa boy howdy uh lee wants to know if we have any more information on the logitech crayon um and i have some information here jason i don't because i went to the event and i also didn't get that information you just didn't bother to look for it because you probably weren't that excited about it. Yeah, that's also probably true. I was intrigued. The question for me, so you can tell me this.

The question for me is, does it use some secret sauce that the Apple Pencil uses? Or is it just yet another Bluetooth stylus? Yes and no. So the Logitech Crayon is a $49 education only stylus, but it uses the same technology as the Apple Pencil. So it has the same latency. You can tilt and it will make the lines grow thicker and thinner, but it has no pressure sensitivity. So that's the thing that it lacks. It has basically all of the technology that the apple pencil has but no uh pressure sensitivity it connects directly to the ipad via single a single frequency it's not bluetooth

i don't really know what that actually means but it fine it has eight hours of battery but with a lightning plug in it doesn't have a lightning plot lightning uh port built into it you plug a lightning cable into it. So that's very different. It's available this summer, sold directly to educators for $49. So it has a lot of what the Apple Pencil has. It doesn't have everything, which is why it's cheaper. It does have a little LED status light,

so you know when it's connected and it blinks red when the battery's running low. So it has some additional things. It's a lot cheaper. It doesn't have all of the features, but it has the most important features, in my opinion, which is the low latency and the tilt sensitivity of the Apple Pencil with, I'm assuming, easy connection as well.

So yeah, I think that's really cool. I like that this product exists. I really like that Apple works with Logitech on these features for education. I think it's great. Like, let Logitech make stuff if Apple don't want to make it. Brian wants to know, can the shared iPad functionality in schools be used without using education tools? What is the shared iPad functionality? You imagine you get an iPad

and it's got a picture of various users on it. You tap on one and it loads that user's documents and it's their iPad. And this has existed for a while, right? Two years, I think. Yeah. And the answer is no, it's an education-only feature. Great.

And our last question today comes from Michael. Michael simply asks, are you underwhelmed, whelmed, or overwhelmed at today's event? launch a new iPad at the low end and some stuff around it and tell about its education strategy. And it pretty much delivered that and only that. So whelmed, I would say, is about right. It met my basic expectations for what an acceptable event could be today, really. It did that. It ticked those boxes. And no more. And no more. But no less.

Producer Alex, are you underwhelmed, whelmed, or overwhelmed? I'd say I agree. I am whelmed. You know, I'm actually really disappointed about one thing. And I'm going to say, if you want to leave this in, and you are, if there are any upgradians who work in the education market and i could possibly pay you to get a few of those logitech crayons i'm at alex cox on twitter all right goodbye there you go alex cox on twitter alex really wants some logitech crayons if someone

can can hook her up with that black markets crayons it's orange and it tells you when it's dying it's perfect i am really keen to try one of those out personally just like to see to see what it's like um but it's also not coming out until like june right june yeah yeah i i did see something like a few people so that is that i think it's pretty funny like so many of these features are coming out june like in june like three months before the school year ends like it's like okay yeah well i mean that's the point is that it's it's not it's not for the school year it's for the buying for next school year the buying cycle for the school starts at the end of the previous school year because they're planning for the summer to roll things out and have them in the schools for the fall so this is a actually a good

time for something like this so that is it for this week's episode jason congratulations on your draft victory oh thank you thank you i'd forgotten all about that but um thank you for reminding me yes it was a it was not my best effort but we did just enough to win um i want to extend our thanks to alex cox for being the producer of this episode and also providing Jason with an incredible environment in which he could record this episode. Thank you, Alex. Of course. Always. You can find Alex at DubaiFriday.com and at Relay.fm slash Roboism.

They are two of Alex's wonderful podcasts that you should go and listen to both of them because they're both great in equal ways but different ways and I love both of those shows dearly so you should go and check those out and Alex is Alex Cox A-L-E-X-C-O-X on Twitter if you need to if you need you know to get her some of those crayons that she so desperately needs I think Alex is willing to do a bulk purchase order requisition if that's something that you need for your school. I believe that she's willing to take a thousand was what I heard of those, right? Yeah, about that amount. Okay, about a thousand.

You could just back up a truck to her apartment. She'll just scoop them all in. If you want to find our show notes for today's episode, you can go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 186. Don't forget that RelayFM is going to be doing a live show at altconf on june the 6th as part of wwdc you can go to altconf.com to get tickets right now um these are selling out pretty quickly i know that a lot of people will now know they're going to be in wwdc because the lottery winners and results winners have been announced

it's so hilarious and winners congratulations you can spend a lot of money on a ticket $1500 to go to a conference but if you are going to be at WWDC and you don't yet have a ticket to our show or to ATP you need to go and get one of those because they're selling out

and we want to see you there I will be there. Jason will be there. Many Real AFM hosts will be there to entertain you for an afternoon and evening. Jason writes at sixcolors.com. I'm sure you'll be able to find a lot more post-event analysis over at sixcolors.com. Jason is also at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks again to Anka, Mack Walden, and Simple Contacts for their support of this show, and we'll be back

next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.