Upgrade - 187: Whiz-Bang Wonderfulness

Episode Date: April 2, 2018

This week Jason steps up to the baseball plate and takes a second swing at the meaning of Apple’s education event, while Myke defends the viability of pen and paper. We also discuss what’s new in Apple’s latest software updates, and once again fail to solve the riddle of the HomePod.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 187 today's show is brought to you by pingdom casper and peacock my name is mike hurley i'm joined by mr jason snell hello jason snell hi mike i'm back in my garage now and alex co't, like, peering at me from behind a curtain. So, it's different. It'd be concerning, I think. That would be a little weird, like, because I didn't invite her over if she was lurking, but she's not.

Our hashtag Snell Talk question this week comes from Will, and this is baseball related, because I understand that the season is open, or however it is you refer to it in baseball world. Sure. Yeah, the season is open or however it is you refer to it in baseball world sure um yeah the season is open that's exactly what we say open for play uh will wants to know jason if you had the ability to play for the giants which i believe are your team san francisco giants what position would you want to play and what would be your walk-up music um well position wise i always uh played when i played baseball in like

little league i was mostly a second baseman so i would probably choose that although uh in rec softball in college i sometimes played first base so something like that so you're you're a catcher you're in the field at that point right you know It's not a catcher. It's a position that is not a generic term, so you can't say I'm a catcher. That would be literally the catcher is the person who sits behind home plate and catches the pitches from the pitcher. I did that a little bit too, but that's not for me. But that's your predominant role, is it then, to catch the ball? Do you ever hit the ball? I don't know how baseball works. I'm very well know you all, so everybody who plays in the field also has to hit the ball do you ever hit the ball i don't know how baseball works i am i'm very well know you all so everybody who plays in the field also has to hit the ball okay except for the

except in some circumstances for the pitcher who is sometimes swapped out for a person who can hit right but that's complication levels we don't want to when you're not a bat when you're not on that side you would be standing at second base that's where you want to be yeah and actually the second one of the things i had to learn when i was a kid and i was playing second base is that you don't stand on the base when you're second base second Second bass is toward the first bass side of second bass. You stand because there's a shortstop who stands on the other side of second bass. Cool service. laugh every time i think about it that my friend philip michaels has explained that his walk-up music would be the uh soviet national anthem which just i think it would be hilarious i think that's a wrestling reference mike you might actually even get that one um because i think there was a wrestler who who they played he was supposedly the uh he was a heel and he was uh from the soviet

union and everybody would boo him as he entered to the Soviet National Anthem. Anyway, I think it's got to be Don't Dream It's Over by Crowded House, right? I think that would have to be it. That's my walk-up music for the Pundit Showdown podcast when we did that at Macworld. So I think that would have to be it. That's a good choice. And honestly, if I would have written an answer for you, that would have been the answer I would have written down. I know how much you love that song. It's a great that'd be it gotta be it so we have some follow-up uh about ibooks author um in the last episode after we were talking about the education event we are under the impression that the inclusion of uh

digital book publishing tools or digital book creation tools i should say in pages meant that ibooks author was going to be dead um but serenity caldwell confirmed of apple that ibooks author is continuing as its own standalone product and that the pages update is not a replacement for it um it continues to exist yeah we got our we had our shovels out we were ready to bury it and serenity broke down the doors and was like no no it's still alive don't bury it yet although i have a hard time believing that they're going to put much effort into ibooks author i hope i hope i'm wrong but i think it's more likely that they would upgrade the book publishing stuff inside of pages and then keep ibooks author around just for the people who

are are already using it you can definitely do stuff with iBooks Author that you can't do with Pages. And that format is still supported in iBooks and only iBooks. But this is good news for people like our friend David Sparks, who do books in iBooks Author format, that they can still do that and it's okay.

And Jason, iBooks Author remains a product in our lineup, but there is nothing more to say about it today. Yeah, I actually asked somebody at Apple about it. I actually asked somebody at Apple, and I said, so iBooks author continues to be a product? And they said, yep. I was like, all right, well. It will continue with the same or little as treatment

as it has received over the last few years. I'm just imagining iBooks author giving Apple a big hug, like, thank you for keeping me around, and Apple's got its arms out. Like, yeah, okay, stop hugging me now. Or it's like it's going for the hug, but it's making a face over iBooks author's shoulder. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, dear. Well, it still exists. It's still there. I mean, I guess it's good because there are more tools in it, right? So my feeling is it exists for now. I would be very surprised if they didn't just continue to make pages better or rate quicker than they make iBooks Author better, but we'll see. Yeah. last week because of the event and there were a few interesting topics that we wanted to talk about so let's get into that right now we're going to start off by saying that amy apollo you may know from parks and recreation who we mentioned in the last week's episode because it was your favorite

of the two between parks and rec and the office is making her directorial debut with netflix it is a comedy movie called wine country which tells the story of a group of old friends who go to napa for a weekend getaway to celebrate a 50th birthday. It is a really great and huge cast, including Maya Rudeau for Maya Rudeau, for Rachel Dratch, and many more. So that's going to be interesting to see. Tina Fey is, of course,

going to be doing some kind of walk-on role in the movie. I think she's going to be in it. But yeah, I'm excited to see this. So this is fascinating, because this is one of those questions of would this have been a would this have been a movie before a theatrical release before and there's just no room for it or is this a smaller kind of story that would have been maybe 15 20 years ago would have been a tv movie or something which they kind of don't do anymore

and so now it's a netflix movie i don't know but i think this is like it never would have been a TV movie or something, which they kind of don't do anymore. And so now it's a Netflix movie. I don't know, but I think this is interesting. It would have existed, right? Like it just maybe never would have happened. Well, yeah,

because a lot of stuff, it's just, is there a, is there a place for, for something like this? And the advantage of having these streaming services is that they, they aren't as constrained as, uh,

you know, a theatrical release especially would be, and the networks don't do tv movies anymore so whether this is something that would have five or ten years ago been a relatively kind of low budget low to mid budget uh theatrical release or whether it might have been in the tv movie like a little bit cheaper tv movie camp which now the tv movies only really are like on on like hbo or things like that or their films released on netflix so interesting and that's what that is what i mean i think amy pollard's really funny and

this could be really good but yeah i think it's also really interesting that this is not necessarily a piece of content that would otherwise have existed other than having a platform like netflix to put common with a lot of these types of productions like her production company's producing it um along with another production company owned by morgan sackett who was a producer of parks and rec a parks and rec writer is writing it with her and she has and she's bringing in a lot of like colleagues and friends right like this is becoming extremely common with these types of movies because it's like the stars have got enough money to put this type of thing together on a small budget

but they haven't got enough money to put it in cinemas right because that's like a whole different thing which you know the marketing cost of a major motion picture is vastly more than the cost to make the movie at this point yep yeah so you know and so basically my expectation is right they cover the production side netflix covers the marketing side and they call it job done and this allows for amy pola to get a directorial credit on her imdb page right so she continues to build herself up so like maybe in a couple years time she will have a feature film like this this is this is why a lot of this stuff is is like so hot right now i think because it's allowing a lot of really talented creators

to get their foot in the door right well this is and and you see how the business i mean there's a business aspect to this which is the money money and the strategizing about where the money's going, going to Netflix. It's going away from things like the networks and even some cable. But it also has this creative, in the end, the money story, the business story becomes a creative story too because there become outlets for stuff that wouldn't have existed before. And opportunities, I was going to say another example of this is just prestige. The existence of prestige television has completely melted the, certainly for actors, completely melted the distinction between film and television. Film stars, Academy Award winners do television now. I could come up with

multiple examples of Academy Award winning actors and actresses who are stars of regular TV shows now, right? I mean, I just watched the finale of Counterpart last night with J.K. Simmons as Oscar winner. And Allison Janney has a sitcom and she's an Oscar winner. And the list goes on, that's completely melted away. And then for writers too, there's that sense like writers, TV is now a better place for writers and writers get to kind of run the show in a way that they don't necessarily in features because features are becoming more like a writer's room that is dominated by the corporate organization that is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in each release because it's got to be marketed and

targeted and all of those things. And it's fascinating that the money machinery gets tweaked by, in a lot of cases, technology changes. But when the machine is running, then creative stuff pops out. And when you alter how the machine runs, different creative stuff pops out. And this is a great example of that. So yeah, it's fascinating. Here's an interesting one.

YouTube have announced a movie called Vulture Club. It stars Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon, Eddie Falco, and Matt Boma. It's a drama. Multiple Emmy winner, Eddie Falco, yeah. It's a drama, and YouTube are planning for a theatrical release in 2018, and it will be released on YouTube Red afterwards.

And you say to yourself, that's weird. Why are YouTube, couldn't they have their own subscription service? Why are they putting this movie into cinemas? Well, let me tell you why. They want it to win an Oscar. That's why. Yeah, that's it. That is actually becoming a very common thing. Amazon has done this too in a few different ways. And there are a couple of ways to do it. One way you can put it in theaters is you can put it in a theater in new york and la for a week and it's eligible for the oscars but another way that some of these um

companies are doing it is they're giving it a theatrical release uh maybe not investing massively in marketing and all that but they give it a legitimate theatrical release and then they put it on their streaming service afterward and that qualifies it for awards and also potentially you know it gets in talking to Tim Goodman from the Hollywood Reporter, one of the, which I do a podcast with every week. One of the things that comes up is how hard it is to find stuff.

And when you're a consumer, but like also how does something get reviewed? Like does a Netflix movie get reviewed? Do the movie reviewers review it? Do the TV reviewers review it? Do the TV reviewers review it? Or does it get caught, like, lost in the cracks, right? One of the advantages of giving your film a theatrical release before you put it on streaming is it's a movie. Everybody understands it's a movie, and the movie reviewers review it.

Whereas Amy Poehler's thing, like, who's going to review that? Are movie reviewers going to review it? Are TV reviewers going to review it? Or is it going to be a neither fish nor fowl situation so lots of smart reasons for doing this netflix goes back and forth on this too where like netflix wants to win oscars and they have they won an oscar for documentary feature uh for uh that that film about russia and the russian doping scandal um Netflix also does direct-to-Netflix releases where they're not eligible, and presumably they can win Emmy Awards for that.

I don't know. That's just a decision they have to make. Well, on that note, Netflix have been banned from Cannes because they are not going to be putting their next movies in theaters. This is so ridiculous to me. This is so ridiculous. I find this to be so old school and stupid. Like, I don't understand why there is this, like, vice grip that they're trying to hold on theater releases.

When I know that there is an industry of people there that work that way, but there is a new industry building around streaming services and actors and actresses are finding and all production companies are finding new success in streaming services that wouldn't exist. Right. We were just talking about that. Like that Amy Poehler movie may not have ever existed, but it can exist because Netflix will put the money into it. But now they're being banned from award ceremonies because they don't they don't want to kiss the ring of the old god i find it so strange

yeah basically the can film festival saying you can't be eligible for any awards that can you can you can screen your films if you want but you can't be eligible for any awards unless you get a full french for throughout theatrical release and netflix was like all right we'll we'll put it out out for a week in theaters and the the whatever entity approves or disapproves that disapproved it so nope that's not good enough and you're right it is you know look at some point either netflix will decide that it's more important that they release the film in france because want to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Or the Cannes Film Festival will say, hey, we would be better off letting Netflix come regardless. Eventually something will give there. But you're right. It is resistance

and fear. And I get it. If they are the extension of the cinema owners in france and more broadly around the world then they may be saying why should we give our cachet to this uh these people who don't want to be in our theaters i i get it but um it does seem yeah i understand it i just think it's the wrong move i mean i, you know, if you want to look down on them, create a best streaming movie award, right? Like they're not eligible for the big ones, but you can give them an award. what is it 67 60 70 minutes whatever whatever the the feature length is up upward and it's the best one of those in the year but it didn't go in uh theater in la for a week it just went on to netflix but it's by far everybody agrees the best movie of the year why shouldn't it be eligible for an oscar and the answer is well there's got to be some eligibility requirement and that's it so you pay your money to a theater and what what the thees Film Festival is saying is, no, that's not good enough. We're not going to let you skate in. You got to like be a real movie with a real release or we're not going to be about you. And yeah, fair enough. I guess that's, it's their, it's their trophy. It's their, it's their festival. It's interesting that they're not banning them from coming. They're just banning them from getting awards.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can come, you know, pay us money. Please, please. Yeah, but just, anyway, it is fascinating to see how industries that are changing or dying react to that change. And this is an example of that. And finally today, the New York Times have a report about apple's upcoming video service and provide some information that we hadn't yet gotten um or at least some clarifications from wherever new york times are getting their sources whether it's from apple which very well could be or others

i can tell you where they got this source because they actually said apple is saying to people that they're talking to now about doing shows okay okay that so it's obviously from those people so they're getting it from movie executives right right it's whoever they're making the deals with they're saying to those people that they're targeting spring or summer of 2019 yep to launch this thing which i i will refer you back to my previous, I felt good when I read this. I was like, oh, thank goodness. Because it was, you know, I said like quite a while ago,

like almost a year ago now, that there's no way that they could get this done before at earliest late 18. And here we go. They're actually not even going to try to hit at late 18 apparently. It's going to be early to mid 19 before they get it out there. Because this stuff, it takes a long time to make TV shows.

It really does. And they've got to have enough of them ready to go that they can start releasing them and promoting their service. And they can't just trickle them out episode by episode. They've got to get a bunch of them ready to go. So, spring, summer 2019. episode by episode they've gotta they've gotta get a bunch of them ready to go so spring summer 2019 i i expect we will probably start seeing the first trailers around iphone time this year i i think they might start like trickling stuff out then to like try and start building the excitement for it could be there the new york times also says that apple is on track to spend

significantly more than the previously reported one billion dollar budget right i wonder if that was their uh their content budget to get going in in 17 and now that they're in 18 or or talking about 19 that they're like well that was the first billion now we're into the next year now we've got a couple more billion it could just be the possibility that when they started on this process they found out that people were a lot more open to them than they had originally thought that they would be. And now it's like, well, okay, we have a lot of interesting stuff on the table. Let's ramp that budget up, right?

Well, and keep in mind, I mean, it is rolling too. Like they don't spend a billion dollars and then walk away. To be honest, when you have a billion dollars to spend on launching your service, guess what? Year two, you spend a billion and a half more. Year three, you spend two billion. Year four, you spend four billion.

I think that you've got a lot of subscribers by that point. Right. Although, your Apple, you've got a giant cash pile. So, you can afford to do that for a very long time. So, yeah, they're going to keep spending money. And we're going to keep talking about this in general and about apple's strategy in particular here but they keep making deals and um and they are gonna it's a real thing like this is going to be a real thing competing with netflix and amazon and disney and you know hulu and anything else that is uh that is out there apple is going to be an hbo and and all

of that apple's going to be in the fray. They are the, you know, this is all still a little theoretical now, but it's, it's going to happen. And we're going to be, they're going to be Apple TV shows.

That's it's already in the works. And so next year I had that moment where 2019 seems so far away. And then you realize it's not that far away. When I finished the season finale of counterpart last night, they ran a trailer that said season two, 2019. I thought, oh, God, 2019. Oh, that's just next year. Okay.

I maintain, like, in thinking about this, I'm really pleased we started doing this regular segment because by the time this service comes around, I'm going to know so much about the way this business works that, like, I'm going to feel confident in talking about it. You know? There's something to be said for the fact that by by getting on this early and we have heard from a few people are like oh i'm not as interested in that i get why people don't like it i mean i

understand i think it's i think it's fascinating because it's a way that technology changes are leading to massive changes in this whole other industry that most of us are consumers of in one way or another but apple's presence in it I think makes it even more a fit for the charter of this podcast. Because, yeah, we don't want to, like not pay attention to it. And then Apple announces a service and we suddenly look up and go, Oh, what's this service about? Like, we're, we're talking about it from the from the very beginning and trying to get a handle on what they're doing and how they're doing it. So I'm excited. I'm excited to see it. And I'm excited to see the shows. And I'm fascinated to see how they roll it out.

And will they, how do you communicate a trailer of content for a service that you haven't announced? And would they announce it six months in advance? Or would they just say, well, we've got something coming next year that we're not going to talk about, but here's a trailer of whatever it is.

Like, I don't even know how they communicate this stuff. So that's going to be fun to watch. Today's show is brought to you by our amazing friends at Pingdom. The reason Pingdom are awesome and the reason that I find them amazing is because they help keep your sites and the sites that you love online.

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Go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM right now, and you can get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the code UPGRADE at checkout, and you will get a huge 30% off your first invoice. That is pingdom.com slash RelayFM right now, and get that 14-day trial with the code UPGRADE at checkout to get 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom for the continued support of this show and RelayFM. So the education event was a week ago. Yep. And there's been a lot of discussion and thought that's come out since. And I think it's good that maybe we should touch on some of these things. I've got a couple of quotes that I want to read, and we can talk about some thoughts from some observers.

And I know there's some stuff that you want to fill in as well, having had some time to think about and discuss this in a little bit more detail. So first off, I want to read a couple of quotes from Bradley Chambers. He's written some pieces for 9to5Mac. Bradley, if you don't know Bradley, has long managed large, huge deployments of Apple devices in education. So he knows what he's talking about. And he actually has a regular column at 9 to 5 Mac now, which started a few weeks ago, which is kind of the perfect time for him and for them. So that was a good coup. Bradley compared the 2018 event to the 2012 event.

That's what he was looking at in one of his articles, because that 2012 event was the education event that we mentioned, where they introduced the textbooks. And he kind of said that really, if you look at that 2012 event, everything that was announced hasn't really gone anywhere. Like all the textbook stuff, it didn't make a big impact. And so this is what he said. As I rewatched the 2012 keynote and pondered the 2018 keynote, I realized that Apple is yet again trying to craft a future for education that I am not sure fits with reality. So Bradley cites some issues being device prices, the timelines of having to implement new features and kind of when Apple are introducing them,

and that potentially they're focusing on the wrong places. And he talks about the fact that Google targets IT departments with their features, not educators, fact that google targets it departments with their features not educators because that's where it's deployed and this is why google are making headway and he says google is touting ease of management and deployment apple is touting new apps with apple pencil support i really liked this because it's showing some of the practicalities that go into these decisions when apple seems to be way more focused on trying to woo people and Google is maybe a little bit more down in the trenches and showing IT departments

why their stuff's easy to deploy. Yeah, it's the whole thing here. I mean, look, if you're Apple, you've got to go with what you've got. You literally can't sell. Yeah, and they don't have the IT management stuff. They don't have that down. You can't sell what you don't have. Also, I would argue this is so familiar, and I think I said this last week, but I mean, this is so familiar because it's, you know, when people are talking about this education market, I hear a lot of market share arguments, which, again, Apple losing share and Google gaining share is important, but like Apple's goal is not purely market share.

So that's part of it. And also I hear things that remind me of the old days of the Mac versus PC in businesses, where it comes down to who's got a better story for the IT managers. And back in those days, the answer was always Microsoft owns the minds of the IT managers. Apple basically is trying to own the minds of the, in those cases, it was like the workers and the executives so that they say, well, yeah, I know it's easier if you have Windows PCs, but we want Macs. And here, Apple is trying to communicate to teachers and talk about how great their products are for students and how much students like them too. And they're not as strong to the IT people. and they're not as strong to the IT people. And so this is a really familiar game in a lot of ways where Apple has to lean on the stuff

that it feels that it's stronger at and make an argument that basically is like, yeah, I know your tech administrator at your school would rather just deploy a bunch of Chromebooks, but look how much teachers and students love what we do. You should probably authorize them to buy this and tell your guy not to buy those Chromebooks. And that's just, I mean, I think that's the game they have to play because those are the cards they've got. So they need to go that direction. That's where their strength is.

They are trying to get better in terms of the services stuff. They're never going to be as good as Google at it, but they could be better. I've actually heard a bunch of people say that device management stuff, that Apple should buy Jamf because you need management stuff like Jamf in order to get the the ipad management to be good enough and uh so maybe you know maybe apple should acquire there or they should improve their own stuff but they're never going to probably match google and microsoft at that game but they've got this other game that they're pretty good at so that's sort of the game they're playing and uh you know it's it's it's a fascinating thing to see this such a similar story playing out that played out involving Apple, you know, not too many years ago with a completely different product set in a different market.

And then we have Carol Anna Milanese, who is a frequent guest on Jason's show Download on RelayFM. She was writing for Techpinions. And this is a longer quote, so give me a moment. I know many will evaluate Apple's opportunity only by considering the price of the new iPad, which is, of course, high when compared to most Chromebooks, and especially once you add the case and the pencil or crayon. But a way I think about it is that with the iPad, you get more than a computing device. You get a camera, a video camera, musical instruments, and now a drawing board and support for AR. AR support is particularly interesting as it would

allow schools to experiment with more immersive teaching without having to invest in a separate headset as is the case with VR and mixed reality. In this way, justifying the price is much easier. If you're investing in an iPad to continue focus on traditional work of text charts and slides, you would be better served by a lower-priced device with a good productivity suite. So this makes sense to me, right? But the thing is, I feel like when I look at stuff like this, it's like perpetuating this idealistic view of teaching, which I don't know if it exists, right?

Yeah, I don't either. And it definitely is. That's the the apple take on it this is this is sort of apple how apple is selling this and it makes it makes sense um i i get what apple's trying to do here right and i and i like what it's trying to do which is saying look with apple you're making an investment on doing more with technology and with your students and having them do AR and making videos and making music and all sorts of other things that Apple has advantages over the competition in. I get that. I get the argument from the other side as well, that the price is pretty dramatically different

and that in the end, teachers just need to do and schools just need to do this stuff that they are required to do. And it's not the whizzy AR stuff. It's the more prosaic, you know, testing and turning in reports and things like that. things like that. At the same time, I got to say, I don't like the idea that I think I see from some people who argue essentially that what a computer is, is a spreadsheet and a word processor and a slide maker. Like Google Docs has got those, right? Google apps has those features and there are people who seem to think that that's what technology is that's what students are need most um and i think i just i get really depressed by that because that that seems to me again to be a version of that same

argument which is the microsoft argument from the days, which is what is computing but office? It's like, it's a lot more than that. And I know that Chromebooks do more than this, that you can do a lot more with Chromebooks than just use Google apps. But the argument for them seems to be a lot about that. Like you got to use the keyboard for this test and you got to do this thing. And, you know, I want to side with the group that's saying, you know, a crappy laptop with a keyboard assumed to be the default is maybe going to change. And maybe we should be agents

of change and say that you don't always need a crappy laptop with a keyboard that maybe having a tablet is better and will make everybody uh have more stuff that they can do and cool stuff and it will change the world instead of and and being kind of pro the idea that things are going to change instead of being the agent of the status quo and agent of the status quo is a very sensible position to take and there are a lot of reasons why the status quo is a very sensible position to take. And there are a lot of reasons why the status quo remains. I always have that little red flag that goes up. It's like, I mean, we had this conversation on download, I think last week, which was, are people really going to need physical keyboards?

And one of my panelists said, people will always need physical keyboards. And the other panelist who is quite a bit younger said, maybe not. And I think that's, again, I'm a physical keyboard guy. I would have a hard time adapting, although I did try to put my mind in the thought of what would, yes, there will always be physical keyboards because, I don't know, change is a really powerful thing. And so this is my long way of saying that I totally get the argument for the sensibility of Chromebooks. But what Apple's tapping into is this other thing, which is, can't we strive to do more? Can't we try to be different? Can't we try to do new and interesting things? And the only way new and interesting things are going to happen in any area, but in this particular area, is if you try to do things differently instead of just doing

things the same old way. And again, I will say this plays into Apple's strengths. That's why Apple's making this argument. But this is a traditional strength of Apple. This is not a new argument they're making that they're just making now because it's all they've got. This has sort of always been the Apple argument for stuff. And it continues to be. So I've been thinking about this too, right? And I know we've been talking about it. And a lot of this stuff comes down to price as well like there is this idealistic view which of course like i'm sure that there are so

many educators that really want the idealistic view and that these tools will really help them to you know to kind of uh expand their curriculum a little bit right you gotta learn the same stuff but there might be some cool ways you can do it right and i think that's kind of what apple are hoping that people will do but the other part the other big stumbling block is price and i know that we were kind of chatting about some ways that potentially this stuff can be made easier yeah i mean there's there's there's two things here first that just on bear price i think it's fair to say that unless you're a technology buyer at a school you probably don't know the details of this my understanding is that although Apple stuff is more expensive than the Google Chromebook solution,

you can't just take their list price and multiply it. It's different than that because there are different prices and there are leases. And so one of Apple's arguments that Apple makes is, for example, that most iPads, and this is true at my son's school, most iPads are leased. They're not purchased by the school district. They're leased for, you know, three, four years, and then they're turned back in and there's residual value there. They get credit for the value that remains on those iPads, and then they get resold or whatever, somewhere else, resold, released. And the argument is that the value retained by Chromebooks after three years out in the field is a lot less. And again, I don't have corroboration here, but my understanding just from talking to people theoretically about this, and certainly this is Apple's argument,

and I've talked to people at Apple who've made this argument, is basically Chromebooks, they're $199, $150 laptops. They're kind of cheaply constructed in order for them to be that, and there's less residual value or no residual value when those things get turned in because they're beat up. Now, that's the sales pitch from Apple is that, you know, the the leases change the finances to a certain degree, Apple still more expensive, but that the math, it's closer than you might think. And that you maybe don't buy a pencil for everybody, but the pencils stay in one class that you know, there are ways to mitigate that. Now they have the crayon as an option that cuts that price. They are building this case. I got a chance to handle that forthcoming Logitech iPad case.

The rugged. Yeah, it's hilarious. I mean, it makes it feel like a laptop. It's a detachable keyboard, so you can use it like a tablet. But it is putting that sleek iPad in a a blocky box but it means that it's rugged and it it uh it it turns it into a laptop essentially which is pretty funny um it's it it adds a lot like i would i'm not somebody who likes a big case on my ipad anyway because i feel like it adds so much weight to a product that one of the great things about it is it's so small yeah

anyway so there's the there's the least Anyway, so there's the lease argument. I think there's the larger argument here, right? Which is something that I've heard people make, but we get so focused on the technology and it's like this event laid down the argument to us, which was Chromebooks or iPads. It's like, all right, we can have that conversation. We just had that conversation. I do think it's fair to say there's another conversation that we should probably not be the ones to have, but there is a conversation to be had about technology in schools

because I think you could make a strong argument that, and actually I remember Casey Liss made this argument briefly, at least on ATP last week, which is you can make the argument that the money that schools spend on technology purchases should probably go to paying teachers better, getting more materials in schools. There's an argument to be made that technology is not a solution, that tech companies are constantly trying to sell into education and saying that it's the solution and it's going to make your school better and it's going to make your students smarter and all of these things and this has been going on for 30 years maybe even 40 years now and it's unclear my understanding is it's unclear if that's really true there are very specific

places where computers in schools make sense you need to teach people how to be a computer programmer. It makes total sense. Some multimedia stuff totally makes sense. But a one-to-one program, there is an argument, and I'm not saying it's right, but there is an argument to say that the money that goes into buying everybody an iPad would be better spent somewhere else in improving the quality of the education. And I wanted to at least voice that because I think it's a fair question. And Google and Apple are not going to have that, are not going to talk about that question because their goal here is not to change the world. It's to sell products.

That's the goal. That's the goal here. I am definitely at the camp that i personally don't believe that like every class requires keyboards and computers i think that it's perfectly fine for kids to handwrite essays like i don't think that it is required that there has to be a keyboard in like every single lesson for all of the stuff to be typed i just don't know if that's required i mean i know i didn't learn that way and you know and like i know that the majority of people that have ever been to school in human history have not done that so i don't know if it is a requirement as much as it is a nice to have in some areas required

in some areas and is being heavily pushed by these companies because they want to make sure that they're the company that people use forever yeah which i i actually um and i think i might have said this last week but i i dispute i dispute that premise too there there is this view of like well you know you get them when they're young and you own them forever. But that was a premise that came up when people didn't have computers at home. And they would go to school and they would get that Apple II or a PC or a Mac and it'd be like, oh yes, and now they're going to be loyal to us forever. First off, I know lots of people whose first computer was an Apple computer in school, and then they were a PC person after that. So I'm not sure that actually worked, but that was part of the narrative anyway. And second, like today, people have technology throughout their homes.

I'm not convinced that using a Chromebook in schools means that you're going to be tied to Google forever. I just, I don't, I question the entire premise of that too. But I think you're right. I mean, you're making an argument that is sort of, we've always done it this way, so why should it be any different, which is not my favorite argument to be made. But I get what you're saying. I completely understand why there are things we should advance. I just don't know if it's needed for everything. I don't know if an iPad is needed in every single class a student takes. So the argument for the one-to-one program, whatever the technology is, is that at that point, teachers are no longer thinking, well, we're going to get the technology for one

class or one week or whatever, and we'll use it to do a unit that uses the technology. Instead, the idea is once you know that everybody's got one, you can just have it be, it's just a tool. It's just like a backpack or a pencil. We assume everybody brings a pencil to class and paper to class and notebook or whatever. And therefore, I can ask you to put something in your notebook and you can do it because you've got a pencil or a pen and you've got paper. So the idea with the one-to-one program is similar. It's the idea that you can just put everything in Google Classroom, for example, which my sons, even though they use iPads, that's what they do,

that the grade tracking is there, the assignment tracking is there, things get turned in there. Apps, they know what the apps are that are on the systems so that they can say, let's all open this app and do this thing. And there's advantages to doing that because it's just assumed that it's there. So you use it when it's useful, rather than trying to construct sort of like a technology. Now we're going to get the cart in here and do computer things. And instead just say, look, the computer is just a tool as part of the education process. And again, I don't have studies or anything to tell you whether that's good or bad, but that's the idea. And I like the idea of that. By the way, as an aside, I find it funny that the

very week that Apple had its education event and we started talking about this stuff, the, something went wrong in the management system that my son's middle school uses. And a lot of iPads had like their apps and documents deleted. And my son was talking to one of his friends about it. I i lost this thing and i lost this thing and he's like oh yeah a lot of people lost that thing so that's that's the other uh the other side of this is what happens when uh something goes wrong in the school management system and stuff gets deleted off of kids uh kids devices the dog is in the school and it's eating everybody's homework i don't know all right let's let's leave it there

on education for today all right i'm sure more stuff will continue to come up um i'm not a lad like i i just want to make that clear uh it's just my case i just get a little bit like i question i question people using pens mike well i do why would you want you know why would you be a proponent of pens i don't like the idea of future generations growing up without having strong abilities in reading and writing, like with pens and paper, right? Like everything being on screens, like as much as, of course, I spend my entire time on them now,

I think having the base skills of just being able to express yourself in that way are important. So it just makes me a little bit skittish. I don't know. It sounds like you're in the uh in the pocket protector a big pen oh nice very good very very good very good and i'm just gonna leave it there today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at casper the company focused on sleep

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directly to your door. And if for any reason you don't love your mattress, they have a hassle-free return policy. Jason, did you take advantage of the hassle-free return policy or do you in fact love your mattress no i love my mattress and i i kept my mattress in fact we just had a moment the other day where um where my wife was drinking tea in bed in the morning and i sat down on the bed and she she and she said to me oh i had a moment when i was going to brace myself because the tea was going to slosh and spill all over me and then i realized oh yeah we have a casper mattress that doesn't happen anymore. No concerns.

It used to happen with the old mattress that was like a trampoline, but the new one, nope, it's solid. It's great. So no, we kept it past the 100 days and are now headed for 1,000 days, I think. You can get $50 towards select mattress purchases by going to casper.com slash upgrade and using the code upgrade at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. So there were a heck of a lot of software updates that came out towards the tail end of last week for basically all of Apple's major platforms.

None of them were whiz bang wonderfulness so we're going to kind of i guess round up all of the little tidbits that we found interesting or important that came from the releases i think the biggest was 11.3 um it has the iphone battery settings screen in it which is hilarious to me because that feels like a really long time ago that we were talking about that now yeah and here it is like that was like christmas right that was back before the holidays and and here we are it's out in 11.3 now like some four months later basically um the screen is i find it honestly uh a little bit incomprehensible like i don't fully understand

like it feels like things should be buttons but they're not buttons it's a strange little screen um it is a baker you can see why apple uh didn't want to show this to people yes um you know obviously my results are as they would i would expect my phone is at 100 battery health which i would expect because it's still new, right? It was interesting. Stephen Hackett saw that his wife's iPhone SE was at 90% battery, which he bought when it debuted in 2016.

So that was quite surprising to see that the battery still counted to be that good. I haven't seen anybody reporting lower percentage batteries anywhere, but it's there now. The screen is there. It's something you can keep checking in on if you want to. I don't expect to ever look at that screen like ever again, I guess,

because I now know that even if I kept the phone for a couple of years, it would probably be in pretty good condition. But it's there if you want it. I genuinely think, honestly, it's probably just going to confuse people more than anything else. But Apple did need to add it because, you know, to reiterate all the conversations from December of 2017, they badly communicated it to people. And I think it's one of those things where they would rather not have a conversation and they would rather have not people obsess over it. But some people are going to obsess over it.

Some people are going to wonder. They're going to have a friend who says, well, I don't know. Did you check the battery? That battery, Apple's got problems with batteries or whatever. And they're like, oh, is there a battery setting? I'll go check it. Oh people are going to wonder, they're going to have a friend who says, well, I don't know. Did you check the battery? That battery Apple's got problems with batteries or whatever. And they're like, Oh, is there a battery setting? I'll go check it. Oh, it's fine. I'm fine. I'll, I'll, I'll it's, that's not it. I'll move along or whatever. Um, this is, uh, I, uh, I will say, I talked to somebody who works in Apple retail, who told me that, um, that the battery thing has been a huge drain on Apple retail

because everybody said, bring in your phones. And then they get really angry when they're, they've got people doing battery swaps all the time, like at high volume, as high volume as they possibly can. And still people come in and they wait in line at the, they drive to an Apple store, which can be far for some people. And they wait in line and then they're told, no, you actually need to come back in two weeks and do this again because we can't take

care of this right now. And that makes them angry. And if you look at Yelp reviews for Apple stories, you'll see those angry people in the Yelp reviews. And it's one of those things that I think Apple made the right decision on a large scale in terms of making making that controversy go away and it totally did like by saying no no we'll fix it it's fine um just bring it in they like the media story ended but my understanding is there is this like follow-on corrosive effect to the story which is the that at retail now you're getting pile pileups of people with batteries. And that is a problem that makes people angry at Apple on a personal, close basis instead of the kind of global media firestorm. But it's still an issue for them.

The advantage of something like this, this information is, it does potentially let a user, a friend of the person who has the phone, or at the Apple store be able to point at it and say, no, you're actually fine and have them leave or not come in. And that is helpful, even though it's more complexity and it's weird and Apple would rather not communicate this stuff. I like that it's there just because it's another thing that people could cite but i definitely get the sense that apple retail is having a having a really hard time keeping in mind too that after the holidays which is when this all went on after the holidays apple retail traditionally cuts back on staff hours because it's out of the holiday period so now they're down staff and dealing with a massive influx of people

who want their batteries checked or replaced. So it's, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I think it's tough times in Apple retail land right now. So if this provides a little more clarity or cushion or something for people, then that's good. That's a good start.

11.3 also included ARKit 1.5, which has a bunch of advantages like being able to detect vertical surfaces. Previously, it was on the horizontal surfaces. So it can detect like tables and floors, but not walls. So that's great to have that. ARKit can now map irregularly shaped objects.

So if you've got like a, I don't know, a pointy wall or something, who knows? 50% greater resolution and the ability to use autofocus. objects so if you've got like a i don't know a pointy wall or something who knows uh 50 greater resolution and the ability to use autofocus so apparently from reading around and i read this on mac stories these were the things that developers were asking for and apple have added them really quickly like the the amount of stuff that they've actually added in the advancements that they've taken for ar kit 1.5 these were the things that people were expecting apple to debut at wwdc this year right and ship in the fall and i was 12 but they've just put it out now so apparently this should make ar kit apps

a lot lot better um i'm excited about the 50 greater resolution and autofocus so i'm expecting this is going to help the images look better and it work in the dark like it work in not great lighting better so i'm i'm pretty excited about that so i'm going to keep my eye on this like to kind of to see apps that i use and have installed to see if they're going to like mention that they got 1.5 ar kit added and see what that does i think it's also an interesting thing for um we talk a lot about Apple's cycle with software and things that they say they may be, or reports are they may be slowing down on. When we look at what's in this 11.3, ARKit is a good example. Maybe Apple also has decided they're not going to hold some major stuff until the next fall release if they don't have to and i i actually

am really encouraged by that i'm very excited by the fact that air kit 1.5 shipped now because yeah i know it's a you know it's a follow-on to that first ar kit release and that there were probably lots of things that they didn't have ready or that they really wanted to knock down quickly and get it out there so that they could press their lead on it. That's all true. But still, the fact that it's out now and not in six months, it's a big deal.

That's a big deal. There are now music videos in the music app. And Apple debuted a lot of music videos. I think some kind of exclusive music videos too. Really, this feels like very basic video support. It's kind of strange. You can't airplay the videos. The video player is kind of weird.

It doesn't do full screen in the way you'd expect. It's very strange. It basically is in the same way that all of the TV shows inside of Apple Music feel strange. So do the music videos. But they have them there. They have playlists, and you can queue playlists up. You can take all the advantage of the features in Apple Music, but with. So do the music videos. But they have them there. They have playlists, and you can queue playlists up. You can take all the advantage of the features in Apple Music,

but with music videos now too. New Animoji. There is a lion, a dragon, a bear, and a skull. Great additions. They're fun. I demoed Animoji to my five-year-old nephew yesterday, and he was losing his mind. So that was really fun to watch um but

yeah i mean an emoji for me like i use it i use them for stickers every now and then i don't record videos i'm still just waiting for like an actual emoji face then i would use it all the time just let me make my own emoji faces like let me let me make the shocked emoji face instead of there being like a lion i mean i'm still hoping that they'll add that at some point um and then the last i think the last big thing in in in 11.3 is the health records thing so there your personal health records can be stored in the health app if you're a patient of a partnering facility which seems like a really cool thing but it's one of those things that i know i'm never going to get because they're probably never going to expand outside of the us and even if they do you have to be like a very

specific hospital right like of the partner hospitals are going to do it blah blah blah but it's cool if you've got it available to you i think more interesting for me jason than what's included in 11.3 is what isn't so things that were in the beta process that haven't been that have been removed. AirPlay 2 and iMessages in the cloud. So these were both things that were in the beta processes. Things that were both announced

at WWDC 2017 and they're still not shipping. So let's assume now that these won't come in 11.3.1, right? They would maybe come in 11.4, which we know will exist because they spoke about it last week. And this is slated for a June release,

which is going to bring a lot of the support for some of the education stuff. So we know that 11.4 is coming. So let's assume that AirPlay 2 messages in the cloud are that 11.4 is coming so let's assume that airplay 2 messages in the cloud and 11.4 if they are this is a year after the features were announced and four months after the home pod shipped and the home pod was the poster child for airplay 2 but this is even assuming that they will ship it at 11.4 it is possible that these might be pushed to 12 that is why i think i think if they can't get them in 11.4 that's what will happen next right i think it'd be amazing if they got them in an 11.4 release and and like on stage while they're announcing ios 12 mentioned that that airplay 2 and messages

in the cloud is also in an ios 11 update that's available like they'll get applause for that or something but it would have been on the same stage where they announced those features a year before is also in an iOS 11 update that's available. They'll get applause for that or something, but it would have been on the same stage where they announced those features a year before. It's pretty wild. But this is our conversation about this. They pulled stuff forward, and then they also pushed stuff back.

And so you get ARKit 1.5, but you also get no AirPlay 2. And we've talked about it before. Apple has stuff that's not ready and they've decided not to ship it and on one level that's really good especially with messages in the cloud that you kind of don't want to mess that up but it is interesting that 10 months later uh from when they announced it it's still not shipping that they're still not ready even though it was in the betas they put in the betas they wanted to test it out that was great wasn't good enough to ship it so they pulled it back out and presumably there'll be uh another ios beta shortly that will probably have it back in

and it's messages in the cloud i'm kind of like okay right like that i assume is like i assume both of these things are really difficult to do anyway. But I'm like, okay, well, I'll wait until that comes because whatever. It will come when it comes. But AirPlay 2 is like a tentpole feature of a product that now is in my living room. That one seems way weirder to me. The HomePod should have AirPlay 2 in it. So all of my air playing will be better on this thing. So I'm not waiting for four seconds every time I press the play button when sending an overcast like podcast to it right an overcast

stream like i want airplay too i bought a product that should have it in there right you told me you told me when you originally told me about this product that it would include it and then i kind of gave you benefit of the doubt that it didn't. And this is a really weird one to me. Like, what is stopping them? I mean, there obviously must be something really tough with it. Are they going to do it? Like, is this something they can do? Oh, I think it's something they can do.

But they obviously had trouble with it and are still working on it. It is the mystery of the HomePod. The riddle of the HomePod continues, right? Like why that product exists the way it does and when it existed and when they announced it and when they shipped it. And the fact that features are missing even now from it. It's fascinating. Fascinating. Watch OS 4.3 was released. It restored the ability to control your iPhone's music playback.

If you read that and you're like, hang on a second, I don't understand. What this did was it reverted a decision from 4.whatever to, I guess, where now you can browse your whole library again, not just what was in the Watch Music app. That's what it changed. So you can now browse your whole library and choose from anything and control the music playing on your phone, not just on your watch. And it also added some HomePod music controls,

so you can now go in with the audio picker thing, and you can control the volume levels of your HomePod with the digital crown and stuff like that. It added activity to the Siri watch face, so now on the Siri watch face, you have like a permanent thing there when there's no other cards that shows your rings and it shows the calories you've burned in the day, the amount of minutes of exercise

and how many stand hours. Previously on the watch, when it had nothing else to display, it just said, have a great afternoon. And so that was kind of pointless. I prefer to have this piece of information there, even though it's guilting me constantly into the fact that I haven't closed my rings. It added also portrait support for nightstand mode. So nightstand mode is when you, if you

have your Apple Watch charging on the side, you get the big clock at night and you can kind of like bump your nightstand and it lights the watch up this is now available in portrait mode which is probably for air power i did notice jason when you when you put the charge when you put the the apple watch on to charge there's a new charge animation so all this stuff is for air power if that ever arrives uh that product that who knows where it is it's out there somewhere um so a lot of this stuff is probably added for that uh when it will come the home pod got an update 2.3 gigabytes just bug fixes no idea uh this is one of those things i've seen people saying like oh i think there's less base in the home pod i can't like believe any of that stuff because it's all subjective right they haven't said that it's reduced the base so so I don't know how you test that.

Yeah, I saw several people say that they thought that some songs sounded different, that they were fixing bugs in what they were doing with their processing of songs. But it's very hard to tell because, you know, how do you do? You get two HomePods and you try very hard for one not to be updated but there's a small window and then it downloads a software update and you can't take it off the internet because it needs to use the internet in order to play the music and it's a challenge is

what i'm saying it's a challenge to to test that out and then you've got a library of songs and how do you do that it's it's hard to say but I have heard people report that they feel like there were songs that were problematic, that the processing on the HomePod was weird and that it doesn't sound weird now. So it may be that they are fixing bugs in their audio processing too. But it's so hard to really kind of like categorically say one way or another for that, right?

Yeah, especially if Apple doesn't detail it in some way and mac os 10.13.4 so this is high sierra 0.4 is that right yeah um yeah it added external gpu support which is something we knew about um there are a small range but a range of products that are available that are supported by the Mac, which is more than just the one that they had originally allowed for people to buy during the testing period. So there are a range of external GPU products that you can buy,

and they are supported now officially by macOS. It cannot be used in bootcamp with windows right which i thought was funny um that you can't do that so if you think you're going to be able to use your iMac for super powerful gaming now on windows that is not going to happen for you um there was something that i saw that wasn't an addition but something has broken which I find really unfortunate and interesting and it's just yet another example of why development can be tricky lots of

Mac desktop extension software so a few different programs, one including Duet Display have been rendered inoperable by this version of mac os due to what the developers of duet display are calling critical bugs they have alerted these critical bugs to apple for apple to fix them this seems like a difficult and risky situation to hope that that's gonna occur for you um yeah i don't know i so basically something's changed in mac os which is basically rendering apps like air display i display duet display they don't work they just don't work so these are the applications where you can have an ios device and a mac and you can basically use

your ios device like it's a secondary screen for your Mac. And something in this version of macOS has broken those applications. So whatever API they were taking advantage of or whatever. This is just another example of why, whilst there are some things on the Mac that you can do because the Mac is open, right? You can do this. The weird and wonderful stuff is open to be broken. And then what do you do?

Yeah, well, I think this is a good example of why if you rely on stuff that is not stock Apple that you don't rush to update to 10, 13.4 because you never know something like this might happen. And it does happen from time to time. So if you've got critical stuff that is not stock, waiting to update until you see an all clear from people who are using or testing the stuff you use is always a prudent thing. This is a weird one.

I'd like to think that this is probably a bug that maybe even is related to the eGPU stuff, that there's something different about display stuff in 10.13.4 and they introduced a bug that it's not Apple. I think Apple has no motivation to crush these apps. I think probably it was just they didn't test against these apps and they broke something. And with any luck, it'll get fixed. The bad news is that you're in 10, 13, four already, and you rely on them. You're going to have to find a way to roll back. And even then you're going to have to wait it out until a 10, 13, five beta or until 10, 13, five drops. I had a funny thing. I'm on 10, 13, four now. And it's very exciting because I was on a beta of 10.13.

It might not have even been three. It might have been two. I was on one of those betas and it prevented, I was not able to update to another version after that on my iMac pro something weird I think with the iMac pro um because it's got the weird you know it's got the bridge os and then it and it and it's got it's an unusual new system for apple for uh for how the the machine boots and runs and uh I was in a boot loop every time a new version would download it'd be like like, I'm going to install this now, getting ready to install. And then it would restart or maybe shut down,

but then it would restart or I would turn it on and it would end up booting into an installer window and saying, I couldn't install it. Would you like to save an error log? And then you like, let's try that again. Nope, I still can't do it. And then if you set your disk as the startup disk, it would just boot back into the same beta

that I was in before. So I was running a Mac OS beta for a couple months, at least. Whoops. And amazingly, 10.13.4 actually installed. And I left the installer loop behind, which which is and it's one of those things where it was a beta right so like on one level i'm like well it's a beta i did i did this to myself on another level i'm thinking to myself how do i get out of this beta and i tried like

i tried downloading a full installer of of the most recent version of high sierra and putting them in an external drive and installing from that and turning off all of the security settings on the iMac so that you can actually boot from an external drive and install. And it was like, oh, I need to download some components to add to this. And I thought, oh, that's pretty cool that the macOS installer knows

that I'm on the iMac Pro and it needs a couple other pieces. So it downloads it and then it restarts. It says, now I'm installing it. And guess what? Then it would reboot and say, oh, I had an installation error and I couldn't install sorry would you like to save a log and uh yeah so uh that led to lots of concern but uh the good news is i am now off of the betas

and on 10 13 4 and i guess i just won't use duet. But at least I'm not on a beta now. No, I did think to myself, whilst Apple may not have decided to do this, it's easy to assume that just something changed and broke it. I wonder if iOS 12 would be like, hey, you can now use your iPad as a secondary display. And the reason it broke it was because they've been building their own system

who knows like it'd be kind of funny to me uh in a very sad sad way because that's how shell looking goes there's a kickstarter um project that has already closed that's out there that and i forget the name of it now but it's a yeah that's it and they have a hardware thing that you pop in to mini DisplayPort or USB-C. And then it transmits that to the Mac. And that has struck me, as I've read about it, as a safer solution because they're not hacking the graphics card, which is what these other ones are doing. It's tricking the system into thinking that another display is attached. You're tricking the system into thinking that another display is attached. Yeah, well, basically, the little thing you attach is essentially an external display, right? It's a hardware external display, and it's saying, here I am.

And that external display is then transmitted. The data is transmitted to the iPad. And I wonder if that works still. I bet you it does, but I don't know for sure. Because that's still in beta. I haven't shipped it yet. As is usual when we talk about these things on the show, iOS 11.4 has been ceded to developers. Don't know what's in it yet.

As we talked. Not enough people have been able to dig into it at this point to talk about what's in there. But I mean, we are naturally assuming ClassKit and SchoolWork will be in there because that's what we knew was going to be in it um who knows if airplay 2 and messages in the cloud are in there you will probably know by the time you're hearing this if you just go to the links in the show notes

it will say hello future people all right let's do some hashtag ask upgrade but today's ask upgrade is brought to you by PCalc, the scientific calculator you didn't even know that you needed. PCalc is designed for engineers, students, or anybody looking for a great calculator. And it's available for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and even the Apple TV, in which you can do your multiplications with game controllers if you want to.

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notification center widget, which is a full calculator on iOS and macOS. For engineering types, pCalc optionally supports marking calculations via reverse Polish notation, which I obviously don't need to explain any further because me and Jason know exactly what this means, as we're both certified math experts. Right, Jason? You know all about reverse Polish notations. That's right. What you do, Mike, is you take a Polish sausage

and then you eat it the other way. That's how it works. If you're still in the mood for yet another Easter egg, Peacock has the most elaborate about screen maybe since Microsoft hid an entire flight simulator inside of Excel. The Peacock about screen is one of my very favorite things on all of iOS. So yeah, you should just go down there, load this app and try it. You can search in the app store for Peacock, or if you go to PeacockPCALC.com slash upgrade, you can get more details. It's PCALC.com slash upgrade you can get more details it's pcalc.com slash upgrade for more details

about peak elk our thanks to peak out for their support of this show and relay fm we're outside of the ad now so i would just say peak elk is one of my very favorite apps on ios uh if you have yet to try it you should try it it's brilliant i love it I love it hashtag ask upgrade first we have a question from Jeff Jeff wants to know do you think that something like the Logitech crayon could come to an iPhone model in the future so I have a couple of thoughts about this

one I am just waiting for the Logitech crayon to go on sale generally now because people seem so excited about it I think at some point there's going to be a product like this which comes out to the masses. We'll have to wait and see. And I mean, I was on the books of predicting that the iPhone 10 would have Apple Pencil support.

I still think it will happen in the future. Do you? Yeah, I think it's inevitable that it will happen. The question is, what form will it take? And is Apple, is the crayon a hint that Apple pencil may change and how Apple's approach to writing weight may change. And I don't know,

cause the crayon uses a different system. It's not Bluetooth. It's a single radio frequency. It doesn't pair instead. It's proximity based. So you can use that crayon on an iPad and then literally just move it over to another iPad and write on it, and it totally works, which the Apple Pencil doesn't work like that. I would love that because I currently have two

Apple Pencils. I would like to just have one Apple Pencil. Right. And so it could be that people are like, oh, well, why does it only work with this one iPad and not all the other iPad Pros? And the answer is because they're using this new technology in it. It wouldn't shock me if they might be doing that for other devices too down the road. And if they do that, yeah, maybe that's a thing that they could put in an iPhone. It wouldn't surprise me. And they're going to have, if this iPhone X Plus is real, where it's even larger than the iPhone X,

plus is real where it's even larger than the iphone 10 that would be potentially a natural for a uh for some sort of uh optional uh stylus input yeah i i honestly i would be surprised i would be really surprised if apple has this like 700 inch iphone 10 plus without without a pencil because like the rumors are like you are getting up there to 7 inches, like 6.7 or something like that, if I remember off the top of my head. It's basically an iPad Mini. You're getting real close to the iPad Mini. I think it'd be kind of

nice. We'll have to wait and see. Jason asks, this is not you, this is another Jason. Not me. Why do people want the bezels on the iPad to go away? The bezels serve a better purpose on the iPad than on the iPhone, surely. Jason, when we talk about the bezels going away on an iPad, what do you mean? Well, I mean, I think the top and the bottom, the forehead and the feet, I don't know where

the button is. Like, I get that you want to hold your iPad by the corners. I get that you want to hold your iPad by the corners. I get that. But they've already reduced the bezel on the sides and it doesn't bother me. Like it hasn't affected it at all. And the idea there is you can get more, more screen in a smaller device. And that either makes the iPad smaller or it makes the screen bigger. And those are both good things.

and those are both good things. So, you know, I don't expect that the iPad needs to be iPhone X-like in its lack of bezel, but there's a lot of bezel space left to be slimmed down, I think, in the iPad. I want to see the thickness that's on the long sides the whole way around. Like, really small, right? You know, I wonder if it's like proportionally like the iphone i don't know like i'd have to do some mathematics probably using pcap to work out that but when i hold my ipad in portrait mode i'm not accidentally touching things like you know the palm rejection

is very good still right i don't think anyone is expecting or really asking for just this front of the iPad to be only a screen, right? But what we refer to as bezel-less, there is a continuum of no bezels, which goes from zero to the iPad. And it's all referred to as they're're not being any bezels but what everybody really means is just very thin right and that's all I want very thin is what I'm looking for right Virginia asks was there a day when Apple's education discounts were more aggressive

urban legend has it that Apple twos were basically given away do we know if this is the case Jason um well Apple's education discounts were much more aggressive back in the day that i would say that although we think of apple's products as expensive today in a lot of places they you know you got to keep in mind back in the earlier days of computing in the early days of the mac you know a lot of these apple computers were multi multi thousands of dollars at a time when that would that would be like even more cost today yeah maybe like 10 grand today or something right for like yeah historically the prices have come down in terms of real dollars from back in the day but that meant that also yes that with with

larger prices came larger discounts so that is true it used to be that if you knew somebody who was in college and you could get them to buy you a Mac at their college sales outlet, which all colleges had computer sales outlets. I'm not sure if they still do. I think UC Berkeley shut theirs down or moved it into the bookstore and all that. But there used to be like the scholar's workstation at UC Berkeley. And that's where I bought my PowerBook 160. And got a good deal you got a really good deal like that was the place to get a computer if you if you uh an apple computer if you could if you knew somebody who was eligible and you had to prove your eligibility and show your student id and all to be an active student and you were limited to like buy one computer a year or something so it wasn't abused but um it was a little bit like

knowing somebody who works at apple and having them buy a computer for you you get a big discount that way too so uh there are still education discounts like individual student education discounts today you can get like 10 or 15 off some stuff yeah some stuff it's still there it's just not like it was no it's just not like it was um and as for the urban legend um i think this the source of this is that Apple gave an Apple II to every public school, I believe, in California at one point. Wow. That was their initiative. And that is the source of that legend. And I think it's the source of the narrative about how you catch them early and they're your user for life.

how like you catch them early and they're your user for life um but that's the story um that that apple apple gave an apple 2 to every school in california elijah asks do you think that the apple watch will ever be sold as a separate complete computer without the need for an iphone like i feel like that's the eventual goal right like that's the logical end game of the product yeah i think it's most likely that what it'll be is like an airport where you know it'll be independent but you'll need an app to set it up okay i wonder what airport you were referring to it's like san francisco international whatever they need no um like the airport base station you you know, you don't need a Mac for that even. You can use an iOS app for that. You can use an iPad app for that.

I wonder if that might be the future of the Apple Watch, that they'll still want you to sign in somewhere. Like, are they going to really make you put in your Apple ID by finger or by emoji on the Apple Watch? on the little, or like by emoji, on the Apple Watch. So it may be that they make it that you can, you know, hold that Apple Watch near any iOS device or even other devices and, you know, put it or put in a code or whatever and configure it and then have it be up and running. It could be. Like, it would be nice if you didn't need an iPhone to,

at the very least, what they're going to try to do is make it less and less dependent on the iphone right like i can see i think it's more likely that sooner you'll have an apple watch that won't go talk to the iphone for everything like if it's in your home network like it doesn't need to glom onto your iphone use your iphone cell connection or whatever it's just it it's on the wifi. It's doing its own thing. It doesn't need to check back with data on the iPhone, which is how it started. So I think we'll get there first because the setup, the setup is the trick. I think that there's a lot that goes on in the setup process that you kind of want another device for at this point. But I think beyond that, having it be independent from an iPhone would be nice. If you, if you have two iPhones and one watch, you should be able to go with either one and have it work fine.

You have two watches and one iPhone. Whatever your combinations are, I think it should be less tied to the iPhone. But I feel like the setup is going to be the last. Remember how long it took for iOS devices to be able to be set up on their own. It actually took quite a while. I think of the watch to the iPhone as the iPhone was to the Mac, right? Like there was a time where you had to set it up

and then sync all of your contacts and data and podcasts through those two devices. And then eventually like it could use all that data and pull that data on its own from the cloud. And then slowly just more and more of it went away to the point that now you can own an iphone without ever owning a computer right there is no computer needed anymore to have an iphone and so like i imagine it going that kind of route i also imagine a future jason where we don't even need our iphones because we have our apple watches and our glasses and those two things talk to each other, right?

And then that's that. That's your computer. But I don't, honestly, like I see that as a thing, but I am of the Marco Arment school of don't bet against the smartphone. Like even though that will exist, I still think people will want smartphones as well or like whatever those pocket computers become,

which is more than just this floating UI in front of your face. But we'll wait and see. And Brent asked, what stock apps do you use on iOS? So I went through this. I picked out a selection of applications that I use frequently. Of course, there are many applications that Apple make that I use every now and then, like Find My Friends or something. But I don't really consider that as an app that

I use a lot. So I use Safari and Mail. Whilst Chrome is my browser that I use typically even on iOS, links open in Safari. There's nothing I can do about it. So I use Safari a bunch, and Mail because I have a constant fight with all email applications. Obviously, I use Messages. And I use Apple Music as my music service of choice. I use the health and activity apps for workout and stuff and for checking that data. I like the way that it represents that stuff. I use Notes as my notes app.

I use Notes for so much stuff. I use Notes as my Notes app I use Notes for so much stuff basically everything unless it's long form text which I typically use Bear for these days and I use the Files app I use the Files app as the way to try and look into all of my

cloud connected services I use iCloud and Dropbox mostly so I use the Files app and the camera third party cameras are are lovely they're never as good as like they're never as accessible and fast and simple as the camera that apple puts into every phone so that's my list jason what about you uh yeah safari mail messages music reminders and notes um use the calendar i don't okay i use fantastic yeah same yeah so camera sure photos do you use notes use apple notes or do you use something else yeah okay no i use apple notes

so yeah i mean they're i think they're kind of like the standard these days and then there are other ones you can or can't use depending on like so you know got like reminders and stuff like that everybody uses that the podcast app is good but not everybody uses that right then there are other ones that you can or can't use depending on like so you know got like reminders and stuff like that not everybody uses that the podcast app is good but not everybody uses that right like there are a bunch of these other applications but i think kind of the list that we have probably similar for most people that that listen to this show i would expect all right so that is it for today thank you so much for sending in uh your hashtag ask upgrade questions to close out the show just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade and it'll go into a document for us to pull from.

And also if you have a question you want us to start the show with, use the hashtag SnellTalk and that will go into another document so we can open the show and close the show in the fun ways that we do. I want to thank our sponsors again for their support of this episode. Pingdom, Casper, and Peacowk.

Don't forget that we are doing a live show RelayFM is doing a live show at WWDC there is still a small amount of tickets available if you go to altconf.com you can get tickets for our RelayFM live show we'd love to see you there if you're going to be

in San Jose for WWDC week if you want to find our in San Jose for WWDC week. If you want to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 187. You can find Jason online. He's on Twitter at jsnell, and he writes at sixcolors.com. Jason produces many, many, many podcasts at theincomparable.com and at relay.fm. You go to relay.fm slash shows,

and you can find many shows that we do here for example you can listen to free agents or download or liftoff which is some shows that jason produces at relay.fm i am on twitter i'm at i mike i am yke i also make many shows at relay.fm i if i was to list them to you now I would definitely forget one of them so just I'm not going to do that I don't want to break any hearts so go to relay.fm and you can find many shows there pick out something, there's going to be something else

that you like even if you think you've already subscribed to all of the Relay.fm shows that you want I bet there's at least one more in there we have lots of great stuff thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Class dismissed. I should have said that last week.