Upgrade - 188: An Elephant on the Bridge

Episode Date: April 9, 2018

What is the future of the Mac? This week we connect the future of the Mac Pro, the possibility of Apple abandoning Intel processors, and the rumored unification of Mac and iOS development. Also, Jason reviews the new sixth-generation iPad.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 188 today's show is brought to you by linode pingdom and slack my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i am very. We have a hashtag Snell Talk question this week from listener Brian. And Brian wants to know, Jason, why do you keep your iPhone in the kitchen, as you mentioned you leave it there for Qi charging, when you sleep in the bedroom? Why is your iPhone not in the bedroom with you?

I could turn this around and say, why would I bring my phone into the bedroom? So many reasons. So many reasons so many reasons alarms emergency telephone calls there are so many reasons alarms i use my apple watch when i have an alarm set i don't use the phone because the i find the apple watch a better uh alarm device um late night late night phone calls emergency phone calls well that is a worldview that i'm gonna leave my phone right next to my ear in case somebody who actually is supposed to call i've got do not disturb on quite frankly so if that emergency phone call is not making it

through right but it's like emergency phone calls from a family member and you have like the do not disturb things set in such a way right that it's like multiple sure in a certain period of time well i have my okay okay so my house is not that big it's all on one level okay you've been in my you've been in my house my house is not that big i can hear my phone if if something breaks through do not disturb uh i can hear it just fine from where i where i am um it's never happened and i have my ipad um that i keep by so that's what you do you're like late night tweeting you're using the it's all on the ipad late night early in the morning whatever yeah it's on the ipad so i don't need an iphone there too like you are not one of these people who is adverse to having devices in the bedroom you just have a having devices in the bedroom you

just have a different device in the bedroom right yeah the phone the phone i have no need of the phone in in the bedroom at night because the ipad is my information source there and in the morning so the phone i i have no i have no need for that and i get why people do it and why there are those like this originates with that, like having that charger that charges your Apple Watch and your phone together. I'm like, nope, not interested. And I would say also my wife is the same way. We have his and hers Qi chargers out in the front.

And then we have iPads in the back. And that's what we use. So it works for me um i don't see any uh any real value i think i think also technically if the phone rang my phone my ipad would ring too when your watch ring it might um my admission here is that i don't actually have i have the sound turned off on all of my devices, basically. So I never hear them chime when they do chime. I feel the Apple Watch buzz when I'm wearing it. And that's about it. I don't have any sounds on almost ever. I have a lot of really cute ringtones and you never hear them because I just never have them on.

So I am like phone, do not disturb 24-7 a day, right? Including my iPads. All my devices are on do not disturb because the notifications come through to my Apple Watch. But I have it set up that if something breaks through do not disturb, it will make the phone ring audibly. Yeah, I think that's a setting and that's fine.

That's how I have mine set up. But I don't, That's, yeah. So there you go. That's why I expect that Brian asked this question thinking that you might be a, like, you know, no devices in the bedroom type person, which I'm pleased. I mean, because I don't really subscribe to that.

I think it's fine to have these things in the bedroom. So I was pleased to hear that, you know, your phone isn't there because you have another device for it. i think that that is that's good also the phone the phone just sort of lives out it would require me to take the phone from where it's it spends most of its time which is on the counter in the kitchen and at the end of the night say all right little phone i'm gonna tuck you in now you know you take yourself to the room right yeah but the phone like the phone just is laying unless it's in my pocket the phone is laying on that g charger and before that it was laying on that counter with a with a plug in it it doesn't need to be relocated at the end of the night whereas the ipad does float

around the house with me and so it's it's just it's all of a kind right like this is this is the role that the iphone plays in my life which is it's only really with me when I'm going somewhere or I need it for some reason. Otherwise, it's generally on its charger. And the iPad is the device that I use when I'm in the house roaming around. The phone is not generally. So it's all part of that same kind of approach to those devices. That one of them, the iPad's role is expansive, and the iPhone's role is really limited in the house. If you would like to suggest a question for us to open the show, just send out a tweet into the world, into the ether,

with the hashtag SnellTalk, and it may be picked for a future episode. Thank you to Brian for the submission. iOS 11.4 was during last week's episode. The beta one was released, and we were talking in the episode about the fact that messages in the cloud and HomePod stereo support of AirPlay 2

was missing from 11.3. According to 9to5Mac, the 11.4 beta does again include messages in the cloud and HomePod stereo support support but there is a catch the to use home pod stereo support there you have to be able to update to beta firmware on your home pod which is not available right now ah so no one can test it but it is referenced in the ios release so it's there um interesting but yeah so i guess unless you need to test homepod things and are granted access to the homepod beta firmware you don't get to test i

would love that i would love if a future beta that would be enough for me to update to a beta is if the beta included or they released beta firmware so that we could try out the um airplay 2 and stereo support that would be really fun but nothing yet but there you go it's back in again 11.4 it's all these features are back in again maybe we'll see them soon the testing continues very large-scale testing on this uh today april 9th apple released a press release in the morning. It was rumored last night because of a leak from Virgin Mobile that Apple is introducing

an iPhone 8 and 8 Plus product, Red Special Edition. It goes on sale tomorrow, I believe and is available like you can pre-order and is available on Friday, April 13th to purchase um

you may remember this with i think this was last year with the seven um that you could get a product red version of the phone it had a white face and a red back and some of the proceeds of the sales go to uh to help uh fight the aids right and to fund aids research and stuff like that yep but this time uh what everybody wanted last time or what loads of people wanted last time has been given to us this time the phone now has a black front and a red back um i personally like the look of that a lot more um it was interesting to me that this is just the eight and the eight plus i was expecting honestly the 10 to to have this um just the 8 and the 8 Plus. I was expecting, honestly, the 10 to have this. I think that would be really cool looking.

Who knows? Maybe at some point in the future. Like the 10's back is stainless, right? I don't think they can do a red stainless. No, the back isn't stainless. The sides are stainless. Oh, you're right. The sides are stainless.

The back is just colored glass. It's black or white. They must have looked and said, no, this doesn't. And again, they did that red and white phone, which is not pretty. I find it funny that so many people are like, oh, finally they did the black front and not the white front with the red because they didn't like that. It's like, this is such a weird product because it comes out midstream which means anybody who's really excited about the iphone 8 already

bought it yeah i don't know who buys this but some people will they will sell some they look it looks great i wish they would just release them at the at the time because i think that would make they would sell a lot of them that way yeah i will uh i do not have strong opinions about the design of either of those models but i will say this which is black front i'm just a big fan of the black front in general it should be you know i i that's the one to get the black front so i'm glad that this one also has the black front now uh you know no iphone 10 though although they did have a case i guess there's a red uh leather folio case now for the for the for the 10 uh still no sign of air power i was expecting air power today when this seemed like there was going to be another press release who knows maybe maybe it will come

with 11.4 who knows right everything everything comes with the next version of ios maybe air power will get that then but still no sign uh jason you had for review and you posted a review on Six Colors of the 2018 iPad, the new regular 9.7 inch iPad with Apple Pencil support. So that is available. And you made an interesting comparison with this iPad and automobiles. Would you like to explain a little bit about that? What your kind of takeaway is of the ipad i'm surprised i have not heard from more people who are really into cars about how i dared to use an automobile metaphor for the ipad maybe maybe you just nailed it right like everyone's like oh yeah he totally got it well so i um i have a Honda Civic. And before I had the Honda Civic, I had a different Honda Civic. And that is the Honda's, you know, it's a solid, relatively cheap car.

is to say, the way I try to frame this story is, how do you talk about this iPad? This iPad is not as good on lots and lots of fronts as the iPad Pro, on lots of different fronts. And presumably, there will be new iPad Pros at some point in the next few months, and that gap will widen even but the iPad Pro the iPad is almost uh half the cost of the 10.5 iPad Pro so I tried to I tried to liken it to cars where there are some people who want to spend a lot of money to get the very best car the it has nice features it's got a lot of amenities. You do it because you want the very best that there is. You do it because you have the money. You do it because you like the lifestyle of being somebody who's got cutting edge technology. I feel like that drawing a parallel between that and people who buy luxury cars or lease luxury cars or whatever seemed like a fit fit to me that that um and i'm not saying that luxury car people are ipad pro people it's like what your priorities are is your priority

cars is your priority ipads ipads are a lot cheaper to have that priority on than cars let me tell you um and i i made the point that like i'm just not when it comes to cars i'm not one of those people when it comes to cars i look for value and i don't need the cutting edge and and and that is what the ipad said to me is this is a product that is faster than the ipad pros that were released in 2015 and 2016 the first generation ipad pro models it's faster than those and it costs a fraction of what they cost. And so what you're doing is you're saving half the price in giving up a couple years on the cutting edge. And it's not for everybody.

And I would wager it's not for a lot of the people who listen to podcasts like this and read websites like mine, because the people who are very enthusiastic about technology, just as I would argue that, or I would wager that the people who are very enthusiastic about technology, just as I would, would argue that, or I would, I would wager that the people who are reading all of the articles about the highest quality, high test, super expensive cars are probably not driving a 2005 Honda Civic. Although some of them are because the other part of this is just money. If can love them, but not have the money to buy them. And so it's whether you have any money at all to spend or whether you have money to spend on some things and you prioritize other things to spend your money on. But either way, it comes back to the fact that this is a really great value as an iPad.

It's impressive how powerful it is. as an iPad, it's impressive how powerful it is. It's got the, uh, the eight 10 processor in it, and that does make it faster than the, uh, than the processors that were in those first generation iPad pros, the current iPad pros blow it away. But again, they're twice the price more or less. So, um, I, I, I, uh, it's a really nice iPad. And if you don't care about, and I, I, the review has a litany of things that it doesn't, it doesn't have that are in the iPad pro, but it's a really nice iPad. And if you don't care about, and the review has a litany of things that it doesn't have that are in the iPad Pro, but it's like, you don't care about the quality of the cameras. If you don't care about the wider color gamut

and true tone and- 120 hertz refresh rate, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's all these things that are really nice features, but if you're looking at the price tag and then you're looking at the price tag of this thing and you say i don't really need all those features everything with the screen they're like luxury nice to haves like none of the things that are in the the ipad pro screen that are not in the regular ipad screen actually add anything of real productive value,

they're all just like, oh, well, this is just much nicer. And a lot of that, like even the processors, which is like, well, there isn't really iPad software that you get a ton of advantage out of having the fastest

processor. Things just happen quicker. It's just more capable. Yeah, there are something I mentioned is that i don't think that there are lots of people who are using ipad apps and waiting because the processor is just not fast enough um there are examples and like i was thinking in something like ferrite which i use to edit and i've got plugins turned on to process the audio and then i export the audio at the end i would imagine an audio export of a of a multi-track ferrite project on the ipad would be a lot slower than on the ipad pro is my guess might be wrong i don't know but my guess is that it would be a lot slower because the processor is is a lot slower than on the current ipad pro but again that's a that's an edge case. And if you're somebody

who cares about that, you probably know it and you would probably make a different buying decision. If you're doing that level of power, perhaps if you've got the... That might make you prioritize that more expensive iPad. Although it'll still work on the iPad. That's the thing. It just would be a little bit slower. But I think it's less of a big deal. And yeah, so you wrap that all in and you end up with a product that is... It pretty great like for three for a price that apple didn't use to sell ipads at all let's remember before last year um it's a that's it's pretty great 329 for um an ipad that is you know two years away from being cutting edge but still incredibly capable with a bunch of features. Oh, the other Honda Civic

thing I mentioned is when I bought my first car I ever bought new was a Honda Civic in 1993. And I had just, you know, I just gotten a job and my wife had just gotten a job and we weren't even married yet. It was before we were married and my car died and we bought a Honda Civic and we didn't have a lot of money. So we couldn't buy any of the fancy features they had. The car didn't have a clock, Mike. They're like, oh, that'll be another $100 for the clock. And we're like, $100 for a clock? That's outrageous.

And then for a stupid little clock. And then we spent the next 15 years driving that car without a clock, thinking, this is the dumbest thing ever. Why did we not pay $ car without a clock thinking this is the dumbest thing ever. Why did we not pay a hundred dollars for a clock? But there was one feature of the windows. We had to, you had to crank the windows. There were no power windows on that car. We just had to use a, use a plastic handle to crank the windows up and down. The one feature we spent on because we, we lived in a, a hot part of the Bay area was air conditioning. And, um, I was thinking about that with the Apple Pencil, which is sometimes, and again, you don't get to choose your features in the iPad. They are what

they are. But the Apple Pencil is like the frill that now comes with the budget product. And I think it's the right frill to bring down there because there's so much potential for people. Like I gave the iPad to my son with an apple pencil for him to try out and you know he took to it easily and he's never had an ipad with a with a an apple pencil and i think that's a that's a great decision by apple not just for education but in general to let the apple pencil be part of the whole ipad story now which is you know that's the story of of car technology too where the all the cool tech starts off in the luxury cars and then eventually it comes down to everywhere and we're now it's hard hard to find a a car that uh i'm not sure they make cars anymore where you have to crank

the windows up and down right like that that may just be over but uh there was a time when that was a fancy feature and then over time they just you know the the auto i've never all cars i think have to have backup cameras now in the US. So now, you know, I've got a car with a backup camera, but that used to be a fancy feature. Eventually, some of these smart cruise control and automatic parking and stuff that are luxury things are getting, those are getting pushed down into cars. Anyway, the Apple Pencil is now that. It's like the power windows.

The Apple Pencil is just every iPad from now on is probably going to have Apple Pencil support. It's great. And other things may come. The only bummer, I would say, is it's a bummer that this thing doesn't do a smart connector, if only because I think that the 9.7 iPad Pro with that Logitech Create keyboard that uses the smart connector was a really great combo as a compact writing machine and for this thing you're going to need to use a bluetooth keyboard but there will be cases there probably already cases that abound that are bluetooth based and will let you uh use it as a little typing machine so put a link in the show notes to jason's review if you want to read more uh but that's a it's a great little machine that ipad It's a good little computer.

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And having it all happen within its own little app or within Slack is so much nicer than having all of these communications also like interwoven with all of the other types of email that I get. Like it's a horrible mess. And then being so easily searchable. So like if I, this happens to me quite a lot. So like maybe me and Jason are planning out something scheduling wise and I forget something. I can just type in a couple of keywords and I can search through our previous chat history and I can find it. It's so, so easy. If I had to do an email, I would lose about a week of my life trying to find that email,

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but that's also where all the work gets done. And that's our office and it completely works. Yeah, 100%. To learn more about Slack, head to slack.com. That is S-L-A-C-K.com. Thanks to Slack for their support of RelayFM and for giving us an easy way to communicate Slack where work happens.

I'm so excited to have Slack as a sponsor. That's good. Sorry, I didn't hear all that out. I was responding to something in Slack. Oh, see what I did there? Anyway. It's true. It's nice to have a product you use as a sponsor.

It's great. We have some more of those in this episode, which is also great. Apple invited Matthew Panzarino from TechCrunch to take a look at what they're doing to address the pro market so this was reminiscent of the round table event yeah what if they had a round table with no table and only matthew panzerino that's basically what happened it's the the one year later there's uh there it looks like no phil Schiller and nobody but Panzer there. But it is the follow-up to the roundtable that we got last year where they said, we are going to do a Mac Pro after all.

It won't happen this year, but it will happen after that. Key point. And now we know, again, not this year. But we'll get to that in a moment. Because there are a few things that we should set up first. So this is, even though it was interesting, right, they only invited one journalist, it's still another indication of Apple believing that it is very important for them to show that they are serious about providing solutions for pro users of their platform. serious about providing solutions for pro users of their platform. So one thing that they spoke about this time, which has happened in the kind of the intervening time from the last round table to now, is the establishment of the pro workflow team. This is nothing to do with the workflow app. This is workflow in the sense of the flow of your work. John Ternus, the VP of

hardware engineering at Apple, amassed this group of pro users to help him understand what Apple need to do. So what they did is they started with observing some people, talking to some creative professionals and trying to understand, you know, like in an environment where someone's asking you a bunch of questions, how much information can you get? Apple believed that that wasn't enough. Just like asking some people questions in the abstract is not enough. Because what you need to understand is on a day-to-day basis, what are people being frustrated about? Because if you're going to go to Apple Park and sitting in a room, you might not remember that like three days ago, you were clicking this button over and over and over again and nothing was happening, right? Like these are the things

that you kind of forget about, but are really important. So they decided that they would start hiring people to work directly for Apple who are experts in creative fields. So that Apple were focusing on visual effects animators, video editors, 3D animators, and music producers. These people now all work for Apple as part of the Pro Workflow team on real projects. They're making videos, they're making music, which I expect Apple are using somewhere. These people aren't just creating their own short films. I'm sure that they're being used somewhere. And the reason they're doing this is they want to put their hardware and software to the test, and then people can feedback on what

works and what doesn't. Apparently, this has already been a great help to Apple understanding what they want to improve. And they are really interested on breaking down and improving some of the real nitty gritty stuff that affect people on a daily basis. So Apple has said that this team is helping them shape what the Mac Pro is going to look like. They mentioned modular system again a bunch of times. So like that is all but confirmed, right? That the Mac Pro will be modular, whatever modular ends up meaning. And also as well, they did underscore that this team is helping inform the MacBook Pros and iMacs too. This isn't only about the Mac Pro.

Jason, what is your take on the creation of this Pro workflow team? It's kind of weird. I think it's... I appreciate the idea that Apple perhaps responding to what happened with the trashcan Mac Pro where it realizes that uh it made some decisions that didn't actually fit what its customers wanted that it's trying to understand

its customers better they made a bunch of assumptions as to what professionals needed and then a bunch of creative professionals told them you got this wrong right yeah so i appreciate that i find it weird the idea and again i don't know how much of this is that it was a surprising thing and pans are focused on it because it was surprising or that they thought it was a cool thing and so they wanted to highlight it but the idea that they've brought people in on contract to sit in the group with the pro development team and do like their work while they're being observed um i find that strange because those aren't real projects they're i mean they're probably not real real projects

or if they are i don't it just seems very strange that uh that and not necessarily reflective of what their actual jobs are like wouldn't it be better to just send Apple people in the field to spend weeks watching them, a record producer producing an album on Apple hardware and software in their own space, like a real job? And the same for, you know, name the field, visual effects industry,

you know, video editing, all of these things. Wouldn't that be more cost-effective than having effects industry, you know, video editing, all of these things, wouldn't that be more cost effective than having them be, you know, brought into Apple and working on presumably demo projects? It seems, I mean, I guess there are reasons, right? Because otherwise they wouldn't do it. But it just, it strikes me like

the moment that you're inside Apple working on real projects, but you're inside Apple, I start to wonder at what point does that become artificial? And you're no longer, you know, you're affecting, you're affecting what's happening. At the same time, I think I can understand the idea that if you're working on this stuff and Apple's like, well, why did you do that? What about this? You know, can you go back and show us that? And you're working on this stuff. And Apple's like, well, why did you do that? What about this? Can you go back and show us that? And you're working on this stuff every day. You're like, no, I need to do my job. And that might lead to somebody saying, well, what if we pay you to do a project for us that

we can stop you at any point and say, well, what about this? Well, what about that? So it's probably not their only data point, but it's something that's new and interesting. The point of it, I think, in terms of messaging was just to communicate to pro users that they're really trying to understand how pros use their stuff and have a direct line of conversation between the pro users who are using the stuff and the people who are building the pro hardware and the pro software for that matter. So I like, I like that because that's showing that, you know, they're, they're really trying to show that they're paying attention and that they care and they want to learn about this. It just, I think there is probably some

missing context here that, that would have been helpful for me, but I think it's a, I think it's a cool idea. And I just, the larger point is, yeah, this is another example of Apple trying to show, uh, it's almost like penance for what they, you know, for not listening to their customers for a while. So Tom Boga, senior director of Mac hardware product marketing, had the following to say, we want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community. So we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It is not something for this year. We know that there's a lot of customers that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro

and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro. So they have come out and said 2019. And I like the thinking behind this where they're like we know there are people that could probably do with an iMac pro for the next year and a half but they're not buying it because they want to see if the Mac Pro is coming well now you know it's not right like if you were thinking to yourself oh oh, I really need to upgrade, but I can't do it just yet because, oh, you know, I don't want to spend all this money and then regret it in two months time. So I think one aspect of this announcement and the first thing that came to mind when I saw this story was this is Apple saying, no, no, no, you should just go ahead and buy the iMac Pro. Yeah.

Which I think is fine. Don't wait for 2020 or whenever, 2019, sorry. They did say it will ship in 2019, the new Mac Pro. But this is Apple saying, it's going to be a while. Don't wait this year for the Mac Pro. Just buy the iMac Pro. Just go ahead and do it because it's going to be a while for this thing. And that's not their only message here,

but that's part of the message. That's absolutely part of the message is, um, here's what we're doing. It's going to be a while. If you're planning your purchasing decisions and you're trying to hold out for another year, don't do it. So I think one of the things that a lot of people were kind of holding onto

was the idea that the Mac Pro was definitely a 2018 product. But Apple never gave a date, did they? They never said anything about a date before. No, they said it won't be this year. And I think everyone just assumed, like, well, if you don't mean this year, you definitely mean next year. I think that was just a thing, and then it's like one of these things that gets perpetuated not not everybody i think we all hoped it would be this year but i remember very clearly writing and saying at several points and i know like the atp guys did and all that like they didn't say it would

ship in 2018 they did not say that they said it won't ship in 2017. That's all they said. And that was always hanging out there. They didn't say it would ship in 2018. Now, oh boy, wouldn't that be something if it didn't ship until 2019? And guess what? They didn't commit to shipping in 2018 for a reason because it's not going to but it is going to ship in 2019 they did commit uh panzerino did get that out of them that their plan is for it to ship next year that is it's risky though to give a date isn't it like well that far in advance i think that's the thing is that the message from the roundtable last year was like we're just starting on this process and we don't know how it's going to go. Now there's a lot of people out there who are

saying, well, why don't you just ship something? Why are you taking this long? And I think part of it is that this is how long it takes for Apple to develop products. They're developing these things in advance. They didn't plan on doing a Mac Pro, right? It wasn't a plan like, okay, the iMac Pro is going to come out and then the Mac Pro is going to come out. Like the iMac Pro was the replacement for the Mac Pro and they weren't going to do a Mac Pro anymore. That was the deal. And then they changed their mind and they had to start a Mac Pro design process from scratch. Now you could argue, I think it's a reasonable argument that that market is so desperate for a product that perhaps a faster development cycle that generated something that was not super mind-blowing or anything, but was a box that ran Mac OS and had high-end features and was modular, like a box, would have made a lot of people happy. But, you know, it's Apple.

They don't do that. They're not going to put out, they're not going to get the cheese grater out of mothballs and do a new Mac Pro cheese grater to hold you over for two years. They're not going to do that. And we can see with the iMac Pro, like, what's the iMac Pro? It's not just a Xeon iMac.

It's got like the T2 ARM processor and this whole other like boot sequence. And it's black. Well, yeah. And it's got like the t2 arm processor and this whole other like boot sequence and and it's black well yeah and it's space gray of course you've got to do so uh apple like this is just this is apple apple doesn't want to make a generic box apple wants to make something that is pushing the mac platform forward in some way and that's really interesting when we get to the other hot topic of the last week about the future of the Mac. But it's, yeah, I mean, I can see both sides of it. I understand the frustration of people who just want a new Mac Pro and cannot believe that it's going to be a couple of years from when Apple says they're going to do it before they ship something. But at the same time, it was a new addition to Apple's product roadmap that came.

It was unlikely that anything was going to ship soon. And it's hard to, it's like the scorpion and the frog, right? Like, I can't help it. It's my nature as the scorpion stings the frog and they both drown. This is like that. It's like, it's Apple's nature. I don't think you can legitimately, asking Apple to just ship a beige box full of mac pro parts is uh not is asking apple to not be itself it is unrealistic it is an unrealistic expectation to assume that they would ever do

that like this is not going to happen no because it's apple and you can say and again so then your argument is apple should not be apple it's like okay you can make that argument but guess what apple is apple why are you here then yeah well that exactly right like that's that's exactly it and and and meanwhile the imac pro is an excellent option and i get i get that it's not a great option for everybody, but it is an excellent option in the interim. So they've obviously decided to talk about this now because they're not going to bring anything out on stage at WWDC, right? Like, that's probably why they've decided to do this now, just to, like, make sure they're getting ahead of that. just to like make sure they're getting ahead of that. Yeah, this is actually, it's funny.

This is the exact same strategy as last year, I think, where the last thing Apple wants is to have WWDC become a story about Apple not caring about pros, especially since developers are the most important in many ways, segment of pros in Apple's product, you know, line of customers because they're making apps for everybody else so the last thing they want is for wwdc to be the place where they give bad news and say uh you know we're not going to ship let's talk about the mac pro that you guys want that we haven't given you in a very long time like they don't even want to

have that conversation two things we have nothing to show you today and it's not coming this year yeah exactly so last year they said oh well uh we do care about you which would have been a positive thing but the thing that we're going to show that we care about you with is not coming um anytime soon and then this year it would have been like you know is today mac pro day Maybe they'll announce the Mac Pro at WWDC. And by doing this, they're saying, no, we won't. Don't get your hopes up. No, it's going to be next year. And that totally changes the – it's funny, too, because this might have been the kind of story that they leaked in the past, right?

This might have been the kind of story where two weeks before WWDC, they leaked something that said the Mac Pro is not coming until 2019. Don't get your hopes up just because they want to set expectations. But today's Apple has some different strategies like inviting Panzer over to Cupertino to talk about it and write a story that we all then talk about that disseminates the information that it's not going to happen until 2019. But either way, I would argue maybe the most important thing it does is take that conversation off the table for WWDC. Well, not that people at WWDC aren't going to be grousing about it, but it's a done deal. Like by the time it's a little bit like the headphone jack thing.

It's like, by the time we get there, everybody's going to have talked themselves out of it. Like by the time the iPhone seven shipped without the headphone jack, we had talked about it for, for 10 months. And we were, we were, you know, people were still grumpy about it, but like the outrage had faded. And the same is going to go with this. Like by the time we get to San Jose, we will already have processed and gone through all the stages of grief about the 2018 Mac Pro theory that is dead. And we will have moved on. And that's why you do it that's like the number

one reason you do it because like last year they knew that they had a cool video about the iMac pro to show but if they didn't reference the mac pro before that everyone's going to be like okay but like where's the mac pro you know like so they didn't want to ruin they didn't rain on the iMac pros parade so they did the whole thing beforehand where they were like, we have this thing coming, it's called the iMac Pro by the way, we've also decided we're going to do a Mac Pro, but you're not going to hear about that this year. It probably allows them to stand on stage

we'll see how we draft this at WWDC and say of course we ship the iMac Pro which is the most powerful Mac we've ever shipped and you guys love it and everybody loves it and it's great and of course there will be a Mac Pro next year too, but the iMac Pro is great. Like they could, now they can, they could get away with that on stage without probably being booed. So yeah. And they may say like, oh, and we have

these updates that we want to do to these products, you know, so that they might update something in the iMac Pro, they might update something in the MacBook Pros, right? But then they don't have, again, this like, well, where's the Mac Pro you promised? And it lets them say, like, we love you. We love developers and we love pro users. And underlying that is everybody having read this story from TechCrunch about how they've got, got like teams of pros inside Apple working with them and they're observing them and giving them electric shocks. Probably not that last part.

And that, that underlies our understanding when they stand on stage and say, we love the pro market and we're, we're recommitted to it and we, they don't have to talk about all that stuff. It's just kind of in the water. So it's a, you know,

it's a, it's a, an interesting pr decision on on their front in order to get out in front of this but that i think i think wwc is the most important thing in their mind when they're doing this just get it off the table before they have that big high profile event because the last thing you want is the developers to be a bad audience and cranky and uh because it's supposed to be like a very it's apple's second biggest kind of tentpole event of the year and they wanted to go off smoothly

just a couple of like tidbits from some tweets that matthew panzerino was sending after the the report went out these article no information about new Mac Minis. Nothing mentioned, nothing seen, nothing. It's not a pro product, right? Nothing, but they're talking about everything else, but nothing else about the Mac Mini. And they did reference in passing, again, the Pro Display.

So that's still very much on the table. We'll probably come with the Mac Pro. And that's where you see the difference between Apple. When Apple announced the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, a few of us asked them about the display. And I think they told Neelay Patel, we're out of the display business. And that was in the fall. And in the spring, that was the fall of 16, in the spring of 17, they had that round table, and they said they were doing a Mac Pro and an external display. And in the intervening time, first off, they shipped that, you know, the LG display

that had so many problems and that people complained a lot about. And very clearly, they also made this Mac Pro decision. You can see the window where they went from, we're out of the display business to, oh no, no, no, we're going to make a display. So somewhere between the fall of 16 and the spring of 17 is when that all pivoted around. This is only like half of the Mac story for today because there's like this whole other side to this,

which makes maybe everything even more interesting, which is the idea of intel processors no longer being in Macintosh computers but before we get to that let me thank Linode for their support of this week's show with Linode you'll have access to a suite of powerful hosting options with prices starting at just five dollars per month, and you'll be up and running with your own virtual server in the Linode Cloud in under a minute. Whether you're getting started with your first server or deploying a complex system, Linode is the right choice for you. They offer the fastest hardware and network with amazing customer support behind everything. It

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or use the promo code upgrade2018 at checkout our thanks to linode for their continued support of this show and relay fm okay so according to mark german and ian king at bloomberg apple is currently planning to transition from intel to their own chips, we will assume ARM for the sake of this discussion, in their Mac line as early as 2020. The project is codenamed Kalamata. It is obviously still in early development, and it is part of a larger strategy from Apple

to make their devices more seamlessly work together. So, Jason, my question for you. The Kalamata, it's a kind of olive. I think it's also a place. So, there we go. Oh, there's a city in Greece, but I was just like, it's an olive. What does that mean?

You stuff an olive? Is there like the pit in the... It's because, I don't know, they i think it's because they're i don't know they're putting new stuff in it i don't know like who knows what it means um so here's my question for you jason okay is apple moving towards a shared platform well so so the um i wrote a piece about this for Macworld last week where I said, I likened it to the parable of the blind man and the elephant, right? Where the blind man touched the elephant and they think it's three different animals because they don't see the whole picture. You're all about parables today, aren't you?

Yes, I am. I am. Today it's all about, there'll be a haiku later. We know about this. We know about Marzipan, which is the idea of building kind of a shared app framework for app development across iOS and Mac. I wonder if we're not seeing the entire picture here. It certainly seems that at the very least what Apple is trying to do is take advantage of the work that it's done on one platform on another platform. Because it's very clear, like maintaining two entirely separate consumer platforms is not realistic. The more, you know, they had this huge advantage with the app store and yet they can't translate that to the Mac because it uses all sorts of different

technologies. I mean, it's not easy for an iOS developer to bring their, their stuff to the Mac. So could they make that easier? They've been putting ARM, I mean, right, like there was that report a while ago about the hybrid Macs, right? And we have, I have a hybrid Mac in front of me right now. It's got the T2 processor in it, which is an Apple built ARM processor, and it's not being used for anything much security stuff, boot stuff, but it is in there. but it is in there. And so they're already integrating their chip technology into max. Dropping Intel is a dramatic move.

There are lots of different pieces here, right? Like this would be a way to move to a unified platform if they want to make, you know, the Mac of 2020 run software that's more or less iOS apps. um but it doesn't you know it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be the whole platform but the two previous chip transitions were the entire platform um but apple could as part of its like let's bring in another piece its commitment to pro users right it? It could retain x86, you know, Intel compatibility, or even keep Macs around at the high end that run on Intel processors.

It doesn't necessarily have to mean that they would switch the entire line over to ARM, although it would be a lot more messy if they didn't. So I don't know. I think it's not surprising. I've seen some people speculate that it's entirely possible that they will, um, the, you know, that they could build something cause it is a Apple building its own chips, right? Apple building its own chips is not fundamentally arm. All of Apple's chips are armed now, but Apple could design something with x86 compatibility in some way. You know,

obviously AMD makes x86 compatible chips. They could also have hybrid systems for pros that had ARM and also had Intel or AMD processors in it. There's lots of complexity about the way you would architect something like that. And I am not a chip designer, so I can't, I can't go down that route, but it's fascinating because it does feel like at a fundamental level, we are hearing stories about how the Mac is going to get the processors that are in iOS devices, the app development framework, or something similar to what's available to iOS developers. And it does feel like if they're not basically merging the mac into something that is a subset or superset of ios it is definitely taking big chunks of things that it has done on ios and saying this is going to be the future of the mac i have uh you know i have a lot of opinions about this, which is just based mostly on my own feelings

as opposed to logic, which is like it goes into a couple of different directions. One, I kind of feel like if you're going to do this, if you're going to move towards designing your own chips, why maintain two OSs? It feels like one of the main reasons you do this is to simplify everything right so like i look at this story and i'm like okay this is apple simplifying they want to bring it all in house so they can control it all so why maintain two os's

right like you just at this point like find a way to create one os that runs everywhere and i don't think this is a case of like, make the Macs run iOS, but like something which is more than that. And this also extends to me thinking, why would you want to have two processor architectures going on at once, right? It's like you are grossly overcomplicating the way that stuff works at that point to a level where it's like,

is it even worth going through that incredible amount of work when you could just stick with intel yeah well that that has always been my argument against apple doing an arm transition for the mac is if apple's goal is just to keep the mac in stasis as a product that continues to exist in their product line. The right thing to do is just keep those things floating. And keep the Intel processors revving. As Intel updates them, you update them.

And just let it go on like that. And do software updates for compatibility. And I feel like Apple has done that for a while, where there has not been a lot. And then we've started to see some changes. And they're all changes that are kind of like, oh, that's kind of like an iOS thing that you're bringing over to the Mac. So I think what people get freaked out about this is when they think about today's iOS, and they think, I can't use iOS to do my job. I need a Mac. I like the Mac. I don't want to use iOS. And I think that's fair. The argument that I would make is, what if Apple's changes to the Mac are essentially to allow this new platform to do all the things iOS can do and the things the Mac can do.

And basically, if you're a Mac user, whether it feels like a Mac or it feels like iOS or it feels like a combination thereof, is it now acceptable because it does what you need it to do? In the end, if it does what you need it to do. That's probably okay. I start to wonder. If what Apple has decided is. The. Rather than let the Mac. Just kind of float out there.

Doing it's thing. It has decided to be aggressive. In. In building the bridges. that get them to a place where they've got one platform. And that means making changes to the Mac to make it fit in more with iOS and potentially making changes to iOS to make it capable of doing more stuff like the Mac. And I don't know whether they come together or whether, like I said, is it a superset? Is it a subset? Like is, is the Mac of the future kind of like an iOS capable device that also has this Mac layer on top of it? Or does, you know, do they really

come together? Um, we've been talking about the idea of like an iOS laptop or an iOS desktop. Um, that's, that's the elephant in the room here. Now I brought the elephant back again. Because that's the domain of the Mac. So what do those products look like in five years? Are those Macs and there are no iOS devices that do it? Does Apple offer iOS devices and Macs in the same shapes? They don't do that currently. That's a mental barrier that you would have to go through. Or is the answer all of the above, none of the above, where suddenly there's the Apple platform stuff and it just works on the Apple platform, whether you're using a laptop or a desktop or

a tablet or a phone. A lot of tough decisions. We've talked about it in a bunch of different ways. I think the idea that Apple's going to use its own processors and Macs, though, ways. I think the idea that Apple's going to use its own processors and Macs, though, suggests that it's trying to make the Mac something different. And I don't think Apple has any fantasies that by making the Mac something different, it's going to expand its market share and become more than 8% of the company's revenue. And for that reason, I think that it's probably motivated by trying to make the Mac a lot more like iOS so that Apple's work on one benefits the other or benefits both. And it's that platform unification thing. How does the square with Apple's commitment to pros? That's a good question. Apple could try to build an A-series processor that has many, many, many, many

cores and is dedicated to pros. And maybe they'll do that. Or maybe they have another solution involving keeping x86 compatibility around for the high end for a long time. I don't know. But it's fascinating to think about it because this is a, you know, I'm inclined to believe this report, right? This is Mark Gurman. it's fascinating to think about it because this is a um you know i'm i'm inclined to believe this report right this is mark german and it means that apple is exerting effort on the mac and i don't

believe that apple would be doing all of this just to keep mac os totally separate from ios i just i don't i don't believe that they would that they do that, that it would be so much easier for them if they really believe the Mac was just going to be in maintenance mode to let it coast. And that isn't what they're doing, apparently. Like, it really feels to me that if you're going to do anything in this arena, like if you're going to make any kind of move any kind of transition it must come with it some some large shifts some description because you know i i hear a lot of people say that oh apple being held back by intel i don't know if they have been like it's not like the laptop line was was

getting breakneck revision right like i know that there were chips that were potentially holding them back, but it's not like Apple had a history of like super quickly updating everything. Like, I think that they've just, they went through a period of time where they were addressing a lot of things. And I don't know if it was necessarily Intel that was being a problem for them,

because there's a lot of stuff that Apple can do, right? Which isn't just processor revisions all the time to their line if they want the line to improve in different ways. They've shown that, right? There are different designs they can do. There are different advancements they can do to the hardware in some way. we have these two platforms and one of them sells significantly less but is super important to us for a variety of different reasons how can we make the smaller platform benefit the bigger platform and vice versa and finding some way to have them all work on the same architecture and then develop them more cohesively makes a lot of sense to me like if they want to create more hybrid-y like machines

like jason snell's uh ibook right this feels like a great place to start with that, where it's like, here is a device that runs this, what feels like an almost bridge between iOS and macOS as we've known them. And it is the future of our platform. The platform has to change eventually, right? Like this is what happens. like iOS was different to macOS and there will at some point be something that is different to iOS if Apple were thinking that it's like me and you have spoken about this for a long time where we don't believe that the iPad is the future of computing

but it is closer to the future than the Mac is right like kind of put that right right what the iPad is is closer to what apple will do in the future than what the mac currently is well yeah that's true but i would say also that they're both they're both on these paths where they both have features that feel necessary

and there are things that you can do on the Mac you can't do on iOS and vice versa. But iOS is a more modern platform. And it's a more successful platform. So what I don't want to say is, well, what Apple's going to do is it's going to transition to iOS and the Mac's just going to get forcibly moved in. Because it's not quite like that. that i feel like apple may be viewing this as an opportunity to take mac users and and take not necessarily all of the mac but a big chunk of the mac the people who just want to buy a laptop right not the not the necessarily even the high-end users the pro users maybe there's a different story there and and give them a product that has better battery life and that has better apps. Um, and how do you do that? And they could continue to call it Mac OS, but all of a sudden it runs a lot of apps that look off an awful lot like iOS.

And, you know, maybe they add a touch to that layer only. And it's a touchscreen Mac, sort of like what Microsoft has done where, you know, the, the nice apps are built for touch and then you can, you know, and then there's also sort of apps that are really built for keyboard and mouse and that's okay. I don't know the, it's a, it's a, it's a challenge. I think just to come back to it, I think my gut feeling is that Apple looks at its consumer market. All the people who buy MacBooks and iMacs and things who are not the high-end pro users. They're not the super technical users. And it's a big portion of the Mac market are those people. And think, we need to serve them better.

think we need to serve them better and do look over at what Microsoft is doing with their surface line and with a lot of the other PC devices that are out there. And now Microsoft is doing, you know, ARM version of Windows. And we're seeing those ARM laptops that have incredible battery life. And Apple is saying not, well, we got to be like those guys, but is saying, are we serving that audience, our audience with what we've got with Intel processors and no touchscreen. And when we, you know, and, and, you know, the window stuff has this, you know, touch first kind of thing. And it's a modern kind of app layer. And we have that it's on iOS, but we don't have that on the Mac. What do we do? And, and I, it's to be that Apple looks at that and

says, this is what we need to change this. We need to change for those users. We need to give them a better product. And the way we're going to be able to give them a better product is to get the richness of the iOS app store on their devices. And one way to do that would be to make an iOS laptop. Sure. But then an iOS laptop has a lot of limitations. They're going to have to improve iOS to get. So maybe it is this thing where the Mac is feeding iOS and iOS is feeding the Mac. And is that a toaster fridge? Or is that a new kind of device that is taking however you want to spin it?

It's taking the best of the Mac and putting it in iOS, or maybe it's taking the best of iOS and putting it on the Mac. Because in the end, an ARM-based, let's say, MacBook that can run iOS apps and has 20-hour battery life, I would argue is a way better product for most people. So there was a tweet that I saw from Steve Chattonsmith, which is really interesting to me,

where there is like a kind of a bridge between these two topics, right? Where you have Mac Pro in 2019, ARM Mac in 2020. Think about those two dates, 2019, 2020. It is very likely that the mac pro and an arm mac may be introduced at the same time wwdc 2019 they'll tell the developers okay we're making a chip transition

here's the details and here's what you're going to have to do in order to get yeah to the new world so that that was that was more what I meant, right? They won't say like, oh, we're shipping today on our MacBook. But they will say like, we have this Mac Pro and also we are doing a transition now. So my question to you is, will the Mac Pro be the last Intel Mac or the first ARM Mac? Yeah, I think it's a great question um it would i i'm gonna say yes

i think okay i i think we've already seen that before before apple abandons Intel, according to this story, right? Apple is going to keep infusing its processors, its designed ARM-based processors into the Mac. Step one was the Touch Bar and the T1. Step two was the iMac Pro and the T2. That's going to continue. So I have a hard time believing that the mac pro that ships in 2019 won't have an arm processor in it i i have i mean this story is starting in 2020 my guess is that it's going to start in 2020 at the low end it may reach the high end eventually it may not so my

guess is that that are that mac pro is going to have xeons in it um and but it's also going to have arm in it and it's possible that if apple is announcing in 2019 at wwc let's say a chip transition it's possible that one of the things that it will say about the mac pro if it indeed talks about the mac pro at that time will be that it's got an ARM processor in it and that there perhaps is even a development story there about how this allows you to develop software for both platforms, both chip architectures. Maybe. Or it could just be as simple as it's like a T4 and it does some booting things and some

security things and not a lot else and it's got xeons and it's basically the imac pro in a case and it is not colliding with the chip transition narrative because that mac pro is not going to turn over into an apple design chip for five years because that'll be the last product that goes it's just i like the idea of these two things coming together all right like is it really does feel like a kind of like here is where we are today and here is where we're going it's an elephant oh i mean right i mean i i i i really believe it like there are pieces to this puzzle that we don't have but all will become clear and apple is i i i have a great deal of confidence that apple knows exactly where it's going and that these mark german reports are pieces of the puzzle but they're not the whole story i genuinely believe that like all of this

is linked right marzipan yes it's obvious it's clear to see yes right that marzipan is the beginning which can lead to the transition because people are starting to build with new tools which can cross the bridge between them which eventually there is no bridge to cross anymore we're all on the bridge right and that and we've moved in we've there's lots of metaphors today we've moved to the bridge we live on the bridge now don't put an elephant on that bridge because it's too heavy yeah the elephant has to stay off the bridge because but you know like the elephant has to take a raft across the river instead but the bad news is the scorpion is on the raft so and so it's gonna get rid of it i brought it all there is there is a i think

there's a clear through line which gets us to our max and apple os right and i believe that that is a long-term thing but yeah but we'll begin in 2018 and then moves through to 2019 2020 2021 by 2025 maybe right like there is one thing yeah think 10 years from now i think if you asked apple um behind the scenes as a person inside apple who gets the truth um where they view their platforms in 10 years it's a long time i think they would say one app development framework for all devices and that all of the needs defined by them right but all the needs of mac users including professional class mac users are capable of being served by the operating system how do you get there and that's the that's the that's why they get paid the big money because it's a it's a lot of moving parts. It's a lot of technology that they have to build to do it. But I think that is the ultimate goal, is one app development platform, one operating system, essentially, and not giving away all sorts of features that today's users depend on.

all sorts of features that today's users depend on, which, again, will be a source of frustration because there will probably be decisions Apple makes to say, this is not a thing that we're going to do, and that's going to take 1% of the market or half a percent of the market out. Straight up, people are going to get left behind when this happens, but there is no other way of doing it.

This is what has to happen. I was listening to John on ATP point out there are a lot of web developers who use Docker and they're using Intel if it's for Intel-based servers. And when we talked about this last year, we heard from a few of them. And I've heard people say basically, well, if they go off of Intel,

I probably won't buy a Mac because a lot of web developers buy Macs because they can run the Mac OS, but they can also have Intel compatibility. And there are other stories similar to that. And I totally get it. As I said last year, I'll say it again. I totally get that. If I'm Apple and I look at the Mac market, what percentage of the Mac market are those people? the Mac market are those people. And if you think you can better serve 99.5% of the market by getting rid of Intel compatibility, you're willing to get rid of the other half of a percent or

whatever it is. If you're in that half a percent, it stinks. No doubt about it. But I think it's any change like this, you're going to lose some people. And that's just how it works. That's just how it is. And there is, I definitely see it on the internet a lot. This is not a surprise that there is an attitude that you should never make a decision that loses you a customer, but not making a decision will also lose you customers. That's just how it is. So you have to make smart decisions and it sucks if you're the customer who gets lost. But sometimes that's just how it is. And as well, like if you believe that by losing this 1%, you're able to do this thing, which can then also impact iOS positively, well, that 1% became a minuscule percent.

If you believe that a change that you're making to the Mac will eventually benefit the entire platform somehow, as they move more closely together, then the percentages that you lose from people that have edge cases, those percentages become really nothing. And there's a case to be made that as Microsoft has failed to reach people on mobile, right? They don't have a mobile platform.

They have a PC platform. And Windows is still strong. laptops and even computers, computers, desktops to people who are comfortable with iOS. And today they can't do that today. They're like, well, we have the Mac. It's kind of like iOS, but not really. And it's compatible with our stuff that's on iOS kind of, but not really. And that, that's a terrible, like, that's a terrible strategy, right? That that's, that's, you've got like, when we look at Microsoft, we say, oh, well, Windows is kind of boxed in. They're a PC operating system, but on mobile, it's Android and iOS. And Apple would be in a much stronger position, I think I would argue, if they could use iOS and say, we have a variety of products that run iOS.

And so replace that PC with, you already have an iPhone, maybe you have an iPad, and now you can buy our computer and put it on your desk. And it'll be all those apps and it'll be familiar. Like that is a stronger position to a lot of people. And I'll remind all of our loyal Mac users out there, there are way more people who use iOS who are not Mac users than who are Mac users. So, you know, would Apple make a trade that would drive some loyal Mac users to Windows in exchange for a much larger group of people, access to a much larger group of people who are comfortable on iOS? You know, you got to do the research, but maybe, maybe, maybe so. And that's, that's something to wrap this all up, Mike, this is, this is something that I've been thinking about

for the last few weeks, which is this really existential kind of feeling about the Mac, which is like, what does this mean? The Mac is really, as we know, it is going away. And I think maybe it is. But what I will, what I will say, I went through all these, again, sort of like the stages of grief the funny thing about things that you rely on that go away is first off things don't go away fast the you know when i started in in covering the mac i was downstairs from the skeleton staff that was still putting out an apple 2 magazine like and that was wow that was years after the apple 2's heyday but it was still around

still around so things things that things don't just die and they pull the plug and they're gone there's a long kind of ramp down but also most of the stuff that i've had that felt essential by the time it became inessential it didn't't matter anymore. And I think that's important that like, and part of this is us and part of this is Apple's challenge, which is that when the time comes when the Mac, when I like don't have a Mac anymore, which I never had conceived of, but I think is going to happen in the next, I't know five or ten years right it's going to happen when that time comes if apple has done its job right it won't matter because i will have already i will be able to do everything i will have adapted the world will have changed and it won't matter and i think about things like the telephone. Like, you know, phone wire.

My house is wired for a landline. And there are wires all over the house because when we were here, it's like, oh, we need to put a phone jack in this room. And then we can do a wireless thing to this thing and all of that. And all of a sudden, it didn't matter. My house has a port in the wall that I can plug an aerial into so I can get, you know, and I can get like our like over the air television. We don't have that plugged in. We don't have that because we watch all of our television over the internet. Yeah, you could. but as an aside i just answered a question about this there are there is like a little um a little product you can buy that attaches to the the aerial cable and it gives you like a

little dvr and it just puts all the shows in plex if you ever did want to do that but we don't we don't there's nothing there right we don't need there's nothing there that you don't already have right yeah we can get it wherever we want it. Yeah. And traditional TV is another great example, right? Where it's like, I have a TiVo and it's very nice, but the amount of streaming stuff that I watch now, including stuff that I get on the TiVo, but I just prefer to watch it on streaming because it's easier. And in some cases it's higher quality or I get it sooner. And, you know, I didn't notice when it happened, but all of a sudden, I realized that I'm very close to being able to not have traditional TV anymore because of the technology advancing. So what I'm saying is,

if done right, and if the timing is right, if the implementation is right, by the time it comes for you to do the inconceivable and give up this thing that you that has been a part of what you do for a long time if in the best circumstances by the time that happens you won't you won't notice or it won't matter or it won't hurt because the world will have changed um the idea of not having a landline, the idea of not having cable TV. And if done right, the idea of not having a Mac, it won't be terrible. It will be irrelevant because the things that you do will now be done in a different place, but you're still doing them. And I know that's kind of a squishy and touchy feely kind of moment, but I really do think that, um, that we could get to that point, but it is kind of on

Apple, right? Cause Apple could screw it up. Apple, Apple could, um, do something to make the Mac, uh, unusable and create a complete exodus of people from the Mac. But I would argue that if Apple did nothing and just let the Mac sit there, we've seen it. That's not going to satisfy people who use the Mac because they want new features and they want new hardware. And Apple is probably not going to do that as an active investment in just the Mac as a standalone platform. It just seems unlikely at this point. But the good news is it may not matter in five years. It matters today. They couldn't take it away today.

But by the time that they take it away, quote unquote, it may not matter for most people. We'll see. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom. The reason Pingdom are awesome is because they help keep your site and the sites that you love online because Pingdom will monitor your site so you don't have to. They give you real time feedback so you know exactly what's going on at all times because stuff breaks on the internet all the time. Every single month, Pingdom detect around 13 million outages. That is more than 400,000

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So we are into hashtag ask upgrade. And our first question this week comes from Elijah. Elijah wants to know, how do you define a pro user on either of Apple's platforms? There's a great question and there's no great answer. I, I would define it as being people who are, I would, I would loosely define it as people who use the devices to get their work

done. Because there is a, and to get like their, their livelihood accomplished. I think there is a portion of the market that is just like looking at their email and checking twitter and playing games and stuff like that especially on ios and uh and the that is the the requirements of those users are a lot lower or at least they're very different because in some cases they're they have very

specific requirements that need to be met but they're very different. Because in some cases, they have very specific requirements that need to be met, but they're not the same requirements as somebody who is in a particular industry, a particular field. There's no good answer here other than to say that it's the people. I think the way it's broadly been defined is it's people who require a level of performance and functionality that is above and beyond the general population of technology users, because they're applying the technology to very specific, generally industry tasks. And that's, I know that that's kind of a vague way of doing it. But I've always viewed, and we used when I when I started writing about Apple, we used to use the term power user a lot.

And that's funny, because some of the power users are pros and some of them are regular people who just love getting the most out of their devices and but but i i like that um i like that name too because you know sometimes it's not that you're the power user is the person who behaves like they their job defend depends on the technology working, but it doesn't actually. It's just fun. But for a lot of people, it's their livelihood and they have needs and their needs are not something that is needed by 80% of the people, but it is life and death to them in terms of their business. So that's sort of how I would define it. The problem is that there's not one industry and there's not one need and there's not one, we can say like performance is a need and that's pretty broad, but you get into the details and sometimes it's very specific kinds of performance, very specific kinds of

software. And that's what makes it complicated to serve a pro market because there isn't a pro market. As Apple pointed out in their thing, when they talked to Panzer, there's not one pro market because there isn't a pro market as apple pointed out in their thing when they talked to panzer there's not one pro market there's dozens of pro markets all of which are very small have some things in common some things not in common and that's why it's so hard to serve pro markets well sage wants to know do you happen to know if there are any websites or resources that list WWDC adjacent activities. In the past, I have used an app called Parties for WWDC, which kind of gets updated as it gets a little bit closer to the time. And then I think throughout the week of like events and meetups and live shows and stuff that are occurring, it looks like the app is coming back. There was another one called WWDC Parties, which finished in 2017.

That app is no longer being updated anymore, I believe, that resources is done with. But it looks like from the release notes of this Parties app that 2018 is coming, they note, and so there will be stuff going in there. I've used it in the past and I really like it. It's nice and simple,

but gives you an idea of some of the stuff that's going on. Great. And I will just note as well, one of those events is RelayFM Live or AltConf. Tickets, a small amount of tickets are still available. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to come and see us do a live show on Wednesday the 6th of June.

David has written in to say, the months of, this is weird, but I love it. The months of July, August, September, October, and November spell out Jason. Jason, did you know this? Yes, of course I knew this. Isn't it awesome? It's amazing. I'll also point out that my initials are J-A-S.

That's right. My initials are the first three letters of my name. It's all true. It's my world. You're all just living in it. It turns out. My mind is slowly expanding over here to take in all this new and wonderful information. Right.

That's right. Let's go back to Earth with nathan's question what are the odds that we'll see a new ipad mini by the end of the year what about just a price drop uh no and no is my opinion i think the odds are no the odds are no that's great uh no new ipad mini i just don't see it happening and a price drop i don't think they're going to do that for as long as that product exists like for as long as they are selling that ipad mini it was like 228 or 256 gig like that thing will just stick around and nothing will change until it's gone until it dies yeah like and i i think i think you're right at this point i my my guess would be that that we won't we won't see it ever i think ipad mini 4

is the one that is still available, and it is only available in 128 gigabytes, but at least you can choose between silver, gold, and space gray. But no, at this point, I don't see it happening. My son has used an iPad Mini for ages, and it's great,

especially for younger kids. It is great. I wish that they would keep it around and do a kind of cheap model of it, but I think the answer really is that there's not enough of a market for that product to keep it in existence and finally today barry's question is do you believe that ios would benefit from the ability that android has to designate a third-party app to wholly replace a core app like calendar or mail and And if so, what are the hurdles that prevent it? What do you think, Jason? Benefit? I think it could benefit from it, but there are some challenges in how integrated the first-party apps are into the system.

We do have the ability to delete them now, but sometimes that just leads to you clicking a link and it's saying, oh boy, this is a calendar link. I don't know what to do instead of just opening the other calendar app that you have. So yes, I think it would benefit it. It is a lot of, there's work involved in doing that on Apple's part. And I hope they do because when we talk about convergence, like this is a thing that the Mac does way better than iOS. And it goes not just to replacing first party apps, but also being able to set default apps and, and even register like different apps for different URL types. And the example there is like for podcasts, I should be able to, there should just be a podcast URL. And if I tap it, iOS should should be able to know what my podcast app is or ask me and let me

say, yes, this is my podcast app. And from then on, it opens that app. All of these things kind of go together. And it's clearly just not been a priority for Apple. And so yes, it would be better if iOS could do that. What are the chances? I don't know. I feel like it's something that they have to get to eventually, but it's probably not been a high priority for them.

Apple seems to have a really high opinion of its first-party apps, which is funny because a lot of them are not that interesting. Mail is a great example where that is an app that feels like it has just never been touched. And I realize it's got some features that it didn't have before, but it feels so old. And maybe some of that is that email feels old in general, but mail feels really old. And like they are, it's like, talk about your legacy product that they just want to keep floating along. It feels a little bit bit like that and other people are trying interesting things with mail apps and so it is frustrating that apple is sort of like not trying interesting things in mail but also not letting people um integrate directly where all the mail stuff just feeds to a different app so i hope

it happens eventually but i think there are technical issues and it's just a matter of attention when i read this question the first thing that jumped into my head to the answer I think there are technical issues and it's just a matter of attention. When I read this question, the first thing that jumped into my head, but to the, like the answer to what are the hurdles that prevent it? My answer was just Apple. Like they just, I just believed that for a long time, maybe even still, I reckon even still, they just think that there is no point that their apps are good enough apple can't doesn't seem to be able to conceive it's funny because they have to hold two thoughts two opposing

thoughts in the collective apple brain at once one of which is we have all these great third-party apps including these innovative calendars and innovative mail programs and then in their other mind has to say we've deeply integrated mail and calendar with the system, and they're great. And, you know, that's fascinating that both of those things can be true at once. So, yeah, but I think you're right. I think the mindset within Apple clearly is, this is good enough. Now, the fact is, those apps are used probably by 95% of users if not 98 percent of a choice you have right like in certain well they don't people don't people don't even people don't even look

in the app store for replacements to calendar and mail they have calendar and mail they're integrated with the system that's it and that's why apple doesn't prioritize this is because it is a uh it is an edge case most people just use the stock apps most people use maps and safari too for that very reason like so there is the other the other one that was in this argument forever was custom keyboards and they did that you know so it's like custom keyboards was when everything changed so it's like oh they will do stuff that we assume they're never going to do, which, like, it, for me, at least, reignited the lost hope of replacing first-party apps. The reason that I want, you know, I don't,

we spoke about this in last week's episode, right, with the apps that we use. I use replacement apps for, like, really significant things, including Chrome. I use Chrome, right, which right which is like that is a that is a daily test in patience like when dealing with ios um but one of the reasons that i believe that this can can happen is there are so many third-party apps that allow me to choose what web browser i want to use right so i know that this is a thing that like third-party

developers have worked out how to do this like apple can do this like it's just whether they want to or not and it seems like right now they don't want to so yeah it is it is weird given that yeah it's this in between where i understand building mail and calendar to be for the most common use because it's going to be commonly used. But it would be nice then if you said, and for our users who prefer other things because they need to go beyond, we give you this ability to swap these in. And that's the frustration, right? Is like, I don't want to say mail is bad

because it's not built for the 2% of people who would use these awesome, weird features, right? I don't want to say that. I think mail could be better for everybody, but I understand why it's not built for the power users. It has to be built for everyone. But if you're going to do that, it would be awfully nice

if you could take those power users, those people who download third-party apps to replace the default apps, if they could say, this is my email program now. And I do think they will probably get there at some point. The keyboard is a great example of that. If you'd like to submit questions for us to answer at the end of the show or questions for us to give our opinions on at least, because there isn't always an answer answer you can send in questions but just tweeting at hashtag ask upgrade out into the world just send a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade and we may pick it for a future episode i guess if you want to send examples of interesting parables uh you

can send them to at jay snell on twitter because this is clearly jason thing right now. He's into deep parables and metaphors. This has been clearly shown on today's episode. A blind man, an elephant, and a scorpion get into a Honda Civic. If you go to theincomparable.com, you can find some of Jason's work, including the upcoming parable pod, which I think will be coming any day now on The Incomparable. Jason is a host of many technology-focused shows and creativity-focused shows here on RelayFM as well. Go to Relay.FM and you can find those.

I will recommend people check out Download if they never have before. Download is a weekly technology news show which focuses on technology companies as a whole as opposed to a strict lens on one or the other, as many shows that we do here or that we listen to have. What Download does is tries to kind of spread that out a little bit more, so you may hear a story about Microsoft and Google and SpaceX as well as just what's going on with Apple. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter, and I host many shows here at Relay.fm as well. Go to Relay.fm, slash shows, and pick something else out there. If I was going to make a recommendation to you today, I would recommend a show that I do called Playing for Fun, which is a show that I do with Tiff Arment, and it is a video game show,

but even if you don't like video games, I think that there is still some enjoyment to be had, because the show is just about two friends just talking about what they like about a specific video game. So it's just two people just having fun and talking positively about something, and that can be a

nice break sometimes from a lot of the stuff that we take in in our daily lives. Thank you to Pingdom and Linode and Slack for their support of this week's episode. Most of all, as always, thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to listen to me and Jason talk about parables. You can go to relay.fm slash upgrades slash 188 for today's show notes. And we'll be back next time. Until then then say goodbye jason snell the upgrade podcast we talk about apple stuff goodbye mike hurley what was that i told you i

would do a haiku at the end oh yes