Upgrade - 190: Redefine It Upward

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

Tim Cook totally has an Mac on his desk and an iPad at home, but how can Apple advance both its platforms while allowing them to retain their individuality? Also, Amazon Prime has a big number and Apple puts a chill into leakers.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 190 today's show is brought to you by squarespace ace and tate and slack my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hello jason snell hey welcome back mike hurley welcome back to Upgrade program. Thank you for taking the reins last week. Thank you to Merlin Mann for filling in. It was always a great time to listen to the two of you. I appreciated how much you destroyed the format that I work so hard to keep in check on this show by doing a 45-minute Snell talk. So that was great.

That was really... I really appreciated that. I guess, as you said, which really made me laugh when I was in the airport, when the cat's away, I laughed a lot. I played the theme song, kind of, I used the wrong theme song at the wrong time with the weird startup music. And I had sound effects toward the end. They were very good sound effects, though.

So yes, it was a great, I i always enjoy i love seeing what you do with upgrade when i'm away uh it is a wonderful almost uncanny valley like situation uh but let's do our hashtag snail talk for this week and it comes from paul and paul wants to know what is a typical word count when jason writes an article for a site like macworld? And how much time does it take? This is an interesting question for me and probably not for anyone else but me and Paul. But I will tell you, my target word count is 800 words. And I'm almost always over that.

Although not always. But when I'm writing something and it's kind of coming in short and I can get it to 800 i'm like all right that that good i made it across the finish line is that target your personal target or is that set by them i think we talked about vaguely how how many words they wanted out of it at some point and and it honestly this goes back to when i was writing columns in the magazine back in the day my column was about 800 words, 800 or 900 words. And I feel like that is a good length in terms of being short but readable and being sort of what they're paying me and the amount of time. There are things I write. I think I've talked about this here before.

But there are things I write that are short that are like, oh, that's a six colors thing. I can post that as a short blog post. Or that's a really long thing that I want to, I'll post myself on six colors. Or it'll be something that I'll work as a freelancer and somebody who paid me a lot more money for that's really long and involved. I will say, I think one of your skills as a writer, because I read a lot of your writing, maybe more than an average person, because I read what you write for this show, right? So I consume basically everything and i think that you have a a skill of being able to give out a lot of information

in not a lot of words and i think that's very valuable especially to me because i don't like i don't want to read 10 000 words every week for the show sure so you i think you do a very good job of like getting out the info especially in the show sure so you i think you do a very good job of like getting out the info especially in the mac quad columns um i like those a lot actually because they're as you said they're pretty short but you give out a lot of information i think that's one of your your talents all right well thank you that's great um i i think there's a thing you can do in 800 plus you know 800 to 1200 words in terms of like it's substantial enough but you know also it's not a 2 000 word 4 000 word 6 000 word thing and every now and then like you will write a big thing and

i will you know and it's for a specific reason right but i i don't feel like that you go overboard all the time you know but every now and then you're gonna get a big review you're gonna get like like a federico vatici ios review yeah it's usually something like that i love reading it every year i don't want to read it every week because i would lose my entire life to just read it books and there's there's also stuff that is that is only worth a couple hundred words in a picture or something like that and that's not stuff that i'm gonna give you know mac world is paying me to do something substantial enough for them to promote. So a 200 word thing, I'm just going to put on six colors and be like, you know, this is for me. I want it out there. You know, nobody's paying me

for this. It's, it's me doing this and getting it out there. And then there's the ones that are a little more substantial. And so I actually kind of hoard those, those topics too. I'll be like starting to write something. I'll be like, Oh, something i'll be like oh and this is probably my macworld column this week because it is gonna be you know that whatever 800 a thousand word worth of topic and so um in terms of how much time it takes that was paul's other other question it really varies i'd say that when i when i get started writing it it um the words come out pretty quickly like an hour maybe two hours the issue is not when the words come out quickly

the issue is all the time that proceeds when the words come out quickly where no words come out and sometimes that is trying to figure out the topic and some of times it's I figured out the topic and I'm not ready to write. And that can take a bunch of forms. It can take the form of me standing or sitting and staring at a screen and thinking, I can't write this right now. And then doing something else. I was

actually just talking to my wife over the weekend about how, and this is going to be probably a free agent's topic in a month or so when David and I talk next, about being able to identify early on that I'm just spinning my wheels and nothing's going to result from it and walking away. Because I'm never more frustrated as a worker, not just as a writer, by staring at my screen for two hours and feeling like nothing happened. Right. Twice at a time, isn't it? Yeah.

So the key is after 15 minutes of doing that, go, I know I need to write this story. I got to go do something else now because it's just I can sit here. Sitting here and staring at the computer for another hour or two is not going to actually make the words come out. I'm just going to it's just going to frustrate me better to relocate somewhere else and then try again to do something else and then come back to it. So I need to be better about identifying that because that happens. And I know, having worked with a lot of writers over the years, that one of the things that's going on during that whole process is there are, you know, there are back, to use computer nerd terms, right? There are background processes in your brain that are working, that are chewing over, that are thinking about the issues involved.

And then at some point, you get to the point where you're ready to write. And so doing something else is not just procrastinating. Although it looks like procrastinating, it can actually be part of the process. So that's my – I block out two or three hours for my Macworld column every week on Tuesday afternoon. And, you know, using my, I do have a to-do item, but I also have blocked out on my calendar. I know you love this, Mike, some time for that. And the goal there is to give myself some dedicated time to sit there and get that column

out and to know that it needs to come out and then not schedule my Tuesday afternoon because then when am I going to write the column? So I do block out two or three hours. It doesn't, the actual time that I'm typing is probably only, it's probably only an hour, maybe with a few breaks, but it's not the sum total of the time that goes into it

and the brain power that goes into it, if that makes any sense. If that makes perfect sense. That's really good. I think there's a lot of stuff in there. And if this type of discussion interests you, you should listen to Free Agents, which is Jason's podcast with David Sparks where they get into this kind of stuff in a lot more detail.

It's at relay.fm slash freeagents. And I want to thank Paul for sending in the question. If you would like to have a question answered to open the show in the future, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk, and it may appear on a future episode. Jason, I have some upstream news for you. We're going to start off with something

that I saw in the Netflix app, and I saw a story about it on Variety. Netflix have introduced some 30-second previews in their mobile app that kind of look like Instagram stories. So they're little trailers, and you go into the app,

and you've got little circles, and you can tap on the circles, and it will show you a trailer. They're only in portrait mode, which I found kind of weird because it crops stuff peculiarly. Like, I turned my phone into landscape, and nothing happened.

So they're really kind of really going for that instagram slash snapchat style with these um and whilst they are a little bit peculiar i actually think it's a really cool way to show this kind of content because people are used to it now like you see the little circles of the little icons and you know what that means and you tap it and you can flick through them. And I think it's an interesting way to present trailers in a kind of, you know, 2018 style. Have you seen these at all? Yeah, I have. I think they're super weird because this is content that's not made for Vertical.

Yeah. I assume that there's somebody whose job it is to put those together and is trying to select images that work where you're just cutting off like most of the picture and just keeping a little vertical thing i expect going into the future netflix will create specific trailers with this in mind right that would be my expectation um but for now i guess they're just seeing if it kind of works um so yeah it i think it is an interesting way to show this type of content because if you're like creating something where people are going to choose to watch your trailers if that ends up working out that's pretty powerful because that's not typically how people consume this type of

content it's usually given to you maybe when you don't want it right so i think that could be kind of cool if i were a movie studio i mean i know some some movie and tv studios are doing this although i'm unsure how much of it is custom but but if i worked in promotion and marketing in a movie studio i would be i would be instructing the people who cut the trailers to cut vertical trailers. Yeah. You know, and that means some really weird stuff in terms of cropping images and finding scenes that work vertically. But, you know, people are on their phones and their phones are in that vertical orientation. And even though they're probably not going to watch your movie or TV show in a vertical

view on their phone while they're holding it. That's how they're holding it to, you know, to look at social media. So as weird as it is, I think it's just, you know, it's something that you need to do. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's actually becoming more and more important because I know that when I'm holding my phone, I guess I'm more likely to watch something if I then don't have to turn my phone to the side as well, right? Like, it's already in front of me. Like, it's just easier to consume it that way. It's less of, like, a break.

I reckon you're more likely to get to me if you're just putting it in front of my face in a way that my phone is already there. Like, I don't know. There's something about that where, like, that works for me because I'm already doing it. My phone's already in landscape. Like, Apple did some ads on Instagram for their HomePod thing. And they were trying to like get you to turn to the side to watch it. And it just doesn't work. This is not how this is not how the medium is right. Like Instagram and Snapchat, they're in portrait. And that's how they should say. And I think this is

an interesting way of giving that kind of content in this format. Amazon have announced that they have 100 million Prime members worldwide. This is pretty significant, Jason, right? Yeah, well, it's significant for a couple of reasons. One is it's a big number, even though we don't know how many of those people are Prime. Prime is such a big product, and in the context of Upstream, we're talking about Prime Video, but Prime is such a huge product. There's such a huge percentage of people in the u.s for example this is a worldwide number but in the u.s who are prime subscribers it's it's a it's a big big product one piece of

it is prime video i don't know if amazon has ever revealed sort of what percentage of prime users are uh are users of the video yeah users of prime video on a monthly or weekly or whatever basis right i don't think they've necessarily said that and it may be 50 it may be five percent i don't really know but it's still a big number and of course it's also a big deal because amazon doesn't talk numbers very often they talk in relative terms they'll either say that it's twice what it was or that they set a record or something like that, or it's grown or it's had its biggest year ever or whatever. This is why we make fun of Jeff Bezos and say that charts without numbers on them,

where it's just bars that have no labels are Bezos charts. But here it is, a real number, a hundred million. And they're happy to share that because it's a really nice really big number i find this number particularly interesting when you compare to netflix netflix currently have 125 million paying customers now that is significantly more than amazon's 100 million and it is significantly more still when you assume how many people of those 100 million watched the prime content and i think this really puts into context how big netflix is in this arena right like i think this really shows it well i mean amazon prime you know amazon prime is a product that's available in different places, I think, with different features, whereas Netflix can get into a country.

Yeah. All they have to do is have video content in that country. So they're not comparable in a lot of different ways, right? Like, they're very different products. And yet, at the same time, they do compete, even though they have different ways that they roll out. And obviously, Prime is way more than just the video product. But it is interesting to compare them. Or whether I look at this and think, I wonder if Netflix should, I wonder if a Netflix subscription should start bundling in other things. That was the other thought I had.

Yeah. Is there value? And I mean, because the subscription, I mean, then again, the brilliance of it is that Netflix doesn't need to bundle in anything else. You're just buying it for the video. Whereas Amazon, you know, you're not just buying it for the video whereas amazon you know you're not just buying it for the video amazon's trying to make this much you know more complete buy where you get access to all sorts of stuff and and so you may buy it just for the video you may buy it just for the shipping or some combination thereof yeah yeah that is interesting about netflix right because but it's like then when you even go into that, it's like, well, they can make you pay.

And they are making these 125 million people pay for just that. Just video. Just video. Whilst Amazon are like, Amazon's video product is a free gift on the side of your Prime membership. And it's like, it's really interesting. And again, when you look at that and you're like, their businesses are so different, but yet yet the same it's one of the things that makes this industry so fascinating right now and and when we roll apple into this yeah this is a one of the big questions that people have a lot which is how are they pitching it right yeah what does apple do here how do they sell it and

and i've had you know a bunch of people ask what about apple you know apple prime and we've touched on that before but that idea like would apple offer a subscription bundle kind of or service that is more all-inclusive where you get like you get unlimited icloud and all apple's video service and apple Music. And it's all rolled together. And it's the news thing that's been rumored? Oh, right, where it's the texture thing that they bought, where it's like, and access to all of these subscription websites in Apple News, and you pay a single annual fee for the whole thing all-inclusive.

And would they do that rather than say, we're going to charge you for iCloud storage, and we're going to charge you for music, and we're going to charge you for video, and we're going to charge you for textureCloud storage and we're going to charge you for music and we're going to charge you for video and we're going to charge you for texture, you know, Apple News, whatever. The advantage is it's super simple to just have one thing.

And even if you don't take advantage of all of the things, if you take advantage of enough of the things to make it worth it for you, then it has done its job, which is, I think, Amazon's approach. And Netflix only has the one service. They've got some different tiers, but it's only the one service. So Apple coming in, Apple right now, every service that it offers is different and

separately billed. And so I get my bill for Apple Music. And I mean, it's all coming from Apple, but I get an invoice that says Apple Music and I get another one that says iCloud storage, right? And I think it's a fair question that probably some people with MBAs have been doing a lot of research on inside Apple, right? For like what the best strategy is for Apple here. Because on one level, like having a new video service, which they could offer, Amazon actually will let you buy amazon video only if you really want to um but it is something you talk about subscription fatigue and things like that if you're an apple ecosystem person it's awfully easy to just say yes just apple just charge me once a year for this membership and i just get all the apple things and then i can walk away um i i you know right versus like what percentage of people would buy each one and is that more revenue do

they offer both it's it's going to be interesting to see because apple's got some really tough decisions to make about this stuff yeah and we had a good question actually from uh upgrading and james and uh he asked do you think that the tv shows that apple is developing will be for sale individually on itunes or just a part of their streaming service like this is another part of it like huh what are they gonna do there what do you think i think they will do what netflix does and what amazon does with this stuff with their own stuff which is at some point it will be for sale if you look like stranger things is available on blu-ray right right right like after a after a substantial delay that stuff gets resold that's going to be my

guess about it is that rather than it being like the new episode of you know this apple show drops and two days later it's available a la carte from itunes it's possible they'll do that but my gut feeling is they'll wait until like six months after the whole season has run and then it'll be available as a blu-ray or a download or both uh but who knows you think they would do blu-ray i i i think well that's the trend that's the trend is that there is an ancillary market of people who want to own this stuff and it's money and and so like the fact that netflix does it i think is telling right right like not just the shows that netflix licenses but the the like i mean i think stranger things is a great example stranger things is available on blu-ray season one.

Like why is that? I think it's, it's getting people excited about it. And it's also, there's people who are not on Netflix who, or it's people who are on Netflix and really want to give them more money for the full quality version with extras. It's like,

okay, that's an extra business. And if, and if you're, if, if, if you're so committed to not giving Netflix money that you won't subscribe and then just watch Stranger Things, you'd rather just give them money separately for a Blu-ray, then I think if

you're Netflix, you're like, all right, just give us money, whatever. You can choose how you want to give us money because one Stranger Things Blu-ray is going to be the cost of buying Netflix for a month and watching Stranger Things, right? So it's kind of a different market. So I think that's what will probably happen. But we'll see. I mean, I have a question in the US about whether there'll be Star Trek Discovery on Blu-ray because CBS All Access really wants people to watch Star Trek Discovery.

And I've heard people say they're waiting for video because they're not going to subscribe to CBS All Access, which again is a little bit weird because you could just buy the streaming service for a month and watch it. But that's not what they want to do. And so, you know, my gut feeling is they will in advance of season two coming out,

release that on Blu-ray because they'll be able to kind of pump it up and say, this is, you know, isn't it exciting? This is that you can watch this now and then you can subscribe and later when you decide you love it. And I don't know, but I think that's the most likely scenario.

But they could leave it all subscribe only, stream only. And they could turn around and say, sure, you can buy it a la carte because the money you're spending on that one show a la carte, if you watch the whole season will be essentially the equivalent of the money you spent subscribing

to the service for several months. And so I'm not sure it's a good deal but it's there if you want it and the last thing that i wanted to just i wanted to point people towards this it's a good reference um indywire have put together an article that details all of the rumors and information currently known about apple's upcoming tv service it also includes a list of all series in development so i just thought this was, I saw it, it came across my radar and I like that this exists because they are so many TV shows that are in development and scripts in development that it's good to have somewhere where they're all written down. This is very useful for me. So I figured I would put it in the show notes and you

can see it there. They kind of, I think they're kind of updating this uh as it goes along so it's a good little good little resource my uh former colleague jason cross has a similar story that they update all the time at uh at macworld about about that's where they list all of the apple shows oh cool i will find that put that one in that too yeah thank you very much for that. That's good. Okay, so should we take a break? Yeah, sounds good. I want to talk about a new sponsor, Jason, that I'm very excited about. It's Ace & Tate.

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see how your frames will look in real life and get the opinion of your friends and family go to aceandtate.com upgrade right now our thanks to ace and tate for their support of the show i upgraded uh i upgrade i changed my avatar everywhere because i wanted to show off my fancy new frames so if you want to see what these glasses look like on my face, you can go to Twitter. I love it when, this is just a slight aside now, but I love it when a company will reach out to you and like, we want to support the show. It's like, oh, great, because I've been using your product for years. It makes it very easy to do that. So I was really excited when they reached out.

So go check them out. That's cool. Especially if you're in Europe. People are always saying to me, oh, we need european sponsors it's companies based in europe they ship everywhere in europe they do home try on in europe go check them out you gotta prove your point europeans come on and it's it's ace and tate not like asymptote which is from uh geometry i don't i don't understand that but but yes, ASAN. It's math. Math.

Maths, right? It's maths. It's maths. Sorry, that's right. It's mathematic. So Tim Cook had an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, and he was quizzed about the notion of iPad and the Mac merging together. And there's a few quotes from Tim that I want to read, Jason,

and then we can kind of talk about this in a little bit more detail. Does that sound good? Yep. So there's a few things from this article. These are quotes from Tim. We don't believe in sort of watering down one or the other.

So he doesn't want to water down the iPad or water down the Mac to make them one product. One of the reasons that both of these products are incredible is because we push them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two, you begin to make trade-offs and compromises. So maybe the company will be more efficient at the end of the day, but that's not what it's about. It's about giving people things that they can use to help them change the world or express their passions or express their creativity. So this merger thing that some folks are fixated on, I don't think that's what users want.

It was also disclosed or mentioned in this article that Tim uses a Mac in his office and an iPad at home and when he is traveling. So what does this all say? Now, you know, we talk about this stuff all the time, right? You can say, and it's easy to say, I think, oh, you know, you're looking at this article and you're picking it apart and trying to find meaning in it. But at the same time,

the CEO of the biggest company in the world, every time he says something, it means something because otherwise he just wouldn't say it, right? So all of these quotes, Apple PR are deciding that he's going to give this approach for say it, right? So all of these quotes, Apple PR are deciding that he's going to give this approach for a reason, right? They're trying to make a statement of some kind.

So what is that statement? Like, so you can pick it apart, start looking into it. What is he saying? What is he not saying? Like reading between the lines. I think it's pretty, you know, all signs point towards increased convergence of these two products and two systems

the mac and ios so what in jason when you read this stuff that tim says what does it say to you do you think he's saying that we will continue to have distinct products and distinct os is always and forever i don't know i don't know this is the mystery of Tim Cook's statements is, is he saying this because this continues to be Apple's actual policy, actual philosophy? Is he saying this because Apple has said this before and they're not at the point where they're willing to change what they say, right? Which is different, right? say, right? Which is different, right? He could be saying this because he knows internally, this is exactly what's happening right now. Or he could be saying this because this has been the company line. And if he changes it, it's an announcement. And so until they change it, they're going to just keep it the way it is. Because this is the toaster fridge, basically. This is the, you know, we're going to do these two things and they're great. And you can see it in what he says is like, both of them are great. They're brilliant.

They're amazing at what they do. And so we want to keep them doing the best thing. And that's Apple's official policy is we want to make the best product for the best use case. And iOS is the best use case over here. And Mac is the best use case over there. over there. And, you know, I think that the fact that he said this and he was asked, right? So he couldn't refuse to answer and he didn't want to make news. But at the same time, he also did repeat this, which carries some weight that just because it's a new statement that is restating what they've said all along,

and that maybe that means that philosophically they're remaining consistent on the inside. I kind of have a hard time believing it. I think this is more, you know, this is the official line and he's going to say it until the point where the official line changes. And if you look closely, what the underlying philosophy here is giving people things that they can use to help them change the world. There is an overarching kind of thing that you could argue is what he's really saying is, what we do's not, what we do is not what you are going to expect us to do, but it's going to be with our underlying philosophy. Um, you know, you could also really read this. I mean, I feel like there's a couple of ways to read this.

Um, it's so baffling for me. Like this statement is kind of baffling for me because this is the, and if you're listening and you're like, why is it baffling? You just don't want to hear Tim Cook say the mac's gonna stick around and and basically not change and ios is gonna stick around and basically not change and that's that's kind of not what i'm saying but i feel like you know the scenario where apple continues making macs that don't change very much and don't have touchscreens and, and that the Mac does what it's been doing all along and that iPads and iPhones keep doing what they have all along.

I'm not entirely convinced that that is, um, a successful way forward for them because, you know, and maybe, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe nobody wants a touchscreen laptop, right? And the Mac OS as it's currently constituted can't do touchscreen, right? They need to make major interface changes to the Mac to support a touchscreen on the screen if they want to go that route. And they haven't yet. They don't believe, they've said, oh no, you know, we've tested it. It's no good. But Microsoft has had a lot of success, and I think even Google has had some success with devices that are more traditionally computery and that have touchscreens on them. And Apple has had great success with

devices with touchscreens on them. And touch interfaces are, a whole generation of people have grown up on touch interfaces. So I look at the Mac as it is today. And I think I don't see how this is a product that can remain viable in the long run. If it doesn't, if it doesn't change pretty dramatically to be more like a modern computing device, like a, like a touch base thing, it could stick around as a legacy product. But if it does that, then you have the whole other question which is is it blocking the growth of ios like if they truly believe that the mac needs to be the mac um does the ipad does the i does ios also get to be what currently we think of as a mac do they get to push into the laptops and push into the desktops too or does does Apple say, no, no, no, no, we're going to keep them apart. And I think

my gut feeling is that they can't do that. They can't do that. So in the end, either they overlap, at which point we've got Mac laptops and iOS laptops, and maybe an iOS desktop that is not an iMac, but it's kind of like an iMac, but it doesn't run iOS. And the Mac continues the way it has been going. Or maybe Apple redefines what the Mac is. And I think this is a possibility that the Mac is a legacy and pro level platform. And it, you know, it keeps kind of migrating upward to the point where the people who buy a Mac are buying an iMac Pro or a Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro or maybe a high-end iMac.

But it starts to just kind of like be about that existing product category and the users who can't switch to iOS. And it just becomes a narrower and narrower thing. That is bad for that slice of Apple's market, right? Like if you're just building this platform that just gets more expensive and more legacy over time. Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be more expensive. I mean, the argument would be that there are probably not a lot of pro users and developers

who are building on a macbook yeah right and so for you to say well look if you want to do this work we've got these systems that'll do it but they're you know and so it wouldn't necessarily be just the imac pro maybe it's like the 5k imac is there and maybe even a 4k imac that they're like the way they view it is we're not even going to try i mean they're already starting down this route right but they still have the macbook air, the way they view it is, we're not even going to try. I mean, they're already starting down this route, right? But they still have the MacBook Air. But at some point they could just say, we're not even going to try to make this anything, but it's a professional platform.

It's for people who have existing software that doesn't, and needs that an iOS device can't fulfill. And they kind of redefine it upward. And some of that might be money, but I don't think it's necessarily saying you can't buy into the Mac unless you spend five grand because there'll be a macbook pro right but um that that's one way to do it like i mean if they don't want to fuse things together uh but there are these rumors that they're trying to at least fuse kind of the development thing

together and that's the other way that i read this cook thing is like i don't know does does what he's saying if their if their plan is to keep the mac around but to kind of add an ios like compatibility layer on top of it or an app compatibility layer on top of it is that different than what he's saying i don't know i think that fits within what he said right like the idea of the two of them gaining features from each other still keeps them separate until they don't exist, until either of them don't exist anymore,

which is my personal pet theory, right? Which is that the iPad and the Mac get closer and closer together until neither of them exist anymore because there's something that replaces both of them, right? Which is, it's not them merging. It's, you know, it's just, this is the next thing. And you would hope, you would really hope that Apple is working on that, right?

Because keeping iOS and the Mac around indefinitely forever, that's not moving forward, right? That's not creating the next evolution in computing. That's not the next major operating system, right? You would hope that they are pushing both of these systems to the maximum, and it could be argued that they're dropping the ball in a couple of key places for both of them, right? And that people would like. So, I mean, my kind of view on this is,

what I think that is going on, which is being supported in part by some of the theories, is what's happening here is that we're going to see more consistency between the two devices, between the two classes of device. Then some huge changes for the Mac, right? Like if the Mac moves to ARM, and then they continue to push that product forward, and they continue to push the iPad forward.

I think that we're in kind of a setup period right for something to set up for a transition yeah right because the rumors about transitions but there's no transitions yet it's a setup for a transition other than the like 64-bit transition that is sort of ending and then a new transition will happen i think um i've been thinking about this marzipan thing the idea of like adapting uh you know ios apps to run on the mac and i do think there was there was a piece this week and i don't i don't have a link maybe we can look it up find it to somebody it was in praise of um in praise of the menu bar yeah okay i'll find this i've seen this i think gruber linked to it and the idea was that like one one of the defining features of the mac is the menu bar but one of the powerful things about the menu bar is that it reveals everything an app can do and it reveals all the keyboard shortcuts which is also

very very clever but it reveals everything and as a kid who grew up using command line computers the menu bar was a revelation because when you were using the command line, I mean, there was just a lot of guessing. It's like, I wonder what this does. I wonder what this does. And there'd be some features that unless you happen to read back on Unix, at least our manual pages back in my,

my early computers, there were no manual pages or help pages. So there were like B commands. You just weren't aware existed, or you knew you could do it, but you didn't know exactly how you had to word it. And then the menu bars happen. Menu bar, you just click around and you're like're like oh here's everything that it does in one

place you don't see it to search for it right that's one of my favorite things to help yeah one of the greatest things they added is is searching the menu bar in the help menu so um so when we talk about marzipan like and we talk about apple saying these things should be true to themselves and we talk about apple's philosophy philosophy saying that we think that a laptop form factor that requires a lot of touching of the screen is not a good interaction model. And I'd agree with that as somebody who sticks my iPad in that bridge keyboard that makes it basically into a laptop temporarily. laptop temporarily. I don't want to have constant touchscreen interaction, right? Occasional touchscreen interaction is fine, but I don't want it to be constant. It's less good than if I'm holding the tablet in my hand to have it at the end of the keyboard, right? So put all that together, mix all that together. Is it possible that one of apple's marzipan kind of approaches

is that your ios app when you update it to support this new framework that lets it run on the mac that it gains a menu bar or an ios equivalent or like not so i don't think it would look the same, right? But what would it be on iOS? But what if it is? What if they say in certain configurations with a keyboard attached or a keyboard and a pointing device attached, which we think of as on a MacBook,

like in the Mac context, the apps become a little more Mac-like, this is my secret hope for marzipan by the way that my secret hope is that if you can go one way you can go the other well right right so this is my thought is that if you if you say hey ios developer you're gonna you're gonna develop something that can run on a macbook and you can get a menu bar and you can get cursor support and all of these things that a Mac person has. And maybe, and this is a maybe, but if you're at the point now where touch enabled apps are coming over to the Mac, it might also be the time that you let the Mac respond to touch events in those apps. Maybe, maybe it's time, but leaving that aside for a moment. It also potentially means that on your 12.9 inch iPad pro, when a keyboard is attached,

the, uh, or when a keyboard and a pointing device are connected to it, smart keyboard of a trackpad, it says, Oh, you've got that now. Well, I'll show you a menu bar, right? I mean, it could go both ways. And is that, and I know this this is it's super weird but on another level it's actually not because it's all about context is that not within what tim cook said which is apple's going to have one way to build apps and let them scale to appropriate interface context depending on the device being used and if you're running mac os

but you can run the same app as you run on ios and it behaves in a slightly different way not because you're running mac os but because you're running on a laptop with a keyboard and a trackpad then i don't know i mean that is that gets you a lot of the goodness of unifying the platforms without technically unifying the platforms. I would love to be able to use Logic on my iPad. Not because I want to move my edit. I would love to be able to use Ferrite on my Mac. Sure, right?

Like, you know, I get that 100%. But like, it's not because I want to turn all of my work over to it, but just so if I need it, then I can do it. So if I need to edit something on a plane, I don't have to bring my MacBook Pro with me anymore. I'm unclear about whether Marzipan will truly be a solution to let Mac developers move to iOS as much as it is. Because I think the pressure is to get iOS developers to run to the Mac.

But this could be the first step to it, though, right? It starts to build the bridge that doesn't currently exist. And if you build that bridge, how powerful can it become? And that is, again, this is my idealized future. This is what i want i want to be able to have one os on all of my devices that's what i personally want and it is a dream right and but you know all of these things start with a dream and then they go from there and i can hear people saying but what about like especially our friends who are developers right it's like oh but

can you imagine all the con you know you have to to change the context and now you have a menu bar and do you have a touch screen? And how does a cursor fit in versus sensing for touch? And all of these questions, a lot of questions. That's why it's a hard thing and why anything, any solution in Apple builds will be incredibly complicated. And is why it's problems. And it will take several years to go through a transition

that said as i recall a lot of these same comments were made when there was only one iphone screen size and they talked about making a bigger iphone and then right and then right you know and the ipad was in there too um and what happened was apple said for a couple of years at WWDC, actually, you should really start looking at this approach that we're taking in terms of size classes. And they didn't say it, but everybody knew it the moment they started talking about it at WWDC. That what it meant was there are going to be different sized iPhones. phones and your apps need to the building an app specifically for one size and then adding on another specific size design is not tenable on the long term. You need to build these apps that adapt. And that's the world we live in now. And it's fine, right? It was work for the developers. Yes, absolutely. But it's fine now. In fact, you could argue it's great now, or at least very good now, because you can buy

an iPhone or iPad of various sizes and all the apps work and they work what is the developer basically has deemed appropriate for that device shape. And this is a dramatically bigger extension of that, but it is kind of an extension of that. And that's why I'm not saying this is going to happen. But I do think it's worth having that imagination about it. Because it is one of the options here is not, oh, I'm going to get an iOS app on my Mac, and it's gonna be weird. And it's gonna look like a dashboard widget or something. And it's gonna I'm gonna have to click but my mouse is kind of pretending to be a finger and there's no menu bar because it's an iOS app. That could be the

solution. It's not a really great one. Or it could be Apple sort of saying, here's how your app changes in that context to behave more like a Mac app. And if they do that right, and if developers are capable of doing that without killing themselves with work over all that goes into it,

it's messy and there'll be issues. I don't know. That actually sounds pretty cool. The idea that there's one app platform that will scale all the way from a small iPhone to a giant iMac. I think that would be, that's the dream. And again, starts with the dream and then the details are where it gets messy the dream includes all of the power of these devices this dream does not include include dumbing something down right like that's not what absolutely right like i want to get like logic anywhere right and it runs on my iphone all the way up to my mac and it's just as good right you know that's because that's a dream right that it seems impossible and if you think to yourself that's ridiculous how how could logic run on an iphone and all the way up to a big

iMac i can tell you having used ferrite which for podcast editing anyway is as good as logic or better that you can use ferrite on an iphone it's cramped but you can totally do it. And I can use Logic on my 27-inch iMac Pro, and they are essentially the same for my uses. I admit that if you're a music producer, doing something on an iPhone would be hard, but there's not a lot of space there. But the iPhone's got a lot of power. So it's not unreasonable to think that you could have apps with serious power that are not toy apps that could scale from small to large when it's appropriate, right? Because it may also be that you're like, yeah, below a certain size, like this can go to an iPad, but it can't go to an iPhone. It's just, there's not enough room for

our interface. Like, okay, fair enough. Then that would be a different choice. But if the developer of Ferrite could just pick up the Mac, that would be great too. And then that would mean that my projects would sync and I could use the same projects on both sides, which I can't now because I either am in Logic or I'm in Ferrite. And that would be cool. So I don't know. Again, this is all, I know we've come so far from Tim Cook talking in Australia, but this is all part of this kind of like, where does Apple go from here?

What gets unified? Is it the whole product line, just a little part? This is the discussion of like the next two or three years, right? Like this is the key discussion that I think is going to keep coming up time and time again is like, where are these products going? Because it does feel like

we are getting close to a point of inflection, like that something is going to happen. And as a Mac user, as somebody who uses a Mac every day, it is the device that I use the most, you know, and I get referred to a lot as one of the iPad guys, right? Yeah, you get put in the list of me and Federico now. With you and Federico, right?

And it's because I'm a big believer in the iPad as a productivity device. But I sit at my iMac most of the day. That's what I do. I'm a Mac guy. I'm also an iPad guy. Again, I'm team both, like I like to say. I think they're both great. Like Tim Cook actually apparently claims to be, like travels with an iPad, also an ipad guy again i'm team both like i like to say i think they're both great the like tim

cook actually apparently claims to be like travels with an ipad works at his desk on a mac i don't imagine him ever sitting at a mac by the way he doesn't ever sit down at his desk he's always moving that's my theory when does he ever get time to sit in his desk he will be in meetings constantly and he's taking his ipad with him like You got to think that there's some PR person who's like, Tim, Tim, we put an iPad on iMac on your desk. Just say you've got an iMac on your desk. A what now? All right, I'll say it.

What is that? Do we still make those? Hello, computer. Is this mouse? What is this? He pushes it off the desk trying to launch Slack, right? Why does the touchscreen not work? Not a touchscreen.

trying to launch slack right like it just like why does the touch screen not work not a touch screen um the uh so as a mac user what i want to say is i don't want the mac to and all the things about the mac that i love that are not fulfilled by ios i don't want those to go away i also don't want the mac to become a completely static backwater where nothing is happening. And I got to say, over the last five years, longer, the Mac has felt that way. It feels like it's slowing, right? Like that, you know, it's in quicksand. My last few years at Macworld, when we would do the Eddie Awards awards and we would talk about mac software especially it was like oh boy like it was hard to come up with and and then on my own doing six color stuff

and doing the upgradies right sometimes you look at the mac stuff and you're like huh what is even here we this year we completely threw out any picks for ourselves for newcomer mac apps on the upgrades we needed 100 it was like we changed the entire way we do it because we needed suggestions because between the two of us we couldn't come up with like six or seven new good mac apps we needed to crowdsource it and we got them but between the two of us we struggled yeah it's so this is what i'm saying is i i you know we're already there to a certain degree where the mac like apple's investments in the mac with the exception of maybe something like the touch bar have been ios compatibility of various features

to certain degrees right not entirely but to certain degrees and just kind of keeping it running and then some of their apps, like, you know, Logic keeps getting updates, and Final Cut keeps getting updates. And there are third party apps out there that we love that keep getting updates. But there's not a lot of new stuff. Because if you're going to develop an app on Apple's platforms, you're going to develop it for iOS, you're going to develop it for iOS, you know, in most cases, not not entirely like, you know, panic has withdrawn some stuff from iOS and is focusing on the Mac where they've got a good existing business. But I'm just saying, as a Mac user, I want the stuff I get out of the Mac and the Mac in general to continue.

But I also would like it to be a vibrant platform that will continue into the future. And I'm not sure keeping it like it is on maintenance mode is a great, you know, does not augur well for the future. And I mean, let me be kind of blunt here as a longtime Apple platform person. I don't want to turn around in five or 10 years and discover that the only way I can do my job is to buy something that runs Windows, right don't want that i don't want the mac to just fade away into irrelevance and i don't want ios to be boxed in and not allowed to become more powerful so it can fulfill a lot of the things that i do on the mac right now and that is that to me that's the core apple challenge is how do you reconcile those two things?

Because you hand your competitors a lot of space in which to operate if you seed part of the market to your legacy platform, which you've put on maintenance mode. And that doesn't seem very Apple-like to me. And that doesn't seem very Apple-like to me. I'd like to believe that what we're seeing now is the calm before the storm, right? It's the quiet period where they can't talk about it yet because they're Apple, but that they are working on what the path forward is. And so we all sit around going, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? And they know or they're figuring it out. And, and, you know, hopefully soon, and it may not be

soon, it may be another year or two. We have a better idea about that, but I don't want to, you know, and again, maybe the Microsoft experience will just be amazing. And I'll be like, all right, well, I guess if I want to use a computer going forward, I'll just, and I'll be like, all right, well, I guess if I want to use a computer going forward, I'll just, it'll run Windows, but I'd rather not. I'd rather not. You mentioned about, you know, if we're going to find out about this, we have to, you know, we need to wait for Apple to speak about it,

and it looks like that is becoming more and more of a realization that if you want to hear about Apple stuff, you have to wait for Apple to tell you, and we're going to talk about why after this break. Today's show is brought to you by Slack, a collaboration hub that lets you organize your team's work in easily searchable channels. You can use Slack for projects, for interests, for teams, for your office. And when you do, you're going to know that all of the right people are always in the loop because you can set up great little channels and talk with everyone individually. You can talk in large groups, small groups, direct messages, everything. You have all the relevant information you need in one place and it's all easily findable because you can search for it. And it's super easy for new team members

to get up to speed. You can onboard them quickly. They can be introduced. You can set up information and contact stuff. It's so, so simple to do. Slack will help you dramatically reduce the number of emails that you need to send and help you streamline your team's communication. In a nutshell, this is what makes Slack so incredible for me. I can't even imagine the amount of email I have not had to send because I use Slack every day. Like I cannot even fathom how me and Jason would get get this show done like the i just because if it was coming in an email it would just get lost amongst all of the other hundreds of messages that i get every day or however many emails i receive a day a lot of it is junk a lot of it i need to look at and it all just gets mixed into a pile but with slack everything is so nicely

arranged and organized. And I know where I need to be. And it's becoming better and better over time because they're adding all these new features like video and voice calls. I use these all the time. So if I need to speak to someone, why even open another app? I just may as well just call them in Slack. I've arranged to speak to them in Slack. I open Slack.

Are you free to speak right now? And they say yes. And I just call them. I don't need to go anywhere else. They've got it all there, real-time messaging, file sharing, searchable archives, all in one easy-to-use app. You can drag and drop profiles so you can share them with people and use the apps that you already use,

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and for giving me and all of us an easy way to communicate every single day. If you're not yet using Slack with your team, try it. Slack.com. Slack, where work happens. So I mentioned about it getting trickier and trickier for Apple to put people inside of Apple to share stuff. That's because they are cracking down again on leakers. Now, we spoke about this a while ago uh back in june of last year funnily enough about a year ago june 26th uh we had an episode of the show where apple where it had leaked out

that apple were starting their global war on leakers it was a huge uh outline article do you remember this one jason it's where they they spoke about the establishing of their kind of secrecy team has the global security team uh inside of apple and at that time we spoke a little bit about like why do people do this why do people leak and it's still going on i mean as we know right like every single week we're talking about a new report that comes from somewhere about something right we're just talking about Marzipan. All that stuff came from reports, typically from Mark Gurman, who, in horrifically amazing irony, is the person reporting on this leak about the memo of leaking, which is just like

my brain twists from the irony of this. The Apple sent out an internal memo warning their employees to stop leaking to the press. This memo was posted by Mark Gurman on Bloomberg. And I think I can see why this happened specifically because I am sure that this stuff really upsets some people when they see things like this and it kind of turns them towards becoming that person. But anyway, I'm going to give you some details

from this leaked memo. In 2017, Apple caught 29 individuals leaking information. 12 of those people were arrested, which is a surprise. I mean, you know, you can see how it's like trade secrets and that kind of stuff. But it was interesting to me to see

Apple specifically calling this out in the memo. They're like, 12 people were arrested, and none of them will get jobs again because we'll make sure that never happens. It's like, whoa! Okay. In this memo, Apple cited a selection of instances specifically in which information

had been leaked from employees. For example, Federighi telling employees that some iOS features will be delayed. This is the discussion about the two-year cycle that's come up recently. Apple found and fired this person. You'll also remember that after the HomePod leak, just before the iPhone X came out,

there was a leak of the gold master of iOS 11. This had within it the name iPhone X, right? Remember we were calling it iPhone X for a week, and also had features like Animoji and stuff like that. This was leaked out just before Apple unveiled the iPhone 10. Apple found it via this person. The member also has a quote from Greg Joswiak saying, we want the chance to tell our customers why the products are great and not have this done poorly by someone else this is what apple tell uh that their people inside i mean i can kind of understand this right they don't want stuff to leak because they have a story they have a marketing story that's that's the whole that's that's why they do it the way they do it is they

want to tell the story on stage and have that be the first time you understand it because when when little bits leak it becomes a conversation about things that apple doesn't want it to be a conversation about they want to control the the the story yeah they never want the phone to be called the iphone x because it's called the iphone 10 and the longer the longer people get to call it the x before it's unveiled the harder it gets for people to understand it's actually called the iPhone 10. I'm going to read a little creepy quote from this memo, Jason. It was interesting to read, and I get it, but it's interesting. In many cases, leakers don't set out to leak. Instead, people who work for Apple are often targeted by press, analysts, and bloggers who befriend them on professional and social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and begin to pry for information.

While it may seem flattering to be approached, it's important to remember that you're getting played. What do you think of that? I don't have a problem with this statement. I think that's probably true right it's like it is true if you're a scooper if you're a you know if you're someone who wants inside info you you befriend people who have inside info and if you are watching people or you know you talk to somebody you know and they say oh this person's working on that project and then you try to befriend them this This is, I mean, happening online.

In the old days, it would be like... Bars. At the bar, right? Yeah. But it is, yeah, this is what happens. Do you get why I say it's creepy? Just when it's written down like this, it makes me feel uncomfortable.

Because obviously I know this stuff happens, but when you write it down, when you put it in black and white, it makes me feel uncomfortable like because i obviously i know this stuff happens but like when you write it down when you put it out like put it in black and white it feels kind of like insidious a little bit well the the the important thing to keep in mind here is that this is management telling employees to not um you know not leak information and so it's a statement from management what i would say is they want to scare their employees yeah they want to they want them to be like everybody's definitely not like this for everyone right all your friends in the press that you have are playing they're all playing nothing is real only love apple all your friends do not love you only apple

loves you only talk to your people who work at apple never talk to your friends outside of apple just love apple stay inside apple park stay inside the circle right don't trust anybody it's management it's management that's fine i what i would say is there's so much gray in this it's not a black and white issue the there are there are lots of people we there was a twitter thread about this that i was going back and forth with people including serenity caldwell about this like a lot of us know people at apple who we know who are not like we're not like befriending them because they know something and you know what information passes back and forth are those leaks

a lot of times they're not leaks a lot of times they're not leaks a lot of times it's actually beneficial to apple to have apple employees who have friends in the press so that when a story comes up about like let's say the iphone battery situation for example or a or an encryption situation and there's somebody you know and i'm not saying this is anybody in particular or me or anything like that but there's somebody you know, and I'm not saying this is anybody in particular or me or anything like that, but there's somebody, you know, and they, and they say, well, you know, this is actually what's going on here. And you never say that you were told that by Apple, but you can write with more confidence about something, knowing that that's actually accurate because a person who's in the know

told you that. Was that approved by PR? Maybe, but probably not. Because again, I also don't believe that your friends at Apple are just there to manipulate you. They're not really your friends, members of the press. They're just there to tell you things Apple wants you to know. That's also a little bit much, right? There can be a lot of paranoia here. A lot of stuff gets passed back and forth. It's useful. I've had conversations that a year later some story came up where information that

i've been told again just chatting about information not about new future products but like how stuff works at apple informed what i was able to write about and i'd be like oh this is like that thing that we talked about a couple of years ago so i already know their philosophy about this like that that's all good right well like i've had conversations with people where it's excited conversation we're talking and they're excited about what they're working on and i'm excited to hear it and i keep my mouth shut sure but that's also true i mean if you're not in the scoop business right then which not a lot of people are can i tell you i read this stuff and i'm so happy that i don't

ever try and break a story like i'm not my gosh like when i look at something like this and when you see something like this and there's still more to come on this right like that that we want to talk about quotes and stuff from this but if this is your business like leaking if it gets harder and harder like what are you gonna do like if they shut this down what do you do and mark german uh is a good reporter and he this is he's doing his job and unless he does a great job unless he's really like inducing people to break the law which is i think where it crosses over into into an issue um still though i have to say from a personal career choice decision, it's not an area I ever really wanted to be in of like breaking scoops

because you're basically getting people, your information is coming from people who are violating an agreement they made. You may not have induced them to do it, but in the end, it is all coming from that. And if this memo is to be believed right like it's costing people their jobs and some of them are getting charged with crimes and like i never wanted to be a person where because this is accurate like you can build a

career on scoops mark german has done that so far right and the result is potentially i would assume some of the people he built his career on lost their jobs and maybe got charged with crimes and it's like he's just doing his job and they're the ones who had the secrets and chose to leak them they they made a bad decision but that's not a i like i just would not want that to be my job. I just personal decision. I don't want that in my life. I don't want to know that that person I talked to got fired because they talked, even though it was their decision and they were supposed to keep secrets and they failed and it is their personal failing. But, you know, and I get Apple's point, which is don't do that. We want to scare you as much as possible.

We have a whole security team. We are investigating you um unless you're doing the you know the the secret meeting at the parking lot uh and your everything's encrypted and you know you you cover your tracks perfectly you're going to get caught and that that you know that's that's a game apple should be playing i suppose because they they don't want their people to leak information um it's very hard in a free and open society to really prevent information from leaking ultimately including memos about confidentiality and not leaking because those leak too of course they do and they know they're going to leak they know they do there's no company-wide dispatch from apple

that doesn't doesn't come out or any other company that's too many people right like one of the things about apple is like company wide everybody got it who are the suspects all of them right they disclose small groups of people about certain things but a company-wide memo goes to everyone so everybody got it everybody's a suspect yeah yep global securities digital forensics also helped catch several employees who were feeding confidential details to a blogger at

9to5Mac specifically called out I said Mark Gurman's sources were good right I mean so John Gruber kind of dug into this a little bit and was kind of referring to something that they were talking about so in in this article they they referenced that global security uh found some like one of

these people who was leaking stuff was talking about airpods and there was an article that mark german wrote about nine months or so before airpods were released about airpods whilst he was at nine to five mac and the previously mentioned person who was fired for leaking the federighi meeting was also a mark german story at bloomberg i think it is very clear here that apple is calling out people that are leaking to mark german right yeah i think so and that is real like just like i don't even really know what to say about it, right? And I completely agree with you. Like, I don't look at this and think, oh, German is responsible here, because he isn't, right?

Like, he is doing his job. And you're right, like, the people at Apple, they sign contracts, they sign NDAs. You don't walk into this company and think oh i can leak things and it will be totally cool if they find out right like everyone knows and it's just so strange right like when you see stuff like this you're like well why does it get out then and you know we spoke about this before people get disgruntled people are excited people think that they want to change things and this is the way that they do it, right? But these are the consequences, and it gets us into this really awkward, just really awkward territory of what comes next from it.

Yeah, I suspect he will lose sources, but I suspect some people will still be. This leads to the side, like, why do people leak things, right? There's the official leaks, right, which do happen from time to time but there's also just these unofficial leaks that happen why do people do it sometimes they're disgruntled like we've talked about that before always ask yourself who's the source and this this type of thing in a strange way disgruntles more people i would expect right like there are probably more people that will be disgruntled now it can't although um i'd say that a lot of these product things don't come from disgruntled employees i think disgruntled employees what you get is apple killed this project right yeah like

you remember that macbook that the macbook was meant to be better and they chose the bad macbook do you remember that story exactly right and that was that was obviously somebody who worked on it and was really angry that their thing didn't get picked. Right. And that's a thing that happens. But a lot of this is people, and we talked about this a lot in episode 147. You can go back and listen to it. But a lot of this is people who are just really excited that they know somebody that nobody else knows. And then once you've got that, it's sort of like, I mean, just psychologically, I feel like the joy you get about knowing a secret for some people is only when you tell it. And I think there is an ego boost and some pleasure that people get about seeing a big story break and have all of us in the apple world talking about it and every and like maybe

even influencing the company's stock price because bloomberg covers it and mark german's at bloomberg so he's wired into uh you know that his information goes to all the investors it's a it's a huge deal right and you're that employee at apple who told mark german on telegram this one fact about what was going on and that employee is like oh i made the world move with just my little scrap of information and that's why there's no doubt in the world that is exciting like that is an exciting thing but well i mean and the argument is for some people it's not for some people it is i I mean, it is exciting, I suppose, for everybody. But for some people, it's like, it's not worth the cost. Like, instead, you do your job and you wait for the product to get announced. And then you, you know, then you say, you know, we worked on this really hard. Like, I remember jury, Michael Jurowicz, who works at Apple, after the iPhone 10, I saw him at the iPhone 10 10 event and he he he did he tell me at the event i don't think so maybe he just tweeted about it afterward i don't remember i don't want to get him in trouble but it was after the event so it didn't matter but he revealed that you know like

he'd been working on i think like hardware software integration on the iphone 10 for the last year or something like it was his baby in a lot of ways, parts of that product. That was his life for the previous year plus. And presumably, he didn't say anything. He kept it quiet. And then they announced the product. And then he got to be one of those people who said, yeah, I worked on that. And I'm really proud of it. And for some people, that's enough. But obviously, for some people, that's not enough. And to go beyond that, I think would require a level of psychological examination of each individual person to find out quite why they need that extra hit of being the one who made the story happen that made people talk about this. some sources will dry up and others will just when we talk about that kind of psychology they're not going to be able to help themselves they'll just they'll keep at it they'll they'll find other ways to communicate more secretly and they'll be more careful about it and there will continue to be

leaks um maybe fewer leaks but there will continue to be leaks but reading this memo in full, I recommend because it is enlightening. It is? It's just a very, very interesting thing to read all of the ways that it is written. It's just a really kind of fascinating thing to look at. I enjoyed it, but it also creeped me out at the same time because it is meant to scare people. And I can see how it

makes people feel on edge because I was a bit like oh god, I hope I'm never responsible for anything like this it's kind of wild really wild it's time to do some hashtag askupgrade but today I want to thank our friends Squarespace for helping support the show

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some hashtag AskUpgrade? Let me have it, Mike. First one comes from Michael today. Oh, the laser's got me. I'll have to answer this one then uh which users do you think make apple happier those who live primarily in first-party apps or those who take full advantage of app store apps so if you're in first-party apps you're kind of you're in the apple ecosystem as much as possible you're using all of the stuff that they make but if you use third-party apps, maybe Apple again is in that 30% cut.

Maybe they're offering more choice so they get higher customer satisfaction. What do you think, Jason? Do you think that Apple have a preference for where they want their customers to sit when it comes to taking advantage of apps on their systems? Yeah, while I appreciate the thought experiment here, I have to just say yes, they make make them, they make Apple happy. I don't think, I don't think, and obviously this, these are extremes. So there's a whole spectrum of how much you're living in the primary and how much you're living in, in, in third-party apps.

But I think Apple's cool with all of it. I think first off, if you're on Apple's platform, that's pretty much a winner for Apple. And yes, I think Apple would prefer that you pay for Apple music rather than using Spotify and maybe use Apple services and not Google services. But, you know, there are also people who are subscribing to replacement apps for Apple stuff. And that Apple does have kind of a cut of that too. And it makes the platform sticky just as well. So I think Apple's okay with it either way. I'm sure Apple would prefer you not to use all Google services on your iOS devices, but in the end, only slightly, because in the end, they just want you on iOS. They want the solar devices first. For a long time to come, that's

going to remain the primary focus, right? I know services is a growing business for them, but by and large, they just want you to buy their computers like that's where they make them the most of their money um another michael uh wrote in it's not to michael's that we actually have i've just realized jason completely accidentally we have three questions from three michaels today how fun is that michael's great people all the michaels all the great michael's best all the great michaels uh i live a post pc life presenting around the world so fancy with my 12.9 inch ipad pro and the use of lots and lots of dongles i normally use my iphone or apple watch as the remote because keynote can do this but when the room has poor wi-fi this doesn't work very well is there a presenting remote that you know of that would work um we I think we both did a bit of searching on this

and found dubious claims of iOS compatibility. There seem to be clickers on Amazon that I found that say they work with the iPhone. And they could, they might, but I've never used one, so I don't know. But if you're in a connectivity-poor environment where you can't use iPhone remote for Keynote or something like that, and you have to have a clicker, I don't know. If somebody out there listening has used a clicker with iOS that was not another iOS device, let us know.

Because that would be a good thing to have right and maybe maybe such a thing exists um there again there are claims but i can't verify the claims so who knows we have some real-time follow-up oh in in the chat room uh from rosemary saying that david sparks talks about a device by setechi and so i'm to put two links in the show notes. Oh, yeah. The Satechi Bluetooth Smart Pointer Mobile Presenter. There is, David, this is from 2013. So this is a long time ago, and it's just a Bluetooth device.

I have found episode 420. Blaze it. Episode of Mac Power Users. It's timely, very timely. So what you're saying, Mike... I'm saying nothing is what I'm saying. Jason, do not walk me into this. I will not accept it.

But at least David recommends the Satechi Aluminium Wireless Presenter Point to Remote Control. I've put two links in the chat room, one to Mac Power Users, one to this device. Obviously, these products do exist. So that's your solution is find a Bluetooth clicker that supports iOS and enjoy it, Michael. Michael, number three.

Josh has written in, I have an issue with another one with the all-in-one iPad life. How do you start a sentence without a capital letter? Now, this seems like such a simple thing, but iOS loves to capitalize things, right? And I think you can turn this off like everywhere in keyboard settings. But one thing that I do, this works with a lot of apps,

not Google Docs, but it works with a lot of apps. If you're using an external keyboard, if you just hit the shift key before you start typing, it won't capitalize the letter letter automatically um with google docs this is gonna i hate saying this because this makes everyone that use a mac so happy the way that i do it with google docs is like if i'm typing url i'll just type the h key twice and then drop

back one and delete the capital letter and carry on oh yeah so um a lot of apps and also the keyboard setting in the settings app now have this one one of my favorite features in ios 10 i think is there's a hardware keyboard setting and you can turn off autocorrect and auto capitalization for hardware keyboards so it's possible to like straight up turn it off but if you if you want it to be there sometimes like 90 of the time hitting the shift key first will stop that and and as you mentioned there are a bunch of apps as a longtime keyboard user i have turned off auto everything on my keyboard for mac and for ios because it's like i i can do it i could do it just fine i don't need your help operating system i i

will type the letters and they will they will appear on the screen and that's all i need i don't need auto cap i will use the shift key when i want to use the shift key so that's my that's my solution is turn it all off if you've got a hardware keyboard if you got a software keyboard yeah you got to do the counterintuitive press unpressing of the space bar or of this of the shift key in order to get it to work, which it's fine. Unless you suffer from the affliction of spelling blindness like me, then it's probably best to keep the autocorrect on.

Our third and final Michael has written in to ask what iOS apps would you be excited to see come to the Mac? Michael was personally excited at the prospect of a native youtube app for his macbook pro which i find funny because i don't have the youtube app installed and i just use the web i use the web interface on ios i prefer it i

like it that's interesting i like the web interface i like the ios app so what would you like to see what ios apps would you like to see on the mac well i wrote an article about this which is i think what he's referencing on mac world uh it's probably more than 800 words and a lot of them were apps that support picture in picture because there are a bunch of um on on mac they throw you to their website and then they use often it's flash and you can't put that picture in picture and so you have to watch it in the browser and i hate that i want it picture in picture on the mac too because that's supported and it's great so like mlb at bat which you can kind of hack with a with a bookmarklet to get it now it's doing html5 video but like hbo go my xfinity cable app i had i was watching a baseball

game in a window and had to be a chrome window running flash instead of just like in a picture in picture view which i would have preferred some of my smart home devices like my i've got these arlo video cameras and there's an app for that and on the desktop again i have to use chrome and flash and it's annoying and i know they've got an html5 capable uh you know a a standards-based video thing because they've got an app. Some social media stuff. Like, I really like that Twitter has apps. That's why I got into Twitter is that I have Twitterific and I use it as an app. And I would, honestly, I would probably, I don't know if I would today, but, like, I'd be more inclined to use Facebook if I had a Facebook app than just the Facebook website. That's the reason I use Twitter more than Facebook is that Twitter has an app and

Facebook doesn't. And I'm not going to leave a browser window open with Facebook, nor am I going to remember on a regular basis to open a browser window and load Facebook. And so I just don't look at Facebook very often. So an app would help there. And then we mentioned it earlier, like a ferrite recording studio love that on the mac i'd love that i might switch my podcast editing to it if it was on the mac as well um overcast yeah shout out to casey liss that'd be that'd be a good one and then i would say um uh the home app because there's no home kit support on the mac to this day so i would like the home app to be there yep and uh i'll leave you with uh games like alto's adventure and flip-flop solitaire

right like more games in theory come to the mac and there's no harm in that right like just having them there that'd be kind of cool like especially something like alto you just grab a little controller you could play a great ios game on the Mac if you wanted to. Like, why not? They put it on Apple TV. Why not on the Mac? I also, for me, not even so much like apps that don't currently exist, but I have a bunch of apps that are cross-platform and they get out of sync from inconsistency.

Like different features are on different platforms. Something like, you know, like AirMail and TweetBot and Fantastical. They're all really great iOS apps and really great Mac apps, but they have different features on each platform. And I would like it all to have the same. And my feeling would be that this might be more likely that developers that work cross-platform might want to go with just the iOS version and then make more adaptions to that and make it a more consistent experience that that's something that i would like to see um anthony asked uh says mike i listened to the episode

of canvas that you were on and i noticed that you said you don't leave automatic updates and app downloads enabled on your main devices how come see i filled in for fraser on an episode of canvas recently with federico um and we spoke about the multi-pad lifestyle and I was talking about how I kind of manage multiple iOS devices to try and keep them in parallel and one thing I mentioned is that on my iPads I have automatic app downloads so if I download an app on one iPad it downloads on the other but I don't have this on my iPhone and I don't have app updates on anything except my small iPad. And the reason for this is I just like to see release notes.

Like if I get app updates, sometimes I want to see what's changed and I like to look at the release notes. And I don't want my iPhone to be full up of apps because that's where I download most of the apps in the initial place. Like if I download an app on my iPad, it's because I want it specifically for my iPad. I typically don't want it on my iPhone as well. So it's just my own little way of doing it.

Do you have any of the automatic updates or download stuff turned on? I think I have automatic updates turned on and I do not have automatic downloads turned on because I generally will download something on one device for a reason and then i hate it when it just shows up on my ipad yeah i don't want it there typically you would make a separate choice to download the ipad app i find anyway yeah i think that's right and

then finally today noel wrote in and asked what is a great simple audio player for the mac i'm looking for an app that can serve as my default app for audio files so I can get one step closer to abandoning iTunes. I have no answer for this. I don't think that you have an answer for this. And this is interesting to me. I use iTunes every day and I don't have a problem with it. I think as a music player, which was what it was designed for, it's fine. And I don't think because it has such a a footprint there have been other audio player apps that have been released for the mac and none of them really last so far as i know because the itunes is just too big a presence on the mac so i just don't think it's going to happen there may be some out there they're probably really compromised if somebody wants to make one available you know that they that they love then that's great but i've seen a

few and they just never seem to catch because itunes is just too huge it's like what you could you know you could use an app like quicktime but it lacks so many features that it would just be more of a pain in the butt than anything else if you're just like playing and playing an audio file that you want to play i don't know you could open that in quicktime player you could open that in i do a lot of pre i do a lot of previews just using quick look like literally i will just select the file and press the space bar and let it play and as long as i'm not using the finder for something else it'll just keep playing so i'll do that a lot quick look is an incredibly important part of my podcast production workflow a quick look at everything that's where

i check a lot of things to make sure they sound okay like last week where i had the monster truck segment where we had the echoes i exported that out and i found a bug in logic where even though i had the the echo came up and then went back down again a large portion of the show had the big monster truck echo on it and so i had to re-export the file i'm so pleased you found that yeah right right well that's i mean that's why i checked yeah that's right from relay fmm right so we didn't do that so but that was just a quick look preview where i was scrubbing through making sure it sounded okay and uh i didn't no we can't help you but maybe an upgradian can so it out there in the upgradian universe uh if you had no other simple audio player that can just play some music files let us know and then we can tell no so that's it if you

want to send in your questions for us to answer at the end of the show to send that tweet into the universe with the hashtag ask upgrade and you can trust that we will find it. And it may be included on a future episode of the show. I want to again thank our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Ace & Tate, and Slack for helping support the show. But of course most importantly, thank you for listening as you do every week. We really, really, really

appreciate it. Our show notes this week are at relay.fm upgrade190190 We are today if you want to find Jason online he is at jsnell on twitter jsnll you can go to the incomparable.com for Jason's wonderful

podcasts and podcast network about pop culture and entertainment some great shows over at the incomparable you can also find shows that Jason and I do at relay.fm go to relay.fm slash shows, and we have a long list of wonderful audio programming for you there. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E, on Twitter.

Don't forget to go to sixcolors.com for Jason's writing as well. All over the internet. We span the internet with our entertainment products. Sure. Hashtag Snell Talk. Hashtag AskUpgrade for questions on the show. entertainment products sure hashtag Snell talk hashtag ask upgrade for questions

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you are the best and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye to Snell goodbye Mike Hurley