Upgrade - 208: The Villain of the Macintosh

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

As Apple's much-rumored fall product launches get closer, Jason and Myke consider what the future holds for Macs and iPhones. And the Summer of Fun surfs into the sunset while hanging ten off of our favorite boards--keyboards, that is.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 208 today's show is brought to you by text expander from smile inboard technology and ero it is the summer of fun my name is mike hur, and that echo you hear in the background is actually Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley, hello, and we're back here on Upgrade. It's good to be back. As we say every week, the Summer of Fun, whilst continuing, I can see the sun setting on the Summer of Fun. I know, it's a beautiful summer sunset, isn't it, Mike? But it is going down, down, down.

This may be it. This may be it. This may be it. For all we know... This may be it. Yeah, see, we're on Summer of Fun watch right now, because any week could be the end, but you're not going to know. Yeah, because what's going to happen is

Apple's going to announce that they're doing an event. And the week previous to that, we will do our draft. And the draft is not really part of the Summer of Fun. It's part of the fall of product releases. So probably either this episode or next week's episode will be the last in the extended Summer of Fun. It's only fitting that this is as as we move from august into september the summer is ending my kids are back in school now it's just we here we are is uh all good things must come to an end even the summer of fun and whilst i know that literally everybody does care

about this we must move on with the show and start with our hashtag snell talk question which comes from cameron cameron wants to, did you like maths in school? And what is your favorite number? I thought you were going to say, and which maths did you like? What were your favorite of the maths? Of various maths that exist. I like math in school. I did well at math in school

and all the way through to a year of calculus in college. And I did well with that. The grades were good. Did I like it? I don't know. I didn't love it. There were parts of it that I liked better than other parts. I liked geometry, I think, or parts of that. There were other parts there was a math class i took in college where there was uh i think it was quadratic equations that at that point in the quarter i had gotten um i'd basically guaranteed myself an a i had done the math you see to figure out that if i didn't learn that chapter and didn't get anything right on that chapter on the final, that I'd still get an A. And therefore, I never learned that. And Jamie was doing some quadratic

equations in her math class last year. And I remember thinking, oh, yeah, I never learned this. I skipped this part because it was unnecessary for my grade. So obviously I was not as enthusiastic about it. My mother always used to say, oh, I like math. It's like solving a mystery. And I would always laugh and be like, no, it's no, it's not. That doesn't work on me. I guess that worked for her, but it never worked for me. The old math is just a mystery. You're some sort of number detective and math is the mystery. Never worked for me, but I did fine at it. It was a means to an end. You know, it was working problems was fine.

It was never particularly hard. It was just not fun. My favorite number as my answer just revealed. I have no favorite number. They're all fine. I have, I literally have no, my wife will talk about how her birthday is her favorite number. So 16 is her favorite number. I don't have a favorite number.

I don't even know what it would be. So, sure. Sorry, Cameron. I thought math was fine, and I have no favorite number. I enjoyed math and was good at it. Maths. Until... Sure. Which maths? The age of like... I enjoyed math and was good at it. Maths. Until.

Sure. Which maths? The age of like, I don't know, 13 or 14. I was like doing, I was like above my grade, right? Like I was actually really good at it. I was one of the top in my year. As soon as algebra came in to the equation, I lost complete interest. I wasn't good at it anymore, and I hated it.

So you were more of a plus minus multiply divide kid. As soon as the explanations for how does this work or why does this work started to drift towards just because my brain couldn't handle it anymore. And then I just, I mostly checked out. I think that's the hard thing about abstract math is that for some people it is hard to, because math can get very abstract. And geometry was different in the sense that, you know, you were talking about angles and shapes and you could, there are lots of places

that geometry is useful in terms of things like when you're playing a pocket run pool, right? Like that's geometry happening there. That's interesting. But yeah, it can get really esoteric and it's very hard. A lot of kids come totally unmoored at that point. They're like, what does this even mean? And I've seen that in my kids too, where they try to make it have applications, but so often it's just so abstract and it can be hard for people's brains to grab onto. My favorite number is 24. I have no idea why. It's just been that way since I was a kid. I was going to give some kind of annoying answer like pi or e is my favorite number

or the square root of negative one. It's my favorite imaginary number but no I don't when I was a kid I always thought that seven would be a cool football jersey to have but that was not my favorite number I just thought that was a good football jersey number

so I don't have a favorite thank you so much to Cameron for the hashtag seltalk question if you would like to Cameron for the hashtag Snell Talk question if you would like to ask a question to open the show you just send a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk and put it in the list for future consideration Jason, shall we close the saga on your television?

I understand that you have a little bit more you wanted to touch on today Sure, will there be math? There's going to be more By the way, don't send in this was the best math question that could ever be asked on snell talk i i want because i'm afraid that next week's snell talk question will be you know a train is moving west at 30 miles now this is the thing they said people may send those in i'm not gonna pick them right because i don't want to be put in a situation

where i might need to try and answer something like that this is not a math podcast don't send us your homework basically that's no it's not what we got enough homework in my house i don't i don't need any more of it yeah okay so tv follow-up i was giggling at one of the uh the blurbs that uh because i write the blurbs for upgrade and send them to you and for those who don't listen to the podcast live at uh 9 a.m pacific 5 p.m gmt uh or bst london time anyway because it rolls yeah it's a good way to remember you know gmt that is the time that everybody sets to and then the other time yeah the best time we're the best time that's how it works the best time it's british summertime um anyway so for those who don't listen uh when we're done with the show, you can hear us

look through the titles and we pick the titles. And then the last thing that happens is that Mike tells me that I need to write the blurb. So I write the blurb that goes in your podcast player and says, oh, this week, Jason and Mike, blah, blah, blah. And a couple of weeks ago, I wrote one that was great because it was like, it was a huge week. Apple broke a trillion dollars in market cap and Jason got a TV. And I saw that the other day and I was like, that's pretty good. I like that. That made me laugh. Anyway, I do have a TV.

I got my furniture. So the saga of the $999.97 television that prompted the purchase of a couple thousand dollars in other materials. Yeah. But it's nice. I had thought for a long time that I was going to put the TV on the materials yeah but it's nice i i had thought for a long time i was going to put the tv on the wall but um it's on this table and it's uh it's a piece of furniture that's made for electronic stuff so unlike my old setup where i literally like cut

holes in the back of the shelving in order for there to be ventilation and also cables to pass through. Just not just like literally I was just cutting holes. It was not good. So this one comes with routing and ventilation and all those things. So that was great. So all of my electronic gear other than the tv and a little sensor that's stuck to the front of the tv that you can't even see is inside and then i had i already had this for a couple of pieces but now it's for everything i have one of these little infrared routing things where

you put that sensor on the outside and then there's a little box and then you can you you get a couple of little things that plug into it that are infrared repeaters, emitters basically, and you stick those on your other devices. And at that point, the stuff that's controlled by infrared, there's now a conduit, so you don't have to see any of that stuff, but it has a window through that one little sensor into the outside world, which means that I can control. Some of my stuff is radio frequency controlled, like the Apple TV and the TiVo, but some of

it is still infrared controlled. And I think, because I've got a Logitech Harmony, and I think I could hook it up to do all of that too. But the problem is that I have a couple of remotes that I use that are sending infrared signals. And I think the Harmony would basically not like that. It wouldn't relay other remote signals, just its own that it's getting from the little wireless remote that it has. Anyway, but it works. It all works. My living room is super different now because there was a huge piece of piece of furniture that went almost all the way

up to the ceiling. That's completely gone. Now there's just this kind of like sideboard ish cabinet that's against the wall. So it looks like we repainted the room only because you can see the, the paint on the wall, which you couldn't see before. And we had one bookshelf left on that wall and we actually have rotated it 90 degrees. So it's against the back wall, actually against the wall to the garage. And so it's even clearer over there. It looks really nice. And the TV is beautiful too, but now the living room feels different. We are limited with what we can do in our living room um but that's that's pretty good uh so i'm pretty happy with that i also had a little follow-up from a listener this

was almost the snell talk question this week and then i told you this should just roll into the tv follow-up which is a listener andrew wrote in to say what do you do for audio you put a lot of care into your tv buying decision i mean i bought a tv i don't know if that's a lot of care put a lot of thought into it though it would seem you know but the a TV. I don't know if that's a lot of care. I put a lot of thought into it though, it would seem. You know, but the fact that we've been talking about it. It's a purchase, right? It's, you gotta spend a thousand dollars on something. You should probably think about it.

It's not a, but what Andrew wanted to know is what about audio and do I have a 5.1 receiver somewhere? And have you considered using an AV receiver as your primary hub for your input sources? All right, so I can talk about this for a second. I'm feeling very John Syracuse right now. And have you considered using an AV receiver as your primary hub for your input sources? All right. So I can talk about this for a second. I'm feeling very John Syracuse right now.

Talking about television purchases on a podcast seems like that's John's thing. But here I go. I do have a 5.1 receiver. Yeah, this is follow-up about TVs. So it's all John Syracuse. This is the prime follow-up. I'd like to welcome John Syracuse to the show. Who's? No, he's not here.

Yeah. So I have a 5.1 receiver. I have a center channel. prime follow-up i'd like to welcome john syracuse into the show who's no he's not here yeah so i have a 5.1 receiver i have a center channel i have a left and right channel and i have rear surrounds that are in the ceiling when we read at our house we had speakers put in the ceiling uh behind the uh the the chair that's the primary viewing for the for the tv um i have i considered using an av receiver as the hub for my input sources my receiver is older and doesn't do 4k so the 4k stuff can't plug into it um so the way it's set up is i've got my 4k sources which are the apple tv and the xbox one x going direct into the into the tv and then there's an optical cable that actually runs out to the receiver for audio

sending back to the home theater. So basically the home theater gets the audio from the Apple TV and the Xbox via the television set. All the other devices are being switched via HDMI on the receiver to the third input, and there are only three three on the TV. So if we're watching something on like the Wii U or the Switch, those all get routed through the receiver instead. Maybe someday I'll buy a new receiver with fancy new audio formats and fancy 4K video switching and stuff like that, where I could actually use I was talking to talking to listener Jesse, who is a used to used to run a brewery in San Francisco, and I had any lessons to the show and I had lunch with him the other week. And he was saying, Oh, you know,

my setup, I've got, I've got the receiver controls, everything. And it's controlled by the TV. And it's like a single, you know, it's got all that stuff that John Syracuse talks about not working works for him. And I, I'm skeptical that it would work for me. But I may get there at some point, but for now, it's basically the setup I had before. Other than a couple of the inputs are in different places. And in fact, my center channel is literally the center channel I bought when I first bought a surround system, which was in the mid nineties. And I still have that speaker, but it's invisible now because the new thing I bought,

the new furniture I bought has a little panel under the TV that's transparent. It's like a speaker cover and you can pop it off and put a speaker behind it and you can't see the speaker you just see the little panel and it looks really nice but there is a speaker back there making noise so anyway so for andrew yeah there's i've got 5.1 audio and you know every now and then i think why am i doing this and then i hear um i hear uh cool you know surround sound happening when I'm watching a movie. And then I'm like, that's why I do this. Also, as I think I said on our first installment of this, to wrap it all up,

I did enter this kind of interim period where I just had the TV speaker. And I was afraid that I was going to hear the speaker coming out of the TV and think, why am I wasting my time with all of this home audio stuff? And no, it sounded terrible. So I'm very happy to have the audio that I've got. Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Smile who make TextExpander. TextExpander helps you communicate smarter. You create snippets for the things that you type or copy and paste all the time.

And then you have them accessible to you whenever and whenever you want them. You can start by making snippets for short things that you constantly use, stuff like email addresses or website addresses, or what about today's date, even formatted in the way that you want. I use very frequently the snippet when I type into my keyboard, UUSD, and it formats the date like an American would would which is very helpful for me because I get them mixed up more than I wished I would and why not make snippets for longer things that you type regularly as well what about directions you're always giving directions to something where you

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So there are two reports that came out. One basically immediately after we published last week's episode. And one this morning. So I appreciate Bloomberg understanding the need to publish before Upgrade. So thank you for that. Solid. Bloomberg understanding that you need to publish before upgrade. So thank you for that. Both reports have the byline of Mark Gurman and Debbie Wu from Bloomberg. One of them is about Macs and the others is about the iPhone 10 mostly. So let's start chronologically.

Let's go through the Macs. So really all of the information that you need is contained within one sentence, which is, Apple will release a new low-cost laptop and a professional-focused upgrade to the Mac mini desktop later this year. Basically, this is an article that is written around that one piece of information that they have. And this is not a criticism, right? Because if that's all you've got, well, that is good information to give to us, right? Like, I want to know those two things, but it doesn't really seem like right now there is a lot more information than that. But that will not stop us digging into it in a little bit more detail, even though Jason kind of has a little bit already because you were on the talk show this weekend.

But I'm only 10 minutes into the episode so far, and I want to talk to you about it. And that's how it works around here. All right. That's how it works. That's's fine but people can go check if you want to listen to me and john gruber speculate about naming of products especially we're not going to do that it's in it's in there today it's it's in there it's a good conversation if you've got a spare two and a half hours yeah i've started it and i'm looking forward to getting through it because i do love when you two are together i always enjoy it um we're funnily enough we're kind of doing a talk show in reverse

today because we're talking about keyboards later as part of the summer of fun but we'll get to that it's special keyboards special keyboards so let me uh let's do these things in in two parts we're going to talk about the mac mini then we'll talk about the laptop so going back to the article for this year's mac mini Apple is focusing primarily on pro users with new storage and processor options likely to make it more expensive than previous versions. What is this Mac Mini, Jason? What is it?

I can't seem to get my head around what this product is actually going to be. So I think it's, and there's a good conversation on atp again thank you to bloomberg for last week releasing this after we did our episode that's really that's good though it just gives us more time to think you know yeah it's true it's true hot takes more like well-baked takes atp uh covered this pretty well too but i i uh first off i want to say i have once again seen people revive this kind of dream that it's basically a mac pro uh enclosure that can scale up or scale down as needed which is just not how it works the x mac yeah you can't the the the demands that what

you would have to build for a mac pro would make the base model of a mac mini so ridiculously expensive it's just it's that's not how it's going to work they're going to build for a Mac Pro would make the base model of a Mac Mini so ridiculously expensive. It's just, that's not how it's going to work. They're going to build something that is probably a lot like the Mac Mini that we know today, but with modern stuff. Maybe they will redesign the exterior. They do that every so often. I think it could be smaller. I think they can get away from, I think they should be getting away from the spinning discs and the optical drives now. You know, they keep escaping these things that take up a lot of space inside. So it doesn't have to be as small as like the Intel NUC that I have, but smaller than the current Mac mini design would probably be something that they could do.

And the fact is, if you look at what Intel provides these days, there are pretty powerful processors, including four core, which were not available when they did the last redesign. So they actually took them off of the price list. So I think all this is going to be is that they're going to let it be a little less constrained by price. They're not going to worry about it being a $500 Mac. Maybe it'll start five or $600, but it'll go way up from there. Maybe it will start at $700 or $800. Who knows? But it'll have i5s in there, maybe an i7, but certainly i5s, 4-core, SSDs, and modern connection stuff.

And it'll just be a modern Mac Mini. And then they'll ride that one for four more years. I don't think this is actually going to be a particularly complicated product. I think it's going to use the latest stuff from Intel and that Apple has. And I think as Marco mentioned on ATP, basically, like, imagine a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Escape put in a Mac mini enclosure. That's basically what this could be. And that could be great. Is the Pro the marketing?

Is it Pro in the marketing then? I think the professional focused upgrade, my choice of interpretation there is that this is a product that leans into what people are using the Mac Mini for. And those people want features that are a little more expensive and they're not going to shy away from it.

I think I read this as being much more that they're less concerned about the Mac Mini being a $500 entry-level Mac for people who want to buy a headless Mac and then attach the monitor from their PC to it and they attach their PC keyboard and mouse, the kind of original premise of the Mac Mini. So we're maybe looking at something

that starts at like $700, right? Yeah. And they're not, as you say, they're not going to go to the bottom of the line or whatever with stuff. They're gonna go middle of the road to begin with because quite frankly, the Mac mini customer buys laptops now, right?

I.e. most people. This is a utility Mac. I mean, people do use it in a desktop configuration and it will still do that. But I think that what Apple's doing here, or at least how it's being, because again, there's layers here, how it's being interpreted by Bloomberg as a professional-focused upgrade. And there is a line later on about this too. But focusing primarily on pro users and new storage and processor options are likely to

make it more expensive than previous versions. That seems to be, I mean, I just think that's really straightforward that the base price will probably come up again. Remember when it shipped the first time it was 500 and then they went up to 600 and then later they brought it back down. I think they're going to not shy away from making it six or $700 to start. And then you're going to have a whole bunch of things that will boost the price up. And, and that's good, right? Because if you're somebody who wants to buy one of these things, and your frustration has been that it's not powerful enough, then here's the other way that they can go, which is like, all right, you can make it powerful. Now you can make a really

powerful, you can load up a really powerful processor and a bunch of SSD and it'll be more expensive. Also more expensive. I do kind of read that as SSD. Like I said before, like, are you going to build a new desktop enclosure today and build it around a spinning hard drive, which would be like by far the largest thing inside that Mac mini. And if you take it out, take the spinning hard drive out and take the options of having like a like a fusion drive out of that thing, it can be a lot smaller, but it'll also be a lot more expensive to start because SSDs are more expensive. So I think that might be involved here. I don't know if I would make a bet that they're going to completely drop the spinning disk, but I will tell you that, you know, I understand the economic issues, but like product design wise, you should not design a new enclosure for this thing around a spinning hard drive. Like don't just don't do it. Just just commit to it and say, look, it starts at 700. And that's with a tiny SSD in it. And if

you want lots of external storage, our customers, you can hear them saying it, oh, our customers who want external storage, they love external storage on the Mac mini and that's where they can store all their stuff. But the SSD is important for performance and blah, blah, blah. So that's what I think they're more likely going to do is, yeah, SSDs make it really small. Lots of processor options, lots of expensive SSD, you know, expansion options. And port wise, I think they can fit. ssd you know expansion options and port wise i think they can fit like my intel nook which i will grant you has has ports on the front and the back which seems very unapple like uh in this day but uh it's got really good though four usbas and a usbc yeah i have ports on the front and back of

my pc and every single time i use one of the usb ports on the front which is typically for something quick i think to myself i love that you're there usb port right because if i'm just plugging in a controller to play what this one game with i play a control and controller with i don't want to be messing around pulling things out of the back like is it go where is it going it's probably straight in the front i know apple aren't going to do this i'm not advocating for them to do this it's merely a point of me just saying it's really nice sometimes. Yeah. And I use that on the Intel NUC too, where it's like I just need to plug this thing in. It's not permanently in there, but I need to plug this in for a few minutes and then unplug it.

Anyway, it's got lots of ports, and that's a USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port that it's actually got on the back. So I imagine they'll do probably a combination since it's a desktop mac of usb a and usbc um and it'll be thunderbolt bolt 3 and again that's a thing where they're gonna they're gonna not necessarily be afraid of designing it for uh more pro use rather than it being cheap because they could make a cheap mac right but it's almost against the brand promise like apple doesn't want to make a cheap mac the 500 $500 is already, like, pretty low down there in terms of the Mac Mini.

So, yeah. So I think, that's how I read it. It's literally, it is what you think it is. Don't overthink it. It's a Mac Mini with the latest Intel stuff,

which means it will be more powerful and that it will, you can load it up with features and make it a powerful system that you can use for whatever you want to use it for in wherever you want which is what the mac mini should be and having some

flexibility there to have it be the cheap one or where it's not as cheap as it was but it's still relatively cheap or have it be the super pricing one that's got more features great like that's that's a nice thing for them to do but i don't think it, I think that's the limit of this use of the word pro users. I don't think it goes beyond that. I was about to say like, it's pointless to make a cheaper Mac mini. And I want to kind of, I want to try and wrap this up

in a way that tries to address, I understand that there are people that use Mac minis for all sorts of uses, like who want a cheaper Mac mini, et cetera. Like I get, I get that there are always people that use products in ways that either they were or weren't meant for, right? I understand that there are some people that their budget is stretched to the point that they can only afford to buy a Mac Mini and then hook it up to their PC. I get that. But at the same time, Apple knows who they're selling

this stuff to. Nobody knows better than them, right? What is selling? What's not selling? And my expectation is that over the next few years, and I think that we see a big moment when they introduce this Mac Mini, that Apple considers their desktop machines as professional-focused machines by and large because that's where they're being used. And I think that this extends, even looking at something like the iMac 5K,

it is a very nice, expensive machine, like is being used in almost prosumer level by probably a lot of their customers because by and large, people own and use laptops now and plug them into a screen if they want to. And the thing is like apple knows this their data says it do you remember off the top of your head when they did that breakdown was it

something it was like single it was like low double digit percentages with desktop or something like that was what they said it's been for a very for a very long time um it's been like a quarter of the between a third and a quarter trending toward a quarter of their sales are desktops yeah so you know you look at it it's like well clearly people are buying laptops now so it's just like yes i understand that like every time they do something like this they're going to shut people out like if you were hoping for an update to the 500 mac mini i understand that that's frustrating that they would then push this to be pro but i think that what they're trying to do and what they would be doing with this machine is actually making it fit more people by making it a

more capable machine it will fit more people's use cases even though it may shut out others yeah and the other argument would be that they're the other rumor here of a more affordable laptop with a new design is on the other side of that. It would be a $500 laptop, but that's on the other side of this too, which is that's a more likely broad appeal device. The other thing is, could Apple make a cheap enclosure thingy? Sure, they could, but it's Apple, right? they could but it's apple right like part of apple being apple is that they want their profit margin and they want they don't want to make something that's perceived as a cheap product and so like the intel nook that i've got um you know it it cost me a fraction of what the same specs would cost actually i did the math uh speaking of math uh it cost a fraction of what the Mac mini currently available would cost with

similar specs. And that's the, you know, four year old model, basically. So there's obviously Apple's going to make something that is nicer. It's also plasticky and stuff like Apple would make a nicer computer than that, for sure. And they build in their profit margin. That's just how they that's, that's Apple. So there is occasionally I get, especially from people who are kind of tangential to the Apple world, complaints about like Apple stuff's too expensive. And it's like, that has been baked into Apple

for a long time that Apple doesn't make, Apple's not gonna make a $300 laptop. They're just not, like, they're just never gonna do that. They do make an iPad that is priced down there, but a $300 Mac laptop is just not, it's not a market they've ever been in and, and, and they're never going to be in it. And that's just sort of a niche product now. They have very niche uses. I actually think that's an argument for the Mac Mini rather than against it in that it is a place where having a utilitarian desktop computer box is actually good. This is my argument for the Mac Mini all along. If you lean into the nicheness, you can produce a more interesting product. Exactly right.

And those people love it. And it is a release valve. It is this escape hatch for the Mac, which is like, if you don't want to use any of our other Macs, if none of them work in the context where you need a Mac, Mac Mini, just pick it up. It's little. Stick it wherever.

Attach whatever you want to it going back to the the report the bloomberg report the new laptop will look similar to the current macbook air but will include thinner bezels around the screen the display which will remain about 13 inches will be a higher resolution retina version that apple uses on other products what is this laptop jason what is it it's well okay so first off we'll look similar to the current macbook air there's been a lot of criminology about that a lot of tealy freedom about what does it mean all laptops look the same on a fundamental basis and and somebody's well that's it it's like well oh you mean it will be an aluminum laptop with an apple logo on it? Wow. I am shocked. Knock me over with a feather. So some of the criminology is also like, why did MacBook Air or something like that, because they don't know more details. And so you end up with that kind of a game of telephone

where you vague it up because you don't have the detail. And so I think it's kind of a meaningless thing. I don't think it means it's a MacBook Air. I think it means it's going to look like an Apple laptop. It probably means that it's going to be aluminum and not plastic, which is, again, not a shocker if that's the case. I think it's really just set up there to say that the Air has those big bezels and that this one's not going to have that, which I would assume that any modern laptop, even one targeted at a lower price point from Apple, even one targeted at a lower price point from apple is going to have the kind of edge to edge with the the pane of glass that design that they have on every other laptop for a very long time and not the silver frame that was on the air like that that's a it's a very old design i always liked it because i always felt like it was less glary than the big pane of glass but um but over

time it started to feel like your computer is a crt i guess that's what the macbook air looks like to me huge bezel low quality screen yeah bezels are are are out i mean oh yes they're they're out like nobody wants them in it's they're unfashionable so of course they're going to be thinner bezels and the bezels will be hidden behind that continuous sheet of glass. I think that's almost a given. So I think the idea here is that, as Gruber and I talked about a little bit, and we've talked about on this show a lot, that the MacBook was maybe originally intended, or the MacBook Escape or both, maybe originally intended or the MacBook Escape or both intended to be Air-like and neither of them can come close to its price. And that may be on purpose. And I think some of it is accidental.

I think maybe they thought it would be lower in price and it didn't get there. So this sounds like they're making a product that is specifically designed to replace the MacBook Air, which is only holding on because they can sell it at $999. So I think this is, I think literally this is the, we want to sell a laptop for $899 or $999. What's it going to be? And maybe it's a redesigned and sort of de-contented MacBook Escape, or maybe it's something new. I don't think it's the... The MacBook is 12 and this is going to be 13.3. So I think it's more likely

that it's either a brand new design or it's taking the MacBook Escape and basically remixing it so that they can actually get it down to $999. Because I think they want a modern computer with modern parts that's $999 and the Air isn't it. And if they have to suck it up a little bit in terms of their margin for a little while,

I think maybe they'll do that. So I think that's what this is. This is literally them saying, we can't keep doing the Air. We need to make a product. What product can we make? What laptop can we make for $999 and sell it? And that's what this is. What do they call it? Yeah. I mean, it's a mess. Very clearly, the MacBook was supposed to be the name and it was simplified this all and MacBook and MacBook Pro. And that brings a level of discipline to the naming, like with the iPad, that's like, I think, welcome. I think that's what Apple wants to do, except what do they do now? I think they may still call it macbook i think it may just be this is the 13 inch macbook and then there's the 12 inch macbook that is a little more expensive maybe maybe not um but it's thin

and light and this one is going to be heftier still like three pounds right it's not going to be two pounds but it'll probably be three pounds and a little cheaper it'll be super interesting to instead of changing the price by screen size they change it by something else right because apple product lines are you have your product line and then you have the same model and it either has some internal configurations that are different or it is different screen sizes in the line that affect the change right wouldn't it would be super interesting to be like here are two products they have different internals in the same size screen but the physical body is different in some way here is the price difference because yeah that seems like a really interesting way in both good and weird ways to display a product decision to the customer

well i think i think though this rumor is that this is a 13.3 and so i think i think what we're going to get is we're going to get the macbook at 12 this at 13.3 and then the macbook pro also has a 13.3 but they won't call this thing macbook pro they'll call it something else and i again the more i think about it the more i think that the macbook escape is gone or turned into this product 100 because they didn't update it right and and what gruber pointed out that i think is interesting is you know back in the day the macbook air came out and it was it was like 1700 bucks it was it was not the cheap laptop and you had this you don't the smallest laptop doesn't have to be the cheapest laptop. And I think that's actually the most likely scenario here is that they make a 13 inch laptop.

It's $9.99. And then the MacBook at 12 is, gets an update, but is still probably 10 or 11.99, right? It's not $9.99. And so, yes, the little MacBook that's underpowered, but only weighs two pounds, costs a little bit more than the entry level 13 inch MacBook. I think that's okay. I think that it's clear why that thing costs more is because it's it's little and cute and super thin. And that's the reason that you pay a little bit more for it. I don't believe that everything has to be about the like the smaller the screen size, the less the value

of the laptop. So I think that's the I think that's the scenario. And you asked about the name. I just, I think the simplest thing to do is to just say, we have a new MacBook today. It's a 13.3 MacBook and that they still also, we also updated the 12 inch MacBook and isn't it great too. And the, and there you go. You've got MacBook with two models, 12 and 13 and MacBook Pro with two models, 13 and 15. Good. Simple. I want to ask to ask you the the like the question on everybody's lips right the keyboard what is it what do they do i think it depends on what this product is if this product is a remade macbook escape presumably it'll just keep a lot of the features of the escape including the keyboard if it really is sort of let's throw that design away and do something new and and this is something that atp went into last week you know because marco's point on atp and i think it's a very good one is there are lots of decisions you can make to opt for the cheaper

whatever no wide color gamut no true tone display uh is there a cheaper keyboard because his thesis is that um other keyboard styles are going to be cheaper to make, like literally cheaper to make and cheaper to support than the butterfly keyboard. Maybe so. Maybe we'll, I think it's coin flip or more accurately, I think it's, did it get redesigned or not? If this is a kind of version of an existing system like the MacBook Escape, I think that keyboard is going to just be the keyboard that we just saw introduced in the, in the MacBook pros. Um, it would be, if it's a new design, then it's possibly a new design that is hinting at Apple's future design directions, at which

point it might be a new keyboard, um, or, or a more familiar keyboard, like the magic keyboard style keyboard. But, um, if I, i again if i was a betting man i would probably say it's more likely to be the same keyboard that we just saw that's gonna be really interesting to see how that plays out oh yeah you know it's like the villain of the macintosh is that keyboard it will be interesting to see if it creeps into this product as well. And I'll ask you two last two questions actually on this. What ports do you expect to stick around on a laptop? I mean, we kind of went through it with the Mac Mini, right? Like that because it's a desktop machine, because it has it will just by design have

more space, right? The surface area that you would probably expect it to be like the imax are right like a mix of usbs um do you think that a new laptop would have less than the macbook air uh well so what the macbook air has is a magsafe a mini display port thunderbolt and two usbs and an sd card slot right mac safe has got to go no matter what right i feel like that's the obvious one unless i would say unless apple this is a redesigned laptop i think there's a wild card here which is this is a redesigned laptop that's actually auguring all the changes apple is going to make down the road to their laptops right and it has a new version of something which is akin to a Mac safe.

That will eventually be everywhere. Yeah. I think it's less likely on a product that you're targeting to be cheap, but it could happen. Could happen, right? If they're designing a new way to do power or a new connector or something like that, and they've got it ready to go, and this is the first new laptop body that they've released in a few years, then maybe we would see it.

But it seems less likely, which is why I think the most likely thing is it's going to be like the MacBook Escape. It's going to have two USB-C. And that's it. I think that's the most likely thing. I would love it to have a USB-A and a USB-C or two USB-C and a USB-A, something like that, where you could power it with USB-C and still have a couple of ports and a headphone jack, which I'm hoping they will not.

There's so many uses for that, especially in education settings. Keep the headphone jack. Come on. So, yeah, but that's what I would prefer. I would prefer two USB-C and a USB-A or even one USB-C and one USB-A. But if I had to bet, I would bet that we're all wish-casting by saying that and that the reality will be to USB-C. I think that would be a little bit disappointing, considering where this

product would most likely be used, right? It would seem weird. Right, and it's replacing the air, which means now a whole new suburban region has been annexed into Dongletown. Yeah, the gerrymandering of Dongle Town will continue.

Dongle Town's growth is just out of control. And here they go. They've taken over a whole other little town outside of the outskirts of town and they made it part of Dongle Town. Nobody who's buying MacBook Airs now has had to deal with these dongles. None of them have had to do it.

It's all the familiar ports. So if this doesn't do that, then that will be yet another portion of the market that's going to have to deal with adapting stuff and all of that. But you know what? Doesn't mean Apple won't do it. Last question for you. When do you think we'll see these? Well, I mean, we got the rumors here. So I think it'll get announced september or october depending on if there's a second event yeah that's more i'm asking you do you think that these get included in the iphone event or do they get their own event boy i i don't know i mean if i were apple i think there's too much to go in that event and that um you can roll out max

at a later time and you don't even necessarily need an event or you can do a smaller event and say now now the focus is the mac which is a hint to all those people who love the iPhone that they don't even need to come to the event. And you could do it there. So, yeah, that would be my guess is that this is going to be one of those announce October ship November things, but it's possible that it's an announce. I think I could make it, you know, make an event on its own, maybe share a little bit more sneaky details about the Mac Pro. Make it a thing. Give an update. That's where we get the update.

It could be its own event. I hope they do. I hope that they feel the Mac could deserve an event. I also think it's possible that they are going to focus on the Apple Watch and the iPhone in September

and leave the iPad and the Mac to talk about later. It really is just like, how packed do they want that event to be? Because they could fill two hours with iOS rollout, the iPhone watchOS rollout, and the new Apple Watch and leave the rest of it for another event. They have so much to announce. Do you want to have all of it in the shadow of the iphone the apple watch is an iphone accessory so it fits there so i mean i could make that case i could make the case that they need two events and one of them is ipad and mac and the other is just iphone because everybody cares about that the counter argument is everybody cares about the iphone so if you care about your product put it under the iphone spotlight because the closer it is to the iphone the more people

are going to know about it. We may be approaching draft territory, but I would actually bet that they do all iOS together and don't even mention Mojave in the September event and just then wrap that all up. We'll put it on the draft board and we'll see what happens. We'll see. All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about these iPhone X rumors

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So, the second German Woo collaboration of the episode we're talking about today. This time, it's about the iOS device lineup for september jason snell let me rapid fire the information that we got today three phones with edge to edge screens 6.5 inch oled which will allow you to view content side by side in apps like mail and calendar this is the return of the iphone landscape mode, right? Which wasn't in the X. The almost useless landscape mode. Really, I want split view.

I don't know why they can't find a way to just do that. I know it's super small, but just make it happen. 5.8-inch OLED phone, which is effectively the iPhone XS, has a faster processor and better camera. And then the 6.1-inch LCD will come in multiple colors with aluminum edges not stainless steel this is effectively the german confirmation of the rumors that have been circulating for the last couple of months right three devices their sizes the fact that one of them has colors got a plus one a regular one the internals are basically s revisions but you get the big one right so that's that's kind of

like the news that will come out right as well as having a cheaper version of the iphone 10 design yeah i keep thinking about what happens to the iphone 8 because here's the thing we all we talk about this with the iphone se it's also true of the iPhone 8. Like, not... The iPhone 8 is a good product, and I think it sells very well. And it is the size of the iPhone 7 and 6S and 6. And what's missing in all of these reports is what happens to that phone size.

The iPhone X is not much larger, and maybe that's the answer, is like, if you want a smaller-ish phone, you just got to. The iPhone X is not much larger, and maybe that's the answer, is like if you want a smaller-ish phone, you just got to get the iPhone X and deal with it being slightly larger or retreat to the iPhone SE. It seems kind of weird that there's no mainstream phone

that's the size of the 8. Does that make sense? Like I'm troubled by the idea that there's a 6.1 inch screen that's rumored as this iPhone 9 or whatever they want to call it. But like that's a plus phone. That is not the size of a standard, what we think of as a standard iPhone. And even the iPhone 10 is slightly larger, although I've come to accept it as being the size of an iPhone. So that part really baffles me. So I've got that out there, too, which is like, are they literally going to be like, also the iPhone 8 is great?

Or are they going to say, and there's also an 8S? Or we've upgraded the internals in the 8. But there's also a 9 and a 10 and a 10+. I don't. There's a missing piece here and i would be very surprised if they literally said if you like the standard design that's been on the iphone for the last five years and want a new model we don't have one for you but that's what these rumors say is that there's no fourth phone or fifth phone with the se there's just these three, and they are missing a piece there.

So we were talking about this on Connected last week. Steve Trout and Smith and Guillermo Rambo found some evidence that suggests that there will be a phone which is being referred to in code as the T500, which is an A10 CPU and the same screen resolution and RAM of the iPhone 7. which is an A10 CPU and the same screen resolution and RAM of the iPhone 7. So could this be some kind of 5C-like device? Or is it the SE2 or something like that? But there seems to be another piece. It could be that the SE branding,

and this will be very sad for people who like the small size of the SE, it could be that the SE branding is going to be moved to the successor to the iPhone 8 and use the iPhone 7, 6, 7, 8 design. And that's the new SE. And that would sure explain why there hasn't been another iPhone SE. Right? Because maybe what they're trying to establish is that SE doesn't

mean small. It means we're keeping around an old design for a little bit longer for cheaper right and that would be harder to uncover in uh supply chain rumors at this point right so well yeah it literally looks like more iphone 8s rolling off the line but they're actually going to be put in a different box it would be harder to tell right if they're using a lot of the same parts then it would be harder to tell, whereas there's these two new phones with pretty new parts. I think it's interesting.

I think it's worth the other great mystery. So, of course, you're talking about this new LCD 6.1-inch phone and this new 6.5-inch OLED screen phone. So, of course, what I want to talk about is the phone that's not listed. And then the next thing I want to talk about is the phone that's the least interesting of these which is the one you want the iphone the iphone 10 right but i think it's i think that's another question here which is is it the iphone 10 s is it the iphone 10 2018 model updated just but it's still called iphone, which would be very interesting, because that would be Apple pivoting, which is what Gruber and I talked about a lot pivoting away from the iterations of numbers. Apple's done it before they get to the Roman numeral x. And they're like, we can stop here. This is good. This is a position of stability. We can stay here for a while. And

we don't have to go up to iPhone 16. We don't want to do that um so that's a question for me and the other question for me is price because one thing you could do rather than really pushing the specs on the iphone 10 is drop the price and say well you know you were resistant to the iphone 10 last year at 9.99 but now it's 8.99 and the new model is 9.99 or something like that i i don't kind of don't see them doing that, but it is a possibility. The LCD one is the price sensitive, right? They're bringing in a $600 6.1 inch. Yeah, but it's big. That's why

there's a missing piece here because it's big. So where, if you're somebody who's got an iPhone 7 or an iPhone 6S and you just want a new iPhone, what do you buy? And it's like, well, you've got this huge phone that's cheaper, that's $899, which is not cheap like, well, you've got this huge phone that's cheaper. That's $899.

It's just not cheap, but cheaper. You've got this phone that's more or less the size of what you expect. It's $999. And that's why I have that question about what happens to those people. What are they buying? Are they just told to buy the iPhone 8? Or is there an update of some sort to the iPhone 8? I don't know.

So I think it's fascinating, right? Because we talked, when these rumors came out about the iPhone X being released alongside what turned out to be the iPhone 8 last year, a lot of the conversation and certainly a lot of what I talked about was this idea that Apple was taking a gamble by having weird stuff in the iPhone line

and kind of expanding it. Well, the gamble worked. Apple's sales were great and they sold a lot more at a higher price because the iPhone 10 costs more. And this too is a gamble, what they're doing here. But it seems like they've hit upon this idea that they should make more kinds of iPhone at more price points, including some that are very high and that people want iPhones and will spend money on them. So, which I mean, it's kind of a no brainer on one level,

but it is risky because anytime you take a chance with the iPhone, you're risking your business because it's the most important part of Apple's business. I feel like all of the risks have some element of payoff, right? That they've done because if you increase the price,

you don't need to sell as many. Well, that's why I think the 10 Plus is just a no-brainer of a product because it's going to be more expensive. It's like $1,100, $1,200 to start. It's going to have a beautiful, huge screen and people will buy it, right? And it doesn't need to be the flagship.

It's not. It's the high-end, huge niche phone, but people will buy it. It will push the average selling price of the iPhone up even higher because if you want that phone mike hurley you know you want that oh boy i'm salivating you will buy it right so why not make that phone but it doesn't have to be the flagship the the 10 is really the flagship and i think that's what we're seeing here is that the 10 is the flagship and then they'll there will be some other phones around it but the part of the

tricky transition here is how do you transition away from the 678 as the flagship and is that an se model um that is sort of like we're going to hold it in place it's got new internals but it's basically what the eight was and we'll keep selling that and then we've also got you know and and there's no eight plus right there's just this other 6.1 lcd screen phone and that's the that's with with whatever they call that i don't even know what they call that maybe the nine yeah my i've been thinking about i think i spoke i spoke about it somewhere else i don't remember but i think i don't know what they're going to do with the 10 S and plus. I don't know if they'll do that.

They might come up with something else. Right. But I think they'll both be like Roman numeral X something. Right. You know, but the, the, the 6.1 inch LCD,

I think will be called the nine because this was the phone that actually bridges the gap between the old and new. Right. They skipped it as they said, right. This is two years in the gap between the old and new. Right, sure. They skipped it. As they said, right, this is two years in the future, this phone or whatever, right? Because this phone in the middle was called the 9, and they would have gotten there, you know, wink, wink, but they just, you know, they never did, right?

They decided to skip straight to 10. Right. So I think this would be called the 9. That's the only one that I feel pretty sure on with naming. Outside of that, I don't really know what they're going to go with. No, and I still feel pretty strongly that the right thing for them to do. I'm not saying that

I'm predicting this is going to happen, but to me, the obvious choice is to just get off the carousel and say iPhone X, iPhone X Plus. And the iPhone X is like, this year's iPhone X. We have a new iPhone X. It's better than last year's iPhone X, iPhone X Plus. And the iPhone X is like, this year's iPhone X. We have a new iPhone X. It's better than last year's iPhone X.

And just, they can do that. They don't have to call it something else. Because iPhone XS is like the XS, Xs. Is it plural? Is it possessive? Is it, you know, an addition? It's like, no, it's just the iPhone X. It's the new iPhone X.

They can do it. Let me pose what I consider the issue is with this, right? I think a lot of the time we point at the other product lines and be like, well, look, the iPad, they don't change the name of anymore. And, you know, the iPad Pro or whatever, I didn't do with the Mac, then with the MacBook, all of those products, the products that keep just the same name of a different year, they are primarily sold majorly by Apple themselves right like in their own stores with their own marketing and everything else around it where the iphone is sold in very large quantities by third parties

without people that are like super well trained and there's more kind of issues that can arise over having complicated naming and i think one of the reasons that you you iterate the iphone name every year is because people buy them every year there's a new one every year people buy them every year and it's so much easier to go into a carrier store and see right this is the new one or they can point to the new one like it requires more information to be known and things to be explained with the iphone than with the other products i hear what you're saying and yet i just don't think it's as big of an issue um phones aren't being bought every year as much as they used to as part of it um they've got a lot of investment in the

iphone 10 branding i think at this point that they may want to ride a little bit longer and i just think they can get away with it i personally hope that they do give it a new name just because as a person who speaks about this stuff for a living it gets really difficult when they don't rename them right i i just don't think it's that bad it's it's the it's this year's iphone 10 last year's iphone 10 this year's iphone 10 like it's i don't think it i think it's different but i don't think it's a problem and i think the iphone can bear it and in a year where honestly in a year where the iphone 10 isn't going to change that much, apparently, it's just going to get some upgraded internals. But this is, you know, it was already ahead of the curve.

I think maybe that's the argument here is that it's, you know, it's still the iPhone X. It's still great. It's a little bit better, but it's still great. it's a little bit better but it's it's still great um i that's i think that that's the right decision because i do think they have to hop off of the constant kind of numbering thing and i don't think once you choose a roman numeral which is a letter right so it's it's not just 10 it's the letter x right and then to do an s like are they going to take the letter off and make it a one zero s or something xs doesn't work like they already they already kind of eliminated that angle for them and i think plus just makes sense for the for the big

phone 10 plus like x plus like why would you everybody understands what that would be kind of fun to use the plus sign an x and just the plus sign that might look quite i don't know it's it's a as i said to grouper um you know i'm kind of glad i'm not in the room about this stuff well here's the thing though jason you say that these are judgment calls but we love talking about it well i love talking about it but this is billions hundreds of billions of dollars of a product i would like to say i would very very much like to be in the room making the decision okay oh now i don a product i would like to say i would very very much like to be in the room making the decision okay oh no i don't think i would want to make the decision i mean you would be supported by a lot of a lot of data but like these are i guess my point is this is why they pay

these people a lot of money to make these decisions because they're super important and the path forward is not clear like no no whatever you do you have no idea what it's going to do like keeping the name the iphone 10 could result in fewer sales than a new model you have no idea at that point you can you can take really educated guesses but anytime you make a diff a big change you gamble with that which is probably why they stuck on the numbering train for as long as they did because you make a gamble if you want to change it so the other thing here is that we should keep these two things separate because the first gamble is in product roadmap right first gamble is we're going to do two phones in 2017 we're going to have this super high-end thing that we've been

working on for years and that we thought would be in 2016 it didn't happen but in 2017 we're going to get it and we're still going to sell a continuation of the other line. And that's what we're going to do for 2017. Like, wow, okay. And then 2018, we've got even more phones that we're going to do in 2018. So that's, first off, that is risky. And that's a gamble. And that's why they get paid the big bucks.

And then there's the marketing of it, which is what do you call them? And those are separate decisions, basically. So it's like, what do it, which is what do you call them? And those are separate decisions, basically. So it's like, what do you call them? How do you price them? And those are hard decisions too. So this is not, I mean, I find it fascinating. Obviously you and I find it fascinating because we talk about it all the time. Because we are severely in the weeds.

I said I was going to blow through this. We haven't even gotten past the iPhone yet. What's great about it is there there is no as far as i can tell you know there is no right clear right answer here you gotta kind of close one eye and you know throw a dart like take your best shot take your best shot and see what happens and phil schiller and his people have done that and we will know in a couple of weeks what they chose but it's fascinating to think about all their options and what a hard decision it is in a couple of weeks what they chose. But it's fascinating to think about all their options and what a hard decision it is in a lot of ways.

So more from the report. The Apple Watch is going edge to edge and will be compatible with existing straps. I'm excited about this idea because this is what I wanted to see, right? Some visual design, some hardware change to the Apple Watch's design. I'm keen to see what that actually ends up resulting

in, right? Is the screen bigger? Is it just bigger? Is it thinner? Is it thicker? What does it look like? So I'm pleased to see that they're going to finally make a change to the visual design of the Apple Watch. It will be different, right? Like, even if you just make the screen bigger, you can still keep

the overall design the same, but making the screen bigger, that is a consumer-focused design change, the the the overall design the same but making the screen bigger that is a consumer focused design change where all the other design changes have been for their benefit in making it thicker but what i'm going to say is that it's a an invisible design change because if you're removing the black edges under the glass the glass will still be the same right so you get a user benefit out of it there'll be more pixels on that screen sure that's that's that is the lightest of hardware redesigns but yes yeah yes that's a good thing you know but in the same time we're about to talk

about the ipad pros and we're all salivating for smaller bezels right so like there can be benefits to it it feels like a strange thing with the apple watch because you say there i don't think people are saying oh i really want a bigger screen but at least it is a user-focused design change like which which i am interested to see i'm keen to see if what else this could manifest in um but yeah compatible with existing straps is a big thing apple need to keep that on that train for for a long time i think think. I think that that is going to be something that when they do change will really upset a lot of people. So they need to try and stay away from that as much as they possibly can, I think. New iPad Pros. So two iPad

Pros. One is around 11 inches and one is around 12.9 inches, according to Goeman and Wu. Now, this is interesting to me because what this says is you take the two current iPad Pros. On the smaller one, it seems like they are keeping the physical size the same and expanding the screen size again, right? They did that the first time, mostly the same size, right?

The actual physical size, but they made the screen bigger. And now it seems like they're doing it again, making the screen bigger, but keeping the physical size probably around the same. And then with the larger iPad Pro, it seems seems like they're doing it again making the screen bigger but keeping the physical size probably around the same and then with the larger ipad pro it seems like what they're doing is keeping the screen size the same but making it physically smaller with their bezel reduction it's a very interesting choice there i think for me they are the two exact choices i want

but it's interesting that they went that way yeah i i think it makes sense to me they're trying to differentiate the ipad pro from the other ipad more productivity comes with more screen space so pushing the smaller model up and then the 12.9 it's like all right that's enough screen space let's get it smaller because the problem as you and i both know the problem with the ip iPad 12.9 is it's too big. Like the screen is beautiful, but it's too big. Too big, too heavy. It's unwieldy because of the surface area of that screen.

So get the bezels down. That's going to be great. That's going to make that even greater. And if you think they sound close, well, that's the same, basically the same difference between the laptops, like 13 and 15, 11 and 13, right? It's effectively the same. MacBook Air, there was an 11 and a 13. It's not that far off from that. I wonder about the Face ID stuff only because there's the trepidation. I feel like we

got to give it to Apple that Apple's going to do the right thing here but you know that means they need to get uh orientation agnostic touch or face id working convinced that they've sold it they gotta have like because there's no way they're gonna say please hold your ipad upright in order to unlock it like there's no way that would be so bad i believe that a second generation face id with orientation agnosticism will come to all of the light all the products so the the two expensive iphones will get it um and the ipad pros will get it um it may be tied to the cpu right like the a12 whatever but like i believe that they would not it would be madness to ship this product i will i was gonna say eat my hat i don't have a hat and I don't want to eat it anyway. So I would be extremely surprised to see that because I feel like you don't need to do that. You don't need Face ID on the iPad yet.

You could do another revision with smaller bezels and a home button still. You could still find a way to do it. One of the defining characteristics of the iPad Pro is the keyboard. It's the first product that Apple has built on iOS that Apple built a keyboard for. And keyboards are fundamentally horizontal. So this goes back to my complaints about the iPad in general. I know sometimes people use iPads in portrait, you know, vertical. I use them that way too, but I mostly use them in horizontal. And I think it's actually a little silly that the iPad is not fundamentally horizontal, that the Apple logo when you start it up, that the Apple logo on the back are not horizontal, that they're vertical. I think that's the primary orientation of an iPad Pro because of, among other things, that keyboard. And because of the way that multitasking is built, where it's all adding things on the sides. That is, you can multitask in vertical, it's not great. So of course, like, they need to go the other direction. Like, they need Face ID

to work both orientations for this thing, for sure. But also, any idea that portrait is dominant on the iPad Pro, I think it's a mistake. I think it's the wrong approach to that product. I'm sure you've seen the whole potential concern and trepidation about where the smart keyboard's going to fit. It looks like the smart connectors may be moved. Maybe it looks like it's going to be portrait, which I just don't buy any of that. I think there's still a smart connector on the side and i saw somebody i think maybe even marco arment suggests that i wonder if that other item that's down by the dock connector is something like a pencil attachment yeah maybe i don't think that that's right but yeah i understand i don't

know i think but that that makes more sense to me than that's the smart keyboard connector in a really weird place where every smart keyboard has to cover the entire back of the iPad for it to work. Unless, and here's the big unless, unless Apple blows us away by doing a full-on laptop style shell to attach to the iPad Pro, where you could like hold it, put it in your lap and tilt it and all of those things. Oh, mama. That's what I want. Wouldn't that be something? Yeah. Wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't that be wonderful? We'll talk about

that in a minute. That would be a thing. The last thing, no new iPad Mini specifically called out. For those of you that think that there might be one, no, there will not be one. Yep. RIP. Today's show is brought to you by Eero, the company who built the Wi-Fi system that you want in your home because it's the one they wanted in their own.

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well you wouldn't expect a light bulb in your living room to light your master bedroom so why would you expect your wi-fi to do the same with aero you can install an enterprise grade wi-fi system in your home in just a few minutes jason i know that you use Eero and it expands your Wi-Fi connection out to everywhere in your home. I just wanted to know what you thought about it. Yeah, even the little smart light bulbs like on the periphery of the house now get the Wi-Fi that they need. And even my little smart irrigation controller that I have now in my backyard, it's on the Wi-Fi and it's not a problem. So I used to have lots of dead spots even in my little house and now I have none, none. And it was easy to set up. So yeah, I love it. And you don't have to wait weeks to get

hold of your new dream Wi Fi setup. For free overnight shipping to the US or Canada. Go to ero.com eero.com and at checkout select overnight shipping, then enter upgrade to make it free. That is ero.com with the promo code upgrade for free overnight shipping. Our thanks to Eero for their support of this show and RelayFM. Keyboard time! Keyboard time! Alright, so for us off, we want to give a quick

review of the Bridge Keyboard version 2. So you wrote a great review about this product on Six Colors, and the fine folk over at bridge they actually sent me one of these um they didn't send me a review unit they just kind of sent me it because they had heard about the problems i have with the first one so after our special ipad episode they got in touch and they said we have a new version coming out we'd like to send you it

so they sent me it so i got it for free but i wanted to talk about my experience and i know you have the same. I think from series one, series one had tons of problems. Bluetooth issues. It had connection issues. I couldn't get mine to work. Jason had multiple units. He finally got one to work.

The series two version that we both got categorically solved the problems. It connects easily, stays connected, no drop keys. This is the product that I always wanted it to be it has no issues like that right like it's it works perfectly yeah yeah it uh i mean i only got the one yeah the one works right out of the box so i you know i'm gonna assume that they got their it is definitely a new keyboard it's the the mechanism's a little bit different the light lighting like you've got the the lights like a little dot on the power key now that's going to give you the information about how much charge it's gotten is it on or is it off um but it is yeah it's it's everything that the first version should have been and the first

version was all already one that it was my choice as my travel keyboard for my ipad but um this is uh it seems to address the issues with the first one and that's really great here's something i did i i swear to you it's exactly how it worked right i turned the thing on connected with bluetooth put the uh my ipad my topo 9 tripod into the hinge right i put it in so it was in there i typed two keys before i reached for a trackpad i immediately reached for the trackpad that doesn't exist right because it just became a laptop as soon as i did it and that is fooled yourself i fooled myself the great thing about this product right it is it makes your ipad a laptop and that's what i love about it, right? The keyboard feels great. It feels kind of like a magic keyboard, right? Like it's, it feels nicer

to me than the butterfly switch keyboard, more travel, less noise. It's kind of what I'm looking for. The adjustable hinge is unbelievable. Like I am so sold on the idea of a laptop form factor for iOS because I can sit however I i want i sometimes like i'll sit and it's on my lap and i'm just typing or i can sit with my knees up basically fold it completely flat right and just have it kind of laying on my legs and i can type if i want to like it is exactly what i am looking for um i love the adjustable hinge as you as we were saying earlier right like the idea of apple making a product like this would be incredible too right like it works just how i want it turns my ipad into a

laptop like yes it makes it significantly heavier but my 12.9 inch ipad never leaves my home right like it makes the the ipad less portable but i use my ipad like a lap how people use their laptops right they have their laptop they have it at home that's what this does for my 12.9 inch ipad but it's so easy to take off that it's never an issue you just pop it out pop it on pop it out like it's yeah it is really really great unlike a lot of these keyboard cases where you have to sort of snap it in and then it's completely kind of like it's in there because it's got to go all the way around it this one doesn't do that this one's just got the the hinge at the bottom with the clips and and you you don't i mean you don't even pop

the clips or anything like that you literally just kind of stick it in and it goes in and then pull it out and so yes it makes it a three pound laptop but you pull the ipad out and it's not anymore yeah and you can't do that with your mac laptop and um i travel with it and it's the same thing i travel with it but i don't travel with a laptop and i can use it as a tablet or i can use it as a laptop and so that's that's why i do it so it does i have that thing where people give me the double take where they assume i'm using a mac and then i touch the screen and they're like, what just happened? Um, I haven't fooled myself. Although I will say the bridge bridge does make a keyboard for the Microsoft surface that has a track pad on it. And I thought to myself, Oh, Oh man. Like if Apple did, uh, you know, Bluetooth pointing device support at some

point, even if it's just for text editing, I'm like, I would love that too, but it's all still, support at some point, even if it's just for text editing. I'm like, I would love that too, but it's all still, it's all still out there. Um, you know, who knows? I, I, I also speaking of the surface, I saw a review today of the, uh, little surface mini or whatever it is. Surface Go. That's right. It's a little tiny one. It's adorable. I saw it when I went to the Microsoft store. It's adorable. It's, it's, uh, underpowered, but, uh, but super cute and tiny. Um, but again, it was one of those things where it's got a kickstand. And the review I read even had a photo of the legs of the guy who was using it. And he's got a big line on his leg, on his skin from where the kickstand dug into it. And this is the truth

of these things is, can you use that kickstand? Can you use the setup with the smart keyboard on your lap? You can, but it's not very stable and I don't like it. And I would by far prefer something else. Yeah, I really love this form factor. Like I think that they totally nailed this product this time around. I'm really, really happy with it. I'm now using my iPad in it all the time, right?

When I'm not sitting down for long periods of time to write something, because I have it in that stand then, so it's nice for me ergonomically. But whenever I'm just around the house, I'm surfing stuff, I'm just getting a little bit of work done or whatever, it's living like a laptop now.

And I really love it. My only question is, is this an awkward time to release this product? Yeah. It seems like these products are going away in a month or two, right? Or it's changing significantly. Like, I have no idea if this product's even going to fit anymore, right? It could be completely different sizes.

Will the bezels mean that it won't fit in the hinge properly? Will the hinge cover the bezels? Or that the't fit in the hinge properly will the hinge cover the bezels will cover the screen right yeah it's this is a really i mean bridge you really made a great product but i don't know if this is the right time to have released it and i it's great for the existing 12.9 inch ipad pro market and there are other people out there who are going to keep their ipad pros for a while i would i would suggest that they look at this as an accessory for it. I'm still using my iPad Pro from December of 15, right? So they have a long life, and that's great.

whatever Apple releases that bridge will be able to use their tech. Assuming that Apple doesn't like steal their lunch and make their own keyboard. Um, I hope bridge finds a way to make the ergonomics of the new iPad to work with this tech because the next iPad pro I buy, I'm going to want something like this for it. It's going to actually be a major factor in my productivity. I'm going to be super sad when I buy a new iPad Pro,

and there's going to be presumably at least a bit of a gap before there's a bridge keyboard for it. But I want this functionality in my iPad Pro from now on. So I hope that all the effort that they've done in building this new version of it, which is only on the 12.9 right now. So that's interesting. I wonder if they just sort of are out of the old ones and they wanted to build this. But I hope they're like positioning themselves to do new versions for the new iPads as well. But it is a question with the reduced bezels and all of that. reduced bezels and all of that, I worry about the ergonomics of dropping something in to the clips versus having to snap something in on the back, which I hate. Like I don't want to snap a special

case on my iPad so that I can use it with a keyboard. That's not what I want. And that could be a downside of the new bezel-less iPad Pro design. Should we talk about, as part of the summer of fun, our favorite keyboards of all time? Let's do it. This may be it for the summer of fun, but we got to go out with something wacky because otherwise it wouldn't be fun. Exactly. So this actually came from an Ask Upgrade question

from Upgradian Jeff. And I thought, what a fun thing to do to match up with our keyboard review here. So do you want to go one each? You start? Yeah, sure. The MacBook Air. I love the MacBook Air.

And it's on the older MacBook Pros too. But that MacBook Air keyboard, you know, yes, all my time with mechanical keyboards, it does feel a little bit mushy. A little bit. But, you know, the fact is I have written, i don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of words maybe millions maybe in the millions on that keyboard probably on the in the millions on that keyboard i love it um it has always worked for me it's always been reliable i've never had a keyboard failure on a macbook air in all the years so macbook air i think i have to pick number one i will pick my number one is the keyboard that

i'm sitting right in front of which is the microsoft sculpt ergonomic keyboard uh the previous version not the one with the alcantara on it you know like that they sell now um so i will include a link to the review of the man who told me to buy this which was marco arment i was having some problems with rsi. He said, buy this keyboard. And this keyboard made me feel a lot better. Like it works great. It's nice and clicky. It does what I need for when I'm sitting in front of it.

But more than anything, like it is a keyboard which helps me over long periods of time to keep my hands healthy. So I really like this keyboard. It does a great job for me whilst also being a super weird thing to sit on your desk. I also love how weird it looks, right?'s just a strange strange keyboard and i really like it so um my wife used to use the microsoft ergonomic keyboard although now she just uses uh the macbook

air so i guess she went from one of our picks to the other one um i can't use split keyboards because of the way i type i can't do it but it uh i know people love the microsoft keyboards um for my second pick i'm gonna pick and this is cheating but i'm just gonna do it because i don't care i i'm gonna cheat you make the rules around him yeah exactly right which is anything with cherry brown switches so i got into mechanical keyboards a few years ago i bought the little clicky keyboard tester which john tells a story on uh on the talk show this weekend about how he got an email from the guy at wasd keyboards um that like the person who runs it saying we sold out we usually sell a couple of uh keyboard testers these little like six switches it's not

like not it's just like a gadget that don't, you don't plug in or anything. You just can feel and hear what the different kinds of switches sound like. And we talked about it the last time I was on the talk show and they like sold out of them. They're like, what, what, what happened? And the answer was, sorry, we talked, we talked about it on the talk show. But what I learned from that,

cause I had bought just making a guess based on like internet like sound files and movies and stuff uh cherry blue switch keyboard which was fun but um the brown switches are actually the ones that i prefer and i've got a bunch now i've got like three different keyboards with the cherry brown switches i love them that's the keyboard for me. And so I was going to pick like my weird, I have my weird keyboard that is, God, what's it even? I can't even remember. Leopold keyboard, which is, has a very unusual key layout. I have a Vortex keyboard that I'm using now. I would say anything with Cherry Brown switches and ideally, you know, no number pad and ideally not even the page up, page down home area, but it has to have arrow keys. So I've created, so the Vortex and the Leopold are both that. So those two keyboards, but Cherry Brown switches for sure. Okay. I'm going to go way off the reserve here and pick the Razer Cynosa Chroma gaming keyboard. I absolutely adore my gaming keyboard for my PC.

It feels so good. It is a mechanical keyboard. It feels great. I love the way it feels. But I love the lights. The lights are ridiculous. They look so stupid and I absolutely adore it. There are so many things you can make it do.

You can make it like light up when you press a key and then it ripples out from that key. You can have the lights on constantly and changing into different colors. When we stream on the Twitch stream that me and Tiff do, if somebody gives us money, my keyboard lights up in specific colors. Like I love this keyboard so much. It feels great to use. And it's so ridiculous. And whenever anybody visits my

house and they marvel at my gaming PC, I immediately turn it on and show them all the things the keyboard can do. And everyone is like really impressed by it. They love it, even though they feel like they shouldn't. And that's why I love this keyboard is even all of my friends, all of my Apple nerd friends who love things to be very specific, you would think on the face of it that this flies in the face of everything that you like as an Apple user. But when you see these keyboards and you see how fun they are,

you're kind of like, oh man, none of my stuff does that. And that's why I love this keyboard. Yeah, that's cool. I have looked, backlighting is not something I really need, although some of my keyboards have it and some of them don't, but the color, individually programmable backlighting is hilarious.

So good for you. My last pick is going to be what I have just looked up as it is the Palm 1 portable keyboard for the Palm 3 and 7 and M100. If you remember the days of personal digital assistants or PDAs, this was a foldable keyboard. And I took a trip in 2000 to the UK for two weeks and wrote a trip diary. And I did it all with a Palm 3 with a couple AA batteries or AAA batteries in the back and this keyboard, which is a full-size keyboard with pretty decent key travel, actually, but it folded up in a couple of places and you could fold it up into a little tiny thing that was kind of a little bigger than a wallet, but it snapped closed. And so it was

super light and super small. And so I could travel with this tiny device, smaller than an iPhone by a lot, actually, and this keyboard and write while I traveled. And I think about that, like today, the equivalent would be to travel with an iPhone and like maybe one of those kind of roll-up Bluetooth keyboards. They also have foldable Bluetooth keyboards and it would be something like that. That would be the equivalent of this. But it was, I love that thing. It was really awesome.

And if I had use, if I ever was traveling where I absolutely had to minimize the amount of space that I was traveling and packing in, I would probably go on Amazon and find the closest analog i could to the palm one keyboard and my last pick will be the smart keyboard for the ipad pro because the

smart keyboard was what sold me on being all in on the ipad it's so good it is i mean we we're not joking when we say this a bunch of us i think marco may say this too but um i like it better than the keyboard on the laptop it is way better i mean just it is a way better keyboard it feels so much nicer the material covering is just feels nice to use it has a really nice and a good 10.5 size is good not you don't even need i mean i was worried that the 12.9 was going to be the only one with like good typing and the and the original 9.7 ipad pro it was not bad like i was impressed on the 10.5 it's great like that is that is you you're not sacrificing typing ability by getting the smaller ipad pro at this point and it is it is really good but it was just that that keyboard sold me on the whole package right the idea of the ipad as the device that i use it for now, it was that keyboard.

And I love it. I think it's a fantastic keyboard. It does a great, great job for pretty much every use. It really is fantastic. So that's our favorite keyboards. That is maybe the final Summer of Fun segment. Maybe the penultimate Summer of Fun segment. You'll know next week, I guess.

I do want to wrap up with two very quick hashtag Ask Upgrade questions because we don't want to do no Ask Upgrades today. So the first one comes from Brian. Brian says, similar to how YouTube Premium is a $10 a month service that makes YouTube a little bit better, what other free web service do you wish you could pay $10 a month to make a little bit better?

You want to say it on three? One, two, three. Twitter. I want Twitter to give third-party developers access to everything, and I will pay them $10 a month to do it. If I could pay them $10 a month, then it means they clean up their platform even better. So Twitter, this is us telling you,

we will give you our $10 a month. Just make the service a little bit better and the second question last question today comes from nick the new disney streaming service do you think it will launch internationally immediately or do you think some of the stuff may be picked up outside of the u.s by services like netflix as star trek discovery was i think they're gonna roll it out my gut feeling and i don't know if they've even talked about it is the goal of this service is for it to be international um they may roll it out first in the u.s but what i i doubt severely that they will sell off any of the content in in other markets um because i think they want to be everywhere so i would be because

once they sell them off they're're going to, you know, you lose them in those markets for some period of time, if not forever. And I don't think they want to do that. I think they want to launch. It's possible they might sell them off to markets that they're not interested in or they don't think they'll be in soon.

But I have a hard time, unless somebody can find a statement by Bob Iger saying something different, like, I imagine they will be trying to launch, you know, even if they launch in the U.S., they're going to want to be U.S., Canada, U.K. at the very least. You know, really, all the English language countries first off, and it would surprise me if they don't push into Europe and Asia fairly quickly thereafter. And so why not just keep it all keep the demand up because you know new star wars tv show um if you don't launch directly in japan you still get to launch when you do go to japan with that star wars tv show

and it's not something that's been on on amazon or netflix for the last two years i i usually like the reason that they're they there are mixed releases internationally at these services is rights issues right like that seems to be the biggest problem and i feel like disney's own streaming service for disney's own content is the one that is least likely to have rights issues yeah i think they've been planning this for a while too right so i think a lot of the contracts are expiring and it might not all be there on day one in all markets, but I think that that's the idea is that they're taking this all inside.

Like they're making content for their own services. That's their strategy. It's been their strategy for a while now. It's all starting to come to fruition. So yeah, I would imagine that they're going to be aggressive about rolling it out worldwide. Thank you so much to our hashtag AskUpGrid questioners. I have such a big backlog. I promise we're going to get to them. rolling it out worldwide. Thank you so much to our hashtag ask upgrade questioners. We have met

with so I have such a big backlog, I promise we're going to get to them. If you want to send in a question to close the show, the hashtag ask upgrade is the way that you do that. If you want to find information and links for this week's episode, you can check in your podcast player of choice, or go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 208. We are still in RelayFM membership time. There are still many fantastic member specials being posted. For example, if you want to hear what it sounds like for me and Brad to build a Lego set that takes three and a half hours

because Brad has the instructions and I have the pieces, you can do that by being a RelayFM member. You can subscribe by going to relay.fm slash membership and you can find out more there or you can hit the link in the show notes for in this episode and you can give upgrades and money every month but you'll get access to absolutely everything or you can go to our membership page and you can take a look and maybe choose a different membership level you want to give whatever you give thank you so much and thank you so much if you signed up. You can also listen to me and Dan Morin

and Stephen Hackett and Micah Sargent talk about Apple software that should have been or was discontinued. That is in a crossover episode called Downwise. Or is it Clockload? Yeah, or is it Clockload? But whatever it is, this episode is worth listening to

just for the madcap introduction, which I was nearly dying in laughter over. Go to sixcolors.com for Jason's work. He's at theincomparable.com as well. At Jason Allen Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike. I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks to Smile, Inboard Technology, and Eero for their support of this show.

You can go to relay.fm slash shows to find this show and many more. I'm sure there'll be something there that you'll love to listen to. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, everybody.