Upgrade - 218: Previously, on Apple Laptops

Episode Date: November 6, 2018

It's review time! Hear Jason's thoughts on the new MacBook Air and Mac mini. How do they fit in to Apple's product line? Who are these machines for? Also: The iPhone XR – is it a 'budget' iPhone, or is it the right iPhone for most people?

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 218 my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell today's show is brought to you by squarespace fresh books and lunar display hello jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i am fine and d, my friend. But we have an action-packed show today. So let's jump straight in to our hashtag Snell Talk question. This question comes from Reed. It is November, which means it is NaNoWriMo time. Jason, Reed wants to know, are you doing NaNoWriMo? Are you involved in NaNoWriMo this year?

And also, what genres have you written in past years for NaNoWriMo projects well I am so I'm not on the board anymore I spent a lot of years doing that and finally have termed out of that I I have thought about doing it but it's been a busy November so far as we're about to dive into thanks to Apple And so I haven't. What I'd like to do is devote time to editing the novel that I'm trying to edit and finish. So more like nano-edmo. Yeah, that's right, which is something that people have tried to make a thing in the past.

The genres, I've written three complete novel manuscripts. The first one is a basically young adult action adventure with superheroes um the second one is a science fiction and the third one is a tech industry uh satire slash techno thriller so different genres for all three oh wow yeah it sounds great unfortunately they're all first drafts and haven't been rewritten and aren't ready to be read by a human being. Does it not frustrate you that you have these kind of like three novels just sitting there? It does.

It does. I would have liked my plan when I was leaving IDG. I was like, oh, man, I'm going to finish that novel. But the fact is, as a freelancer, as an independent, you have to prioritize the paying work. It's very hard to. I admire Dan Morin, who has just walled off part of his time for his novel stuff. And he has published novels and has more novels on the way that are being published. And he's able to, he was able to commit to use that time. And that's something that I, it's very hard for me to

partition off that time and not use it for, well, I've got this other thing I could do instead for Six Colors or this other thing I could do for The Incomparable. And then it ends up not happening. So that's been a frustration. in every episode disappears from this brick building that is employment and says, yes, hooray, I'm out of here. And then it begins throwing bricks around and saying, now I can do anything I want. And the last panel, it's in a new brick building called Freelance. And it says, oh, no. So that's a little bit like it. So yeah, I would love to get those rewritten and see if they want to be published somewhere or all that and it just is it's hard with all the other stuff going on ironically when i had a

regular job um it was easier to separate those things and make the time for it than it is now maybe uh november's just the wrong time for you like if you're going to do it maybe you should do it at a different time of year yeah i will. Yeah, I have rewrite stuff on my calendar all the time. And sometimes, but yeah, this is a terrible time of year because there are new Apple products. I still have some revisions to make on my photos book and publish the new version of that. I've got a lot of things stacked up.

So basically I've been unable to even touch my novel for the last two months. So it's not a great time. But I'm hoping with what we're going to talk about today and what we're going to talk about next week, that I will have reached the end of the peak Apple cycle. And then we'll be on a little downward slide into the holidays. Well, we'll see. So far, this quarter has uh shown to be surprising um so we are going to be talking about reviews of the macbook air the mac mini and the iphone 10r today so we got a lot of stuff

but of course the ipad pro embargo lifted yesterday yes so there are lots of reviews out now and i know that jason you have uh an ip Pro, but we're not going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about this next week because you haven't had enough time to fill out your kind of feelings about the product yet, more than just, I guess, like initial impressions. And plus, I will have one, and I want to review it with you. Exactly. We're going to hold this on until next week so we can have a bunch want to review it with you. Exactly. We're going to hold this on until next week so we can have a bunch to say about it. There are a bunch of interesting and informative reviews out now,

which I'll put in the show notes. Yeah, if it sounds like we're being cruel at withholding it, the reality is that I just got mine. As we release this, I will have had an iPad Pro for all of a few hours. And so there's not much more I would be able to say than what I said in New York. So better to spend time with it. It's very much the conundrum of anybody who gets a review unit after the reviews have come out,

which is I could write about it now, but I'm competing with people who've spent a week with it and I haven't. So that's pointless. And so instead we will wait and then you will get a chance. Exactly. I mean, we would have done it and would have like tried to talk about it

in a little bit more detail if we didn't already have three very interesting products to review on this episode. Which I have actually much more time with and much more to say. Yeah yeah so that's what we're going to devote today's show to but um as i said we will we will be talking about the new ipad pros i'm going to get both as well so like you know i'm going to have all of as much information as all the ipad pros um so if you have questions about the ipad pro uh send with the hashtag AskUpgrade next week,

and we'll answer as many of those as we can. Yeah, I think that's going to be an iPad Pro blowout episode. Yeah, it's going to be pretty focused on that next week. So I'm very excited. You're going to need to talk about it on this show, because on Connected, Federico's just going to talk the whole time. So you're going to need me. Well, also on Connected, hopefully mine will have arrived but i would have had it for again like

an hour maybe so we'll see so that's why we're going to have a bunch of time i'll be spending as much time as possible using those devices so we can talk about them on next week's show but we should get into talking about maybe the most interesting uh of the three for a variety of reasons we'll see is the macbook air so your review kind of started off with something that i really enjoyed uh which was kind of looking at the macbook air's history and it has had a very interesting history so it was like a marvel when it announced right they even kind of evoked back to that in the event last week of the manila envelope, right? The machine being pulled out of an envelope. It was then kind of realized that it was full of technical issues and downsides, right?

Like my brother had one of those things and it overheated to a state that they had to replace it twice. overheated yes to us to a state that they had to replace it twice like it overheated so bad something just went wrong in the machine like the logic board something went basically um he got a an actual burn from it at one point like that was a very interesting but technically flawed machine in a variety of ways it was then reborn as arguably the best laptop Apple has ever made to where we are today, where it is a machine that is lovingly welcomed, but then was later on questioned. Yes, at the fall of 2010, beginning of this decade,

that new design came out, the 13 and 11 inch models with the wedge shape. It was the, you know, unlike the, that first one with the flip down port door and all of that, which was super weird. It was a super weird product and it was expensive. The new ones were priced aggressively. There were, and they rapidly became the favorites. And I argue in my review and, you know, we could debate it. It's fun to debate things. But I think it's arguable. It's possible that you could say that the definitive Mac,

especially since most Mac users use laptops, the definitive Mac of this decade is the MacBook Air, is that MacBook Air design. And yet the last few years, it's been just abandoned in favor of when in 2015, when the 12 inch MacBook came out and began this whole new cycle of design language, new keyboards, new screens, new,

you know, all sorts of stuff. Well, you know, you could argue back to the retina MacBook Pros, but those felt right that they were ahead of the air. But when the MacBook came out, it felt like, okay, what's up with the MacBook Air? It hasn't been left behind. Is it about to get put to the, you know, sent to the cornfield for the last time? And the answer is probably that Apple intended that, but that didn't happen. And so in 2018, in late 2018, eight years after that first, or that introduction of the thing we think of as the MacBook Air, Apple has finally done what it probably should have done three years ago, which is make this refresh. So here's a recap of some of the new features.

There is a new keyboard, a Retina display. It has a Force Touch trackpad, an Apple-designed T2 processor. It has two USB-C slash Thunderbolt 3 ports. It features the Ahoy telephone functionality that comes along with the t2 it has touch id but no touch bar and new processors and they have higher maximum capacities for storage and ran than the previous version so they're kind of like headline that's what's in this thing right it's very much like um previously in apple laptops because it's a recap, like at the beginning of a Netflix show where it's new to the MacBook Air, but I'm not sure there's anybody out there who's like,

well, I just use the MacBook Air. I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, I guess they're out there. I guess there are probably a lot of people out there still using the MacBook Air from previous years and are wondering what's in this new one. And that's the beauty of it because what Apple's done is just stack on like eight features that they've added to the MacBook Pro and the MacBook over the last few years that have not yet come to the MacBook Air. And they just kind of like put them all in and like, look, they're new. They're new to this one model. These things we've been doing for the last five years on the rest of our laptops. And, you know, I think something that we were expecting was a new design and we

didn't exactly get that. So what do you think of the hardware design? I love it, but that's because I love the MacBook Air. And that's the thing about it is Apple could have, in fact, some might say Apple has done a rethink and redesign of the MacBook Air and it's the MacBook, right? Like you could argue that the MacBook is Apple's modern take on what the MacBook Air should be, even thinner, even lighter. I think it was the point of it. Even more minimal, right? That was the point of that machine.

But it was maybe too extreme. And with this, for whatever reason, you know, the MacBook Air kept selling. With this, they said, all right, what if we give people what they want? What if we give them something that is recognizably a MacBook Air? And the fact is, that's what they've done. If you are somebody who loves the MacBook Air, either is currently using an old MacBook Air or has fondness for it, but has moved on to something else, I got to say, and that's me, that describes me.'ve had every macbook air over the years it's always been the for a long stretch from 2010 until i left idg um the macbook air was for most of that my primary computer i would plug it into a monitor um and use it at work and then i would carry it in

my backpack home at the end of the day and like my mac i lived on the macbook air that's that was my computer even though it was yes it was underpowered and not pro and all those things i didn't care i loved it carry it back and forth um and so when i pick this thing up when i look at this thing it is undeniably the macbook air it is recognizable all the design beats are macbook air the wedge shape yes but also like the way that the top and bottom aluminum, it's got the curved edges. It curves, it bends down over to the edges the same way that the Air does. It's got those four little flat rounded feet. It's got even all of those little screws that are on the bottom that you know that Apple doesn't love.

But are very, very are very much like, that's what the MacBook Air is. It's got all the screws on the bottom. They're all there. So it is, the way the hinge works, the way the hinge works and the look of the hinge, it's all MacBook Air. Now on the inside, on the outside, in fact,

I would say if you don't look at the ports and if it's not space gray or gold, you would be hard pressed at a glance to say that it's uh that what it is whether it's a new or an old macbook air at a glance because but it is smaller though right but you don't necessarily see that right right you you i mean you can tell um it's actually residing in a funny um in between space and this is one of the things that i actually got out um i got out lauren's 13 inch macbook air and i got out my 11 inch macbook air and um there's some images of that in the uh in the the story the uh and it's in between the two it is because

of the bezel shrinking what they did was they shrunk the bezels so the old air has the silver you know silver bezel around the outside it's the old the way apple laptops used to be before they said no we're going to put a sheet of glass over everything and then the screen will be behind and there'll be bezels but they won't be visible uh bezels in terms of materials they'll just be bezels behind the glass, but the glass will be a single sheet of glass. So they finally did that with this MacBook Air. But also the actual bezel size is so much less. So the width of the whole computer is less. And so what they've done is they pushed the whole computer in along with that bezel size savings. And so you end up with a 13.3 inch screen it's the same physical size as the 13 inch macbook air but the computer itself is um in terms of width it's only slightly wider than the 11

it's it's about a half an inch deeper than the 11 but it is it's so it's in between but it's closer to the size of the 11 inch air than you might expect but of course full-size keyboard the speakers there's enough room so that they can have a full-size keyboard and speakers on the sides of the keyboard which means that the sound is more direct instead of what they had to do with the air in the past which is put the speakers in the hinge and fire them back off the screen and bounce them to you now they actually just come straight at you and they as a result they do sound more full and they apple's doing its same kind of stereo uh field widening effect processing stuff that they do with the iphones uh the modern iphones and with the ipad

pro okay so they're they're doing some of that too so it feels more stereo when you're watching that they do with the iPhones, the modern iPhones, and with the iPad Pro. So they're doing some of that too. So it feels more stereo when you're watching a movie or something on it. So it has some iPhone tech in it then as well as, as well as like of a Mac tech.

Exactly, exactly right. So it's, but my point is it's still undeniably a MacBook Air, which is why I like the look of it. Yeah, it's got the two Thunderbolt 3 ports on the one side and a headphone jack on the other. That means that it doesn't have a display port uh like the old one

had a separate display and thunderbolt port and it doesn't have magsafe so when we say it's got two usb ports just like the last one does i'll just point out that they are still literally doing double duty because the uh on the old system you could plug in a monitor, plug in power, and still have two USB ports. And on this, if you plug in a monitor and power, you're out. So it's different. And one of the big losses for people will be MagSafe, right? The keyboard is different. And if you don't like the new keyboard, which I think is fine. Issues of, I had never really spent a lot of time with the third generation butterfly. I'd use the really spent a lot of time with the third generation Butterfly. I used the first and the second. I think the third generation Butterfly is fine. I think it's less

crunchy sounding than the second, so I actually like the sound of it better. It feels okay. I got used to typing on it. I wrote my whole review on it. I got used to typing on it. The reliability issues are a worry, but it's's just it's out there some you know are they reliable are they not but the magsafe thing i think is going to be the thing that existing macbook air users miss the most because it is really weird to have a macbook air and then realize i need to uh you know i need to plug it in and then i need to remove the plug uh but and and of course it's taking up a usbc port when you do that yeah you see because that's that's the frustrating part about this right like if you're coming from um the old 13 where you could also plug in other stuff even if you had a mouse and a monitor plugged in you could still plug in probably something else via

usb because you could use hdmi or you could then use your sd card right sd card slot right so the 11 inch never got so I never really had that. But yes, it's absolutely there in the 13. Right, because that's the one it's going up against, right? Like it's going up against the 13 because that's the only size that they've made available for this

because, you know, effectively the 12-inch fills the 11 spot, I guess is what I was thinking. I mean, I feel like if somebody told me today I'm coming from the 11-inch MacBook Air, what should I get? I'd be like, well, the MacBook is small,

but I'm telling you the MacBook Air is almost as small as the 11-inch MacBook Air, even though it's got a 13-inch screen. And you get effectively the same I.O. constraints coming from the old 11-inch to the new 13. It's still not, though, because you're still losing MagSafe and mini DisplayPort. Oh, I forgot about mini DisplayPort.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, because that was the Thunderbolt port. Now the Thunderbolt port is doubled up on the USB-C, but there used to be a separate DisplayPort, and now there's just... So you really, if you put in Display and Power or think of that as Thunderbolt and Power, you are going from 4 to 2. There's no denying it.

2 is better than 1. 2 is 1 and 1 is none. We already know that lesson. John Syracuse taught us that. But it's way better than the MacBook. And I should point out again, these are Thunderbolt 3 ports. So they're far more capable than the MacBook, which has a single USB-C port. There's a lot going for them. They

can drive a 4K monitor. One of them can drive it. Well, either one, but you can drive a 4K external display with them. But it's still not. So if you've got any complex kind of port needs, if you've got a bunch of external things, like I often would have an external hard drive and ethernet and a monitor, like attached to my and power, of course, attached to my laptop when I was at work. And in the end, they were going through the Thunderbolt display. So it was doing all of that. And all I needed to do was plug it in, which was good. I imagine that when Apple releases its own monitor monitor and i would actually imagine that um existing usbc monitors probably supply power i'm gonna say i've never used one but i think they i think they do i think so that yeah that reduces the amount of pain because

you're just plugging in one thing whereas with the old macbook air you had to plug in two because your usb couldn't double um as you Or you plug in Thunderbolt and you plug in your power. So there are ways, but I'm just saying it is more complicated. And for those of you who are inveterate MacBook Air users are very excited you can buy a MacBook Air now. I just want to say welcome to Dongle Town. You'll probably need one, a dongle to convert something somewhere. Or orientation begins at the or orientation begins that's right town hall that's right they're welcoming new visitors all the time they're really excited that the macbook air people are coming in now that's a whole new subdivision they can build at the edge

of town but um you know it's but then again if you're and i think apple really believes this if you're in the vast majority of people who don't plug stuff in then it doesn't matter so yeah the keyboard you mentioned you mentioned that you uh you found it okay so it seems like you are warming to it because you were one of the most outspoken people i mean when when they initially changed to this this new butterfly mechanism you were very very, very vocal about it. I don't like it. We could roll back the tape, but I'm pretty sure the word hate was thrown out at one point.

Well, everybody gets to have their own opinion about it, but I don't think this is the right decision for them to eliminate so much key travel. I don't understand. I kind of mocked them last week about when they made this announcement, they talked again about the key stability. How, you know, oh, heaven forbid that if your finger touches the edge of a key, it slightly bends down, you know, while you're pushing it down. Like, who cares? It fixed a problem people didn't really have.

Were I Ant-Man and I shrunk down to very small size and was trying to stand on a key on the keyboard and not want it to be wiggly, I would be very grateful for the new keyboard. But as I am not, I don't care about key stability. I just don't. Key travel is way more important than key stability. So no, I don't love the decision they made to go to this keyboard. And I guess what I would say is I can see that they made progress from the first generation and the second generation. It sounds better. It feels better. I'm never going to like it.

The other part of it is this really does kind of close the door on the old MacBook Air keyboard. I mean, I know they're still selling the 999 model, but now here's a new MacBook Air. It's got the same keyboard as all of the others. And if you don't like that keyboard and you want to use an Apple laptop, you're basically out of luck. This is where we are. You can either use it or not. Is it usable? Yes, it is. I wrote a 2,500 plus word review on it yesterday and it was fine although then i came back to my mechanical keyboard and i was like whoa these keys go down so far because i was i had spent all day just kind of like batting at these very small uh travel keys but um you know so a lot of things i don't

like about the keyboard but they've they've gotten better it does provide audible feedback without it being super loud and crunchy like on the second generation. That is helpful. It's okay. You can use it, but I'm never going to like it. I'm never going to love it, but it's fine, right? You can type on it, and it's not – you can type on it unless it breaks, and I can't speak to that issue because I've never used one of these things long enough to have to deal with potentially issues of blowing compressed air into it or taking it to an Apple store to fix it because a piece of dust got in it.

Yeah, it feels like we're still unsure about the long-term ramifications of the current version, right? Yeah, it seems like there are still issues, but it's unclear whether those issues have been reduced to a rarity. Yeah. Yeah.

We don't know yet. How much of a difference is the retina display on this machine? I mean, it's retina. It is, you go from not retina. I mean, let me put it this way. I would open up my 11-inch Air from time to time because I'm primarily using my iPad Pro now. But I'd open up my 11-inch air every now and then. And I would immediately go, whoa.

Like, oh, oh. Like, I mean, every time I'd look at it and be like, wow, non-retina display. Where have you been? Like, it is, yeah, retina Macs are great. Like, retina displays have ruined us on our is, Retina Macs are great. Retina displays have ruined us on our iPads and our Macs and our iPhones have ruined us now. And it is rough. I know for some people they don't care and that's fine.

But it's so much nicer to have just the crisp text. I love it on webpages when I'm writing. Just to have that clear, crisp text. It's beautiful. It's an IPS display, so it's a better quality display. It doesn't have the 4K color gamut. I mean, one of the reasons they're saving money here, it doesn't have the fabulous color gamut. It doesn't have a true tone sensor or anything like that.

But it's a really nice display. It's way better than the display that was there before. It's not quite... Apple said at one point that it was twice the resolution or something and that is i believe and that's not true it's not it's like 1.7 times the number uh horizontally and then again vertically the magic of rounding up in marketing yeah exactly but in practice it does not matter like it is a high resolution display and it looks great and uh it's nice that there's a macbook air a retina macbook air at last we've been talking about mike we've been talking about the retina macbook air since this show has existed as a as this mythical beast like a unicorn like the unicorns use a retina macbook air thing is what we've been

talking about of course right it happening because i remember at some point we had a long conversation about uh the laptop that adina wanted to buy um because she hates the macbook air design because she doesn't like the big silver bezel that went around it. Right. So she ended up getting a MacBook Pro, mostly because of that, because she just didn't like what she thought was an old-looking computer because of it, which I completely agreed with. So it's been a very long time we've had this.

I guess what you're saying, really, is this screen is good because you don't notice it anymore. Right? You don't notice something's wrong with it it looks as you would expect yeah and and that part of that is just the context of every other apple product that's been designed over the last five years right like literally this now looks like every other apple product and there was a time when we would have looked at this and said whoa this is a very different macbook. But at this point, like it is just coming in line with the rest of the world. I guess something that's exciting about this machine for a lot of people, I think, is that it has Touch ID without the need for the touch bar. Yeah, that's the big new feature.

I mean, this is a product that is largely just playing catch up with every other product in Apple's lineup. And although the Touch ID on the Mac is not new because it has been in the macbook pro with touch bar all this time um it we this is the first iteration where they've just put the touch id key in there's no touch bar there's just to the right of the f12 key there's this narrow key just like the one that's on the touch bar next to the touch bar but it's harder to see there this narrow key it's basically the power key but what it's really for especially since now if you open up a laptop it boots like you don't need to press the power key at all um what it's really for uh other than holding it down when you're doing a reset is touch id you lay your finger on it and it unlocks and it's fast and it works just like the one on the touch bar uh macbook pro and uh it's super

convenient like while i was using it um the last few days like every time i flip it open like uh when i was writing the review yesterday i was going back and forth and doing a bunch of other stuff and then i would open you know i flip the laptop back open it would be locked and i would just you know reach out with my index finger as I was picking it up and it's unlocked. No typing, you know, one password works great with touch ID where you open a one password and you don't have to type in your password, just like on your iPhone or your iPad, you can biometrically authenticate and then you just move on. It's instantaneous. It's a very nice feature. I, at this point, I feel like it's probably coming to every Apple laptop in the next iteration. I would be surprised if the MacBook Escape and the MacBook,

when they get updated next, if they get updated next, that they will both get this same thing where there's just a touch ID button to the right of the function row and in the function row, but at the far right, because it makes a lot of sense. And I know there are a lot of people who are saying, well, why wouldn't they just jump jump to face id but the reality is that although we think of the mac as a mac is thicker than an iphone um the the half of the laptop that's got the display in it is very very thin right and and the there is a general sense that perhaps it will be a while before a face id camera will fit inside a laptop uh display shell well i mean so touch id i guess the thing is like maybe they don't ever put it in the top maybe they do something where it goes in the bottom and

it's angled well right the ipad the the ipad has weird angles and can unlock um with so so maybe maybe we'll see but for now that i think is the reason why touch id makes sense on mac laptops i think face id makes sense on mac on imax and on uh if they do an external display having face id camera in there so you can authenticate that way because you know you've got an external keyboard and it's kind of a mess to do it some other way but on the laptops i think touch id works great and i suspect that we'll we'll see that for a while let's talk about power but there's been a lot of discussion about what processor is in these machines what What is the situation here? What is going on with the MacBook Air

when it comes to power? Yeah, so it's the same class of processor that's in the MacBook, not the one that's in the MacBook Escape. So it's the, what, 5-watt processor instead of the 15-watt processor. It's the low power. It's not the processor class that was in the old MacBook Air air it is a lower uh lower power part there's also only one which i

think is interesting um you have options with macbook air it's very ipad like in that sense where yes this is the processor that comes with this computer i suspect that in the in the future especially when apple is making processors for its Macs itself, that this is how it's going to be. The iPhone doesn't let you build to order a version with a faster processor. You just get an iPhone and some other model might have a different processor, but that's it. I suspect that may happen across the Mac line in the future, but especially in the consumer line where Apple would rather, if you want a faster processor, get the MacBook Escape, which is $100 more and has a more powerful processor. I will say it is a newer processor and the MacBook Air has a fan, has a whole cooling system that the MacBook doesn't have.

And so I think in practice, the MacBook Air is going to be faster than the MacBook, if only because it can throttle up and blow the fans and keep things cool on thebox. It spent about an hour just blowing the fans on the MacBook Air. It was a very familiar sound. I know what MacBook Air fans sound like, and it still can do that. So, you know, in terms of the speed of it, it's, you know, it's fine, I think, for lots of uses. You cannot do the thing where you try to turn it into a pro system by upgrading it to an i7 which is what we used to be able to do back in the day i think they went with a lower power part uh maybe for cost in part also um for battery life concerns um but the thing is in the modern that macbook escape for as long as it, like it's a hundred dollars more and it's

got the, and it's not much heavier and it's got the, uh, it's got the, the higher rated processor. So if you are the kind of person who specs up a MacBook air, uh, in order to make it like super pro powerful, even though it's just an air, I think Apple has sort of drawn a line and said, beyond a certain point, this thing is just not going to go. And you, we make the MacBook pro for you and you should use that instead. Just a super quick correction. It's a, it is a core i5 processor, which is, you know, what we've seen before, but it is running at seven Watts, not five Watts, which is the difference. that's why it can get a little bit more power than the macbook can and and again it's because as you said they have fans in it so

they can eke out a bit more power than they could in the macbook this is the first computer that's used this part which is actually a classic macbook move uh the original macbook was the same way where intel like worked with apple to supply a part that nobody else had used before. And it created a whole category that everybody used that part afterward. So anyway, it's a low power processor. And I know there's been some disappointment out there because there are... The fact is there are a bunch of people who are kind of wanting to do pro level tasks and could get away with a MacBook Air in the past. And like I said, I think Apple has basically said, look, we're not going to do that on this one. We've not designed this as a

pro. We make three different MacBook Pros. Please use those if you need more power than the MacBook Air can give you. And I'm okay with that. Even as somebody who used to get the i7 version of the MacBook Air, I get why they're doing it i'm okay with it it makes this a more power efficient device which is good in terms of battery and stuff like that and it's still going to give you more power than something like the macbook because it's got a modern slightly more powerful processor but more importantly it's also got the thermal stuff so it can blow that fan if it needs to cool things off and let things still run it at uh at the higher turbo boost kind of speeds do you have a sense for like

the macbook really struggled with the pro apps right like logic and and final cut do you have a sense for if the macbook air can handle those any better you know my macbook air never struggled with logic i never had a problem with it. The MacBook Air was fine. The MacBook. Oh, the MacBook. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think my guess is that the MacBook Air will probably handle something like Logic fine.

I'm going to guess that Final Cut is going to be a harder thing. Because video, there's a lot of... The disc is fast um the processor is not super fast although the t2 does hevc so if you're doing hevc encoding um you get that for free and it's fast which is great but if you're doing like h264 and code or something like that i always thought the video encodes on the MacBook Air were a disaster.

I could edit simple-ish projects on the MacBook Air, and then you'd get to the video encoding. It was just like walk away for days, and the fan blows really loud, and you go to another computer that's more capable. So I think it remains to be seen. I did not edit a big video project on the MacBook Air because I thought that was a bad idea, right? So that's my gut feeling is that it's going to be, you're going to be pushing it because it's not a pro laptop. It is not pro in the name and it is not intended to be. It is intended to be, and this was one of the questions I had for Apple. It was one of the questions I was really thinking

when I was flying home after the event, which is, where does this product fit in Apple's product line? There are six Mac laptops currently for sale from Apple. And I really do believe that this is the default. I think this is the place you start when you're shopping for a Mac laptop. I think even though there's more complexity in the Mac laptop line than there was before, and that there are more question marks about what's going on because the MacBook and the MacBook escape are still kind of hanging out there and haven't been updated yet. I think in one way, the MacBook Air has simplified what you do when you're looking for a Mac laptop, because I think it gives you a starting point. I think you start with the Air and you say, okay, this is the lowest priced other than the $999 Retina. This is the lowest priced Retina MacBook, and it's got a pretty good feature

set. And does it fit your needs? And then from there, you spread out and say, well, I like that MacBook because it's thinner and lighter, and I know I'm losing a port, and I know I'm losing Thunderbolt, and I'm going to spend $100 more, but it's so nice and light and thin, and that matters more to me, which is a classic MacBook Air argument too, then you can go and get the MacBook instead. And you'll give up some stuff, but you'll get some stuff. Or you'll say, I am going to use Final Cut. I need a little bit more. It's like, okay, well, you can go up to the MacBook Escape or the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. MacBook Escape's $100 more. So it's not even a huge leap.

And you can get a little more power and maybe you'll feel. And then you can spec up that processor, pay a little more money, and maybe you'll feel a lot better. And it's not that much heavier. It's kind of like a mega MacBook Air. And then, or you can go way, way up to the MacBook Pro if you're a pro user and you just need, I need all the power. And, you know, but you'll get the Touch Bar. You're okay with that. So there are still trade-offs at the different computers.

It will be much simpler when the MacBook and MacBook escape presumably get updated with the touch ID and modern processors, new generation of processors at some point, or they go away. That would make it super simple. I don't think, I don't think the MacBook is going to go away. super simple. I don't think the MacBook's going to go away. I like the Escape, right? It's actually a good computer. It's just weirdly marketed, but I'm not as convinced about its long-term life, but I hope it might stick around. Anyway, but I think the best way to think about the Air is it's the default, which means that as with the MacBook Air in its decade as the representative product of the entire Mac product line, I think it's broad appeal. It is a broadly appealing laptop for somebody who wants to buy a Mac laptop. You can point people at that. And then if they want to shop around, if they want to make some changes,

they can do it. I know that it stinks that it's $1,199 instead of $999. Apple is ratcheting up all the prices everywhere. And this is another case where they're doing it. It is still the lowest price Retina MacBook. And I think that counts for something. I wish it was $9.99. It's not, at least not yet. Maybe it'll be $10.99 next year. But I do think functionally, it is where you start. And that's where the MacBook Air belongs, honestly, not to get all sentimental on you. But we are still in the 2010 start. And that's where the MacBook Air belongs, honestly, not to get all sentimental on you, but we are still in the 2010s and this is the decade of the MacBook Air and the MacBook Air should be the starting point in the conversation. And then you go from there and say, no, I have

more, you know, I have need for more space and more power or a smaller device or a lighter device. And then you can go from there. But start with the MacBook Air. I think that's the right thing to do. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at FreshBooks. Everyone loves to save time, and it's especially important when you are a freelancer. Our friends at FreshBooks can save you up to 192 hours with their simple cloud accounting software that is perfectly made for people that work for themselves

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Go to FreshBooks.com slash upgrade right now and you can get a 30 dayday free trial just because you listen to this show. There's no credit card required to do it. You could just go in and play with it and you'll see that it's right for you. So we go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and when they ask you how did you hear about FreshBooks, you tell them I heard about it on Upgrade. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. So it's not the only mac let's talk about the mac mini so yes the mac mini is it a pro machine in more than just color what kind of power are we really talking about here with the mac mini so it's obviously it's in space gray because that's apple's code for it's different i guess um it is so i only got to test the the baseline configuration which is the 1.6 gigahertz

i3 that's what i got they didn't hand out it's funny yes sometimes what apple will do is give you a a high level configuration so it looks like oh yes you get the best and that's very interesting that's peculiar i think exactly but in this one they're like man yeah okay uh you get the you get the uh you get the i3 but you can you can uh spend more money on the higher end model which is uh three gigahertz uh six core i5 you can max it out to an i7 uh if you really want to so i think it you know we will have to look at the scores and all that but i think it can be really really impressively fast if you want it to be this is a desktop class processor it's not a laptop class it is i think for a lot of people i mean it fits it fills this niche that's slightly

different than the the well it's it's how was being used, maybe not how it was originally intended back in the day. And that is for all of these uses where you need a screenless Mac and a Mac Pro is overkill. But you find these things in all sorts of places, you know, lighting setups and, you know, audio setups and in live performances. And where we recorded, as I think I mentioned last week, where we recorded, I recorded in Manhattan at the Stitcher Studios last week in an edit bay that was powered by a Mac mini. Like there are lots of places where the Mac mini fits and this thing, you know, 3.2 gigahertz, six core i7,

like that's a lot of power. It's not a Mac pro, you know, and there will be a Mac pro at some point, but it's still, you've got a lot of, of, uh, of options here. And I think, so I was listening to, uh, Stephen Hackett last week on a couple of podcasts, talk about the base configuration and how he was like, you don't want that. Like it's not, it's the 799. It's like, it's an I three. Uh, it's, it's just a, you know, it's not good enough. You need to, you need to bump that up he's very much down on the on the 799 configuration and i gotta say like again i i'll grant you i'm coming from like a 2011 mac mini that i was still using as my server but um right but that's all anyone really had

to them anyways yeah i mean the it's it's having the fast ss SSD and having the RAM where you can start at eight and then go up from there. My old server, I upgraded it to have eight, and it was amazing. But it was also kind of like all I felt like I needed. So for my needs, running a server in my house, I feel like the base model is fine. In fact, the one feature, fortunately, everything is configurable in this thing. I can get in the base model, I believe, I can spend an extra $100 when I buy it and I can get the 10 gig Ethernet, which I'm actually tempted to do. I've got one coming that's the base model, but I think I may return it and get one that is built to order with the 10 gig Ethernet only because I have this vision of being able just because I have an iMac Pro, which has 10 gig Ethernet in it. I have a vision of like buying an Ethernet switch and a 10 gig Ethernet switch and having like my storage on my server be at full speed, like, like 10 times faster than it is now. I don't know if I'll actually do that or not. But you could do that. You know, you can,

there's, there's a lot you can you can max this thing out and spend a lot of money on it but you will get a lot of mac for it it's not uh unreasonable at all like 64 gigs of ram and and a two terabyte ssd and that's super expensive because two terabytes of of flash storage is super expensive no matter uh no matter what but uh you know yeah it's it's and what's funny about it is like the macbook air even more so than the macbook air it's a Mac mini. Like other than the Space Gray, you would not know unless you looked at the ports that it was a different computer. It is the exact same computer.

So you mentioned the RAM, you can get 64 gigabytes of RAM in this thing. Can you clear up the question of, is the RAM user replaceable? This has been a big question mark. So it's replaceable, but not user replaceable is the answer and that is accurate in fact um so the the mac mini has a little the little um foot that it sits on which is this little plastic thing that um on the old mac mini models there are the like two little um divots that were like the finger holes they're not holes but the finger you can put your fingers in them and push and rotate it, and it would pop off. You're like unscrewing it.

Well, the message Apple's sending with this one is different in that those little divots are gone. Like, there are no finger holes. Don't open this. Don't push this open. Now, I'm sure it does open. It's still that thing. Maybe you need a suction cup or something. I don't know.

But I'm pretty sure you can get in and that ifx it will get it and tear it apart but what's under there is the new cooling system because what they've done is they've taken the space that the hard drives used to be in and they've i mean they redesigned the whole interior but they got a lot of space back in saying we're not going to have hard drives just ssds which is great call modern computers shouldn't have spinning hard drives. They're bad. And at least as internal, like if you want to have a raid on the outside, fine, but like as internal, it should be flash storage.

So they've used that space to build in a cooling system that is capable of relatively quietly cooling. Even they three to 3.2 gigahertz, six core I seven. Right. And, and so it's, it's like a small version of the story of the iMac pro where

they use the extra space to do better cooling and quieter cooling that is on the bottom there so if you open it up what you're going to have to do is you'll find the the ventilation stuff and then you'll have to do the thing that you used to have to do if you wanted to upgrade the hard drive in a Mac mini, which is basically take it apart piece by piece, removing items out of the hole in the bottom, one by one, until you get to where the RAM is. And then you could pop out the SO-DIMMs. So can you upgrade the RAM after the fact? Absolutely. It's not soldered on. You can do it. Do you want to do it personally? Well, the way it was described to me, it's like, well, ideally you'd have somebody at the Apple store do it, or you would have an authorized Apple repair person do it. But I, you know, I even got somebody

at Apple as I was, as I was, uh, I think walking out to say, you know, we all know that iFixit is going to post instructions about how to do this. And you could do it. As somebody who has upgraded the hard drive in a Mac mini before, I don't recommend it unless you're super confident

because it was Dan Morin and I both did this. And it was super stressful. It took a long time and I broke some stuff. My Mac mini, when I got it all in with the new drive, couldn't make sound anymore. And it was an older model with the infrared port and the infrared was also broken. At that point, I snapped those cables or whatever I did. I did something very bad. It still worked, but it was not what it used to be. So what I'm saying is the good news is that the RAM is upgradable after the fact, but I don't really recommend that somebody who isn't super confident in technical attempt

to do it. You can get the pros to do it for you if you need that down the road. You know, if you start with eight and decide to go to 32 in four years, you will be able to get somebody to do that for you if you need that down the road um you know if you start with start with eight and decide to go to 32 in four years you will be able to get somebody to do that for you i think one of the biggest things to compare the mac mini to the new macbook air is the ports this thing has all the great ports right it does it's got um let's see four thunderbolt 3 and two usba along with ethernet isn't it that's a lot already that's six ports yeah it is yeah and then and then yeah it's got ethernet and a headphone jack and and hdmi um but uh so yeah it's it's got it's got all of them all the great ports so you can you can um stick some of your old usba stuff on If you need more, you can use a hub or you can use an adapter

from USB-C to USB-A. I have, my RAID is Thunderbolt 2, and so I have a, Apple sells a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter, which I had a while ago. And that's how

my RAID is attached to the new Mac Mini is using that adapter, and it's how my RAID is attached to the new Mac mini is using that adapter and it works just fine. So, uh, you know, you've got, you got, and I've got ports open, you know, I've got three Thunderbolt three ports back there just hanging out that I haven't added anything to yet. And, uh, so it's super flexible on that front too. It's got, it's got all of them, including it's the same, they're making the same decisions they made with the iMac Pro right which is this is or the iMac really it's it's this is complicated enough um and we've got enough space and we let's add the flexibility it's not a laptop why not give them some of the old USB ports and some of the new USB ports and let them

choose and I guess for a lot of the purposes that you would use it or for a lot of the purposes that Apple are kind of calling out when talking about this machine, ports are key. I feel like they couldn't have told the story that they wanted to tell without having a bunch of IO on this thing

because it is not a machine that can fit into many different purposes if all it had on it was maybe just the four usb c ports like that's not that's not the story that they're telling right i think versatility is an important feature and they wanted it to be as versatile as possible and it doesn't have um it just uses onboard intel graphics and i've heard some grousing about that. But the beauty of it is Thunderbolt 3, you can attach an eGPU and have an external GPU if you want it. And you can do that.

Those aren't cheap, but you can do it. So there's a lot of flexibility in this little thing. You know, I hear people and know people who for years have been complaining that they wanted a mid-range Mac mini tower, the idea of something that's more than a Mac mini but less than a Mac Pro. And I think the truth is that, at least from Apple's perspective, this is that. And what you should do is spec this up and then use those many, many ports on the back, including some very fast Thunderbolt three ports to attach fast external devices if you want more. And there's that is I know not what they want. But because they want like a, an old PC and Apple's not going to give them an old big PC chassis with a bunch of slots or something in it. But this is effectively that in the sense that those Thunderbolt three ports are so capable

that you should just be able to hang fast whatever off of it on the outside using Thunderbolt 3. And that's the closest you're ever going to get, I would say, to that desire to have a powerful computer that's not a Mac Pro, but still has a lot of expansion. It's just external expansion via Thunderbolt 3. Do you think that this Mac Mini says anything about the Mac Pro, like what it's going to be? I mean, I think it does in the sense that you can see how we now know the range of the Mac Mini, the dynamic range of the goes from not super low, but from low to pretty high. And so you would have

to imagine that a Mac Pro is going to start somewhere up by where this ends and then go up from there. I don't know exactly what form that will take, but it does feel like this is what they're doing. I still think that they're going to have some internal space on the Mac Pro, but I think it's not a given. And I think it'll be more swappable than this is. Maybe it will be actually user replaceable stuff as opposed to just replaceable stuff i i would think that that would be an important part of something like a mac pro because you're paying you're paying for not only the the premium for the power of it yeah and that'll have undoubtedly have like xeon processors and things things what is modula right that's what

they've spoken about module right modular right do you think apple's gonna sell a lot of mac minis i think apple will continue to sell mac minis like they've been selling mac minis i think they'll sell a lot in the first uh first quarter um i've also heard from people who are like well i'll get one eventually when mine dies but mine's fine right now so i think i feel like the mac mini will now do what it's been doing, which is continue to bubble along and people will buy them when they need them. And it's not a very exciting, like, it's not a, it's not a gotta have it product. It's just a product that needs to exist. And so I understand Apple's reluctance to update it very often because it's never going to be one of those things that everybody's like beating down the doors,

say like, oh boy, everybody loves the Mac mini. We need another Mac mini right now. And everybody goes like, oh, it's, it's the Mac mini. It's everywhere. We're so excited. Like it doesn't, it just, it's not that product. It is more boring than that, but it does need to exist and it does have its followers and it will continue to sell. But you know, I don't, I don't think it's ever going to be a huge seller because that's not what it's for. It's really to fill all these different little niches where you need a headless Mac and you don't want to buy a Mac Pro.

And there are a lot of them. And Apple acknowledges that there are a lot of them. And so it'll just kind of continue on. And now that it's a modern Mac, it's also possible that they will every couple of years update the processor inside of it and do that. I would be shocked if this Mac mini was not designed so that they don't ever have to do a major, you know, engineering redesign on it for years, but they can fairly easily upgrade the processors or whatever they need to do um as we go we'll see i saw a fun theory online uh i don't know if i subscribe to it but but i kind of want to because it's fun uh i saw a few people talking about this that one of

the reasons they may have kept the mac minis size and shape the same is because Mac Stadium have a lot of custom racking hardware. And you would expect Mac Stadium is one of the biggest purchases of Mac minis. Biggest customers. Yep. And that maybe if they were talking to them, maybe Mac Stadium would have said it would be really, really useful for us if you didn't change the size of this thing. Yeah, I think that that is part of it. I also think that would have been a piece of data that they took yeah i don't think it's the reason but i reckon it was a reason

but but you put that on the list and then you say what do we need to do like because obviously they were reluctant to update this product because they didn't for very very very very many years right they didn't update it at all and it's got the same enclosure that it's had for a decade basically too so um i think they looked at it it's like well geez if we don't have to change the outside and there are people saying please don't change the outside why don't we just not change the outside like we already i mean literally we have the molds we know the shape why why put work into that part of this thing when we're trying to minimize the amount of work we do so we sure we'll do a different anodization on it we'll change its

color but like it is a lot less work if you don't have to change the enclosure and so they didn't like i think right like people will be happy if you don't change the enclosure and it saves us time. And money, probably. So let's do that. And money, well, time is money. But yeah, I mean, somebody, so if they made it slightly different, like now they have to do all sorts of materials testing. Like here, they just, it's the same. It's literally the same.

I put them in a stack. They are exactly the same in terms of the footprint. They are exactly the same in terms of the the footprint they're they're exactly the mac mini is a low-key machine but this is a great update that's going to serve a lot of people very well and i applaud apple for doing it finally yep this is exactly what apple should have done with the mac mini and i know there are people out there who who are mad because it's it they viewed it as being the low cost entryway into the mac and at a time when Apple is raising prices in a lot of different areas, this is another frustration. But I think the 799 Mac mini is a very capable machine. And I think we don't live in the era of Apple trying to get desktop switchers in at a low price. I

think that was a very different era. And today's era, first off, most people use laptops and not desktops. And Apple designed this Mini for what it feels is essentially the market the Mini was already selling into and making it better for that market. And that market is not families with a PC on a desk that they're unplugging and putting in a $499 model. That's not, that's what it was when Steve Jobs introduced the Mac Mini at the beginning, which was before the Intel transition. It was a long time ago now, but that's not what it is now. So I think it's a pretty good value for what it is. And that flexibility is huge for

anybody who relies on a Mac Mini to do some aspect of what they do for a living, which is a lot of people. You mentioned about the raising prices. I want to talk a little bit about why that might be happening. And this is a segue into Apple results. So we just had some quarterly results come out. Let me give you the real quick headlines, and we'll talk about the one big interesting thing that happened this time. So headline numbers, $62.9 billion in revenue for this is the fourth quarter, right? This is fourth quarter revenue? Yeah, it's the end of their fiscal year. It's

the last fiscal quarter of 2018. So $62.9 billion in revenue, up from $52.6 billion year-on-year. 46.9 million iPhones sold, which is up from 46.7 million. So not a lot more iPhones at all, really. It's effectively flat. Effectively flat, but way up in revenue, but 20 plus percent up in revenue. Yep, which we would have expected. And again again we'll get to that 9.7 million ipads sold down from 10.3 million makes perfect sense considering there were new ipads on the way i don't think yeah i'm concerned if it's funny that the ipads went down for the first time in like six quarters and i don't care because i know what's happening yep you know it's perfectly timed 5.3 million max sold down from 5.4 million.

Same deal as the iPads. Everyone knew they were new Macs on the way. Yeah, and it's basically flat. And services revenue is $9.98 billion, up from $8.5 billion. And the guidance for the next revenue, so for the Q1 revenue, the holiday quarter, is between $89 and $93 billion in revenue, which is absolutely bonkers we're probably like one more year before they hit 100 right yeah and this is the um this is holiday quarter is always

their big quarter um this is uh this will be their guidance is a record the stock fell initially because the wall street was hoping to see 92, I think, as guidance, and they gave this range that's up to 93. So there's some part of their range that doesn't hit the guidance. And of course, Wall Street's all about expectations. But what Apple's saying here is, yes, next quarter will be our biggest quarter ever. We will beat our record, which was last holiday quarter. But the big thing that happened is changes to future

reporting. So from now on, so from Q1 onwards, we will no longer get sales numbers of products, just revenue numbers. So Luca Maestri kind of gave the main reason for this, which is from Apple's perspective, that the reporting of 90-day unit sales no longer presents an accurate picture of Apple's performance. It is worth noting, just for the record, that Google and Samsung, they report in this way. Apple was kind of the only big company as phone manufacturer that reported unit sales instead of just revenue. Why have they done this? So I want to give a quote from Shannon Cross, who works for Cross Research. I found this in a Bloomberg article,

which kind of, I think, gives the most synced reason for why they've done this. Apple is trying to shift the discussion to services and recurring revenue because the more recurring revenue, the higher your valuation becomes it is as simple as that unit sales no longer are good for apple and the reason unit sales are no longer good for apple is apple are not selling as many more iphones as they used to yeah the sales sales are flat or just slightly up and what happens is when when people see that their stock falls and oh no Apple is doomed. Well, so this is the thing.

So there's a bunch of things going on here. Shane Cross is great. She is on the call every time. She always asks a question. So she is in the, this is Tim Club. So this is partly because Apple's not required legally to do it. It's kind of funny that Apple discloses what they do because there are legal restrictions on a public company where there are things you have to break out in your results. Unit sales are not one of them.

This was good for them when it was good for them, which is why they did it. They continued talking about unit sales for as long as they did, probably because it was a good thing to keep talking about unit sales. Probably. And there was a legacy there because they always did it. They used to break out desktop and laptop Macs too, and they pulled that out at one point and just went back to a main number. But they don't have to do this, and it doesn't benefit them.

And I think if Apple had its druthers, it would disclose as little as possible. It's kind of amazing they went as long as they did. But you're right. There was not a really real reason. And what both Tim and Luca Maestri said on the call is that the fact is their disclosures are meant for investors. And investors, as far as they're concerned, should only be caring about revenue growth. And sweating the sales numbers in a product roll-up category is not worth it. If you're looking at Apple, they say, what you really

need to do is look at our revenue. And if our iPhone revenue goes up, it doesn't matter what the sales composition was. He also said, which I thought was a really funny one, It doesn't matter what the sales composition was. He also said, which I thought was a really funny one, that he said, you know, for example, our brand new units, our brand new stuff did really well this quarter. But you don't see that because we only give you the total number. To which I thought, well, you could break it out. Yeah, but you do that. You make that happen. This isn't an actual thing that occurs in the

world like yeah you don't do that so yeah so so that i thought that was really funny like well you know it's it's not a great number and we're not going to supply you with a better number and so we're just going to give you no number and so we'll we're going to be left with as with other phone makers um and other computer makers uh we're going to be left with IDC and other places guessing about numbers and we'll see how accurate or not accurate they are. And tidbits that get dropped in various Apple events and other appearances by Apple execs where they'll mention that they hit some sort of milestone. They will only talk about this now when there is a benefit to them to do it. When it serves them. Exactly right. Exactly right. So if they have great sales,

they'll say, much like with the Apple Watch up to this point right they'll say this was really great we we had big apple watch growth 20 year over year 50 year over year or whatever they'll say that and then the next quarter they won't mention like they didn't mention the apple watch sales at all this time no um and and there had been several um quarters in a row where they had mentioned apple watch sales and they just they didn't even mention it and that's probably because the beginning of the quarter that it hadn't come out yet and the sales had stopped and then they sold them toward the end of the quarter when the new ones came out but regardless of it that like they they they didn't characterize it at all and when they don't you just don't get the data point so that's that's what they've done they've changed

here because the the fact is the smartphone market is maturing and Apple is cranking up prices. That's one thing that's happening. They're increasing the services revenue. They're definitely focused on showing revenue growth because that's what the investors want. That's what the stock market is want. It's looking for growth and it is looking for revenue growth. And so Apple is going to show its revenue growth and it's not going to talk about unit sales anymore and if that if if you want to view that in the context of the fact that every single product that they release costs more than it used to then this is why i think that i think that's appropriate this is why like i know this

is a very hot button topic right now like if you mention anything currently about any of the new products about why you like them people want your opinion on why it's more expensive the fact the reason it's more expensive i mean that apple are doing more they're putting more in this stuff they're trying their best to show some reasons why things are more expensive. But the reason more things are more expensive is because Apple needs to grow their revenue now. And if you don't like that, and I understand why you wouldn't like that.

I mean, nobody loves it, but like if, if you have a real problem with it, like I hate to say it, but you're going to have to get used to it because this is going to keep happening now because Apple's growth now is money. They need to make more money,

believe it or not not even though they make so much money they have to continue because this they are they are bound by their investors to do so to make their stock price go up and the way they make their stock price go up now is by showing more and more increases in revenues why products are more expensive it's why the ipad line has all these expensive accessories like it's why there's stainless steel on the iphones right like they need to to make products more expensive they try and justify it by making them look and feel more expensive and it's all just to drive the revenue numbers and they're gonna keep doing this and there's there's a thought that when the sales are flat, that means that the

buying cycle has lengthened out. And we've talked about that here before, that if you're buying an iPhone every two years, you can charge X. But if suddenly people are buying it every three years, what you can do is charge X and a half and make it a nicer phone that will last those three years but also you'll still get your money over the course of those three years it's just a larger price paid few paid less often and that's a a game that they're playing now um i also want to say i don't i mean there there's we'll talk more about this in another show undoubtedly this is going to keep happening but i don't believe that apple has completely abandoned lower price points. One of the things that they do is they still like the iPhone 8 is still available and is a really good phone and is cheaper than it's ever been.

They will continue to do that. But what we are seeing is Apple saying, if you want the latest and greatest, you're going to pay for it. That's what they're saying. And I know that that bothers people because there are – and I've seen it in talk about lots of Apple products where people are bothered by the fact that – This event especially, this most recent event, because everything got more expensive. You know, we've had stuff where like, okay, the phone's more expensive,

but there's still other phones. Like, okay, fine, whatever. But this event, event it was like here's a bunch of new products they all cost significantly more than they did before and but in my mind so so in my mind um and i get it look there's a fundamental here that will never change which is we all want great stuff for as lower price as possible right and you can't get away from that. I want the best thing ever for nothing, for no money. But that's not the way the world works. And it is beyond the scope of this podcast to discuss capitalism. Sorry, people who would like this to be the capitalism podcast.

And I've heard from them, it ain't going to happen. But what I will say is, I would point to, yes, the iPhones where they're selling older models, but I would point to the iPad as like, I would love for Apple to, in the end, reach a place where something like what they're doing with the iPad happens to the other products, which is a stronger differentiation between pro and consumer. Because the fact is that iPad for $350, it is great. It is a really good product. It's got Apple Pencil 1 support. It is a 9.7 inch screen. It's a good product and it's $350. And the existence of the iPad allows the iPad Pro to cost more money because those iPad Pros,

although they're way more expensive than they used to be, and I saw somebody the other day say, well, I was hoping to get the new iPad Pro at the same price, but now it's $150 more. And that's a bummer. I'm like, I get that. At the same time, if you look at what's in them, I think this is not a story of Apple saying, hey, I know what we'll do. We'll just crank up the price. I think what Apple said is, why don't we make these more expensive and put more stuff into them? I really believe that that was the charter here was Apple saying, let's go all the way to the wall with the hardware. Let's make these laptop class products, probably because that's the direction they want to take the iPad Pro over the long term and with

the software and all of that. And viewed as laptops, they're not unreasonable, right? But I think that was their intent was, why don't we design a more expensive product? Not why don't we take our same old design and raise the price on it? And I know that's a little, in the end, it doesn't matter if you are just disappointed in the price. But I do think it's a difference in what Apple's doing. And they can do that more because they've got the ipad my frustration with them is that the macbook that we talked about earlier in this episode is 11.99 because if there was a good solid fine for most uses retina macbook at 9.99 and then everything else all the other versions you wanted and you want to get more pro like even with the one processor right so you said well it's 9.99 so you need to spend 300 more to get the macbook escape

but that's a pro system and this is not yeah like that is for me that's the ideal kind of setup where they've got a really good general purpose thing that costs a reasonable price it's not ever going to be the low price leader because that's not apple but a reasonable price and the fact is on the iphone front they do it with old models and on the Mac front, they haven't gotten there. But on the iPad front, they have. And I hope that that's the model in the end, because they do need to make Apple products available for people who can't afford the pro products to still have Apple products and get into the funnel

where they start spending money on services and all of those things. They can't just turn their back on people who are outside the Apple ecosystem and not let them in. And for more on this, you can tune into my new podcast about capitalism. Nope, which does not exist.

Does not exist. Today's show is brought to you by our friends at Luna Display. Luna Display is the only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. So you will have a super portable second display with stunning image quality and basically zero lag. Setting up Luna Display is so simple. You just plug a lovely little piece of hardware into your Mac, and you'll be up and running in seconds with everything working over Wi-Fi. This is like the smallest home in Dongle Town is the Luna Display. It is basically just the port with this

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lunadisplay.com, promo code UPGRADE at checkout for 10% off. Our thanks to Lunar Display for their support of this show and RelayFM. iPhone XR. Now this one, you had your review out before the event. We haven't had the time to get to it yet, but we really should because it is a product

that deserves discussion right yeah sure let's let's uh let's talk about it really quickly let's start with the price because this is the big headline everywhere is cheapest iphone budget iphone right it's not cheap no it's priced like the old plus phones were priced it when they were the you know which was the step up the the more expensive iPhone. Yeah, the cheapest iPhone is now the most expensive iPhone. That is wild. Is it budget?

No, it's not budget. Is it worth it? I think yes. I don't think I told you this. I have one. Did I tell you this? Oh, no. When I was in Canada, I bought a 10r um and i

bought it for two reasons one i really wanted to try it because i'm fascinated by it um and two i'm going to give it to a family member for christmas um so i got the coral too because i like you believe that it is the ultimate color i'm a little bit in love with this phone uh it's really good because every time i use it i forget about all of its downsides except a couple which i'll get to and i kind of feel like i really love the way this thing looks and i and i and i kind of wish i could use it as my phone every day. Because here are the things about it, right? And I know you agree. The bezels are bigger and it is thicker,

but you lose kind of sense of that very quickly. Like it is heavier, it is thicker, the bezels are bigger, but after like 10 minutes, you kind of forget. Oh yeah, no, it's a, you forget very quickly. And it does, you know, it's in sort of in between the XS and the XS Max. It's a big phone.

Having used the X for a while, I'm so adapted to having a slightly larger phone that it's less of a jump to the XR than it used to be. I, you know, I still prefer the X size, but the XR size is nice. prefer the 10 size but the 10r size is nice and uh it is again is 749 a budget price it is not however i will say if you max this thing out it's still a hundred dollars cheaper than the base model 10s like so so my conversation is with people who are thinking about buying one of these for the holidays is very much sort of like start with a XR, like go to the store and hold the XR

in your hand and see if you like it because it is not necessarily cheap, but is it the best deal? Is it the best value of the three new iPhones? And undeniably, yes, is the answer there. It is really good. It is a really good phone. It is not. Remember a year ago when there were these rumors about the cheap LCD iPhone X knockoff thing?

It is not that phone. It is. This is not a cheap plastic iPhone X knockoff thing. It is not that phone. It is. It is. This is not a cheap plastic iPhone 10 knockoff. This is a really nice phone that would have, this would have melted people's brains if this had been the iPhone 10 last year. Yeah. This is the iPhone 9, right? Like it really is because this is the iphone 9 it is so close to

the 10 but like all it maintains is the screen really right like the screen is the only thing that is holding this back if you would call it that right the screen is fantastic but it's just the technology the technology isn't the same and it's removed 3d touch right which they obviously couldn't get to work with the liquid retina display for whatever reason. Yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into getting it as close to the edge as possible because that close to the edge look with the curved edges, that's an OLED thing. They did it on the X because OLED can be done that way. And then they're like, well, could we do it with an LCD screen?

And the answer is, yeah, but it's complicated, right? And one of the things they seem to have given up is the 3d touch because of the added complexity of getting that as close to the edge as possible with the curved edges and the cutout and all of that stuff which is harder to do on an lcd screen than an oled and i would say that i mean really is it can i see a huge difference between this lcd and the oled I will tell you, honestly, no. I'm using apps that have the true black, right? So I use TweetBot in true black.

And I will tell you right now, it is very, very hard. I have to be really, really looking to find a difference. I mean, you can see, once you know what you're looking for, when you're looking for that shimmer of a, a led backlight, um, on a black background, you can see it, but I would say you have to be educated enough to look for it.

And you have to be paying attention. It's a great screen. I didn't, I had no point and it's a lower resolution screen than the, than the plus was even because remember the plus the Plus was at like a 3x scale, and then it was scaled down in hardware because it didn't have that many pixels. This one is a 2x screen, exactly. Which I would argue actually makes it a better screen because it's not scaling.

It's native at 2x. I would also argue that since it's an RGB screen because it's LCD, it is arguably as good a screen as the OLED because the OLED has the pentile pixels, which are different. I mean, and you get into a lot of details about how displays are created. But what I'm saying in the end is this is a really good screen and you're not going to pick it up and go, oh, this is crap. Like it's not going to happen. It is the best. And in fact, again, if it was released last year and there was no iphone 10 this was the iphone 9 it would have melted people's brains because it would it is better than any iphone screen made other than the 10s

and you can see it like it really is it it's wonderful like it is wonderful the fact that it can sometimes make me forget that it's not an OLED shows how good of an LCD screen this is. And it really is. And I'm super excited for the iPad screen, right? Like, because I wonder how great that's going to look too. I know that the liquid retina isn't necessarily screen technology, but the, I think the iPad screen is probably better, whether it is better. Right. So like, I'm super excited for that so we all know right it has most of the same technology as the 10s right the a12 face id the primary camera is the same has smart hdr wireless charging all that sort of stuff we know that the screen is different the other things that are different we know that it doesn't have a telephoto lens

so i will say i would miss it i use the 2X lens a lot. Do you? I do too. Yeah. So I will miss that. It does software portrait mode only on the main camera. It's mostly fine. It actually has some benefits, right? It has better low light performance in portrait mode. You actually get more of the environment in portrait mode

because it doesn't have to use the 2X camera. But honestly, I think i may be i may be pretty alone in this i don't think that there are many people like me but i would tell you right now one of the main reasons i could not use this phone is the lack of 3d touch i use 3d touch a lot jason and i miss it and you miss it because because the only things i use 3d touch for they put the haptic touch stuff in for so it's like i only really use 3d touch for things like um turning on the flashlight from the lock screen and the camera from the lock screen and those all work with haptic touch so you're doing things on your

iphone normally using 3d touch that are not mimicked by haptic touch yep so no notification previews i use previewing the notifications with 3D Touch. That doesn't exist here. You have to do a swiping and then, and I find it too frustrating to press swipe and then view. I don't like it. I use Peek and Pop a lot on messages, on tweets to see threads. Like I use it all the time.

And even the, you know, like the long press on the space bar for the text cursor, whilst it exists, it doesn't work as reliably for me and it doesn't feel right you know like i'm used to pressing into a screen and feeling something and on this phone a lot of the time i'm reminded that i'm just pressing into glass that doesn't move and and that is it's a big frustration for me and and i believe honestly that you should know if this would bother you you shouldn't not

get this phone just because it doesn't have it. I am somebody who uses 3D Touch a lot every single day when I'm using my iPhone. So, you know, because it's funny because the iPad has a lot of these features. So like the notification previews, the iPad does this,

and I can't understand why Apple did not put that on the XR as well. I find that very peculiar. Like if you long press put that on the 10r as well i find that very peculiar like if you long press a notification on the ipad you get a preview for it you don't on the 10r and i find that weird my understanding is that there's some sort of like what they were able to do that isn't um that there isn't already a long press for but there are also some missing pieces where i wonder if some of that will get added later yeah i my gut feeling is that um they're trying to unify um the idea of non-3d touch devices having haptic touch i'm a little surprised honestly that it isn't on the ipad pro because

why not like just just every other device can have haptic touch, can have a touch and hold instead of a 3D touch. Maybe they didn't want to regress yet because as I say, right, there are things that the iPad does that the XR doesn't. Maybe they'll wait until they can make a phone screen that can do it all or their software does it all and then they'll maybe will just brand it

as haptic touch everywhere. Maybe that's why. I guess we'll see. So the big question right now is who is this phone for yeah and i really believe that unless you have a super compelling reason to go for a tennis this is the phone you should get it looks great it comes in wonderful colors this is a really cool phone like the tennis stuff it's like oh it's real luxury these are really cool i think yeah i think this is a uh like the macbook air i would say this is a place to

start and if it's too big then you say well okay you can go get the 8 or you can get the 10s um if you have if you're really sad about 3D Touch, you're sad about the telephoto lens, you can go to 10S. Or if you feel like, for whatever reason, you want luxury or you want the biggest screen, then go for it. Or you prefer the look of those and all that. But yes, I agree. This does not feel... It's funny. And again, the Air is kind of like this too.

This does not feel like a compromise. This is, this is why one of the reasons why, um, Apple's products are not cheaper than they are. And this is, I don't mean to say this as an accident. It's a choice that Apple makes, which is this does not this 10 S and the air is like this too. This is not a cheap product. This does not, like going back to that rumor, this is not the cheap phone. This is a really, really good, I would say premium quality phone that happens to be way cheaper than the other phones

that Apple's making that are in the $1,000 and up range. And that's why I keep saying my standard line for the 10r is go to an apple store and hold it in your hand you'll you'll understand the size you'll understand the weight you'll you'll um you'll know if it is comfortable in your hand you get to see those colors in person you need to see the colors in person to decide what you want to do there it's hard to choose about seeing them because there's some weird mismatches you've got to see them yeah um because the anodized aluminum doesn't do the same thing that the glass back does but uh i i really recommend that if people are thinking about getting a new iphone that they go to the apple store and they

spend some time there because the 10r may not be for you but i feel like the 10r is a good it's like your best first step is see how you feel about this one, because this one you can get at 128 of, uh, of storage for a hundred dollars less than the 10 S is to start with minimum storage. So like if, if you're at all price sensitive, but you want a brand new phone, you're going to use it for a while, you know, try it, pick it up. And you may also go like, eh, some 49, this is nice, but I'd really rather get this other one that's cheaper. That's that's good too. That's fine too. But I think I feel like it's the starting point. And I wasn't quite expecting that. But as much as I like the 10s models, I think they're very nice. The 10 hours really good.

And it's way, way, way cheaper than they are. And so it's got the value. It's got the best value for sure. Bringing all those, not all, but almost all of those 10 features down to a lot less than a 10 phone, $250 less. All right, let's round out this action-packed episode of some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Before we do, let's thank squarespace for their support of this show make your next move for squarespace they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project you can get a unique domain name take advantage of and customize

beautiful award-winning templates and more in fact you get everything squarespace is an all-in-one platform to let you put your next project online if you want to create any type of site they have the tools that you're going to need they The templates are not just designs. They can actually also feature content, which can help you. So like when we were designing our wedding website, we used one of the wedding templates, and it had all of the page structure built in. So we kind of knew exactly what we needed to tell our guests. It would have been way harder to do this if we were just trying to come up with it on our own. Like what does a wedding website need? Squarespace can help you with that. There is nothing to install or patch or upgrade.

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but you can sign up for a trial today with no credit card required. Just go to squarespace.com slash upgrade and then use the offer code upgrade at checkout and you will get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show. Once again, that is squarespace.com slash upgrade

and the code upgrade to get 10% of your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of this show. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Our first hashtag ask upgrade question comes from Tim. And Tim wants to know, Jason, with the release of the new Mac minis, which desktop Mac would you recommend to a MacBook Pro owner who doesn't already have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse?

You should get an iMac. You should get an iMac. You should get an iMac, right? If you're coming from the MacBook Pro and you would need to buy a monitor anyway, you've got to get an iMac. I mean, it's difficult because the iMacs should have an update, but I will say as an owner and daily user of a 2015, late 2015 Retina 5K 27-inch iMac. This thing is more than powerful enough currently. Yeah, I would do that rather than, I mean, because the idea is what desktop Mac.

You could get an external monitor and a Mac mini and then plug the MacBook Pro into it when you wanted to do that. But I think, I'm assuming that since you want a desktop Mac, you want a desktop Mac. So don't worry about an external monitor or anything like that. Get an iMac. The iMacs are powerful. You can choose your power that you want. You can get the 4K, you can get the 5K, you can get the iMac Pro if you really want to. But that's the best value. Like that's the best value in buying a desktop Mac because you get the computer and the monitor all in one. Whereas the Mac mini is not as good a value.

It gives you flexibility. You can choose your own external display and all of that. But the Apple display, the Retina Apple displays on the iMacs are fantastic. They are very, very high quality. So that's the best monitor you're going to get. And it comes with a computer that's really fast.

So I think that's a pretty simple you're going to get. And it comes with a computer that's really fast. So I think that's a pretty simple answer. Get an iMac. If all other things are equal, why not just get an iMac? Nathan wants to know, when do we think we'll see a Brydge keyboard for the new iPad Pros? Not soon enough, is my answer. Not soon enough. I am interested to see what they're going to do with this, assuming that Bryd Bridge tries to make one, because I think there is still a hole in this market, as Federico talked about on Connected last week, a hole in the market for a laptop-y keyboard instead of what Apple is doing, which is still a little bit, you know, it's still a smart keyboard and it's not quite the same as

having that laptop with the infinite uh adjustability my i imagine that the first thing that the bridge people are going to do on november 7th is get one of these and look at the magnets and see how strong the magnetic hold is because one thought i had is they could make a shell with magnets and that you would uh lay basically snap the ipad onto the magnets and it would hold and the question is how how strong would that hold be could that be enough to hold the ipad to the bridge keyboard the problem with the bridge is it's currently constructed they've got those clips and the clips go over the bezel part and there's kind of not a bezel part anymore so the other way they could redesign it is by creating something that is very narrow and that maybe clings to the sides a little bit but i think it would be hard for them to do that so um but i hope they are on it on wednesday and

are immediately you know going to figure out how they could build something because I think there's still a market for something that turns the iPad Pro into more of a laptop feel than what the smart keyboard can do. Mickey wants to know, with the 12.9-inch iPad getting a smaller size instead of a bigger screen, what do you guys think is the upper limit

of screen size for an iOS device? Do you think it will always be 12.9 or is it someday going to get bigger on an infinite i think it'll get bigger on an infinite time scale everything will get bigger yeah i think i think it'll get bigger i think they're making the right decision for now yeah but i think later that those screens are going to get bigger beyond a certain size you have human interface problems where it's like does this need to be on a table does this need to be on a table? Does this need to be on a desk? It's not something you're necessarily putting in your bag at that point. Although, you know, they make the bezel smaller. You could argue that the other thing they could do is make a bigger one, like the size of the old 12 nine.

They chose to go the other direction, but I had this wild theory, which I don't think is accurate, but I'm going to just throw it out there, which is what if Apple made an external display that was beautiful in Retina for the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro? And what if one of the features of it was that it also did multi-touch if you attached a multi-touch operating system? Then Apple can make an external display and you just attach it by usbc to the ipad pro and then you've got an external ipad monitor oh god with with ui and multi-touch wouldn't that be great i don't think we're there i don't think we're there but it wouldn't it would not surprise me if the in the end result is not a surface studio but is a multi-touch display external to an ipad um also i had a i had another wacky thought which i'll share now because this is ask upgrade and it's the place for wackiness

which is what if um you you've been having a lot of faults recently i know i got a lot of thoughts um and i share them here on a podcast the uh i had a vision when I was waking up from sleep and it was WWDC and they were announcing that there was a they were going to do ARM Max and they were going to have the ARM Max be they were going to release them later in the year but the developers could get access to the Mac OS version for ARM today and what they would do is like and you can install it on your ipad pro and everybody's like well how will that work and it's

like what you what you do is you attach an external monitor to it and then you lay the ipad pro down and it turns into a keyboard and trackpad so it's the screen is the screen and then the ipad becomes like a virtual keyboard and trackpad and i thought that is a terrible idea and uh it would be hilarious if that happened i don't think any of these things are going to happen the weird thing is we live in a world where they could happen if apple wanted to do them but they're probably terrible ideas and apple won't do them peter wants to know how he could share a monitor wireless keyboard and mouse between a new mac mini and a macbook pro so they can toggle between them.

Is there a software equivalent of the old KVM switch? I have used a product many years ago, but to some success, called Synergy, which is a product that says it will do just this. I mean, I know it used to. I don't know how good it is today, but this is something you install it on a couple of machines and you can use your mouse and keyboard between them all.

So give it a go. I don't know anything about KVM switches at all. I think they still make KVM switches too, but I don't know anything about this. Sorry. I used that product a long time ago. I cannot vouch for it in 2018, but in like 2012, it was brilliant.

And Gareth finally wants to know, not finally as if like gareth's been trying a lot but like this is the last question today uh do you think it's strange that apple specifically called out the ipad mini on stage despite not having uh an update since 2015 do you think it's more likely that apple will now update the mini or does it mean it's more likely it's gonna die i did think it was weird that they said on more than one occasion spoke about the ipad mini last week so the bummer about having ming chi quo or if we like to call him on this show roger quote our friend roger our girlfriend roger code name roger

ming chi quo uh like the week before the event said apple is working in addition to airpods and a bunch and other stuff that was not at this event. Apple is working on an update to the iPad mini. And everybody went, what? Yeah. But we live in a world where there's a new MacBook Air. So anything is possible. And a new Mac mini. Anything is possible.

The sad thing about that report is if he hadn't done that and suddenly the iPad mini is mentioned in all the product line shots and they mentioned it on stage a couple of times. We would all be like deep into the theories about like, what does it mean? Does it mean it's coming back? I think maybe it means it's coming back. Why would they mention it if they were just intending to have it disappear? All of which I think is accurate. I think absolutely they mentioned it because it's not going away. I think it would have vanished from their product shots

if it wasn't going to be something going forward. And of course, Ming-Chi Kuo has already spoiled the fun by saying, yes, they are absolutely going to do an iPad mini and release it. And I would imagine it will be like the small counterpart to the existing iPad and that it'll do like crayon and pencil support and stuff like that and be like down there

next to the iPad and the low end of the product line. So if you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, you can send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade. Remember, if you have any iPad Pro related questions, send those in because we should both have products by then. Fingers crossed for delivery companies is all I'm going to say on the matter.

If you want to ask any questions to open the show, hashtag SnellTalk to do that. You can go to SixColors.com. That's where you can find all of Jason's reviews that we've been talking about today, including more.

I'm sure there's going to be even more wonderful stuff over at sixcolors.com. Jason is at jsnell on Twitter. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E, on Twitter and Instagram. You can find this show at relay.fm slash shows, where you can find many more. Thanks again to FreshBooks and Lunar Display and Squarespace for their support of this show. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. All the great Macs!