Upgrade - 219: The Chicken Just Laid an Egg

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

After a week with the new iPad Pro, it's time for our in-depth review of what we like and don't like about Apple's latest tablet hardware. Which size is the best? Why does Jason want to cover his Smart Keyboard Folio with stickers? Does the new Apple Pencil pass Myke's tests? And why is Jason so angry about Apple's pro apps?

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 219 today's show is brought to you by pingdom lunar display and hello my name is mike hurley i am joined by jason snell hi jason snell hello mike hurley we have a big show today we have a ipad extravaganza ipad pro extravaganza yes yes it's time it is time but we we have a lot to get to before then starting with hashtag snell talk and today's question comes from carlos and carlos wants to know if jason could appear on any of the classic game shows like Jeopardy, Price is Right, that kind of thing, past or present, which would it be and why? Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. I feel like if I wanted to take the pressure, I would be on Jeopardy because I've thought about being on Jeopardy.

I think I would probably be bad at Jeopardy. I think I would probably be bad at Jeopardy, although I know from our friend Glenn Fleischman's experience on Jeopardy that what you do when you get on Jeopardy is you study before you do it and you learn all the precedents in order and things like that so that you've got all that stuff in your back pocket. But otherwise, you know, I love the price is right, but I think I would be bad at the pricing at the pricing part of it um so i'm gonna say i'm just gonna take this out of left field i want to be one of the panelists on um because the question is could appear on a classic game show i want to be one of the panelists on match game be one of those six people who sits over there and comes up with wacky words to fill in the blank to frustrate the uh the contestants and uh yeah so i want to be one of the celebrity panelists on match game so what you're saying is we need to do some kind of podcast as match game oh my yeah we've done so on the incomparable game show we've done some of what we call the game of matching totally distinct distinct, not the same at all, where we've done something like that.

And it's actually a lot of fun to do that, to play a game like that, where you fill in the blank. So you say, you know, dumb Donald was so dumb. How dumb was he? You know, when he turned on the light switch in the living room, he thought he would see a blank. I don't know what that is. And then you have to fill in the blank and then the contestant has to guess it's fun, it's silly

and the pressure would be off because all I'd have to do is make jokes there's a lot of links in the show notes to various incomparable episodes now that include discussions with Jeopardy and match games so if you want to get those go to our show notes and you can get them so thank you so much to Carlos for the Snell Talk question. You can send in a question to open any episode of this show with the hashtag Snell Talk,

and we pick one from your submissions. Thank you to Carlos for doing that. We have some follow-up for today's show. iOS 12.1.1, the beta which is currently available, brings notification previews via haptic touch to the iPhone XR. This was one of the big things that I was talking about last week in our iPhone XR review that I really wanted was to be able to, when using the iPhone XR, to use what is effectively 3D touch, but haptic touch, right, like the long pressing, to be able to see the

notification content. So if you get a notification, you can preview it. This wasn't available currently with the iPhone XR, but will be in an upcoming software update, which I think is fantastic. I'm pleased to see that Apple are doing what they said, which was that they would expand haptic touch to places that it was needed. And they're doing it already, which I think is fantastic, especially like it's not even 12.2 probably that it's going to come out and right like it's a point update of 12.1 so i think that's really awesome yeah that's great bridge keyboard we talk about them a bunch sometime in the next week or two i think we both have the 10.5 inch uh version so for the previous ipad pro on the way because i know they just shipped that um But we saw that they were talking over the weekend. They've shown some kind of renderings

of what they're going to be doing for the new iPad Pros. Apparently going to be shipping new versions of their keyboards in 2019, which I expect you are as excited about as I am. Yeah, I'm very excited about that. The, they were kind of trolling us they showed us a really really lousy logitech keyboard design we're like no no no no don't do it don't do it don't go upset it was quite don't go to the dark side they're like no we're just kidding we

have a thing that's very much like the the uh old one which is funny because they they're you know there's not a lot of bezel space in there to put those little clips on but they think they can do it so i hope they can. Yeah, I remain skeptical. I have faith in their ability as a company to make good technology. But I also know from experience that they've had some shaky first attempts at things. And I can't understand how this is going to really have a strong connection because the clip is so small. I mean, we don't see what the back looks like or anything.

So, you know, I'm very keen to see. Yeah, I was kind of hoping that it would be a magnetized back that would be used to support it rather than putting all the weight in the clips because there are those magnets back there that they could just make a back that you just touch it onto and then it stays. But yeah, if it works, that's great. Also, they put those pictures out the day that they came out, and I feel like their next step is probably that they've got them now

and are figuring out what's practical now that they actually have one of these iPads. Yeah, so I think there might be some slight changes from the renderings that we see, but who knows? All I'll say is I cannot wait for these. I really hope that they're as good as the current versions um because i i do sorely miss uh my my bridge keyboard maybe not as much as i thought that i would have we'll get to that a little bit later on in the show um we had a i was really happy with our episode uh last week um where we reviewed all of all the

great macs so that was really fun but. But Jason's review from Six Colors got quoted on Apple's newsroom, which I just think is a notable thing because I wanted to congratulate you, Jason, because that is quite an achievement to be amongst the handful, the five or so reviews that were picked about the Mac Mini.

They chose your quote about how the new Mac Mini is exactly what it needs to be, which I think is a great quote. And I'm really pleased that Apple picked it because you were making a statement there. And I'm pleased that they, at least from a PR perspective, seem to agree with it.

Yeah, it's strange because they're picking it because it is something that reflects positively on their products. And I don't write my articles to be quoted by Apple. I write them so that people read them who want to think about the products that Apple is making. But I'm glad. I mean, it's nice visibility to be there. It's nice to be recognized and noticed that somebody at Apple is actually reading what I write. That's cool.

So yeah, that was awesome to see. It's on the same level as sort of like when Phil Schiller tweets a link to something you wrote, where again, I'm not writing it to please Phil Schiller, but it's kind of cool that he's got a lot of people paying attention to him, that he tweeted out my iMac Pro review last December. So it's kind of on that level. It's cool. I've never been, to my knowledge, I've never been

quoted in Apple PR before. I remember at one point when I was working at IDG, there was a PC World logo and quote in a presentation. And that was exciting for them and less exciting for me because I wasn't in charge of PC World at that point. And they were kind of competition. But, yeah, it's nice to be noticed. And lastly, a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about the changing sizes of iPads. audio comic for our listeners, which podcast artist to the stars,

Kate Matthews, went and created an actual little comic strip out of. And I think it's very cute and very funny. And it's in our show notes if people want to find it. Yes, thank you, Kate. We are bringing back Mike at the Movies. It has been a long time for Mike at the Movies. And there has been no Mike at the Movies. I actually been a long time for Mike at the Movies. And there has been no Mike at the Movies.

I actually, we've only done two this entire year. So we're going to be finishing out this year. We're going to be doing a couple. The first one is going to be in two weeks time. And we are going to be doing a movie that I have never seen but feel like I should have seen by now. My Neighbor Totoro.

Yeah, Miyazaki. We're going with some animation. And this is a delightful movie. I love it so much. I talked about it on The Incomparable with John Syracuse and many others. And I'm excited for you to see it. So that's going

to be on the episode that will come out on the 26th of November. So you have two weeks to watch my name but there's more exciting news than that jason snell you know how excited i am we're not doing a draft we're doing something that i think i enjoy even more than the drafts is it the first annual of something because we remember there's no first annual of anything at all. No, it's so much better than first. It is the fifth annual Upgradees. What?

Oh, boy. They're on their way. Fifth annual. Now, that sounds really exciting. They are coming at the end of the year, but voting is now open. So there will be a Google form in the show notes where you can go and submit your votes for the fifth annual Upgradees. Very, very excited about this. It is worth noting, you know, we're

opening the voting a little early. So stuff like the Mike at the Movies category doesn't have all of the entries in yet, but they will. So you may want to go in and amend your votes later on. But we are going to be opening up the Upgradies again, just like we did last year, to hear from you, the Upgradians. We want you to complete the survey and let us know your favorites in each of the categories. These results will be pulled together and they will have an impact in every single category, as they did last year. But some categories will be 100 decided by the upgradians me and jason will be coming together over the next few weeks to decide which ones

exactly they will be but it is now available so we will announce a closing date for nominations sometime in the next few weeks but you've got some time so go in think about it and we'll be talking about it as time goes on but this is for the 2018 upgrade which is our fifth annual which i am absolutely thrilled about jason snell yep it's it's hard to believe that we've done uh five of them but but here we are i'm very it's great i'm so excited i know it's your favorite it's your favorite thing but it's it's a fun it's fun way to look back on the year and to get the listeners involved too which is great so you can go and submit your votes

and every vote counts it's very important so make sure you get yours in I would like to triumphantly the triumphant return I should say of Upstream oh Upstream now I've missed you I have a few big pieces of Upstream news today, Upstream, now I've missed you. I have a few big, big pieces of Upstream

news today. Okay. First off, Disney streaming service has a name. No, it is not called the Disney Vault, as many people wanted it to be, which I agree would have been a fantastic name. It's going to be called Disney+. This goes right with ESPN+, right? Yep.

Which is also from Disney, so you know, it makes sense that they're expanding their branding. Like, I get it. It's not the most exciting name, but it's clear. Yeah. So Disney Plus is going to still be on target for launch in late 2019,

is the plan. This information all came from Bob Iger on a conference call. They also announced another Star Wars series, which will be focused on the Rogue One kind of time frame and will star Diego Luna. So it's another Star Wars series. They announced some other more Marvel projects

and stuff like that that they're looking at doing. They also spent some time focusing on Hulu and talking about Hulu. Because Disney owns 60% of hulu now they dodged all questions about if they've tried to buy the rest of it but it does seem like no matter whatever the case is disney is steering the ship at hulu um uh they will be focusing hulu on general entertainment whilst disney plus will focus solely on disney properties and disney are looking to expand hulu internationally which is exciting news they got to do that they gotta they got to do that

they want to use this as a platform for um for some of their stuff i think all the stuff they're getting from fox will be helping feed that and it's a u.s only service because it was based on u.s tv networks and now it's going to be something different. Hulu is going to be very different in five years from what it is now. But I think this is what we all kind of expected, which is that they're going to use it as a vehicle to get a bunch of other stuff out internationally that is separate from the Disney brand. Like Disney Plus, calling it Disney Plus and not giving it a name that is like a weird name is the disney branding like makes it clear like this has got the stamp of the disney you know disney on it and so there's going to be uh we talk about apple being wanting like family-friendly entertainment on its service you know if you're going to call

it disney there's not going to be any rated r uh marvel shows on dis? No. It's not going to happen. Not with that name. Maybe on Hulu, not on Disney+. So that's a clear difference where Hulu, different brand, it's going to have a lot of different stuff on it. That's where you're going to get your It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Simpsons and who knows what else will go there. Things that Disney is going to own

but will not want under the Disney brand. The Information is reporting that Apple plans to launch their streaming service in the first half of 2019 in the U.S., but is planning to roll the app and service out to 100 countries within the following months. So they're planning on having, by the end of 2019, this thing available in literally as many places as possible, which is good to know this is great

one of the questions was what how fast was the rollout going to be and when it was going to happen and uh for the last i feel like mike for the last year and a half we've had a bunch of people say at every single apple event are they going to announce their tv service and we keep saying probably not probably not and then and then recently it's been very much like 2019 and we're almost in 2019 now and this is when it's going to happen. They've been on the job for more than a year now developing content. And we're going to get that strategy in 2019. And this information story is interesting because not only does it put it, you know,

peg it and say first half 2019 is when they're going to launch this thing. But within months, it will be rolling out over a hundred different countries and that is something that i think we all knew that they would do that there's no way apple is going to build a video streaming service if it can't roll out all the content everywhere like there's just no way right there are some individual things about like local content being generated and things like that that that deal with sort of access to some markets. You've got to have French content in France, things like that. But we've been talking about them ramping all that stuff up.

Like they've been making hires, right? So they are very aware of this. Yeah, absolutely. So this is, you know, it's not quite as simple as just flipping the switch and turning it on everywhere. But I don't think this is going to be a Hulu situation either. So it's good to hear that uh even if they launch in the u.s first um and they might not they might launch

in a handful of countries first but the idea is that they want to roll it out everywhere quickly and that leaves us to you know the big question which is what's it going to cost what's the preview going to be what content is going to be available at launch um and that's all still a little bit of a mystery here's my other question though all right first half so when then like wwdc please not again right because you know i did apple music at wwdc i would imagine a spring event that's going to be my guess is i think they'll do a spring event they'll have an event in like april and they'll and they'll do this that would make sense right they'll launch this unless event they'll have an event in like april and they'll and they'll do this that would make sense right they'll launch this unless there's a the other thing i'll say is like unless

there's like a tv industry event that they want to tie into but my guess is that it'll be um the only thing that i would i would i mean they're wacky ideas too like what about the day after the super bowl or the day of the super bowl and they put a Super Bowl commercial on saying all these shows are available now go go get it on only on Apple TV like they or the Oscars or something like that they could do something like that as a way to launch it um but they could also probably since it's Apple they'll probably do an event and then say it will be available on this date and maybe that date will be the day of the Oscars or the day of the Super Bowl or whatever. Yeah. So they'll do it that way. They have the event to catch people that tuned in, but everybody else, they'll just wrap

it all up with a big TV spot. Right. And then that's the day it's available. I would think something like that. But it could be, I mean, when the information says first half of 2019, probably one of the things that's happening there is that they don't know yet. Right. Like, I think it's, they don't know yet.

Otherwise, we'd probably have a better idea. But I would imagine it'll be a kind of a spring thing. But we'll see. They also reiterated, the information also reiterated the rumor that as well as Apple's own programming, you'll be able to sign up for other paid TV channels. Right. Which really does, you know, it solidifies the fact

that really Apple are more of a Prime Video competitor than a Netflix competitor from a business model perspective. Yeah, I think that's right. I saw somebody, and I wish I could remember who it was, last week on Twitter said something very, very smart, which is there's no such thing as a Netflix competitor. Everybody else is trying to be another service in addition to netflix and i think that's the right way to look at it is netflix at this point is dominant and i don't see a lot of people dropping netflix to pick up one of these other streaming services it's more like who else is in that packet of of uh tim goodman said this to me on tv talk machine last week like um you're competing to be in the four streaming services that people subscribe to that's basically it

netflix is one i mean tim probably said this too about netflix like netflix is one and then you know if you've got amazon prime you've already had two and it's like what are the other two is it apple is it disney is it like but that's that's where the competition is going on it's a little bit like the you know input one on the tv set where it's like well if you've got cable input one is your cable box and nobody's actually replacing that now they are with cable cutting but it's that idea like there's netflix and then there's everybody else i guess it kind of reminds me like of the itunes music store like there was only really the one music store. There was only really one music store, ultimately, which was the iTunes music store.

And the reason I kind of relate those two things together as it being like Netflix is there is no way that some company could be like Netflix again. Like to get the deals that Netflix got to give it a base. Because no one will give that content away anymore. Right. All of that content that it's losing,

which is all the old content from stuff, that'll uh probably drain away but it doesn't matter now yeah you know one can be in that place well like how um so you know warner shut down um uh what's its name filmstruck right and they've shut down some other things and we talked about this on download last week the uh because we had on natalie jarvey who covers tech media for the hollywood reporter and uh you know they undoubtedly warner which is now owned by at&t they undoubtedly have a uh streaming service coming of course right um but they will get their warner brothers catalog of content so think like Friends, which has been very successful and a whole new generation of people

has watched that TV show on Netflix, right? But that stuff's probably going to go to whatever the new Warner streaming service is. And that's everybody right now is trying to pull their content back. But it's too late. Netflix is already enormous and has already benefited

and has already built out a huge library of original content now. So they made it. They have made it to you know they they have made it to that point people don't care what's on netflix anymore they just know there's good stuff on netflix exactly from it doesn't matter and that's what you want is to is to just have it be like how could i drop netflix there's always something on netflix but for apple it is and and apple's going to do what amazon's done that's very smart, which is basically wrap all the other streaming services around you and say, we are not just our own content.

We also are the path to get all of these little services added in. It's a little cable company-like when you think about it. Like, well, you just get one bill, right? It's just one app that has all of these things inside it. And hopefully one good user interface if you're lucky right like that's i mean that's been my experience with the prime channel stuff is that there is something to be said for subscribing to cbs all access and brit box and having them inside the uh disclaimer past sponsor prime video channels but having it inside the prime app like

if you like the app experience of the wrapper whether it's prime or the tv app for apple if you if you prefer that experience the nice thing about it is it's a unified experience instead of having you know oh now i want to watch star trek i gotta go to the cbs app and i don't like the cbs app but that's where Star Trek is. And you're like, I don't even need to open the CBS app. Just stay in my TV app or my Prime Video app

and do it from there. That could be potentially smart. And from Apple's perspective, also it gets people in their app where they control the promotions and they can promote the Apple TV content as well. So I think that Apple have decided what their flagship

show will be because Steve Carell has signed on to join Reese Witherspoon's TV show drama series. This show, as well as Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell, also stars Jennifer Aniston. this show as well as Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell also stars, Jennifer Aniston. This is a big one. I think like star power, like this is going to be one they put on posters, right? Like this is pretty huge for them.

They have a lot of great stars. A lot of, we've been talking about it, right? Like even people like Oprah, like doing individual projects, but you're going to have one show with three A-list movie stars, at least. right like i think this is going to be one of their big big we put i don't know how good it's going to be i mean honestly i think it

will probably be fantastic because of that cost but that's going to be one that looks really good on a poster right right that's the and here's the other thing um can we just stop for a moment and imagine what what an apple event to launch this thing might be first off holy crap yeah it might be a very different event we might none of us might get invited right it might be that that tim goodman and natalie jarvey get invited to this one because it's well it is for us but maybe apple don't know that but you know like this isn't a normal event for them it's like how when they um when they announce things like the apple watch they bring in a lot of fashion press like it's slightly different but this would probably wait much more heavily on television

media with maybe some big tech culture sites you know yeah but can you imagine the people they're going to bring on stage for these things it's going to be like a marvel thing yeah yeah here's here's oprah here's jennifer aniston here's steve carell it's probably not going to be a good presentation but it will be really interesting at least and joe is in the chat room saying and and and uh joe and zach are both in the chat room saying it's definitely going to be in la which it 100% will be i'm actually looking. The one thing that I wonder about, although we would probably hear soon, but the TCA, the Television Critics Association, has not announced their winter press tour dates yet, I think. But they're usually in January.

And that's another question I've got. Would Apple do that? Would Apple do a day at the TCA and actually use a venue like that to roll out some of their plan? Probably not. They could talk about the shows because the shows aren't a secret. Aren't a secret, right. So wouldn't that be interesting if TCA puts up their schedule for the winter death march with cocktails and says, Apple is doing Tuesday. I'm like, what?

And they're going to show us some trailers. And we're going to bring in Oprah and they're going to bring in Jennifer Yeah, and they're going to show off some trailers. And we're going to bring in Oprah and they're going to bring in Jennifer Aniston and they're going to do all that. And then maybe they also, maybe they time that with, again, the question is what Apple chooses. They've got a lot of choices,

but they could time that with an event in LA the same week. And so they make sure that Oprah and Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell, all those people are in LA that week. And they do a Apple media event on a Tuesday and maybe the Thursday they're at TCA, the Wednesday they're at TCA, but they, whether it's TCA or it's something else like

the, the, the choices that they're making are different because it's a TV service rollout. And, um, I would argue that actually they probably will include a lot of press that covers Apple normally, because it, why would you not want all the tech press and all the entertainment press to cover you? That's twice the press coverage. Woo! But we'll see. It's a different product, though, so the rules are going to be different. This is not going to be like come to the Steve Jobs Theater and we're going to put out a new iMac and also Jennifer Aniston will be here

that's probably not gonna be how it works yeah the more we've spoken about this today the more I think that they might just do this on its own right like just a straight up on its own event with a very different um press makeup in a very different location you know like maybe even Tim isn't there right like maybe this is a schiller and q deal or maybe this is schiller oh yeah and the two sony execs or now yeah you know what i mean like it might be completely different uh well if it's if it's something like tca you know they'll have it will it will just be maybe eddie q but probably it'll just be the two guys who run the studio who will come up if they're going to go in a tv world it's probably

best to have the people that really know the tv world right yeah to answer this question anyway it's fascinating heating up can't wait and you know all upgrade listeners you're well prepared for when this stuff launches that is the service we provide to you on upstream today's show is brought to you in part by hollow hollow is amazing hollow make insanely comfortable buckwheat pillows buckwheat pillows i hear you say what is that mike it is a very different type of pillow it's very different to your regular fluffy pillows buckwheat pillows support your head and neck and do not collapse under the weight of your head like traditional pillows they don't squish down they're just compact little things they stay cool they stay dry

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It is time, Jason Snell, to talk about the iPad Pro. Now, if I am correct, we both have both, right? Yes. So I think, and we were talking about this a couple of days ago. I think for the sake of ease now, because the 10.5 inch is now the 11 inch, we stop calling the 12.9 the 12.9 and we just called it the 13 right apple legally can't do that right because it's claiming something that doesn't exist i feel i feel

like the rest of us could if we really wanted to i i don't know whether it'll it'll stick it's certainly way easier to say the 11 and the 13 than it is the 11 and the 12.9 yeah but either way it basically it's essentially an 11 inch laptop and a 13 inch laptop it's like the macbook air except now these are ipads because it's not 10.5 and 12.9 anymore right so we'll give it a go i'm sure we're going to slip up but we may reference to it as the 13 in this episode and you know which one we're talking about now yeah so you are getting ready to publish your review on six colors but you sent me a draft of the the review yeah of what i've written so far anyway yeah your opening that you sent me is very strong it is a very strong statement which is this is a computer and i love that

yeah the the um i mean the night of the event, when I was flying back to San Francisco, I wrote a thing that my first impressions in the headline was, this is a computer. That is the theme of Apple's event. That is what Apple's trying to say here. Apple's basically saying, look, it's USB-C it's priced.

It's priced like a computer. It's got the power, more power than all of these laptops. Like it, it is Apple saying, we want you to take this thing seriously as a device. And that is, you know, that is the way it needs to be judged. Now, the challenge, and, you know, you and I have seen this over the last week, especially with the iPad Pro reviews coming out last Monday, is uh there are two ways to look at this one way is to judge it as a pc um and the other way is to judge it for what it is and how it works

and that i don't actually think those are very different um and i think there are some reviews that really walked the line quite well including neilayay Patel's at The Verge, where, you know, as I say in the article, you know, the iPad's not a computer as it's been defined for the last 40 years, but it is different. And that means that it does some things better than PCs and it does some things worse than PCs. It's not a PC, and I don't think we should judge it as a PC. Well, can it do these 10 things that my laptop running Windows 10 can do? I think that's the wrong approach. Because iPad Pro is a different thing. It's a different kind of thing.

But I also don't think that means it doesn't, you can't criticize it. Because in the end, it still has to measure up. It still has to be worth the money and it still has to be able to do things even if they're not the same. So that's the distinction I'm trying to make here is like, there's, how do you judge a product like this? And there is a group of people who want to judge it saying, well, if you're going to

call it a computer, if you're going to say that it's $1,000 and all of that, then every single thing that I can do on my PC that I can do on the iPad is a strike against it. And I don't think that's quite the right way to approach it because, as our friend Federico will point out time and again, there are lots of things that the iPad's way better than a traditional computer for. will point out time and again, there are lots of things that the iPad's way better than a traditional computer for. And so, you know, trying to find that spot where you're not judging it based on old ways of thinking, old workflows. One of the things that frustrated me last week was when Nealey said on Twitter that his team of video people at The Verge simply couldn't do a video on the iPad as an example of what the iPad fails at. And it's like, I'm sorry, that's totally wrong. They could do a video. You can do videos on the iPad. What he meant to say or what they meant to say was

they weren't comfortable making a video on the iPad because they have built an entire computer-based workflow, PC or Mac-based workflow. That's how they make videos. They've made decisions based on the tools that they've got on the computer. And those tools aren't available on the iPad. And therefore, for them to make a video, it wouldn't meet their quality standards, or it would take a huge amount of overhead to rethink their workflows, and that they weren't going to do that. And I think that is the challenge when we're thinking about the iPad, is there's can it do it?

You know, okay, but what are you asking it to do? Are you asking it to match what you do on a computer? Or are you using it for what it is good at and what it can do? And within that, again, within that, because that's the funny thing here, is people on both sides of this argument are pointing out a lot of the same things that are lacking in iOS. But from one perspective,

it's proof that this is a toy. And from the other perspective, it's frustration that this productive tool doesn't go far enough. So it's all a matter of perspective. Yeah, and we might spend some time today talking about some places that we want to see the iPad Pro go to. But I think there is a strange,

and I think sometimes fundamental issue with framing every single review around the fact that this machine has to be better or replace a PC. That isn't necessarily the way that this machine needs to be judged because we don't, you know, this isn't how we approach all products, you know, and I find that

there can be benefits in reviewing these things by people that that use them every single day like me and you instead of just kind of like someone who's begrudgingly using it in the first place well right that's the advantage uh of having somebody like federico write a review of it or having me write a review of it. But I think if you're somebody who uses a laptop and is intrigued by the iPad, having a review from somebody who uses a laptop and is wondering if they can use an iPad is useful because if that laptop user says, no, you can't, you just can then you know again from from my perspective i get frustrated because i say well no a lot of those things you can it's just different but i think there are you know it is a valid point of view to be one of those people who's on the other side of the fence and

who's you know literally like i don't know could i use this could i instead of buying a new mac laptop or pc laptop could I just buy an iPad Pro and do everything? And even the most dyed in the wool iPad Pro user would not approach that hypothetical and say, oh, yes, absolutely. You have to ask a lot of questions about what their job is and what tools they use, because sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes it is no. And I think our frustration when we see reviews of the iPad sometimes is because it's all framed around the fact that the iPad Pro is a failure because sometimes the answer is no.

And that's not right. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes it's not the right tool for the job. That doesn't mean that it's not a tool it just means that it's not the right tool for some kind of jobs but the internet lacks a lot of nuance and people sometimes lack nuance and the fact that it's not the right tool for some kind of jobs translates into it's a toy yeah like you know there are a bunch of reviews that i really enjoyed i really enjoyed nila's review i really enjoyed uh john gruber's review i think that they had a

lot of balance to them but the problem is you know as is all these things people see what they want to see and sure people will pick out things and be like oh well look at this quote it means it's a failure that's why it's great that there are so many reviews and videos and all these things is because then um i feel like you can get a really interesting um holistic view of the product by seeing these different perspectives and here is another one let's talk about hardware design these things are so thin i cannot conceive the thinness of them. Like, I know how thin they are. I know that they are thinner than any iPhone ever made, but my brain cannot believe that fact. It's, well, I mean, the shape is so totally different.

That's part of it. I think the thing that struck me about it is that Apple has decided, so with the iPad 2, they started rounding the edges. And really that was because they wanted to make them feel less chunky. I mean, so many Apple products have rounded the edges. My iMac Pro is rounded at the edges and bulges in the back. And the idea there is to make it seem thinner than it is, right? And with this design, they just stopped. just stopped they're like nah we don't need

to do that anymore we can we can go back to like the original ipad we can go back to those uh flat sides because it's so thin that uh and and they get benefits from the flat sides for things like having the the um magnets and charger for the apple pencil well and also if you made these tapered sides, you wouldn't even be able to fit the USB port on there anymore. You wouldn't be able to do that. You're at the point now probably where tapering those sides or making it any thinner is going to start to cause issues

as opposed to really making anything nice. And those flat edges, that is a stunning design. That is just a beautiful design. Considering that you've got the thin bezels as well, they're both 9mm, which is interesting. I find it interesting that the bezels are the same size on both the 11 and the 13. I continue to look at these iPads and get this real sense of a futuristic feeling design

it's reminiscent of the iPhone X in that way for me that I'm looking at these products and they feel like they shouldn't be now like it is a huge jump I still feel that way sometimes when I look at my iPhone X. It's like, you really are something that is still feels new.

And these iPads definitely have that feeling again for me. It's like, wow, you feel like a futuristic device. Yeah, and it is literally, I mean, it is literally the first time that Apple has dramatically changed the design language on the iPad since the iPad 2, which was 2011,

the second iPad ever made. Since then, it's gotten thinner, but it's basically been the same. And they've made some changes here and there, but this is completely different. It is a completely different look. The way I describe it in the review is that it's a little like looking at a laptop except there's only the one piece it super looks like a laptop now like it really does it's kind of weird yeah i think personally that this design is it's one of my favorite designs that apple has ever put out um because it is, it really does feel like, and I feel like this is overused now, but it really does feel like

if you had infinite technology available to you, this is the product you would make from the beginning, right? Because it is, it's so close to perfection, right? Because if you push these things further, if you even make the bezels thinner or the device thinner, in theory, you could be harming its usability. It really feels right now, and again, it's going to change and we'll see how it changes, but as it stands right now,

this device feels about as perfect to what an iPad should be as any iPad has ever been. And one of the reasons that I think I rank it so highly, I actually personally rank this above the iPhone X in terms of my personal

feelings on design, is the iPad Pro has no compromises in its design. Like the notch is a compromise, right? That is a compromise in the design. I like the way it looks, but ideally Apple doesn't want that notch to be there. But on the iPad, they don't need it. You know, like the only thing

that I think could be considered a compromise on design with the iPad Pro is the camera bump. But in usability affects absolutely nothing. You can lay the iPads flat with no case on a table. They do not move. They do not wobble. I don't know how that's possible, but they don't. Like, I really feel that this is one of, from just a pure design perspective, really feel that this is one of, from just a pure design perspective, one of the least compromising designs Apple has ever made.

It is just exactly as it should be. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. It's fun. I mean, it is new, too, so we've got the new product thing there. But I...

Part of this, too, is that it's so nice to see apple give design love to the product that you and i use so much yeah yeah there was something so like so in our chat room right now uh zach knox pointed out that you know in his in his mind the the last big ipad change was uh with the air and the mini, which, I mean, we could argue about it, but it still was a curved edge. The curve got a little steeper. They also got a lot thinner, which is one reason they had to do that. But still, it felt like, you know, again, this is the one where they threw out the design playbook. They didn't tweak it. They threw it out. And so we can argue about how far back

this goes, but it goes far back either way. Even if it goes to the mini and the air, it goes far back. And in an era where we've also been complaining about how Apple has not spent enough time thinking about iOS on the iPad, which we can get to later, but it really shows now like that. The fact that they didn't really start revving up the engine in terms of iPad features until iOS nine, uh, when they should have been putting the foot on the gas from the very beginning. Uh, this is, I feel like it's really starting to hurt them now, but, uh, so at a time when they were kind of like not doing it on the software side, they also weren't doing it on the hardware side.

The internals kept getting better. But like, this is the time where it's like Apple has spent a lot of design effort to make a completely different looking iPad now with the new iPad Pro. It feels good, right? It feels, as somebody who uses this product line, it does feel nice to have it get some love

from Apple's designers. You know, I maintain, I said this, you know, you can roll back the tapes. I said this after WWDC, we had no iPad features. And I still feel this way. I would forgive it if the hardware was incredible, right? That like, I will let them go every two years and be happy with it

if that's how we're going to go for software. But in those off years, I want good hardware. And, like, they really gave that to me. You know, like, this for me is like, I know iOS isn't changing, but I now have a renewed love for these devices again. Because the hardware is so incredible. And just because of some of the changes in the hardware, it's brought some new stuff to me, which is making my overall experience better. Yes.

You know, the iPad is the screen, right? Like that's what it is ultimately. And this screen is just continues to be incredible. So, you know, there's True Tone and Wide Color and it has ProMotion. And I know ProMotion is something that's kind of new for you now. Yeah, well, so that's one of the funny things about this

is that although I have a review unit of the second gen 12.9 in a drawer for photography, for all of these things, but the one I bought and the one I use is the one I bought is a first generation. And first generation does not have ProMotion and it does not have the white color gamut, and it doesn't have True Tone. And so I don't use those day to day on the iPad. So it's just

a reminder for people who are not upgrading. If they're thinking about upgrading to this, and they're not upgrading from the previous iPad Pro, you have missed out on a lot of these features that are pretty amazing. So it's just a reminder to me of how good they are and how good that display is. Again, not really new features, just the high frame rate, the smooth scrolling. It's pretty great. And yes, it is important that that display be great because it is all you see. There's a bezel, of course. The bezel is a little bit thinner than it used to be on two sides and way thinner than it used to be on the other two sides. But the screen is at the center. Now, I'm not going to say it's like touching light because I don't know what that

means. But it is a big deal and a great experience when you're using it. I think they said that because they've too many times said it's like just holding the web page in your hands or whatever, right? They needed another way to describe it because they've used that thing a million times. The rounded edges, Liquid Retina, which is apparently from the Elisa review, that's all that means, by the way. Liquid Retina just means the edges are round and it's an LCD, has introduced some letterboxing issues which is kind of interesting so if an app has not been built to the 12.1 sdk taking advantage of the full screen sizes it has some slight letterboxing on the top and bottom so basically the home indicator like you have on the iphone just is in a black bar and the status bar is in a black bar and the content sits in between it yeah

this is weirdly i mean there is a reason for it but it is weirdly much more noticeable on the 11 than the 13 because the 11 changed its aspect ratio so it is in addition to you you're getting a letterbox and you're probably also getting a you're either getting a larger letterbox depending on the orientation or you're getting a pillar box so it's yeah the the lack of or you're getting a pillar box. So it's, yeah, the lack of, if you've got a non-updated piece of software, it's much more noticeable on the 11 than it is on the 13, for sure. It really is, yeah. I've held them side by side. I'm like, the same app's open, and it's like, yeah, okay.

Like, this looks very different. It looks very different. And in multitasking, it's lowest common denominator. So if multitasking, you're using an app that hasn't been updated with an app that has, it goes back to the letterboxing, because that's how it has to do it i was actually writing my article my review in a text editor that was updated while i was writing the section about the displays and i ran the update and then suddenly it was updated to support the new display sizes i was like oh that's better uh as i was writing that section which is pretty funny and it's kind of like the iphone 10 right like going all the way to the edges doesn't necessarily

add a lot of functionality but it does look really good well that's that's the thing about the letterboxing on the 12 9 is like i i saw people mentioning it in our slack and i was like it's not that big a deal and and the thing is it's not that big a deal because the black bezel and the black letterboxing you kind of don't notice it no in in certain apps you really do notice it um but yeah the truth is that for the top and bottom especially and when you've got the safe areas in the corners because you've got those curves um you know a lot of times it's just content that's flowing under the status bar or flowing under the home indicator at the bottom. And it's not super important content. It just looks better that way. My text editor, OneWriter,

actually had a bug where it was hiding the part of the toolbar at the top of the screen was going off the top. And so there was like a game of like, how can I get it back so that I can touch it? And then the update happened and it's like, oh, now it works fine. It's great. So, you know, there may be quirks too. How incredible is Face ID on this device? So I tried to put into words how important it is.

And I think the best example is when you're using a keyboard with it, where, um, you know, when you're using a keyboard with it, you literally just keep using the keyboard. You don't, you know, you call up one password and it opens, you go to the, you step to your iPad, wherever it is, and you touch the space bar and it opens, right? You don't have to reach up because it's one of those things where you got to reach up and rest your finger on it and get the face ID or get the touch ID and all that. And now that's just gone. Your face is already in, it's right there and it unlocks the device. And yeah, so it's huge. It's great.

And the fact is it's so forgiving. Yes, if you are covering the camera, it will tell you. But what I found is like, unlike my iPhone, which I feel like is not forgiving, obviously it's got to be upright and all that. This thing is so forgiving

in terms of I don't even think about where the camera is and I just flip it up and it works or it gives me a little arrow and I just flip it up and it works and or it gives me a little arrow and i just move my hand and and it just immediately unlocks it's it's so it's fast it's forgiving and in a lot of uh scenarios when you're using it it basically it's like you don't even need to know that it's there it just sort of happens

and you keep going on working like i've been trying to trick it, but I can't do it. It's so interesting to me. I feel like it unlocks way better. I found it unlocks when two people are looking at it. It gets it, and I feel like, well, that should confuse it, but it doesn't. It feels like it has a wider field of view and can detect from further distances than my iPhone can. I can have my iPad flat down on the desk in front of me,

and it will unlock, and the iPhone is way spottier than that. Not only does it work in all orientations, it will unlock in diagonal orientations. I've been testing it. I spin the iPad around. It is incredible. I don't know what they've done,

but I genuinely believe that there is some slightly different hardware in here as well that they're just not mentioning right now and i was on the talk show this week uh with merlin man and john gruber you know they were kind of referencing the fact that there might be something there but apple don't want to talk about it because it might make the iphone seem worse so i asked them i asked them about it in my briefing. And the response I got was essentially that it's the same hardware and that the machine learning has been retrained for all these different things. So some of it is the machine learning input has to be dramatically different like why couldn't you just previous

do that on the iphone but here's the other part of it though it's the same hardware what i what they didn't say and it makes me wonder is is is it the same hardware in the same position right or did they do something where the infrared and the you know the flood illuminator and the dot projector if if that is if it's the same projector but it's projecting over a wider field or something like that right where they're actually um it's the same hardware but it has been modified uh or its placement has changed in order to get a wider angle i don't know probably study the i fix it tear down right yeah it would be interesting to see exactly where all those sensors are and where they're pointed and how that might vary. Maybe it's the same, but yeah, it is kind of hard to

believe how much more forgiving it is than it is on the iPhone. And it really makes the whole thing so much nicer. You know, I love how helpful the UI is, right? Like you're too far away. You're covering it up. Like, yeah, thank you for all of that, right? Like I enjoy all of those prompts. I think it's great. So Face ID, I mean, ultimately, big thumbs up.

I like it on the iPad even more than on my iPhone. You know, like I sit down to my iPad. It's at the desk with the keyboard out and i hit the spacebar two times and i'm in yeah you know like it wakes up the screen and opens up oh by the way talking about that i'm so happy to have tapped awake oh yeah that's that's a big uh big improvement it's one of those things i forget about because i was doing it anyway but it wasn't working right uh but i'm so happy i'm so happy to have it here the only one downside for me from uh the from face id i.e no home button is um unlocking or like quitting an app when i'm using the apple

pencil like i used to use my apple pencil and hit the home button right and it would go home there's no way with the apple pencil to make the ipad go home that interesting it this has always been the way that the apple pencil can't interact with any of the system elements so it could never change multitasking it can't bring down control center it can't bring down notification center so it also doesn't work with the home indicator so this is not a big thing but it's just something that i keep like putting my apple pencil to a place that doesn't exist right it's like off the edge of the ipad to try and hit the home button so that's the one downside that i have with you know no home button anymore everything else is upside oh and also there's a

second the screenshot thing is a nightmare i hate that like that you have to hit the wake like the two side button and the two buttons closest to the corner so i've gotten used to this sort of like just kind of pinch pinch the corner thing but yeah it's that takes some takes of getting used to for sure i've also found it to be less reliable like it's failing on me like it keeps changing the volume um i assume this is just something that needs to be tweaked, but that's been a bit wonky for me. Should we talk about the performance? I mean, I don't really know what to say. These are incredibly fast and incredibly responsive, as you would expect, but there is an abundance of headroom in these devices. I mean, okay, this is why so many people are talking about the missing parts of iOS,

because these devices are so powerful. Like, I get how you get from there to there. But all it does is, and I've seen other people say this, I completely agree, it reminds me of the iPad Air 2 and iOS 9. Like, the iPad Air 2 debuted and was way too powerful for what iOS and the iPad could do with iOS 8. And it was because in June, iOS 9 came with split screen. Yeah. Also, I think it's like you need more apps that can take advantage of this,

and they know that they've got Photoshop coming down the road, and there are others. I spent a lot of time doing some testing with Ferrite Recording Studio, the editing app that I use for podcasts when I'm on my iPad. And I sent the developer some feedback because there were a couple of places where I'm like, I'm not seeing any benefit here. And I think I've found places. I did some performance analysis apparently for him where there's some places that he might want to actually, he can gain some benefit by speeding up the app. But there were also some areas where it was just

very clearly for something like that, much faster. And it's one of those things where, you know, does it matter that the export takes half as long? It's like, well, yeah, if you're waiting for the export to happen, it does matter. And I think the challenge is that there are a lot of apps that just don't stress out the system. And so we need more of those. And there needs to be more functionality that uses the power because the power is there. And that's a recurring theme, actually. In a lot of reviews, it comes out, as we said earlier, it comes out in a lot of different ways. And sometimes it comes out angry and sometimes it comes out dismissive.

But for me, the big question is not, is this a computer or is this a PC or can it replace your PC? For me, I think the question we need to keep asking is, can a software live up to the hardware? And right now the answer is no. I think we can get into it a little bit, but like you said about the iPad Air 2 and iOS 8 and then 9, the hardware is, I said last week, the hardware is willing, but the software is weak. I mean, it's kind of like that. It's like, what can this hardware do? It can do anything you throw at it. Are there more things we could throw at it?

Like, let's find some more things to throw at it. Because right now, it will handle almost things to throw at it because right now it's it's uh it it will handle almost anything you throw at it you can edit video with a 4k external display and all that yeah you can totally do that but there are not as many of those use cases as you want because quite honestly if you're if you're using if you're not stressing out the hardware you know there are a lot of arguments that you should just be buying the $350 iPad at that point. The point of having a $1,000 iPad with all this power is that you use it. And that's the big open question, I think, about this product.

And, you know, I'm in the camp of believing that there will be more places it will be used. I mean, even just in Photoshop, right? Like, I'm sureoshop really needs this um but you know if you're gonna do more with the operating system they had it might be they had to release these devices now like these ipads will be the ipads we have for the next 18 months to two years because that's the kind of cadence that the ipad is on right now especially the ipad pro so you would want to release the hardware before the software, not afterwards. Well, I mean, I would...

My theory is that that Gurman report that they had iPad features in iOS 12 and they kicked them out because they wanted stability. I believe that this thing was designed with some of those features in mind. Okay. And we just didn't get them.

And I think that may have actually been the case with iOS 8 and iOS 9 too, is in the end, I think in the end, Apple is willing to kick those features down the road and just release an iPad that's incredibly capable and then let the next version catch up with it. The nice thing about the iPad Air 2 being so capable is that when WWDC came around the next June, they said, you can test these features now on the iPad Air

or iPad Air 2 or whatever. Like you can test them now. We have them now, even though, you know, there is an iPad Pro coming, but like we already have a capable system that you can test these on and whatever they do in iOS 13, these iPad Pros will be able to handle it. But I think it's debatable whether these were designed purposefully to be ready for whatever comes next or whether they were designed for whatever comes next and it got delayed. So referencing another thing that kind of isn't there yet, USB-C. Yeah. Yeah. mean this is we knew this would happen you and i have been talking for months now about this rumor about the ipads having usbc and i think saying that this is going to be a challenge for apple in terms of communication because usbc is a is a plug

and it only works with what the software has been built to support and apple basically didn't improve the software support for devices that it essentially with the exception of like high resolution displays and there's some complexity there right because it won't work with a it'll drive 5k displays but it won't drive 5k thunderbolt displays because it doesn't have thunderbolt you need to have a usb display and there are like three of them or something like that. There's not very many of them. No trip to Dongle Town will save you on that one, I don't think. No, because Thunderbolt and USB-C,

you can't make USB-C behave like Thunderbolt. That doesn't happen. So it's the other way around. So the challenge is they haven't done anything. If you could adapt it before, you can do it now. And the difference is just that the challenge is they haven't done anything for if you could adapt it before you can do it now and the difference is just that the port is different and you might not need an adapter but the sheer existence of it as a usbc port doesn't make it support anything more that is once again it's back to the software and as far as i can tell the only different thing that it

does is allows you to charge other USB-C devices. Right. Or USB devices. Well, it can do more power than lightning. And so there are lots of USB devices that are bus powered that you previously could only use on an iPad with that adapter where you also plugged in a lightning plug and plugged it into power. And then it would power those devices that now will just run off of bus power. Lots of microphones and USB interfaces and even some keyboards that wanted power and the iPad couldn't supply it over lightning and so they didn't work. And now they work. And that's a function of USB-C.

And yes, so that means you can also charge external devices with it. That's a function of USB-C that is great. And the software doesn't really need to support that at a high level. So great. But what it doesn't get you is what a lot of people thought, which is great. I can plug in my name of random USB-C device here and it will totally work like it does on a computer, not unless Apple has built that. And so the one we keep talking about is file access,

where Apple built file access on storage devices early on in the days of the iPhone to import photos from cameras and SD cards. And so it'll import, if you plug storage into any iOS device, it will open the photos app and try to bring in anything that it recognizes as a video or a picture. And that is all it is capable of doing to this day, even though there's a file browser now and all of that, that's not, it launches photos and it wants you to import photos and videos. And that's literally everything. And that, you know, by, by changing the port, Apple has opened itself up to that conversation again, because now it seems much more like what you find on the side of a computer, but it don't want to do it, or maybe it's just too hard, or maybe they couldn't do it in time. But think of how much criticism Apple could have completely bypassed about the iPad if they had put file storage into an iOS update. So like the amount of people that are complaining about it,

including me and you, probably wouldn't even use it that much. But it's just something that's such an oversight. We can't believe it didn't get fixed, right? And it reminds me of range anxiety with electric vehicles, which is like most of the time you don't need that range. But you are really reluctant to buy an electric car because what if I do? And that's the fact of like, if you're traveling somewhere with just an iPad, you and you and I both experienced this,

you are closing yourself off to a bunch of scenarios where somebody hands you a USB thing and says, can you get the file off of this? And the answer is no, I literally cannot do that. When I am recording something with a USB recorder and it saves something, audio files on an SD card, I can't, I had to buy a weird contraption to bridge that via wifi and a custom app. And it's like all this whole thing, because I can't just bring my iPad and my SD card recorder, even though it's got USB and I've got an SD card reader for my iPad, I can't do it. So I think that's some of it is like, does it come up a lot? Well, no, but it's hard to

commit when you, by committing, you are closing yourself off from some very common, I would say, especially in kind of business situations. And, you know, Apple would say high-speed cloud service file transfers is the future, and we're building this for the future. But the fact is, you know, there are so many scenarios where you are not, and the person you're dealing with is not, on a high-speed network. That was more of an excuse when you were using Lightning ports, but now you have the exact port that's needed. So now it's harder to excuse. Yeah. And also I don't buy it like, okay, this is a device that can edit 4k video. What cloud access? Like, you know,

at least it can import the video, but that's an example where it's like, well, why even bother? Let's just use the cloud. Oh, cause the files are huge. And my audio files, they're also huge. And if I'm on an airplane and somebody hands me a PowerPoint presentation on a USB drive, what do I do? The answer is nothing because the iPad won't see it. And that's like, that's not, that's not good enough. So again, they could have saved, this all could have been avoided if they had done that software update. And I wonder if it's coming or if they're just going to be adamant about not doing it. I will say this, because I don't want to assume malfeasance here. It will be a crying shame if Apple doesn't want to support file access in iOS because of some sacred cow that was put there years ago by somebody who may not even be with Apple

anymore saying, Oh no, no, we can't do that. Like you've got a files app now get over it. Let us plug in devices and see what files are on them. Um, and if they had done that, and we've been complaining about this for years now, but if they had done that before they had switched to USB-C or when they switched to USB-C, this whole line of arguments would just vanish. And they didn't do it. So maybe it'll happen later. That would be good. But that's the part that gets me.

It's not the I want this feature, so therefore I'm grumpy that they didn't provide it. It's like, do you guys understand how this one example opens you up to this whole line of criticism that you could just avoid if you've implemented that feature. So maybe it's just really hard and they couldn't do it. And they were concerned about the performance issues in iOS 12. And so they had to kick it out. But it seems like maybe a mistake from an iPad product rollout perspective. The iPad Pro is not just the iPad itself. It's also the peripherals that Apple sells alongside it. We should talk about those, but before we do, let me thank Pingdom for their support of this episode. While you've been listening to this show,

how would you know if your website had gone down if you were not a Pingdom user? How would you know if customers couldn't click that Buy Now button or access the content that you've been publishing? You might stumble across it by luck. You might get an email. You might get a tweet, but that's no good. You need a reliable system. You need something to tell you that everything's running smoothly on your site and to alert you when it's not. That's why you need Pingdom. Pingdom will let you know the moment that your website goes down in whatever way is best for you. It's super

smart as well. You can customize it to get the information needed to solve an issue sent to whoever needs to receive it, whether that's one person or your entire team. Pingdom are dedicated to making the web faster and more reliable for everyone. They utilize more than 70 global test servers that will emulate visits to your site, checking its availability as often as every single minute.

All Pingdom needs is your URL and they take care of the rest. Don't risk being the last to know about something on your site breaking. Start monitoring your website today by going to pingdom.com slash RelayFM. You'll get a 14-day free trial there with no credit card required. And then when you sign up, use the code UPGRADE at checkout to get an amazing 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom for their support of this show and RelayFM. So let's start with the keyboard folio. And let's start with the keys.

So how does this feel to you? The keyboard. I mean, it's effectively the same as the previous one, but what have you been feeling? Well, it is the same, which is reassuring because actually I like that keyboard. It's funny, one of the biggest pieces of criticism I've heard about the keyboard was from Harry McCracken, who used to be the editor at PC World and he's now at Fast Company. And he's been using an iPad as his primary computer for a long time. People don't know. He's another one we should put on the list of the high profile iPad people because that is

his computer. And his biggest criticism of it is he wears them out. He uses them so much to write all of his articles and stuff that he wears them out and has to get new keyboards. And I think that's not great. Apparently, if you really use them, you can wear out that fabric keyboard. But I like it. And he was disappointed because it doesn't seem to be any different. I've totally worn them down to making them shiny. I haven't broken any, but, like, I've made those keys shiny. He's gotten them beyond that point.

But, yeah, they're really good. I think they're good and bad in these new ones. I think they addressed. It's not quite like the pencil where I feel like they addressed every issue. And you and I have talked about that a little bit. They addressed every issue and it's like, yes, they got it exactly here. It's a more complicated product. It has to do a bunch of different things. They have had to make some trade-offs, but I do feel like they learned from the past version and have made some very good decisions along with some

decisions that are questionable. But overall, for me, the number one thing they needed to do was make this thing more lappable, to make it more steady when you're typing with the iPad in your lap, because it was shaky. It's not quite as shaky as something with a pure kickstand, but the old one had a fold. And so the back case came down, and a lot one had a fold. And so the, the back case came down and a lot of the weight of the iPad was transferred into the back of the, of the underneath part that's sitting on your lap. And then there's a, there's a fold there. And as a

result, you end up with this thing where the two surfaces are kind of independently moving and that made it feel much less stable. And plus it was dealing, the force was getting transferred through this kind of folded over triangle in the back. And they completely changed that where there's a single rigid surface that is the part that goes on your lap. And the way that the force is transferred is more direct.

And as a result, it is totally like, I have spent all weekend writing my review using the keyboard folio and mostly not on a table, but in my lap and it has worked great. And that is, so for all the other details we can get into here, for me, that was number one on Apple's list

and they got it, they nailed it. So the keyboard, as you say, in the lap is much sturdier. But the iPad itself, like when you're tapping on the iPad and it's in that kind of keyboard, it's pretty bouncy as it kind of is resting on that triangle. Because the triangle is still kind of there as like, you know, how it's putting the angle in. There's quite a bit of bounce to it. It's a little bouncy. But it's easier to put into position uh you know like it is a more easily understandable design than the origami of the previous version i went i went back to so when i was writing about this i got the old

one out and i i was using it now i and i do what i still do which is like how does this go what is the order where does it and like it's you can figure it which is like, how does this go? What is the order? Where does it, and like, it's, you can figure it out, but like this one, there's no question. Just,

oh, it goes like this. Yeah. It takes some, it's super fast, easy. The new one doesn't. I still, you know,

same wishes, you know, I wish it had media keys, you know, I really wish they found, even to put some skinny media keys in there, you know, like a play pause and brightness and all that stuff.

Other keyboards have it. I really wish that they would have had it, but they don't. So, you know, like a play pause and brightness and all that stuff. Other keyboards have it. I really wish that they would have had it, but they don't. So, you know, maybe another, maybe another time. Yeah. No function row, which again, I don't really need. Um, this, I feel like this is one of those things where it's the faster horse argument. I don't need a function row. What I need is keyboard access to a play pause, volume, brightness. Those are the things that I need keyboard access to. And if Apple's not going to provide those keys on this keyboard, fine, provide back to the software again, provide assignable shortcuts in the system that are system wide that let me do keyboard shortcuts to replace those dedicated keys that they've decided

they can't fit on this keyboard. But they don't do that. And I don't mean backlighting, although I know people really want backlighting. It would be very hard to do on a keyboard with this design. I do get frustrated by the lack of a caps lock indicator, because, boy, I start typing in all caps because I brushed against the caps lock all the time. There are lots of magnets. These magnets make it easy to attach. All the magnets. There are just lots of magnets these magnets make it easy to attach all the magnets there are just lots of magnets there are magnets everywhere in this thing 100 plus magnets all over

this thing including many of them are on the back side which provides that kind of like grid of support which i think is actually makes it easier to go on and it holds it more securely um the the the way that i have approached it is basically, look where the camera bump is and look where the camera hole is. And you just kind of go boop, and it does it, and it aligns it, and it holds it solidly. And my experience with it is that only once or twice have I been fiddling with the case and had it kind of pop off the magnets mostly it does exactly what uh you want which is you can remove it easily when you want but otherwise it stays stuck and that's that's what i want they i think they did a pretty good job but it's also not difficult to take off like it's not like super stuck on there but it's just the right amount you need when you want it comes

off but it doesn't come off accidentally and that that's a tricky little balance that they you know well designed i have no doubt that people were really at apple were really trying to find that sweet spot that's that it holds it sufficiently well that it's not going to fall out accidentally but that it's still uh 103 magnets would have been too many like oh it's just a little bit too strong now 102 is perfect right uh the overall look of the keyboard folio is incredibly boring it is just this smooth gray nothing like no apple logo even it has nothing it's just smooth gray nothing this is my grumpy part of my review especially is like it's so disappointing like

it's not textured it only could the the keyboard only comes in gray which has always been the case but even the folio that doesn't have a keyboard that comes in gray and white on the big one and gray white and pink on the small one and it's this synthetic material it's super flat and featureless which i've also found picks up fingerprints and it picks up other junk i had this in my kitchen at one point uh when i was cooking something and i took it back to the living room and it had like just junk all over it and it's so visible because it's this featureless slab of of gray kind of not particularly appealing material. And it's, yeah, it's not,

and the one side, which has that flat surface with the keyboard on it, which it's great that it's a single surface for that, but it is, there's nothing to detail it. It's just empty. At least there's a fold on the other side. So yeah, the Apple logo, you mentioned that to me yesterday. It's like, why not put an Apple logo on there?

Like you're Apple, you're the only company that can put Apple logos on stuff. Emboss an Apple logo on something to say, I am so awesome. I am using my iPad as a keyboard with, and look at that horizontal Apple logo there. Nope, nothing. And it's super disappointing because like, I understand that they're from an engineering standpoint, they're probably, they need to use certain kinds of materials. But like, it just is, it's, it's not attractive. It's, in fact, what I say in the review, I keep referencing this review that I haven't finished writing yet, is basically Mike was right. Which is, I don't like putting stickers all over everything.

like putting stickers all over everything, but let me tell you, I really want to put stickers all over these keyboard cases because they're super boring and kind of unpleasant to touch and look at as they are. And that's too bad. I spent the last couple of years with a leather smart cover on Midnight Blue on my iPad Pro, and I loved it. I was so happy when they finally came out with some colors and some better options for the smart cover. But here we are, we're back to the reset here where the accessories Apple is releasing are extremely functional, but that's it.

So the previous smart cover kind of had, a smart keyboard, I should say, had like two angles. You would have the keyboard out, and it would be in an angled away-from-you position, as you would have a laptop. And then you could flip the keyboard around, and you could stand it up in what I would call the media position, which is the same as what the smart covers used to do, smart covers still do. But the smart keyboard would also do that the new

keyboard folio has two angles with the keyboard in front of you one is what they call desk mode and one is called laptop mode but the desk mode is basically the replacement for it standing straight up for you to watch media on it it's media position you you would not there's no good ergonomic scenario where you're using that keyboard and the screen is in desk mode i think it's media position you you would not there's no good ergonomic scenario where you're using that keyboard and the screen is in desk mode i think it's just not either your hands are going to be too high or the screen's going to be too low in fact i think on the 11 even in uh the laptop mode this the angle isn't isn't steep enough i'm i i think it's much better on the 13 than the 11 um the it's it's it's too upright in my opinion on the 11. It's too upright, in my opinion, on the 11,

even in the non-upright mode. So the 10.5 had this issue as well. The 10.5 was always way steeper than the 12.9. So that is something that has continued. Yeah. I guess it's just the amount of material that they have, like all that kind of thing, right? Yeah. I think it's the pure geometry of material that they have like all that kind of thing right yeah yeah no it's i think it's the pure the pure geometry of it and the size of the i will say also

the the keys are full size on the 13 and the even on the 11 it's not it's not quite full size there some narrow narrow keys there so it's a much nicer typing experience this is among the reasons that if you are torn about the 11 and the 13 that 13 has some typing advantages i really missed the media view i used to use it a lot um especially in bed you know if i'm watching videos or whatever uh i miss it i think it's a shame to lose it i know i could get a smart cover uh and but i'm smart folio smart well yeah the smart yes smart folio that's what it's called but it's effectively a smart cover with a back on it but I'm just not keen on swapping them around

all the time so I'll see how I go on that one I haven't made my mind up and if I get one and do swap it but that doesn't seem keen to me and I guess the last thing about the keyboard folio if you don't want the keyboard in front of you you kind of wrap it around now

so the keyboard's on the outside so you're kind of holding on to the keys i've heard a lot of people say they don't like this uh for me it's kind of like a fidget toy because they've got buttons to just press uh so you know there's a i think there's a hall effect sensor somewhere where um basically when you uncouple the when the ipad even though the smart connector is on the back when the ipad is sitting in one of those two little trays at the front for the two different angles, it's the snapping of it into that tray via a magnet that is turning on the keyboard. So when it's uncoupled at all from those little trays, the keys don't work. from those little trays, the keyboard, the keys don't work. So when you wrap it around backward,

you can, you know, put your fingers on those squishy little thingies all you like. It doesn't do anything. Now, if you feel that's weird and distracting and you don't like it, then I get that. Um, for me, um, and I, I think this is actually an endorsement of this keyboard. I never, ever, ever, ever, ever went anywhere with my old smart keyboard unless the only thing I was doing was using it for typing something. I would, otherwise I would take another cover or I would leave it off. I just, because it was thick. This other one, the thing we didn't say, like it's flat now. The old one had like the thin part and then the super thick part where the keyboard lived it was really kind of janky um this new one it's just one thing it's flat it's it

feels much better it's much lighter the big problem with the 12.9 was always the surface area of the screen was so huge and i had to cover it which meant the whole keyboard thing was huge there actually were bezels on the keyboard um on the of the keys. There was just like empty space because I had to cover the whole thing. So it's much smaller now and it's much lighter now. All of these things make it a much better experience. So, you know, there's a lot going for it. But I will say, so I will carry it around now. And that's a big win.

Like I can carry it around and I do as my smart cover essentially with the keyboard. So that's huge because I never wanted to do that with the old one. That said, when I'm just reading, especially like in the morning, if I'm reading like the newspaper in bed while I'm drinking tea, I just pull it off and just use the naked iPad and that's great. And then it just snaps right back on. So that's sort of where I am is that I'm using the smart keyboard folio to take it around, but I'm also trying to be a pretty aggressive in just removing it when I want it out of the way.

So I'm not doing a lot with it folded back and squishing on the little keys. Usually in a scenario like that, I'll just take it off. Let's talk about the Apple Pencil. I think Apple just improved the Pencil in every conceivable way from version one to version two. It is a huge jump. it's basically pretty much everything i wanted but i didn't expect to get everything i wanted so it's again it's a bigger jump than i would have thought it would have been it's a weird feeling isn't it when when your your to-do list for the pencil is exactly or for any product yes exactly what is done but that's what happened with the pencil it's like they they uh whoever is building the pencil knew exactly what they needed to hit in the next version and they did it the texture

on the new apple pencil feels fantastic it's nice to the halt um it has a warm feeling to it with from the softness of the texture not this kind of like cold hard shiny plastic this isn't something that i've seen a lot of people mention because only people like me really care about it so one of the reasons it feels nicer to hold is that it is better balanced the weight inside of it is more evenly distributed and the Apple Pencil is actually smaller it is not as long as the previous one

so kind of the entire end where the lightning port was and the cap, they chopped that off so the new Apple Pencil is slightly smaller than the last one and it needed to be. The previous Apple Pencil was slightly too long, so when you would hold it in your hand, there was too much sticking out the other side, which misbalanced it. So it has a much nicer feeling in the hand because it is less long, so it is nicer to hold. It is more evenly balanced. So that's one of the reasons if you feel like it feels nicer to hold, that's one of the reasons why. Another is the flat side. You can hold it by the flat side, you can pick it up, you know, and it orientates itself. It doesn't roll away because it has the

flat side. You can put it down. You just put it down without it like sliding off the table. It's fantastic. And also the flat side is how you store it. It's how you charge it. The magnetic It's how you store it. It's how you charge it. The magnetic attachment and pairing and inductive charging is absolutely incredible. This one thing has changed the pencil considerably. It is always there. And for me, what is more important than it always being there is that it's always ready.

Now, I have always stored my Apple Pencil in a pen loop that i stuck to the back it's in the exact same position as as i've always had it the problem was my ipad would an apple pencil would stay connected the battery would always drain i'd grab the pencil it was never charged when i needed it to be now it always is because that's you store it on the charger. I have fallen in love with the Apple Pencil all over again because of this one feature. I think for people like me who don't use the Pencil very much at all, it also makes it more relevant in the sense that, yeah, you want it and it's like, where is it? And oh, and it's not charged. And forget it, right? Whereas with this, yeah, you want it, and it's like, where is it? And, oh, and it's not charged,

and forget it, right? Whereas with this, even if you don't know, like, you're planning on using it, you're like, I'm going to do some pencil stuff here. Even if you don't carry it around all the time, then you just snap it to the side, and you go where you're going, and it is there, and it's charging, and it's ready for you when you decide to use it so it's so much better on so many different levels the magnetic attachment is not so strong that if you just kind of toss your ipad in a bag it's not going to pop off but it'll be in the bag with your ipad and when it's out and about and you're using it and shaking it and stuff it stays put yeah so like you know it will uh attach and it will stay attached And when you're going about your daily business, it will be fine. But as you say, this exact thing happened to me, I was testing it, taking it in and out of a bag, it will come off, but it'll be in the bag, right? Like,

they can't, you know, I would recommend if you're going to put it in a bag and this concerns you, just pop it in a in a different pocket in the bag. Most bags have like pencil pockets, just put it in there. It's totally fine. Get it when you need it but like it's gonna be fine right like yeah it is not as rigid as like strapping it to there but it's this is as strong a connection as they could do without you putting the apple pencil into something i think this is the right way to go uh the double tapping uh gesture is great you know this is really nice i've i've used it in a bunch of apps that use it and i'm seeing you know lots of developers think about interesting ways to do it we were talking about ferrite earlier and you were telling me that there's a cool feature in ferrite the way that they're going to be implementing it that you could basically assign a keyboard shortcut to it

effectively which is fantastic the beta there's like a handful of features although i wonder if you'll expand those but the idea that, so I don't draw, and I don't write out longhand. So my need for Apple Pencil has always been pretty limited. But I think in part due to your feedback, Ferrite has some good Apple Pencil support. And I was looking at it as part of my review. And so i should say also like uh i we speculated that there was an accelerometer in here like airpods but what apple told me is that it's not it's a touch sensitive surface on the front edge the front the front of the cylinder of the pencil is a it's like a little tiny trackpad wrapped around that front surface of the pencil which means theoretically

they could support other gestures it may be that that they found that other gestures and moving your finger around on it was confusing, but it's possible that software could handle other gestures beyond just a double tap in the future. But anyway, that is a touch sensitive surface. It's not just feeling the accelerometer tap. That's not what it's doing. But my point about Ferrite is, yeah, I set Ferrite to use the pencil to delete audio and a double tap to play and pause. And that allowed me to hold my iPad in my hand and stop the audio and delete a couple of little segments and then just double tap the pencil and the audio starts again. And I thought, well, that's pretty cool.

Like the idea that you can do that or you can toggle. And that's an example where the app developer has overridden the standard settings because there's a standard set of system settings and replaced it with their own. In this case, you have to because there's no such thing as draw and erase really

in an audio editor but um i'm excited about that as a as a possibility that the the gestural support on the pencil makes it that much more of a tool that could be used in other apps as well so all around apple pencil like i love it i'm using it more again than I did before. I've fallen in love with it all over again. It's absolutely wonderful. There are two iPads. There is the 11-inch. There is the

13-inch. Which one is right for most people? I have been using both iPads frequently. I have my uses. I've been using the 10.5 for when I travel and also using it in bed to read and watch videos and to use it in the morning. And then would use the 12.9 as my work machine. It's where I'm doing all of my communication, my email, all my show planning, all of my administration, everything's going in there. my show planning, you know, all of my administration, everything's going in there. For me, nothing's changed. Because even though the 13-inch is, you know, it's physically smaller,

for me, it's not necessarily the physical size. It's that 13 inches of screen is more screen than I want in those scenarios. Like, at night, that's too bright. It's too big. It's too bright when I'm reading in bed at night next to my wife, right? Like it's too much light. And the 11 is still smaller. It's still lighter. It's still less expensive. You know, like I actually still think that the 11 inch iPad, especially now that it is 11 inches, so it's more than 10.5, I think that it is actually even more than the 10.5, the right iPad for most people. I think the trade-offs that you will experience, like slightly less than full apps and multitasking, slightly less than a full size on-screen keyboard, they are worth it. If you believe, and if you know that the iPad is going to

be a serious part of your working setup, the 13-inch is probably the right one for you. Otherwise, you should get the 11-inch because I think that the smaller iPad Pro is now better than it's ever been. So if you're in that camp, you have a much, much better option available to you. you have a much, much better option available to you. So I sort of agree with you and sort of disagree with you. I feel like with this generation, with the 13 getting smaller, that I think the 11 is still the right, the smaller of the two is still the right iPad Pro for a majority of people. I feel like that percentage is less than it used to be.

I think they're closer. I agree with that. I agree with that for sure. I think it's, if it was 70-30, it's 60-40 now. Yeah. I feel like, because I feel like with the 13 being so much smaller, so much less kind of ungainly to hold, and the benefits you get in terms of the bigger screen, the better multitasking, the better keyboard, that for a certain class of user that's

larger, maybe who might who might before been like, Oh, yeah, I like all those things. But boy, it's just so huge. It's going to be it's less awkward, it's less ungainly, it's more of a pleasant device to hold the so I think they're closer, but I think you're right. I think the 11 is still the, uh, more likely choice. I will say, you know, who is, who is the 11 for the 11 is, is powerful and beautiful and has all of these accessories. And that's great. If part of me wants to say that the 11 inch iPad pro is kind of for people who want the nicest iPad possible, but may not be using it as an iPad pro. Like, because really, if the smaller screen doesn't bother, it's bigger than the iPad at $350.

But like for $350, you can get an iPad and it has pencil support. It's the old pencil, I know. But you can get that. And you can get a keyboard case for it if you even want to type on it. And you can do multitasking and all these things. Like if you're going to spend $799 on the 11, I do think like there is a good question to ask yourself, which is at this point, what are you going to use it for? And if you're really going to use it for multitasking and things like that, consider that 13. It's not as ungainly as it was. That all said, I do think for most

people, the 11 is or for more people than than not, the 11 is the right one to choose. I use, I've used them both. And it's funny because going into this, I was really thinking that I might go down to the smaller iPad because the larger iPad was, I love the screen, but it's just, you know, it was a load. It is, you know, it's a heavy thing. And so that way to spread out over a large distance. The new 13 really is so much better at all of that. And then I pick up that 11 and I got to say, I pick it up and I'm like, oh no, this is way too small. It's great because it's so light. I spent a day just using the 11 and at the end of the day, I up the 13 and i'm like oh yeah this is the stuff so for me i am validated i will say there are times where i've used the 13 and i'm like which

one is this you lose you lose perspective but then you pick up the 11 you're like oh it's oh yeah it's that one it's just a hey little guy we are we i think we are mostly in agreement right that you know the most people, but the percentages have changed. I 100% agree with that analogy. They're creeping closer together. And again, it's probably as close as it can get if they keep these sizes distinct. Because there isn't really much more you can do to the 13-inch to make it closer to the 11 now. You know, in size and weight you know and i don't

think you'd want it to get any bigger that's the thing is you you don't and apple made that choice right i i think if we talk about the future of the ipad i have a hard time imagining them changing from this scenario right now in terms of the ipad pro yeah there's an additional size and it's a different thing right like there is a bigger size you can do but that's a different thing, right? Like there is a bigger size you can do, but that's a different thing. And we don't know what that looks like yet. Yeah, because I think that's the truth is if they're going to do another iPad Pro size other than 11 and 13,

I think it's like a 15 and it's a artist's tablet slate thingy. And I don't think they're actually going to do that. But I feel like that's where they would go, is creating yet another giant screen, not tinkering around the margins of these two. They feel like they've kind of landed on more or less the right trade-offs here.

And if you get them closer together, yeah, sure, you can make a 12-inch iPad Pro that's one size fits all, but I don't know, that doesn't seem necessary. So we have a little bit more we want to get to today, but first, let me tell you about Luna Display. I mean, if you want something, a nice little trinket to make that new iPad Pro purchase even better for you, Luna Display is it. It is the hardware solution that will turn your ipad into a wireless display for your mac you will have a super portable second display with stunning image quality and zero

lag setting up a luna display is so simple you just plug this beautiful little piece of hardware so effectively just as i say the smallest dongle you will find you put it into your mac and you'll be up and running in seconds with everything working over Wi-Fi. Or you can also use USB as well to connect them all up together. It's super simple. And then Luna Display will be a complete extension for your Macintosh computer. It supports external keyboards as well as Apple Pencil and touch interactions. So you have the best of all worlds basically turning your Mac into a part touchscreen device.

It is so simple to set up and what i love about it is you can just plug it in and leave it and whenever your mac comes on lunar display you can have it open and you're ready to go so you don't have to go through this whole mess of like opening up the mac and pairing it all again it's just you set it you just open up the lunar display app on your ipad you are ready to go i love this thing it's super simple you just plug it in forget about about it, and it's there. And then you have the power of a second display whenever you need it. You know, like if you're on the road, say you always use two displays at home.

You're on the road, you've got a Mac, you've got like a laptop, and you've got an iPad. Now you can set up that two-display experience no matter where you are. It's super awesome. And listeners of this show can get 10% off Lunar Display. This is an exclusive discount for our listeners. Just go to LunarDisplay.com and use the promo code UPGRADE at checkout for that 10% off. That is L-U-N-A

D-I-S-P L-A-Y.com LunarDisplay.com and the promo code UPGRADE at checkout. Our thanks to Lunar Display for their support of this show and RelayFM. So, code upgrade at checkout our thanks to luna display for their support of this show and relay fm so there is a gap between now and and june when which we will i'm sure touch on this many more times but just from a super high level i was kind of kind of trying to think of what are some of the things that we would want to see in ios uh in i iOS 13 to really further take advantage

of this professional-grade hardware that we now possess. I think one thing I want to see is some refinements to multitasking. These are things that I wanted to see from the beginning. More keyboard controls. I can hit Command Space and search for an app,

but give me a keyboard shortcut to throw that app to the left or right side right you know i i can get 70 of the way there with the keyboard let me do the whole thing with the keyboard um i was thinking about this too right like what more could you do with the dock because i don don't, you know, most of my applications that I use, like 75% of the applications that I frequently use, they're all in a dock, right? Like I've set up my dock in such a way that if I need to bring up a second app, I can get to it from the dock, or I use Spotlight. But I was thinking like, what more could you do? And I was thinking about the home screen, right? Like how can you change up the home screen? Because something I think needs

to happen there as well. And it got me to thinking, I don't know if this is a good idea, but it's something I thought about. We have Launchpad on the Mac, right? Which is a way to bring up all your applications from the dock. Why couldn't we just get to our applications that way on the iPad? Like, the Launchpad was just in the dock, and that's where all your apps are

and the home screen can be used for something else. Like you could have shortcuts there. You could maybe have files there. You could have applications there. It's maybe more like the Mac's desktop and less like an app launcher because you could have an app launcher in the dock. Yeah, sure.

Is that crazy? No, I don't know. I don't know i i think there's something there right i think i think what what overall what you're saying is i want the multitasking stuff to i want another another stab at it another another draft of it where knowing what we know now i don't want them to go back to the drawing board again though because i don't think that's good i i want to see them just because really they pretty much went back to the drawing board with yeah with 11 i want to see refinements to 11 system sure sure sure but the doc is a good example where it's like well what what is the purpose of that and how do we get that to be more functional as a part of the multitasking experience? I mean, the nice thing about using the keyboard is you can also go to Spotlight and find an app and then drag it into multitasking.

But if you don't have a keyboard, you can't do that. So, yeah, I think it's an interesting idea of being able to get more access there. And I hear you about the keyboard controls. Overarching, it's going to come up a couple of times, but I feel like keyboard is something like more keyboard stuff is a thing that I really want throughout. But yes, should you be able to launch an app in multitasking from the keyboard? You totally should. If that's Spotlight and then you select an app and you hit a keyboard shortcut to pop it uh left or right in split view great do that but something like that would be great keyboards are not the only uh input peripherals though right you know it's been on my list for a long time and people always say like that'll never happen it's like

i'd like to see the proof that that will never happen it's like because apple said that they wouldn't um trackpad support external pointing device support oh that will never happen well uh i would have believed you until they put a text editing cursor in ios a few years ago but we literally there is a cursor now for editing text so genie the genie's out of the bottle. There's a cursor in iOS now. I would love to have a keyboard with a trackpad attached to it or an external trackpad for, again, not mandatory, but for situations where I'm editing text so I can move that text cursor around when I'm using an external keyboard instead of having to reach up to the screen and put two fingers on it to do it. Yeah, would kind of like that that would be great we have external monitor support you know in a more significant way i mean i don't think it would be the worst

thing in the world to have some kind of pointer like so that you could plug it in to a display and have a virtual finger of some description. You know, like it's not completely graceful, but I wouldn't mind to see them have a go at it. Yeah, I think that's less likely, but I think it's not impossible, especially since a lot of these apps are going to be updated to support menu bar

and cursors and things because of Mac OS. Yeah. I also am putting out there again in my kind of impossible future direction file, the idea that Apple is going to release an external monitor that is a touchscreen. And so their external monitor will also, if you plug an iPad into it, just be a giant iPad. That would be interesting. Maybe that won't happen, but it could. It could. will also if you plug an ipad into it just be a giant ipad that would be interesting um maybe that won't happen but uh it could it could and then the external storage thing that we've talked about like yeah it's got a that's just got to be at files this is i'm just gonna put out there files

needs to support when you plug in an external storage device it shows you the external storage device and if there are technical issues where like we don't want you opening, you just, it's just a copy. You need to copy it to your local storage or whatever. Fine. I don't want to open a file on a drive and then have the drive disappear. Great.

Do what you need to do. But when I plug in a storage device, I want files to open or the option for files to open. I want to see everything on that device and be able to copy it to an app, sandbox, or just to my storage on my device or to my cloud storage.

And I don't want to stop there. Two, I want native support for SMB shares in files. I want to be able to be on a local network with a file server and mount it in files and copy the files off of it. I can do that with third-party apps, and those third-party apps will even work within files, although it's really annoying

because you kind of got to launch the app and then launch files, which is kind of beside the point, but you can do it. Like, put it in there. Put it in there. The iPad is being used in the enterprise. Enterprise servers.

Enterprises have not just cloud storage, but they have, like, file servers. Companies have file servers. People have file servers. just throw it in there again is an edge case sort of but it's a blocker and it's frustrating and why not just embrace it like yep files we did it they're not that exciting that's what apple will say but you can get to them they're they're old. Soon we will slough off our human shells and become beings of pure thought and energy. But until then, we have files for you.

This is a somewhat selfish one, but better audio support. Multiple simultaneous audio streams. Let me make a call in Skype and record it in another. Come on. I was thinking about this. I was playing music via my home pod and um and i opened ferrite which uses the audio subsystem because it can record out of the

microphone and i hadn't i hadn't switched away from the home pod controls because i was controlling my home pod so i could do the volume volume and next track and all of that. And the moment I opened Ferrite, the music stopped. And I thought to myself, okay, this is ridiculous. Like this has got to change. And this is one of those examples where on iOS, audio can't do more than one thing at a time.

It actually can to separate output devices. Like in a way they've they've gotten around this because when you pop open the little floating thing of audio inputs you can select a home pod and then play to that and then switch back to your ipad and that that totally works which is great but it's like okay starting point but when i open ferrite which is hitting the microphone, like, I don't want you to stop playing my audio. Like, I want this thing to be able to do more than one thing at a time. It needs to be more sophisticated.

And yes, it would be great if that meant I could run a recording app and a telephony app simultaneously and recording over here in voice memos or something else while also being in Skype. And again, I'm not asking for audio hijack. I would love apps to be able to have that level of audio access that Rogamiba could write audio hijack for iOS, but I'm not expecting that. I'm expecting something like, oh, you can now use two apps can use the microphone at once. That would be great. So I i don't know i'm with you that that is yes it is a little self-serving because what we do is audio but also like

again the more flexibility you build into the system who knows what other things will come out of that anyone that adopts um the ipad with ios as a significant part of their workflow will eventually come to shortcuts as the way to bridge gaps or help them fix problems that they need to solve. I would love to see some enhancements to shortcuts as part of this. Being able to have shortcuts trigger in the background automatically, running at set times, running at set locations, that kind of thing would be wonderful. know running at set times running at set locations that kind of thing would be wonderful yeah uh i i agree that one of these um one of these things that somebody has asked me in the past that i couldn't give them a really great answer is like i want a shortcut to fire off at a time and it's like i think you can do that through this like chain of apps uh you always it always has to be

some kind of user intervention so like you can have a notification pop up from like launch center pro which when you tap will go to go to it and launch it but you always have to intervene exactly so so yes being able to say i just want to schedule this and run it at a certain time and i yes yes Apple that is scary because who knows how people will use those sorts of things but you can't neuter the system that way you can't you have to let people

do things like that even if their you know their annoying cousin will set a fart to play out of the speakers at full volume at 3am right okay fine don't let your cousin a fart to play out of the speakers at full volume at 3 a.m. Sure. Right? Okay, fine.

Don't let your cousin use your iPad then. But I need to, I want my alarm. Put it in the alarms. Put it in the clock app and say, when this alarm goes off, don't make sound, but play a shortcut. Like, okay, that would be fine if they want to do it that way. I'll also throw in, I want keyboard shortcuts for shortcuts.

I want to be able to launch a shortcut anywhere in the system by using a defined shortcut. And yes, I realize that there's complexity there as there is on the Mac. On the Mac, you can set a global shortcut and sometimes that will be overridden or override in a particular app because it has a different shortcut. That's life. Choose a different shortcut then. Like again, we're humans, we're smart, we can figure it out, but let me do that. Let me be able to, in any app go bloop and a shortcut happens. Um, I got, you and I probably have lots of other shortcut things. I would like the shortcut shortcuts to optionally run. Um, now, shortcuts run and show you the shortcut in a lot of contexts.

It's terrible. Like I get it, but it's like, that is one of the most aggressively nerdy things that Apple has done in a very long time. Like that is like running an app with a window that shows you what source code is currently running. No, like I think it's great for debugging,

but as a user tool, you need the option of throwing up some UI that says, my shortcut is running now. And not, here's a shortcut in its entirety as you watch it go through the steps. So I would like shortcuts to be simplified and less in my face as well. I feel like we got to mention Xcode. Sure, yes. There's actually a hashtag ask upgrade question. There's two I wanted to get today, but this is one. I kind of like this theory where Matt says, could a reason behind the move to USB-C be Xcode

and using the iPad to develop for the phone, perhaps coming of iOS 13? I like that Jason style fever dream theory. Yeah, right? Like, and there are lots of reasons the developers will tell you why the iPad is not a real device, but it always comes back to, I can't do my development on it. And like Fairpoint, I think personally, in the grand scheme of things, having developer tools on the iPad is not as important as some of these other areas.

But if I was a developer, I would feel differently about it, probably. So I think it's out there. as important as some of these other areas. But if I was a developer, I would feel differently about it, probably. So I think it's out there. I still believe that Apple, what Apple's going to do is they're going to do a new thing that lets you build apps and it'll run on iOS. It'll be Swift only.

Yeah, it won't be Xcode. It'll have some limitations. It might not be Swift only. You might be able to bring in C and Objective-C and all of that, but it's going to be like a different set of tools that are next-gen developer tools that run on it's going to be like a different set of tools that are next gen

developer tools that run on it and won't be able to do everything. And if you're like using an existing app, there will probably be like 18 different reasons why you can't bring that app over to the iOS environment. But if you're building a new app, or you're building a certain subclass of apps, you can do it. And then there'll be lots of complaining about that, because that's what everybody does when you don't get exactly what you want. But that seems to me like the most likely path forward. Again, not not high on my list, but it's got to be a stop point. Yeah, you do have to start somewhere. And it's unlikely that they're going to say, Oh, we ported all of Xcode over, it's going to be we have this new thing. And it may be we have this new thing on all our platforms, right? It may be that, you know,

we're gonna, we're to keep Xcode here. It's going to be the thing that you can use for all your existing projects. We're going to keep updating it, but we're also building a next-gen set of tools. And here it is. And it also runs on the iPad. And then the last thing that I wanted to mention was, like, Apple's supporting pro development via developer business models in some ways. So, like, what can Apple do to entice more support for pro software like can they realistically do anything i don't know like do they need to do more or encourage more about subscription stuff like larger companies like adobe are bringing more

software to the ipad and they're supporting this because it's subscription. Or is this something that's naturally going to play out when the iPad and the Mac run the same software? Is that what Apple does, right? Like, will WWDC 2019 make it easier for developers because they can create these applications that run in both places? Like, is that what they need to do to help develop a business model? Like, I'm not sure what the answers are, but they need to do to help develop a business model. It's like, I'm not sure what the answers are, but they need to do something. And I think the seeds are there to try and convince some developers that this bringing professional, more professional software to the iPad is a good move.

Maybe. I mean, I think the subscription thing catches a bunch of it. I think as the more, as the perception of these as professional devices, like as that continues to permeate, app developers will think, I want to reach those, the people who are using that and I want to price it accordingly.

I just, as an experiment, I haven't gotten a chance to use it yet, but I bought LumaFusion, which is a video editor. It's 20 bucks. Like, and again, that's not a hundred bucks. It's not 200 bucks, but it's 20 bucks. Ferrite was about $20 all in. And then he just came up with a, came out with a Ferrite update, which added an in-app purchase for new features. And I thought, you know, you can do it.

Like these, this is, this is a software business model. It's not quite the old software business model. It's awfully close. Like the Ferrrite thing is super close where it's like literally you get all your existing features. And if you want the new features, give me another five bucks or whatever. I feel like the, you know, honestly, I feel like the big issue here is just going to be to show that lots of professionals are on the iPad pro. I think if they are there, then the tools will come, and that's a chicken and egg problem. But guess what? The chicken just laid an egg, and it's Photoshop, and it comes out next year. So maybe that will help matters. And who else would help? Apple. Apple would help if Apple would take its own-

Weslogic. Pro apps and put them on the platform. And they got garage band and iMovie and i'll just say it i'm gonna i'm gonna try to be a little mean here when you're apple and you're trying to explain to people that the ipad pro is a professional tool and that it should be taken seriously it is counterproductive to have your video and audio editing apps on the iPad Pro be toy versions of your real pro software. And that's what they have now. They have GarageBand, which is a toy version of Logic, and they have iMovie, which is a toy version of Final Cut Pro. And, you know, when I think about it, it infuriates me because you cannot tell me with a straight face that this is a professional tool when your own software

development shows that you don't take it seriously so um like not to be too harsh here but apple if you want us to take the ipad pro seriously take it seriously yourself whoever is in charge of deciding what pro apps go on the ipad is asleep at the. I'm sorry. I'm just going to say it that way. It is unconscionable that this product exists and we still have GarageBand and iMovie and not Logic and Final Cut. It doesn't have to be the same Logic. It doesn't have to be the same Final Cut. But how are we supposed to say, well, Adobe hasn't brought Photoshop to the iPad. That's a real shame. Apple hasn't brought Final Cut to the iPad. That's a real shame. Apple hasn't brought Final Cut to the iPad.

Apple hasn't brought Logic. They've got the apps. And they insist on creating these baby apps, these neutered apps, these subset apps. And they exist on the Mac, too, because a lot of users don't need the complexity of those apps. Right, but GarageBand and iMovie and iOS are not even as powerful as the counterparts on the Mac either but I'm saying the existence of garage band and iMovie is great right like you shouldn't feel offended if I if I say the garage band and iMovie on on the iPad aren't enough because for some people they are enough my point is on the Mac Apple does both because for

some people you just want garage band other people like people are like, no, I want to spend money. I want to get Logic. I need Logic. I did that. I went from GarageBand to Logic. Never looked back. Totally worth it for me. Many people, it's not worth it. That's great.

On the iPad, you have no choice because Apple hasn't bothered to bring their Pro apps to their Pro tablet platform. It's pathetic. So for all of the... We can grouse about iOS, but like, where are the apps? Apple. Like this is, and this is fundamentally, this is my frustration with this product is I love it. I can do a lot of work with it. The problem is I can see, and I think you're in the same boat here. I can see a lot of other ways I could do work with it, but nobody, you

know, nobody knows the barriers to doing certain kinds of work on the iPad pro better than people who work on the iPad pro all the time. Trust me. And it is frustrating to see Apple make such great hardware. And then like their software, just their software game. Isn't there their app game? Isn't there? It's so frustrating because I can do a lot, but there's a lot more I want to do with my ipad pro that i just can't do because the software's not there and this is the big difference between people like us and people who are coming to this device fresh we see the same problems but we also get more benefit out of the improvements right so we can see more of the fuller picture where like i totally

understand like if you're trying to use this as your work machine and you feel like you can't do it but like you're going to be annoyed about it and you're not going to get the good out of it but we get the good and we still see the frustration but i have hope i want to finish today with one last hashtag ask a great question it comes from brent uh brent wants to know just one laser this week very short laser do you guys organize your ipad home screens based on portrait or landscape layouts landscape right oh yeah landscape absolutely it's that's how i use my ipad it's a horizontal machine in fact when i am i do use it in portrait in vertical when i'm you know reading

newspaper in the morning, like something like that. And obviously for comic books, I do it too. So I do that. And whenever I'm in the home screen, I go back to the home screen in that orientation. I'm like, where is it? I don't know what anything is in portrait on my iPad. No idea.

I know nothing. It's a landscape device. No, we didn't get the Apple logo on the back in landscape this time, which frustrates me a little bit. But again, and the thought that they could have put it on the folio in the right orientation and so when you've got the keyboard on suddenly your apple's in the right orientation and they didn't do that it makes me so sad

like this was your chance to kind of fake it and say yeah it is a horizontal device when it's in this nope nope oh well uh we will be answering more Ask Upgrade questions next week. So send in your tweets with the hashtag AskUpgrade and we can pull those out on another episode. Also, don't forget, a couple of weeks time, my neighbor Totoro and Mike at the movies. And don't forget to also get your votes in for the fifth annual Upgradees.

This has probably been the end of review season. Oh, I hope so. Products. So we're sure hope so. Going back to maybe more regular content and programming next week. But I will say it's been very busy. But this is a very, very exciting time. And it's fun to talk about these new things. You can look out for Jason's review of the iPad Pro. It will be going up before our next episode at sixcolors.com. Yep. I'm going to put that deadline on you, Jason. Thank you the iPad Pro. It will be going up before our next episode at sixcolors.com. I'm going to put that deadline on you, Jason. Thank you.

All right. Yes, I would like to finish it sooner rather than later. Yeah, I would just naturally expect that you will have it done by next Monday. You know, I'm going to just naturally assume that on your behalf. Jason is at jsnell on Twitter twitter j s n e double l i am at i mike i m y k e on twitter and instagram um this show is a part of relay fm go to relay.fm

slash shows and you can find more wonderful programming if you've enjoyed uh this discussion about the ipad pro well on connected this week i'm going to be asking federico fatici for his views on the ipad pro which I'm very excited about to understand how Federico's been enjoying this. He's been pretty deep in the peripheral rabbit hole as well. He's been connecting monitors and all this kind of stuff.

So I'm excited to see what he has to say. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Lunar Display, Pingdom, and Holo. And we'll be back next time. Thanks for listening. Say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, everybody.