Upgrade - 221: Dongleton-on-Sea

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

Where does iOS go from here? This week Myke and Jason discuss the top 10 iPad features for iOS 13 they'd like to see. Also, Myke at the Movies returns, as Myke watches "My Neighbor Totoro" for the first time.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 221 today's show is brought to you by simple contact lunar display pdf pen and hollow my name is mike hurley i am joined by j Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. From my garage. This is me. Hello, Jason. It's Cyber Monday today, so everyone's going to get 25% more upgrade because we're going to, for the low, low price of regular upgrade, because we're going to be doing My Neighbor Totoro at the end of today's episode as we welcome back Mike at the Movies. Yay. Yes, I'm looking forward to that. so it's like one of those plastic bottles that gets a little bit larger and they put a thing on the side that says 25 more than other bottles that are smaller than this one that kind of thing that's what we have today but we do have our hashtag snail talk question and this one comes from jared

and jared wants to know jason what is your opinion on christmas music when should it start to be played and do you have some favorites uh i appreciate this question the opinion about christmas music so i believe as a as an american i think that one of the great things about thanksgiving which we just had on thursday and my kids were out of school all last week, and it was a pretty light week. It was nice, and I'm back to work today. I love Thanksgiving, not only because I think it's actually a very nice holiday, and the idea that it is about reflection and thinking about what you're thankful for, and it's an opportunity for families to get together, and it's also for everybody in America. It's not based on any particular religious background or anything like that. It is for everybody.

So I like that. It also is a really good backstop. I mean, it's leaky. It's leaky these days. I'm not going to lie. But I feel like when I was flying back from Ool a couple of years ago, I was in the Dublin airport. And it was like October 27th or something. And there was Christmas stuff everywhere.

And I thought, oh, my God, why is all this Christmas stuff out? And I said, oh, you know, they don't have a Thanksgiving to act as like a wall. Nope. Because I am a believer in the, like, I have some great holiday playlists that I really like. But I don't listen to them until after Thanksgiving. but I don't listen to them until after Thanksgiving. So now that it's after Thanksgiving, which is always the, what is it, the fourth Thursday in November, now we can break it. And now we're talking about when are we going to go get a Christmas tree, get out all the decorations and stuff like that. So we're getting there. We're getting there. So that's my official

policy. thanks for asking about when christmas things start to happen at least here in in in england do they just break out the christmas stuff like november 1st october 10th you're talking in retail because retail it's like it was happening before halloween in places yeah like yeah just like the dublin airport it was yeah it was getting pretty serious which is frustrating i think i mean i would prefer to wait until like we're about a month away that kind of feels like the way to do it for me but you know retail is gonna retail jason retail is gonna retail um what what can you do? I don't blame them, right? They make a lot of money at it.

So that's what they're going to do. Do you have a favorite? I will give everybody a link that we can put in the show notes to a piece that I have written a couple of times once at Macworld, but more recently at Six Colors with this kind of geeky holiday music playlist

that I built. In terms of traditional, you know, I really like the Christmas song, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, Nat King Cole. I like that one a lot. Otonenbaum is fun, especially there's a, they might be Giants version that's in the original German, which is fun. uh yeah that's but in terms of uh of what i would say kind of old school i would go with uh i would go with a christmas song which isn't that old school but that's the one that i i think i think is the is the favorite if you would like to send in a question to open an episode just send in a tweet with the hashtag snell talk and it may be picked for future use. Thank you to Jared for that great question.

Upgradeyourwardrobe.com is where you can go right now to buy upgrade merch. We have merch items available just until December the 4th. I want to thank everybody. We both would like to thank everybody who has bought one of our wonderful Dongletown t-shirts so far. They seem to have been received very warmly. So I recommend that people go and get those. We have Dongletown tees in blue and orange. We have a very limited stock left of the Upgrade Logo enamel pin. And then you can also buy a hoodie or a regular Upgrade Logo T-shirt if you would like to. You can also follow at underscore Upgrade FM on Twitter because we've been giving away some free codes which we're going to keep doing over the next week so you might be able to nag yourself a free t-shirt there

but we would love it if you uh if you have the means and desire that you would want to purchase any of our merchandise right now uh that you would go and do that we would we would love that um so you can go to upgrade your wardrobe.com and you and you can go ahead and buy some of our wonderful merchandise. Yeah. And you can also go to theincomparable.com slash shirt. And I've got a bunch of incomparable and six-color stuff available over there too. Hat, sweatshirt, other good stuff. Wonderful.

So you can go and check those out. Put them in the same shopping cart. Yeah, with pins. Got to get all the great pins. There's lots of great stuff available right now. But you can go and buy those if you would like. Talking about dongles, we have some dongle-related follow-up today. So on the last episode, we were trying to work out when it was that we first mentioned

Dongletown. And I proposed that it was on episode 114, but I couldn't find it. Good friend of the show, underscore David Smith, did two things. One, confirmed that it was on episode 114, was the first time that Dongle Town was mentioned on Upgrade.

But also, what's more, for a reason that I don't know why he did it, but I love that he did, David has compiled a supercut of every single time me and you have said the word dongle over the first 220 episodes of Upgrade. It is a five-minute audio file that you can go and get, which I'll put a link in the show notes

so you can listen to it. It includes a little bit of context every time that we say it. But if you just want to hear me and Jason saying dongles, dongles, dongles over and over and over again, you can go and check out the All the Great Dongles link

if you want that. And thank you to Underscore for doing that. So that's there. I also wanted to mention we got a great uh piece of dongle fan art from ian on twitter it's uh the uk tourism poster for dongle turn on sea the beautiful seaside town which i love so much it is the british seaside town of dongle turn on sea um and it's it is our one it's a tour tourism poster so I really love this a lot, actually.

Dongleton on Sea is a much nicer thought for me than just Dongleton. It's good. This is a very frequent thing in British seaside towns. It's something on sea. Well, and it's USBC, right? So it's the Dongleton on Sea is perfect. Oh my gosh, I did not get that.

Oh yeah, that's, listener Ian, yeah, perhaps that should be on USB-C. So that's where it is. So if you're summering in England, go to Donkleton-on-Sea. What a beautiful place it would be. The price of admission is a little high, but... Yeah, well, all the hotels have these strange power plugs,

so you have to bring an adapter. Yeah, funnily enough, you even have to bring your own adapters when you visit dongle time all right so do you remember on the last episode we were talking about the tragic wildfires and the the terrible in california and the terrible air quality and you jason posted the question of i wonder what apple park's doing considering they have the natural ventilation system, right? Where it brings in air to cool the place down instead of air conditioning. Well, we had an anonymous listener write in to

tell us exactly what is happening. So, apparently, this is what the person told us. The smoke has been rough, but Apple Park is able to shut down the natural ventilation system for just this type of situation. This also came in handy in the early days of the building being put together when we moved in because the landscaping meant that the

outside smelt of manure totally true yep this doesn't mean all of the air inside is clean though the various entryways feel identical to the outside and many people have been wearing masks but the cafeteria air is the cleanest air by far interesting so i i think this is uh fascinating so it's not as bad as maybe it could have been but um you know they probably also waited to shut it down and the air quality inside was always not great and the entryways that are probably pretty spacious and are letting in a lot of the polluted air and i wonder if they are thinking about a air filtration strategy or something to clean up the air inside if it's dirty.

But this is interesting to hear. I appreciate our anonymous listener saying that Apple Park does have some sort of strategies for this. And the good news is that a storm front came in on Wednesday in the Bay Area, and the air is clear now. Oh, that is good news oh that is good news that is good news and what is the fire situation fires are those fires are out they got they got they're in containment and we also had a lot of rain which helped a lot no thank you for the rain i guess

right that's that's a good thing to have in a situation like that. The Upgradies, we're still getting lots and lots and lots of votes. We have set a closing date for Upgradies nominations. You have until December 24th to get your votes in for the fifth annual Upgradies. So if you want to get your votes in.

This is an unprecedented opportunity to get your votes in over a long period of time because behind the scenes, we sometimes record the Upgradies early. But we're going to – we are going to record it early, but it's not going to be too early. So we have – it's good. It's good. We have until the end of the year for us to consider our favorites of the year and for you to give your suggestions which i like a lot yep yep so this uh by the way just i guess we can say this now right too this episode will be uh the the upgrade this episode is going to be the episode that goes out

on december uh 31st so it's going to be the last episode of the year. That's when it's going to go up. So you'll be able to check it out then. But you've got ample time to get your votes cast if you would like to do so. You don't have to have a vote for every category. If you only want to submit votes for some, that's perfectly valid to do, by the way. So no categories are actually required categories. So feel free to submit what you would like, and they will all be calculated, and we'll go towards where the Upgradees are going to be awarded

in the fifth annual Upgradees, which is very, very exciting. And again, this is, as we've said, I think we said last week, this is an exciting way the Mondays fall in December, where on that same day, Christmas Eve, we will have the uh upgrade holiday special what will be special about it wait and see i can't wait to find out and on the 31st then on new year's eve the upgradees so lots of great things coming your way in december from the upgrade program indeed including next week's episode, which because of, I believe you are going to be

on assignment next week. Yes. As we like to say, you will be on assignment. I don't even know what that assignment is, but we've assigned you to do something

that is not being on the podcast. And therefore, we will have a special guest host next week. I don't want to tell you who it is, but I will remind you, unrelated, that nothing is so perfect that it can't be complained about.

I wonder who that could be. I don't don't know nobody knows you'll have to find out and check out upgrade next week i was saying to jason before the show i always enjoy listening to upgrade so don't mind it when i have the time off i always enjoy making upgrade knowing that mike is going to hear it and be like what are they doing my show ruining my show i have one piece of upstream news for you uh this was from a report from the information um via nine to five mac the apple is apparently considering for as much as that can can truly mean uh a cheaper version almost in dongle style of the Apple TV, like Chromecast or the Fire TV Stick. So like a little HDMI dongle that you plug into the back of your television so you'll be able to access Apple TV content. So you would naturally expect that the differences

between this, if it ever comes out, and the Apple TV that we have now is in power and storage. So this would probably only be streaming stuff and it wouldn't have games and apps for as useful as they are in the Apple TV. And maybe some, there might be some other restrictions and we would assume that they would do this so they're able to get their new content into as many homes as possible.

That's why they would do it if they would ever do it. Yeah, as possible. That's why they would do it if they would ever do it. Yeah, I wonder about this and how they would do it. Part of me wants to say that Apple would not do a product like this and make it super compromised because that doesn't feel like Apple at the same time. I mean, this report's weird because it's considering. It's like not even that they're working on it. They're just like somebody is thinking should we do it uh i do think that there would be uh and a more affordable entry into apple tv would probably be good for apple to have but apple hasn't done that

yet i've seen people speculate that it wouldn't do 4k i kind of have a hard time believing a brand new product in 2019 wouldn't do 4k hdr like i i think they got to do that. But this idea that maybe it wouldn't be as fast a processor, therefore it might not be as good for games, or they might even, you know, I don't think it sounds like Apple, but it is possible that they could make it a stripped down thing that didn't run the whole app platform, but only could see parts of the app store,

like for video playback, or even basically just ran the tv app i i doubt they would do that because they want to let the third party providers provide their own apps um you want to be able to run netflix and all that but you know they could bar everything it's seeing anything that was not in like the video section of the app store um or i think more likely they would just you know it'll be stripped down and it won't have much storage and it will be, but it'll still be an Apple TV. I don't know. I mean, I would love for them to do this because I think the entry price for the Apple TV is still too high given their competition and given their motivation to get people into their ecosystem.

And, you know, I talked to somebody, a friend of mine this weekend who wanted to buy a couple of these seasons that are on sale on iTunes, TV seasons. But he doesn't have an Apple TV. And he's like, I don't want to watch this on my iPad. And I thought, oh, yeah, you know, that's one of those things that, you know, by not having the ability to get the iTunes stuff and whatever Apple's going to do on the streaming stuff onto your TV set, even if you're in Apple's ecosystem a little bit, that kind of stinks. So I think there's something to be said for Apple to make that more accessible, whether it's a cheaper base model Apple TV or it's one of these stick things that's smaller and cheaper and maybe less functional. I think they do have to do something. I just don't know what it is.

I don't know what it is right like i i don't know what the the answer would be right the the the regular apple tv so you can buy a non-4k apple tv for 149 dollars and if you want to get your content into people's homes, I'm not sure that's the best way to do that. Right. It doesn't feel like offering a $150 entry point before you even start paying every month when like Amazon, they offer the fire TV stick for $25. Right. Like that's their entry point. And the 4K version is $35.

So, yeah. So like, you know, it's like, obviously Amazon have options this cheap because they want people to see their content, right? And then when you're looking at something which is like four to five times more expensive before you start charging them, I don't know if that's the right way to get people to watch the content that you're investing billions of dollars into making. But it all depends on what Apple's ultimate strategy is. But I would naturally think that if you're making a television series, you want people to see it and as many people as possible. So maybe it's the right thing to do to try and have an option which is cheaper. And I really don't think washing on your iphone is the answer right right this is

the the challenge is what they want to do is get people who have iphones or or ipads or both to get them to start thinking of apple as a source for their tv set as well and you know again having that interaction with my friend over the weekend, I had that moment where I thought, oh, yeah, this is a huge untapped market for Apple where these, you know, he's not even considered getting an Apple TV. And that's the solution to his issue of, well, I want to buy these seasons, but I don't want to watch them on my iPad. I want to watch them on my TV. But he's not going to buy Apple TV at its current pricing. So what can Apple do? but he's not going to buy the Apple TV at its current pricing.

So what can Apple do? How much money have you saved on buying the office at $35 when you need to buy a $150 item to play them? Right. So they're already in the ecosystem, but they're not in the TV part of the ecosystem, the TV set part. And that's important to Apple. And AirPlay is how you get things on there

and you need an Apple TV for that too. So I think it's an interesting place. The Apple TV isn't as a product, right? Because part of me wants to say, this product is not going to make or break your company, right? It's totally not. It is a minor product. This product exists to be a compliment to your ecosystem.

So maybe you need to start being super aggressive about it as a piece of hardware because you want people in your services ecosystem and you want to sell these into every home that's got iphones in it because it makes the iphones that much more capable because you can throw the iphone content up onto the tv yep um so like you know it is it is just one of those things that i think uh apple needs to change how they're thinking about it and maybe they will maybe maybe this is part of that the the steve jobs line right that the apple tv was a hobby um that makes sense still makes sense up until the point that the tv service launches it's not a hobby anymore like everything that apple has done everything that apple has continued to release even the apple tv

4k that we have today you can look at it and be like, this is a thing they do on the side, right? Like it's just, here's a little thing. It's a different way to get this content and blah, blah, blah, right? Like it's like, oh, it looks like maybe a fun project that they like to work on. But then when you start dropping billions of dollars and signing like A-listers to create TV shows for you,

it's not a hobby anymore. You see it as a tentpole of your business. And if that's the case, you need to tie up the actual tell the home television strategy a little bit better than you've got because right now that's not the case right like it's fine with how it is but you need something more and the iphone and the ipad that is not an answer? Like I don't want to watch every show at home on my iPad. I watch them on my iPad when I'm on a plane, right?

Or I watch them maybe when I'm in bed, like at night. But if me and Idina are watching a new big TV series that we love, we're watching it on the TV on our sofa comfortably, right? With our two HomePods playing the sound for us. Like that's what I want to do. I don't want to watch it on my iPad. So whilst I have an Apple TV and I like my Apple TV, I don't think that's the right answer for everyone. So we'll see what they're going to do, if anything. All right. Today's show is brought to you in part by Hello. Hello make insanely comfortable

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That's holopillow.com slash upgrade right now. Our thanks to Hollow for their support of this show and RelayFM. So we have been talking a lot over the past couple of weeks about the possibilities, the great possibilities and dreams and hopes that we have for iOS 13, especially as it pertains to the iPad, right? Yeah, that's a nice way of saying what's missing on the iPad. But yes, our hearts turn,

a nation's eyes turn to iOS 13 to see what it might offer to make the iPad Pro more functional. Yes. So you put your fingers where your mouth is? Yeah, I don't even know. So there was a tweet. The story is there was a tweet. As don't even know. So there was a tweet. The story is there was a tweet.

As all good stories begin. They begin with a tweet. There's a million tweets in the Naked City, and this is one of them. The reader Mike R on Twitter replied to a tweet that I sent out for my review, my Six Colors review of the iPad. And he said, and I think this is really funny

can we get a David Letterman top 10 iOS 13 iPad features you'd like to see list a top 10 list David Letterman for those who do not know long time talk show host in the United States retired now has a Netflix show will it come back I don't know I haven't heard anything about that

great Netflix show really good and one of my favorites all time time, very formative for me. Been watching it. You know, I watched it when I was, you know, a kid. I threw high school and stuff and college. So, and one of his bits was a top 10 list where it would be like a comedy top 10 list. So you have a premise, top 10 things we'd like to see from, you know, whatever. Right.

And then there would be 10 counted down to one, there'd be drum rolls. Um, and it was jokes because it's just, it's comedy. There were, there were jokes. And the last one would often be completely absurd. That was not the funniest one. Wasn't number one. Uh, that was usually the most absurd one. And anyway, so listener slash reader, Mike R wanted to know, uh, top 10 iPad features I'd like to see. I very quickly responded to him on Twitter with a top 10 list. And that got a lot of commentary. And I thought, well, I should just write an article. And it was the easiest article. I wrote that for Macworld for my Macworld column last week. The easiest article I have ever written because I already had done the thinking about the list. So all I had to do was explain what was on the list. And because there were 10 of them,

they didn't have to be long explanations. And so, yes, that's where it started is, what about the top 10? And then that got people talking and posted that. And people are like, but what about this? But what about this? But what about this? And I think it turned into a very interesting exercise

of sort of like, what are those features that are missing that we would really like to see? And I sort of ranked them. I mean, there's room for improvement. I left a couple out that I think are probably more important than some of the ones I left in, but it was also a personal list. There are some features that I think are important

for a lot of people that were not as important for me. So I didn't list them. But yeah, it was a fun exercise. So we will run through the list as you wrote it. And then at the end, we will address some of the common, what do you think about? And maybe some of the stuff that was missed off yeah yeah i can't believe you didn't mention there i got a few of those so we will cover those too number 10 menu bar mode what is

a menu bar mode on the ipad menu bar mode i uh so my this is a this is why it's number 10 is it's kind of a dumb idea, but the idea is that if, uh, if developers are converting their apps using Marzipan next year to run on the Mac, what they're going to have to do is things like define how they work with menu bars and windows and stuff like that. And it got me thinking, I wonder since they've got all this great external display support on the iPad Pro, if those same apps running on the iPad Pro, maybe they could take advantage of all that extra information, the Mac menu bar information and keyboard shortcuts and all of that, and kind of enter a mode that's not turn it into a Mac, but is something that might be more drivable on an

external display with, you know, either, either like a keyboard and a track pad, or even using the iPad as a pointing device. It sort of like converts it into something more like a desktop when it's attached to an external display. Again, number 10,

kind of a wacky one that I actually don't think Apple will ever do because it's feels like a bridge too far, but I think they totally could. And a lot of the feedback I got was surprising in that it was positive. Like Steve Troughton Smith, I think, responded to this one. He's like, yeah, they could do way more than that. Use those Marzipan apps. And there was somebody else who said, why do you say this in context of the iPad? I want to plug in my iPhone to a big monitor and have it enter menu bar mode. And I said, well, you could do that. I said, you're ruining my premise now by saying the iPhone. That's why I didn't mention the iPhone. But yeah, totally, you could.

I don't know. It feels like it's a bridge too far for Apple because Apple seems to have drawn some lines that they seem unwilling to erase about what iOS looks like. And I think Marzipan is actually the proof of that. The idea that rather than bring iOS to a laptop form factor, they've just decided they're going to make the apps go over to the laptop, but not call it iOS. They're going to call it Mac OS, but it's going to be iOS apps on Mac OS. And that appears to be where they're drawing the line. device uh support the big external display support 4k 5k displays and i think you got to do something with that that isn't just it's an you know it's a preview of your media right like there's got to be something more you could do make to make that more useful and one way would be to find a way to drive that interface uh and you know you can't do that right now on ios it's just a mirror or it's an external preview so something maybe menu bar mode is that. If menu bar mode was or something like that would exist, like when you plug it in and the interface

changes in some way to allow you to maybe use more power applications, use more of them at one time, there are other things that you need to do that. And we will get to those, right? Because there's some different things that you would need. But kind of just going back to this a moment, like, maybe, right, like, thinking of it as, like, menu bar mode is not the right way to think of it, because it might just be that, like, what is the next thing? So, like, you take the Mac and you take iOS and you smush them together, and then what comes out, right? Like, how does a computer look like that, right? Like, if now you have a really big screen you have a 27 inch screen and you have ios slash mac os apps that can run together in the same place what does that user interface look like right and maybe they call it desktop mode or external display mode if it was a marketing marketing name for it i might call it like desktop mode

or something like that and just say this is how do you use ios on a desktop well here's one way attach it to an external display i also don't think it would have like mac windows right i think it would have i think we're assuming ios 13 is going to have some sort of uh different some spin on multitasking uh and including running as we'll get to later right like tabs maybe but but whatever it'll be i think it'll be a more ios method of running things in full screen or split view or slide over or tabbed views or something like that but that idea of could we drive this on an external display and then number nine external touch screen support what does this mean this would be even better uh and this would be what if you plugged an iPad or an iPhone, I suppose, into one of these 4K or 5K displays that was a touchscreen. And I don't know what the standards are.

Although, you know, if Apple built its external display with touch multi-touch on it, they could do it however they liked. But the idea of we keep talking about what if Apple made a Surface Studio that's the iMac-like product. I was actually at Twit yesterday and Leo Laporte on the set. He was using the Surface Studio. And with the side edges and actually the shape of the buttons on it, it looks like an oversized novelty iPad Pro 2018. Legitimately, it looks like an enormous iPad Pro sitting at his desk. But what if Apple doesn't make that?

What if Apple just makes a display, a 4K or 5K display with touch and says, if you want to use this as an iPad, just plug in an iPad and boom, now you have an iPad that's that size. Why not? And I liked the thing that you posed as like, well, we know Apple are making monitors again, right?

Like what if one of them was really expensive and it was this, right? Right, so you could attach it to your Mac Pro or your Mac Mini or as an external display for your iMac Pro, but you could also attach it to your iPad Pro. Oh, I would love that. Wouldn't that be cool?

Now, there are ergonomic issues there because the Surface Studio has this kind of drafting table kind of mode where it'll drop way down. It's not like an iPad. That's what I would want, right? Like I would want them to make that. And that's what you kind of need to do it that way.

But, you know, Apple is not beyond doing something very similar. And if it wasn't, the thing about the Surface Studio is it's got a huge foot because it's got the computer inside. And it's got the thin, it's a little bit like the gooseneck, the Chrome ARM iMac, where there's a computer in the base. And then the display is super thin and light. So Apple doesn't have to do that.

Apple needs weight in the base just to keep it from tipping over. But Apple doesn't have to build a whole computer into it because it's an external display. And that gives them a little bit more freedom. I'm sure they could develop an adjustable touchscreen external display that would work for Mac users, especially if the Mac gets touch eventually uh especially with marzipan coming in um but certainly for ios so the next thing that you move on to is keyboard shortcuts for function keys so you know this includes what we were talking about right like what we were missing from the uh the keyboard folio right is being able to that we one of the things we had on our beloved bridge

keyboards is the ability to change the brightness playing poor music you have home like you get buttons for the home uh to get home you can use like siri buttons like they're all there and apple's keyboards don't have that but it's more than just that right the smart keyboard folio um doesn't have that row and i said in my you know i was listening to atp and marco talking about his briefings i don't generally talk about what happens in the briefings because they're sort of on background but i will say this that i said to the people i was talking to very specifically i said the problem i said i like this keyboard it's's very nice. You not having the function row. I know nobody cares about the function row, but the function row is where

you put all of your media shortcuts, your brightness and volume shortcuts. And it kills me that you can't, uh, that you can't set, uh, as an alternative, set a keyboard shortcut of your own, uh, for those things so that I can when I'm using the smart keyboard folio and I want to adjust the volume or pause my song or change the brightness on an external bluetooth keyboard I can do that from a key on the iPad I have to to reach up and swipe down from control center and get the control and do it and it's not as nice and I will just say my the response was essentially we hear you like it was not oh no no no that's dumb nobody does that right it was like we hear you which is i i don't think that's an

endorsement that they're going to make a change down the road but i i i was impressed that they didn't give me an impassioned defense of omitting the function key row yeah i don't need those keys i really don't i don't care that they're gone on the smart keyboard folio, but Apple itself already retasked them all with things that were more useful than generic function keys. And then they omitted them from this keyboard. I know Apple doesn't love the function row because they did the touch bar too, but it would be nice if I had an alternative to that. And then you can broaden it out from there, but the whole idea that I want there to be system-wide keyboard shortcuts like this,

and there could be others. And at that point, you probably should have them be at least somewhat customizable. You can do that on the Mac today. I know that risks collisions with apps, but the Mac handles that today where if there's a collision, the app wins and that's it. And it's fine.

If you have an app that collides with that keyboard shortcut, change the shortcut and just deal with it. If users can assign it, then it doesn't matter. I would like to see more of that. This is one that is of great interest to me and you, but maybe not the world at large,

but would be wonderful, is mature audio support. Yeah, yeah, this is, we beat on this a lot, but the way I boiled it down in my article, and I think this is the way to think of it, is we have apps on iOS that can record audio. And we can run more than one app at a time. In fact, you can run three apps at once with slide over. But only one app can attach to your microphone at a time. Also, I mean, it goes beyond that to things like if you have an app that has microphone access, or you're playing music in the background, and then you tap on a video on Twitter, like lots of weird things happen because iOS kind of wants to only have one thing playing at one time and one app attached to the microphone while another app is playing music. The music just stops, which is frustrating. So

it's not just input. It's just a more mature audio platform for iOS. And this comes up in a bunch of ways. One we'll mention later is the idea that for video conferencing, it's a similar thing where you kind of have to do that full screen. Somebody pointed out to me, it's like, it would be really nice if video conferencing, I could pop in picture in picture or run side by side and run other apps and stuff. And it's like a lot of that stuff in a lot of apps doesn't quite work right because Apple has not focused on making this stuff better. But yes, I would really like it if I could have multiple input devices supported by iOS, which doesn't exist right now. It switches for you. And yes, if I could run a recorder app and a video conferencing or audio conferencing app side by side,

and both of them could see the microphone at once so I could record myself while I was talking to you, that would be great. It's just not there. Yeah, I mean, iOS seems to have some basic understanding of multiple audio, right? Like AirPlay 2 has shown that. You can be using AirPlay 2 to play something,

and you can also hear audio right like it it's a thing that there seems to be something i mean and i don't know how related or unrelated those things are but it's it's huge yeah yeah it's a big step forward on the input side they haven't taken this big a step forward some of the apps still kind of like do weird things to your audio um they have they have made advances here but i would like a little bit more it just it feels very much like this was a decision that was made a long time ago and it was in a world where only one app ran at a time and the world has changed and this has not like we know the audio bus exists which is this way in ios to be able to like able to like move audio between multiple applications.

But let's just say AudioBus has been around for years and it hasn't really changed anything on iOS in significant ways. This is something that I got feedback from somebody about who said there already exist these different interfaces that let apps share audio. It's just that all the apps that do this video conferencing and audio conferencing don't support it. And the implication there is that Apple's already solved this problem. It's just the app's faults for not supporting it. And I'd say, well, I think it's still false on Apple. This could be way easier. And whatever they're doing now, it's not working because these apps

aren't supporting it. And one way to make it way easier is to just let the apps do what they're doing now and have it work. Yeah. Is that the apps don't need to support it way easier is to just let the apps do what they're doing now and have it work yeah is that the apps don't need to support it right because that's not how it works on the mac because you know skype is not going to add audio bus support it's just not going to happen i wish it would but uh so you know apple needs to do something to get all of these audio apps to actually be able to to interoperate in a way that an and AudioBus also was built for, you know, basically music production stuff. And it's probably overkill for these other apps to implement.

But anyway, yeah, I just, I don't care how it's done. I just want it to work. And I don't want to have to hope that one day the maker of an app decides to finally implement it. I would like it to be something that Apple can do with the system level to make this basically a no-brainer. And developer tools for iOS. I guess this is like

the showing of maturity on the platform, right? Like a platform, I guess, is mature when you can make apps for it on the thing, right? Like you make Mac apps on a Mac, right? Make iPad apps on the iPad. I mean, that's the standard line to be a legitimate computing platform. You've got to develop software on that platform. A lot of people believe that. Those people are all software developers. I don't believe it. I think it's a legitimate computing platform now. But I will say, yes, it would make lots of sense for apple to do some sort of development tool to on ios i wonder if it's not xcode though i wonder if apple is working on some sort of thing that they'll you know that'll be a next generation development tool that runs on mac and ios and

they keep xcode around but there's this thing and and they kind of final cut ten it where it's like this is new and it's going to grow and xcode is going to be still around for a while, but we're also going to invest in this and it runs on both platforms and it will be limited and they won't be able to bring over all their Mac software to run it on iOS or even their iOS software.

It'll be, you know, and there'll be complaints and the whole story, right? I think that might be the approach they take. I think history has shown that that will 100% be the route that gets taken and it's not a criticism right it's just that's just the way a lot of this stuff right has been going like it's what adobe is doing with photoshop they're doing this exact thing too right yeah yeah

yeah so uh and and that'll make everybody nervous because people who rely on xcode they're like what do you mean you've got a new development tool what What about Xcode? And I think the answer will be Xcode's not going anywhere for a very long time on the Mac. But we're also going to invest in this new thing that is on the Mac and iOS. And that is sort of the future development environment. And it's the next generation developer environment. They could also just do Xcode for iOS. But my gut feeling is that that's an old piece of software. And that may be their solution when they introduce a lot of rumors about them introducing a bunch of new development features and ways of building apps in a future version of the OS is I wonder if this is

all connected. I'm trying to connect some dots here. So yes, I am in an evidence dungeon with a bunch of yarn connecting different scraps of paper and like, let's figure it out, people. Let's go through the rabbit hole here. But it does sort of feel like maybe this is an opportunity for Apple to kind of say, here's a whole story about what we're doing with the future of Apple platform development. And that story has to include iOS as a place where you do your development. It can't just be a target. And so yes, even though I'm not a developer and kind of don't care from a professional level about the ability to develop on my iPad Pro, because I'm not going to do that, I think it does need to happen at some point.

And I would like to see Apple start to move in that direction because it sends a signal, right? It's like the iPad Pro. It's so powerful, you can develop software on it. Like that's important. Send the message. We're halfway through the top 10 list, which seems like the perfect time to take a break and thank Smile for their support of this show.

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about PDF pen and PDF pen pro. Our thanks to PDF pen from smile for their support of this show and RelayFM. So item number five, external pointing devices. Yeah, I feel like I've talked about this one a lot, but it's the same thing. I mentioned that I think external pointing devices have a use on iOS, and then everybody goes, no, iOS, don't you know? The rule is that there are no pointing devices on iOS, and there are no cursors. It's different. And, you know, not to – well, I already did. I already gave them a little bit of a funny voice there. you know,

not to, well, I already did. I already gave them a little bit of a funny voice, but not to, not to repel these complaints, but I feel like, uh, first off it's,

it's the worst kind of, uh, Steve Jobs told us what this product was eight years ago. And therefore it must always be that way. Kind of like it came down from the mountaintop kind of dogma that it's just like, no wrong. I don't care.

I don't care what they thought about this product eight years ago.'s talk about 2018 everybody knows jason steve jobs never changed his mind yeah well and it kills me too because i get it from the other side too where i talk about the apple pencil and there are people like oh a stylus i thought you didn't need those which is not what steve jobs said about that either but anyway it wasn't about the ipad and it was about you like whatever and it was about requiring a stylus instead of making it optional. But anyway, that's already in there. That support that they said they would never, ever, ever, ever come to iOS, of course it did with the Apple Pencil. So external point is what I'm not asking for.

And what I think a lot of people think when I talk about this is a little black arrow that I can slide around on the screen between windows and turn my iPad into a Mac. That's not what I want. But first off, the genie's out of the bottle. The editing text, there was a whole raft of stories last week where people were blown away by the fact that you can use a text cursor on iOS by 3D touch or by touch and hold on the space bar, which is a thing we've talked about a lot, but is not super discoverable. And therefore people are still surprised by it. And it is great. And it's been in there for a while.

Like Apple has a cursor that you can move around on screen. It's already there. So the idea of having a cursor is already in iOS for text editing, where it's very useful. That's why they did it. And I would like that for an external device that like a trackpad that I could keep it the same plane as my keyboard.

So I don't have to reach up to the display to edit text. And the other thing that I use my Mac's trackpad for that I'd like to on iOS is multi-touch gestures. Because again, I have them on my iPad, but my iPad is up there and I'm down here on the keyboard. And I'd really be able to like to be able to reach under or beside my keyboard and swipe to another app or bring up multitasking with a, you know, a multi-finger gesture like I do on my Mac. Um, and so I could, I could totally use an external device like the Apple pencil. It doesn't need to be required, but wouldn't it be nice if there was a whole new round of external kind of keyboard accessories for iPad that also had a little trackpad that you could use to edit text or swipe between apps or whatever without leaving your web pages. You have access to scrolling, scrolling, scrolling stuff all the time, right?

Webpages, you have access to gestures. Yeah, scrolling stuff all the time, right? Like when I'm sitting in keyboard mode, it's optimized for my hands on the keys, but I still have to reach up and like swipe through a webpage. Well, I would love to be able to just move my hand to the right slightly or down and do a two-finger scroll and swipe through that webpage. So I'm not saying it's super easy and there are like lots of complications with it.

And I don't think it would be a mainstream use. I think it would be a small productive subset subset like the keyboard is not a mainstream use i would say but i would i want it i want it could call it a pro user feature it could be a pro feature it could be and then if you're using if you're using a video editor or an audio editor all sorts of other applications now you've got this touch surface at the keyboard level that lets you do some swiping and scrolling that you otherwise have to kind of like go back and forth between the keyboard and the screen.

And that's not as good. I will say, like, I know what you mean about saying about the cursor, but I do think that if there is an ultimate option, like if something that is being encouraged is that we start plugging our iPads into 4K displays, I do think trying to find a way to to have a cursor on screen would be interesting i think it is not an impossibility that's menu bar

mode right that's maybe a little bit different but yeah i think in in a mode like that i mean you almost you would have to have this to do menu bar mode and the cursor doesn't have to be the little black arrow right like it could be a circle which is almost the size of a human finger right and you just use that and that's just i guess i don't love the idea of having a virtual finger that you move around with a track pad i don't i don't love that idea um i'd be okay with an ios that that works with gestures and has cursors in very specific contexts um with external pointing devices i would love your thing i'm just saying i don't think it's a it's not the worst thing in the world to assume some kind of cursor.

You know, because it's like there are other platforms, right? Like Chromebooks and Windows, they find a way to make these things coexist. I think it is not impossible. It's maybe not the most elegant thing, but it might be interestingly usable over time. We'll see. Number four, I uh upgrade listeners keen

upgrade listeners know your feelings on this one uh pro apps on ios yes i ranted about this last time so we'll just say um apple one way apple shows that it's believes in its own platform as a pro platform yes the developer tools is one way bringing its other professional tools like final cut and logic to the ipad is another way adobe's doing it with photoshop i think it is yeah i mean it's i already i already ranted about it so i won't rant again other than to say that i think it is uh a thing that apple needs to do just to show that it's taking the pro market on the iPad seriously, even if it's impractical, even if they won't have as many users for it, at least at first. There are lots of excuses. I had somebody say, well, you can't use Logic on an 11-inch screen. And I thought, I used Logic on an 11-inch MacBook Air for years. So no, I think they just need to do it to say,

yes, we are there too. Pro apps are real and they run great on iPad Pro. I think they need to do it. It's not necessarily an iOS feature, although maybe they need to update iOS to do it. I would imagine it will come in conjunction with an iOS release, but maybe not. But still, it's on my list.

Number three, additions to shortcuts. So I was thinking, you talk about those keyboard shortcuts earlier, wouldn't it be lovely to activate shortcuts shortcuts with keyboard shortcuts? shortcuts. I also want them to truly run in the background so I don't have to see every step running. That happens in Siri and it happens in the Today View in Notification Center. They run there without showing you all the steps. I would like it to run optionally other places without showing those steps. So I could do a keyboard shortcut and it could say running shortcut. Done, right? I would love to be able to do that. It does tie in with my idea of system-wide shortcuts. Although the way the Mac does it, you can also apply shortcuts in particular apps.

Okay. If we want to do that, that's fine. And then the other part of this, and it's something that you and I have talked about a lot is scheduling shortcuts, having the ability to say, run the shortcut at 8am every day, tying it in with an alarm or having it be an alarm i was thinking home kit you could tie it into home kit automations as well as another option like alarms is great but like this it's another one right like you have your good morning shortcut why not just have that trigger with your automation or whatever you know like with your with your home kit automation it's another way to potentially do it um but it would be great right like this is i genuinely feel like these types of things these additions to shortcuts are one of the more likely things because shortcuts is super powerful sure and they hadn't been working on it for that long you know inside

of apple and they did a lot of really interesting stuff this is the integration with ios that i'm talking about here but there are lots of other ways. Etienne Bueno in the chat room said it would be nice if there was an undo gesture in shortcuts. Yes, you should also be able to copy individual items and whole sets of items and duplicate them or paste them elsewhere in the shortcuts. And of course, as Federico Fadici will tell you at the drop of a hat um folders for shortcuts so that they're not all in one giant scrolling list would also be nice there are app improvements that need

to be made with shortcuts but i also wanted to be better integrated system-wide yes uh we don't really need to talk about number two any more than we already have but external storage in the files app like yep yes it's such a gimme my elevator pitch is basically look some people in some contexts still need to read files off a drive or connect to a file server in their in their office or home um and and you've got an app called files and you've got a usbc device you have a standard connector now. Just make it happen. Just make it happen. Like, it is the one that boggles my mind

only because it could, think of how much criticism they could have avoided in the arguments of not a real computer if they had been able to ship that feature before they shipped the new iPad Pro. But they didn't. You know, the thing is though, Jason, it would have just been something else.

It would have been. But that was the easiest target. And they could have removed it. And they didn't. And as we mentioned earlier. If you're following along. The David Letterman style lists. The number one always was some kind of joke.

So that's worth bearing in mind. They're all jokes. But the most absurd and not necessarily funny joke. Was the number one always was some kind of joke so that's worth they're all jokes but the most absurd and not necessarily funny joke was the number one and so for my list i put number one you moji like well you we had an emoji and we had me moji what about you moji would this be that you would replace we replace your your friend's face with an animoji because you don't want to see their face. I don't know. Whatever. It's just a joke.

I don't need this one. I'll take the other nine. But there's a bunch we didn't mention. So there's one that I put in our document too, which is one we've spoken about in the past, which I was surprised didn't make it to your list actually because I know you care about this so much. A desktop class Safari browser.

Yeah, I think this is, it's complicated. And this is the reason that I didn't want to get into it in the article, but it's complicated because some of this is on the web developers because web developers are sensing an iOS browser and serving a light version of a page. Some of it is on the complications of the assumptions that you make as a web developer, that there's a pointing device with hover states and, you know, all mouse click states

that are not ones that exist on a touch screen. And so they have to provide this alternate view and they're basically doing it for phones and the iPad is sort of stuck in the middle. Trackpad mode could do this. Right. Right. So that's possible. Trackpad mode could do this. Right. Right. So that's possible. Also, Apple could find other ways.

I think Apple could find ways to make this more palatable. And the reason we want this is because there are some web apps that should run fine on iPad and they don't because they're broken because they are serving this weird mobile version. And if Safari was given the charter on iOS, that it should be at least able to run desktop level stuff. Maybe it's a setting. Maybe it's for certain sites. There are lots of ways you could do it.

But a lot of times you run into a situation where you need to open a web page on an iOS device and it doesn't work right. And I don't, you know, but why? Like all the power is there, but it's being served strangely. You know, there are browsers that will pose as computer browsers and sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't. But I feel like this is something, this is a problem that Apple needs to try to solve. And if some of that is by making changes to the software that make it a more more complicated world for web developers, or web developers have to pay attention, or if they just have to fake it, and just pretend they're a Mac running Safari and do some stuff in the background to make it all kind of work right, or make that mode optional, whatever it is, this is a frustration because sometimes there are apps

that are not as full featured as the web app. So you need to go to the web app or there is no app for something and you have to use the web app. And when you try, you realize I literally can't do this thing on my iPad because of the way that the website is built. Which is really annoying.

It's super annoying. Running iPhone apps in landscape. Somebody tweeted this in and it's totally true. If you run an app that's not universal so it doesn't support the iPad, it insists on running it in portrait orientation. And it runs in iPhone SE mode or something. Yeah, and then blown up. It's not good.

So I know that Apple doesn't want to make iPhone app compatibility a priority because they want to shame the developers of these apps. But I have a couple that I have to run and I run them on my iPad and I go, oh, like they're just so bad. So just, you know, have pity on the poor iPad user. We use our devices in horizontal orientation

a lot uh please let that be okay it's like instagram is obviously a big one and i was just saying i mentioned this because it is something strange i saw something strange a couple of days ago so like instagram their app is so bad like the ios app is like you know the iphone app is so bad on the ipad like it's not it's almost not worth using at all um i don't i i just i just use the website yeah instagram has a not bad website right and like you can use the website but i was like playing around i was like what can what can you do with the website version and you can apparently add to your Instagram story. And I was like, that's strange. So I pressed the button and it said, you have to rotate your device to portrait. And I was like, this is so weird. But yeah, you rotate your device to portrait and you can take

pictures with the iPhone's camera on the Instagram website. And it's just like these things of like, why did you make this Instagram, but you don't have an ipad app why did you put so much effort into your website even allowing you to take pictures from devices on the website you don't have an ipad app it's very peculiar to me very peculiar uh better video conferencing support i mean i you kind of reference this but i don't really understand what the issues are here because i guess i don't do a lot of video conferencing support i mean i you kind of reference this but i don't really understand what the issues are here because i guess i don't do a lot of video conferencing the impression i so i heard about this from a reader and um i think the idea there is he said not just audio it's video too i have these video conference apps that insist on being full screen and it's again it's one of these kind of legacies where they're insisting on being full screen now this is an

example where i don't know whether that is just an app that has decided to ban multitasking or whether they are doing that or are forced to do that because of the way the video and audio subsystems of iOS work. I don't know. But given the complexities of audio stuff, it may be that they're like, no, no, no, we don't want other apps running. But his frustration is he wants to have his office video conferencing app open side by side with like a document. And he says that at least with the apps that they use, they can't do that. So I just wanted to kind of throw that in there as yes, this is a thing that that the iPad needs to be better at is like you should be better at doing anything you need to do in multitasking. You know, if multitasking is good, some people want to do stuff in multitasking, having an app that forces you out of multitasking

is not good. So then as an advancement to multitasking, we could be looking at tabbed app instances. And this is like a thing that I keep seeing people like Steve Trout Smith talking about. I think Steve thinks that this is not only a good way for it to go, but believes that this is the way the iOS 13 will go. So this is like if you imagine looking at different web pages in Safari or Chrome and you have tabs, well, imagine that you were using Google Docs and you had tabs in Google Docs

and you could mix those instances all up together and that could be a way that you would allow applications to have multiple instances running and stuff like that. What do you think of that? It's complicated to get your head around, I think. Yeah, I think so. The basic version of this is apps should be able to think of it as opening multiple windows. Like on a Mac, apps can open multiple windows. On the ios you really can't do that although safari does it you can have two safari uh windows running side by side and so the idea there is let this happen again mail do it too what does it i think it has a version of split screen

in mail on ios i don't know or if that's just multiple panes anyway so the point here is let other apps do it have this be a system-wide function i think this has the the assumption everybody's making here is that that's going to go along with marzipan stuff like you're going to have to have the ability on the mac to you know potentially have multiple windows open how do you reference that on ios and the answer is you could have tabs or you could have at least a side-by-side kind of thing. There are other uses here too, like the flexibility this gives you. Yes, it means that I can run Microsoft Word with two docs side-by-side.

It also means that I could have like Safari and another app open in split view, but also have a different Safari view in slide over, let's say. Like that could be cool. Like again, not for every use but it increases the flexibility of the os to have all the apps be able to tap into this and yes beyond that you start to say how do you deal with lots of different apps running in different places maybe there's a tab tab interface where the tabs are different apps i'm not sure apple wants to go there that's a very different interface approach from iOS today.

But who knows? But something like that. At the very least, we all, I think, want to see the ability for apps to have multiple instances running at once. And something that I hear people talk about quite a lot is multiple user logins on iOS. Yeah, and I heard about this from a bunch of people um it's not a

feature that i care about because i don't share my ipad pro with the rest of my family but there are a lot of people who i think apple's argument is like you know this is this is a pro product but the reality is people share these devices and at a thousand dollars uh people are going to share these devices still they're not going to just say no, no, no, this one's expensive. Nobody else can use it. A lot of people these are iPads are shared devices, iPhones are personal devices. Dan Morin wrote a thing in Macworld last week about it. And he made a point like it goes beyond the iPad, like the there are assumptions Apple makes about one device for one person that work on the iPhone and that start to break down

with the iPad and with the HomePod and a little bit with the Apple TV. But I think the HomePod is another great example where it doesn't recognize different people. It will only tie to one Apple ID. If you have one Apple ID because it doesn't recognize other people and you turn personalized music suggestions on, then everybody who uses that HomePod is now feeding data into your personal account, which I had to turn that off because I'm like, wait a second, I don't want the random songs my daughter plays to be influencing my for you data on my Apple Music. Like, I'm not, I don't want that. I want to keep my data, the stuff that I'm playing. And it just, it has no way of doing that. I think this all goes together, which is Apple has to deal with this idea

of devices that are shared. And how does it go? We got Face ID. Can Face ID do multiple views? Because that would be the nice way to do it is to have your Face ID, like Touch ID actually, on Macs detect who you are and log you into your user. But that adds all this complexity of having a

logged in and logged out state. But I heard from a lot of people who say they really, really want this because they want to be able to use their iPad and then like flip it into a different mode where their kids can use it. And they only have, you know, they don't have access to their emails and stuff like that. It's just the kids stuff. And I get it. get it that's a hard problem to solve and apple has not shown a lot of interest in solving it but they have had some sort of version of this in education for a couple of years now and uh i think it's worth mentioning as uh potentially being on the list there's some great items in there and i would love to see a big chunk of these being knocked off the list. Yeah, let's see what we get in 2019.

All right, it's time for some hashtag Ask Upgrade questions. Today's Ask Upgrade is brought to you by Simple Contacts. I'm sure, dear listener, that you have many things that demand your time. You have work to do. You have side projects to complete in your evenings, and let's be honest,

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and the code ahoy20 for $20 off your contacts. Our thanks to Simple Contacts for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, Jason. Hashtag askupgradequestions. Thank you very much. Jacob wants to know, or maybe Yakob. I'm going to go with Jacob, though.

Do you guys set up your iPad just like your iPhone, or do you do it completely different? Totally different. Totally different, right? Totally different. Totally different, right? Totally different. Now, Jacob said that he did it differently and now was trying it with his iPhone and it made more sense to them. And I understand that, you know, if that's your thing, because like consistency, but like, I think of these devices as two completely different things. I mean, even down to the fact that the dock on the iPhone is four apps. The dock on the iPad is like 12, right?

Like that's completely different at that point. Yeah. Yeah, it's completely different. I have some of the apps on my first page of my home screen are the same. Most of them are not. Yeah, like I have apps on some devices that I don't, like I have apps on my iPhone. I don't have apps on, don't have the same apps on my iPad and vice versa, right? Like I have the apps that i need on each device um and i will say that i set both of my ipads up

practically identically you know i do it manually and i try and keep those relatively the same like for example the 12.9 inch ipad pro i think can have one or two extra apps in the dock than the 11 but i but i don't put that extra app in on the top really small because it's weird it gets really small but it would it would it would mess up my brain i do put basically the minimum minus one uh in in there and i also have i have a folder too where i have a bunch of little utilities that i frequently use in multitasking. I pop that in there too. Jim wants to know if Mike is still using Gboard. I am. Still use Gboard on my iPhone. I'll tell you why. The two reasons,

three reasons I use Gboard and continue to use it. One, emoji search. You can search for emoji in Gboard. Two, swipe typing. I use swipe typing an awful lot. Helps me use my phone with one hand. It's really awesome. Three, the dictionary, the auto-correction.

That is better for me on Gboard for a couple of reasons. One, I just find that it gives me better results. And two, I think that they use some Google search stuff. So if I type in Pokemon the the options right now come up to say let's go they're like the two things i can tap because i think google is a little bit aware of the zeitgeisty stuff that's happening so they kind of tailor the the dictionary for that is what i believe is going on because i see this stuff happen quite a lot um i will recommend if you want to try gboard on your ip, I don't use it on my iPad

because the keyboard's not very good on the iPad. If you want to try it on your iPhone, you need to get rid of the other keyboard. You have to go all in so you're used to it. So you understand all the limitations. You understand that sometimes when you have to enter passwords, you won't get your autocorrect, right?

It's going to give you the regular keyboard. You really need to understand it so you can really try it out. So you add this keyboard. And then when you go back into keyboard settings, once you've added a second keyboard, you can actually delete the, say, like United Kingdom or American English or whatever keyboard you can remove. Apple standard keyboard can go. And then you have just Gboard. So if you want to try it, I really recommend going all in on it for like a week. And if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you.

But it really works for me. I'm a big fan of it. They've gotten way better updating it as well, right? Like they have like the new emoji. When there's new emoji, they have it in a couple of days now. And it used to take a long time. But I think that team is pretty focused. So they seem to get the updates out quick yep i use it too uh not all the time but a lot of the time i i have both now there were some really weird cases where the where gboard

was quitting and i was left with no keyboard so it totally happens it crashes but i do but i do use it a lot and there are moments where for whatever reason I'm getting very frustrated with typing out things where I will I don't I don't swipe type all the time but there are I will go through periods where I do because I'm frustrated that you know or I need to get something out really fast with lots of words in it and the swipe typing is much better at that yeah like this is what I'm saying about like go all in so you understand the frustrations. Sometimes the keyboard crashes. But there's a couple of things, right? So like all of the stuff with the quick type bar, so like the two-factor authentication codes, the new password stuff in iOS 12, you still get all of that.

Like that actually is like a separate thing. It still exists when you have a third-party keyboard. So you don't lose out on that awesome functionality. So it's worth bearing in mind. So you don't lose out on that awesome functionality. So it's worth bearing in mind. That's because, by the way, when you go into a password field, iOS flips you out to the standard keyboard.

So you still get all that functionality, which is really great. Matthias asks, It's not really practical for me to use an iPad as a laptop replacement, in part because of the strict requirements of the App Store. Do you think Apple will ever let you install unverified apps on ios do you think they need to uh no and no yeah i think that's exactly it and i would i would actually rephrase this question um i don't think that i mean unless you're saying it's not practical for me to use an ipad because i want to run bit torrent and bit torrent apps are banned from the App Store or something like that. But like Apple's requirements, like I don't think that that's a good enough excuse in most cases.

I think that Apple has started, you know, they have opened up a lot in the App Store and the stuff that is not allowed. And the stuff that is not allowed, you know, I will say this, that if there is a development tool that runs on the iPad, that is going to enable people to do what they do now, which is, you know, do on the iPad running a custom build of something that you download from GitHub and you run and it's just for you. There'll be more of that, perhaps. You can do that now with downloading things for Xcode and then installing them on your device there there are ways but not to distribute them more widely and and more easily and i agree with you mike um it's never going to happen like a complete side loading of ios apps no i just don't think it's ever going to happen yeah they're not going to do it and i don't think they need to either right like and i think you know the best the best example of this is like what they've tried to do and kind of i think mostly failed um on the mac with like the sandbox and stuff like that was their attempt to trying to close up that system a little bit more by being

able to offer the greatness of the mac app store but turns out this didn't work really well and what they're trying to do now with the mac App Store, I think, is indicative of what they would do with the iOS App Store, which is if there's a need, they will find ways to, rather than just let you sideload, they're going to find ways to create entitlements for apps that grant them more access. And that entitlement has to be improved. Like the best example that doesn't come, people who argue this don't talk about is CarPlay, where like, you can't just write a CarPlay app. Apple has to actually approve specially your ability to access CarPlay. And they only do it for a very limited number of apps. There are not very many CarPlay apps. And one of the reasons that that is true is not because people aren't trying, it's because Apple won't let you. And so, you know, if it turns out there's a real need for a certain kind of access, Apple doesn't have to give that access to everybody. They can say this

is a specific entitlement, and only certain apps will be granted it. And every other app that tries to use it will be rejected. And I think more of that is more likely in the future across all of Apple's platforms, but including iOS, that if there's a need and developers are like, we can't make this whole class of apps because of this. I think Apple is going to be more open to the idea of saying, all right, maybe there's a way for us to do that. What they're not going to do is say, sure, go ahead. They're going to say we spent a year and built this whole structure for this particular entitlement. And now you can ask for it. Design Station asks, do you guys do a local backup of iTunes purchases like music, TV shows,

and movies? It seems that with iTunes cloud integration, it's no longer necessary. What are your thoughts on this? I don't do any local backups, period. I don't do a local backup of my device in any way. Oh, really? Certainly not for media. And I don't do local backups of i don't do a local backup of my device in any way oh really certainly not for media and i don't do local backups of the device no it's all in icloud i'm not interested in in using itunes the only thing i use itunes for in relation to ios these days is that i will use it to get to the file transfer stuff so i can transfer across a wire uh big audio files that's about it i don't i i'm otherwise it's in the cloud. That's it. So my thing is like, if I have something downloaded on my iMac,

it will be backed up by Time Machine, I guess, but I don't download anything on my iMac. So like, no, like I, no, I even treat my iTunes purchases as streaming purchases,

right? Like, yes, if I buy an iTunes TV series, it very rarely is downloaded anywhere right like i'm just playing it right whenever i want unless i'm going on a trip or something exactly right um i understand like why people say this because i know that like weird rights changes which has happened can like remove files but like yeah but they're generally those stories go around and

they're generally errors right the stories generally are turn out to be mistakes because if you buy something and then it goes off sale in the in the itunes store whether it's an app or a piece of music or a uh a movie or a tv show generally you still get it people who bought it still get it it stays on the servers you can still download it people new people can't buy it and when you hear those stories of like oh i bought this thing and then apple just made it disappear and they didn't care uh that happened a few months ago and it turned out it was a mistake it was a bug it was not apple trying to take your movie away that you like i i imagine that even let's say that let's say that they did do it right like there was something that got removed at some point i don't think having a backup of it is going to help you right because i don't know if it's a drm

check-in yes yeah if it's a drm wrap backup maybe but i just i just don't think that this is no anyway to answer the question i'm not going to guarantee it 100 of the time but i do not download media from apple unless i'm going on a trip and i want it on on my ipad on a plane and i don't back up my devices right like i just treat apple's store as my backup right like i just well it's not even it's not even my backup it's my repository that's a great that's the media i buy from apple it's not you know my icloud backup is a backup but my media stuff it's just that's where that stuff lives. But like I will also just say, you know, I try everything I can to not buy media now.

Like I prefer to stream, right? Like I don't buy music. I stream my music. I only ever buy like TV shows and movies when they're not on a streaming service I pay for. And they're the only types of media that I do buy now because I just prefer to stream and i figure there's always going to be a streaming service around and if the streaming service i use goes away i'll just move to another one like you know i i don't really think especially music you know and for lots of lots of video content i just don't really think of owning it anymore like it's just not really how i think of it like i pay what i consider to be a relatively small amount of money for the amount of new stuff

that i consume like if i bought everything that i consumed it would be a lot more money than my streaming bills cost me right like can you imagine that like you know like if i if i listened if i paid for all the albums that i listen to these days, I'd be paying a lot of money every month. A lot more than my $10 or whatever that I pay for with Apple Music. If you have a question that you would like to submit for a later episode, you can just send them in with the hashtag AskUpgrade. And thank you to everybody that has done that today. We do have one more wonderful segment today, and that is going to be our discussion of the movie My Neighbor Totoro. But before we get to that, let me thank our final

sponsor for today's show, and that is the fine folk over at Lunar Display. Have you ever looked at your iPad and wished you could use it as a second display for your Mac? That's what Luna Display will let you do. Your iPad is a beautiful display. That's what it is. All iPad screens are wonderful and everybody could always use some extra space when working on the Mac,

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whether you want to be more productive at your desk at the office in a studio or on the go it doesn't matter you can get more screen real estate without the expense of buying a new screen Luna also acts as a complete extension to your Mac it will support your external keyboard as well as Apple Pencil touch interactions and so much more if you want to know what it might be like to have a touchscreen Macintosh Luna Display will give will give you that. Listeners of this show can get a wonderful 10% discount on Lunar Display. Just go to lunardisplay.com and enter the promo code UPGRADE at checkout. That's L-U-N-A-D-I-S-P-L-A-Y.com and promo code UPGRADE at checkout. I say listener of the show Brent sent in a video that he took showing him using the Lunar Display the other day, which I thought was awesome,

to airdrop a file from the Mac to his iPad. It's like, oh, that's nice, right? Because you're able to do that with the Luna Display. I thought that was really, really cool. Our thanks to Luna Display for their support of this show and RelayFM. So, My Neighbor Totoro. So, why did you choose this movie for me Jason? it is a beloved movie in my house

and across the world it is from the 80s which is sort of what we try to stick with this movie is as old as me 1988 yes it is well I just turned into dust and blew away

goodbye and although as my daughter asked me, when, because we usually watch the dub version rather than the Japanese with English subtitles, the dub is from 2006? Right, okay. So the movie is from 88, but it has actors in it that are like, well, that person wasn't alive in 88,

but the mainstream English dub version that's out there these days is from 2006. The movie's from 88. I first saw it, I don't know, probably, yeah, 2008, 2010, 2012. It was not that long ago. So it seems more recent to me than it actually is. And I think for most Americans, that's probably true because I think our understanding of Hayao Miyazaki, the brilliant Japanese animation director in America, he went mainstream a little bit later than, you know, he was a huge star in Japan. So as I like to do with these movies, movies to tell you what i knew and thought before about my neighbor totoro i knew it was a beloved movie i even wrote beloved movie and you said beloved movie which i think is funny um i'm very familiar with the character of totoro you know like i know the character seeing the totoro around seeing it you know as somebody who loves poutine like oh yeah yeah go together quite nicely they're similar

color right um i know the umbrella bus stop image very well right like it's just like an iconic image um so i asked like a question is totoro an imaginary friend that was my my thought going into the movie like is totoro an imaginary friend is that what totoro is we'll find out just a question um and then also just as a note this is my first ever miyazaki movie i've never seen a miyazaki into the movie. Is Totoro an imaginary friend? Is that what Totoro is? We'll find out. Interesting question. Also, just as a note, this is my first ever Miyazaki movie. I've never seen a Miyazaki movie before. Wow. I realize that depending on how this goes we may rapidly move on to

Kiki's Delivery Service. Which is actually my favorite Miyazaki movie. This is my probably second favorite. Also from the 80s. If there is a special guest host of next week's episode listening right now they will be upset at the fact that i watched the dubbed movie i watched the i'm sure i'm sure that would upset that person i just there are purists out there and and it's true if you want to get closest to the japanese uh spirit because

the dubs have to match match the sort of the mouth movement and what's on screen. And so they don't always impart all the same information that you would get in the translation of what they're saying in Japanese. And I get that. At the same time,

for an animated movie, I do have this other feeling, which is it's all dubbed in a way because there are drawings with somebody's recorded voice underneath them but i get it i have watched it with the subs before but i didn't watch it with the subs this time either i watched the dub version so the movie i guess is focused around a young family moving from tokyo to the country um because the mom of the family is sick and they never say what but it's clearly

something very bad we'll talk about yeah i think i assume tuberculosis but okay yeah okay and that's your villain in the film by the way the villain the villain in the film is that is the illness of the mom there's no bad person in this um and uh so they're moving to the country because I guess it will be better for her once she hopefully gets better and the movie is focused around the two girls Sutsuki and Mei now I had just assumed that Mei would be the main focus of the movie

and like after the establishing part that Sutsuki would fade into the background but that wasn't the case um no satsuki is the the main character and may is is just this uh adorable little sister who does and i like that it wasn't what i expected but but i but i enjoyed that i will say this movie perfectly captures the relationship of a younger sibling doesn't it doesn't i't it? I never had close-aged siblings, but having had two kids who were three years apart, I laugh at that so much because it's so true.

Like, there's a scene where they're going through the house and May just keeps basically doing exactly what Sutsky already did. And repeating everything. And repeating everything she says and all of that. And she says, all of that and and she says i'm gonna go do this thing it's like oh can i come too like that's the little sister is just following her around and i love everything she does it's adorable that the dub the voices are dakota and l fanning like yeah actual sisters which i really liked and they did a great job i

thought that it was really their performance was excellent um like you could show me that movie and I don't think I would have known it was dubbed I guess the only giveaway would have been for me which is a little bit interesting I kind of just had to put it to the back of my mind of like this is clearly Japan and these are clearly American accents like I had to like just try and just

forget that and I was able to after the first couple of minutes but like at first it was a bit like this is very Japanese like what I'm seeing a bit like this is very japanese like what i'm seeing here right like we're not even in a city you know like um but we'll we'll just forget about that but um there were you know i i liked a lot of the little moments right like the first time that they come into contact with the soot gremlins is really funny to me you know like the girls trying to be brave

and and like i enjoyed all of that stuff like the way that they were clearly troublemakers right but were also scared at many points and i really enjoyed just how much trouble those sisters would cause like when they effectively nearly bring the whole house down in the beginning right they're just pulling on that beam and everything's just starting to crumble around them like i just that was very funny they're like the dad had he seems to have his work cut out for him a lot of the time yeah but he's a cool dad right he is a cool dude they come in and they say they say this is uh the dad the house is haunted and he's like great i've always wanted to live in a haunted house yeah Yeah, I really like these characters. Lauren and I both were watching this and we're like, he's a good dad.

Yeah, he's a very good dad. And like when they're all scared and he starts laughing, right? Like when they're bathing and he's just like starts laughing at the top of his voice, like get rid of the monsters and the ghosts that way. It was really cool. I want to ask you something because it seemed interesting to me and I couldn't quite work it out. If it was a different thing to most movies

or if I just wasn't noticing it so much. There are a lot of panning shots with landscapes and it looked really different. It feels like a thing I don't see in animated movies a lot. I couldn't work out what it was, but it seemed like there were some interesting like camera moves going on that seemed to be refreshing in some way. Or am I like, is there something about that?

I don't know about the camera moves. I will say that Miyazaki loves landscapes. He loves showing lush foliage. He loves clouds. I love the way water was shown. It's very impressive. impressive yeah there's that that thing where the little something like pops up out of the water and there you watch the ripples and then it just kind of moves on he loves that stuff it's incredibly detailed it's beautiful

most i would say most films uh animated films do not lavish that much time and effort on the beauty of the surroundings but right something that that is very clear in all of miyazaki's movies but it's clear in this one is that he he does a lot of uh stuff about the environment and about people interacting with the environment and treating it badly and how we should treat it better there's a line in here about how this is you know there was a lot of these things before we started cutting down all the trees or something like that that happens and and so you also he shows a lot of his imagery in his movies is kind of like uh look at this beautiful lush environment this is rural japan or this is japan as it used to be

and and that's definitely a theme that he's trying to get his environmentalism he puts it into the the kind of beautiful scenery of the countryside and it's just it is beautiful every i put on this movie and the first thing i say is oh look at those clouds they're great one thing that was striking to me was how much silence there is in this movie it felt very different to a regular animated movie not a lot of like of soundtrack right like there's not a lot of music playing in the background in certain scenes like sometimes it's just silence no one's even talking and i was i think that struck me a little bit it's like huh that's that's that feels different to most animated movies that i would see like tension being built by silence or there just being no music like there's just none you know and it's just like here is some peace and it was like huh it just seemed very different to me as and i i think i kind of liked that a lot um it didn't help my overall feeling of dread

about what was going to happen to the mum like ah right i was very very uh nervous about uh the what seemed inevitable death of the the mom in this family one of the funny things about these miyazaki movies is that we do bring our western anticipation of story structure onto the movie and something that i've learned about about miyazaki movies is uh i keep looking so when i was first watching these movies, I keep looking for a villain. I keep expecting a traditional linear plot and I keep expecting things that are dramatic that happen in movies like the mom dying.

In the third act, right? And they don't. Like I said, who's the villain in this? Literally the villain in this movie is the illness that the mother has. There are no people who are antagonists in this film. Kiki's delivery service, which hopefully we'll watch sometime, the villain in that is the weather. Like, that's it.

The wind. The wind is the enemy in that movie. There is no traditional antagonist. And so, yeah, you kind of start expecting that uh the movie doesn't just refuses to deliver it's not that kind of movie and it i mean they were it was pretty heavy right like they're talking about the mom dying right like that's the thing that happens when the telegram comes and when may goes missing later in the movie they're like searching a pond to see if she drowned right and they find a shoe and they're like is this her shoe and she's like nope that's not her show i noticed this time that we see her put on her shoes earlier so we know

that's not her shoe but attention if only if you're paying attention i only did it the 10th time i saw it i was like oh yeah right that's that's actually setting us up there yep all right i feel like we haven't even mentioned totoro yet so um totoro uh does not sound the way i expected totoro to sound totoro screams and shouts and growls and roars i was not expecting that um honestly i was expecting totoro to have a voice well he doesn't he doesn't talk right but he's he's a uh they they just make they just kind of make roars and and stuff yeah like i i i think i was expecting totoro to be like as cute as totoro's appearances right where like the sounds that totoro makes are scary sounds yeah yeah oh no he he roars really loudly and everything shakes right he's adorable but the big totoro there is a small

medium and large totoro of course but the big the big totoro the see-through totoro which i initially thought was like a ghost that was like i was like aha imaginary aren't they aren't they i mean they're they're like wood spirits i think so so they can go through things and they're not always there and all of those sort of things yeah yeah like so like i don't i don't have a uh feeling on on a theory of this movie, really. The imaginary friend thing seems obvious in some places, but then there are parts that I don't have answers for, like how does Sutsuki get to Mei? How do they get to the hospital?

I don't have, except for the horrifying cat bus, not like that. Do not like the door on the cat bus. No, thank you. That, I didn't like that, Jason. That upset me. I don't love it. I don't love it.

The sound effect makes me laugh because it's like a sci-fi sound effect. It's like, Oh, it makes it even worse. Like, why is the cat making that noise? Did not like the cat bus. Thank you very much. That's fair but no

i think i we had this discussion on the incomparable people can listen to episode 144 hanging with the totes um it's a great episode it's me and john syracusa and merlin man and i'm putting that in my list because now i can listen to it now i love that episode it's a great episode and we uh all of our uh miyazaki episodes are great but that's a great one um and uh yeah we we talked about there the fact is that yeah stuff happens in this movie that is not explained any other way like may leaves they leave the corn on the windowsill at the hospital at the end like they totally it is real so it's not an imaginary friend although you could think that but they are like magical tree spirits basically yeah so it's like i don't have an answer right because like if they would have just looked at the mom that would have been one thing and if they would have just shown the

corn on the window that would have been another but it literally had a message from the girls on it right there's no there's no way around that other than the fact that they were there. Like, they were definitely there, right? So I found that all very interesting. Like, I really like this movie a lot. I liked it more when it was done than when it was happening because nothing horrifying and upsetting happened, right? Like, that was my concern.

So, like, now no having seen this and having you said it to me like if other i i think i will approach other miyazaki movies differently right not thinking that something like that there's not a villain or whatever and sometimes there is a villain but it's it because the structure structures are just very different from what we expect not necessarily expecting but at least not necessarily expecting something. Yes. And I think that that would make, on future viewings, I will probably enjoy this movie even more. Because I really like movies where there are no stakes sometimes.

Like, I like watching, or like, no upsetting high stakes, right? Like an overall thing that must be overcome. I like watching nice movies where you just get to see like a slice of life yes like i like that that's one of the reasons that i love this movie and one of the reasons i love kiki's delivery service which has a little bit more of a plot but really not really and this this movie is completely i would say plot free and it is all about these little experiences and you can just sit there and enjoy it and it's and look at the scenery and i love it that's i want to give this movie a big hug yeah and i feel like it would hug you back like you're in like a very furry warm although it

might also say so much noise totoro makes like so much noise um but i you know i really loved all of the characters like i loved all of the characters in this you know grandma is awesome like she's super nice i did find it a bit harsh when like uh when the uh they get the sandal and they're like that guy's like oh grandma like what does he say something like oh she's making a mountain and now nothing again like oh she's overreacting it's was like, all right, all right. Like, she's worried. I just found that kind of funny.

What's the name of the little boy? Oh, what is his name? I don't know. I'm going to find it now. He's super funny. With the sailor hat. Yeah, and he grunts. Kanta. Kanta. i found him really funny well and he's he's like super shy around satsuki but he's also very helpful and lends her his umbrella and all of that and like is really

focused on trying to help find may right like this is a great movie jason i'm i'm really really happy i'm glad you liked it i really really liked it it makes me want to watch kiki's delivery service oh yes well we have to do that we have to do that that's that is uh that is great too that is a very different looking movie but um i love that even more than this one and this one is is is delightful yeah the totoro they are adorable i believe the origin is uh troll and you see that in the dub where it's like oh like the trolls in your storybooks or whatever yeah but but it says you know toro but that's the idea is that it's just kind of like a little girl sort of mangling troll um and that's so it's not you know

that's we call them toros but they're just these little furry, adorable spirits that float around and are cute. And yes, and that scene, let's just say it, that scene at the bus stop, before the cat bus, because I get the cat bus is creepy, but before that, where suddenly he's there next to them, and then the water is just very slowly dripping onto his nose from his little leaf hat and then they give him the umbrella and he doesn't really know how to use it and then he realizes that the drops are dropping onto it making a loud noise which he really likes the loud noise and then he decides to jump and have all the water come out of the trees once it is a

classic i love that it's a great scene at all so much yeah yeah and obviously that's that's like the part where as well like some of the understanding of what's going on so that's to change because it's like oh uh you you think it might be all in may's imagination but now satsuki sees it too yeah and it's like that's where it's like oh so what is going on and he takes the umbrella away with him yeah on the cat bus so that's that yeah what does that mean yes it's like, oh, so what is going on here? And he takes the umbrella away with him on the cat bus. So that's that. Yeah, what does that mean? Yes, it's very, very good.

Very, very good. Love this movie, Jason. Thank you for recommending it. Hey, that's great. We have more to watch now in the future. I want to see more of these. Yeah, they're good. You've made Professor Syracuse very happy as well.

I don't know. I don't know how he's going to feel about the dubbing. That's okay. You know, in more advanced, he's going to treat you like one of his children he's going to be like that's okay we'll we'll start you out easy but uh but yeah it's a it's a classic and and miyazaki's movies are are great but my two favorite are totoro and uh kiki's delivery service so they are just i i i watch it and i say oh i love more I would love more movies like this that are just pleasant to be around. It's just nice to go on the little journey and be in that world for a little while.

And when Japan hosted a World's Fair in 2005, they actually built the house that's in this movie. Oh, wow. And I had that thought while I was watching. I was like, wouldn't it be great to walk around that house? And they built that house for the World's Fair. It's amazing. That's in this movie. Oh, wow. And I had that thought while I was watching. It was like, wouldn't it be great to walk around that house? And they built that house for the World's Fair. It's amazing. That's awesome. That's really cool.

All right. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as we have enjoyed putting it together for you. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to an article on Kotaku of the Totoro house. It looks like it's something that was built in 2005. They built a full-scale replica, and it looks amazing.

That looks super, super cool. I think it's still something that you can maybe go and see. I don't know. I'll have to read up on that. That looks like that's super amazing. I love that. If you want to submit questions, always, you can send in a hashtag snell talk for the opening of the show hashtag ask upgrade for the end of the show um i'd like to thank our sponsors for this episode simple contacts lunar display pdf pen from smile and hello for their support don't forget to go to

upgrade your wardrobe.com you have just until the 4th of December to buy our limited edition merchandise I'll be back in two weeks but Jason will be back with a very special guest next time until then say goodbye Jason Snell Toe

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