Upgrade - 225: An Upgrade Christmas Carol

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

Then it was, as Myke and Jason began their preparations for the Christmas holiday, that they were visited by three ghosts, representing the spirit of Apple past, present, and future.

OS9 was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its burial was signed by Steve Jobs himself. I was there at WWDC in San Jose and I saw it. Mac OS9 was dead as a doornail. Then it was that Mike and Jason began their preparations for the Christmas holiday. A podcast feast was intended and all for them. But when they entered the hallowed halls of Relay FM, they discovered something strange. There was nothing at all particular about the Upgrade podcast logo,

except that it was very large. But let anyone explain to us, if they can, how it happened that what we saw in our podcast player of choice was, without it undergoing any immediate process of change, not an upward pointing arrow, but Stephen Hackett's face. I am the ghost of Apple past. Long past? No, you already said that Mac OS 9 was dead. So it must be Mac OS 10's past.

It's just called Mac OS now. Okay, so maybe just Apple's recent past. What are you doing with this ridiculous intro? It's the Upgrade Holiday Special! i am steven hackett and i am the ghost of apple past steven do you have something wrong with your throat is there something going on there yeah uh i'm good i'm good to go now good to go i feel like we've finally given you the role that you've always wished for. Honestly, I'm going to retire after this episode goes out. Oh, strange visitor from the past.

What message do you have for us? How do you break for us today? In case you hadn't guessed, we are doing a Christmas carol today. The upgrade holiday special is a Christmas carol. We are joined by Stephen Hackett. And he is going to tell us everything about Apple's past so we can frame it in today and we can talk about it. So, Ghost of Apple Past, from whence do you come?

I'm around 2005, it seems like. You know, people are really into Smash Mouth, but they don't tell their friends they're still into Smash Mouth. They're sort of in the phase where kind of backing away from it. George W. Bush is president. You know know it's 2005 people excited the big news guys is the ipod is huge huge here that's interesting i thought apple was more of a computer company than uh than an ipod company are they still apple computer inc in 2005 they are right oh yeah why would they change their name that's silly why would they ever change their name well you know they could be like apple apple music player inc or something no that's the that's the beatles company you can't

do that they are apple apple computer incorporated as they ever shall be oh yeah okay all right i don't see them ever changing that what could possibly come along in just two years that would change everything i can't imagine it can't be true so uh ghost of apple past uh what chips are found inside of macintoshes today it's funny that you should ask because here in my office i have an imac i have a very powerful iMac G5. It is fast and it is white and it is beautiful. I really enjoy it. And in my laptop over here, I have a PowerPC G4 just humming along here in my aluminum power book.

Yeah. So the impression I'm getting here is you come from a land where Apple is branching out from its traditional product line with something called the iPod. And also you've got a Mac that has a long time relationship with PowerPC chips, but might be teetering on the precipice of a chip transition. That's the rumors. There are a couple interesting things. So when this iMac was introduced about a year ago in August 2004, Phil Schiller said something that really caught my attention, and it was, what will the creator of the iPod do for their next computer? Like, totally turned it on its head. That's when they introduced the iMac G5. And I got to tell you, you know,

the G5 has been in the cheese grater now for a while. You know, John Syracuse has got one. He's really happy with it. But for those of us who don't want a tower, having a G5 with its 64-bit processor that's really fast and really speedy in an iMac is just mind-blowing. This, you know, this ship runs kind of hot, and to squeeze it in an iMac is just mind-blowing this you know this ship runs kind of hot and to squeeze an iMac y'all will not believe this this iMac is only two

inches thin two inches thin I can't even imagine a computer thinner than that never gonna happen all right so the what so what are the issues like um there's what about a g5 power book you said you got a g5 iMac, but you don't have a G5 PowerBook. Apple is, I'm sure, working hard at that. We know the G5 takes quite a bit of cooling and quite a bit of power, but I'm sure that they're working on it. There are rumors, though, that Apple could go to the dark side and put an Intel processor in these things.

What? The PowerPC has been around a long time, right? They transitioned, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, What? It's a processor that may not look as fast on paper. An 800 megahertz G4 sure seems slower than an Intel chip running at 1.2 gigahertz. But in every test you can throw at it, the G4 is faster. Because megahertz are just a myth. That doesn't matter. I'm going to come up with a term that just came into my head. It's fake news. I've invented that term here in 2005.

That's good. That's good that's good i want to say first off i agree with you that apple using intel chips and mac seems crazy um i just read a column a whole column in mac world where they said it's never gonna happen so i'm pretty sure it'll yeah i haven't picked up that that that uh magazine yet i'm gonna go get it after this i'm sure it's gonna come in the mail because it'll have all the latest information and i can't wait now i'll be waiting okay mike i think it's time where we use our magical powers that we have as hosts our host powers to reveal to this ghost what has happened up to 2018 oh my you sure that the ghost will be able to take it i don't know

about that well yeah he's gonna be shocked but also uh i feel like this bit is uh is running out of steam and we need to talk to the real steven uh steven hackett of 2018 appear oh wow a lot happened there didn't it in between 2005 and 2018 i have a crazy headache welcome back to the present we uh we we had to extract you from the past uh yeah so so given given your little so you dipped into 2005 there you were in the mindset of 2005 and uh i i think one of the things we wanted to talk about and not just have a a bit where we talk like you're confused about what's happening in the present for the next 20 minutes is uh is to talk about like what what can we learn are the things we can learn about about transitions Apple's gone through before? Because you mentioned the G5 PowerBook that never happened.

They were never able to do that. And it helped force Apple to Intel when it seemed initially impossible that that would happen. And then suddenly became, like, a real possibility. And then it happened, and we all moved. It's like the life cycle of this and it seems like we're kind of in that same cycle now so you know can we draw parallels between the intel transition and an arm transition for the mac i think we can for a couple of reasons one apple drew parallels to their previous transitions in 2005, 2006, when they were moving to Intel, Jobs pitched

that Apple's really good at this. And he talked about the move not only to the PowerPC processor, but from OS 9, rest in peace, to OS 10. And Apple is good at a lot of things. But one thing, it may be the best company technology at this exact thing at moving through these really big transitions that would totally cripple other companies and other platforms if i could challenge you on that point for a second could it be argued that apple is best at transitioning its current major platform like if so if they were trying to do something with ios and they can mostly get

people you know on board of any changes that they make to ios right like here's some new screen sizes here's we want to go from to 64-bit all that kind of stuff would a transition of the mac today have potentially more concern than the transition of the mac did in 2005 though because in 2005 the mac was a much more i guess exciting platform than it is today just because there was more focus on it right like it's just it's just the focus has shifted it was apple's biggest platform at the time it's not apple's biggest platform now but the mac is bigger than it was then and i think in some ways ios has helped like sharpen the definition of the mac where like the mac is is maybe uh its user base is broader but maybe also like more specific like i think there's a lot of people

doing a lot more stuff on a mac now as far as production and professional level work writing iOS apps that wasn't going on in 05 necessarily. I don't know if that's a big factor. I think that Apple would do just as good of a job doing this if the Mac was its primary or its secondary platform today. It is an interesting thought, though. You're right, because this is the first time the Mac has transitioned as not the largest thing in Apple's catalog. But until iOS development can happen on iOS, they need the Mac to be healthy from a professional standpoint. And I think they would take just as much care now as they did then. One thing that works in the Mac's favor, Mike, and I'm glad you brought up ios is the fact that we have ios that apple has been has spent a decade now building operating systems

on top of the arm platform right and there was this great moment in the announcement keynote through the switch to intel and jobs was like os 10 has been leading a secret double life it's been running on intel the whole time. And the details there are a little fuzzy. It wasn't all running, but it compiled at least. But that's because OpenStep that kind of got rolled into OS X, that worked on

Intel. They just preserved that over time. Jobs pitched it as a safety net, but it was more than that. But now Apple has a decade of building things on top of arm the os itself frameworks apis so apple are better suited this time for the operating system transition themselves even than maybe they were last time i was thinking in some ways apple this is weird but bear with me here this thing is really weird. So we're just going to get slightly weirder.

Apple is Intel in this scenario. Like, and think of it this way, like when that chip transition happened and, you know, I was at Macworld then, you know, we did publish a column saying it was never going to happen. And it happened like two months later. The thing is, Intel at the time, like now we think of intel and it's kind of like uh really downgraded in our thoughts over the last few years but like it was rolling and it was everything the power pc alliance could do to try and battle it and do those megahertz myth things and all of that but the intel chip architecture had been proven over many years

it was like the leader leader they had the best chips and they were being tested by all of the pc manufacturers like every pc with you know there were some exceptions but like intel was the standard intel and microsoft and all the pc makers were working together and so when apple made that switch you picked up a lot of benefit because there's this whole other market that had been optimizing and had you know customer demands and all of that for intel so when apple went there it was like oh and now max or pcs too yes but it also benefited from all this stuff that was part of this really vibrant uh kind of ecosystem on the pc side in terms of building up that pc tech and like that's

the story of the arm processors and the iphone and the ipad is like that's the vibrant um world that has been developing for 10 years that the the mac could now potentially just step right into and it's a little weird to think of apple's chips as the intel chips of today but that's kind of i think the parallel is is actually not bad no it's not they're building the best systems on a chip the best processors in the industry you know by far and even though intel ruled the roost for i mean for decades they they just have totally missed it and if if history teaches us anything it's that apple will do the hard thing if it's the right thing for the platform. Look, transitioning processors is not a walk in the park, even for Apple, right?

You have all the hardware stuff, you have all the software stuff, you have all the third party developer stuff, right? There's all these things and now Macs are more complicated, right? So you got to deal with Thunderbolt and you got to deal with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and all of this stuff. And they will do that work, even on a platform that's not the beloved child it once was, if they really believe it's the right thing for the platform and that platform's users. And I think it is. And I think Apple thinks it is too. And it really feels like we're right on the

edge in the next 18 or 24 months of something big happening here. And I think all the things we saw that came to the Mac with Intel that benefited the Mac, you could do much more powerful notebooks. You could build things like the first MacBook Air, which people forget now, had a custom Intel chip in it. They worked with Intel for a year to build. All of that stuff that came to the Mac could reinvent the Mac again with ARM inside. And that's, as a Mac user, pretty exciting to me. I mean, the Intel transition was great. It was shocking. But once those Intel Macs started coming out, it was pretty impressive, right?

The code translation stuff, old PowerPC processor apps worked fine. They weren't super slow. And then the native stuff that was coming out was was much faster and you finally got faster laptops that you were never going to get in the in the old power books the new macbooks running intel um processors were way faster than anything because the g5 just never was going to go in a laptop. The other parallel I wanted us to draw between the past and the present was about services. And I'm wondering if you can follow along with this too, if this seems like a parallel, which is the iPod changed Apple's business in an unexpected way. And for a while there, famously, Steve Jobs said, And for a while there, famously, Steve Jobs said, why would we ever have the iPod work on a PC?

We want the iPod to be this great thing that sells Macs. And then at some point, somebody at Apple stood up to Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs went along with it, because they basically said, there's a business opportunity here, maybe greater than the Mac, and we need to follow it. And the parallel I keep drawing is with services today, which is an extremely non-traditional Apple thing. It's not hardware. They're not dealing with margins. They want recurring services revenue. And when you look at things like Apple Music coming to the Amazon Echo and potentially this video service launching on, you know, question mark on Apple TV or as well as Apple hardware platforms, or would they also be on other people's hardware? I feel like it's a lot of the same questions. It's that same debate of like, what are we as a company services? So basically services the iPod where Apple has to kind of reinvent itself and

figure it out, or there's an internal debate, do you think? I think there are some parallels to draw. You know, the iPod came in as an accessory to the Mac and very quickly grew much larger than the Mac had ever been. You know, by 2005, you had the iPod was four years old, the iPod mini was a year old, and the shuffle was brand new. And we were about a year or two away from the Nano really kind of taking off and the iPod gaining things like video in late 2005. But the sort of sibling story to the iPod is iTunes, right? So iTunes at the beginning was just a way to sync your music. They launched in March 04, the iTunes Music Store. So I pulled some numbers. By January 0 2005, they had sold 250 million songs. By July of 2005, 500 million songs. And by February 2006, 1 billion songs have been sold

through iTunes. So the iPod was a conduit for the iTunes Music Store, but the iTunes Music Store was also like this really growing, business all into itself and it it i think it was the first time apple realized that they could they could sell something that wasn't a computer and it'd be okay right and so the iTunes music store in a way kind of was apple's first big service right it's for sure it was it was pay as you go right it wasn't just you pay once and get all you can eat, but it was a service. You traded money for digital assets. And that has evolved into Apple Music and all these other things now, iCloud.

And.Mac and MobileMe went away and iCloud is here. But Apple got good at services then with the iTunes Music Store. And of course, there have been some bumps and hitches on the road. with the iTunes Music Store. And of course, there have been some bumps and hitches on the road. But I think there's a clear path between that initial iPod iTunes success and where Apple is now with services. The difference is, of course, the iPod is gone and Apple Music benefits in a way that iTunes didn't because it can be, if Apple makes it, hardware agnostic, right? Apple doesn't need to sell the iPod anymore. They have the iPhone and these other things.

But as they roll it out, it's on Android. It's on the Amazon Echo here in a few days. All of this stuff, Apple Music has the ability to grow even larger than iTunes ever was. And I think Apple is fine with that. I think they get it. I think that Apple has been really clear in its communication to investors on these quarterly calls that services is an important part of their business the one they are focusing on and if you look at the charts on six colors each quarter just goes up and up and up and up and up and i i don't think that's as awkward for apple as it as it seems or is it or definitely as it would have

been without the success of the ipod and the itunes music store it's just sort of that in the modern era it's hard to look at apple tv and i keep saying this and i don't mean to beat on the apple tv because i i use my apple tv all the time but it's hard to look at the apple tv and say this is an ipod in the making right it's just gonna take over that's not gonna be the case not gonna happen but so so you've got a video service to launch. And you want people to view it on their iPads and their iPhones and all that. But if they want to view it on their TVs, you've got to take a step that you might not have taken in the past. Because like Steve Jobs back in the early days, you're like, well, wait, we just want

to use this to sell more Apple TVs and more iPads. And somebody has to say, and in this case i think that somebody is probably tim cook says no we're not we're not gonna do that we're gonna let everybody see this but the uh that the amazon echo music thing that's a big that's that's to me that's like the the flare gun you know flare being fired to the air saying we we care about our services it doesn't matter where they are we just want people to give us money and like or or alternately we want people who are our customers who have feet in other ecosystems to not turn away from our services because they aren't there

which i think is probably more realistic right it's not like people are going to buy an amazon echo and say now i can sign up for apple. It's more like they already had Apple Music and the Echo was like a frustration because it didn't have it. That's like all of us who bought them or they can't buy one because they want, you know, Apple Music and they don't know if they want to switch to Spotify or whatever. Like it just clears all that stuff out. And it's like, you want Apple Music? It's not an impediment. It's fine. Yeah. There is a difference there in the hardware. You know, this is not to discount what Amazon has done because I think the Echo is an incredible device. But hardware is easier in 2018 than it was in 2005. It just is, right? Like manufacturing is simpler, components

are cheaper, it's a more understood area. And so Apple now has to play in a world where there are hardware devices that, you know, can run all these different things. You know, hardware was an extension of software for a really long time. But now that's not necessarily true. And good on Apple for realizing that and setting aside, OK, you know, Apple Music, as big as the iPhone is, Apple Music would only be as big as the iPhone. Best case scenario and like an old version of apple but now they are willing to uncouple those things and have apple music be on devices that are sold by competitors apple and amazon compete like there's no way around it but they're willing

to give that up to grow their services revenue and as the iphone may or may not be slowing down we you know it's a debate for another time as the ipad and the mac may or may not be healthy or not whatever those things may be services can continue to grow past apple's hardware if they continue to invest in it and i think they will you know i did there was something that's funny to me like looking at because we kind of transitioned from the it store into talking about Apple TV, right? Like in the realm of the past and present of services. It's funny that like a lot of companies, they will get one once in a lifetime thing. And Apple has been lucky enough to have a couple of them, right?

Like the success of the iPhone is a once in a company's lifetime thing you know but i also think that the itunes music store like is for how much it dominated a specific industry like in a way that there's pretty much nothing apple can do to dominate streaming video with their upcoming tv service in the way that they dominated with the itunes music store like they're just this isn't a way for them to really do that in today's climate because it's a very different situation partly because of apple they made all of this now fun enough past apple 2005 apple made 2018 apple's job a lot harder right because the tv and film industry won't allow apple to do to them what apple did to the music industry right right so it's kind of just funny to look at those

two things be like the apple can try really hard and they can they could set it up all perfectly but they're just not going to be able to replicate that success it's just it's a it's just a different world and a slightly different market and And so it's interesting to me. I think Apple Music, by and large, seems to be doing really well. I think it's maybe doing better than a lot of people expected it to, compared to something like Spotify. There are all these charts constantly about how Apple Music is catching up. And I'm just intrigued to see how well Apple's tv service can do and the devil's going to be in a lot of the details for them but i i i would be i would eat my hat if we saw itunes

music store level of dominance for that service it just doesn't seem likely well it's a different world right that i think that's the truth of a lot of this is that the competition is much stronger now and and the you know apple was in a unique position in the 2000s in terms of coming up with the ipod and having uh some competition but nothing from major players and itunes the same way that they were able to make those deals and there were there were other things out there but they they were able to it was like a green field for them to to run in and now i mean all their competitors have seen what happened in that era and i think the biggest if i had to say the biggest change in the attitude of tech companies today versus in 2005 i i think i would say the number one thing is all of them understand their own mortality and that's why you see like google is the most open about it where google has their whole other

bets thing you know but in general tech companies spend money on r&d and on buying other companies because they know that there's going to be a next big thing and that and and the steve jobs attitude at apple was always we will be our own replacement we don't care about protecting our current thing as long as we're the ones who do the next big thing and the problem is google does that google knows that amazon knows that right like microsoft knows that everybody knows that and they've got so much money z Zuckerberg can't stop buying companies that threaten him. Well, and they've got so much money now that they can afford to do it as long as they have the vision to make the bets. And so, yeah, you're never going to, in any of these areas, you're never going to totally dominate it, I think, because everybody is looking under all the couch cushions looking for the next big

thing. And like video streaming services, like there are a million of them and Apple has to be there and it will potentially be a success for them. But you know, it's never going to be the dominant like Netflix already played that game and they and they won and they parlayed like Apple taking the Mac and turning it into the iPod netflix took their dvd business and got into streaming before it was really a thing and that was their beachhead and they got there and you know credit to them that's why they're number one but apple could still be a player and it can still be part of a larger picture so ghost of apple past steven hackett thank you for joining us on this very special uh holiday episode. And where can,

where should people go to find what you're up to these days? Well, it's 2005. So everyone has a web blog. So you can find me at 512pixels.net. www.512pixels.net and here is an itunes gift card for you as a thank you my blog loads really well in the brand new safari 2.0 so go check it out excellent mike i feel that we're being pulled forward uh the the ghost is gone perhaps another ghost will come who knows but uh before then do we have a sponsor we do i think we should all take a moment we should all take a moment to relax after uh who knows scary i don't know visitation of the day the 2000s are scary they're scary they are horrifying times simple

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Our thanks to Simple Contacts for their support of this show and RelayFM. And wait a second, Mike. Do you hear that? I feel like there's another ghost coming. Is it happening again? I don't know if I'm ready for this. Well, it's too late. I think she's here. I am Rosemary Orchard, and I am the ghost of Apple present. Oh, we have been joined by another ghost jason who could have imagined there would be another one everybody everybody saw that coming now i have a question though which is what is a ghost of the present rose is that you is it just

you i am an omnipresent being okay but it's still you're just still you you're still you yes just everywhere as i present day ghost search could just be people okay one of the great things about having a ghost of the present is that they can tell you what's happening right now uh i guess in case you were not paying attention so rose i think maybe the best thing or i should say a ghost of apple present uh i should i'm interested to know in in your perspective um what are the new things that you're excited about right now in the world of Apple? Like what is a good thing for you right now?

What are you enjoying? Oh, the HomePod. Oh, really? The HomePod is a magical, magical device, which is excellent at Christmas time, which is, of course, the perfect setting for this occasion. Is it not it it's funny because i don't know if i would have assumed that the first thing you would mention was the home pod

not that there's anything wrong with it but it's it is very much a kind of just it lives in the world for me like it's not really something that i pay a ton of attention to and i can only imagine that being the automation whiz that you are that one of the reasons you're a fan of the home pod is for stuff like that are you using shortcuts on your home pod a lot yes i used it to turn on the christmas tree the christmas lights and to start the christmas music playlist of my choice i set to random earlier with just a few words so is that like one shortcut that you have built that like you'll do all of those things yes yeah that's i just i don't know why but i i find myself just not really invoking shortcuts in that way jason

are you doing that are you triggering any shortcuts on your home pod i have done a few but i'm not doing it regularly um but i I keep thinking about doing it. I do feel it's funny that we're talking about the HomePod first off, but this did feel like... So a couple of things happened, right? They did that software update that enabled pairs of HomePods to be stereo pairing, the ability to do shortcuts, a few other things like, I i think kicking off calls from the home pod like the stuff that was missing finally got there and then i'd say during this holiday season apple has been really aggressive with home pod deals like uh you've seen the home pod for 100 less for 249 in a bunch of places as a deal and you know you put those things all together and

it's like well yeah if the home pod is more capable and maybe less expensive then it becomes a much more interesting product that it is and I have two I have a stereo pair and you know I kind of love them they sound great that is where we listen to all of our music now so and even though my Amazon Echo will apparently be getting Apple Music I can't really envision listening to Apple Music on it because the HomePod sound too good yes I mean for me it's mostly the present and the most awesome because everybody seems to be getting them now like they they've been around for a little while and suddenly everybody is talking about the home pod again because of these deals that you just mentioned jason and so they're working their way into the homes and into everybody's hearts, of course. Yeah, $250 really does feel like the right point for it.

I think we only knew this at the start, right, that $350 was too expensive. It's not about the quality of the product, but it's too expensive to give it a go. $350 is a lot of money for for a connected speaker 250 while still it's not cheap that $100 I think makes more difference than $100 does that make sense like it just it brings it into like a different bracket which makes it a much more approachable device I think my main thing with the HomePod is I find it impossible to keep straight in my mind that that was a product introduced this year. Like, I think that it is much older. I always think that it came out last year.

And it's always funny to me when I remember that. No, no. It's like an eight-month-old product at this point or something like that. It's kind of funny. It was just announced. Yeah, it was announced. Because it shipped quite late, didn't it, in the end? Yeah.

That was one of the big things. Oh, yeah, I remember we had that whole stuff because Airplay 2, right? Airplay 2 was super late. Airplay 2 came later. Came later, yeah. HomePod did not have a good introduction into the world, I don't think. Yeah, it was announced at WWDC 2017 and didn't ship until February. My word.

There you go. That's why. It's the WWwdc announcement that's why it feels so old to me it's like it just that that's that is an old product and yet it's yet it's a this year product isn't that something it's an apple present most definitely is rose what else is going on right now that you're that you're pumped about well of course there are these shiny new tablety devices called ipad bros with these very large screens on very small devices and that is very very exciting for all of us super ipad power nerds yeah i picked up my 12.9 today uh i took i had the case off and was just, I was looking at it and I was like, how is it so thin? Like, how is it so thin? It is wild to me that it is the thinnest that it is.

The thinnest iOS device ever made is, it boggles my mind. I just don't understand. I don't understand how they did it. There's part of me that wants to know why. Like, why did they decide to make this decision? It really is just, the iPads are so wonderful i love them so much yeah they're great um i i am so excited we we anticipated them for a long time and now that they're here i'm very uh i've been using mine a lot my ipad use has increased um i will say uh also my apple pencil use has increased like i would i would you know mess around with the apple pencil but it would just never stick for me and of course you couldn't

like it would just roll away somewhere and be lost forever and now it doesn't roll away and you can stick it on uh as a magnet and and i've been using it especially to edit podcasts in ferrite and uh so i i'm getting that and i love it the part that is kind of unsettled for me is the accessory stuff like i can't decide what i feel about some of the case options like uh part of sometimes i use it just without a case i used to have a smart cover on my ipad all time, but having the case, the non-keyboard case, everything is a little bit thicker and a little bit more fiddly, and I'm not sure I really love that. I do love how thin it is with the case off. I do like the new keyboard. I use it way more than I ever used the smart keyboard on the old one because it's a lot less ungainly but but yeah i love it i i i'm

uh i'm using it all the time bros are you are you know has your ipad use changed since you got the new one i'm using the apple pen some more because it is not out of battery every time i pick it up right which i think a lot of people are finding that hey this thing's actually really useful now because it's never out of battery when you need it because it just sticks to the side of your ipad and it sticks there pretty well as well so i've not i've only once had the occasion of oh gosh i've lost my ipad pencil and it was in the bottom of my backpack so yeah that's the only time that it does and it will inevitably fall off in your bag but like it's fine if it's in the bag right but that's again me too like it's happened to me a couple of times now but it's always when

putting it in or taking it out of my backpack. But it's perfectly safe in the backpack. You know, you're saying about that smart cover. Wait, which one is the cover? The cover folio without the keyboard. What is that one called? Smart keyboard folio. Yeah, and the smart folio is the other one, right?

Without the keyboard. That product, the fol one right without the keyboard that product the folio product without the keyboard is so much less appealing than the old smart covers used to be because it's as you say jason it adds so much thickness and like bulk to it i feel like for most people you're probably just better off getting the keyboard version even if you don't use the keyboard that much i just feel like like you've added so much by that point rather than just having a cover that goes on the front. So I've just handed down my 10.5 to Adina

and got her a new smart cover that just goes over the front. And it's really nice like that. She doesn't need the keyboard, and that's great. But if it was a whole wraparound case, I don't know if it would be as appealing. So I don't think I agree, and I think mostly it's because although the folio adds bulk, the keyboard folio adds more bulk. And it is thicker and heavier. But the other thing about it is, and I know this is esoteric, but the folio folds open on the front like the smart cover.

Whereas on the keyboard, what you have on the front of the screen cover whereas on the keyboard what you have on the front of the screen is the completely rigid keyboard surface and it's a lot less kind of pleasant to open because it's thought you've got to kind of open the whole flat keyboard and pivot it around and it's not as nice a thing but but i do agree i would really rather that they had put they got they got a lot of magnets on this thing i would have really liked it if they had put magnets on the side. So there could have just been a smart cover instead of having it be a complete wraparound. But I get,

you know, for Apple, like there's a question of what they want to make and how they want to engineer it. If you had wanted complete protection before you, you had to buy a smart cover and that back shell and put them together. And that's too expensive. Apple accessories for one product

and this time they've made one it's still expensive but one expensive apple accessory that gives you both i just never protected the back of mine i just i just covered the screen and then that was it and and now you've you kind of have to buy the whole package now i i know rose that you are uh you are a big ipad user but you are but you have not issued the Macintosh, right? No, of course not. What, are you mad? Yes, I made a horrible mistake two weeks before WWDC. No, not even that, a week before WWDC, like three days before I flew out, I bought a brand new MacBook Pro. Six weeks later,

there are new MacBook Pros. So that means that we have new MacBook Pros this year. And there were some other interesting new Macs, including the Mac Mini, which has come back from the dead. It is no longer in the area of the past. It is back in the present. And there was this lovely new Air as well, which I keep looking at going, oh, that's pretty. And then thinking, no, I have a nice MacBook Pro.

How do you find your MacBook Pro? I'm interested. Well, this is the first type of 15-inch laptop I've had. And sometimes I go, ah, because it's big and heavy. But at the same time, I really, really like it. I like the Touch Bar. I am a Touch Bar person, at least in the applications that have used it well. So, for example, Scrivener, which I've been using a lot recently, has got good touch bar support.

And it's much easier to use the touch bar than it is to remember the 8 billion and 1 keyboard shortcuts for the six different types of formatting that you use and things like that. So that has actually been really useful to me and everybody loves touch id on a mac that's why it's in the air and it is extremely useful i am fascinated to talk more about the touch bar with you are there any other places that like it's you find it specifically useful emoji emoji are a very important part of my life that honestly feels like the primary one to me yeah they're a very important part of my life. That honestly feels like the primary one to me. Yeah, they're a hugely important part of my life. And it's really nice to be able to type them without having to hunt or remember that keyboard shortcut, which I believe is command control space,

and then searching for it because it shows the most recent ones. And I use BetterTouchTool to customize the toolbar as well. So it's showing me the most recent ones and i use better touch tool to customize the toolbar as well so it's showing me of course you do it's showing me um a video that i was watching in safari earlier and it's got like a little um application switcher in there as well so that i can switch um from skype to google sheets uh docs um and back again um in safari oh that's cool to audio hijack so you would be pretty bummed if it went away the touch bar then not if there was something that i could replace it with right okay but you you like this kind of like secondary display on your on your on your laptop what i would like is i would like the touch bar and a row of function keys. I want it all.

Well, I miss the physical play pause buttons and the mute buttons because when somebody calls me and I want to hit pause, I can't just feel for it and go for it. I have to look at it and do it because I rarely answer calls on my Mac despite handoff being an excellent feature um i just don't like talking to people on my mac it's not portable enough i like to be able to get up and wander around if i so choose now the mac mini you mentioned um i find it funny first off i find it funny because uh of the love that was given out for the mac mini which i i feel like uh for the previous four years or whatever there was this combination of disdain for the Mac mini, which I feel like, uh, for the previous four years or whatever, there was

this combination of disdain for the Mac mini, but also fury at Apple for not updating it. And I never, I could never figure out what side people were going to come down on, on whether it's irrelevant or whether it's super relevant and, uh, we should be angry at Apple. But in any event, the love has showered down on the mac mini since it got updated because it is something that although it's a little more expensive to start than it used to be it's still i would say the 799 configuration very very powerful and good and then you can scale it up from there and make it much more powerful if you want to and the thing i didn't expect is that all these people talking about using it as a headless server with either um you know either screen sharing software or something like the luna display

and basically saying your ipad pro's best friend is a mac mini that's off somewhere in your house so you can use the mac when you want to on your ipad that one i didn't see coming and i i see people talking about it all the time and i've done it myself right but i i've been screen sharing with my mac mini for a long time but that i find that really funny that we have this whole kind of like mac versus ipad kind of thing and then all of a sudden there are all these kind of excited ipad users who are like all right now i've got a mac in my ipad that took me by surprise i don't know if you guys were surprised by it but i i didn't see that one coming i think i ended up surprising myself with it i think it's funny the mac mini right now is in a very exclusive

club of macintoshes that people are happy with i think it's the mac mini and the imac pro i think they're pretty exclusive in that club of like universal everyone's fine with this Mac, right? Like there doesn't really seem to be anything specifically wrong with either of those. People seem to be universally happy about them. And I think that's one of the reasons that everyone is so excited about. and I think a lot of people are purchasing the Mac Mini is that it is a computer that is fit for purpose where it could be argued that maybe a lot of the Macs available right now are not so much, right?

You know, the iMacs are old again and some of the laptops, some people consider them to have problems and there are features that Rose loves that other people don't like very much. And so I think that's one of the things that makes the mac mini so interesting right now is that it is actually the machine everybody wanted it to be and i think that's that one of the the key things moving into next year is what is the rest of that lineup going to look like because the clock the clock is ticking um which was actually asked i want to

know from your perspective rose what is not uh what is not up to snuff right now what are you uh what do you think apple really needs to put some work into uh the ipad software it's okay great having one ios for iphone and ipad and i don't mind if they they they stick with that that's fine but we we need more features for those of us who are iPad power users I understand that not everybody is an iPad power user there will have been a lot of people who when Apple announced that new iPad in March of this year with Apple pencil support went yes I don't need to buy a pro I just wanted the pencil support and that's great for them maybe they don't need these features but for a lot of us we are hitting the limits of what ios can offer us frequently and it's frustrating because it is such a great device i mean compare this to the devices that

people use to calculate the moon landing um you know our ipads are so much more powerful than that but we're still hitting a lot of limits like for example i was trying to put one document in dropbox earlier today and it just kept throwing this very strange error i mean that of course i had to file radar about because it was saying ns user something or other that's when you know you've got into a bad spot when ns users thrown at you but you know why can't I put this file in Dropbox? That's the question. And that's the sort of thing that, I mean,

for us power users, it's extremely frustrating. But for a regular user, that's a turn off. They'll return the device because they can't put the file where they wanted it to. And David Sparks mentioned this recently. You can't create a new folder when saving a document. Well, a lot of us like folders and and tag management things like that is yeah this is why i continue to use the dropbox app when i'm saving stuff as opposed to using files because dropbox their app still has

a better way to navigate through your folders it lets you create new folders it lets you rename the file before you save it this is all stuff that files the files app does not let you do in certain instances you can do all of those things but later and it also lets you save favorites yeah oh i mean don't even get me started on the favorites like oh you like your favorites oh they're just gone today but they might be back tomorrow um what are some of the other like things that you specifically would are hoping to see for iPad software maybe next year? Very specifically, some easier multitasking. I would love it if I could have one Google Doc open in this multitasking window

and one Google Doc open in that multitasking window and switch between them. I don't know if we're going to get the ability to have tabs in applications but at the very least having like two documents of an application open at the same time in different multitasking windows so multiple instances of the same app right so like you could be you could have like a tweet bar open and google docs open on this one and then you could go over to another one you've got notes and another google doc right and you can move between them all it would be kind of wonderful i would love that very much even just i mean even just having two google docs side by side would be great for me well that's just it as well there are times when

you need to reference two documents at the same time, and it's really difficult to do. A number of times I've opened something in Word just because that way I can get it on the other half of my screen. Well, this is one of the great things about being a weirdo iOS Chrome user is there's always another web browser for me. Yeah, that's true. And Safari, to be fair, Safari will let you do two windows, and I do that sometimes too.

And I'm reminded of the fact that I would like this elsewhere as well as well um can i throw in um my big frustration i think we brought it up in a recent upgrade is the um we we need better indication of which multitasking view is active where there's keyboard focus and uh and that also needs to be shored up a little bit because it's super inconsistent now and it's one of those things that you know it doesn't seem like a huge deal but uh it can get very frustrating if you are typing in one place and then suddenly your keystrokes are going into another i can't tell you how many times i put things into a google doc that are not supposed to be in the google doc or a google spreadsheet because the keyboard focus changed and i couldn't see it and it's just it's it's it's great that we've got multitasking don't That are not supposed to be in the Google Doc. Or a Google spreadsheet. Because the keyboard focus changed.

And I couldn't see it. And it's great that we've got multitasking. Don't get me wrong. But it needs to be better. Though they have this lovely bar at the bottom now. And I think personally. If I were them. I would just slide the bar.

Because that's a very nice visual indication for people. And it still indicates that you need to go to the bottom of your screen. To do stuff. And so we have this bar. Please use the bar something. Yes, definitely agree with you. The home indicator, you mean, right? Like it's always there.

Use it for something useful rather than just being in the way. Yes. Rose, what else is exciting to you? You know, there's a whole world of possibility in a new year next year. Is there anything that you're hoping for? Any wild wishes i'm hoping that shortcuts gets the ability to start itself at specific times or locations or at the very least suggest that it will do things at specific times and locations that you pre-specify similar to

cron jobs on a server it would be so nice to just be able to say every monday at 9 a.m remind me to run this shortcut or just run this shortcut for me. I am horrified at the potential that you could do at this point. I would be scared that you would just start automating my life for me if you had the ability to do things without just in the background that I feel like that might be just, just for you too much power to give you, right? Like it's, you've kind of been given some kind of too strong magical power and you'll end up just imploding everything in on yourself but i'm very excited to see what you could do with it well i'd ask you first before automating your entire life get me to sign my life away before we end up putting everything to work tap okay mike just

tap okay just just just say it to the HomePod and everything will be done for you. It would be very nice to do that. Rose, thank you so much for visiting us at Ghost of Apple Present. Where can people find your work online at the moment? Well, there is a very lovely podcast here on Relay called Automators, which I would highly recommend that people check out. relay called automators which i would highly recommend that people check out and all of my things are linked to from rosemary orchard.com which includes other podcasts i guest on books i write and more thank you so much thank you wow mike that's two ghosts in one show i really hope that's i don't know if i could handle any more two feels like more than enough ghosts for me jason i

feel like two ghosts is probably my limit too so i i hope i hope we have some like holiday ask upgrade or something to do after the sponsor break because i i don't want any more ghosts uh that's too those ghosts were great those were two great ghosts those are my favorite great ghosts favorite uh but just yes ghosts podcast go guests i don't know pod ghosts pod ghosts yes but uh but you know enough spectral visitations for one show i think so let's do a let's do a sponsor break and then we can yeah ask upgrade some lasers it'll be fine this episode jason is brought to you by pdf pen so actually brought to everyone not just to you um it's brought to you and me and everybody else visiting itself upon

you like a ghost no no we We already said no more ghosts. PDFPen is not a ghost. It is the ultimate tool for editing PDFs from our friends over at Smile. Using PDFPen, you'll be able to say goodbye to filing and go completely paperless with scanning and OCR right at your fingertips.

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of PDF pen. It's got a lovely blue icon now and it's got a bunch of new features in it. I'm super excited. I love that you can now scroll through PDFs vertically as well as horizontally. I love that change. Really, really excited. I use PDF pen every single day, especially around this time of the year. Lots of contracts going around, but there are on the Mac, you have PDF pen and PDF pen pro and PDF pen pro has even more features. One of my favorites of these is to be able to convert websites into PDFs that you can then edit and mark up to your heart's content. And of course, don't forget dark mode on the Mac.

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software.com slash podcast that is smile software.com slash podcast our thanks to pdf pen for their support of this show and relay fn oh no what it's happening again. We've reached our limit. No. We, we, we, oh. Okay. Get ready, Mike. I think a third ghost is about to appear. So much for Ask Upgrade. I had the red and green lasers ready.

Oh, well, well. What will the specter say this time? I am Federico Vittici, and I am the ghost of Apple Future. Future? What future do you come from federico i come from 2023 oh let me tell you it's a much much better world in five years it feels kind of it's very uncomfortable to be back in 2018 have you seen the ipad multitasking we have i feel so bad for you guys everything is just so bad so we have we have a great opportunity for us now then i guess because we can just get the low down on the next five years so like what's big what's coming for us what do you want to know it's been it's been such a such

a roller coaster especially you know the past five wwdcs uh been really really fun and sort of the apple community sort of collectively lost their minds over certain transitions that have occurred um so let's start from the big one i mean um i think you guys in 2018 uh were speculating about uh what was it called uh Marzipan, maybe? Something like that? Yeah, that's very now for us, Marzipan. Yeah, so you want to know what happened there? Yes, please, we'd love to know.

All right. So what happened there was that basically everybody was speculating about these iPad apps coming to the Mac, and that happened, actually. So in 20... It was not 2020, it was Mac. And that happened, actually. So in 20... It was not 2020, it was 2019. So that happened.

And Apple basically did this WWDC that was heavily focused on this new framework that allowed developers to bring their iPad apps to the Mac. And it was sort of presented as a way to say the iOS ecosystem is, you know, there are so many apps and so many good apps that will also make sense on the Mac. So we're giving developers a way to offer these apps on the Mac.

And everybody was, part of the attendees were very excited. I remember I was in the audience. A bunch of people were excited. Some longtime Mac developers were not having it at all. They got off a walkout. I mean, there was a lot of grumbling at the event. I can't imagine that. No, no, no.

There's no way. There's no way. The way that that turned out was in the fall of 2019, we started seeing these sort of iOS apps on the Mac. But they were so much better than the preview of the year before. You know, when Apple did the weird thing with Apple News. Do we know it? We're living it.

We're there. Oh yeah, right now. You're using those apps right now. Yeah, those are terrible. Using is a strong word for it, but yes, they're present on my Mac. Yeah, those were terrible. So the framework, the final framework was so much better. It was sort of a combination of some aspects of ios and some aspects of mac os but the thing that really

sold it for some people including me and mike mike you're gonna like this oh good i know because we've talked about this in in your future in the future my past the idea was that a single app could scale depending on the device that you were using. So a developer could say, on iOS, have this kind of UI and have these kinds of controls. But when you're running on a Mac, you should adapt to, like, for example, to a cursor or to a trackpad. Oh, speaking of which, you guys still don't have trackpads on your iPads, right? Oh! Right.

I can put two fingers down on the screen and move a little cursor around. I can do that. Oh, that's so cute. You can do that. Well, so basically, what happened there, just as a quick aside, they enabled, eventually, trackpad support.

It started as an accessibility feature. So you could, the idea was, if you cannot interact with the screen, you can enable like an external pointing device. So it was rolled out, I think at some point in 2019, maybe actually. So you're not too far from that as an accessibility feature. I'm excited about that. So that you could have like a mouse, like a USB mouse,

and it will work with the assistive touch thing. And then eventually so many people liked it that it became an actual feature i think at some point in ios not 13 maybe 14 uh yeah it definitely happened so uh trackpads were a thing so anyway um the the your the thing that you call marzipan uh became a way for uh ios apps to sort of evolve into this um individual like bundle of multiple platforms and then so that was 2019 but the big the big change was in 2020 when we started seeing the um first arm max so 2020 was the year of the revolution essentially. Wait, now politics in 2018

you may not remember are pretty strange. Do you mean the ARM Mac revolution or was there an actual revolution somewhere? I don't want to talk about politics. There were a bunch of revolutions. You don't want to know about that. I withdraw the question. Let's to talk about politics. There were a bunch of revolutions. You don't want to know about that.

Actually, I withdraw the question. Let's just talk about computers. Yes, and let's not get into politics, and especially what happened to the UK. That's not funny at all. WWDC 2020 was the beginning of the transition from Intel CPUs to ARM made by Apple. And initially we thought, well, maybe Apple is just going to do like the MacBook Air first

or like the smaller computers with fewer and smaller requirements. And initially they did that, like they started transitioning the sort of the base models of everything. But the change happened very quickly in that in 20 so two years ago in 2021 we had the first macbook pros and the mac pros and the iMac pros and even the mac mini with arm cpus in it so they move fast they move fast and sort of it's one of those things that when it happened you sort of you were able to put together all the different pieces of what Apple did, like the new design language that they announced in 2019, which is also a thing now, sort of an evolution of iOS 7. on the Mac and ARM on desktop computers. And sort of until we reached the point where it was clear that Apple was moving

to a unified platform, which is what we have now. And it's very fun. But for a couple of years, especially between 2019 and 2021, it was a kind of bumpy transition for everybody involved. Like long time Mac users were unhappy

with certain aspects of the transition, which we can talk about, like the cutoff on the App Store for legacy apps. That was not fun. But yeah, overall, like coming from 2023 and looking back at where you guys are right now, in hindsight, it's clear that Apple has moved to this vision that we're enjoying now of it's a single Apple OS, but we don't have hybrid devices in the way that you guys in 2018

may think about them. It's kind of more of a modular thing and and more of a sort of adaptivity thing in the sense that each device still has a clear purpose but everything is more unified everything is more integrated and especially when you look at the ipad and what the ipad has become in 2023 um it's sort of a it's a perfect example of that vision so is there a mac in 2023 there's there's a mac in the sense that you can build your own Mac Pro, you can buy a Mac Mini, there's still a MacBook Pro but essentially the iPad

has become the laptop for most people and has become that it's, I don't want to call it a modular computer because that's sort of the weird connotation of assembling things like a like a lego it's not that it's more of a it's why you jason you were saying um i think it was in

2017 a few years ago and people in 2023 uh referenced that article quite often i'm gonna get some traffic for that that's great yeah. Yeah, yeah. People still talk about that article because you were really on point. The idea of the iOS laptop. Anyway, the iPad has become that kind of computer. I mentioned it supports trackpads. It supports windowing now. And essentially, Apple is now making more types of keyboards

and cases for the iPad. But also, the UI changes depending on what you are using the iPad with. So in touch mode, it's a tablet. But when you use it in laptop mode, you have a cursor, you have like a pointing device, and the UI adapts. But it still remains consistent, and it's very nice. And it's kind of difficult to explain to somebody who doesn't have this product uh and any the the ui um the new design language in from 2019 really helped uh with this kind of um flexible ui um and also i think

you guys still have you guys still call the 20 12.9 ipad pro as the big one right right yes yeah that's funny uh that's one of the small ones now uh oh my gosh we have a four almost 14 inch ipad and also a 15 point something um inch ipad uh ipad pro yeah that's that's basically a laptop and it's this big screen uh and there's talk that apple's gonna do do like an even bigger one at this point. But yeah, they don't make the 9.7 anymore. They don't make the iPad mini anymore. They start from 11 inches and they go up to 15 inches. Sounds great.

Did anything ever come of AR? Oh yeah, totally. So what happened there, it's hard to remember because there's like a clear, there's like a clear moment when everybody realized that Apple was serious about this. So they started shipping at some point. I think it was 2020 or it was a couple of years ago, I think. 20 or 20, it was a couple of years ago, I think,

they started doing like full-on augmented reality modes for system apps, like the Photos and Apple Maps. And by the way, the Apple Maps rollout that was announced, I think, in 2017, 2018, your timeline, your time period, that rollout was completed like a little over a year ago internationally. It's a big rollout. Yeah, it took years.

Honestly, I was expecting you to say it hadn't been finished yet. No, it's still not 100% done in some areas, but the majority of Europe and Asia and the Americas, it's done. It's pretty great, actually. But yeah, they started doing augmented reality modes for iOS apps.

And ARKit was updated until version 5 or something, I think. And finally, last year, in 2022, they announced glasses. So we have the glasses now. And it was basically like the same, having lived through the announcement of the Apple Watch, it was kind of the same approach

that Apple reached a point where everybody was talking about Apple doing glasses, Apple doing glasses. They finally announced them. And yeah, we have them. They're not super great so far, but you can tell how they will get better like the Apple Watch did.

Well, where is the Apple Watch then? The Apple Watch? Yeah. I mean, the Apple Watch is basically now almost... I don't want to say it's the default Apple device that most people buy, but it's so much better than the rudimentary watch that you have. For example, Apple really focused on the health and medical aspect of it. So they

did a new design, I think in 2020, but the thing that matters the most, they started embedding more and more sensors in the Apple Watch. So, for example, our watches now, they can measure blood pressure and it's kind of accurate. And it's like nobody was believing that Apple could do blood pressure from an external device, but they did it with these new sensors that they have. And they're also built into the bands. So that's why that's why they can do it. And it's approved by the FDA and all of that. It's very it's It works really well. We have sensors to measure hydration

by essentially taking a look at the quality of your skin. I'm not sure there's an actual term to describe this. And the OS is basically native at this point in the sense that developers can make actual native apps. It's not like, I think you guys are still using those sort of mirrored apps that are like, they're not real watch apps. We have real watch apps.

So the idea is that Apple is now making this, they make like five different health apps for the watch, like heart rate and and ecg and blood pressure and skin um like all of those are just skin that one's called it's the branding isn't as strong on that one no i think it's i think it's called hydration and it's sort of uh i call it skin because it's what it does it's's called a hydration and it ties into, like they, you know, they do this like reminders that you're supposed to hydrate during the day and you can measure that.

They teamed up with more medical institutions around Europe. I was very happy when they announced an integration with the hospital that I used to go to. So that was great. But yeah, the apple watch is now it's now fast and it looks beautiful there's so many bands to choose from and from a health and fitness perspective it's the device to buy basically nobody else is making smart watches anymore okay yeah okay i i have to ask i have to ask because we've been talking about it for years now okay tell me about the apple car tell me what it's like to be in an apple car i want to know

i've been resisting up to now but i need to know what it's like to ride do they have them in italy yet or did you have to go to the u.s and ride in them? There are no Apple cars yet. Oh, dear. So basically, what happened there was, I think, somewhere around 2020, Elon Musk kind of lost his mind and was replaced. Oh, no, that was happening in 2018. It's fine. Okay. So he was replaced as the head of Tesla. But essentially, what happened there is that due to climate change and sorry if I'm going to get into politics here, but basically

after your current US president, the United States signed they were back on board with doing something for climate change with the administration after your current one.

And so all the car makers realized, oh, we need to get these electric cars, you know, actually going. And so there've been from 2020 to 2022, like these massive transitions of all the automakers offering cheaper electric cars. And for example, in italy we've been installing uh charging stations all over rome and all over the big cities and even like there's a

presence of charging stations in the countryside it's been like this very this massive adoption of um electric cars by all the automakers and Apple is kind of sitting it out for now. There's talk that they're still working on this special project, that a bunch of people have left and a bunch more people were hired. So it's not clear, but it is the rumor for now. But the problem is that they are facing so much competition from all the automakers

that have poured all of their entire resources and teams in getting the electric car change going because all of the basically all of the international governments are now requiring car makers to make electric cars uh but we don't know yet what apple wants to do so i'm sorry jason that's really disappointing i can tell you about USB-C, though, if you want. Okay, sure. It's not an Apple car, but so, yeah, USB-C, that's great. Is it ever any good? It got better.

Great. Do they make hubs for it now? Does Apple make a hub yet? There's still so many hubs, but Apple doesn't make one. I'm sorry. So what happened that was fun um i think you're living the worst moment for usbc in 2018 i feel very bad for you both um it got good with the uh adoption of usb well we're now in USB 4, so it's hard to remember, but with the transition from USB 3.1,

I remember writing about this years ago, to USB 3.2, it doubled the bandwidth of USB from 10 gigabits per second to 20. And it was backwards compatible with 3.1 and all the accessory makers and like these big companies like apple and google and microsoft they were very disciplined in adopting usb 3.2 and following the spec because they didn't want to make the same mistakes of the previous one where it was inconsistent and there were like two subspecs i remember gen 1 and gen 2 that is no more so with usb 3.2 everything was kind of more uh consistent and unified and and basically the usb consortium they started um approving these specs um like from 3.2 to 3.5, and then what they proposed for, they were careful not to repeat the same mistakes

of the previous generations. So the USB-C connector now is smaller, and the cables are not as thick as the ones that you guys have right now, I think. But it's more, it's so much better. And the iPhone has USB-C now so um yeah it's it got good but i think your next couple of years are gonna be bumpy for yeah i don't like the idea of it getting smaller again because that just means more connector change again but as long as it

ends up being good in the end then i'll be after after 3.2 and especially with 3.5 it sort of everybody calmed down and sort of started appreciating the the the promise of usbc was really delivered uh between usb uh 3.2 and 3.5 but there's still a lot of dongles right not as many as you think there are i mean they i don't think they will ever completely disappear because people are still using HDMI and there's people that still require those vintage connectors like VGA or DisplayPort. They don't make those anymore. And actually, HDMI is also obsolete at this point

because really, I think the bandwidth of USB 3.5, it was basically, they reached 100 gigabit per second uh with some new wiring technology that they somebody invented that i remember the name uh but so basically hdmi became obsolete um so there are some dongles especially for people who still have like 4k tvs for example uh you guys i think you have 4k tvs now right. Yeah, we have 8K TVs now, are quite common, actually. Yeah. But there's still people who are using 1080p monitors. So the dongles do not completely disappear,

but they are not... Like, I remember years ago, there used to be a joke like dongle village or dongle city something like that town dongle town man i haven't heard that name in a long time how could you forget it's been a while dongle town yeah that was fun so we don't have dongle town anymore man it's more like uh yeah it's more like uh like a dongle dongle commune like it's very okay very small there's a dongle tent uh it's a dongle tent so okay this is i know you're the ghost of apple future so that your knowledge that you can share with us is limited to apple but i have to ask how are the shows on on apple's video streaming service are they are

they any good yes actually um it it was um i mean a lot of people in the Apple community made fun of the service when it launched. You know, it was kind of weird to have Jennifer Aniston on stage at an Apple event. It was very unexpected and all these other like TV people on stage. It was a different Apple event, but the shows were actually good. And it took them a couple of years, I think, since they launched in 2019, to sort of find their style, if you will. And it's not like every show is a hit, but I think the quality is consistently good. And some people would say superior to what Netflix is doing with the originals. But I think, you know, if you subscribe to Netflix and Apple TV,

you're basically getting all the good shows that you need to find right now. You know, if you want to stream content from the internet. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty good. I actually like it. And it comes bundled if you buy an Apple TV 8K. So the actual device.

Oh, yeah, we have them now. Apple TV 8K, the actual device. Oh yeah, we have them now. Apple TV 8K. It comes bundled with the year of Apple TV, the service. And it's very nice. And I can tell you, you guys don't know this, but you remember when you used to do your upstream segment?

Yeah, sure. We do it every week. Except for this one. Yeah, that became a show. You started doing upstream a show. Oh! Yeah, you started doing upstream the show. I think you will come to this decision in a couple of years. But yeah, it will happen. And I listen every week.

It's very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ghost of Apple Future. Sure. Is there anything else you want to know, Michael? Well, there's always things I want to know, but I'm'm worried about knowing too much you could change the course of the future but apparently not i can give you some advice maybe oh yeah that's great on things you should do uh

so i mean uh you both shouldn't have a problem here um start getting comfortable with ios as much as possible ios apps, because it's not like, again, it's not like the Mac is disappearing, but I think, you know, it'll be useful to get used to iOS apps and to certain like iOS interactions or the privacy controls, the permission prompts, that kind of stuff. Wait, don't lose hope on apple um i remember an old very very old episode of upgrade about like jason getting really upset about this don't lose hope on apple making pro versions of their apps uh for ios warms my heart that you still remember episodes of upgrade five years later i will say that it's it's very nice i mean you know i'm i'm

very busy now uh but i still make room for still make room for those shows that i still listen to uh but yeah uh you know it's uh don't lose hope on that it's gonna happen and i think you will see um you will be disappointed i think uh coming into, if I remember correctly, you didn't get Xcode on the iPad, but that happened in 2020 with the big diversity about the transition. So that happened. I mean, in 2018, I would say get an HDR TV because all of the shows on Apple TV, the service will support Dolby Vision by

default, so get an HDR TV. Got it, done. I'm so prepared for 2022, it's great! Yeah, and that's basically it, and I mean there's other things like multiple AirPods coming, I mean the AirPods have

an eSIM in them now, so they're fully independent from the iphone uh but yeah the big advice would be get a big tv get hdr get used to ios and get ready to spend a bunch of money because they're gonna make a lot of new things you don't expect wow what's the cheapest mac you can buy now it's still the they don't make the macbook air anymore so it's still the macbook oh yeah all right that was a weird experiment bringing back macbook air but it's it's gone and what what does the macbook cost does it cost like 11.99 or 15.99 or two thousand dollars but no i think i think it costs

12.99 all right yeah okay yeah and they still well there's inflation too you know that our dollars wouldn't go as you know they're not the same as $20, $23. If the dollars still exist, I don't even know. You still have dollars. But yeah. Anyway, that's... I don't want to spoil any more secrets. I feel like I've already told you all the basics.

I think we've learned a lot. Mike, do you feel like our future has been mapped out for us by this ghost? My head is spinning. So much information. Wonderful information. So much. Almost too much. My final comment, Mike, specifically for you.

You will eventually get into role-playing games for the Nintendo Switch.intendo switch um you will become obsessed with playing japanese rpgs oh i will while i that was very surprising to me because four years we discussed this so yeah um see i was hoping he was you were gonna say he gets into role-playing games and now is a regular on total party kill but uh the nintendo switch makes more sense it makes more sense yeah yeah so considering people will hear this in 2018 uh ghost of apple future where can people find 2018 federico fatigia i'm

sure 29 2023 federico fatigia is very busy with many new products but can you can you think of where you would want to tell 2018 people to go to? Okay, so 2018, I mean, I still have Mac Stories, so that was true five years ago. I think back then I used to have Twitter. Man, that ended badly. I guess until it lasts, you can find me in 2018 on Twitter as Vitici, V-I-T-I-C-I. Also used to have Instagram. Also didn't end nicely there.

Also V-I-T-I-C-I there. And I guess that's pretty much it. I won't give you the name of the social networks we're using now, but in 2018, you can find me there. I think that's fair. Well, thank you, ghost of Apple future for being here. Now I disappear back into my future where it's much better than this world of 2018. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Oh, okay. Three ghosts is okay. That was fine, I think. Yeah. That was a good ghost. I'm sad now. There better not be a good ghost. I'm sad now. There better not be a fourth ghost. They're all good ghosts, Jason.

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It turns your Mac into the touchscreen device that you've been dreaming of. Listeners of this show can get a wonderful, exclusive 10% discount on Luna Display. Just go to lunardisplay.com and use the promo code upgrade at checkout that is l-u-n-a-d-i-s-p-l-a-y.com and promo code upgrade at checkout our thanks to lunar display for their support of this show and all of relay fm okay mike do i hear another ghost is another ghost coming please no i can't i can't do anymore

jason we have to like we have to do something to stop these ghosts fire the lasers fire the lasers the anti-ghosts what we didn't actually know is every single week what we've actually been firing was the anti-ghost well they're, they're not usually ghosts. Maybe it's the Christmas lasers. Because we're firing the lasers. The red and green Christmas lasers are probably deadly to ghosts. Can ghosts die? They're already... I don't know.

I don't know how it works. But that was a lot. I mean, first off, talking to Stephen Hackett of the past was interesting to try and draw some parallels between the past and the present that was that was interesting i enjoyed i enjoyed that and who better to talk about the past with than um than the man who buys the computers from the past yeah someone who wasn't necessarily in all of the past but has more fondness for computer past than anybody else

exactly exactly i like how he and i can reminisce about something and i was there and he wasn't but we can still do it there isn't that it's always fun it's like oh yeah i remember that and it's like i don't remember no i just looked it up and watched it on youtube and then we got uh we got rose who was talking about uh sort of stuff that she was excited about in the present which is you know i think technically this is our kind of next week is the upgradies so this is our kind of year in review in a way uh you know a past present and future uh and so it was nice to talk about that with her upgradies voting is is closed it's closed we've had the most successful voting of all time don't do it that's i heard from the ghost of christmas future that it was a great year for the upgradies i didn't actually hear that from him uh who knows if the upgrade is still i'm sure they do i'm sure they're

the 10th annual upgradies is probably big upgradies and now everybody by that point at that point everybody attends in person yeah with hollow uh glasses or something those apple glasses that are i like how the apple glasses uh are not that great like it's a first generation they're not that great but they'll be still surprising no that's that's actually pretty consistent so talking to rose it is funny to think all the stuff that happened this year she mentioned the home pod first and it's like yeah that that really was a 2018 product even though it was announced in the middle of 2017 it shipped in 2018 as far as hardware has been like 2018 has been so much better than 2017 oh yeah was for

apple hardware yeah like i know we got the iphone 10 you know the iphone 10 was like the the only real shining star of of 2017 but you know that there were meaningful updates in every product line you know you look at the apple watch um you know the iphone XR and the XS Max, right? With sizes and differences that people were looking for. Obviously, the iPad Pros, the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air. For as much as it's maybe not the exact machine people are looking for, it's still a meaningful update that a lot of people will value. So as long as this year, the hardware story has been excellent.

And I guess we're just going to hope and the ghost of Apple future would suggest that the software story is going to be the big one next year. So I'm really excited considering all of this knowledge that we now have. It feels like, yeah, the iMac and the MacBook are still kind of floating out there. The iMacs got updated last fall and the iMac Pro came out. I would hope that in the spring of 2019, we might get some updates to those two, but the Mac feels like it's in a much better position than it was in a year ago.

And don't forget, you know, June, we're probably going to find out about that Mac Pro in June. Yeah, yeah, that's true too. Exactly right. Exactly right. And then the software, it does feel like 2019 is going to be all about um the software transition stuff moving forward i think that marzipan stuff it does feel like it's going to be a huge just as the ghost told us a huge uh shift and that it's going to be much more than you know what the

little preview that we got this year and and that it's going to be a big change for how people view the mac yeah yeah it feels like a lot of points will will will line up right like the ipad software and the oh yeah it's all going to start lining yeah it does feel like those are going to go hand in hand and that they're all it's all it's all connected that what you're going to be able to do on the ipad and what you're going to be able to do on the mac through through um marzipan is all kind of be of the of a piece what do you think about this so um gruber wrote a piece a few weeks ago about how on daring fireball for those i mean john gruber ever i just assume everybody reads john gruber that you why would you not do that um but he he wrote a thing um and i think it got a lot of pushback from from people about um mac-like apps

and he was mostly complaining about like electron which is like the javascript based stuff that is often used to make apps like slack and um i think what's interesting is that like steve trout and smith on twitter was talking about how um he feels like clinging to mac like as a concept is wrong because the mac is an older platform that hasn't had much action on it for basically a decade and that apple is in the process of defining a new kind of like software uh approach that is the replacement for Mac-like and it's almost iPad-like is the new Mac-like. And I thought that was, it's interesting to see both sides of it. And as a longtime Mac user, I definitely feel the trepidation, but like, what's the, what's the strong software platform? It's, it's iOS, it's not Mac OS. So if apple's going to have a strong native app platform on its

on its devices it kind of has to be ios based i understand the the trepidation and and the desire to not move away but i don't think mac like exists anymore like there is an idea of what a traditional mac app feels like but the amount of people making mac apps in that way is dwindling even now right like you know it's like i get it i get that there is a specific way that this stuff's always being done but i think it's time to start letting some of that go because i mean you could just look at it right like i know everybody like the the thing is like the hate on electron right like that's the thing but that's just what big companies are doing and you know i see this a lot like as i saw i see you see it a lot of places right it's like oh but this company has so much money why can't they just make such and such app right like you know i see this

is slack right like why can't slack make a native app they have hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars they're a multi-billion dollar uh company right and it's a matter of of focus it's not a matter of resource isn't the same reason that apple don't make wi-fi routers anymore right like there are only so many markets that you want to be in there are only so many things you want to have to care about as a company just so you can try and stay focused and unfortunately native mac software has become one of those areas right that like if you want to make an app that app is a mobile app everywhere else it's a wrapper of some description around a web browser like that's just kind of that's the place that we're at and i genuinely believe right that like we're about to move into a different era of what being a native application looks like

and i think that like with a lot of transitions the companies that are going to be the most successful are the ones that embrace this new way of working and it will be about trying to find new design conventions for how you build applications that work across both platforms you know like pull to refresh right like yeah ideas like that the people that are going to succeed are the people that i in my opinion can work out like what are these new design things that work well on both platforms and that make sense for everybody and that we have all these new design ideas and and the way that things work and then we end up with a new conception of what an a good apple app is um that's probably that's where i believe we're going and i appreciate lovely mac software right like i'm sitting here

and looking at like a perfect example in audio hijack right like that is a wonderful mac app made by people who really care about how Mac apps are made. But I think that that is just something that has had its day. And I know that that kind of thing upsets a lot of people. But I just think that things are changing and you've got to move with it. The ghost of Mac software was going to really debate that with you, but we shot it with a laser. So, no. Yes. I'm not're to do that but yeah you know i mean change is hard but i i think i'm actually going to uh

prefer to be often optimistic about the idea that apple is going to roll out as the ghost of of apple future suggested uh really its new design language and philosophy for how apps work and they don't mean ios it doesn't need to be a bad how apps work and that changes that's going to be everywhere and i would argue that it's better to have an activist apple that actually has built new rules about like here's how we think this is going to work because what we've seen over the last few years is kind of this slow kind of degradation of standards for UI on the Mac, because I think in part, Apple has not cared that much, and they haven't kept their eye on the ball in a lot of ways, but also in part, because they've been focused on iOS stuff. And so,

you know, I think the future for software running on the Mac is actually brighter if Apple is actively promoting a certain way of building apps and this is how these interactions work and this is how they look on these on on phones and on ipads and on imac screens and how it all works together than what we have now which is really this just kind of like coasting on the past and you know's, I think it's a mess and fragmented in part because Apple's attention has been elsewhere and the Mac has just kind of been left to drift. And if they really unify their platforms, the Mac's not going to be left to drift anymore because it's too important as a piece of this unified app platform that Apple's doing, which I think

is almost certainly what they're doing. I guess it's definitely what they're doing if we can believe our our ghost from the future i think that brings us to the end of the of the upgrade christmas carol um yes we got rid of all the other ghosts so there are no more ghosts to visit us and uh we'll be back next week with the upgradees which everybody is excited about on uh on's Eve. The Upgradees will appear and talk about the best of 2018 and informed by your suggestions and, of course, by ghosts,

I guess. Are ghosts on? Are we going to have ghosts every week? I hope not. No? Okay, just you and me. I really don't know if I can live with that. Not ghosts at all. But I think we definitely want to take this opportunity to thank everybody for listening to to upgrade this year uh it's been a good year for us i think we've done a bunch of uh a bunch of great episodes we also did this episode which is different another great

episode okay great and all the great shows of great episodes all the great shows they're all great um i you know i think we went over a lot of this type of stuff uh around episode 200 which were my favorite episodes of the show uh for many reasons one of the big reasons jason is now i just have a url to give to people when they say what about this about podcasting i'm just like go to episode 200 of upgrade so i'm very happy we did that episode just so i have that link to send to people but also you know i have been so proud of uh this show this year um i i think that we've we've done some really great stuff and i'm really excited um about next year uh for upgrade uh i'm really excited for the upgradies um i got some some things up my sleeve to make the upgrade is bigger and better than ever before uh i i'm i'm really excited about

all our events next year you know like everything so yeah it's it's really great we did our first live upgrade this year too in chicago first live episode and i really want to do more of those and i hope that uh 2019 will enable that for us. So, yeah, it's been a wonderful year. Thank you so much to everyone that has listened and supported the show. And we can't wait to give you another year's worth of upgrade. So if you want to find out more about the show, as always, radio.fm.com.

You can find that out. We've got all of our links there for this episode and and thank you to our guest ghosts i could go house ghosts yeah steven rosary and federico they all have shows here on relay.fm as well as me and jason we have many more relay.fm shows where you can find out more about all of those thanks to our lovely sponsors simple contacts lunar display and pPen from Smile for their support of this episode. We really, really hope that however you celebrate this holiday season, that you have a wonderful holidays ahead of you. We will now wish you goodbye.

Merry Christmas, if that is what you're celebrating. Jason, until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow. And so, as Tiny Tim tim observed god bless us everyone blimey this podcast got british all of a sudden i felt myself slipping into super strange britishisms I was finding myself doing. The past is American, the present is British, the future is Italian. Yeah.