Upgrade - 229: A More Intentional Folding

Episode Date: January 22, 2019

This year Samsung plans to release a smartphone with a foldable OLED display. Is this technology that Apple would use in future iPhones, and if so, how? We also discuss Apple's new videos that highlight the iPad Pro, and Jason tries to explain NBC Universal's interesting new streaming service announcement.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 229 today's show is brought to you by fresh books lunar display and squarespace my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snail hi jason snail hello mike hurley how is seattle washington i am yes i'm in a hotel room in seattle having just attended the second podcon uh it was wonderful i really like seattle um i like that we're well i kind of like that we're on the same time zone i don't like recording at nine in the morning but here we are anyway welcome to my world it's 9 a.m pacific on it's not monday it's tuesday as we're recording this because i had some travel over the holiday weekend in the u.s and so we pushed the release back a day but yes this is what it's like for me 9 a.m podcast is what i do mike nobody cares about this jason

we have a snell talk question from mark and today mark asks jason if you were stationed on the uss enterprise that's the star trek thing if you't know. What position would you want to hold and which Enterprise would you want to be on? So this is a tricky question because there's sort of like... I would like to minimize my chance of having to put on a red shirt and then being killed by an alien.

So what I want to say is like, I want to be the cruise director on Captain Picard's Enterprise, the Enterprise D, because is that a job? You know, basically like, it's like a big cruise ship, right? No threats.

Oh, okay. Just hanging out like it's the love boat or something. You want to work on the entertainment. Yeah, that's right. I take reservations for the holodeck, stuff like that. The fun answer would be I'm going to be the navigator on Captain Kirk's Enterprise because there were lots of them over time because, you know, Chekov wasn't there in the first season and all of that. And that seems like a fun job. There's lots of buttons and switches to flip and you get to like go, you know, warp factor eight and, you know,

steer us hard about and all of that kind of stuff. And that would be fun. So that's my, that's my fantasy answer. But my real answer is, what would be the safest place for me to be on the Starship Enterprise? Yeah, I don't think that I would be very well equipped to do any of that stuff. I like the idea of cruise director. That seems like a fun thing. Do they have podcasters on the Star Trek spaceships? I mean, technically, I think we would be in the communications department, right? We'd have to open the hailing frequencies

and stuff like that. And we'd say, Lieutenant Hurley, contact the Klingon ship. And you'd go, boop, boop, boop, boop. Hello, Klingons. Would you like to hear a podcast?

I feel like I have a pretty high rank as lieutenant on there. Just for that. That seems like a great deal. Thank you to Mark for sending in that suggestion. If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of Upgrade, just send in a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk. A couple of items of follow-up.

So last week we were talking about the potential for the iPhone to get three cameras. And one of the things we were talking about was a proposed mock-up based upon information, you know, in quotation marks uh from an account twitter account at on leaks who seems to have had some interesting stuff in the past they posted a different um prototype based on more information of the three camera setup uh now you know we spoke about the idea maybe they were going to do that weird square with the the cameras all at different places maybe there's some benefit to that. This different prototype or this mock-up has the three cameras in a horizontal orientation in the middle of the back of the phone.

But it looks very much like the current kind of design with just the the um the oval with the cameras inside now this feels way more to me like something apple would do visually but again i don't know how it helps by having the three cameras in that exact arrangement yeah that's the great mystery here is is it a you know is it a a deeper zoom are they trying trying to... There's lots of possibilities for what it could be. If it has three cameras on the back, it is a mystery. So I guess we'll see. But this is the trade-off of not being able to have a super thick space in your phone for a big long lens is that instead, sometimes you just stack on a bunch of different cameras that are built for different tasks and you kind of move among them.

I don't know. It'll be fun to watch as the rumors continue. These seem less like rumors and more like conceptions based on a spec rumor. Yeah, some information leaked out somewhere and then somebody's made a design that they think matches that information effectively. But this one is much more appealing to me visually than the one we spoke about last week. Sure.

And at some point, presumably, if it's like every other year that there's been an iPhone, there will be a different kind of leak that will be more specific about the actual placement. And that happens a little bit later in the year. Not too much later, but a little bit later. And that's the one where there's almost like a, you know, somebody describes it or somebody has a really low

resolution image or something, and then somebody turns that into a render. And that's the sort of like, this is where we think it'll be and how it'll look. But we don't have that now. It's sort of the, it's the early part of iPhone rumor season. So we just have a vague idea that there might be three cameras on the back of the max. Yes. Of the max. Oh, so I've got some followup as well.

Mike. Okay. I just want, it's not really followup sort of it's follow out, I guess to the TV talk machine podcast, but I want to mention it here because I think listeners of the show might like it. There's a show currently airing on the national geographic channel or nat geo as they want all the cool kids to call it but they

don't uh it's called valley of the boom it's a six-part miniseries about the early days of the web in silicon valley it's three interlocking stories it's netscape and the ipo of netscape which was dominant and then was crushed by microsoft it's a site called the globe which it was facebook before facebook a little too much before facebook which is why nobody has ever heard of the globe.com and a streaming site run by a guy who is a complete fraud who just stole people's money. And so those three interlocking stories happen. And then it's told in this hybrid format. It's similar to what they did on that GEO with the show Mars,

although I think it's done a little more artfully on Valley of the Boom, where you have actors who are acting out things that happened theoretically in the 90s and telling that story like a drama would, like a traditional drama. But there are also interviews with the participants from the present day and they go back and forth. So a lot of times you'll see Jim Barksdale talking about the early days of Netscape and then you cut to a scene where that is going on and his his comments he's almost commenting on what's going on uh very cleverly done it's not the usual kind of drama format or documentary format it's this weird hybrid but i i liked it and it gets pretty meta at several points where characters talk to the screen um one of the actors playing one of the parts poses as the person doing the present day interview until they're informed that um they're the they're an actor and they're not the actual guy i mean there's some there's some really kind of quirky funny stuff too and the the 90s on the internet this is like it's almost like the pirates

of silicon valley for the um birth of the commercial web and internet so i don't know where it's available outside the u. US or when it will be available there. Currently airing on NatGeo. If you've got a cable or access in some other way to National Geographic channel on demand or something like that, you might be able to dig it up. And I think it's airing for the next three or four weeks too. But Valley of the Boom, it was fun. I've seen the first half of it so far and uh and it's pretty good so for

those who are intrigued uh check it out so let's move into upstream uh as of today it was announced the academy award nominations were announced and there's some interesting stuff in there but as it pertains to this segment netflix have received 10 academy award nominations for their movie roma which they made a real big deal out of, as you can see, quite rightly. So this is going to be big for Netflix because I would say the odds are on for them that they will walk away with at least an Oscar for an original movie, which is a pretty big deal for them. So we'll be talking about that uh later on next month when the oscars uh happen yeah it's good um it's an interesting sign that in the end the academy cares more about the art of alfonso

coron than it does about the politics of netflix which is great because that that was the question yep was like will they downgrade and they still might for the final voting it's probably not going to win best picture probably not, although it might. It's got a chance, I would say. But we'll see how that goes. But it tied for the most nominations. So clearly, whatever suppression, you know, the politics of Netflix

versus the Academy regarding, you know, it's a streaming service versus a traditional theatrical release and all of that seems to have not had any appreciable impact here um and nbc universal is working on a streaming service of course because who isn't they are looking to launch an ad supported but i'll get back to that in a minute direct to consumer service in 2020 uh bonnie hammer who was previously the cable chief has been put in charge of the effort um so

nbc universal are going to be showing their own content new and old and also offering some content from outside partners so here's where it gets a little bit confusing but it is interesting if you already pay for nbc via a cable provider you're going to get the service for free potentially with ads maybe would not right they are also planning a paid version with no ads if you don't have cable as well so you can get it straight over the top okay it is confusing enough that you've only described two of the four ways you can get this oh my god okay so i believe what they're saying is if you have cable this is so the easiest way to think of this is they're kind of doing a CBS All Access, where in the

US, CBS All Access, the way it works is they've got original shows like Star Trek Discovery, which just came back, and The Good Fight, and they're doing a new Twilight Zone version, and they're doing a bunch of other Star Trek, and a bunch of stuff like that. Those are their originals. And you also have access to basically all the CBS shows that are on the CBS network, and their library, and not just like the latest five like on Hulu, but like the whole season and all the previous seasons. And it's all there for you. So, and you pay for it.

And there's one price for CBS All Access that shows it to you with ads. And there's another price that shows it all to you without ads, which is actually kind of fun for the network stuff. Because it means that you can watch their network programming without ads if you pay them enough.

What NBC wants to do is, and they made a big deal of, is this idea that the primary audience for this is going to be people who already have cable. So it's a streaming service where they're talking up the non-cable cutter aspect of it, which is kind of bizarre. But what they're basically saying is, and this is them walking away from Hulu, I think, because they still own 30% of Hulu and they play they're playing it coy about whether they'll sell it to Disney which owns basically the rest of it but this is basically their own Hulu which is if you're paying for cable you will get to log in to NBC streaming service and watch it for free with ads so it's basically a replacement for

NBC.com video streaming they'll take all the Saturday Night Live content that they put on there and they'll put it on this service instead. And they'll put it behind a wall. But it's not just a paywall. It's a login wall if you've got cable. So that's option one. Option two is if you don't want to see the ads and you're a cable subscriber, you'll be able to give them money and turn off the ads like CBS All Access. turn off the ads like cbs all access if you're a cord cutter you can pay i believe the plan is a little bit like cbs all access to get it with ads and more to get it without ads so four different options based on whether you have cable or not and you want to see ads or not it's super confusing

tim goodman wrote a great piece who i do the tv talk machine podcast with uh where he basically said this is a fascinating example of a company kind of embracing the reality of streaming services in the future while also being in complete denial about how it changes the business model. Because they're like, we did a streaming service and let's tell you about how it'll work for cable subscribers. Like, what are you doing? But that's what they're doing. But this is their reality though, right?

Like this is, I mean, this is their reality though right like this is i mean this is probably the best thing for nbc universal follow the money is what i i mean that's a classic thing but do do it here where's the money coming from the people who make money at nbc universal on the nbc side on you know where are they making their money from they're making money from selling ads and they're making their money uh well i mean's, so it's ads and it's on the broadcast. It's from like cable deals and stuff like that. So we're going to, we're going to give this as a reason for you to hold onto your cable subscription. They're owned by Comcast, by the way. So this is a key part of how Comcast makes money is people pay for cable, right? So this is

a, this increases the value of your cable subscription, one. And two, the primary tier that people will be watching on has ads. And NBC's ad sales force will presumably sell those ads like they do ads now on NBC's website and also obviously on their TV networks. So I think it's actually smart. It's too complicated, but I think it's smart in the sense that it's them admitting they need to build their own streaming service while also accepting the fact that there's a current way they make money and they need to keep the money rolling in in that way. But this is an example. services and all the silos going up. It used to be everybody had their own business and then there was this ancillary business for streaming where you just chucked a bunch of your archival content and your old shows into it. And that's basically Netflix at the beginning, which is like, sure, Netflix, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then they did their own things on their primary business.

And now all of them realize they can't do that. Netflix is the primary business. They need to take their stuff back and build their own Netflix, build their own silo. And so everybody's doing it. Disney's doing it. Warner's doing it. NBC is doing it. CBS did it. And then obviously there are other players like Apple. So this is where we're going to end up. And it's interesting if we bring in the other piece here which is um and i think we've got an item about it in a minute is you know netflix is aware that providers of content like nbc universal are going to be less inclined to sell a lot of their content to netflix in the future because they're going to want it for their own service just like how disney uh is going to build up marvel shows on disney plus and the marvel shows are are going to get canceled Marvel shows on Disney Plus and the Marvel shows are going to get

canceled at Netflix. So we're seeing this realignment happen where all the big players have realized that Netflix is not going to, they don't, it's not an ancillary revenue stream anymore. It's like the revenue stream of the future and they want to own it. And so they're all going to build their own silos and pull their content off of netflix eventually yeah you know with the exceptions of like we mentioned a few weeks ago that friends deal where warner brothers basically uh got paid a huge amount of money by netflix to keep friends on netflix because it's a huge show for for netflix but in the end they're going to put it on their own streaming service because of course they are disney will show off that streaming service that you mentioned dis are disney will show off that streaming

service that you mentioned disney plus for the first time on april 11th at their annual investor meeting very keen to see what that ends up looking like yeah and mentioning uh netflix and popular tv shows steve corell is going to be starring in a new netflix comedy about space force which is uh the current u.s government's attempt at creating a new space. A new branch of the military called the Space Force. Yeah, I've struggled to really explain it because my brain can't effectively conceive it. It's set to debut soon. Steve Carell is co-creating this series with Greg Daniels,

who is responsible for adapting The Office for the U.S. Now, that is responsible for adapting the office for the u.s now that is important for this reason the office is still currently the most watched tv show on netflix like by a big margin more than friends well the nbc exec that um that natalie jarvey at the hollywood reporter talked to said it's often number one it's not always the number one show but the office is often the number one viewed show on netflix so it is a huge deal for netflix i will tell you my daughter is responsible for a large number of those views because she watches the office endlessly on netflix well i found a report on recode for data from netflix for 2018 and the office accounted for 7.19 percent of all of netflix like viewing the next is friends

with 4.13 so it's interesting huge difference yeah so it's a it's a big it's a big show for netflix so here's here's netflix this and this is why we don't talk about you know every deal that is made with a streaming service because there's 500 tv shows on on on english language uh scripted this year but uh this is relevant because uh pertaining so nbc universal owns the office so it's entirely possible that either nbc universal is going to take its ball and go home when it launches its streaming service and the office is only going to be available on nbc's streaming service or they will hold it for ransom for Netflix and crank up the price even more and probably demand that it not be exclusive to Netflix. So Netflix, the office is going to get really expensive for Netflix as time goes on. And there are going to be strategic reasons why

the makers of the office, the owner of the office doesn't want it on Netflix without it being a high price to pay. So what does Netflix do to hedge against that and to counter that is make a deal with the star of the office and the executive producer of the office to make a new show on Netflix because they know that people like what those guys do. And it gives them something that Netflix will own. That's Steve Carell and Greg Daniels. So it's fascinating to view this through the lens of, like, why did they make this deal? It's like, oh, that's why.

It's because The Office is huge on Netflix and might be going away. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you in part by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace because they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project or event. With a unique domain name available to you, because they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project or event. With a unique domain name available to you, the advantage of beautiful award-winning templates,

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service. You can sign up for a free trial right now. Just go to squarespace.com slash upgrade. On that trial, you can go in, you can customize everything and make the website that you want. And then when you want to launch it out to the world, you just have to sign up for one of their plans that start at just $12 a month. When you decide to sign up, use the offer code upgrade. This is going to get you 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain, and you'll be showing your support for this show once again that's squarespace.com slash upgrade and the code upgrade to get 10 of your first purchase a thanks to squarespace for their support of this show squarespace make your next move make your next website jason let's talk about foldable phones oh foldable phones you say you mean like how the

the iphone uh six could like bend well sure but like i think more intentional folding uh than unintentional folding because the difference is in air grade aluminum or whatever it was was it like air grades that that was it right like airplane spec aluminium was what i don't know i can't i can't tell the difference between the airplane grade aluminium and the uh surgical stainless steel like i don't i don't know how this stuff is there's like food grade uh what i don't know what these safety aluminium anyway yeah foldable phones have long been considered as like a potential future form factor, right? Because you could have a phone that you could fold in half so it's smaller and you can open it up and you've got a small tablet.

And this has been something that people have thought about for a while. Flexible displays have been a thing that have been shown off at CES for multiple years, right? As they've been building that technology up. years right as they've been building that technology up but this kind of this year kind of the tail end of 2018 beginning of 2019 is where we're actually starting to see it become somewhat of a reality so you may remember a few months ago samsung had a super short demo at the developer conference where like they turned all the lights off and showed a phone that could open up right like it was a prototype so they didn't want to show it but they could show that they had a phone which had a screen and you folded it in half and there was another screen so

this is currently being referred to as the galaxy f and we will probably see it for sale at some point this year yeah i don't think that we're seeing this at the galaxy event which i think is within the next couple of weeks this will probably be i reckon announced alongside the note which is like in september or october yeah it's unclear it's unclear but it seems like it's going to be a real product they're not going to make a huge number of them it's probably going to cost a fortune but they are well going to do it we'll come back to this a little bit later on but kind of probably like the original galaxy note right like did maybe didn't sell a ton of them at first it was a weird product it had a bunch of strange downsides but ended up becoming something uh quite interesting but let's put a pin in that Like, maybe it didn't sell a ton of them at first. It was a weird product. It had a bunch of strange downsides,

but ended up becoming something quite interesting. But let's put a pin in that. We'll come back to that in a minute. Because also at CES, the first foldable OLED phone that's available for purchase was shown off. It's called the Royal FlexPi, which is just... That name, by the way,

is spelled in none of the ways that you would expect. Right? If you can think of how you would spell Royale Flexpy, it isn't that. Yeah. No, let's do it because this will be, everybody's going to go on a little journey now. Okay. R-O-Y. Okay.

You feeling good? Yeah. O-L-E. Oh, Royale. Oh, that's totally different. F-L-E-X. Yep, we're all good. We got that part.

Capital P. Mm-hmm. A. Huh? I. Royal Flex Pie. Everybody knew that, right? Royal Flex Pie.

Royal Flex Pie. So, as you can imagine, the Royal Flex Pie, being the first phone of its kind isn't very good uh there's a really good video um on the verge from vlad savov and he uh kind of eviscerated the thing right like i don't know if you've seen this video jason but like he really just just like okay it's cool that this thing exists but it's like broken in every fundamental way like it doesn't work very well didn't he refer to it as something is as like delightfully every fundamental way like it doesn't work very well didn't he refer to it as something is as like delightfully terrible or something like that i mean it's it's pretty funny yeah so i mean but that this is kind of what i think what you would expect for something like this in its first iteration like i find it really funny like because i've seen a

few videos about this everyone's like you feel like you're about to break it every time that you kind of bend it around to where it every time that you kind of bend it around to where it's like that to the kind of the folding in half thing. Also, I actually think that the way that they're doing the folding is wrong. So the way that this phone works, I think this is the way it will end up probably not being in a lot of instances. But the way that this phone works is you have the screen and then you fold the screen in on itself so you have a screen on each side of the phone right so when it's folded in half there's two sides and when it's opened up you have a larger screen where it looks like at least from what we could make out

from samsung is they had a screen that you folded onto itself and then there was an extra screen on the outside now that probably logically makes more sense unless there's some way that you can like kill half of the screen or whatever because then you have like you're holding the phone but your hand is touching an active screen like it's a it's a this is a complicated thing that i don't think we've well we definitely haven't seen anybody make a good version of this yet but this is how it goes right the form factor that isn't necessarily bad just because the first iteration of it isn't great and i will bring up phablets at this point this was the joke nobody calls big phones phablets anymore right that's the

portmanteau of phone and tablet because all of our phones are that big now right like the phones that are available now they they're just smartphones. There isn't a phablet anymore because anything bigger than what we currently have is just straight up a tablet. Now, if you remember, like this was something that everyone was laughing at. The original Galaxy Note, right? We were all laughing at.

And I bet like the iPhone 6, I bet is bigger than that now. I didn't look this up, but I bet it is. And the thing about this is, right? We're thinking about what the, because obviously we're talking about it, would Apple ever do this? Would Apple ever make a flexible phone?

And this was an article that you wrote for Tom's Guide last week, which is why we're talking about it. Full credit to my pal, longtime pal, Philip Michaels, who's an editor at Tom's Guide. And every two weeks when I write for them, I say, any ideas, any thoughts? What do you want? I take requests. And he said, what about... And it's interesting because I'm sort of writing every other week about the iPhone for them.

And they are steeped in all of the other phones that are going on in a way that Macworld is not. I mean, PCworld is, but Macworld is not. And so he comes with like a lot of pitches for me that are, what's the Apple take on this thing that's happening with all the other phones, like 5g or something like that. And so he said, foldable phones. And I was like, he gave me a couple other items and I'm like, I don't know. And then I thought about it and I was like, actually, there's probably a conversation to be had about this if we assume that foldable phone tech is happening when does apple if if ever embrace it and what does that look like and what are the pros and and what are the cons and that's basically what my piece uh on tom's guide is about which is um

you know yeah apple's not gonna apple is not a company that rushes in because they say, oh my God, everybody else is doing this. I have to get in on this now. Primarily because unlike every other phone maker, Apple has a whole bunch of other things that differentiate it. If you're Android phone maker X and you don't rush to this new thing, your competition does. rush to this new thing. Your competition does. You know, you don't have, I mean, you might have some extra junk that you loaded on the phone's home screen or something, but basically you have nothing else to differentiate yourself because it's Android. And so, and this is how it worked with PCs back in the day. Apple did the same thing because Apple was not playing quite the same game. They could afford to wait and say, it's not time yet. This stuff isn't good enough.

Everybody else is rushing to get the checkbox that, you know, on the spec sheet that says, yes, we have that thing. It doesn't do anything, but we have it. And Apple can afford to wait until it feels the time is right. And I feel like that is probably what will go on with this is that they'll wait. And you mentioned phablets. It's the same thing. They can wait a little bit.

They can even be skeptical about it, or they might be super into it. There have been rumors that Apple has worked on foldable tech, too. But if there comes a moment where they feel like they've figured it out and can put it in a phone that they can price, feel like they figured it out and can put it in a phone that uh that they can price i would say reasonably but i think maybe not even reasonably that they can they can sell a lot of at a price that will give them the revenue that they want because maybe the first one is a 1200 phone right yeah this feels like it would be this is the next step above the iphone 10 yeah that's right this is another like quantum leap where it's like it's way more expensive and maybe the iphone 10 tech has come down at that point and then this thing leaps in above it so but i i don't think they wouldn't do it i think if the tech is good so that they can

make a good product with it um apple actually has a lot of advantages to this kind of approach but it also has some disadvantages like the fact that they don't make their displays, right? Like, this is a display tech, which means that in the end, they're going to be relying on Samsung or LG to make these foldable OLED displays for them. Unless they have a Skunkworks project where they're working on foldable phones, which the only rumors we've heard are about the OLED, the micro OLED stuff that Apple is working on, but not the foldable OLED stuff. So they may have to wait for this tech to come from a provider. But if they feel the time is right and they've got a good product and a good story, I don't know. They've got some advantages too it's it's not i i thought it was a worthy exercise of like what would it be like because this is something that we've we've

talked about foldable phones and we've talked about like you know what what will apple do in the future but i hadn't personally at least walked down that path of like what would it look like so when i was thinking about this i kind of broke it down into four areas that apple would have to overcome or would have to have answers for for why they would make this like looked up looking up on previous decisions that they've made so like is the market proven right like apple tend not to release products that are brand new right like nobody nobody else is doing anything like this sometimes they do but it's in rare cases and it's not usually when like in this case unless they have secretly built a a factory that makes foldable oled screens like they're going to

be using a part from a partner which means it's going to be on other devices it's not going to be they're not going to be first out with this because they can't they can't be they're going to be using a samsung widget or somebody else's widget. So they can't be that. Siri was first, right? They do that occasionally if they think they can make a big splash, but the conditions have to be exactly right. And for this, it seems like not. So instead, they're going to play the waiting game, which is when do they think it's a product or a feature that is worthy of the Apple level of quality that is expected. And I'm making air quotes there, but you know what I mean, like from Apple's perspective,

versus it being sort of a silly thing that isn't practical that people are doing because they can, but they don't have any idea of how to do it. And then Apple sweeps in and goes, aha, we figured it out. And the first ones to do this, right. Cause that's, that's Apple. That's what they do. It's easier to them to do that stuff with software right with hardware it is way harder for them to oh well they are way less likely to kind of roll into an unproven market be like haha we made a new thing nobody's doing anything like this like it that's less likely for them unless they invest in it enormously over the course of many years like with the pa semi acquisition which led to all of their processor capabilities. Now they can do that with processors, but it took them a long time to get there. And they may be doing that with displays now with this rumor about micro OLED stuff, but who knows? And it might be

years before we see that, if ever. Can they do it elegantly? Because here's the thing, that all of these first models, what they are not going to be is elegant. And that's understandable, right? Because we're in kind of the infancy of this technology being available to consumers but it's why like you know the mechanisms of bending these things is going to be super awkward they're all going to have well at least i reckon that most of them will be like this royale where it's kind of like that surface book where the the join isn't flat it leaves air that you can see through so like it doesn't actually close completely right so like all of this stuff has to be maybe ironed out or at least accepted upon but like when we see these phones i don't think we're going to find them very

elegant for a while yeah in europe it's called the royal with cheese um yeah i i think you're right i think i do think this is a place a case where maybe apple and samsung actually i think maybe there's some hardware design prowess that comes into effect because samsung's got very good hardware designers too we can we make fun of samsung for knocking off apple's phones but you know they they among android phones you know they do a very good job. Oh, and also, like, don't forget, we had all those beautiful Samsung phones while Apple was still rolling out the iPhone 6 design, right? Like, Samsung for a while, in my opinion, like, they way eclipsed Apple in what they were actually producing. Well, I mean, regardless of those kinds of opinions, I mean, there's no denying that they have hardware.

They're good at hardware, right? Yeah, they do. denying that they have hardware. They're good at hardware. Yeah, they do. They do. So, but Apple is good at hardware too. So I do think that that's a possibility here where, all right, we built flexible OLED screens, but only a few companies

are going to, at first at least, build them in a way, if it's possible, that isn't super awkward and janky, right? Like that's, and I'm not entirely convinced that that first Samsung phone won't be that, where it's really like, well, we want to sell these displays and we'll make one, but it's not there yet. But at some point, and this is where Apple can bring its skills to bear,

Apple's going to get samples if they don't have them already, a foldable OLEDs. And they're going to be, maybe they've been spending the last couple of years with samples from Samsung and they've been figuring out like, how would you do this? And do you do a sandwich kind of thing where there's a folded layer and then there's another screen? Or do you do it where it's actually the screen that folds around and does the folded around part, how do you get it to deactivate? Or could you put data on the backside? Do you put an Apple logo back there? What do you do with the backside? And think about that stuff. And that's all like hardware design that Apple's good at. And they've got their own platform that they can customize for it. advantage in this scenario is that ultimately, you know, I think iOS being on devices as small as the SE all the way up to the big iPad Pro gives them some, and the fact that apps are on iOS are better suited for large screens, like very large screens than on Android because of the iPad.

You know, maybe not phablets, but even then, I mean, my experience with Android has always been that even on very large Android phones, it feels a little empty because of the way that Android apps, most Android apps are built. They don't like, and the lack of popular Android tablets makes me skeptical about large screens on Android in a way that I'm not at all about the iPad because, you know, Apple has done a pretty good job getting iPad software there. So I think there's lots of advantages that are on Apple's side here, including the fact that they would have to design something like this so that it didn't feel super weird and unpleasant to use. It would have to be a pleasant experience.

And that might not happen until the screen tech gets a lot better. I don't know what the state of affairs is. Is this something they could do in two years or not? But it's interesting to think about that. I think there are a lot of questions until we see what Samsung have done. That's the key. What have Samsung been able to produce? With their own display.

They should be able to make the best one. Yeah, and have it do what they want it to do because it's their display, right? So that should be, they should do that. It's not to say that though, I was, so I was starting to envision what an iPhone, foldable iPhone display thing would be like. And I have two different thoughts about it,

which is, you know, the first one is the obvious obvious one which is you take something the size of the 10s or the 10s max and you have it flip open and suddenly it's got double the screen size and it's like a little it's like a mini ipad mini yeah um so it's a big phone that becomes a tablet and i think that's the most kind of obvious answer but i did have this thought about if this was a way to make a smaller phone because i'm not sure people love phones with big screens i'm not sure they love a big screen in their pocket they love it you know in their eyeballs basically um and so could they instead make a phone that was smaller that folded out into something that was bigger? And would that be a thing that would be popular with people?

Something that's maybe even more like the SE, more like that dumb like Palm phone that was your second phone kind of thing. The idea that if you could fulfill the Steve Jobs' law of iPhone design, the everything must get thinner and lighter and smaller. law of iPhone design, the everything must get thinner and lighter and smaller. Well, it wouldn't get thinner, but you could have something that was smaller in your pocket, and then you opened it up and flipped it out, and it was a big phone. And then when you were done, you just closed it and stuck it back in your pocket. And I wonder about that as an opportunity for basically making a phone that has a big screen but still fits in people's pockets in a way that the 10s max maybe doesn't yeah i was thinking like how would i want to use this and i was thinking about that example right because if you had a small phone going to a big phone so like imagine

you were looking through twitter and you were like kind of scrolling things on the smaller screen and you see a video and you open up the phone and press play on the video so you have a bigger screen for the video and then you close it back again and go back to twitter right like i kind of think that's an interesting way to use your device check your notifications and see what the time is and do something really quick and then if you want to dive into something you you pop it open and then you've got a bigger thing it's a it's possible it's very science fiction isn't it it is in fact um i would imagine that if you're somebody at apple who designs iphones or at samsung right and you get your hands on one of these as a demo as demo tech or even you don't have them and you're just mocking them up in hardware like one of the

first things you've got to do is have a whole bunch of people try to use it. And like the early days of the iPhone, where they had things hooked up to like Macs with a cable in order to pretend that you were holding a phone in your hand, like in Ken Koshenda's book, right? It's a little like that because I'm not quite sure what all the ergonomic ramifications of this are. It might be that if you make a foldable phone, that's like an SE, um, people are like, oh yeah, I, I mean, it might be whatever it is that people hate unfolding it, right? Like we can make a foldable phone and the world says we're not interested in that. It might be, we don't know and and the first thing i would do uh if i was working on a project like this would be to uh try it out with as many people as i could presumably secretly inside apple or samsung and uh just discover you got to learn what the issues are with this stuff even if it's an idealized version of this like do people want to do this are people ever going to open it up are

they going to get frustrated? What are all the issues there? And that's fascinating. And that's a huge amount of work, which is why this is, you know, those people presumably hopefully get paid a lot of money to do their jobs well. There were two other points that I was thinking about as to, you know, if Apple would want to do this. One of them is if they can do it at large scale, right?

Which is a thing for them, which makes sense, right? One of them is if they can do it at large scale, right, which is a thing for them, which makes sense, right? They sell lots of phones. If they can only sell 500 of these a year because of the technology, well, they're probably not going to get into that market. But the other is can they do it without too many tradeoffs? And in your article, you mentioned something that you referred to as Jobs' Law. What is that? Yes, right. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, I mentioned it earlier. It's the short version is the Jobs' Law, which is every iphone every apple product should get thinner and lighter basically is the jobs as law that is the um that is the ongoing push it it doesn't always happen but i think the idea there is that apple is always pushing its product designs to be thinner and lighter now are there i'm not saying that that's like an ideal form i'm saying that i think apple feels it's an ideal it's something to strive for and so if you can make your laptop smaller and lighter instead of bigger and heavier or keep it the same even um that apple it's like you've got a manager saying you know could we make it lighter like not not that you have to but like let's strive for that

let's try to make this thinner and lighter and uh and that's that's the question with something like this is that this is totally new tech and i'm not just looking at it it seems unlikely that this would be something that would be thinner and lighter so no way so so you would have to you know how how does apple handle that um you know and is apple's goal to make it a you know thinner when unfolded and then thicker when folded or or what i don't know it's a mystery like oh at its thinnest point this is the thinnest iphone we've ever you know what i mean it's just like but what happens when you fall down on the cell. Right. It's like the most surface area display per gram or per volume that we've ever put in an iPhone, right?

I'm sure there's some spec that Apple will come up with. There's a Johnny Ive thing there. Most screen density in the smallest phone volume ever, something like that. And it's like, I guess the way you would, the easiest way to get away with that idea is it's a brand new phone and the line, like the XR is thicker than the X, right?

And they kind of like was because it's brand new. And this would be like that, right? This would, if they did something like this, it would have to be a completely new part of the product line. It would be- The fourth new iPhone that they release. Yeah, it's a, yeah, it's above the X.

It's this other thing that goes beyond it and is even more kind of expensive and aspirational, at least at first. This very much could be a brand new product line, right? Like it could be named slightly differently. Like it might not be called like the iPhone 12 Flex or whatever. Like they might give it a new name even because it is this weird thing that sits in the middle. It's like this convertible thing. I would imagine they'll call it an iPhone just because the iPhone is such a big product and it's such a great brand.

But it would be a very different kind of product. Potentially. It might not be. It might really be a phone and even unfolded it's not really even iPad screen size. It's still a phone with an alternative view. So I would imagine they would call it an iPhone, but who knows? Who knows? I don't know. I'm really excited to see Samsung's. I genuinely, like, I cannot wait to see what they've done. Well, I mean, this is,

people can roll their eyes and be like, oh, this is ridiculous. It may well be ridiculous, but what's interesting is that a product that has been a category that has been talked about for ages, since the beginning of the conversations about OLED, people are like, oh, you know what, they're going to be able to make flexible displays. And there were demos of like this thing. But 2019 seems to be the year where these products will actually be released that use this technology. Now, will they be good? Will they be practical? Who knows? Probably not. But it's a starting point. And it makes you start to think, okay, what if this is a real thing? And we'll find out. Maybe it's not. Maybe Samsung will, it'll be a complete flop. Maybe that LG TV that rolls up that was shown at CES that is apparently actually going to ship this year. Maybe it will be a flop. Maybe it won't. Maybe it has weird issues that they're not talking about that the reviewers were discovered. That's all to play for. But it is interesting in the sense that we might be at the point where this tech that has been promised for a long time actually exists.

And if it does, then, you know, then things potentially get interesting. All right. Today's show is also brought to you by our friends over at FreshBooks. I use FreshBooks and love FreshBooks. I've been using it this week to send invoices out as I do every week. And every time I use FreshBooks, I marveled at how easy it is to use. And that is because they are so focused on saving time for their users. By simplifying tasks like invoicing and tracking expenses and getting paid online, FreshBooks drastically reduces the time it takes for their over 10 million people to deal with their paperwork. Look, FreshBooks is a great system to use, but let's not lie about this, right? Like, invoicing is not fun. Like, there is no...

Now, I don't know many people, I've never met anybody who's like, I want to do all... I just want to do invoicing all the time because I love it. So, when you are actually working on sending invoices, you want to be able to use a simple, easy to use system that takes you not a lot of time to do. So you can just go back and get on with whatever it is that you want to be doing instead. That is one of the main reasons I love FreshBooks. They make it so easy for me so I don't have to be spending hours and hours every single day just digging around in there trying to work out why I haven't been paid because all of that stuff is shown to

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There's no credit card required. Just go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and enter upgrade in the how did you hear about us section so they will know that you came to them from this show. That's freshbooks.com slash upgrade for a 30-day free trial of FreshBooks. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their continued support of this show. That's freshbooks.com upgrade for a 30-day free trial of FreshBooks. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. So there's been a bunch of interesting ads that Apple have been putting out recently,

and there was a big selection of ads for the iPad Pro. Now, these are the types of ads that are interesting in their execution because of how they're displayed like a lot of the time the only time you ever see them is by going to apple's youtube page and watching right yeah or otherwise they tend to be used in online media like these ads these ones that we're talking about right now they're not shown on tv um right they're all they're all too long and yeah exactly right and they're not wishbang tv um right they're all they're all too long and yeah exactly right and they're not whiz bang right yeah i was hesitant to even call them ads they're like are they videos they're kind of like little tutorial videos yeah they're they're interesting

but they're interesting because of their focus so there there are uh five of them for the ipad pro and i'll give you the quick titles of them so So a new way to create a presentation, a new way to take notes, a new way to design your space, a new way to go pay plus, and a new way to host your own podcast. And the reason that I saw about these ads in the first place is because a bunch of people sent to me the podcast one, because naturally, it's cool to see Apple focusing on that. So they use a bunch of apps, they use actually pretty much all third party apps for these. So that's cool as well, because they're showing them off so uh they use a bunch of apps they use actually pretty much all third-party apps for these so that that's cool as well because they're showing them off so they use good notes which is a wonderful app that just received a new update which is really great and notability which is another app that i really love i like i use both of those they're like note-taking apps on the ipad

um but for the podcast one they show off anchor and it's a really good one because they show how you can like just plug a usbc microphone in and you can record and then you can go to garage band and make your theme song i actually really like it i think it's really good and it shows off the tools that anchor have to allow you to put a show together really quickly you know maybe it would have been nicer as jason points out like to use ferrite because that's the actual really powerful app right i know why they didn't right which is that with anchor what you get is ferrite you can's the actual really powerful app right i know why they didn't right which is that with anchor what you get is ferrite you can record in and you can edit

but anchor because it's made by a hosting company it's it's a good app and it has some features that ferrite doesn't like it will just post your podcast right like it will then upload it to anchor servers and your podcast episode is live. And I think, I'm unclear, I need to follow up on this, but I think they've got it set up that if other people are running the Anchor app on iOS, you can call them inside and everybody records together. I'm not sure if you can do that

if you're not running the Anchor app. I'm not sure if you can do that with desktops on the web or not. Yeah, I think it might just be app only, but yeah, it is a thing you can do. They have a lot of features right like yeah and also as well like i'm sure that apple's super aware of anchor they have like business relationships right so like it's not surprising to me that they feature them but it probably is the right thing i think using ferrite in an in an ad like this would be too much right like it's it's maybe a little bit

overboard yeah i will tell you i will admit and this may happen it depends on how much time i have and i don't have a lot of time but i i have been tempted to uh set up my camera and my table and replicate that ad with i would very much like to see that i don't have a white i don't have a white table with a white background so it would not be exactly the same but i have been tempted to do that because it is a little more complicated, but it does actually work. Right, but Jason, will you go the whole way? Because these ads, they all say, well, most of them say at the end that they are filmed, edited, designed, and made with the iPad Pro. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I saw on Twitter there were some people who were really skeptical. They're like, you know, what is this? Do they really mean this? It's like, yes, they mean this. And you can, like the new iPad Pro.

There is no benefit people are about this do real work on the ipad thing and i will point people back again to serenity caldwell's review of the sixth generation ipad that she did last spring which was entirely drawn written edited and produced on the ipad um that you can do a lot of stuff on the ipad folks it's not it's not a it's not surprising it should not be surprising at this point that's the reason they did it is they want to just throw it out there in every single one of these that like yes we can we can absolutely do this all on ipad pro there's some conspiracy theories out there that are like oh they were secretly using a new version of Final Cut Pro X for iPad. LumaFusion is incredible.

It is an absolutely amazing application. And you could 100% make a video like this with LumaFusion. Sure. It's possible, you know? I find it funny because it's like, they don't need to say this, right? If they didn't do it, if these videos were not made with the ipad people wouldn't go aha you can't do real work on the ipad it just never would have come up right but i think i actually think it's really great that they did do this because yeah it's it's proving a point right

which i think is really important this is dogfooding in public right they're like we we did this too we made these videos with the ipad pro you can do all of this stuff and it's i like to believe that the pro workflow team made these ads that's that's what i like to believe that's my my head canon interesting or at least maybe they were uh maybe they were involved yeah they were consulted involved in the uh you know and I'm going to obscure all the information here, but I was asked by somebody who works at Apple a while ago what I thought of Anchor. And would it be a, you know, a valid podcasting tool? And I said, yes, it's very good. Oh, look what you did. It's tied into their system, you know, right?

But it's very simple to use and does all the things and lets you edit and all that i should say on that podcast they also go to garage band at one point to make a theme song which made me laugh i thought that was really funny i love that i think it's funny yeah uh so so i i don't know i now i saw this and i was like i wonder if that's why they asked about anchors is they're just getting a read on whether this is legit enough to put in a video like this, but it totally is. And it's a good video. Um, I, you know, it's funny, this is not a podcast where we talk about like Apple released some ads a lot because it's just like, it's marketing from Apple.

And I generally, I'm not super thrilled about it, but I thought these were interesting enough to talk about, especially since you and I care about the iPad pro a lot. And I think they're very well done. And I like that they filmed and edited and designed them about the iPad Pro a lot. And I think they're very well done. And I like that they filmed and edited and designed them on the iPad Pro. I did want to mention, since we broke the seal and talked about Apple ads, I wanted to mention another Apple ad,

which again, we never do on this show, but watching sports the last few weeks, I keep seeing the Color Flood ad, which is for the iPhone XR. This is an ad. This is the ad where there are people in various colored outfits running around in streams of color all over a city. You know it if you've seen it. And I just wanted to say I loved this ad before I even discovered it was an Apple ad. Yeah.

It immediately caught my attention and I thought it was a great ad. I didn't know what it was for. It turns out it's all the color. It's like the colors on the back of the iPhone XR, which is okay, fine. But I love it as a piece of commercial art. I think it's a really cool ad. And the song that goes with it, which has come along by Cosmo Sheldrake, great name, is super catchy. And I think it's a cool little short film, basically, that also happens to be an Apple ad. So I wanted to plug it and mention that i love it i can't

believe i haven't seen that ad yet like this just feels like something that should have been shared on the internet like as a look at this incredible ad because it is beautiful yeah i i really like it again like how difficult must that have been to make that is a very expensive shoot right yeah my assumption is there's two things going on here you know what it reminds me of do you remember the bouncy balls ad from from sony where they they let all the bouncing balls down a hill in san francisco oh yeah yeah right we're set with uh i think it was teardrop or was it heartbeats by jose gonzalez right that was the okay the song which is you know made that song famous but what they did with with that ad is they actually did let a ton of bouncy balls down the street in San Francisco,

but they also put some in with CGI, right? So like they did a bit of both, right? And I expect that that's what's going on here. There's too many people running way too close together. It feels like there is a bit of both, I think, going on with that one. Yeah, it may be that there's some is a there is a bit of both i think going on uh with that yeah yeah it may be that there's some cleanup or there's some doubling and all that but it is very it is very impressive and there's things they do where they like jump they jump

they do like high dives off of a level and it makes it look like a like a waterfall and then the one guy flips back off of one level and is caught by the people and there's a disclaimer at the bottom that says don't do this uh but it is yeah it's cool it's cool it is now i don't know as a sales tool for the iphone 10r i don't know it doesn't make a difference the point is i think to get people's attention and and that is part of apple's marketing campaign it's like when they did that christmas you know they do the christmas ad every year it's not a showing off all the features kind of ad it's a branding campaign and yeah which which i think they're very important uh i i wish i hope that companies continue to do this it's my favorite type of advertising is when you see

the brand it just makes you go oh they're so cool and like that is incredibly powerful if you can do it um so yeah i think i think it's a great ad i think it's a great example uh of something i did want to just go back to those ipad pro ads just for just for oh yeah okay fine i just like what they're focusing on like they're focusing on a bunch of like just real real work that you can do on the ipad i like the things that they've picked you know that like the these are a combination between purely creative stuff and also kind of just like regular stuff like make a presentation take notes like things that the ipad is really good at and in some places uniquely good at especially when you put like the apple pencil in and stuff like that um so i really

like him i think that they chose some really good stuff and again i want to reiterate how happy i am that they chose some like really good third--party apps to show this stuff off with. Because if they would have, for Notes, it's like, oh, look how great Apple Notes is. It's like, yeah, I know, but Apple Notes can't take handwriting and convert it into text. It can't really mix all the

mixed media in as nicely. I'm pleased that they actually did choose some of these third-party apps to really give them that shine. And I also hope that it results in lots of sales for these companies because they do good stuff. That was my last thing, my closing statement on the iPad Pro. Approved.

Now it's time, Mike, for us to put on our full-body blue jumpsuits and run through a park. Okay. Are we going to do that while we're talking about Luna Display. Okay. So this episode, no, they're not going to do that. It's brought to you by our friends over at Luna Display. They are the makers of the only hardware solution that will take your iPad

and turn it into a wireless display for your Mac, which means you're going to have a second display with you all the time. It's super portable with basically zero lag and stunning image quality setting up lunar display couldn't be easier you just plug their wonderfully small red dongle into your mac and you're good to go everything works seamlessly over wi-fi so no matter where you are as long as you're on the same wi-fi connection you can jump back into your mac when you're away from your desk or you can have it with you while you're at your desk and have that second display experience. But it also works over USB. So if you're traveling,

I think about someone being on a train. I've taken some long train journeys in my life and you get a little bit more space on a train maybe than on a plane. Maybe you've been lucky enough to get one of those four-seat table dealios and you're all on your own and you can put your laptop down

and then you can plug in your iPad with a USB cable and then you have, with Luna Display, two displays right there so you can put your laptop down and then you can plug in your iPad with a USB cable and then you have with the with Luna display two displays right there so you can get your work done super simple to set up and you get all of that beautiful extra screen real estate I love my Luna display I use it all the time I whenever I'm at home I'm jumping into my Mac mini now performing little tasks when I need to it is truly a wonderful thing for me to have Mac OS Live as an app on my iPad. Listeners of this show can get an exclusive 10% discount on Luna Display.

Just go to lunadisplay.com and use the promo code UPGRADE at checkout to get that 10% off. That is l-u-n-a-d-i-s-p-l-a-y dot com and use the promo code UPGRADE at checkout. Thanks to Luna Display for their support of this show and RelayFM.

It's time for some hashtag AskUpgrade. Matt asks, I have a wallet case for my iPhone that holds two credit cards. I'm sure it wouldn't work with screen face up, but do Qi Chargers work with the screen facing down and will

disfry my credit cards? So let's break this down a little bit. There is, I don't know what it is, but there is a maximum distance that the phone can have to a Qi charger. It seems to work fine through regular cases, but like I have a pop socket on my phone, right? It will not charge

to the pop socket. If I take the plastic part off and I just have the rubber part that's underneath on the pop socket, it will charge. Like there is a distance right from how far away your phone needs to be to a Qi charger. So if your case is thin enough and you have two credit cards in it, it might work. It might be within the distance. You know, you kind of have to play around with it. The thing is, Qi charging does not work with the iPhone screen face down because the coil's in the back of the phone. So that just doesn't work. Would it fry your credit cards i have no idea about that jason do you know

i don't know i it might not i i i mean your credit card company will send you another one if it does fry them i i would be more skeptical about like whether it actually will work to charge them um screen facing down by the way it's not going to work that's not how it works um it has to be the back because that's where the coils are and you have to you could give it a try um i you know you could give it a try and see and the worst thing that happens is you have to get them to send you a new credit card because your credit card stops working the magnetic strip won't I'm a little more worried about what might happen to the little chip. It might be okay or it might not, or it might die over time. It's not something that I've tried. My more concern would be that if the cards are in the way, it's going to stop working because it's going to be too much material

between the charger, or it's going to be a lot less effective in transmitting through all of that. I will point out, you might want to, if you really want to do cheat charging, you might want to look into like a folio case. Apple makes one, but there are others where you put your cards in the front. Good idea. That didn't used to happen before the X, but the X and now the XS and XS Max, Apple actually makes a folio case.

And there are third-party ones. They have a Hall Effect sensor now on the iPhone where it locks and unlocks when you open and close the folio like on the iPad cover. The iPhone does that now too. So that would be one way to go. Not everybody likes folio cases, although I know people who really love them, and there's official Apple ones

now if you want to go that route where you put your cards in the front and then flip over backward and close it. Cards in the front and then it you know flip over backward and you know close it in the front chi charging in the back right that's sure that's how that works that is how that works that's how it works dominic asks first time ipad comic book reader jason do you recommend buying a comic on the kindle or apple bookstore which app is better for reading i'm gonna i'm gonna assume you say none of the above. No, I don't say that. Well, I mean, this is an interesting choice because I do most of my reading in other apps.

But I did write a story on Six Colors about comic reading on the iPad Pro, which I'm going to put a link in the show notes right now. Don't you worry. I've got it, Jason. You got it? I got it. You got it?

All right. Thanks, Mike. So my answer is I don't like how iBooks does comic reading. They do it. It feels to me, just my personal opinion, I don't like their really kind of skeuomorphic approach to it where they want to show you like the spread and then zoom into one page

and then you flip the page and stuff like that i much prefer the kindle stuff because the kindle stuff is comiXology integrated into the kindle app and if you did not know uh not only did amazon buy comiXology which is the leading comic digital comics uh exclusive seller um it they have their own app which was the best app for reading comics that you could, you know, not side-loading comics, which is a separate issue where you've got files

and you want to display them, but like to buy them, Comixology was great at reading comics that you bought. When Amazon bought them, they began a process. The guy who's in charge of Comixology is actually, I think,

in charge of comics at Amazon, too. Digital comics at Amazon. Basically, Comixology is Amazon's digital comics shop, too, kind of, or at least they work together. As a result, the Kindle app basically has Comixology in it. So when you open a comic in the Kindle app, you are getting a good comic reading experience. I prefer the Comixology app. kindle app you're getting a good comic reading experience i prefer the comiXology app um comics from comiXology and kindle i think your kindle purchases sync to comiXology i'm not sure if it goes back the other way but um anyway i would choose the kindle over the over ibooks or books because i just don't like how the apple books experience is for comics but other people disagree

and that's fine too i just i i don't need uh like my article details it like there are there are things you want out of a comic reader experience and uh right now i would i would choose uh kindle or comiXology first in terms and i do in terms of of reading comics on the ipad that i that i bought from amazon basically gareth asks if the price of OLED screens come down to the point that Apple can use one in the cheaper phone, so like the R series,

is there still a place for three phones in the lineup? If they both use, if they all use OLED, what distinguishes the R from the standard phone? So this is the assumption here that OLED will be

the only distinguishing factor in the difference of these phones going forward, right? So if you look at the R line, right now it doesn't have OLED because OLED is the core new technology that makes the phone more expensive. My assumption would be that if the R does stay around, which I am inclined to think

that they're going to maybe give this a bit more of a college try than they did the C line, right? Irrespective of how well or not it's selling. Apple's saying it is selling well. The rest of the world is saying it's not. I don't know what the truth is. My thinking is that as new technology finds its way into the more expensive phones,

it doesn't all find its way into the r line right so let's imagine apple adds x new wonderful feature to the iphone 12 maybe it's the three cameras maybe the cameras get a little bit better in some way maybe there's some new technology and maybe there are at some point picks up the oled but it doesn't get feature x right the thing that's pushing the phone to make it more expensive because if the price price of OLED screens comes down, then they don't need to keep OLED away from that phone. You know, like, maybe it never

gets 3D Touch, because 3D Touch is more expensive. Like, even when they move to OLED, it still uses Haptic Touch, right? So, like, my expectation is that the R line is just it keeps getting better, but never has everything. Yeah, I think this is, you've hit on the real question about this line, which is, is the R, the XR there because Apple wants to establish a line of phones that are cheaper than their super high-end line um that have some but not all of the features

is that what they're doing here or is the r the 10r a a side effect of where they are currently in uh their product cycle where they need to have a phone like this or they want to have a phone like this because they the oled stuff is too expensive and they want to have something that costs a little bit less um i if if the last couple of years of apple and the iphone is any indication i would expect change more than i would expect things to stay the same if like will the 10r or a version of it be there next year maybe but in the long run do i expect something like the 10r to stick around um maybe something like it but i also would not be shocked if it went away at some point and then if a different kind of outlier phone came back some other time it really depends on what apple's

uh strategy is going forward and that has to do like, do they think that the 10 line as the regular line is priced right? Do they think there need to be more phones that are cheaper? Do they think the 10 line needs to be cheaper, but there could be phones above it? There are a lot of options there. But I think there's some validity in this idea that they build a nice phone that's got a lot, but not all of the features that they can sell for cheaper that that is going to be more of a crowd pleaser i i think apple wants that to be true but since we don't know how well it's selling and how you know apple is interpreting those sales versus other sales elsewhere in their product line it's very hard from the outside to say but it does seem like they want there to be

a market that allows them to sell a super expensive high-end fancy phone with all the features and another phone that's good but doesn't you know but they can price it for two or three hundred dollars less i think they would like to do that if they can get away with it i'm not sure whether we know if they can get away with it this question comes from brian hamilton uh we have two doors a front door and a back door if If we get a smart lock, do you think it should be the main way to get into the house with the back door as a backup or should the smart lock be the backup

to a front door with a key? Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. The front door is the backup, the backdrop is the back door is the backup? Yes, that's what I said. There's a Dr. Seuss poem in there somewhere. Listener Brian, the whole reason you get a smart lock is for convenience. So it would be the front door. Yes, that is what I said. you can give them a temporary guest coat and they can come in the front door. The back door is presumably not a normal way anyone enters the house.

And so it seems perfect to be a backup unless your back door, like the house I grew up in the, the front door was never used and the back door was everybody's access point. But I would say it's supposed to be your primary access point that you use a smart lock on because what you're really trying to do is just make it super convenient for people to get, to get into the house and then you can hide a key in a rock somewhere in the backyard to get in the back door or whatever you need to do luke asks do you know if the new battery cases would fit the iphone 8 plus they do not they are made not complete have you seen

or tried one of these yet i have not done it it. I was enjoying Rene, Richie, and John Gruber talking in depth about these battery cases, and I haven't even been to the Apple store to see one. I don't really have a need for them because I work at home, and I travel infrequently enough that bringing a battery with me when I need it is fine. I don't, like yeah you really need to be committed to you're always using your iphone and it's always out of battery that's when you that's when you go to the case because if it's occasional i don't see why you can't just bring a battery with you unless you've got very particular needs or no pockets or whatever it is in which case i

understand that um so so yeah but i all accounts, they are incredible for battery life. They have the secret sauce because they're built by Apple that the phones talk to the batteries and it knows when to charge them and they work kind of without you having to press buttons or do anything. And that's all great.

But they're also for the XS, right? So the iPhone 8 phones are not the right size, so they don't work. Yeah, like for me, I have more devices than just my iPhone, so I typically prefer to have a big external battery that I could also use

to charge my iPad or my Nintendo Switch or whatever when I travel, you know? On a daily basis, even when I'm out and about, my iPhone does not need more than what I already give it. You know, like it just doesn't need it. I'm very happy with the battery life on my XS Max.

But if it is, I mean, I'm pleased that they're doing it for the people that want it, right? Like if you've been waiting for this, that would be great. And it was weird that they didn't make one they didn't make them for the last generation of phones which was i just seemed very strange to me that they didn't do that yeah it's it's i wonder if they're um charging tech people were working working on a different product instead oh oh jason snell or maybe not finally today jeremy asks do you think apple will experiment with more region-specific iphone models in the future like the dual sim 10s max in china to compete stronger in markets where maybe they they need a little bit of a leg up i think it's i think it's possible i think that the reason they went with the dual SIM

was so it would sell better in China, right? I think that was why they did that. Yeah, I think Apple is open to this, but what I would say is that every design variation has a cost and Apple needs to see potential payoff for them to do it. And building a phone for China china given apple's commitment to china

and wanting to be appealing in china makes sense um building region-specific phones for markets where the iphone is less appealing because it's too expensive basically means making region-specific cheap iphones i think it's possible. It would be a real break in strategy from them to do that. They would be purpose-building a new cut-rate cheap iPhone for markets that can't afford the iPhone. And there's a question of, like, does that devalue the iPhone? Maybe. The iPhone brand and its perception,

it's a high quality product, maybe. But if you're in a market, if you're failing to get any traction in a market like India, because you're just out, completely out of range for anybody, I wonder if they would do that saying, we can't be a luxury brand in India

if our phones are our cheapest phones are too expensive we need to build a phone that will be priced like a luxury brand in India that people who are want you know who have the money who are middle class in India will will buy and right now it seems like most of their phones just can't crack that. And that price is one of the big reasons why. So, you know, I think not impossible, but that would be a real change in strategy for them over just building a, you know, just selling and leaning into the models that are cheaper and trying to sell them in those markets. It would be, you know, hey, Apple just had their big oopsie with their forecast for their sales. iPhone sales are slowing.

Would it be unlikely for them to take a totally new approach to a market like India or Brazil or any of these other kind of markets where they have not had as much traction? No, I would say, although it would be a big break for them i feel like they're in a position now with the iphone where they might be willing to take some uh some risks and go outside their comfort zone because they want to keep expanding um but you know it's a i i think it's a coin toss kind of like they might do it but it would be a big change so i wouldn't expect it um but you know anything's possible change. So I wouldn't expect it. But, you know, anything's possible given where they are right now. All right, if you would like to send in a question

for us to finish the show with, just send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade and it may be picked for a future episode. If you want to find the show notes for this episode, you can find them in your podcast app of choice or at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 229. Jason is the host of many shows here at RelayFM, like I am. Go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 229 Jason is the host of many shows here at relay.fm like I am go to relay.fm

slash shows and you can find something new if you are looking to find more podcasts for your listening enjoyment but Jason also hosts a bunch of shows over on the incomparable as well Jason writes at sixcolors.com and he is on twitter he's at jsnow I am at imyke

thanks again to our sponsors this week, the fine people over at FreshBooks, Lunar Display, and Squarespace. But most importantly, thank you for listening. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Live long and prosper, Lieutenant Hurley. May the Force be with you. No, no!