Upgrade - 233: Let's Start a Rumor

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

A 16-inch MacBook Pro? A 6K Apple external display? Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has dropped the first detailed report of Apple's 2019 hardware plans, and Myke and Jason take turns dissecting them and wildly speculating about possible features. Also we ponder what a services-themed Apple event might look like, which is a lovely discussion until someone mentions Drake.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 233 today's show is brought to you by fresh books luna display and instabug my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how are you i'm very well, Jason Snell. Very well, indeed. We have a hashtag Snell Talk question from Connor. And Connor wants to know, Jason, when you're wearing only one AirPod, or when you take an AirPod out of your ear, which one do you take out? Is it the left? Or is it the right? Okay, that's a very specific...

I don't know why. Does this make me left brained i i always when i'm holding a phone to my ear or if i've got one earbud in it's always in my right ear okay and i it's not like i have a hearing issue in my left ear. I just, whenever I'm holding a phone to my left ear, it feels completely wrong. Okay. So my right ear. I will also, as a bonus, I will point out that as miraculous as

the AirPods are, my ears are itchy. And I hate it that if I have to scratch one of my ears and take out one of the ear pods that the podcast I'm listening to stops I should probably do something about that but it's such a good feature all the rest of the time

but there's moments where I'm like no I don't want to scratch I don't want to scratch because I don't want to stop listening to oh god I gotta take the ear I gotta scratch my ear now I don't like that it's an issue they should have like a anti-itch plastic on it or something anyway right the right right is the answer i'm not sure if it's the airpods specifically that are making your ears itchy but no no they just they just itch anyway

but then i i have the airpod in there i i wonder if i should get some sort of like a technique where i where i like bring my finger up and like touch the proximity sensor and then carefully lift it away but i don't think that'll work i think it'll i think it'll know that the jig is up and probably won't let me scratch my ear while still listening with the other so i take out my right airpod and i think i know why this is because the right side is where the controls have always been for iPhone earbuds and for like iPod earbuds and stuff. Dangly. Dangly controls are on the right. That's true.

Like the volume and the buttons and stuff. So I think I'm used to when I want to change something, my right arm goes up to my ear, you know, or like it goes up towards my ear. So that's why I take the right one out. That's my theory anyway. I'm sticking to it. All right. Thank you, Connor, for this very peculiar but somewhat interesting question nonetheless. And that is what we love here for Hashtag Snell Talk.

Yeah, I think that is like an archetypal Snell Talk question, which is very personal, very specific, and a little bit pointless. There's no other reason that we would answer that question. Indeed. It wouldn't be part of follow-up, for sure. Talking of which uh there are some audiobook streaming services so this was something we spoke about in hashtag ask upgrade at the end

of last week's show uh we had an upgradium write in to say why are there no audiobook streaming services and we were like hmm that seems like there should be some turns out there are some uh i just don't know about them but luckily luckily our upgradings do. So we had some suggestions come in. Peter wrote in to suggest Scribd, but without an E. I'm pretty sure that this company used to do something else. Yes, well, they used to be much more of a place where people could post copyright violations. Right. I don't have a Scri scribbed whatever it is i don't

have a very positive relation with that brand mostly because uh my entire relationship with them was sending cease and desist about people posting whole issues of mac world online it used to be scans right they used to do scans okay so now they also do uh unlimited audiobooks and such and then another company called playster who have a whole bunch of services that that i don't feel like i fully understand uh movie streaming services and ebook streaming services but also an audiobook streaming service um and uh leston sent that one in and then uh last one's from cory who sent in high books as another option options hi books oh and we and uh lorenzo said that in a few countries you can go to storytell s-t-o-r-y-t-e-l.com so they're out

there um it seems like there's no dominant player and i i am a little skeptical about whether the catalogs are very good um but they it's worth investigating if you're somebody who is looking for a you know spotify or netflix for audiobooks but so they are out there but it seems like it's a much smaller part of the market than which is interesting than music is yeah it's interesting to me that it seems like i mean you're we're assuming that these these are all 100 above board these services uh but let's just assume that these are all 100% above board, these services, but let's just assume that they are. They have all of the right deals that they need to have to provide this content. If they can exist, it's surprising that a company like an Apple or an

Amazon are not doing this. That just seems like a surprise to me. If it can exist, then it's surprising to me that there are other companies that are not doing it. And I have heard that there is some audio content, some spoken word content on Spotify at least too, which seems weird. But they've been put in the system even though they're audio content, they've been put in the music system. So if you're a Spotify user or even an Apple Music user, I don't know, search around, maybe you'll find something. But yeah, it is a little bit weird, but I think it is the economics. Like I said last week, the economics of the publishing industry that publishers are really reluctant for books and audio books to give up the purchase model to a, you know, it's like we talked about with Apple News, right? It's the, do you want to give that up for a promise of a portion of a big pot of money? And I think publishers have done the calculation and they kind of are reluctant to do that. I guess I'm expecting that Audible plays you more because people are specifically choosing your book.

They are purchases, right? The Audible subscription is giving you credits to make purchases. And that's their way of creating a subscription model, quote unquote subscription service, that in the end is basically an all-card purchase system. And the same for iBooks, audiobooks. So my expectation would be that larger publishers don't want to rock that boat because people right now that want to get audiobooks are paying. By and large

are paying full price for those audiobooks. So maybe there is an incentive there on the part of the bigger publishers to not want to rock that boat because, you know, look what happened to the music industry. No one buys albums anymore.

So, there we go talking of which of all this stuff we have some upstream news so warner media's new streaming boss kevin riley who we spoke about a few weeks ago he's recently put in put in place uh had his kind of first press junket um and one of the biggest headline tidbits that Riley was talking about is saying that it is not a good model to share. So he's talking about when, before he came on board, Warner Media did a deal with Netflix for $100 million to renew their Friends contract for streaming. This was before, as I say, Kevin took the role, and he seems to not be in the mindset that that is a thing that Warner Media should be doing going forward. When talking about what was referred to as their kind of crown jewels of the Warner Media catalog,

Riley says they should be exclusive to their upcoming service. They don't think this about all of their content. I think that they're taking a slightly different stance to Disney here because Riley says that he feels Warner Media has such a large portfolio that they're taking a slightly different stance to disney here um because riley says that he feels warner media has such a large portfolio that they can do some deals but they need to be more strategic about it and not be giving away their big stuff and friends is obviously a very big thing for them but i think that friends deal was just one year so considering one are not going to be starting even a beta of their service until 2020,

they'll probably be able to get friends back for it. Yeah, it makes sense. This is the way video stuff is panning out here, is people want to, at this point in the game, people want to use their content to set exclusives to force you, if you want to see it you need to pay and yes um this is this is like the decision cbs made with putting star trek on all access instead of just putting it on netflix they could have made more money up front putting it on netflix worldwide instead of uh

just outside of north america but they wanted in the u.s they wanted to use it to build a new service and this is what riley is here, which is why I could make money selling Friends to Netflix. But in the long run, it's more valuable to us as part of the content of our service to make people find it more appealing. I just checked. It turns out it was a multi-year deal. Nobody knows how long it is between Netflix and WarnerMedia for Friends. Yeah, it was a multi-year deal. Nobody knows how long it is between Netflix and WarnerMedia for Friends. Yeah, it's a multi-year deal. It's a non-exclusive deal, which means that the WarnerMedia service will probably launch with Friends.

But it will go for a few more years. It's unclear how long also being on Netflix, where WarnerMedia is not going to have the exclusive, but Netflix won't have the exclusive either. Yeah, but it doesn't make it a selling point for warner specifically not not not right at first but you can see what riley's saying here is in the long run uh this is very much like uh like marvel and netflix where you you could see the writing on the wall um how i set you up for our next story right there yeah you have uh this was announced just before we went live today on the show um coming from deadline there will be no more seasons of punisher or jessica jones these were the last two marvel netflix shows that hadn't yet officially been canceled because they were still rolling out their final

season and obviously everybody knows the jig is up because they did this even before the jessica jones season rolls out they were going to they waited for after Punisher rolled out, but, um, yeah, so this is, I mean, we, we've talked about it before Marvel Netflix, uh, on both sides. This is a deal that was made in a different era and five years ago, and that era is ending and Marvel stuff is going to go on Hulu and it's going to go on Disney plus, um, but it's not going to go on Netflix and Netflix is not going to give its competitor money. For shows that are built on intellectual property, it doesn't control. So that model is over. And so these shows are over.

And if you're a fan of those shows, it's really sad. There's probably not a big chance that they will ever come back in any form elsewhere. It's not completely impossible. But there are several years where Netflix gets to sit on them and have them be exclusive on their service. Yep. Season three of Jessica Jones is coming out soon. That's going to be the last. And that's it. Apparently that one, they knew enough about what was going on with all the other shows that that is what I've heard is that that series ends with some more finality in terms of storytelling

because I think they had the heads up that this was going to be the end end of Marvel on Netflix. Going back to WarnerMedia, they did call out specifically that they would have some shows set within the DC universe as a thing for their future original content because that's something that they have at hand and if they do a good job of it,

they can really make some cool stuff. Yeah, the real mystery is what this means for the DC Universe service, which is DC video content and movies and comics. My guess is that like HBO, the Warner streaming service will be a superset. Because I think that's another thing that Riley said is that HBO content will be in the Warner streaming service will be a superset. Because I think that's another thing that Riley said is that HBO content will be in the Warner streaming service.

It's unclear whether all of it will be or not, but I have a hard time believing that it won't be, you can get HBO for this low price, you can get DC Universe for this low price, and for this slightly larger price, you can get Warner streaming service with everything. But we'll see how they do it. Because, you know, why do you want to make DC shows for just this one niche streamer?

It seems like that's not a decision they would make today. They would say, we don't need DC Universe streaming. And they may fold the whole thing up and put it inside at some point. And the plan is to get this out early, I think sometime in 2020. But the content for this and the NBC Universal streaming service that's coming in 2020, it sounds like it's everything we talked about about Apple, which is it takes a long time to make content. And that means that they're going to start with a small amount. And then they're going to have to build it over time. Now, they'll start with catalogs, both of these,

because they have catalogs of content that they own unlike apple but you know it it takes a couple of years to roll out a full slate of shows for a streaming service and they're both um behind so it'll be a what he called it like a beta version in 2020 which is really like yeah it'll be i think not i don't think it'll necessarily be so much beta in terms of functionality as beta in terms of what's on it. Content, it's all old. It's just all old stuff. Some HBO and some DC

and maybe like another couple of shows and a catalog and then we'll figure it out and more shows next year. All right, today's episode is brought to you in part by Instabug. You can go to instabug.com slash upgrade where you can sign up right now and store their SDK. If you do, you'll get a free Instabug t-shirt

along with a 14-day free trial. Instabug is an SDK that takes complete care of your beta testing and user feedback process. This will allow you to debug, fix, and improve your app faster and easier than ever before. It takes just a minute to install, giving you seamless two-way communication with users or testers. Your users will be able to shake their phone to send you feedback,

with screenshots that can be annotated, and a full log of touch events, so you can focus on exactly what's needed to fix the problem, and so you can reproduce it as well. Instabug also features automatic crash reporting. Each crash is reported with complete stack trace and reproduction steps, helping you fully understand what happened and what went wrong. And all of your crash data can be viewed together in Instabug with charts,

helping you get an overview of your performance at a glance. Instabug also features in-app chat, so you can easily communicate with your users to get more feedback if you want it and let them know what's going on as well. You also have the ability to run user surveys too so you can understand how people are feeling about the functionality of your application. You can integrate with all of your favorite third-party tools like Yira, Slack, Trello, GitHub and more so you and your team can have all of your work together in your favorite places. All of this takes just two lines of code to integrate into

your application. Go right now to instabug.com slash upgrade to find out more. And as a special offer for the listeners of this show, if you sign up and install the SDK, you will get yourself a free Instabug t-shirt along with a 14-day free trial. Once again, that is instabug, I-N-S-T-A-B-U-G dot com slash upgrade to sign up. Our thanks to Instabug for their support of this show and relay fm so it looks like that there's gonna be an event an apple event on march 25th uh this news kind of rolled out slowly over the last week it started with a report from john paksowski of buzzfeed um paksowski reported an upcoming event on March 25th

at the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park that would be focused on streaming, well, on services, I should say. Sorry, focused on services. And Paksowski spoke about pretty much primarily the new subscription service. This happened just a couple of days after the rumor that came out that Apple

wanted to take a 50% cut for publishers who want to work with them on this service. Jason, we've spoken about this news service. We've spoken about the hesitancy of news organizations wanting to work with Apple. Now we maybe know a little bit more about why that is, right? Well, the 50-50 cut, which is rumored to be what they're doing is they want 50-50, which seems to be maybe the deal that a lot of the magazines who are kind of desperate are taking. Because Apple has obviously sold them on the idea that this is going to be huge and there's going to be a lot of money. sold them on the idea that this is going to be huge and there's going to be a lot of money and we're just going to be it doesn't even matter that we're taking half of the money for your content because we're all going to be rolling in dough because everybody's going to pay money for this and um you know it's not ben ben thompson wrote a great piece about it on stratechery that basically if you're a premium uh subscription model company like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post, this deal doesn't make sense.

I don't think it makes sense at 30%. I don't think it makes sense at 15%, quite honestly. But it certainly doesn't make sense at 50% for them. a smaller publisher and you're really desperate for more incremental revenue, maybe it works. This report makes me think that it will be a work in progress when it launches and that Apple's going to have to make some recalibrations. And I don't have a really good vibe about this service. I remain open to the possibility that it will be good, but I'm skeptical because it seems like a bad deal for publishers, which means it's going to be a limited number of publishers. And maybe I get, I don't know,

I just get the feeling that this may suggest that Apple has an unrealistic opinion of what this is, that they think that they've solved it and that a lot of their partners don't agree and are not willing to sign on to this. And without a good selection of partners, it's hard to sell something like this. You could throw it in a bundle, which is, I suspect, now what they're going to do. Having gotten the, you know, adding this to the list, and we talked about this, I think, last time, that makes me feel like the bundle is really going to happen. And if you bundle it with music and video video maybe that's part of the calculation there although what what is the bundle you know it's 50 of whatever they assign the value of the news percentage of the bundle at that point i don't know and then also dependent on

people actually reading your content right because it seems like from the rumors that they're going to be paying out the money based on engagement in apple news so you can go in on this but you might not make anything it also means that um if you are somebody who gets paid by readers to make content your goal is to serve your readers if you're somebody who gets paid by the number of pages viewed guess what it's clickbait time. This is a model that unless they've come up with some very clever ways, which I doubt, to beat it, it means that there'll be clickbait within Apple News because you want to drive engagement with your story so you get a bigger percentage.

And I don't think that's good. You won't believe what happened next, Jason. You will not believe. You won't believe it in just checking Apple News You will not believe. You won't believe it. Just check in Apple News and you'll find out. So, you know, we'll see. But I think what's interesting is that Pekowski's story was followed up by German, right? Yes.

And German said, yeah, it's the Apple video launch and also news will be there, which it makes much more sense, right? Like I can't really imagine the tap dancing on stage. I felt like I was losing my mind a little bit because Pekzowski's source, he says in the article, his source said he had no details on whether the video service would be shown. Because his source is somebody in a magazine somewhere. Or it could be anything, right? We don't know. I mean, that's probably the case.

But anyway. Really? Somebody who's only been briefed about what they need to know. I mean, that's probably the case. But anyway. Really? Somebody who's only been briefed about what they need to do to participate in the news part of the event. Well, he did say that he's claiming no hardware, no AirPods and no iPads. That's true. That's true. Although that seems very, very separate and not surprising. That could be a secondary thing.

But he has a separate hardware source that said that. And so this led lots of people to believe that, oh, well, there's not going to be a video service launch. And, you know, I'm sure you agreed with me. Actually, you did from reading your article on Six Colors, kind of your link to Paxowski's point on this, like his report. It seemed madness to me that you would have an event like this and not show off the streaming service stuff because that's the crown jewel not this weirdo magazine service right like yeah exactly so uh mark german and anusha sukhoi uh sukhoi of bloomberg uh they had a report that apple has invited many of the stars that they are working with to this event as we have spoken about many

times in the past um because they will indeed be showing the first information of the video service. Apparently, this list includes J.J. Abrams, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Jennifer Garner. I saw on Variety as well that Variety is saying that they have heard this will include the first trailers

or clips, if there are any um will be shown um but this is still like a summer to fall thing yes that is really that was really interesting and i wonder uh obviously they're gonna have footage to show right like i can't i think it might even turn into something kind of like the upfronts where it's literally apple saying here's what our lineup is or it may be here here's some samples of the shows we're doing with the people who are involved with them um in it wouldn't shock me if they even release pilots right or release a handful of things to people on apple music as a teaser for the whole thing that's coming in the fall. That's a possibility. Certainly trailers. But the Variety note is interesting in that it contradicts other reports

that have said that they told them that the service is launching in April, which what does that mean? What Variety says is it's literally March, April, they're going to do a rollout, which may be this event, and then maybe they drop some sample episodes or something but Variety says the bulk of the content

at least is going to launch summer or fall of this year which is also a new thing from their sources Both the Variety and the Bloomberg reports mention multiple times again the idea that

Apple will be selling other channel subscriptions through their service like Amazon Prime does. So maybe that's what comes in, you know, before the content, right? That like, oh, we're doing more with the TV app and now you'll be able to buy this channel and this channel and this channel right within the TV app. Maybe that comes first, we don't know. But, you know, that could be something that Apple does if they don't have enough of their own content to put forward. The new service is slated to be shipping with iOS 12.2 in the summer. Maybe some of this TV stuff comes with that at the same time. Who knows?

This is going to be a real interesting draft. Yeah, you're right. The pics are going to be super weird, right? Like J.J. Abrams appears. Almost like an existential draft of what an imaginary weird Apple event we haven't seen before. Yeah, absolutely. I think J.J. Abrams is an enormous Apple fan. So I think I can really see him running up on stage and being like,

I just am so excited to be at an Apple event kind of thing. Would not surprise me at all. But yeah, that's an event like no other, Mike. And so that'll be interesting. Yeah, upgrade listeners. Let's see if we can do you the service that we train and help you out with sometimes. This is probably going to be a really boring Apple event, right? There's going to be a lot of celebrities come out.

Remember when Drake came out, right? Imagine that five times in a row. Cause that's what this one's going to be like, you know, a bunch of stars are going to come out or directors are going to come out and they're going to talk about their shows. Like you're not going to get anything exciting.

They're not going to sneak a one last thing, new iPad in there on you. They're not doing that. Right? Like here's someone from the wall street journal, probably not the're not doing that right like here's someone from the wall street journal probably not the wall street journal but like here's someone from vogue here's jj abrams and here's eddie q to talk about it all right like it's it's gonna be it's gonna be a bit of a slog this one i think so just bear that in mind wow wow you mentioned drake i can't believe you mentioned drake that's but that's that's the analog right that's the

closest analog they brought drake out to talk about i don't even know what he was talking about because like it wasn't they didn't have anything specific with them um and and so i think it's going to be it's going to be a very kind of regular press event typically the type of thing that we don't see from apple right but like you'll get a lot of companies do these types of things you mentioned the up fronts if you don't know what they are this is when um a bunch of uh media agencies and advertising agencies will come together in rooms and then the media agency say well here's our new shows they are a podcast up front there are tv up fronts here's our slate of content coming out this year with the provisio that you hopefully

want to buy it yeah the president of nbc goes out on stage and lists all the shows that are coming in the fall and say now you want to buy ads on all of these and it's going to be like that you know and once they're not apple apple kind of spinning it in a slightly different way and just saying like hey press here's our new shows and maybe you want to buy all of these. And as in, buy into all of these. And it's going to be, I reckon, a very, very, very different guest list to normal. A lot more entertainment journalists, right, would be your expectation. It's going to be an interesting one for us. I don't know if the Apple fan base at large is going to have a lot of warm words to say about this event i feel uh

people will be sitting down to expect one thing and they're probably gonna get another we'll see it's just a different thing right and and i i should say as the specter of drake hovers over us both uh this is what the event should be right like it's not an apple this is no criticism from me like this is 100 what it has to be. Bringing the celebrities is really important. I'm still surprised that they're doing it in Cupertino and not doing it in LA. I felt like they'd really want to glitz it up, but maybe they feel like the stamp

of the big fancy theater in Cupertino is a better way to do it. But I'm a little surprised that they didn't do this as a full-on Apple embraces Hollywood kind of thing. But maybe they were uncomfortable with this as like a you know full-on apple embraces hollywood kind of thing but maybe they were uncomfortable with that i don't know yeah well maybe maybe as you say they're trying to add a bit of importance to it only iphones have been introduced right like at the steve jobs theater that's what it's been used for so far as september iphone keynotes i don't think it's been used for anything else so like oh look how special come out to our beautiful spaceship

and we'll treat you real nice oh yeah that's true that's true they could they could treat them treat them really good i um i guess we will all have to choose whether we want to draft jj abrams comes out wearing a vintage apple jacket i think genuinely we have we're gonna have to think about going a little bit esoteric with this one uh because i think it's gonna think there's not going to be a ton of stuff and we also know a lot more than we typically would know. So this draft's going to be a really fun one to put together, I think.

That'll be wild. So it'll be towards the end of March, so we'll probably know here within the next two or three weeks, I reckon, if this thing is going down when the reports say it's suggested it is. All right, let's take a second break and thank our friends over at FreshBooks for their support of this show. Everyone loves to save time, but this is especially important when you're a

freelancer. And our friends at FreshBooks can save you hundreds of hours with their wonderful cloud accounting software that is perfect for freelancers, for self-employed people. If you ever send invoices, you should be checking out FreshBooks. They drastically simplify the time that it takes for you to get your paperwork done, not only when you're creating the invoices and getting them sent out because their system is so easy to use, but then also in the administration afterwards. So you will be able to very easily see when your client has received an invoice. You don't have to chase them down to make sure that it's in their inbox. You can very quickly and easily check how late an invoice is

or when it's going to be paid. The people that you're sending it to can pay you super easily because FreshBooks integrates a bunch of different great solutions in there, including their own payment system, which is super easy to use and set up. They have a projects feature. So if you want to share files and share messages with your clients or your employees or contractors that you're working with you can do that all in FreshBooks as well so you can have all of that stuff in the same place saves you going from here to here to

here to get everything done FreshBooks is absolutely amazing I use it every week to send out our invoices we use it for all of our expenses tracking at RelayFM like it is a very very important part of the way that we do business like they are a sponsor of this show but I personally recommend them to anybody that that wants this type of thing in their life that needs to be able to send invoices or track time track expenses like it is absolutely fantastic if you have yet to try it out they're offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of Upgrade with no credit card required. Just go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and enter upgrade in the how did you hear about us section, and you can get that 30-day free trial.

That is freshbooks.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. Friend of the show, Ming-Chi, Roger Kuo, as we call him. Roger, codename Roger. Codename Roger. Not his actual name not his actual name not his actual name this disc stems from if you're new listeners stems from a time when for some reason jason randomly called ming chi quo roger because i went to college with a guy that was a guy yeah guy named roger quo. I don't know. My brains are weird. What can I say? So Kuo dropped an absolute… Roger? Roger?

The word you're looking for is Roger? Roger. Okay, go ahead. Dropped an absolute bombshell of a report on everybody yesterday. And there's a lot of stuff here. It's kind of unclear at some points, as these things tend to be, because Kuo is an analyst, at some point, as these things tend to be, because Kuo is an analyst, how much he knows, how much he is expecting. But this list rings true to what I would expect to see over Apple over the next year. So let's go through some of this and we'll stop and talk about some parts

along the way. So some details about the current uh well the current upcoming i should say 2019 iphones uh sizes and kind of basic specs remaining as you expect they're not going to change any of the sizes of the phones they're going to keep lightning ports they're not going to go to usbc the chi charging will go bilateral which means the iphones can charge stuff as well as getting charged by Qi. So your AirPods, for example, if your AirPods got a wireless charging case, then you will be able to charge those with your iPhone, which I think will be a really, really wonderful feature.

But I bet we'll make the cost of replacing that back glass even more expensive than it currently is. Probably. And talking about that, the glass will be frosted on the new iphones so that would give it a slightly different look i'm intrigued to see what that ends up looking like if it maybe means some different color changes to make that that show through but that could that's a different look um an interesting look we'll see it the um the pixel line is glass and has this weird texture to it makes it look very different so it might be nicer to hold might be more grippy we'll see. The Pixel line is glass and has this weird texture to it. It makes it look very different.

So it might be nicer to hold. It might be more grippy. We'll see. Upgraded Face ID. A bunch of new internals in Face ID. Hopefully making it faster. Maybe making it work from further distances. We'll see.

Bigger batteries. That would be nice, wouldn't it, Jason? Just a bigger battery if you can fit them in there. Sure, always. That's part of the constant Apple quest of trade-offs is size and thickness but also battery and capacity

and trying to extend the life. So yeah, that would be nice. Always. And Quo also kind of echoes the rumor of triple cameras but does not say where we will see those. Like if it's going to be one phone or the phones. But that's kind of the information Quo has given us about iphones this all seems pretty logical to me i like the bilateral charging i think maybe the most out of all of that it's not a huge update cycle and

people will probably howl uh constantly between now and when they're released and after they're released about the fact that iphone sales are flat and this year's models are not going to necessarily be an enormous change. It's also not surprising and not new. This is sort of, you know, it takes Apple a long time to make changes in their plant iPhones and these iPhones were already on the way. So these are the kind of logical, not super exciting, but, but you know continuing to be available uh versions of what we got this year or last year you know it's the it's next year's half step kind of yeah uh this is a surprise to me upgraded processors with two new ipad pro models that is seems strange seems different right to take the current ipad pros put new processors in them. Apple hasn't done that for the iPad Pro line.

They've waited, right, until they've been able to make bigger changes to the models. That would be interesting. I'm keen to understand why that would be so needed and if that's all that there really would be for them. Yeah.

I guess it's them treating them more like laptops i guess i i wonder if there's more here in terms of things they're doing for uh new versions of ios or something like that where they want to put different hardware in there but it does seem a little bit i mean i'm not going to complain about a new ipad pro model in 2019 but i i really didn't think that they would bother doing a yearly cycle for them so um that was a surprise here's something that like i'm trying to work we've been trying to think through this so the uh smart hdr right that required the most recent chip and so both you know so the devices could do it so there might just be some software thing that requires these new chips and it might be an interesting part of the new iphones that gets

added to ios so maybe they decide to put it in the ipad pros as well i don't know but that's the only thing i can think of if that's what they're going to do right that there might be something that is going to be a cool feature and they would like it to be on the ipads as well but they need the new processors in them because you know these ipad pros are so powerful it's not like i don't think we're going to need a speed bump that seems unlikely but again we don't know what ios 13 is going to bring in general yeah right right and there may be something like that is not part of quo's sources that uh are like explanations why they're doing this but it may just be that they just decided why don't we keep cycling that processor

every year as we cycle it for the iphone and just keep them on the same page i don't know sticking on the ipad train uh 10.2 inch version of the base ipad so taking the current uh kind of regular ipad and taking it from 9.7 inches to 10.2. So making the bezel smaller plus a new iPad mini, which close states of just having a new processor. I expect to see the iPad mini with a, with a new processor.

He also mentions the, the iPod touch kind of getting the same treatment. This feels like potentially that the processes that are currently in these devices won't be supported anymore and yeah if they want to keep selling them yep they have to that's that's this is the thing that we talked about with the macbook air at some point too which is like at some point you can't keep making that thing like you can't you just can. It's too old and you can't move ahead with your product line and sell a product that doesn't work with your product line. So it is the, I'm fascinated by it because there's just the basic idea that we have to

make a decision about this product that we kind of don't care about. And the easy decision is to stop selling it. But there's somebody inside Apple who's like, wait, no, don't. You've got to keep selling it for some reason. And you're like, all right, okay, fine. We'll just put another processor in it and put it back out there. Which is a little bit like the Mac mini story, right? It's like you need to do something.

What are you going to do? And they're like, all right, we'll do it. And then we're going to let it sit there again for five more years. And the really big story, the wild story, is a 16-inch MacBook Pro. So I think the easiest thing to assume here is we're talking a 15-inch MacBook Pro with thinner bezels, right? To give it a bigger screen as opposed to a brand new form factor. Yeah. So what he says is it's a redesigned.

Yeah. He says redesigned. And I take that to believe that maybe this is the first in what will be a series of replacements for the existing MacBook Pro line. That this is the next generation of MacBook Pro and it's starting with this model. Now, maybe that's wishful thinking, but that's my hope. That's what it is.

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think the 15-inch is a real question, right? Which is, we know that Apple has had success in just pushing the bezels in, right? Like to, or I mean, I guess out. Out, yeah. But making them super thin. And that's a trend in the laptop world in general,

PC laptops as well. So when we say 16 or, I think he said 16 or 16 plus inch. Yeah, somewhere between, I think somewhere between 16 and 16 plus inch yeah somewhere between i think somewhere between 16 and 16.5 is the yeah i my gut feeling is that ultimately this is the replacement for the 15 inch macbook pro but what it is is um thinner bezels and maybe a wider maybe the the the laptop gets a little wider but you know they will make some claim about it being thinner

or lighter or better by volume or whatever it is, right? But I don't think what we used to think of as the step from the 13 to the 15 to the 17, which was an enormous distance in size. I don't think that's the kind of size difference you would get from this one. That's my gut feeling is that this isn't like the new lunch tray, 17 inch laptop, that what they're trying to do is create a 15 inch model, a mega 15 inch model with more screen space without it being

enormous. And that in the end, yeah, in the the end maybe the product line is the 16-inch macbook pro a 14-inch macbook pro instead of uh you know what we have now with the two 13-inch models and then you have the 13-inch air and the 12-inch macbook maybe that's maybe that's where they're headed i mean that would make a lot more sense right that would start to differentiate the whole lineup again. Yeah. Well, like the iPads, right? Yeah, just like the iPads.

Like the iPads, your pro models have bigger screens and some fancier tech, and they're up at the high end in those small bezels. Like it starts, whether it's the right story is an open question, but it starts to sound like an interesting parallel to what they've done with the iPad to differentiate them, which is they've got the technology now to really slim down those bezels and use that space for screen. And that means that they make a choice. Do I want to make the laptop smaller or do I want to make the screen bigger? And for a pro, given what they've talked about, about their pro users on the Mac, for a pro laptop, why would you on the mac for a pro laptop um why would you not on the big pro laptop why would you not give those people

more screen space like they they value more screen space so um it kind of follows i think it's i think it's really interesting um since this is something that nobody has talked about before to my knowledge this is a new one um and it opens because he says new design it really does open the question of like do we get face id uh for once because you got to fit all those sensors into that into that smaller bezel little hatch thing but they but the you know the ipad has it but the ipad is thicker than the screen part of a macbook but they could or could they could do it with a combination of different sensors and and uh and machine learning they could put that sensor they could shoot up from by the keyboard and shoot up into your face from there to look at you i mean i don't know there's stuff they

could do with optics and like sensors in different places there i want to be open to that but and then the big one of course is they could rethink the keyboard they they could. I think they probably would. I mean, I'm intrigued to see what a fully new design... So here's my thing. If you put this laptop next to a 15-inch current MacBook Pro, would you see... How much difference would you see? That's what I really wonder, because I feel like laptop design is a solved thing now.

They look how they look and and i would be super intrigued to see what a new design looks like like what could they do that that i'm not seeing or will it mean or does new design mean it has a bigger screen and we've re-engineered it in these certain ways to make x y and z better right like a fully new design could mean we had to go back to the beginning to make the keyboard work and keep it thin you know i it could it could my guess is that um and this is just a guess is that it'll look more like the ipad pro which it already kind of does yeah but more like that, less rounded corners. We'll try to make it thinner.

But more of those right angles and a little less of the curves. But that's just a guess that, again, I'm trying to place that iPad Pro parallel and think. I always feel like Apple is always striving to have their whole product line kind of work in harmony. And it doesn't because it's very, very, very hard to do that. And like the iPhone, for example, he doesn't say in this, the iPhones are going to look different and they're going to look more like the iPad Pro, which is something people have commented on. It's like those iPad Pros look great.

What if the iPhone looked like that? And, you know, Kuo says no. He says that's not going to happen. I almost called him Roger again. It's fine. Codename Roger. But I think they try, right? I think they try to have harmony between their products. They want, Apple really wants Apple products to feel of a kind, which is a challenge when you have two

completely different operating systems, which is why they're also pushing the operating systems closer together. So if they do a hardware redesign here, it might only be internal stuff like keyboards and all of that. But I think they might take the opportunity to take whatever this design language is that they use on the iPad Pro and also apply it to this, that you know, that normally I would say what what's their most recently released laptop? And what does that tell us about where they're going with with laptop design, but what it tells us is nothing because it's a retro design. It's literally just the MacBook Air design updated.

So it tells us nothing. So we're left just guessing until they release one of these things. And then with this one, we will read the tea leaves and say, oh, this is going to be what all the future laptops look like. But I think the chances are good here based on what Kuo is saying, that this is going to be that laptop where it's the model and all the rest of them will follow it for the next three years or whatever. Allow me to start the speculation train, Jason. Oh, okay. All right. I'll put some fire in the engine, some coal in the engine of the of the locomotive the the speculation train is now rolling down the track mike intel our arm oh boy yeah intel intel yeah i i think

arm transition is going to happen but boy i think putting it at the pro line seems like a mistake i'd be surprised but i just wanted to say it you know i just wanted to say it because it's it's a thing right like it is a thing that is it's floating out there we don't know what it's going to look like we don't know when it's going to happen but you know like we would expect this product will probably not replace the 15 inch for a while it will probably be too expensive and it will sit alongside it so you know okay never know okay so here here I'll throw something in I'm going to be the I'm going to do the most

wild speculation of all which is it's going to have an ARM processor in it because the T2 is in most of the new Macs now all the new Macs now what if it has an ARM processor

that's more like an iPhone or iPad processor in addition to Intel and you have the ability to target software to it. Yes. Because we're entering marzipan land. And also these are used by developers and they're iOS developers. So having it run on the actual hardware is kind of an interesting idea.

Maybe this is the machine that if you want to do this type of development, this is the one that you should be buying. And I'll just throw on top of that, at that point, if you're going to be, because again, wild speculation, wild speculation. Why would that new nice screen not be a touchscreen? Oh, damn. I'm an iOS developer. I am developing touch software.

I want to run it on my screen. Maybe I want to to touch interact with it as it's supposed to be interacted with jason what if that new design let's start a rumor let's start a rumor right now let's do it what if jason that new design includes a hinge that allows you to flip the screen all the way around to the back jason i don't okay you lost me you lost me now we now we really are in fantasyland it was just increasingly bizarre the train is so far off the rails now mike it's off the rails it's in the canyon disclaimer these are not our official predictions merely wild speculation no but i do i mean i think if i'm we we are only able to view what Apple is doing from the outside, mobile. And Apple has not done touch on laptops for reasons involving like macOS's suitability to it. But now we're bringing in all these apps from iOS.

I keep asking the question, like, I don't know whether that's a good idea or not, but I would imagine that if you're somebody inside Apple talking about the future of the MacBook Pro and your audience, a huge part of your audience is graphic designers and iOS developers that having touch for an Apple Pencil, for Marzipan apps, or just in Xcode for doing app testing and previewing on your laptop is i mean it's worth asking the question if and everybody freaks out when you talk about max people who

who have really believed everything apple has said about it's a bad experience zombie arms all those things the fact is you know it's not a primary interaction method it's not even on the laptops that have touch screens people don't spend all their time with the zombie arms up touching the screen. But as an extra thing, it has applications. And so I think it's, I just want to put it out there because I think I would be surprised if Apple never adds touch support to the displays on Macs. I would be surprised, but they might not. Anyway, I think it's worth going down that road of like what other iOS tech could they put into these things?

And Apple Pencil support is one of them. Touch support is one of them. ARM processors that can actually run software, like run apps, is one of them. And that would also create a transitional developer machine if the platform is going to ARM, right? You expect at some point some or all of these things are going to happen. This could be the beginning of some of it, right? That's the thinking.

31-inch 6K external display. I saw this and I was like, sure, why not? 6K. Actually, we've heard a lot from people and on other podcasts about how the 5K that we use in our iMacs and that Apple has talked up is not really a thing in the broader computer industry. Like 5K displays are not really what people are doing. They are pushing further out into like 8K displays and all that. So the idea of a 31-inch 6K display is, I could see that. Like why stop at 5 when you can have 6? Why stop at 27 when you can have 31 inches of display,

especially if the bezels are really small, as opposed to our iMacs, which have huge bezels? It's quite a jump from we don't make monitors anymore, isn't it? We don't make them anymore. Oh, by the way, here's a 31-inch 6K. Here's the best monitor of all time. Mini LED backlight design. i don't know what that means i'm gonna wait for john stuart cruiser to tell me in a bit more detail it's a different kind of led

backlighting that's supposed to be better that's that seems to be what it is so i don't know quote outstanding picture quality of course of course i'm sure we'll have all the colors it will literally run the gamut haha see what i did there anyway Anyway, yeah, all the colors. Here's what I think. I think June, WWDC, we get the laptop and the monitor, and then they say, here's what the Mac Pro looks like, and it will be out later this year. That's what I think we're going to get. I think that's about right.

That's going to be... One of us will get to draft that, but that's my gut feeling, is that they will mention the Mac Pro and do like they did with the iMac Pro. They will unveil it. And the Mac Pro, the trash can. They did it for both of them.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you can see it, and then it'll be available later. But the monitor could come out now. So one of the reasons I think that it's just based upon the information that Quo gave, like he references the Mac Pro but doesn't really say anything new about it, which makes me think that the MacBook Pro and the external display are closer to production

because everybody knows that Ming-Chi Kuo's sources come from the production line and the suppliers. So maybe these two products, which are new products, right? Nobody has spoken about either of these two things at all anywhere before now. So if Kuo's on the money, which a lot of the time he is,

it would make, I guess, make you think that these things are closer maybe than the Mac Pro is. So yeah, we'll see about that. Last couple of little parts, a new ceramic casing for the Apple Watch and ECG to roll out to more countries. AirPods 2 will have wireless charging case and upgraded bluetooth connectivity so i guess maybe the bluetooth stuff will be better in some way and

obviously it needs the wireless charging case if the phone can charge them um and believe it or not i don't but believe it or not air power to ship during the first half of 2019 believe it or not indeed i think it's gonna happen i think it sounds like you know it or not, indeed. I think it's going to happen. I think it sounds like, you know, it's not the AirPower that they announced, obviously. Like that's the truth of it is that this is almost certainly a completely different product that they've engineered because they had to go back to the drawing board. And I've heard there was a story about how it's going to be like way thicker than they showed and stuff like that. sounds like it's it's in the works and uh air power and the airpods too and i've heard you know i heard from somebody in in uh in uh i'll say a

position close to retail that uh that the airpods are are becoming kind of hard to come by in the in the product chain in the supply yeah i've seen people talking about that that like they're out stock a lot more frequently now yeah which makes i am skeptical that what this means is that they are they have ceased production of the old airpods and have begun making the new airpods and it may be that the the way this works is um it just stock is reduced so if you run out you can't get more from the factory so instead they kind of like take it out of wherever there is stock and they move it around. So it may not be imminent, but it feels like the AirPods are coming sooner rather than later because they're having all of these issues with keeping them in stock. That's not a run on AirPods. It is that they may be preparing to turn it over and sell AirPods number two instead.

So, Roger, Roger, thank you Ming-Chi Kuo for all of that information. There's a lot to go on there. I'm really intrigued to think more and hear more people talk about this MacBook Pro. I like Mac rumors.

Isn't that nice? iPhones, yeah, they'll be new. nice iphones yeah they'll be new ipads yeah they'll be they'll be upgrades uh oh now let me tell you about all the new macs and external devices and stuff like okay cool that's cool yeah i am still most interested though in learning more about the mac pro i think that that is the most likely product in my future. I would really like a Mac Pro that I could assume I could keep for 10 years and keep upgrading. I'm on my 2015 Retina iMac at the moment. No desire to change it.

This machine is brilliant. I don't feel the requirement to get an iMac Pro. I don't need it. But I like the idea of a Mac that I could just beef up and leave for a long time with the provision that I could then change graphics cards and change RAM more easily in the future. So I buy a 10-year Mac instead of a 3-year Mac, you know? So I've got my eye on that, but it might be more than I need.

Probably is more than I need, but we won't know until we see it. Yeah. Yeah, this year. This year. This year. Alright, today's episode is also brought to you by Luna Display. Our friends over at Luna Display are helping many of us and hopefully helping some of you

and can help some of you save money and improve your workflow. We're talking about these external displays, right? Everybody loves displays. Your iPad has a great display, a beautiful retina display. Wouldn't it be lovely if you could use it as an external display for your Mac? Well, you can. With Luna Display, you don't need

to spend a fortune on extra screens for your Mac because you have one right there that you can use. Luna Display will let you, by just plugging in a tiny dongle into the back of your Mac, connect over Wi-Fi or USB for more screen real estate by employing your iPad and giving it that job to do. You can have multiple screens without needing to spend the money on new screens. It's even better when you travel as well. If you travel with a laptop and an iPad because that's just your usual travel kit. That's my travel kit a lot of the time. I can use Luna Display to have a second display and more space when I'm working on my laptop which has a much smaller screen than my iMac. So it's

nice to have that extended screen real estate. Or you can do like what I do, you know, I have a Mac mini sitting here. And I use Luna display to connect to my Mac mini, my Mac mini runs about a display attached to it. And I can have Mac OS is like an app on my iPad, which is a wonderful experience for me that I enjoy greatly. And it allows me to to easily tackle some of the things that the iPad falls down on. So I really, really have absolutely loved my Luna display. It's totally changed a lot of my workflows, like genuinely. When I got it, I thought, oh, this will be a nice thing to have,

but it has ended up becoming an essential part of a lot of the work that I've been doing recently. So I'm a big, big, big, big fan of it. Don't just take my word for it. TechCrunch, for example, said that the visual fidelity is frankly stunning, which it is. They actually just made it better. They did some upgrades to their engine

recently, and they've made it even better than ever before. It runs so much smoother. Yeah, just trust me. Go get one of these things. Go to lunadisplay.com, L-U-N-A D-I-S-P-L-A-Y.com and enter the promo code UPGRADE at checkout and you'll get 10% off

a Luna display. So that is lunadisplay.com, promo code UPGRADE at checkout. It is handy, it's smart, and it will save you money on extra screens. One last time, lunadisplay.com, promo code UPGRADE for that 10% off. Our thanks to Luna Display for their support of this show and RelayFM.

The Luna Display does make me have uh moments where i think i understand why apple is hesitant you would need to make some changes to how mac os works for it to make sense as a touchscreen right like if you really want to interact with all parts of it well i use my apple pencil that's that's how i do it that's true good point like it's it's trickier with with the i, it works. The touch works, but the Apple Pencil makes it just like a cursor and it's perfect. So, like, that's how I've been using it.

Yeah. I like using it that way. Jason, should we do some hashtag AskUpgrade? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Is this a, this is a, we didn't, unfortunately, events continue to occur. So, we haven't had a chance to do our mega Ask Upgrade episode, but we can clear out a bunch today, I think.

We most certainly can. Our first question comes from Frank today. Frank says, In regards to the rumors of a 50% commission on Apple News subscription revenue, which we spoke about earlier in the show, what if the rumors were leaked strategically to manage expectations? Remember how relieved we all felt in 2010 when the first iPad started at $500

instead of the rumored $1,000? What do you think about that? I think it's somebody leaking that information strategically. I think this is negotiating in the press. My guess is that there's somebody who's so outraged by the 50% that Apple wants to charge somebody probably for a newspaper that they leaked it because they want Apple to look bad. And it's possible that it's Apple playing a game where they set a high number

and then they change, but I doubt it. I think it's more likely that it's apple playing a game where they you know set a high number and then they change but i i doubt it i think it's more likely that it's somebody who's kind of outraged and is hoping that apple will uh be this will put more pressure on apple from other publishers to not make a deal with them so that they back down and they change their uh their percent commission but it does definitely feel like like like, uh, I said, one of the last times we talked about rumors, uh, like six months ago, um, always ask yourself why it got leaked. Always ask yourself, why did this information come out? And for something like Ming-Chi Kuo, it's people in his production. He's got sources in the production line and he's reporting on the

supply chain and he's saying which companies are building what and the people there are motivated probably by just um possibly by money and if not that then they are they like that they're feeding uh this analyst that information but for something like this i think it's very clearly motivated by something that caused this to leak and my beyond just oh i know a i know a percentage number it feels more like it probably was tactical of, this is ridiculous, let's leak this to the press and Apple will get roasted. I agree with you. Yeah.

Like Apple, I feel probably do strategic leaking from time to time, but this wouldn't be one of the things that they would care to tell the public about. This is not general public information. Why would you leak to the public a 50% number general public information this is why would you leak to the public a 50 number and then go back to the people you've been negotiating with for the last six months and say okay we'll make it 30 now that it's leaked that doesn't make any sense

so yeah that's right the audience here isn't really the public because it's the people they're negotiating with so i think it's far more likely that this is the negotiations on the other side where they're saying, this is outrageous. I'm going to shame you in public. And then maybe you'll get the word from everybody that everybody thinks that this is ridiculous. I'm not saying it'll work, but that feels more what it is, is somebody who's frustrated that Apple is sticking to this number that is bananas. It's just, I can't believe it. I mean, I kind of believe it because it's Apple, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

And I wouldn't take that deal for, you know, if I was, again, maybe there's some businesses that it makes sense for, but I have a hard time conceiving of what those would be. So our next question comes from Eric. Eric says, with the other category being renamed to wearables home and accessories what is a new product in that area that you think could be profitable for apple like with their privacy stance eric would love to see home cameras or

security systems are there any areas that you think apple is likely to move into when it comes to home technology i would say right now no um apple seems to have decided they're just not gonna bother making smart home products um i think what i mean what do they make they make uh the home pod they make the home pod and they make bed it right the sleep sensor which they bought and they still sell and i have one one of these days i'm going to write about it um it but it's a weird thing and and and like why is that product there and i think it's to feed home kit data and because they they wanted it but my bigger my overarching question here is i'm a little bit mystified why apple has decided they're just not going to bother

competing and they're going to let google i mean you look at the euro acquisition by amazon like you're letting other tech giants build infrastructure in smart home tech and you just don't you just don't care like you got out of the wi-fi um they're in the with the home pod and that's about it it on one level it allows them to say we just want everybody to use home kit and then it'll all work and it'll be great but on another level i think you're letting your competitors buy out everything and you're not you're not gonna choose to compete and when amazon owns zero i do have that moment where I think, if I were at Apple, I would be like, wait, everything that happens on a network is going to be seen by our competitors, potentially. Why did we stop making airport?

Why did we not make our own mesh networking where we guarantee that your data is secure? that your data is secure. We live in an era where our competitors are, the people who are using Wi-Fi are often using it from either their cable company or they're using it from like Google or Amazon now. Why would we not want to do it? But they obviously made a decision. They can reverse themselves. They've done it in the past to just say, no, we're not going to bother unless it can be an enormous hit or as an accessory to one of our enormous hits. We're just going to walk away. hit or as an accessory to one of our enormous hits we're just going to walk away um it's weird it's weird um i don't i don't think i agree with that approach i feel like it would be more apple like for them to make these products but at the same time i'm really sensitive to the fact that um it really seems like apple can't even reliably update and develop the products that it has.

That the way that company works, their attention has to be focused on a very small number of things. And maybe somebody inside Apple said, you know what? We could build Wi-Fi routers or a smart thermostat or whatever, but it's going to be a super distraction for us and we don't need that kind of distraction. I just, for a company their size with the money they've got, I'm a little surprised that they just haven't built a smart home division and put everything inside of it and let,

let their speakers and thermostat and wifi and all sorts of other stuff like that go in there and let them compete. But, but it is possible that they've just decided philosophically they'd rather get everybody to use home kit and then you can use anybody's stuff with apple stuff the the wi-fi is the one that gets me though that because that like ero being bought really made me think hmm apple maybe you should have not punted on on wi-fi after all because it's a market right it's a market people want the products

right and and that and your competitors are are the among the leading manufacturers of that stuff it was reported over the weekend by cnbc um the apple hired a guy by the name sam jadala who used to work on microsoft then started a company called Otto, which ended up not working out. It was like a smart lock. And CNBC is reporting that Jadala is going to be revamping the smart home business, whatever that means. Could be Apple branded products,

could be different stuff for HomeKit, we don't know. But they did hire somebody who has experience making smart home hardware. Interesting, interesting. Well, I don't know the details of all of Apple's business and their culture on the inside, but I will say it feels like a missed opportunity

for Apple not to play in some of these smart home spaces and not to have maybe bought up some of these smart home companies that are now going to be guided by their competitors among giant tech companies aaron asks i have a mid-2011 my iMac and i'm considering a new Mac mini my understanding is that with the right adapters i can use target display mode to just display the mini to the iMac is this a viable long-term solution or should I buy a new monitor?

I mean, it depends on your feelings about Retina is what it comes down to to me, which is if you've got an iMac that supports target display, it's not a Retina iMac, which means you've got an iMac running in target display mode with a new Mac mini that's capable of Retina and the iMac can't display Retina. And so you're going to get a nice picture, but it's going to be a low resolution picture. I don't consider that a long-term solution, but maybe you don't care. I would buy a new monitor because at this point I, I don't want to use a Mac without a retina display, but, um, but if you want to save money and don't care about retina then it's viable i think i have not used an iMac in target display mode for any length of time at all so i can't say just how annoying it would

be over time to have to be putting it in target display mode and all of that um because it is a computer and you have to put it in target display mode but um so i would say in the end i i'm i'm skeptical of its ability to be a long-term solution it's a solution but because of the fiddly nature of it being an imac in target mode and not retina i wouldn't consider it personally a long-term solution steven asks do you think that apple's new subscription news service will be limited to existing apple news countries currently the usa uk australia and i think think Canada has either just launched or just about to. Or do you think it's going to roll out more broadly than that? Apple News is so slow to roll out that I think it's going to be limited.

I think it'll be limited. It may be even USA only at launch. I know they're going into Canada finally. They announced they're going into Canada, and the weight there was that they wanted to go into Canada multilingual so that they'd have French and English versions. You know, you go to Europe, you've got to make a deal with European publishers. You go to Asia, you've got to make a deal with Asian publishers. I think this is more likely to make it worse rather than better. Yeah, yeah.

So my gut feeling is that it's probably a u.s only rollout maybe u.s and uk but uh like they're they're still struggling to negotiate with the u.s and then when once they're done with that yeah then they'll have to go to the uk and negotiate there and when they're done with that they'll have to go to germany and negotiate there and like that's what they're gonna have to do and that's um that's a lot that's a lot i don't envy them because they have to make a deal with every single, you know, they have to approach every single publisher and talk to them one on one and have those arguments about 50%. Are you crazy? And like, every time I don't want to be that

person, I feel for that person who has to get yelled at about what Apple's terms are. So I think it's going to be a slow rollout. i think like i said earlier i think it's also going to be something where the product is not quite fully formed at launch and that they uh continue to tweak it they may get there with it but i think um i'm really skeptical that it is not going to be kind of broken when it launches and finally jeff asks do you think there is or could be a viable market for a second home pod device different size different focus kind of so my question is kind of in twofold to you jason one do you think there could be and two if there was in your mind what does that look like well i i've been meaning to

write this for a while and i'm far from the first person to have this idea but i think just as sonos has done this um i think apple should make a soundbar i think apple should make a siri enabled soundbar i'll go further and say i think apple should make a siri enabled soundbar that's also an apple tv and you plug it into your tv and it makes nice sound and gives you surround-ish sort of sound and will uh also plug into your tv and let you have stuff on your TV menu and do all the things that an Apple TV does. And it'll look good and it'll sound good. And it'll do Siri, whether the TV's on or not, and play music that sounds good. That's the one that I keep thinking of, is an opportunity for Apple

to get people. Why attach an Apple TV to your TV? Well, if, if it comes with, if it's a soundbar, that's also an Apple TV, then you're getting good sound on your HDTV. Plus you pick up all the Apple stuff. And I, I, I feel like there's a product there that maybe would be more, give people more reason to buy an Apple TV. And with the HomePod tech, it could also be functional all the time. You can talk to it. You don't need to even hold up the Siri remote and talk into it. You can just talk and the speaker will hear you and control your TV or play music or do whatever.

So that's kind of my pitch for the HomePod. I mean, I think the HomePod should be cheaper. Like, bottom line, I think the HomePod should be cheaper. Like, bottom line, I think the HomePod, I think the HomePod's not bad. I think the problem with the HomePod, and I feel like as I look at my iPod Hi-Fi that's right here, I think it's the same story, which is people say like, oh, well, the iPod Hi-Fi, that was a really bad product. It wasn't a bad product. It was a misguided product that was overpriced and kind of oversold for what it was.

But it's a perfectly fine speaker. The HomePod pod is good and two of them is kind of great but the price is just completely out of whack so with the rest of the market and uh and so you know borrowing a sound bar i would say i just think that the home pod should be cheaper like and that they should sell it um and they should really aggressively sell it in a bundle, make the bundle of two of them cheaper because everybody I know who's gotten two HomePods has said, oh yeah, it's so much better now. In a stereo pair on different sides of a room and it fills the room and it goes from being a curiosity to being the go-to music player in the house.

But that's $350 times two times two no it's too expensive so um my feeling is like the the the product's okay they could put a they could hang a screen on it or something but at that point it's basically like an ipad attached to a speaker i'm not sure there's um i'm not sure that's great so my my feeling is yeah price and uh and uh soundbar what about you i never thought of soundbar i think that's really cool i would like that a lot um my my thinking was the same that you were that like they should just make the current one maybe a bit more affordable before they worry about building a second one but But that soundbar idea of an integrated Apple TV is like a genuine product, right, that could exist without them needing to touch the current one.

Like, it's got enough new and cool about it. I like that, Jason. I would like that a lot. I find it frustrating that I always have to remember to change my audio outputs to the HomePod from my Apple TV because I have the two, and we have them kind of in a position that it's nice, right, to, they're, like, around the television, we actually have them on either side of our sofa, so, like, it's perfect for us for watching TV through the Apple TV, but it never seems to, like, lock to it, like, it's, I have to keep remembering to turn

it to change the audio output, and if it was a device like a soundbar, it's more in tune to actually doing what it's supposed to do. And that's where the sound's going to naturally come from if the Apple TV's built into it too. I would like that product a lot. SoundPod. No, it's a terrible name. HomePod TV.

There you go, we found it. Thanks so much to Instabug and FreshBooks and Lunar Display for their support of this week's episode. You can find Jason online at theincomparable.com and sixcolors.com. He's also at J Snell on Twitter and Instagram. I am at I Mike, I M Y K E. Uh, you can find this show at many other shows at really a lot of fam slash shows. There's tons of great content there for you, uh, to feast your ears on. That's not a phrase that exists.

Yeah, okay, cool. It's an ear feast. Ear feast. If you'd like to send in questions for the show, hashtag SnowTalk for something fun to open with. If you have any questions you'd like to hear us answer at the end of the show, hashtag AskUpgrade, where we can get into some good detail about those.

Thank you so much for listening to episode 233 of Upgrade and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, everybody. Goodbye, Mike Hurley. Goodbye, Jason Snow. John didn't do any research. Sorry, wrong show. Wrong one.

Every podcast should end with Jonathan Mann playing the banjo.