Upgrade - 239: Fighting Against the Laws of Physics

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

This week we say goodbye to AirPower, ponder the place of the new iPad Mini, speculate a bit about Apple Arcade, and take a hard look at Apple News+. Also, Jason literally sits in the iMac Pro Gap.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 239 today's show is brought to you by borrow hello and pingdom my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by somebody else it's not jason haha no april fools it is jason hi jason snell boy that was the zaniest april fools joke of all mike hurley hello no it is i tim cook hello michael hurley hashtag snow talk question this week comes from seth and seth wants to know jason do you know how many author pictures or photos you've written under and what prompts you to change your picture avatar when you do i haven't counted uh i had a couple in high school or no in college where literally the photo editor would take new photos of everybody every year in because they wanted them to be their perfect art and i still got a couple of those kicking around um and i got a

picture taken when i was an intern mac user to be mentioned in the column once by the editor-in-chief uh and then as editor-in-chief of mac world when i was writing my column there i had a column photo and i i don't remember i think at some point like they took my column photo and at some point they wanted to all that have all the column photos matched. So they took another column photo. And then at some point, I think the art director of photographer decided that they didn't like that one. So then I had to go to the photographer studio and take another column photo. I used that for a while in my non-professional post-professional, whatever it is, magazine life. Now that I just am on the internet. Sometimes I use pictures of me that I find acceptable. I used a picture that John Gruber took of me at WWDC for a

while. I used a picture that Sean Blanc took of me at WWDC for a while. And I'm currently on Twitter, I'm using an illustration. The U all this drew little pictures of all the speakers and it's their illustration of me although i was thinking just the other day that i'm oh i'm almost ready to replace that with a with with a real photo um yeah so and and same for um you know on six colors uh in the newsletter i have a picture of myself and that's changed and it really is just like what do i have that looks decent that's fairly recent? And I'm currently using one that I took at a conference, that somebody took of me at a conference. So, yeah.

Yeah, it's what prompts me to change them. I get tired of them, or I don't think they resemble me anymore. That's basically the reason. Yeah, I mostly change my avatars when something has changed about me so like i'm looking at getting new glasses soon so i'll be looking to replace my avatar at some point after that um so there you go if you would like to send in a question like seth did just send out a tweet with the hashtag snow talk it can be about anything to help us open the show and we start with some follow-up slash follow-out.

WWDC is coming and RelayFM is going to be doing their live show. We're going to be doing an episode of Connected on Wednesday, June the 5th. Tickets are still on sale, but there really aren't many left. It will be sold out pretty soon, so I would recommend people

go to the link in the show notes. It's the first link in the show notes it's got some flashing lights around it so you won't miss it they're emoji they're not real flashing lights um we're really excited we're going to be doing our show again at the hammer theater which is my favorite venue that we've done anything in because it's like a real theater it's a wonderful wonderful place um it is like a block away from the convention center uh it's it's near like the fairmont hotel and stuff if that if you know where that is in san jose so it's going to be on wednesday june the 5th um you won't want to miss the show we had a great time putting it on

last year uh and we're working hard on making a really fun and exciting show for you so that's wednesday june the 5th i'd like to make a couple announcements related to that. One is I would like to be the first to announce that I'll be at that event. So if you want to know where Jason Snell is, that's where he's going to be. If you want to see me, I'll probably be in the first row. I'll probably not be on stage, but you never know. And then also Dan Morin and I are possibly going to do

a live performance of the Six Colors Secret Podcast that week. If we do, it will be on a bench somewhere, but we're hoping to have a live studio audience this time. Just like a flash mob podcast audience. We'll see how that goes.

I also have another announcement that's not related to WWDC, which is next week's episode, episode 240. You, Mike, are missing big milestone episode 240. Is it a big milestone? Okay. It's not. It's not.

But you won't be here. I thought it might have been some kind of binary joke or something. No, I don't know. You're on assignment, right? On assignment next week? Yeah, I'm going to be at the Atlanta Pen Show. So that's a big thing with the Pen Addict. We do it every year. It's a pen assignment. And I'm going to be at the Atlanta Pen Show. So that's a big thing with the Pen Addict. We do it every year.

It's a pen assignment. And I'm going to be on a plane on my way home on Monday. So Jason's going to be doing one of his famed guest episodes. It's the rare upgrade where you didn't delay and sit an entire extra day

in a city in order to do upgrade. So that's happened many times where you've sat in a city on a Monday and flown on a Tuesday, but not this time. Not this time. So I will have a mystery guest.

I say that because I actually haven't asked anyone to be on that episode yet. So it is a mystery to me too, and to them. But we know it's going to be an all-star mystery guest. Maybe. We'll see. Yes. Whoever we get will be uh spectacular and fabulous um also i wanted to do a little bit of a follow-up from our episodes uh a year ago at this time which is that you'll be

excited to know mike they're going to roll the baseballs out from behind the gate oh good news friday because it's opening day and alas you won't be here next week. So we won't be able to repeat our confusion where I try to explain how baseball works to you. So, oh well. Maybe next time. Maybe next time. But that's, anyway, the gate is ready. It's blocked. And the baseballs have been placed behind it.

And they will open the gate to reveal the baseballs on Friday afternoon. Weather permitting. If it rains, the baseballs stay inside. They have toitting if it rains the baseballs they have to stay away they're afraid of they're afraid of the rain yeah where was that did we did that actually ever get published anywhere i think it did i don't know it was it was uh it was fun though i think did we post that on on like on twitter or put it in a in a b-side or something it was the the how does baseball work and it doesn't work the way Mike thinks it works, but,

but I have been to a baseball game with you and you, you, uh, you didn't catch a foul ball. A foul ball landed near you and you picked it up. Yep. That's the best way to do it. Cause then you don't drop it.

Yeah. Or you don't get hit by the ball. Yeah. That's also good. Yeah. Yeah. That's good for me, I think.

All right. But we do have some more pressing news. IMAX. We have some follow up on the IMAX All right, but we do have some more pressing news. iMacs, we have some follow-up on the iMac because Jason, I believe you have one. So remember when we were talking about the iMac Pro gap, which is this idea that I think a bunch of us have had, which is now that the new iMac has been announced.

And before that, last year when the iMacs and the iMac Pro were being compared, and there was this question of like, do you get a high-end iMac? Do you get a low-end Mac Pro? There's a big price difference between them. There's a gap in performance. Stephen Hackett obviously grappled with this

and he got the high-end iMac and then he was so turned off by how often the fan blew on it because it's, and presumably it's getting throttled too, right? The processors are heating up and they get really hot and the fan blows and tries to do as much as it can.

And then at some point the system has to just kind of like dial it back because it doesn't want to melt your processor. And so Steven ended up getting frustrated by the, I think primarily the fan noise and returned it and got an iMac Pro instead. So this is the gap. I am happy to report that I am literally sitting in the iMac Pro gap right now. I have the base model iMac Pro in front of me and the top of the line build to order i9 iMac behind me, a review unit sent by Apple, which I've been testing. So that's been fun. Fun way to spend

a weekend running benchmarks on an iMac. But very interesting. There's also some other people are testing this stuff and have come up with something. Stephen actually sent me a link to this video from Max Tech that's suggesting definitely that something is different about this iMac than the previous generation iMac. And it's unclear what it is. They haven't redesigned the cooling system, but it looks like some combination maybe of firmware in terms of like the fan control and the curve at which the fan kicks in. Maybe there's something about how the Intel processor is handling, you know, the heat that it is throwing off and how it switches when it does turbo

boost and goes really fast. But that video is interesting because the guy in the Max tech video found that we'll call him Max. Max found. I think we can assume that that person's name is Max. It's Max tech. Yeah. Right.

Well, tech tech could be like his middle name he could be like max text johnson but either way max found that uh that the fan uh took a while to ramp up it didn't it wasn't uh nearly as easy to get the fan to blow and uh that the uh processor got close to the turbo boost max speed although not quite there's still some thermal throttling going on and he was pretty impressed with it um in my test what i found something and i'm still kind of processing what i'm uh looking at here but it seems to me that a lot of the third party benchmarks that are used on these systems are not necessarily like optimized to how a Pro Mac works with the Xeon processors and the T2 and

all the things that are in the iMac Pro. Not too surprising because it's an outlier, right? Like only these Mac Pros and iMac Pros have Xeon processors. Only the iMac Pro has the T2. What makes me say this though is that I ran a bunch of tests where the top-of-the-line i9 iMac is as fast or faster than the base model iMac Pro. Now, that's a $4,200 configuration if you match the storage and RAM in the iMac Pro. So it's in the ballpark of the $5,000 iMac Pro. So it's in the ballpark of the $5,000 iMac Pro. But it's still surprising to me that it scored the same or better than the iMac Pro, even though it is, yes, it's a year newer computer. But what really kind of blew me away is that I did a bunch of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro tests as well.

And the iMac Pro is better in all of them by a bit. And what that suggests to me is that maybe like only dedicated Pro apps and maybe only from Apple are really trying to eke out the most performance from the Xeons and the way that the Pro Mac is built in a way that maybe everybody else is just not concerned because that's such a niche product. I don't know, but it was really striking that like, oh, these computers are about the same, or maybe the new iMac is a little faster. And then you run a final cut protest and you're like, oh, or maybe not. And it's fascinating. So it's interesting to watch. I will say that people who don't want to spend $5,000 on an iMac Pro can basically, I think you can go all the way up to

the speed of the iMac Pro, more or less. There are disadvantages in buying an iMac over an iMac Pro. The cooling system is better. There are a bunch of other things about it. It's got the ECC RAM. The storage is faster, I believe. It's got the T2, which the other iMac does not have. So it's a, you know, in terms of like Mac generations, it's basically still kind of old tech compared to the iMac Pro, which is what a modern Mac looks like. But it is interesting to look at this thing and see just how much power is in that ninth generation i9 processor model. You got to pay a lot for it, but it is pretty impressive. So anyway, that's my report from inside the iMac Pro gap.

Let me ask you, though. I don't know if this has answered the question, right, though, as like which one you should get. this has answered the question right though as like which one you should get like it is do you feel any clearer about which you would recommend to somebody than you did before my gut feeling right now is that uh it's actually it's sort of the same argument that i would make before for the imac pro which is you really need to be a pro who uses the pro apps to use the iMac pro because you can get, uh, you, you know, most of that performance and you can also scale it a little bit. And the iMac pro it's better to think of it as like, it starts at the $5,000 model and then it shoots way up from there.

So you really need to be somebody who is, who is trying to get just enormous amounts of performance. Uh, because if you just want a fast iMac, the regular iMac is as fast as you need it to be, essentially. So I'm trying to get more, you know, detail about exactly what's going on performance wise, it does seem like maybe the this new iMac isn't as noisy. But you know, it's it's fan characteristics aren't as aggressive, maybe as the old version was, I't know but um but the iMac pro i mean it is it apple's not kidding when it says this is a pro system uh use it with pro apps and it seems like uh that that uh final cut and logic are um are really better optimized for it than some other software which is interesting but you know that's apple's

bread and butter right is there you could argue that they're building these systems with that pro applications group that they've got now and the people who are like trying to understand professional workflows that those people um it's apps like final cut and logic and probably some other hand-picked apps that they deem pro are what these Pro Macs are being designed for. Yeah, or I guess the other part of it is knowing if the exact applications that you want to use are working better on the iMac Pro. Because you were saying, in some cases, depending on the application and depending on the process, the new i9 chips in the iMac, in the top of the line, can be better. But if you're using what seems to be, as you say,

the optimized software, that Apple is somehow optimizing the iMac Pro for, then it's better. But you maybe need to know that going in, right? If your applications of choice are really going to give you that much of a boost on the Pro line. And the bottom line is that most of the things that most people do are not aggressively multi-threaded multi-processor which means you know most of these high-end processors that's the speed boost you're getting

is you're getting lots of processor cores and uh you know and yes the high-end iMac is like that too but the truth is that for a lot of people, these faster configurations aren't really that much faster because they're trading single core speed to a certain extent for lots of multi-core performance. And if you use apps like I use, the denoiser in iZotope is multi-core, heavy multi-core. And that's why I bought the iMac Pro. I just was denoising four-hour-long Dungeons & Dragons files this weekend, lots of them, and they are enormous files. And, you know, it just filled up the cores and cranked through those files. And then there are other Pro plugins, even iZotope plugins, that are single are single core and they are slow and on systems that have a faster single core performance they would actually be faster on a different computer

so you know the truth is that for a lot of people this whole like we're optimizing to push as far into like multi-core power as possible isn't isn't right for you because you're probably not ever or very rarely in a situation like that. It is nice that they've added the Vega graphics as a built-to-order on the new iMac because that will get you more GPU, which could be good if you're doing graphics stuff, including games. So that's a possibility too. But no, it's interesting. They're different computers. And so the new iMac is in some ways more advanced because it's newer, but in some ways is still, like I said, like a step behind because it doesn't have a T2.

It's built for spinning drives. Even if you replace that with an SSD, that's what it was built for. It is 2012 or whatever conception of what an iMac is. Whereas the iMac Pro is really a late 2017 perception of what an iMac is, whereas the iMac Pro is really a 20, I guess, late 2017 perception of what an iMac is. I also just wanted to talk about one very quick thing for an upstream streaming media segment today, which is just to close out the loop of Disney and 21st Century Fox,

because the acquisition's complete now. We've been following this as it's been happening over the last few months or so. So as of a few days ago, Disney now owns the entire movie studio of 21st Century Fox. They took the 30% of Hulu that Fox had and now have 60% total of Hulu and the television group. But this is like the comedy and drama

type stuff so it's like the television production company because fox news sports and broadcast tv will remain with a kind of new fox corporation that's being established new fox for a while although now i think they're back to be calling like 20th century fox or something like that or fox entertainment or something like that it Fox Entertainment or something like that. And also, in the US, it's very confusing. The Fox network, the broadcast network,

is owned by them. But most of the shows on that network are produced by the Fox studio, which is owned by Disney. Which means you have this funny thing where all the networks want to be aligned where it's their shows from their studios that are on their network. And with deal closing it means that the fox networks shows

are all you know not all but mostly supplied by a company owned by disney now they're not the stuff they own themselves and over time that will probably lead to the fox broadcast network being really different where they're going to dump a lot of scripted stuff and go to reality and sports and other things that they produce themselves or with partners. So that'll be a big change for people who are watching network TV. You know, I don't know who those people are. There aren't that many of them anymore. But yeah, so it's a new world. It's a new day. Disney owns everything now. And as I always like to point out, just kind of like as a refresher, it's like, what did Disney get here? I mean, if you think

they got a lot of stuff, but some of the key things, they got The Simpsons now. They also have the rights back to X-Men and Deadpool. And Disney have actually confirmed that movies like Deadpool, which have a more adult bent, will continue to be made. But as Iger said and disney have actually confirmed that movies like deadpool whichever more adult bent will

continue to be made but as as i said in an interview but we'll be separated yeah that's gonna be interesting with with the marvel intellectual property that will be that will be interesting how they do that because it's a marvel movie are they going to put more adult like would they do a deadpool movie and have it be tied into the Marvel universe? Are they separating it by marketing? There's a lot of questions there too. But yeah, it's an enormous amount. I had a moment the other day where I realized that my favorite TV show of all time, Buffy

the Vampire Slayer, that was a Fox produced show. And so Disney owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer now too. There are so many, like, it's huge amounts of intellectual property that they own now. Now everyone can ramp up the speculation that Firefly will finally come back because they also own the rights to that. So whatever you want, Disney can maybe

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Our thanks to Borrow for their support of this show and RelayFM. So, AirPower. AirPower is gone, Jason. Within the blink of an eye, we never got to meet AirPower, and AirPower has been canceled by Apple. Yeah, AirPower, and I guess hashtag Mike was right. I mean, after all of this time waiting for a product that was shown in September 2017, and then nothing, just

rumors, Apple did your classic move, which is the Friday afternoon news dump. On a Friday afternoon, they announced via statements to Matt Panzarino at TechCrunch and some other places like, yeah, we're going to not make that product.

And then they ran away. As if nothing had ever happened. Look over there, they said. And then as the person turned, they ran the other direction. The end. Yeah, that's basically what happened. So Dan Riccio, who is the SVP of hardware engineering, his name was put to this. of hardware engineering was put his name was put to this

he was the name at the end of all of the PR statements that were handed out to publications like TechCrunch the statement was this after much effort we've concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologise to those customers who were looking forward to this

launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward. And as you mentioned it was first shown off in september 2017 and it's had this weird life of showing up in random places over that period of time so it's been hidden in images on the website it keeps showing up in packaging materials but now it's gone are you surprised that apple cancelled air power i okay so this is this is unprecedented in some ways but i mean there was i hate to say where there's smoke there's fire hey oh there it is how far did we get into this conversation i i heard about it uh it has been going around

like the rumors have been that they had severe problems with the thing they thought they were going to ship and not like it doesn't work but like again i i've said this on this podcast before like rumor you know through the grapevine of like it's overheated it's on fire like lots of stuff that was like product safety stuff. And I think Apple, I think it's interesting. I think Apple's not going to ship something that goes, could be burst into flames some percentage of the time anyway. We've already talked about the scale many times about, you know, even a 0.1% problem is magnified by the volume of anything that Apple ships.

But for this, like after what happened with Samsung and the Galaxy Note, right? Like, boy, you really don't want to be put in a position where you release a product that bursts into flames or that, you know, overheats and does, you know, basically bad things. And so I'm not surprised because we heard about it. It is, however, surprising that Apple announced a product that wasn't ready, that they announced it. I get when Apple announces a product well in advance because it's a brand new product. And so the Apple Watch was like that, the iPod was like that, the iPhone was like that. iphone was like that i get that that sometimes you announce a product um and there's some degree of nervousness there like that iphone

that i got to try the day it was announced six months before it shipped and it like was missing apps and barely you know barely worked but some of it worked like they had some confidence that they were going to be able to get it done, but you're taking a risk. You're talking about the original iPhone there, right? The original iPhone. Yeah, the first iPhone. But with something like AirPower, it's like, why? Why?

I guess what happened is they had, they had, as it turns out, misplaced confidence that they could ship this product. Somebody told somebody told somebody that it was good and it was going to be fine. And they really wanted to take, you know, have an Apple spin on Qi charging because the big feature that they were unveiling in September of 2017 and the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 10 was wireless charging. And so rather than just saying we've got third parties, they wanted to have like an Apple charger. And in fact, makes me wonder if maybe originally it was

supposed to be like the Apple charger was going to be right there and they weren't going to even talk about the Qi chargers. But that changed perhaps even before they got on stage where it was like, oh, it's compatible with all these things and our thing is coming and that like maybe just because they wanted to have this big picture you know of wireless charging it made them lean into a product that that um somewhere along the line maybe uh had been questioned i don't know i don't know whether they made that decision thinking oh it's fine it's coming out whether they're like well yeah it's not as far along as we'd like, but we're still going to announce it because it's a good story to tell. And that's the part that surprises me, honestly, is like, I'm surprised that Apple seemed that this thing got through to the point where it

was on stage, given that it wasn't, that it didn't work, like it wasn't done. And is that because there was this misplaced confidence that it works? I hate to bring out the term, but let's just put it out there, which is, I think there's a degree of arrogance in this, right? Which is when you look at that statement on stage, it's like, Apple has rethought how to do wireless charging. And we're going to share our largesse with the Qi charging standards body as well because we've really figured this whole thing out and isn't that egg on your face to stand on that stage and be like oh the big boys are here now we're going to help everybody get better at this and then they couldn't release their product and they hadn't figured it out and the people who were observing

them who had worked on this uh elsewhere were like i don't think this makes sense i don't know how they could do this and you know what to me that's the, this is a product that is irrelevant, right? It's kind of irrelevant. It's an accessory product. And I think it's only been magnified because it's been this legendary missing product in a small community who focuses on this stuff. This would have probably been a close to $200 charging pad. Yeah.

It's a footnote product it would have it would have been a nice uh spiff on top of an iphone sale it for the holidays of 2017 i think that was the whole idea right as you come into the apple store and they upsell you to an air power and isn't that great and it just you know but but it's gotten magnified because they said nothing it's a little bit like you you know, the Mac Pro was, I honestly think way more people cared about the Mac Pro when there was this question about what was going on with it than would actually care. The Mac Mini too. And the Mac Mini too, right? So there's this thing about Apple and mystery and why aren't they saying anything?

And that's the nature of Apple. But, you know, so anyway, I think in that way, it's really is a tempest in a teapot. It's just not that big of a deal of a product. For me, the big deal is how is this allowed to happen? Because something went horribly wrong. Something went wrong in Apple's estimation of what kind of products it can make. And that's the thing that presumably in the last year and a half, managers at Apple have had to grapple with, which is like, you know, I would be shocked if there is not an Apple University course seminar,

if not now, then soon, about what went wrong with air power. And not to throw people under the bus, but like, this was a failure of Apple's internal culture. Somewhere, somehow, somebody was very confident that they had completely figured this thing out, and they were wrong. Well, Jason, it could have been fear not confidence right that like somebody was tasked with this project i've worked in a big company and this person was like well i know i've

been told i need to do this and we're apple we can do anything i say it's all under control because my job's on the line i can't say no yeah but but that's a But that is a failure of the internal culture, right? This is like when Stephen and I talk about space stuff on Liftoff, on the podcast we do on RelayFM. It's a great show about space. If you're interested in space tech, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand what they talk about on Liftoff. You remember the tagline. That's great. NASA, you know, NASA culture after both of the space shuttle disasters, you know, they're looking at this culture of, we want to get, we want to fly, but you have to counter that with, uh, the

ability of people involved in working on it to say, um, something's wrong. We have to stop. And you have to be able to let those people feel free to raise their hand and basically say, I know everybody, hundreds of, you know, hundreds of people, thousands of people are working to this thing that the whole nation wants to see where we go and we fly the space shuttle right now. Somebody has to raise their hand and say, so this is wrong. We can't do this. And you can trace both of the space shuttle accidents back to the culture kind of getting rolling and into this point where they kind of like don't they they just want to go and they and and that's when you make mistakes yes and in that case it's human lives that are at risk but that is the kind of thing i think that you have to look

at at apple which is for a product like this which is there there needs to be employees need to be able to raise their hand and say no this isn't going to work and be listened to and if you get that uh in space terms i think they call it go fever where like everybody just wants to uh rush to the the end and you're just the person who's complaining and you're getting in the way that's when bad things can happen. And so, again, without knowing the details of this and just looking at it, it could be any number of specific things. But in the end, it didn't work. It was either tested and didn't work or they thought it would work, but they hadn't tested

it yet. But you can go through the list. A failure happened where a product was announced and marketed that couldn't ship and never did. And if I'm Apple, and again, I think Apple customers, it is irrelevant. It's a product that didn't ship. They could never buy it. It's irrelevant. If I'm inside Apple, though, if I'm doing a course at Apple University, you got to do failure analysis on this. You've got to say what went wrong because that's how you change and grow. So I would actually be shocked if they hadn't already done this. I know it's sensitive and all that, but like, this is such a great Apple,

not to quote John Syracuse here, but when John Syracuse was talking about Pixar, you know, one of the things that he talked about a lot is one of the ways you learn is to deal with failure. And Pixar had such a long string of successes that his concern was that they weren't, they were setting themselves up for a fall because they had never really, their culture had never really had to figure out how to deal with failure. And, and I've seen the good dinosaur anyway. All cars too.

That well, yeah. Yeah. The good dinosaur is really a failure. That is, but just my opinion is that that feels very much like a movie that was completely broken and they tried their best to get it out to be okay. And it was okay. But, you know, anyway, the point here is Apple has had such a run of success.

They are rightly confident in their ability to make products that are great, right? And, you know, you lose the muscles maybe to say, oh, we can't do this. And you need to have that. You need to be able to deal with failure. So I think it's a fascinating story in terms as a more functional, hopefully, more functional company in terms of knowing what they're capable of, of being disciplined with what they bring to the public. And maybe this is a lesson where some people are going to be able to win some arguments that they lost before about this isn't ready. Don't announce it. And I think that's good because

they should not announce, pre-announce good because they should not announce pre-announce there was no reason to pre-announce air power right there was really no reason other than it let them tell a little bit broader story about the iphone 8 and 10 wireless charging there was no point because they decided to support the standards if if this was the only wireless charging option but it was going to come out later then fine but the fact that like the iphone came out with the ability to use any charging pad and they worked with some companies to get some you know in their stores or whatever my review unit came with a third-party chi charger right it was not a big deal i don't know why exactly but like for a long time i have been in the unpopular camp of thinking this product

was never going to come to market um and and i think really for me it stems from a i have like a unwarranted concern about wireless charging like just the technology makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable i don't know why it is exactly um but like the heat thing has always been a concern for me and it's and it only got worse when i heard about the fact that like that this product was specifically difficult so when i looked into it like and kind of thought about what it would take to make just from a technical perspective this product would have been incredibly difficult because you had to put multiple multiple coils in there. So anybody that's used a wireless charging pad will know

that you can put your phone down on the pad, but it not be lined up properly, right? And then you kind of have to move it. But what Apple was trying to make of AirPower is you could put it anywhere on this mat. So they had to have tons of overlapping wireless coils and most likely a separate set of coils for the apple watch because the apple watch doesn't support chi charging and it was also considered i don't know if this is the case people have like suggested that airpods were never

supposed to be chi charging it was supposed to be proprietary. So then you had to have Qi plus Apple's proprietary and all of that overlapping. The sheer technical power, the wiring that would have needed to go. Honestly, I thought it would come out of a fan in it if it was going to have anything. That's a joke.

But I've kind of been... When it did not make Holiday 2017, I've been pretty convinced that it was never going to happen. And it seems like that's the case. Last week, so prior to this, a couple of days prior to this, new AirPods were released. And they can be charged with Qi charging. And you can either get them, basically the second generation AirPods with the wireless charging or without. Or you can buy get them the airport basically the second generation airpods with the wireless charging or without or you can buy the wireless charging case i've seen a lot of people making

this point and i vehemently disagree with it but want to get your point saying that it is bad or deceitful that apple put the airpods up for sale before they cancelled air power and i think that that is kind of that seems ridiculous to me and i want to know what you think that that is kind of that seems ridiculous to me um and i want to know what you think about that i i i don't know i mean the so i think for most people it's not uh it's not a big deal i think for most people it's not a big deal because what i said about air power is really true, which is it's nothing. It's nothing. It's just it was a thing set on stage and then forgotten, essentially.

I bought, I mean, I bought my new AirPods with the Qi charging thing because it had Qi charging, right? Like for me, it was definitely not a, oh, well, I'll buy these now and then I'll get an air power. Um, you know, well, let's say that it happened so quickly that if you are, uh, if you're upset about this, you should just return them, right. Which you can do. You're still within your rights to do that. So I don't think it's a huge deal. I can see how some people might feel frustrated about the sequence and the fact that they maybe did speculate that they were going to get an air power. But the fact is, if they've got a recent phone and they've got a set of headphones with

a recharger that's a Qi charger, they were going to need to buy something anyway, probably, if they wanted to do wireless charging. My Twitter timeline has been flooded over the last week with people who are who are holding out for air power who are now just shopping for all the other uh you know the other chargers that are out there so um you know i i don't know it's it's uh like i said i think are there some people who maybe bought it completely speculating that they were all in on air power and are now sad? Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. I don't think that was Apple's intent. And if you really are that bent out of shape about it, I'll go out and walk the dog or exercise or whatever. And then I'll come back and my wife is gone to work. So her wireless charger is open and I just pop the little AirPods on there and that's great. Yeah, it just seems strange to me that now the air power doesn't exist.

Now you don't want chi charging on your airpods like there are other wireless charges like if that wireless charging on the airpods only worked with air power and they released it beforehand then yeah i'm totally on board with your upset but they there are chi charging pads everywhere like there is a product that you can buy there are loads of options just get one and then you'll be fine i don't think that it just seems strange to me that like people i've just seen some people like super upset about it and it seems like a really weird a really weird thing to me and also just in general like this is an interesting thing as you know it right like this is an interesting thing but air power is not an

important product like the actual product itself is unimportant the story is more important yeah the relevance to this is what does it say about how apple is working today and if they have you know problems and this is a very rare public display of product design failure at apple that's interesting yes as a product it is essentially irrelevant so yeah because as well like think about wrap your brain around this one it was a bad product it never worked so it was a bad product it never worked and it would have been probably way too expensive and most people would have opted for a perfectly nice uh cheat chart this is why they've canceled it because the only option that they had was an expensive product that didn't work properly because like for them to be able to put it out they clearly couldn't do what

they wanted right because they've not even delayed it they've like straight up cancelled it like this product will probably never exist because they are fighting against the laws of physics with this one i think that was what eventually ended up stopping them is that they just couldn't get it to work because the technology that they are having to take advantage of i just don't think is built to do what they wanted to do with it so uh but yeah so that's it air power has flown away we will never see it again yeah i really like the mofi wireless charging base i have one of those i think it's really nice it's 40 bucks if you are looking for a chi charger i like that one a lot it's a low profile it's called them oh it's actually called the mofi wireless charging base

like that is the name of the product okay yep that Yep. That's it. Yeah. I've seen a lot of people talking about this one called Nomad because it is a wireless charger that does have multiple coils in it. I don't have one, but I've used one, and they are very nice. You can have two devices side by side, or you can lay the phone on it because it has multiple coils in it. When you put the phone down, you're more likely to hit a coil easily um but they are super backordered because it is a good looking product and it does they have one that also has an apple watch charger in it so it can do everything you need um and also uh if you are still looking for these things our friends over at studio neat they make a range of products called the material dock which and some of them have wireless charging in them as well.

So there are options. They're just not made by Apple. But because this is a standardized technology, as long as you're buying from a company that you trust, you're going to get something good, right? Because it all works. Yeah, and Apple sells a bunch of them on their site too. There's a Logitech stand there's a

a belkin pad they have a special edition belkin pad that looks nice the regular belkin pad i have one of those too it's not as nice as the mofi um and then also yes there's depending on which one you get some of them uh can charge the iphone faster than others can although i think the ones that are on apple's site are all like-approved work at the right charging rate. So there's a bunch of options available to you. None of them are made by Apple, and I don't expect them to make... I don't think... For the foreseeable future, Apple will not make a product like this.

Because even if they could do it, I don't think they would want to do it now. That's kind of my view on these things. That's probably it. That's probably it. All right, today's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom we love Pingdom and everybody should love Pingdom because Pingdom do what

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We're going to have some more thoughts on the last week's news in a little bit. But I wanted to make sure that we spent some time talking about the iPad Mini because you have one for review. spent some time talking about the iPad mini because you have one for review. And it seems like from your review, from reviews that I've seen from other outlets, like everyone seems pretty happy with this device, maybe more than we necessarily would have expected when assuming that there is going to one day be another one, right? Like, I don't know if necessarily everybody thought that, oh, there will be an iPad mini and when it arrives, we're all going to like it. that, oh, there will be an iPad mini. And when it arrives, we're all going to like it. Well, I think a lot of us who are not regular iPad mini users moved on, right? Because the new iPads for a long time were not the iPad mini. And I used to use an iPad mini, but I switched

to, you know, did I go to the iPad Air and then to the iPad Pro or maybe straight to the iPad Pro? But it was a, you know, I've been on the iPad Pro for a long time. And the mini, you know, you just, you forget if you're not using it, you forget all the good things about it are its size. And the bad thing about it was that it hadn't been updated and it wasn't modern. And the great thing about the new iPad mini is that it keeps all the things that were good about it. It is literally the same size as the iPad mini four and it's modern. It's got modern processor. It uses the Apple pencil. It it's got, you know, all of this kind of modern iPad stuff in it. It's not an iPad pro, but it is a, a solid modern device. And what that means is that if you like the mini size, then, uh, there are no, you know, essentially no compromises, almost no compromises here.

It is a very good iPad mini, which we haven't had in a long time because it's been a long time since it got an update. And it is striking to carry it around. It is so light. It is so small. I wrote my review of the iPad mini or at least half of it on the iPad mini with a, like a Bluetooth keyboard with a magic keyboard. And that was perfectly fine.

I mean, multitasking is a little weird on such a small screen. I think it's better for people as it has always been for people with very good eyesight because it's taking the 9.7 inch screen and then squishing it down. It's all the pixels of the larger iPad. It's still that way. So it's a very high resolution screen because

all those pixels are just smaller. So everything's smaller, which means that if you want to use it as a reading device or something like that, you might want to crank up the default text size in order to get it back to kind of a reasonable size. But I will tell you, especially if you're somebody who loves the iPad and has a big iPad, I think we had that conversation about the multi-iPad lifestyle again, because I've definitely heard from people. And I had this thought myself, which is, this is a great reading device. Now I like having a Kindle. But I also read a lot on my iPad, because I read newspaper apps and Apple News and all sorts of other stuff on my iPad. And this is a, you know, so nice and small and light iPad compared to my enormous

iPad Pro. And, you know, I can see its appeal as a reader. So one of the things that's interesting to me, I think, about this iPad mini is that from a software perspective, at least right now, it can do anything that any iPad can do, right? Like it can do multitasking. It can have three apps, which the previous one couldn't do. So you have two in the multitasking and one in slide over. What is it like to have an iPad that is that competent at this size? Do you even think of it in the same way when you're using it,

like the larger iPads? Or does your kind of mindset shift when you're using something smaller? I have to say, the way I viewed it was sort of like, well, I can do this and that's great, but this is sort of ridiculous and nobody should do this. There's some aspect of that, which is on such a small screen and even on the 9.7, there's some truth in this. Like the bigger your screen is, the better iPad multitasking is. Yeah, it's some truth in this like the bigger your screen is the big better ipad multitasking is yeah it's more comfortable in in those sizes yeah so it's it's cramped but it's usable which is nice because if you've got that muscle memory of like i just want to drag this app out so i can

see these things side by side which i do all the time um you know put put fantastical on one side and doodle on the other so that I can see what my calendar is when I'm saying when I'm available. I do that stuff all the time. Or you slide over to do it. So having that there, it's good because if you have used other iPads, you don't get frustrated and say, oh, this thing doesn't do that. It does everything. It is a little ridiculous, but, you know, that's okay. And again, you know know some of the people who use ipads who love ipads the most are um have great eyes and small hands and they're kids and for them you know they can they can multitask and they can draw on it with an apple pencil or that logitech crayon or whatever

they want and like it's it's great it's great. It's great for kids. It's great as a reader. Um, and, and honestly, if you are somebody who likes that size, I mean, that's the beauty of it is you don't have to make a compromise, you know? I mean, yeah, you can't use like the Apple pencil too, or whatever, but it's like, you don't have to go back in time several years in order to use that size if you like that size. And that great i think that these are kind of pretty similar um reports like i've seen reviews of the new ipad air and people seem to really like it and i think in an interesting way and i totally get it it doesn't get the same criticism from uh people that the pro gets about what it's capable of because it is not intended to necessarily be at least a name like this is your right computer replacement tablet it's like no this is just your like tablet tablet so like it

can do all of that stuff it doesn't look like an ipad it doesn't have usbc it doesn't it doesn't raise the question as much because these are pretty powerful devices but it doesn't raise the question as much as the ipad pro about like the gap between functionality and power uh and functionality price and power where it's like oh this is priced like a laptop and has the power of a laptop but doesn't do all the things that a laptop does the ipad mini and the ipad air uh yeah i mean it's still they're still pretty powerful you could still ask that question but it's less about that and you mentioned like multi-pad lifestyle the idea of having multiple ipads um and and i think that this definitely does fit that idea maybe even more so than a lot of people would thought would have thought before this is like a little notepad this This is like a little book, right, that you could have.

I mean, yeah, it's not a cheap device, but there is maybe with something like this, especially if you're rocking the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, if you're looking for something smaller, this definitely fits that maybe more than any of the other devices have for the last few years, right? Yeah. Oh, something else that I wanted to mention.

I think it's got lost. I missed this in the initial kind of news that came out, that the Logitech Crayon, which is the only kind of third-party device that has some of Apple's blessed technology in it to work like the Apple Pencil in some ways, is actually now supported on every single iPad, right? Yeah, that is every single modern iPad.

So I tried it on the 10.5-inch iPad Pro. Didn't work. But on the current iPad Pros with the iOS update that came out, and then on the 6th generation iPad and the new ipad mini and the new ipad air um the pencil works across all of them or the crayon works across all of them yeah which means it is uh it it it works across all of them in a way that the apple pencil doesn't because you have the apple pencil 2 on some of them and the apple pencil 1 on some of them um the crayon isn't for everybody i have have one and I like it. It doesn't do

pressure sensitivity. So if you're using it for drawing, you're not going to like it. It is a carpenter's pencil style. So it's got a flat wide side and then a thin side. So it holds in your hand differently. Although I kind of like it. I like how you've got a little more grip area as somebody who is not a great pen and pencil user. I like the kind of grip of it. It has a physical power on off button. So it's very different kind of look and feel. It's anodized aluminum

with kind of like neon silicone gaskets on it. It's got a plug into which you plug a lightning cable. So the opposite of the Apple Pencil One. It is a super different product. It is a very different product. Oh, but here's the other thing. So you should consider it if you've got like an iPad Pro and an iPad Mini or something like that.

You want to use the same implement across both of them. You can do that. And that's actually one of the most interesting things about the product and has been since it launched. But it was more of a school feature before. It doesn't do Bluetooth pairing. It's entirely proximity based. So if you want to take an iPad or an Apple Pencil from one iPad and use it on another iPad, you have to repair it with a new iPad.

And that's true for Pencil 1 or Pencil 2. pair it with the new iPad. And that's true for pencil one or pencil two. The crayon, when you touch the crayon to the surface of a compatible iPad, it draws. And then you move it to another iPad that's also compatible, it draws. Like it just goes, it hops from iPad to iPad, which is, you can see why that might be good in a classroom setting because you don't have to worry about pairing and unpairing these things all the time. But I think if you've got multiple iPads around your house and maybe it's a shared crayon that anybody in the house can use if they want to draw something or write something, you know, so it's an interesting product and it's cheaper than the Apple Pencil. But again, not as fully functional in terms of pressure sensitivity and stuff like that.

But for some uses, in some use cases, it's actually, I think, a pretty great product. Something I find interesting, though, the reason it doesn't work on older iPads is because it needs

some kind of technology within the iPad, right? To find, to enable it to connect. I think there's a radio frequency that is built into whatever chip they're using from the sixth generation iPad forward that was not there previously.

But it's fascinating to me that that chip's been in the iPad Pros for this time and nothing's happened with it. So the capability's been there, but they haven't turned it on. And they just didn't turn it on. Yeah. And I see something and I'm like,

huh. Again, I have no real thought about that other than it's interesting, but that is very interesting to me. This has been possible, but for whatever reason, they just waited. I don't know what the reason was, but it's super interesting. And as Zach has mentioned in the chatroom, which I agree, the listing on Apple's website, it only references the sixth generation iPad itself.

It doesn't really talk about compatibility-wise the other iPads. It mentions... See, this is super weird. The product itself is called Logitech Crayon for iPad 6th Generation. In the tech specs on the listing on Apple's website, it talks about iPad Air, Mini, and the iPad,

the 6th gen iPad. It doesn't even mention the iPad Pros, even though it supports it. Super weird, but again, really interesting. I think that is maybe the overall theme of today's episode is there's some weird stuff going on and we don't really know what it means but it's interesting that it's happening yeah speaking of which let's talk about last week's event a little bit um okay i wanted to just provide one piece of follow-up um because we were talking about apple arcade a lot and like is this going to

be a closed off thing uh there is a contact form on apple's developer site where you can submit your game or idea for your game for consideration to be included in apple arcade from my perspective this just tells me that it is a closed off system um that you have to be invited to. You can kind of put your hand up to Apple and say like, hey, look at me over here. But I don't think for the foreseeable future, and this is honestly for me, enforce that, that we're going to see any way that a developer can just opt in to be included in Apple Arcade.

Oh, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I actually view this as a positive because I thought it was going to be, and maybe this is just a deflection, but I thought this was going to be very much like, if you have to ask, you can't afford it kind of stuff. Like, don't call us, we'll call you. That's probably a more appropriate thing to say. Don't call us, we'll call you when you impress us with your game prowess and instead they put up a link in the developer section that says yes uh tell us if you're awesome and we'll look at that and maybe it really is just that they got besieged by people asking about this and they decided to create a

funnel or they knew they were going to get besieged and they created a funnel so that people had some place to go and for them it's like look we have this thing we'll check it when we want to check it and there might be some interesting stuff in there what i wonder what how they view in terms of like talent scouts i mean it's possible that things will come across the transom that are interesting it is you know they are it is developer relations and presumably you will need a track record to be an apple arcade so if somebody clicked that link and said i've actually developed 15 app store games and they've all done pretty well and i'm working on something that would be perfect for apple arcade then there's probably a developer relations person who kicks that over to whoever is doing apple

arcade and says this one could be interesting yeah i mean to be honest apple should already know the companies that they would want in this thing yeah they they know their partnerships and they should be watching the app store as well right and? And to see the people that, like, you know, when we were talking about Zach Gage, you know, who has made so many great games, like, I would be shocked if somebody from Apple had not talked to Zach Gage. How would you not talk to Zach Gage after he's made interested but you know i would imagine that apple's apple arcade people are scouring the app store's games for good games that not not to bring into apple arcade even but to find those developers and say would you like to work with us and it's weird because it's like a development process it's almost like hollywood like in that way but it definitely isn't going to be hey i wrote a game i will check the box to submit it to apple arcade and see what happens i it that does not seem to be in the cards this is a curated service these are business deals being made and it's probably that if you've got a great idea for a

game what you should do is is publish the game and have everybody notice how great it is and then you point to that and say hey apple everybody liked this game fun my next game fun my next game yeah all right let's talk about apple news plus uh have you been spending any time with it i haven't been able to because hashtag uk but um i want to know if you spent any time with it and what your kind of uh feelings are on the overall experience and the content uh i have been spending some time with it i never really liked apple news and i never really liked the apple news interface and i've spent the last week reminding myself of why um i really hope they're doing a revision of the interface in uh june at wwdc for release in the fall because uh it's not good like apple news is kind of grafted on and you got to go many levels down.

And I really want to be able to say these are my favorite sources and then see the stories from them. But it's so deep down in this kind of magazine concept. It's hard to find the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times in there. And you can dig through and then tap on their masthead logo and then favorite them and then you've got a shortcut to them but like that part's hard the magazines are very much like here is a list of magazine stories i would really like you know and maybe they'll improve on the tagging side too but like sports illustrator releases their baseball preview issue and they've got a great cover story about baseball i want that to float up in my little

baseball favorites list that i've got set up in Apple News. And as far as I can tell, they don't cross the streams. And that's frustrating. It's like, I just want it in one place. I don't want to hunt down Sports Illustrated or ESPN the magazine or whatever. If they've got good articles about baseball or whatever your favorite topic is, those should float up to me. And if they are, I'm not seeing them. And I think it's really confusing. And I think it's great in terms of what content they've got, especially the stuff that's in Apple news format. I think that's really interesting, but it feels tacked on to an existing product that already had a weird interface. And so it's sort of doubly weird now.

So I don't, I don't love that about it. So from a reader's perspective, I like the idea of the content. And once you get into an article, it's okay. Although even there, I got to say like, so watch the, no, the Wall Street Journal content, like every third paragraph there, they insert garbage. So this is, you know, you're with your subscription to Apple News Plus, you get Wall Street Journal content. Great, because that's just paywalled on the outside. But it's literally like two paragraphs and an ad for other Wall Street Journal content, followed by two more paragraphs and an ad, followed by two more paragraphs and an ad for related content from

the Wall Street Journal, followed by two paragraphs, followed by ad for related content from the Wall Street Journal. Followed by two paragraphs, followed by another ad. It's so bad. See, that's the gamification of the system already happening, right? Like this is the kind of exploitation system. Because for these people to be paid, they need to have people looking at their content so instead of them serving you traditional advertising they're replacing those ad blocks with ads for their content because then if you go read more wall street journal content you're going to get more money from apple so i understand why they're doing it but then the idea of apple saying there's no ads in this is like well what's

an ad let's define what an ad is first shall we because you can definitely advertise your own content so i just called up a news story um about the ethiopian airline 737 crash and you know as you scroll down you get more from wsj in a little gray bar followed by five headlines so um how the points guy became the credit card kingmaker, the right way to choose a college, right? Like, and then after those headlines, it immediately goes back into the story. So that's super jarring because it tells you where the house ad begins, but not where it ends.

And then you continue reading. There's a picture and two more paragraphs. And then what's news in a big gray box, which is sign up for our newsletter. Then there's three more paragraphs. paragraphs and then what's news in a big gray box, which is sign up for our newsletter. Then there's three more paragraphs and then there's related coverage with three more bulleted headlines. By the way, the first set of headlines was not bulleted. The second set of headlines is bulleted. Again, there's no conclusion to that. So then you just kind of have to find your way to the next paragraph of this story that you're trying to read, kind of having it flow together.

It's not on the side. It's just right in your face. And this is the premium I paid for this experience. And it's bad. It's just lousy. So you're right. They are trying to push more views because that's how they get more money. And probably the argument inside the Wall Street Journal was, well, you know, we'll give away some content, but we're also going to like use it to heavily promote our newsletters and other stuff, which gets them into our, you know, our database instead of Apple's database. And so you can see them doing it. So, you know, I'm disappointed as a reader, and I think it could be way better. And I hope it does get better when they have a little more time to you know redesign the news app with news plus in mind I mean I know you're not everybody who uses news

is going to be a news plus subscriber and that's fine but I would like a kind of like an experience that is better thought out for everybody than maybe what is there now from a publisher standpoint I am fascinated by this. And I want to point to a very good conversation on a podcast you may be familiar with, Mike, called Connected last week. Oh, wow. And Federico had some good thoughts about this. And I just wanted to say, as somebody who worked in magazines for a long time, The 50% revenue share, whatever that is, I remain deeply skeptical that any magazine publisher will really be able to

have this be a good revenue source. But what really struck me is Federico was talking about the idea of having to build in Apple News format. And I want to echo something he said, which is a lot of people out there, their attitude is like, oh, Apple News format is easy. Just do it. It's like, no, that's not how it works. Like you're a publication, whether you're on the web or whether you've got a magazine or a newspaper, you've got existing tech that's all set up to do and has been built over time to do certain things. Apple News Format isn't easy. There are a lot of things that are complicated about it.

I don't do Apple News Format on six colors because I don't think I can technically. I think because of the way that my system is built. I've actually given some thought to changing my CMS just to do it, but I don't see a lot of benefit. Maybe there will be a growing benefit over time, but I'm just doing regular old HTML and RSS right now. Yeah, and CMS is a content management system. So that's like the system that Jason uses to publish his articles. The publishing system you use to generate your web content or your magazine content, quite frankly.

And so first off, it's a little like telling a developer, oh, this is an easy feature to add. It'll just take a day, right? Like, no, that's not, you don't understand the complexity of these systems. So adding Apple News format at all is an issue. If you're a magazine, right? I mean, they've got half these magazines basically to do it. Like they have to do a new content export in this format and they're usually laying things out in QuarkXPress or InDesign and generating out essentially PDFs, whether you print it or you go into some digital mag format. It's basically a

PDF out of a layout. They also need to get those articles into Apple News format. So it's technically complex. And that means it costs. It costs money for you to hire a developer or task your on-staff developer to build this thing. And I'll tell you, I used to fight long and hard to get prioritization for development resources to get features that we wanted implemented. It's hard to do, especially if you've got limited resources at a publishing company, very limited tech resources usually. And if you have to get somebody from the outside, they have to understand your system. So it's extra complicated. And that doesn't even cover the other part of this, which is the doing of it. Because most of these things, it doesn't happen automatically. You have to have a person every time you do an issue, do an export, get things in the right format. It is really complicated. It adds a lot.

And all along the way, you have to make that calculation. Like, is it worth it? What are we getting out of this? And you're getting some money. You're not getting customer names. You may be able to do a Wall Street Journal and insert lots of junk in it in order to get more views, which is more money, or to get names through a newsletter or something like that. But it is a difficult thing as a publishing business to make that calculation. And whether you're doing an export from your page layout or whether you're doing an export

from your web publishing system and doing a different version of that, it's expensive and it takes time. And they talk about like the live covers and all that. It's like, well, now you've got to do a video workflow and have your cover designer and pay them extra to get some video and to do a totally separate design in order to do the live cover thing that apple uh showed off so you know i just it is my skepticism about the the reported 50 is all informed by my thoughts about like how Apple is really asking

people to make a custom content workflow to get things out to Apple News. And then when Federico talks about how everybody's basically using one template, like Apple has provided some templates for content in Apple News format, and everybody's kind of using one template. That's the other part of this is everything kind of looks samey. That's boring. have people formatting like article by article, these special designs of this stuff. And it just, it all adds up. It's not easy. It's hard. It's complicated. It's expensive. It takes time. And that is a challenge for Apple. Now, it's way better than the old approach on Newsstand, which was, hey, everybody write an app. Because then you're not only doing all the content flow stuff, but you're also developing an iOS app. That was way worse, but it is not like not work to do this now. And if you're a publisher, it, you know, you, you have to analyze that and, and see what's going on.

I did notice by the way, that Mac world, my former employer, and currently still I write for them weekly. Uh, they're in there in apple news format which i'm fascinated by i really wonder what the backstory is there um they're they're in apple news format while mac life seems to be there just as a pdf right now so i don't know yeah and it is this expense and this potential expense for what nobody knows as being any gain yet which is probably why most of the magazines or like a lot of the magazines are still pdfs and i'm in apple apple format i imagine that's a tech those are people who are in texture and are like yeah we're not interested in doing it right now or we can't or we can't do it in time or whatever it is yep yep or because as well like the pdf is if you're a traditional magazine like you're actually

publishing a magazine not like where a lot of the companies would be web first but there are a lot of like companies that aren't they've still make magazines. They have PDFs of those magazines. It's probably trivial, really, for them to put those into Apple's system because these are like PDFs that exist. They have to make them to make the magazine. So those ones, it's like, well, we'll give it a go. And that's probably why there is so many of those,

unless you say, because that's what Texture was. Right, so they've already got them set up for texture and they just keep it flowing for them but the key is seeing over time how does it change do we end up with more Apple News Plus magazines in general do we end up with more news companies

moving in and do they look like they belong there or do they look like they're just scans of magazines that's going to be the key as it goes forward but thank you for your uh your insight on that though jason i mean it just it is very funny that i spend enough time in the magazine world that i learned all of this stuff and you know every time apple deals with them and apple news plus is a good example it is fascinating to watch it happen and i look forward to seeing what they do next. It is, it's a real challenge, because I think it is an opportunity for some magazines to get their

content out there in a way like getting magazines to think about articles and not pieces of paper or PDF pages is hard. Take it from me, I spent years dragging people into thinking about the web. And this is a little bit like that. But with the carrot is money from Apple for page views, basically. So I hope it works out. I do think Apple News Plus is a nice idea. And there are things I don't like about it but i think there is some potential there too but it's going to be hard because i'm not sure ultimately i'm just not sure whether the business model is very strong for the publishers for the content generators to do the work today's episode is brought to you by hello the company you make insanely comfortable buckwheat

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slash upgrade right now. Our thanks to Hollow for their support of this show and RelayFM. So we move into hashtag askupgrade and our first question comes from Richard. So we move into hashtag AskUpgrade. And our first question comes from Richard. Thank you.

Slightly delayed lasers this week. Richard says, I've been listening to Upgrade Forever. That's nice. Upgrade Forever should be our movie name. But anyway, I'm an Android and Windows power user, and I'm only now buying my first Apple device. I just want to say, Richard, I got much respect for you, my friend, right? That you've been listening to this show, and you're only just getting your first Apple device. I just want to say, Richard, I got much respect for you, my friend, right? That you've been listening to this show and you're only just getting your first Apple device.

Thank you so much. But Richard's getting an iPad Air 2019 with a bridge keyboard and a Logitech crayon. That is a great setup. But Richard wants to know, can you recommend any resources to help quickly get up to speed and get the most out of iOS for the iPad.

So one that I wanted to recommend, I actually have two to recommend to Richard. One is Federico's iOS reviews. So Federico did an iOS review like he does every year. So he got the iOS 12 review as the most recent. I did an audio book version of it as well, which you can buy, but the web version is available for you for free on the website. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's very nicely laid out. Federico basically dives into every single feature of the operating system. So this is a really good way to find out how some pieces work. So that's really great.

So that's available to you. And you could also look at one of the Take Control books. So this is the Take Control series. Is it still published by Tidbits, Jason? No, Joe Kissel now is the publisher of it. Yeah, it's like an independent thing now, right? Like Take Control is now its own thing where it used to be part of Tidbits.

But Josh Centers wrote the Take Control of iOS 12 book, which is in essence a guide where Federico's is kind of like looking at the features and talking about them um so there are a couple of I think really good resources but I will say though like if you've been listening to shows like this for a while uh you probably know a lot of it but if you're you know you're looking for some of the nuts and bolts there are a couple of good resources for you yeah I was going to mention maybe uh he said iPad though that's the thing so

so David Sparks has a Mac Sparky Field Guide about the iPhone. Oh, yes. Which is nice. But back at Macworld, back in the day, we had a Mac Basics and an iPad Basics, like these e-books. But they're all out of date because they don't do them anymore. So it's very sad. But those are all good choices. Federico's stuff is great.

And I think that iOS 12 Take Control book is a great example, Josh's book, because it's going to be much more of a traditional kind of like step-by-step kind of thing. And David Sparks has a shortcuts field guide as well. If you want to get the most out of iOS for iPadad shortcuts is a great way to to do that and david takes you through a whole bunch of different shortcuts you can do yeah david has a bunch of amazing look like courses and stuff in general as well uh i'll put links to all of that in the show notes if it's stuff that you're looking for so there's a lot there is a lot of great content available if you're trying to learn this stuff, which is wonderful. Our next question comes from Mike, not me. What do you think the odds are that the next iPhone or iPad would have support for an Apple-built game controller? Well, I mean, it's 100%, right?

Because if Apple does a game controller, it's going to be Bluetooth and it'll work with Apple TV and all that. I don't think Apple will build a game controller, but if it did, I imagine that it would work with all of them because it would be Bluetooth. Yeah, there are a bunch of controllers available and Apple has actually been, I mean, this is relatively quiet and I say it's quiet, like you do it in the open, but nobody knows because nobody really buys these controllers. They're called MFI, made for iPhone controllers controllers they've been adding more support over time so like more buttons um so like for example being able to click in the analog sticks it's called l3 or r3 you know like on playstation for example

um that has been like api changes that has been that have been happening over time uh so there are new controllers now which can support these additional functions like SteelSeries Nimbus is one, the HoriPad is another one so these are products that exist that have been existing for a while and Apple is slowly over time adding more functionality to it

As long as the SteelSeries Nimbus exists I'm not sure that Apple really needs to make one that is like a apple blessed device so i don't think they need to make one i don't know if they will make one they are more likely to make one now than they ever have been before but i just don't really know if it's something that apple should or needs to do uh they could just do a better job of promoting the products that already exist a la chi charging because apple can't make that product uh so they're going to have to continue to promote and help other people let me let me put it another way do you want the people who

brought you the uh siri remote for apple tv to make a game controller i don't our next question comes from tyler tyler wants to know how long do you think that air power will continue to be an auto-corrected word on the ios keyboard because it does the is it called camel casing when there's a capital letter in the middle uh do you think this is going to continue like apple have a trademark on this like uh what do you think do you think they're going to keep it or do you reckon they'll stop doing it i i think it's going to continue to be in there for a very very very very long time and it will become like an interesting trivia question about why does ios correct air power wrongly and the answer is going to be well let me tell you a story about a september day a sunny

september day in 2017 when they stood on stage and announced a product that didn't ship. You know, it's one of those things, I assume that a lot of the very hardworking people at places like MacRumors and 9to5Mac who really dig into the betas, I assume that they must have some kind of checklist that they're going through of things that they have to check to see if they've changed and areas to look.

Someone's got to put this on their checklist. If that exists, right? Like is air power still capitalized? And like, when, when is that going to happen? When will it stop?

Uh, Connor asks after the, uh, event last week, uh, my fiance accepted new terms and conditions for Apple pay. And she is now no longer able to send a peerto-peer payments because she only has a credit card in her Apple wallet. Does Apple

no longer allow credit cards to work with Apple Pay? That is actually very true, in fact. That is what happened. So with the update to iOS, the most recent update to iOS and to watchOS, Apple are no longer allowing credit cards to be the

funding source for Apple Cash. I think it's called – is it called Apple Cash now? Or is it still called Apple Pay Cash? Whatever it's called. I don't know. Yeah, it's unclear to me, and I haven't done the work, but it struck me that on stage they were kind of moving to Apple Cash from Apple Pay Cash. Yeah, Apple Card, Apple Cash, right?

Like that's kind of where it's going. So I'm going to keep calling it Apple Cash now. Yeah, no, they've cut off the credit cards, and you need a debit card to connect. And they don't want to pay the credit card fees to fund an apple pay cash account and i think a debit card you can you can send them the other way and it's basically a fun it's free with debit card um it was originally reported that it will still be free with apple card so that was like a thing that was being reported everywhere wherever it was believed that was going to be the case or expected. But there was in the nine to five Mac report that I read, they are reporting that this is not the case, like that it still won't work even with

Apple Card as your only funding method. So the cash back that you're going to get will go there. But actually trying to fund your Apple Cash balance with a credit card is not even going to work for Apple Card because this was being positioned as like a, haha, that's how they're going to drive adoption, right? Like that was kind of like the looking for the sneaky thing, which I would have understood, but they're saying that 9to5Mac is saying that no, it won't. So they didn't cite where they got that information, but it seemed like they were pretty sure about it. So it seems like what has probably happened here is the provider that Apple's using

is just not going to do it anymore. I reckon that's what's going on. But that'd be something to watch out for if that is the case. But yes, if you have a credit card, won't work. You need to use a debit card now. And Lonnie asks,

what are some of your favorite iOS games? Now, Jason, I have a list. Can I just read my list? And then, because I reckon I'm going to pick up what you would have in your list as well. are some of your favorite ios games now jason i have a list can i just read my list and then because i reckon i'm going to pick up what you you would have in your list as well you're going to pick up a lot of mine yeah great because i have a folder on my iphone that just has some of my favorite games in of all time because i still play them so i will put links in the show notes to all of these so these are some of my favorite ios games of all time threes flip-flop

solitaire pocket rum pool stagehand alto's adventure alto's odyssey and hold down uh alto's odyssey is probably my all-time favorite um and what's the other one i want and really bad chess is good and that's also zach gage and oh i'm trying to i'm trying to think um i'm sure there are others there's a game called orbital that i still play that's ancient and probably um not long for this world i don't know then again it's survived this long maybe it'll continue that i play on my iphone um oh wow there are i'm sure i'm forgetting some really excellent games but there there are there are lots of great ios games out there so yeah yeah you you covered a lot of them threes and flip-flop and those are and stagehand is really good that's true too we mentioned zach gage earlier on in the episode um and we've just

like it was funny to me that we did mention him because they're like three of the games that we've just spoken about zach gage made i think that he's one of the most talented ios game makers um that's around right now so great ideas all perfectly executed yeah worth checking out but yeah there's so many just so many great yeah I like oh that's it super stick man golf I love super stick man golf it's great and it's got great network play black box is a really good game fill in the blank text game it's not what you expect uh mini metro mini metro i like a lot uh i was playing that this weekend and it's soothing because they have endless mode now where you just build a um like train lines in a city when you

said black box did you mean uh the game oh sorry black bar okay that's what i mean black box is also another good game also another good game but no i meant black bar okay that's what i mean black box is also another good game also another good game but no i meant black bar yeah fill in the blank game uh yeah so many and monument valley right oh of course i love monument valley i can't believe i forgot monument valley there's a lot of great games out there that's what we're saying all the great games is something you could actually say no actually that's not true but there's a lot of really there's a lot of great games on Switch as well. I want to actually say that I just started playing a game called Baba

Is You today. Baba Is You on the Switch today. That's super interesting. Just play it. Just try it. By the way, which Super Stickman Golf is your favorite? They're all great. The latest one has the most stuff in it, although I kind of like the simplicity of the earlier versions too.

But it's all fun. I haven't played it in a while. I have friends who still play against each other all the time. And I'm not naming names, but those names would be Dan Morin and Dan Frakes. And Lex Friedman maybe too. Yeah, it's a great game. It's not – if you're like, oh, golf, golf is boring. It they're yeah it's it's a great game it's like a super it's not if you're like oh golf golf is boring it's like it's not golf i mean it's golf but it's like

it's arcade golf and it's extreme weird arcade golf but it is hilarious and delightful and they have they have a turn-based version where you play against another person but they've also got a live version which is great because it's live golf and if you can imagine you're in a weird like half zero g alien environment with walls that stick and stuff and you're playing golf and so like you need to shoot your next shot as fast as possible because you're seeing everybody else also hitting their balls as fast as possible to get to the hole it's hilarious it is some of the most fun i've had playing an ios game because it leads to just ridiculous finishes where everybody's right at the end and they're who is going to get in first and there are weird you know turns of events because the physics are strange and it's

great what is that other golfing game the desert golfing desert golfing the one that marco played all 8 000 levels over whatever yeah yeah that's pretty good that's pretty good too but that's a more traditional golf game except that it goes on forever and uh there's no score well i mean there's a score but it doesn't matter which is kind of brilliant if you want to send in a question for us to answer on the show hashtag ask upgrade would be that and please tweet those out and they'll go into a document for us to pick from in the future um don't forget if you want to get tickets to the Relay FM live show which is connected at

WWDC, you can find a link in the show notes for that Wednesday, June 5th. Thanks to Borrow and Hollow and Pingdom for their support of this show. You can find Jason online at sixcolors.com and theincomparable.com and he's at jsnl on Twitter. I am

at imike and so I want to thank everybody for listening to this week's episode as always um and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye jason snell goodbye mike hurley