Upgrade - 240: Dance on the Grave of iTunes

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

John Siracusa joins Jason to discuss how 2019 is potentially an enormous year for the Mac in both hardware and software. Also, we make time to swap TiVo stories and generate John's Hierarchy of Mac Pro Needs.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 240 this episode of upgrade is brought to you by fresh books express vpn and moo i am jason snell mike hurley is on assignment and so in order to replace mike hurley i have gone to the uh one of my go-to guest hosts it is you know him from the accidental tech podcast and hypercritical and reconcilable differences and many other places and os 10 reviews it's john syracuse so hello you always forget robot or not and you know me from robot or not you know him from robot or not which is an excellent podcast which is totally not like this podcast at all because it's uh but it is different it's you and me you know i forget about robot or not because we record that in like a batch and then release them um i have to remind you we just like netflix you gotta do some bacon research before our next

session you gotta do some we make all the shows and release them in a batch yeah actually we don't we don't see one at a time no we could we could release them in a patch yeah actually we don't we don't see one at a time no we could we could release them in a binge and then like every every year you get 20 episodes that seems like a bad i don't i don't love the binge thing on netflix but that would certainly be bad for podcasts i think well i don't approve it anyway nobody wants to hear about this they want to hear about the snell talk question which i warned people that you were going to be on the show and i asked that they could send questions to them you mean you you told them so they would be excited um yes that's what i meant by warning it was a positive it was the most positive kind of warning the

positive warning of uh greetings congratulations and felicitations john syracuse will be on upgrade uh and listener fuzan wrote in to say is there a particular shape of pasta that is most pleasing to me and i wanted to ask before we turn the spotlight on me for for hashtag snell talk i wanted to do some hashtag syracusa talk do you have a particular shape of pasta that you find most pleasing i could swear we did this question on the just mentioned robot or not podcast but i'll trust you if you tell me if we haven't oh i remember nothing of that podcast yeah me neither as i'm saying how many answered this people i mean we've done pasta questions but i'm not sure if i've asked you specifically for like a favorite shape yeah pasta shaped deja vu or something

my answer is as it always is when i get asked this question it's like it's like trying to choose your favorite child there's no favorite there are lots of ones that i like and i'm in the mood for a particular it's like music like you might have a favorite band but it's very hard to come up with a favorite song like it depends on what you're in the mood for at the time so i have strong opinions about what pasta shape i want at what particular time and i have opinions on which pasta shapes go best with which kinds of dishes for sure but none of them are my favorite they're all situational all right all right do you have like can you give me an example of a situational sure um so you've got a really kind of heavy sauce maybe it's like a sauce with like ground up meat in there something you want something

that's going to stand up to that like a rigatoni big beefy tube that can stand up to a very heavy sauce you wouldn't put that on like angel hair because it would just overwhelm it similarly if you have a kind of light sauce maybe just olive oil and garlic or something like that you want a lighter pasta i wouldn't do like a a really thick spaghetti or any kind of big two pasta i'd go with regular spaghetti on that or even thin spaghetti on that so it's kind of like it's like wine pairing but really you want the want the pasta the robustness of the pasta shape to match the sauce or whatever other thing you're putting on it the right tool for the right job yeah and i have favorites like my my staples are uh probably uh ziti rigatoni regular spaghetti thin spaghetti uh i mean gemelli penne uh those are usually at all times right now i have every

single one of those in my cabinet there are probably some other esoterics uh ones that are in there for special dishes but those are the staples so there we haven't done a pasta episode of robot or not but we did a gnocchi episode so you know maybe that maybe we covered that as part of the greater pasta existentialism of the Nokia episode of Robot or Not. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. And the pasta shapes, like, I have lots of recipes for pasta, as you might imagine.

And the recipes are shape-specific. So, in any particular recipe, you can't substitute one shape for another. It would be like substituting a different meat for another meat. It becomes an entirely different dish. You know, I hate it when people say that they've got macaroni and cheese, and then you get it, and it's not macaroni. substituting a different meat for another meat it becomes an entirely different dish you know i hate it when people um say that they've got macaroni and cheese and then you get it and it's not macaroni like just say that just say that it's not macaroni but don't tell me it's macaroni macaroni is a kind of pasta if you give me macaroni and cheese and then it's some other

pasta and cheese it's not macaroni and cheese it's not having spaghetti meatballs and it's not spaghetti it's like well yeah you know that's not so so i was thinking about this because just the other day my uh my for reasons that i'm about to explain my my uh family had a a dish that was with oh i forget what it was is it was is it orzo the little greek pasta or so the ones that look like fragments yeah rice rice pasta exactly right and i had mine with a special pasta and it was um it was penne and um this is not what fuzan asked but um i hate penne and i said to lauren i was like oh that's not my favorite she's really it's like not not something she knew about me because apparently i've swallowed my dislike for penne over the years but i it all came out john it all

i was under stress it all came out like about it i don't know i don't i don't like the shit i don't like like how it goes on the fork and i don't like the tube part because i just feel like that's do you like any tube pasta i don't think i do like any tube pasta honestly i don't like not even zd and a big zd yeah well i okay yes all right like zd or cannelloni or something like that. It's an enormous tube. Ziti is not enormous. Okay. Well, then maybe I don't like it. I'll take a big tube pasta. Anyway, what I'm saying is that gemelli, the little twisty pasta, is my favorite. I don't love the super fine spaghetti or angel hair. I always like the thicker, more robust spaghetti. And gemelli is nice because it's the twisty guy, so it's a little bit thicker but it's still like um it's all on the outside i don't really want i don't really like the pasta so much where there's also like a little cave that sauce can get into i just

it doesn't work for me you have a very limited pasta palette i do i do are you surprised really nice i suppose not as long as you're not eating honey wheat pasta i'm sure yeah that's true i'm not i i saved that for other things so speaking of pasta i i will i'll mention here it's a uh some personal news that i'm going through now the reason that i got served a special sort of pasta is that um i have been uh delightfully diagnosed as being gluten sensitive and i have to go on a gluten-free diet which means i am now rethinking um all aspects of my life up to this point i i put a link in our show notes to the kubler-ross model of the stages of grief because last week i went through all of them i have reached acceptance now where i've bought a few gluten-free cookbooks and I'm trying to figure out how to make gluten-free pizza dough and things like that. Oh, my goodness.

Because, yeah, it's really bad, John. It's really bad. Because I subsist. As a part of this process, they're like, now, before we stick an instrument down, we sedate you and stick an instrument down your throat, into your stomach, and then through into your small intestine to see if you have the signs of celiac of gluten insensitivity um we need you to be sure and eat a wheat product like a piece of toast wheat toast whole wheat toast every day and i just laughed i was like guys it's not going to be a problem i eat i eat so much

wheat it is not even going to be i there is no effort required here i had a piece of toast in the car right over yeah i mean seriously like i got a piece of bread in my pocket right now i could just eat right now it's not going to be a problem but anyway so spread so and i realize we're touching the third rail by even mentioning people's diets because you guys you guys have gone on that third rail the last couple of weeks on atp with all of uh all of marco's stories 100% plant-based diets and keto diets and things like that. So, yes, I'm not looking for any advice. I'm not looking for any favorite recipes. I might put, later on in this process, I might put out a request for that.

But right now, I'm just kind of processing and trying to figure out what products are available in my local store so that I can continue to eat things that are a, in some cases, sad simulacrum of the actual thing that I want to eat. Rice pasta, in my opinion, is not worth having. Just don't even try it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, if I can get some pasta that is decent, then so be it. But I'm willing to forego. There's some stuff that I'm willing to forego, other stuff not. I think right now the goal is like, can we come up with ways for me to eat dinner with my family without me having like a completely different dinner than everybody else in the family? And that would be like, can I make some, yeah, an alternate pizza dough, an alternate pasta that I could mix in there. But I'm generally with you speaking of the ATP stuff in that I appreciate you

being the voice of moderation there saying perhaps instead of going on the all plant diet or the all meat and butter fat diet that you kind of up going like whole on into something where it's like nope it's just going to be this one thing and i'm not going to eat and everything else and i don't know that never seems to be a good idea and it never seems to work out well i agree yeah he says as he cuts all gluten from his diet yeah well that's doctor's orders i'm not i'm not doing that because uh doctors know stupid doctors star trek they're just gonna give not doing that because uh doctors know that's for stupid doctors star trek they're just gonna give you a salad what do doctors know yeah salad and some little foam cubes are also those are future croutons the foam cubes so let's move on thank you to for uh for the snell talk question let's move on to upstream where we talk about media things

that's a little little area that Mike and I have carved out over the last couple of years. And when I think about John Syracuse, I think about having somebody else to talk about my TiVo with, because you and I are both TiVo customers. And I wanted to get a TiVo update from you, and I wanted to give you my TiVo update. and I wanted to give you my TiVo update. So my TiVo update is still using it. Very glad I have my TiVo. I feel like it has become the secondary input now because there's so much that we watch that is on streaming.

And I don't use the TiVo interface for streaming because those apps are not very good and they're super slow. And they did a sale uh not too long ago where they were selling their 4k model which doesn't actually do 4k like cable but it does 4k video streaming and i thought about switching to it but then i thought about how they've got um you know those awful kind of cheap web interfaces for their streaming apps. And I just decided I would really rather just save TiVo as my TV channels device and everything else I'm just going to watch on Apple TV.

But I'm starting to get the feeling like I can actually see it coming now where I'm going to eventually abandon the TiVo and go to an over-the-top service with a cloud DVR instead and just have it be on one box. But I'm not there yet because my tivo works great and i think in the end i wouldn't be saving any money by switching to a an over-the-top service i'm going to be spending probably more money if i do something like that we've got three tivos running right now i've got my good tivo which was the last best flat one you know the tivo that was rectal in here romeo right that's what i that's what

i've got before they bent the tivo mold and they can only make bent tivos now yep the fanciest romeo with the most disk space me too that's what i have and i love it and it continues to do what it does but i have been using it less just because so much of my stuff comes from the umpteen streaming services um and it manifests mostly in like how much free space is there on my tivo it used to be perpetually full and now it's like this the free space is going up over time so i think it's like it's 70 now and when i watch something there are so many streaming services that i watch stuff on it's like it's time to watch something and like in general i don't keep track of where i'm watching them like i have i have one thing that keeps track of all the shows that I'm watching.

But once I figure out the show that I'm watching, I have to remember where it is. Is that one on Hulu? Is that one on Netflix? Is that one on Amazon Prime? And, you know, the fourth or fifth choice is that one on TiVo, which means that it's not on any of the services. It's on some premium channel like HBO or Showtime or it's on network television or whatever. And also it's a currently running show like hbo or showtime or it's on network television or whatever um and also it's a currently running show like or an amc or something uh like walking dead or whatever there are shows that were on television that i could have caught on my tivo but i didn't and now they're on hulu for example or some other service right so it's very confusing where they

are but the bottom line is my watching is fairly evenly spread around all my services which means that tivo which used to be the vast majority of my shows is now one-fifth just like every other service is one-fifth or whatever um and i'm i'm fine with that uh the interesting thing is i spend a lot of time these days like i'm gonna watch a show like right before i go to bed or finish a show before i go to bed that i started earlier uh a lot of the shows that don't care that much about like the magicians or something like i'm into it but you know i'll watch it but it's not yeah it's not like appointment viewing right so very often i'll have the end of a magician's episode to watch and i will watch it on my ipad in my bed from my tivo

from the tivo the tivo recorded it because it's a show that's running right now and i'm caught up so when the episodes go it will be on my tivo and i'll watch it in the tivo app which is strange because it's like i'm using my tivo but even when i'm using my tivo i'm not using my tivo like i'm not using the tivo remote in front of the television um even though i'm in the same house and i'm just in a different room um anyway so that's that's the state of my tivo i have three of them so i've got that good one i've got a bent one the fanciest bent one that they had and the bent ones are terrible and they have fans that make noise and they use laptop hard drives and i don't like them and they're stupid that they're bent and then underneath that i have the whatever the fanciest tivo you could

get before the romeos was i think it's like the tivo premiere hd pro whatever also a flat box it was better looking than the romeo too but slow as balls it's just very slow the romeos were a huge improvement uh in speed that's in the in the bedroom that used to be it was like the bedroom tivo the bedroom always got like the hand-me-down tivo right when i got the bent one i got it because the the hand-me-down bedroom tivo was just so slow and like we knew what the faster ones felt like. But by the time I decided to get a replacement for the slow one, the only ones that you could get were the bent ones. So I got one of the bent ones and put it upstairs.

And because of my TiVo remote situation, I didn't have enough spare remotes. And they took away the 1-2 switch on the remotes. Do you remember that? The little switch on the remotes that toggle between 1 and 2? right so you could have two tivos and switch like there's some confluence events i ended up without the right combination of remotes in my house to be able to have one remote for the bent tivo and one remote for the flat one and instead i had one remote that both tivos responded to so i had to put a big piece of tinfoil in front in front of the ir receiver on the non-bent tivo which is receiver on the non-bent TiVo,

which is fine because the non-bent TiVo wasn't even hooked up to the television anymore. The bent one was hooked up to it. The idea was that we would copy all the shows off of the non-bent TiVo into the bent one. Right. And then we would just retire the non-bent one. And if you've ever done that, transferred shows from one TiVo to another, you know it takes an eternity for some unknown reason so we were trying to do that and then eventually we had roadblocks where certain shows you weren't allowed to copy them off the tivo because copyright

yeah garbage whatever and so both of them just stayed there permanently and so if you wanted to watch something off the non-bent one you would go to the bent tivo and there you can see the non-bent one on the network and you'd watch the shows like remotely from that and then it was stupid so that's to explain why there were two tivos one of which had tinfoil in front of it hooked up to the bedroom television for the past two years or whatever but recently my bent one the hard drive died in it you know basically confirming my suspicions that laptop hard drives are garbage and it was much better when they had 3.5 inch drives this is my first you know i've had tivo since before the series 2 just before the series 2 i

don't remember uh i bought i bought the original i bought the series 1 the original one that was my first tivo i don't know if i had the i think i did have the original one because it was super ugly in the series 2 which must not much nicer looking so yeah i've had tivos for years and years um and this is my first hard drive to die and it was one of the stupid bent ones and the bent box laptop thing luckily i wisely got the extended warranty because i didn't trust the stupid thing so i got it replaced under warranty and they couldn't even replace it with the with the model because they don't make this anymore mine was like a tivo bolt plus but since then the top line bent one has been rebranded tivo voxox. So that's what I have now. I have a TiVo Vox, but it doesn't matter because I didn't get the Vox remote.

Right. So I can't, I can't talk to it. It's just, it's anyway, I've got that now. Uh, and it came with the new UI,

which I thus far avoided. The new UI is garbage. Oh yeah. It's yeah. They did a whole new, uh, interface update that you could opt into if you've got an older box and i actually asked on the occasion of its one year anniversary i asked um dave zatz who does that's not funny and

he's a you know dvr guy and a tivo guy um if it was any better than a year before when it was released and he said oh no it's terrible i regret it every day. Don't update to it. So I have just remained on the old TiVo interface, which quite frankly is like why I have a TiVo is because I like that interface. And they've got this new interface that seems to prioritize all sorts of ways of watching television that I do not participate in. So I have no interest in doing it. Can you roll yours back? Can you like wipe the drive? I't i don't think so i don't think i would do that i mean i i warned my wife when i sent it away i said you know there's a chance that when they send this no it's going to have the new ui and the new ui i heard is terrible and

so we were all ready for it and sure enough it came and we're just gonna deal with it but she had questions she's like why would after trying to use it for a couple days she's like why would they do this why would they why would they make it like this because she wants to know and it made me think about it more than just thinking about how garbage it is and the best explanation i can come up with is the new ui has more places to show pictures of things and that there's many reasons that why that could be uh a decision they would make one is it's more places to sell promotional thing i don't know if tivo does this but potentially hey do you want your show advertised on TiVo?

Pay us a little bit extra money. We'll make sure your show shows up in the banner or whatever. Two, it's for people who can't read. I don't know. People do like pictures. They like pictures to be in the background. They like pictures to be in the front. They like to work sort of graphically, but it's a huge miscalculation to think that TiVo

customers want this because what we want to see is some way of organizing our shows and going through them and be able to tell things about them like setting aside the ui for a second the main thing you want to do is like the magicians is a show i record how many episodes of the magicians are on my tivo which ones have i watched or not watched which one's the newest one which one's the oldest one like you give me information about them show me the titles maybe show me the season and episode number maybe show me the first words of a description like i kind of think of the gmail interface the ever see the gmail web interface i don't know if you use that oh i do that's what i use where it shows you that you can organize your messages and it shows you the subject line and the

first few words of the message it's very information dense for a single line item very compact right especially if you go to the actual compact mode tivo's interface used to be like that you could organize things and sort them in different ways but it was basically a list view and they'd put as much information as they could on each list view item and because of the way they were sorted and because of various graphical uh you know elements like the little colored dots or a little tiny progress bar you could see like which ones are old which ones are new which one you had you watched already which ones you were you halfway through uh maybe what the titles were maybe the date they were recorded lots of information and however many could fit on the screen and you could scroll to see more the new interface is like how much information can be removed so you go to the magicians now and it

shows the same stupid thumbnail, which gives you no information because it's a generic thing of just like Elliot had been a weird pose, right? And it's the same thumbnail for every episode. It shows four episodes, no text associated with any of them. So you're like,

what episode is this? What order are they in? And it, and it scrolls horizontally instead of vertically. And I just, I was like, do I have to like go into the episode for it to tell me the title or the date or the season or the episode number? It's almost useless.

It makes no sense to me at all. Like, show me all the episodes of The Magicians that I have so I can pick the one that I want to watch. And they try to highlight something where you can just like start playing immediately. But I'm like, is that the one that I want to play? Or is that the newest? Or is that the oldest and it whenever i try to guess it seems it is sorted at the opposite way and this is setting aside the whole change to the ui the old model as rudimentary as it was made sense with a four-way well a five-way thing you know four directions and a select it was go to the right to go into it go to the left to go to the

left to go out of it and press the select select button to select the item you have selected, and up and down arrows to go up and down. It was north, south, east, west. It made perfect sense. You could do the entire UI. It was like the old iOS where it's like you hit an item and you go to the right, and you hit the back button and you go to the left, only it was even simpler than that because there was no back button.

Then they got rid of that model. Now you enter a menu, and the only way to get out of it is to hit the actual dedicated back button the left button usually does nothing it's i'm very angry about the new ui so i can tell i don't know what i'm going to do when i have no choice but to get that ui i just hope they get a clue and and restore like list view everywhere at least well i i i just feel like there's that that moment is coming where i'm going to finally give up on tivo but it hasn't happened yet yeah i'm getting close i don't even have any 4k tvs in the house so i'm like my the 4k revolution is going to come to my house and there's going to be a reckoning and we'll see what survives yeah um i want to ask you about

some news because i think you might have an opinion about this uh this is a some right prime uh upstream news apple and stephen king it was reported today as we record this that they are going to series with eight episodes of an adaptation of lisi's story which is a stephen king novel um jj abrams is producing it, Julianne Moore is starring, and Stephen King is not only producing, but writing all eight episodes of this TV series. Now, you are a huge Stephen King fan. What do you think about this deal? I'm a very big Stephen King fan. I read everything he wrote up until several years ago when I just fell off the reading bandwagon almost entirely. So, I looked at this and I'm like, is this one of the ones that came out after I stopped reading?

And then I went to the Wikipedia page and realized I have McNulty's disease. Nope, I totally read this. I read this when it came out. And I remember it pretty well. And of all the things for Apple to adapt, I would not have picked this because it's very weird and not particularly family-friendly at all.

But I have good feelings about the book that said i stephen king adaptations for movies and televisions just seem to be a problem that we as a species cannot yet crack like yeah there are good ones in there here and there but the batting average is really low. And having Stephen King be a writer for it, I don't think helps. I'm not sure he knows how to write television. I don't think he knows what good television is. I don't agree with his taste in television. Like, I love his books and I love his writing and it's all great.

But when it comes to movies and television i mean look no further than than his general hatred for the stanley kubrick movie which is barely an adaptation of his book but unquestionably a good and effective movie but stephen king hates it and doesn't make any freaking sense um so uh that said because i i like this book and now remember it um and because i like stephen king i will undoubtedly watch this but my hopes are very low i mean did you like uh castle rock i did surprisingly like i mean it's it's uneven and it's like barely based on anything having to do with steven king lots of references and the setting picture whatever but it's kind of like well it's not the same as black mirror but like

black mirror a show i generally dislike i still feel good about just because that one good episode how can one good episode make up for like five seasons of shows that i mostly didn't like it just does that's just like i feel like the one good episode like it's worth all the time i invested to get that one good episode and we've talked about that before uh similarly castle rock which i watched all of i think i feel like was worth my time because of that one good episode. I think it was like episode seven or something, which I thought was batting way above, like it was punching way above its weight. The rest of the show was like, nah, okay, Stephen King, it's kind of weird. Yeah, I get it. Where are you going? Whatever. Kind of silly, blah, blah, blah.

And then this is amazing episode. And then back to it, its old self. Yeah. I'm not sure I've seen any evidence that Stephen King is actually good at writing screenplays yeah or television shows or again if i follow him on twitter and he says which shows he likes i'm not sure he has his taste in shows matches mine like his shows he'd like i don't like yeah so interesting idea but uh i i just it i kind of found it hard to believe that you and i were going to be talking about upstreamstream, and this was announced. Even with his novels, I think he benefits greatly from the editors he works with. Which is not to say that he's a bad writer or anything, but I remember that from On Writing.

That's one of the things that stuck with me about that book is when he shows his drafts and the editing process. Whether it's him editing it or his actual editor at his publisher helping edit, it really elevates the raw material that he puts out. So if he has good editorial help and good directorial help, I think he can do an okay job. But my main fear is like that he's the things he thinks are most important about the novel are not the things that I liked best about the novel. And so he will be sure to put in the things that he thinks are important from the novel and I'll do, and there'll be in there and he'll be super satisfied that I gave this to anyone else.

They would never put this stuff in, but it's the most important thing in the novel. And I will disagree with that opinion and it'll end up being weird. Anyway, I'll definitely watch it. Sure. So that's a, that's an Apple deal.

JJ Abrams apparently is finishing out his deal with Warner, which is going to produce this show, and is apparently being sort of wooed for another big producer deal, because those are all the rage, a big-name producer. And J.J. Abrams, I have to say, has been incredibly productive as a producer. I guess that's their job is to be productive. But if you think about not just the stuff that he's written, but the stuff that he's produced and that his production company has made, there are all sorts of them,

including things that you would never even identify as being a product of JJ Abrams at all. I think Westworld is technically a JJ Abrams production. And so he, he's got a deal that's lapsing with Warner. And there's a question about, you know, Warner and JJ Abrams, are they going to make another deal to have him stay at Warner now that they've got their new owners? And, you know, I see it intimated every here and there about Apple potentially making a move for him. And that kind of fascinates me only because not only do I think that J.J. Abrams actually might be a good fit for Apple.

I'm not sure Apple wants to pay him what he's going to ask, but maybe they've got cash laying around. They could do it. But also, I know that J.J. Abrams has a basically lifelong love of Apple. Like, he's a Mac user from back in the olden days um the opening credit sequence of his tv show alias was made by jj abrams on his mac like jj abrams goes back a long way with apple and i wonder sometimes if we are if we are a few months out from some big super deal for tv between jj abrams and apple it wouldn't shock me if that happened as long as it

wasn't exclusive i think he would go for it because i i think that he uh always uh wants to be able to make movies that will be released in cinemas as they say yeah well i think the tv deal in the movies and the movies are different potentially right where he's making movies over here and then he's doing his tv where apple's got a first look or something like that but i don't know i just jj abrams is is the the one name if you would ask me like who's the one player in hollywood who's like the most likely to be a good fit with apple he would be who i would say just because i know his history uh with apple and i it's uh yeah it'll be interesting to see what it does but anyway this is here's another this is the third jj abrams produced show to be bought by apple

yeah i'm sure you've talked about this on your other podcast focus on this topic but i hate the idea of jj abrams anyone else being a good fit with apple for making shows because i really i i really don't like the idea of apple involving itself in the creative process so many of these things i know obviously they're putting up the money of course they're going to be involved i understand the realities of it but like i just don't have faith in their taste when it comes to this and the idea of apple giving notes to jj abrams puts my teeth on edge i just don't want to think about it because i like almost everything that he does and i feel like apple has no notes to give him presumably it would be zach van amberg and jamie erlich who would give him notes if anybody and presumably

if they back up half a billion dollars into jj abrams you know front yard yeah maybe he he's he'll he'll be okay with the occasional note or they will show so much confidence in him that they won't be so worried about i just think he's just got such a um he spoke at wwdc right like i feel like he's got an existing um relationship with apple that serves you know they have a connection there that maybe uh leads somewhere else i don't know yeah and he's slightly more young and hip than steven spielberg slightly he's basically the younger hipper version of steven spielberg sure sorry steve there was a literally in that sizzle reel they did for Apple TV+, there was that shot of somebody in a World War II fighter plane,

and I thought, well, that's amazing stories. And it totally was, because that is amazing stories. It draws the landing gear. All right. We have more, but first I will take a break and tell you about our first sponsor it's fresh books everyone likes to save time but it's especially important when you're a freelancer hey tell me about it fresh books can save you up to 192 hours what that's very precise with simple

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free trial to listeners of upgrade no credit card required all you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and enter upgrade in the how did you hear about us section thank you to fresh books for supporting upgrade and all of relay fm all right john um 2019 when we last spoke uh on this podcast it was late 2018 it is now 2019 and i have uh i want to talk about the mac this year because it feels to me like 2019 is going to be one of those years that we point to and say this was a momentous year for the mac both on the hardware and the software side. And I want to talk to you about that.

But I want to start with Mac OS because I think that's probably, I had to pick one and that's the one I chose. Like I'm thinking about WWDC and how, you know, how potentially the announcements there for the Mac are going to be much bigger and have much greater ramifications than maybe a lot of people understand. Like this idea that they've already laid out there, that they laid out last summer, that a whole bunch of iOS apps presumably are going to be coming over and running on the Mac this fall. Like, I'm not sure people understand just how different that's going to be and how potentially

weird that's going to be it's certainly not going to be um what we're used to on the mac how do you think this is going to go both in june and in september do you think it's going to be a huge change or do you think it's going to be um maybe less big than than it has the potential because i keep thinking it's going to be maybe less big than it has the potential? Because I keep thinking it's going to be an enormous thing, and people are going to not quite realize just how it's going to change the whole texture of the Mac to have these iOS apps running on the Mac. Yeah, it's one of those changes that I think people who are either developers or are plugged in at a more technical level feel and see see more strongly than users so it's hard for me

to say how it's going to impact just your average apple consumer in 2019 but like was it back in june of 2018 just around wwdc uh our episode of atp that we recorded about it was titled uh extinction level event which was yes my uh estimation of what it means to introduce iOS applications that are written with iOS APIs onto the Mac. Because it is not a strong ecosystem, and UIKit is an incredibly powerful invasive species. And even though 2018 came and went, if you're a consumer, you're like,

I got this weird news app that I never launched, like a stocks app, but I just ignore it. It doesn't seem like a big deal. But June of 2018, we're like, this is it it if they are serious about this and they follow through on it and and they don't do something fairly you know fairly radical to ensure the continued survivor survival and primacy of app kit on the mac say goodbye you my kid is gonna going to arrive and eventually wipe out everything on the mac and for lots of reasons that we discussed last summer so this summer we're getting closer to the general public realizing this is to your point they're going to give us whatever the

real marzipan story is last year was just like this is a tech experiment we're doing and we're going to ship it and we'll have more for you on this you know in the future blah blah but for now here's some apps right this year wwc they're going to presumably say remember that experiment here's the apis that you developers can write to and here's how you can port your ios apps and whatever like they're going to have a name they're going to have a story there's going to be a whole big thing to it they could still choose to say and we've merged into app kit or app kit is still the primary api and this is just reporting like there's lots of things that apple could still do to steer this ship in a different direction but all signs point to them saying here's this great new way to make mac

applications we still support and love app kit yada yada but there are so many oh ios developers who are suddenly going to be able to take their existing apps and bring them to the mac or write new apps with ui kit that are multi-platform and have the whole multi-platform story of how you can write a single application have it run on all the platforms and maybe emerge the stores and it is is a big change and you there's lots of times the big changes oh the big change from carbon to coco but if you were a mac user maybe you didn't notice that that much maybe you noticed a little bit maybe the app seemed a little different maybe you heard tech nerds talking about it but in general it was just like okay well a new way to write mac apps who cares but the difference here is that marzipan apps and ios apps look and feel different in a way that users

will notice right and they will also notice the app that they had on their phone suddenly they have it on the mac and it looks and runs kind of the same. And I think it will generally be seen as a positive change to almost everybody, except perhaps old school Mac users who will eventually get used to it because we get used to everything eventually. Yes. I loved it when you pointed out to Casey and Marco that people who are upset that Apple seems to be changing

have not been around long enough because the old timers like you and me, it's like I have seen so many different Apples in the time since I bought my first Apple computer. Like this is how it goes. And generally you get over it. But I do agree. I was thinking, and Mike and I talked about this a little bit,

when we do the upgrades every year, like struggling to come up with like best new mac app some years and honestly i would say there it's very rare that there's a new mac app that is not either a mac equivalent of an ios app because you're not going to write a new mac app and not write an ios app in cases, or it's an app that takes advantage of very specific aspects of the Mac, things you can do on the Mac that you can't do on iOS. And when I think of my favorite Mac apps over the last few years, they're one of those or they're the other. And the first case, I think it's actually great for those developers, right? Because maybe not the

ones who put all the work in to make it work on the Mac, but for the next generation of those developers, because they can come to the Mac without all that extra work. And for the other set, I don't think anything's going to happen to them because as long as they have access to the things that you can't do on iOS, then they'll have a, they'll have a role, but that's kind of, I mean, there's not a lot, like most of the apps that I use on my Mac every day have been around for a very long time. And the few that have that I that aren't like that are either electron apps like Slack, or they're, you know, these unique kind of apps like audio hijack, or, you know, some of the other rogue Amoeba stuff, which does things with audio that iOS just doesn't let you do. does things with audio that iOS just doesn't let you do. So on that front, I think it's kind of okay. I do get a little concerned that we're going to either end up with, well, I'm not concerned if they redefine what Mac apps are supposed to look like to make it seem to fit more with iOS. That'll be frustrating as a user to have a kind of like a redesign that makes everything

look more iOS-y. But I think I would rather have that than what we sort of have with those four Marzipan apps today in Mojave, which is apps behave a certain way unless they don't, which is not, that's inconsistent and super weird. But it's kind of hard. can't imagine i mean marzipan may be um it's going to be better than what we have in mojave for no doubt but i kind of have a hard time envisioning it coming all the way across to saying oh these apps are just indistinguishable like carbon and coco apps indistinguishable from one another they're almost it's impossible to tell where it came from i think it's impossible to tell where it came from i think it's far more likely that it'll be very clear that these apps originated on ios and

therefore the only solution for consistency in the interface if apple seeks that is to redefine a bunch of things about how traditional mac apps are supposed to look and make them you know push those apps toward being more ios like i mean back in the carbon coco uh transition it was fairly obvious for people skilled in the art as they say which one was carbon coco and especially in the beginning because just the basic behaviors of like text fields and controls were different enough that you could just tell but they eventually the way they fixed that was not saying and the coco way will be the new way in general they made sure that as carbon faded and coco became dominant that all of the quote-unquote mac-like behaviors that we had come to expect from the carbon

controls were ported to the coco controls right and there it was a little bit of a hybrid and a but they didn't just say well forget about that old behavior that you used to like coco controls don't work like that they they worked so hard for many years on trying to ensure parity basically to bring coco up to the the carbon standards in terms of mac likeness and to bring carbon up to the standards of coco in terms of functionality and integration with all unix world and all that other stuff and i have some faith that they're going to do something similar with the marzipan apps and that in the beginning it will be easy to tell because even just the most basic controls and navigation won't look or work right. But eventually, like all the different places in the UI, they don't have selectable text or don't support copy and paste or don't support context

menus that they will eventually provide a way to implement those and implement them themselves in their own applications. That's my hope anyway, not that I'm saying they're going to make them all just feel like Cocoa Apps. Surely it will be a hybrid, and I can imagine them saying, this is our opportunity to bring touch to the Mac, so don't do any changes to the controls that make them less friendly to touch, so everything's going to be bigger and waste more of our screen space, which won't matter because we'll have giant 31.6-inch displays on our Mac Pros, so everything will be awesome.

But anyway, I have some faith that they will work towards the goal of letting the mac continue to be the mac in the sense that it is a you know that it is a truck and steve jobs is parlance like because otherwise what the hell is the point of having the mac if it's just a larger screen with a mouse and keyboard to run ios app there's no point in the beginning it's going to look and feel a lot like that just due to time constraints and the development of the api and honestly i think a lot of us will be happy just to get like the uh the ios port of messages and finally have feature parity like that will feel like a huge upgrade even though the new messages app will not quote unquote be mac like the existing messages app isn't particularly mac like all right same thing with like photos and and

all you know when they did like it was like a lion or something when they started iosifying all of the mac apps either by using uh what is that the ux kit or whatever by using like their sort of look-alike work-alike framework for the mac that uh that apis were a lot like ui kit but it wasn't really ui kit and changing the uis of the application so they look more like their iOS counterparts, removing functionality and making them frustrating and everything, the actual legit straight ahead Marzipan versions of those will be upgrades both aesthetically and also probably functionally. And they'll probably also be even more Mac-like than the existing ones. So there'll be that little honeymoon period where finally Apple gets to bring us all of

its old applications and can disband the Mac teams and combine them with the ui kit teams and do all that stuff then there'll be the uncomfortable period where we'll be able to tell the difference and we'll have these you know quote unquote real mac apps sitting alongside the marzipan ones but then i hope eventually as the extinction level event progresses and app get fades into the dustbin of history that the marzipan apps that we're left with will have adopted all the utility of the applications they replace not necessarily all the individual features and ways of doing things but all the utility that that's my hope anyway so our friend uh steve tron smith tweeted um last week that he is very confident based on evidence he doesn't wish to make public

at this point that apple is planning new likely UI kit music podcast, perhaps even books apps for Mac OS to join the new TV app. I expect the four to be the next wave of marzipan apps, grain of salt, etc. And yes, this means the much discussed and long awaited breakup of iTunes. Finally, he says, and I, you know, I'll be there to to dance a jig on the grave of iTunes, finally, he says. And I, you know, I'll be there to dance a jig on the grave of iTunes, too. And I use it every day to play music. But I do think about that moment when these apps will come over to the Mac. And I think, yeah, but they're not super functional. Like, if I had to switch from iTunes to music to play all my music every day on my mac the music app as it's currently iterated on iphone and ipad i don't love it like browsing

music in it is not great partially i think because it's designed for a smaller screen and i would actually argue i don't know if you've spent much time in the music app on the ipad but that that feels very much like an app that the iPad layout itself is an afterthought right down to the fact that it's got that now playing screen that just kind of comes up on the side. Cause you know, whatever, I guess we could do that. It makes it look like the iPhone. Um, so I, I, I have those concerns, right? Which is like, be careful what you wish for getting rid of iTunes, trying to do everything and be everything and replacing with a TV app and a podcast app and a music app and all of that sounds good.

But at the same time, then I start to think, but what if it's just the iOS app? And I get a little concerned that those iOS apps, maybe not right, maybe they're going to get pushed forward. And this is going to be the impetus to make those iOS apps have more features and more feature parody with the Mac because they don't want them to be as much of a regression. But I'm a little concerned that what it'll really be is just those kind of limited functionality iOS apps dropped on the Mac. You realize what's going to happen, don't you? This is something you might not want to think about, but I think it's in all our futures.

iTunes will be the new QuickTime Player 7. Oh, for sure. For sure. It'll be in the utilities folder and if you need to like sync over a wire or get access to the uh the application storage space or any of those like things that or or maybe even like sideload mp3s onto your hard drive you'll just have to go to uh you'll just have to go to the utilities folder because my my guess is that the music app if it comes on on the mac is going to be literally an apple music app but i think

it'll be quicktime player 7 in another sense in that it will be the application that we all wax nostalgic about and say boy they replaced quicktime player 7 with this crappy new quicktime player and all and i every day when i want to get anything done i have to go back to the real quicktime player quicktime player 7 this will be the best thing to happen to itunes's reputation And every day when I want to get anything done, I have to go back to the real QuickTime Player, QuickTime Player 7. This will be the best thing to happen to iTunes' reputation in years. Exactly. It'll suddenly be our favorite application.

I can't believe they replaced it with that crappy music application. You can't do anything. And it's like one screen. You have no options. I can't sort stuff. I can't edit my metadata. I can't do anything with it.

And so if I ever were going to get anything done with my music, I have to launch iTunes Player 7. Oh, sorry. iTunes Classic, or whatever they ended up calling it. I mean, yeah. We spent all this time hating iTunes, and then it suddenly becomes our most favorite application in the entire world, simply because the new ones have limited functionality.

And now, on the flip side of that, this thing gives me some optimism, is part of the reason that quicktime player 10 or x or whatever you want to pronounce it never got all the functionality of quicktime player 7 setting aside all the framework stuff of the actual deprecation of quicktime and the advent of av foundation and all that other stuff is that like that application and several other ones also arrived just as apple basically stopped uh doing any serious development of mac applications basically like yeah it's not that they couldn't have continued to improve insert name of bundled apple mac os application here they just didn't like in general the applications stayed mostly

the same there weren't big teams advancing them even flagship things like photos once they had iosified it spent a long time not getting a lot of new features and when it did they didn't really rethink much of anything i think about the the horrendous interface to uh shared photo streams and photos that tiny little popover with that horrible autocomplete field you know that whole thing and an inability to tell when any action has taken place and trying to edit things that turn into those little blue cells in a very limited space on a giant 27-inch iMac screen.

And how many years that has been like, yep, that's good enough, it's fine. Like one tiny little toolbar button hidden way up in the corner, huge expanses of wasted space. And compare that to the development lifetime of iPhoto which started very simple and got and was worked on year after year and got more and more features and more and more advanced and better and better over the years it's just night and day

so you could say QuickTime Player 10 was terrible because you know just the QuickTime Player 7 was better or you can just say that that was the time that apple put their foot off the gas and now with the advent of marzipan when they replace itunes with the music app or whatever yeah initially it'll be crappy and not have a lot of features but maybe the second year the music app on the mac will get a bunch of new features because now they have all the wood behind one arrow and that team is able to execute and make one code base that runs on all their platforms and it's more than one person or half a person working on it for a year right it's instead it's like five people working on it for a year and maybe they can make progress like that that's my hope that they will come back to developing applications for the mac because now they no

longer have the excuse that there's like five people in the company left to know app kid and they put a half person in this app and a half person on that app and all that other stuff so initially yeah it's going to be bad and the music app is going to be extremely limited but year two and year three are the real where we'll see what the real deal is um because they do need to add functionality like can you imagine like you mentioned how bad the music app is on the ipad and how it feels like the expansions and afterthought can you imagine that on a 5k imac the music application and you and you zoom it to full screen it's just i i do that that's that is the exactly the nightmare that i am having is what you just described i mean you don't need all the functionality of itunes but like you need a different paradigm that screen

is way bigger the input devices are way different and it's just it's the wrong fit right and and unlike unlike the tv application where there's no mac equivalent now and we just can't do anything like we got to watch it all on itunes but like oh at least there's a tv app we do have a music player application and for all its warts you can listen to music in different ways with it and the new application will be like yeah it's like a big phone that fills your mac screen and i'm just going to give that app the middle finger one of the reasons the quicktime player 10 is what it is is because like yeah it's like a big phone that fills your mac screen and i'm just going to give that app the middle finger one of the reasons the quicktime player 10 is what it is is because apple decided

that it was philosophically like not going to invest a lot of effort into little utility apps when functionality existed elsewhere which is i felt like that was kind of an older school version of apple where it was um you know, Preview is a good example of an app like that. And QuickTime Player 7 was like that. And there are other examples too. But like with QuickTime Player 10, they were really saying, you know, look, if you want to trim little videos out of bigger videos and then save them out, you should just use

iMovie. Like it's right there, but we're not going to, you know, we're not going to make that a particularly easy thing to do in this app this app is is much less functional and it's the it's the same apple that you know again they have preview and text edit and things like that but I think modern apple with a whole other platform to build on ios looked at it and was like now we really just need to be a media player some basic functionality that's all it needs to be they just use iMovie otherwise it was uh mentioned the the framework difference that really does make a difference because the old QuickTime player before it was seven but whatever the QuickTime player pre-10 uh was there to show off QuickTime everything

the QuickTime everything the QuickTime could do it was just a gateway to the functionality inherent in the QuickTime framework so that's a front end for the quick time framework whereas quick time player 10 was an app that they built because they knew that eventually in fact this fall is the eventually the whole quick time uh framework was going to be deprecated because it's 32-bit and they didn't want to work on it anymore so that's why quick times player 10 is bad yeah and av foundation is mostly about you know encoding decoding and playback and not a general purpose editing thing in container format like quick time was much more extensive right so not only do they they want an app they could show it all off but the making an app that shows it off like in the app itself not that it

was trivial but you were basically just exposing existing framework functionality the quick time player didn't contain that functionality the framework contained it uh but we were long since left that world so to put that similar functionality in quicktime player it would basically be like writing iMovie like it's not sitting there waiting for you in the framework because it's not a front end for quicktime because quicktime you know was no longer going to be a thing so i i kind of feel for for quicktime players and that's that's also one of the reasons that no one really replaced it with something because it's like okay well do you just are you just going to write quicktime player 7 again because we've already got that and if you're not you're going to write your own video editor because that's pretty hard like quicktime i'm

kind of sad about quicktime because it was and is a great technology that desperately needed to be modernized but the world modernized itself around it and it got left behind and so now it's like it's not just the 32-bit 64-bit but it's everything the container formats the codex the quicktime was a pioneer that just didn't keep up and so all the existing video editing applications and the various frameworks are written for a different world and there's no equivalent to quicktime it's you know it's sad but for the other applications like preview and text edit i'm always impressed by their functionality especially preview like preview doesn't seem like it can do a lot but like

you know if you if you copy an image to the clipboard and you're like can i put this image into preview and crop it but it's in the clipboard how do i get an image in the clipboard into preview so you make you're like maybe i just make a new document because you're a mac user you hit command n and there's your clipboard in the document exactly size to whatever was in your clipboard and you're like oh it just did it for me there and then you just crop it and you save it and you can convert it like quick time uh preview does expose all the functionality inherent in the ability to read and write images which unlike quick time preview does expose all the functionality inherent in the ability to read and write images which unlike quick time is still in mac os in 64-bit variants

and so it does a surprising amount and same thing with text edit with all the different text editing features and the ability to attempt to open word documents i'm generally impressed with most of the built-in applications right up to the point where the apple stopped developing them which was at this point like several years ago. Well, let's take a break and then I have some more Mac stuff to talk to you about. Let me tell you about our sponsor. Our next sponsor is ExpressVPN. You know, cybercrime is something you think that happens to other people.

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one year package thank you expressvpn for supporting upgrade and all of relay fm so john last week um bb edit came back in the mac app store which is great it was foretold last june another one of these things last june they apple said that panic and bare bones were going to come back to the mac app store transmit came back last fall and bb edit came back last week interesting combination of factors right some policy decisions with a mac app store some new functionality in mojave that lets apps ask for permission to do things that in the past they couldn't ask permission to do which were were restrictions that led apps to say well if we can't do this we're just not going to be

in the store like read the entire disc is a good example of that um but also i think it's interesting that when these apps came back they came back in basically a special edition it's the subscription model edition which is if you want to just buy an app and get that app and you can use it forever but you're going to have to pay an upgrade fee for the next major version you do that on the transmit or bare bones websites. If you want to get them in the Mac app store, you sign up for a subscription, which is annual and gives you access to whatever the latest version is whenever they release it. Um, and, and that's how they've managed to figure out how do we deal with not having upgrade pricing in the Mac app store.

So, um, I think that's interesting on its own. It also has gotten me to start thinking of what the Mac App Store is going to look like in the aftermath of Marzipan as this new OS comes out this fall, whether we're going to see a flood or not of iOS apps. Do you have any thoughts about the BBEdit thing, though, first? Like, I'm not going to buy a Mac App Store subscription to bb edit because i i'm happy to just have it and the one that i get from barebones.com um but it it is a sign of apple as we said last june directly addressing some of the issues with mac app store through this combination of adding an app store editorial and fixing some of their policies and changing some of

the things in the operating system and it's it's better than it was i feel like there's still inherently uh a mismatch it's like a bad fit between the mac app store and popular powerful mac applications that existed before the mac app store and it's to apple's credit that they've been trying to bridge that gap trying to woo these developers back but mostly they've done so in a non-systematic way like i still think the mismatch is there even though these things are back they're back because of the herculean efforts of apple to woo these developers and the efforts of these developers to do what's required like it's a cooperation between these developers and apples to figure out a way to get this to work but in the end when they've all figured it out and they're back on the store

we are now not in a situation where if you make a powerful mac application that it's a no-brainer to go on the mac app store it's not only is it not a no-brainer like it's it doesn't seem like a benefit and it seems like you're questioning whether you might want to do it at all like which which is not where the mac app store wants to be you want it to be a place where developers say i want my app on there because that's where i'm going to make all my money because that's best for my application i can make the best application there and i can make the most money there and that is just not true of the mac app store for powerful applications traditional mac applications right even though they've done all this work to bridge this gap and to get these high-profile applications, I don't feel like they have fundamentally changed the nature of the Mac

App Store. It is not attractive to that type of application developer. And the users have learned that if you're a user who wants that kind of application, buy it direct. That has been what we've learned. And I feel like that is still the case like steve troughton smith to mention him again or i think it was him maybe it was uh gee rambo dumped the uh the entitlements of like one of the mac app store versions was

like bb or whatever and half of them are still called temporary exception dot something dot whatever right like it's not there's a mismatch there and no amount of schmoozing or like getting flagship applications onto there are working hard with individual developers is going to change that. And that's not a scalable system anyway. Is Apple going to work like that over the course of a year with every single developer who wants to make an application that just wants to do things that Mac applications used to do? No, like direct Mac applications with, with notarizing, which will be mandatory shortly,

you know, uh, and all the other things they can impose is still the way to go. like direct Mac applications with notarizing, which will be mandatory shortly, and all the other things they can impose is still the way to go. If you make that type of application, you spend a lot of time thinking, do I have to go in the Mac App Store? Will I actually make enough sales for it to be worth what I know will be the huge hassle? Is it worth potentially having the Mac App Store version

behave differently and have a different set of support concerns than the other ones are there some features i can only do in the direct sale version these questions still exist and highlight the fact that there is a mismatch between what those mac apps want to do and what the mac app store allows i think some of those temporary exceptions are apple wanting i mean obviously there was a pr move that's why they announced it at the keynote to say we're making changes to the mac app store when i talked to the people involved in this announcement in june what they basically said is yeah a lot of the stuff's not there and it's not going to be there in the

fall um and clearly apple solution was well we're going to give you temporary permission now. Those temporary exceptions have been there. Like temporary exception has existed since the dawn of the Mac app store. That has always been their tool to get apps in there, but they didn't rename them. They have added some, but I think you're right. I think this is the challenges. How, how far down the path do they go? Is there a whole other set of, uh, different permissions that Mac apps can get maybe this fall or not? They did enough to get bare bones and panic and Office 365 and Creative Cloud.

And even them barely. Like, I think there are still potential, if not functional, then sort of semantic differences between like the Mac App Store version of BBA and the direct one because there have to be like different transmit for sure transmit there are some differences where there's some features that are are um i think panic has said that they will do them at some point which is very strongly like they can't do them until apple opens that up for them to do this feature that's in the regular version that's just not in the mac and if you think about it from their perspective the panic or bb like if they're making their application they those features that were in there that they can't do in the mac app store they made them because they think they're good features that people want to use and the fact that they can't put them in the mac app store means that they are like they're working so hard

to get as much of the functionality of the app they made into the mac app store it's like why am i working so hard to wedge this into this this this funnel when i i have the perfectly good working applications that i could sell to people right now and i have my own store and i'm a big enough company and i have existing customer base and like the upside is like maybe potentially you can get a big boost in sales but maybe not because most people like these applications have abandoned the mac app store so part of it is just a relationship with Apple or like the goodwill and the PR and being featured by Apple. And again, not a scalable system and doesn't change the fundamental nature of the Mac App Store. So is the future of the Mac App Store repository for iOS apps that are coming to the Mac?

Is that its future? So, yeah. So that's the flip side of this is if you're coming from iOS, you're coming from an environment that's even more constrained than the Mac. And so no big deal, right? And especially if they combine the app stores or have a way to have an application that works across all the platforms. Like if, as we were discussing, the introduction of UIKit and the iOS APIs on macOS is an extinction-level event

for all quote-unquote native Mac APIs to eventually be replaced by iOS ones and Mac developers to eventually be replaced by ios ones and mac developers to eventually face by ios developers this all works itself out long term because yeah the old funny guys will be there with their weird applications they need all these special permissions but that's probably not where the growth is it's not like there's hundreds of those clamoring to make new applications every year like you said like what is the best new mac app this year sometimes it's hard to tell there are tons of ios apps there are tons of ios developers and they fit right into the app store because they're used to this level of abuse

slash whatever like they're they've got stockholm syndrome or whatever and they and they have accepted that this is the channel where all the sales come from because it is literally the channel where all the sales come from on the phone uh and they don't know about the the direct model or whatever so long term i think this problem will mostly work itself out it may come up again because eventually you'll be in a situation unless apple's the only one who's going to make applications like pro level applications like the the apple attitude often seems to be that uh the only application that needs any kind of special permissions is xcode and everything else can fit into the app store model but even you just look at something like logic or you know

photoshop or lightroom or any of these pro level applications that still would have to jump through some hoops to work in the mac app store and apple would still have to help them jump through those hoops that's not a healthy ecosystem of new pro applications and thus far very few ios applications have reached the heights of functionality that the best mac apps have there are a few of them out there we can name some graphic design applications on ios or some other apps that are super impressive and some ones that are up and coming like what ferrite or whatever is that the only writing application to use right but the highs on the mac are very high trying to get those developers to add that kind of functionality to a mac app written with ios apis will be uh a big uh a big uh rung in the ladder and the climb

to slowly replace the old mac ways with all these new mac ways and i think it could happen i think like the the path ahead for apple and the back is fairly clear but it's going to be a difficult road and success is not guaranteed because we have proof that people make tons and tons of ios applications of sort of like middling complexity that are appropriate for phones and ipads but we don't yet have proof that there will be mac applications with the complexity of a logic or pro tools or a photoshop or all those other things like we can't just keep relying on these same old developers like panic and bb edit in adobe and microsoft like eventually we need more new blood like with the uh i'm trying to think of all the the great new uh ios applications but you've got affinity as as a new name um uh pixel mater what are some other ones there are

some there are some very powerful ios applications that i can imagine them either or they already make a kick butt mac application or they certainly could make one so have some faith in the future but i want to see an existence proof that amazing new complex feature-filled applications written in ui kit can appear on the mac and fill those gaps my gut feeling too is that the priority with Marzipan is to get, is not to allow people to use Marzipan to then break out of the box of iOS and add more functionality on the Mac, right? So I would put money that for a very long time, if ever, if you want to have access to the system at a level that is way beyond what iOS apps can do, your answer is to write Mac apps, like to write them the old way, because it would seem to be that would be one of the last boxes that Apple would feel like they needed to check in terms of letting people build apps using that framework, using that code base, and then being able to write a whole disk backup app with it, right?

So it feels like the iOS apps that come over with Marzipan or are conceived as being iOS and Mac from the get-go using Marzipan are not going to be pushing into areas that some mac apps live in because you know apple won't let you like i would imagine it'll be much more locked down the security model will be the ios security model and you'll be very limited to what you'll be able to have access to on the mac and that'll just be a function of marzipan maybe forever it'll be a tricky part we'll getting beginning them to play nice with the the mac system environment so you mentioned rogami about all those applications that manipulate the

various sound things that sort of a system level that in no way would fit in any kind of app store right that's one side of that but think about the applications that are running and how how rogami was apps see those applications and how they see the changes that the rogami apps are making to the system if rogami tries to change the inputs of a marzipan app will they will it correctly will the will the pipes connect in the right way right will they see those changes will you know like just behaving in a way on a mac system behaving in a mac-like way understanding when they when all these settings that don't exist on the iOS devices are changed out from underneath those apps, that they respond to those changes in the expected ways.

That's a great example of one of those details that if they don't nail it on the first try and it seems like there's a big disconnect, second and third and fourth visions of Marzipan, if this is indeed the path forward, will include connecting those dots. And eventually, I think the rogami apps will work them right before apple totally crushes the rogami apps ability to run it all

on the mac which would be a shame right yeah now steve trott and smith did try and succeed to get apple script sort of working in a marzipan app automation that's a whole other thing and and uh get services to show up in an apple script or in a marzipan app and uh so it's it's i bring those up just to say i think you make a great point which is it's not just how these apps work and look and feel on the mac it's also going to be are they apps like do they interact or are they like dark matter right like are they there in their own little they interact or are they like dark matter, right? Like, are they there in their own little world where it's like,

well, they exist, but Mac apps look and they're like, doesn't look like anything to me. It's just Marzipan. And that's not great. You know, just like how in Mojave, if certain frameworks die,

all of the Marzipan apps quit. Like not just one of them, they all quit because they're really one process at one level. They just have a common, frameworks die all of the marzipan apps quit like not just one of them they all quit because they're really one process at one level they just have a common they just have a common parent process i mean it's the same thing if you kill login if you kill login window on your mac today everything disappears because it's the parent process of your entire login it feels very classic to me in a way though right which is like oh no that it looks like an app but it's not really

an app quite it's not quite and that that goes over lots of stuff, including, yes, can I grab audio from that? Can I, you know, what if I adjust the inputs? It also does mean, like, things like automation. Is it scriptable? A base Mac app, I can tell it to launch using Apple Script. And I can use UI scripting, you know, to do things in Keyboard Maestro or something like that. scripting you know to do things in in a keyboard maestro or something like that that may all be completely broken but you know that that will make those apps less good citizens on the mac and you know in the long run i suspect that something more like shortcuts will be the

approved user automation system on the mac too but we do have a lot of things that sort of define what a mac app does now and if if it's like oh yeah well you just can't use audio hijack with this app this class of apps that's less good for the platform so that's that's part of that's why that's why they announced it and gave themselves a year before they actually had to ship anything for developers because it's really hard some of that stuff that's broken like they'll never fix because it's that's not the way forward right you know i think apple script is a great example i could imagine them saying like yeah it's not really supported apple events apple it's not or even stuff like the services menu which is from next step right they that could probably

be made to work as but if that's not going to be in their future plan they won't ever bother enabling that function like this is no point and on the other hand apple has been laying the groundwork for this for years with things like share extensions which were conceived and implemented as a cross-platform thing long before marzipan existed they're different like share extensions on the mac are different than they are on ios but they're similar enough that you could see how by making both mac applications and ios applications have this share extension model despite the code and api differences it is a it is one of the rare cases of a new system level thing that apple actually made across platforms that is just waiting for all those tubes to be hooked up

behind the scenes like oh there you go remember all the share extensions you've been writing now there's a unified way to write them and they work across all platforms and it's a paradigm that works but there's so many places where where that doesn been writing? Now there's a unified way to write them, and they work across all platforms, and it's a paradigm that works. But there's so many places where that doesn't exist, mostly because there's system-level functionality on the Mac that has absolutely no equivalent in iOS. And it should. The answer to this is not, well, don't worry about that because it's not on iOS.

The answer to that is add stuff like that to iOS. Give file system access to iOS. Let it see external storage. Let you control the system sound routing. We all know the iOS complaints complaints that's the solution and if the solution on the mac is we're going to do all those things but what we're going to do is we're going to implement them on ios and then bring those implementations to the mac all the existing mac implementations will just fade away that's one path to the future and arguably is a reasonable one because

a lot of these systems as implemented on the mac are very old and very creaky and you know things like services got people who use them and love them they're great but they are not they are not a well-loved piece of uh uh software from the perspective of how often new features get added or even how how well they're surfaced in the ui if you don't know if services exist you can use mac for years and just never see them yeah apple actually did some things to services in mojave which is super weird but it would not be a big leap for them to find a way to bridge the gap in in terms of saying well we've got a new solution that is basically like services but it's using the share functionality that would be addressed in the same way um it wouldn wouldn't surprise me if that's the direction they go. But as an iPad user,

I have to say the flip side of all of this really is that I hope that part of the process means the iPad apps get better and more powerful. Because if you're going to do some extra work to add functionality to them, especially so that they work on larger screens and they work on the Mac, maybe that means that the iPad can pick that stuff up too and that the ipad apps will be more functional i'd take that i'd love that that's kind of a side effect of the the app centric nacer of what was originally iphone os like that the the entire phone was the app even when it was in springboard was the app that conception of ios that it's all about the apps we need more powerful apps for the ipad i can't wait to see what the new apps can do right what we need on the ipad and have needed for years is a more

powerful ios that that's all we usually talk about on the mac what new features does this os have oh yeah and by the way there are apps that run on it and it's so inverted on on the ios right we so rarely think about what the os can do what features have they added to the os because the os like whatever it's just a way to run apps right and yeah we all know under the covers there are apis that are important so and so forth but the apps are so such take such a prime place that there is no thing of like oh the os added system-wide text to speech everywhere the os added the ability a new you know the ability to mount network shares using this new protocol the os added a way to control sound inputs and

outputs and create new like the os added a new context menu and a new like we don't think about what the os can do for us in ios because it hasn't been doing enough whereas on the mac all those things we just talked about are things you can do at the os level that influence all the apps that are running in that stew in that environment a new way to manage windows the dock itself like all these things that we consider part of the os on ios we get we get crumbs we get table scraps and we don't we tend not to think except for maybe ipad users asking for better multitasking but like we need to ask for and should expect so much more out of the os itself in ios instead of just being like a status bar and a springboard for us and like a maybe maybe a way to split the

screen up a couple different ways that's we need more yeah now that's my that whenever i come back to the uh you know storage stuff it's that's one of my things or the sound stuff those are two of the things that really get me peripherals yeah usbc on these ipads now i know right so we'll see what happens there what you want to talk hardware a little bit because i do think it'll be a big year for the mac in terms of hardware lots of possibilities you're gonna get well i say your mac pro but we'll see you you're gonna get a mac pro you can judge if it's your master theory yeah a mac pro yeah it's modular i don't i don't know if i believe that i you know they just mean the monitors and built and that's all they mean

it's fine that's it could could just be that that's literally all that they mean or they could mean some aspect of the production which is that they have stuff that they can drop in but it's not a user thing like just obsessing over like they give us so little they give us like one adjective and we spend two years talking about that one adjective what could it mean that is the the the worst kind of criminology that that is the kind of stuff that happened um without giving any spoilers that happened on star trek discovery a couple weeks ago where a character said something phrased in a certain way that they created this entire like conspiracy theory about how that phrasing was similar to phrasing of another a character in another star trek series and so it was all connected man i was like i'm

caught up on discovery i think but i don't even know what you're talking about probably because i haven't seen the other star trek series also because it's really dumb i just re-watched that episode yesterday and i'm like that whole thing came from this one line reading of one character. Come on. But that's, you know, yes, we are reduced to that, which is what does it mean? It might be modular. And it's like from a third source who saw it one time or heard people talking about it briefly and heard the word modular and doesn't know what it means. And it's hard to tell. tell i mean there will be one this year they said you know i imagine we'll see it at wwdc at least as a promo maybe they'll have one like they did with the imac pro where it's like don't touch it don't you know it must be looked at don't even play it but uh but you can see it and then it'll ship on december 29th and

that'll be that'll be fine but um there are also rumors about that new macbook pro um like the 15 inch that's actually a 16 inch that i know marco's excited about which maybe they would finally have a new design where they would not use the old keyboard that has gotten uh such bad publicity for apple over the last few years yeah the latest tweet rumor i saw was actually that's going to be a 2020 model and people were getting excited about it i don't think we can wait that long but yeah there's a mac laptop with a new keyboard and a hardware escape key i feel like is in our future is it in our future in 2019 i god i hope so it well i mean it wouldn't it wouldn't surprise me if it is more like 2020 it would be much better if it was in 2019 the iMac is the same way like we got that new iMac thing I flew to New York I talked to the

product manager I'm getting briefed about it uh you know in the car on the way to meet with the product manager um and I get there and I'm like so it's just a you know it's just a speed bump right and and when you think about it now it's like okay well in the spring of 2019 they redesigned they did new imacs it's like there's no way they're gonna there's gonna be a new imac design this year because why would they have just turned over the new imac in the spring if they were going to do a brand new imac in the fall it seems like that is now a 2020 product if it happens yeah and that and that's a product that really needs a redesign right like that is we are still using the iMac is the 2012 car model and just update it every so often but it is a 2012 iMac that we're still that Apple is still selling with updated processors yeah we talked about this

on ATP like they're despite the fact that it's that it looks just like a screen with a little stand you're like well what the hell else can you do it I don't care about the chin make the chin smaller who cares like there are things you can do like there are many design challenges inherent in that computer that they can take another run at and whatever it's been seven years now seven years is a good run for a case design like and if you people have these these very aggressive uh uh images that they uh make out there of like showing the iMac with the year underneath each design and how radically they changed you had like the little gumdrops and then the the lifesavers and then you got the the the cool uh looking ones you get dalmatian flower power then you got the little one with the arm on it and then you got the flat white ones then you got the flat

silver ones and the flat silver ones get skinny and then it's skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny skinny and present day like there's this huge run at the end where evolution stops um and in some respects it's because the design was refined and made it made more essential or whatever johnny ivy word you want to use and you know it didn't need to change in any radical way but every every seven years or so it's a good time to rethink it and so i i feel like it's part of the reason the speed bumps are just speed bumps is because the new design isn't ready but you don't want to wait for the new design to be ready to speed bump them so you speed bump them in the existing case with the existing cooling

and do the best you can but i really hope there is a redesign in the future i hope i hope the redesign in the future of the plain old iMac is part of the rededication to the mac because i feel like the imac pro is the last the last mac design that predates apple's rededication of the mac which sounds weird but it's like isn't that isn't that the bellwether of their rededication the amazing imac pro i don't think so i think that project and that design that idea started before apple had decided to rededicate itself to the mac in full oh yeah it's literally the replacement for the mac pro because they were killing the mac pro and then they then they changed their mind and the imac pro became

this yeah transitional product and changing your mind about the mac pro isn't just deciding to make one computer that you weren't going to make before it's rethinking the entire idea that it's possible to cover the problem space of mac users with a very limited feature set and they realize that's actually not it's not really possible and furthermore it's a mistake like we're it's a misreading of our audience for these products to think that by simplifying the products we can simplify their lives and everything will work out fine and these people like my life is complex i have problems. I need a tool that helps me solve them. No amount of simplifying your hardware

is going to change that. Give me powerful, versatile computers. So the Mac mini is a reflection of that. The Mac Pro is coming a reflection of that. The iMac Pro is not a reflection of that because the iMac Pro is the last of the, it was going to be the previous top end before they realized that it couldn't be the top end

because it wasn't top endy enough. I feel like the definition of what a modern Mac is, what a Mac is now, the iMac Pro is that because it was the first Mac to have the T2. Yeah, it fits in. It just doesn't fit where they thought it was going to fit. They thought it was going to be the very end of the line, and it's not. Yeah, and I don't think they changed their definition of like, here's what the Mac in the future is going to have it's going to have the

t2 it's going to do all these different things that are you know that we're going to take off of the the shoulders of other controllers or of the intel processor all of that i think they still believe but it it yeah it was not it was meant to be uh the the pro mac in an era where there was no mac pro it was meant to be the apex and it's just not it's not the apex it's not the the pro mac in an era where there was no mac pro it was meant to be the apex and it's just not it's not the apex it's not the the ways in which is not the apex is revealing of like apple's customers saying that's an amazing computer but i can't fit this inside it it can't do this for me it doesn't give me this amount of versatility that's that's the the the change in the thinking i hope that thinking will eventually be reflected in the

laptop line i see no evidence of that yet but i really hope it will i mean a hardware escape key is actually a good step in that direction of saying we gave you an escape key and but what we've heard from you is you don't like that escape key so here's a hardware version of it which that seems like such a subtle thing but it's a reflection it's like well we gave you what we wanted you have an escape key right and we're just saying no you don't understand just having some place where i can press my finger to make escape is not an adequate solution there is enough of a difference between pressing my finger on the screen and pressing a key that it's worth your trouble to make that a physical key so please

do that even though it seems like a subtle thing and a simplification and it's nice and uniform and the touch bar goes end to end and it's all awesome and everything please think really hard about that and the next time you make a keyboard oh and by the way yada yada all the other keyboard problems that we've been discussed forever but i feel like the hardware escape key of all the things is the most important sign kind of like the usba ports that we assume might be on a pro mac or whatever like do they recognize a certain amount of ugliness that apple is willing to put a complexity and ugliness that apple is willing to put into its products non-uniformity non-uniformity asymmetry uh not backwards looking but at least not like relentlessly forward looking

because they realize a certain set of customers have a problem or a situation or a preference that they want served in the best way possible, even if it makes the computers that Apple makes slightly less pure or less of the vision of the future that Apple thinks should happen. So that's what I'm looking for in all the new Mac stuff. I think it's reflected in the Mac mac mini which did not reduce its number of ports to some ridiculously small level and it is amazingly powerful and all that other stuff like they made a versatile little computer for people who like versatile little computers they could have made that same computer made it much smaller and just put like four uh thunderbolt forts in the back of it and said done and done and no one would like it one thunderbolt port in the back of it no i can't just figure it figured out two maybe two maybe two

the the um the thing that i think bugs me the most about the new imax is the fact that it's the it's the first apple product since december of 16 to be released that is a new apple product or no december 17 when the imac pro came out to be released without t2 all of the oh the only other remaining t2 products out there are products that haven't been updated in too long and we there are lots of reasons why the biggest reason why is that that would require a complete redesign of the iMac and they would need to get rid of the spinning discs and all of those things but it does make it feel like a holdout of a of a bygone era not 2012 where the design of the hardware comes from on the outside but just of the you know of 2017 and before when what a mac was was different and it's been redefined and then here come these things that are i mean the good news is in like five years we're going to be talking about how um max made from in 2019 can't

run old versions of the operating system and can't do all these things except for those imax because they didn't have the t2 and they therefore they have this capability um but it just that that really bugs me at the same time i don't think the right way people have talked about like the iMac Pro being the basis of a new iMac design. It's like the iMac Pro is designed like the iMac. It's got the new cooling system in it and it's a very different system on the inside. But like, I feel like if they're going to do a new iMac, it should not look like the iMac Pro because they really should make an effort to clean those bezels up. Because if you think about where all monitors and laptops and

screens of all kinds are going, TVs, the bezels on the iMac and the iMac Pro are enormous. And that would be the first thing that I would rather it be a little thicker, quite frankly, because I don't see the thickness of my imac and have the bezels go away and i know you know so i i keep thinking there is a new imac design out there but that's what it is is a a really new imac design and it'll have a t2 at least in the larger of the two imacs it'll be that new design but um i don't know when that is. Is that 2020? Is that 2021? It may be a while. My optimistic take is that if we had seen new T2 iMacs that adopted some of the cooling structures of the iMac Pro, it would mean that any redesign of the iMac case is much farther in the future than we think it is, right? Right. imac case is much farther in the future than we think it is right right the fact that they did this stopgap thing uh makes me think that the imac design is imminent and it wasn't worth their while to basically make a non-pro imac pro in the old case like better pooling and stuff not so

imminent that they could wait and not update the processors yes exactly and so and so it's heartening on multiple levels. The idea that they did ship the speed bump, that they didn't just say, eh, we'll wait it out, right? That they said, we can do a speed bump while we wait, and we should do a speed bump while we wait, because it's better than having nothing. And so I agree with all that. Despite these computers having some disappointing aspects, all signs point to their reasoning process making sense, assuming our speculation is correct. And I would say the opportunities to do a new iMac case are more than just shrinking bezels or changing thicknesses. There are many opportunities.

There are problems with the iMac design inherent in its nature that can be tackled. You could pick just one of them and spend the entire redesign figuring out one of them is the relationship between your face and the screen. Unless you have a VESA mount like you, which most people don't, that relationship with a fixed bent L-shaped stand is not optimal in many different situations.

You could do something about that. Apple has experience making iMac screens that move into different positions and different heights. They could decide to tackle that. Say they don't want to tackle that. Second problem with making iMac screens that move into different positions and different heights. They could decide to tackle that. Say they don't want to tackle that. Second problem with the iMac design is all the ports are on the back, which looks really good, but it's a pain in the butt when you've got to plug things in. How can they fix that without making it look ugly?

What is the solution to ports and cable routing for a computer like the iMac? like the iMac they could tackle just that problem and say can we figure out a better way than the current solution that is not horrendously ugly that people can plug and unplug can we put some facing the people some not facing where should the ports be like if you try to tackle both of those at once you could have a radically different iMac that is still nevertheless basically a big screen that's in front of you with very little visible stuff anywhere on it but an overall better computer i don't expect them to tackle those hard problems i expect them to be fairly conservative if the past decade or so of the ever skinnying imac is true but the opportunity is there if if someone had a really good idea basically like and and i love some of the old imac designs like the one with the little the arm whatever we want to call that design the big silver arm i love that design i thought it was

ingenious i thought it was a great fit for the technology limitations at the time it was just brilliant like and maybe you know it didn't last very long because technology changes so fast and it became like pointless once you could flatten the whole thing out right um but i i am i'm ready to be wowed by an imac design i just i'm not sure that's in the cards because i feel like not that the a teams are all designing iphones and ipads but just that that's that's where most of the action is happening so it makes some sense to be more conservative with the imac and maybe just take another crack at it and maybe just make skinnier bezels or whatever but well apple knows who's buying an imac and that thing is the iMac is

doubling as its entry-level desktop computer and that's the reason why we you know that's the reason why there's a base model that didn't change at all that's the reason why there are spinning disks in the 4k iMac at the low end even though it's really unconscionable, and you and I agree on this point, it's because I think on that low end, they are really concerned about people's price sensitivity, and they're trying to get the lowest price possible. I believe that we have reached the point where everything should be a Fusion Drive in the 4K iMac. If you're going to buy a Retina screen, maybe that cheap one that's not even retina they should probably not even be selling it but I they're just like the 999 MacBook Air they're using it to hit a price point but the rest of them at the very least put some SSD in there so that you could do the fusion drive thing it can be a little bit faster but like that's the truth of

it is this is this is a weird computer that goes from being entry level to being as powerful as an iMac pro and you know so I I think that distorts some of the decisions they make about the iMac now sometimes the iMac has always been their entry level desktop from its introduction right and and that has never stopped them back when the Mac was so much more important to the company obviously from doing you know having lots of innovative ideas there if you look at all those different uh imac designs lots of complicated expensive interesting choices uh you know and it's only because the mac is so much less important to the company that you see less of that these days but i think you know as part of the beauty of it that you could if you come up with a good design

it doesn't have to be expensive to manufacture or overly complicated. Like the beauty of a good iMac design is that it solves problems for the users in an elegant way that, you know, just seems obvious. Like that it doesn't look like it's trying too hard to figure something out, but in general, it's just pleasant to use. And things like how difficult it is to plug and unplug a little something into any one of the ports that's tackling that problem it's a very difficult problem like you if you were just a pc maker you just put a bunch of ports on it and be done with it right but but apple like doesn't want it to be in your face and ugly but it is a pain to reach around behind and get things what can we do

to solve that if you come up with a solution for that it doesn't have to be expensive it doesn't have to be pro it is perfectly if you do it well it is perfectly suitable for the lowest of low and entry level things and kind of in the same way that i was always amazed at like the uh what the hell's the name of this one the the one with the silver arm chip transitions happened at the same time as the industrial design transition so that was the imac g4 because there was never a g4 in the old plastic bubble and then the g5 came out and that was the beginningMac G4 because there was never a G4 in the old plastic bubble and then the G5 came out and that was the beginning of our kind of like single screen with a with a foot then it got complicated because then they did an Intel version of that same design um and then they did

the aluminum so there's there's that like the white plastic uh iMac that could be either Intel or a G5 this is an awkward phase I think they went they think they went everything behind the monitor a little bit early yeah yeah yeah I don't know what the issues were with the G5 fitting in the the sawed-off volleyball oh yeah yeah the iMac G4 the the one with the arm uh like i remember one of the one of the interesting statistics about that was that the base the semicircular base had less volume than the g4 cube so you can understand maybe why it would be hard to fit a g5 in there with cooling and optical drive you might need the whole volleyball yeah if they wanted to do that well son reference acknowledged i was always amazed that that computer was available at that price because it looked so much more expensive than it was kind of like those cars like this is i've said a lot about uh volkswagen some volkswagens feel like audis which is a much more expensive car like

their interiors feel much nicer than the price tag would allow you to admit for like whatever it was it was like it wasn't cheap but it was there you could buy the entry level iMac and it was that iMac and for that amount of money you got a computer that looked so much more expensive than it was and I don't know if they were just eating the margins there or like found a way to manufacture that inexpensively or whatever but that's always been the beauty of a Mac even today's iMacs you get the cheapest iMac you could possibly get and that case is still beautiful like it is seamless it doesn't it seems like it's all one magic piece you can't

figure out how to even manufacture such a such a thing it is just as beautiful as the highest end imac it's in fact it's the exact same damn case right uh other than the screen that's in it right so i i have faith in the ability especially with such an elemental design to come up with a design that works for the cheapest possible computer that makes people feel like they're getting something special and that improves upon the existing design in all possible ways all right let's take a break one last time and then we'll do some ask upgrade how about that our next sponsor is moo very excited about this. I use Moo. Moo is an online print and design company.

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and some of these questions may be specifically because you're here. Listener SM wrote in to ask, tons of movie slash TV streaming services will launch over the next 12 months. In five years' time, so not an infinite time scale, a five-year time scale, which of them is still around, and what will be the top two in terms of subscribers in five years i think all the major players will still be around you'll still have netflix uh amazon apple's thing will still be around because they're definitely going

to give it at least five years disney streaming service isn't even here yet but it will be here in five years uh the only major player i can think might things that might drop out is maybe hulu might get absorbed like i can imagine consolidation might eat up one of the minor players i mean amazon's certainly not going to sell its service because it's just too big that's a company even though its service may not be big so like i don't think the landscape will change that much except that disney will be here and unless there's some other service that i'm not thinking of like there could probably consolidation in the the fringes like maybe somebody buys crunchy roll or some crap like yeah i feel i feel like a lot of those small niche services are going to get swept up by somebody yeah um you know either either in whole or in

part where the the the channels thing the amazon and apple channels approach might allow some of them to survive on their own but i feel like more likely somebody is going to be kind of voracious and the trend right now, the trend in media companies is just keep buying stuff, right. And get bigger and bigger and bigger. So I'd imagine those other services will just kind of keep getting swallowed up until there are only the large players.

Do you, I have a hard time seeing any scenario where Netflix and Amazon aren't the two biggest still in five years. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's safe. But the only thing that's weird to me is I'm thinking about is all the networks and their streaming services like they're

not equipped to compete but they're also not inclined to sell unless someone just buys the networks outright which may be the way this resolves itself like i'm watching discovery on the cbs app that's not a sustainable anything like that's i understand what they're doing and why they're doing it i also understand that cbs is not going to sell itself to netflix unless you buy all of cbs like they're not just going to sell the streaming thing because cbs is not a streaming concern it is a network with a streaming app that whole situation where abc nbc cbs you know and fox to a lesser degree want to have their own streaming thing and things like amc and amc app like that all just feels untenable i'm just not sure how it resolves

because they're all attached to various behemoths and maybe the resolution is disney buys them all and like i don't see what happened with fox which is fox sold everything off except the broadcast and they kept they kept that but i'm not sure if the people who own CBS and Viacom, which they're trying to stick together. But yeah, I think there's a real question for like, what happens if you're a network? Like NBC is universal and it's Comcast. And so they can have a strategy that involves streaming

and also involves cable and involves broadcasting. Aren't they also part owners of Hulu? Is that NBC? Yeah, they own a owners of hulu is that nbc uh yeah they own a piece of it disney now owns a majority of it but they they own i think disney owns 30 and they own or disney on 60 they own 30 and then there's an outstanding 10 that's owned by somebody else is it me do i own it i should check it could be you should yeah look under the uh let's see if there's a hulu under your pillow. It's the ads in the radio, unclaimed portions of Hulu that you may own. It could be. It could be. There's a class action lawsuit, I'm sure.

Um, okay. Uh, Trevor wrote in to say, one aspect of the cancellation of air power I haven't heard discussed much. Is that possible? I feel like air power is the most discussed, least interesting product ever. I haven't heard discussed much is the leaks that preceded it over the last few months. Many pundits and bloggers seem to have inside sources or supply chain tipsters that said its release was imminent. Were they all wrong or lying? And I can answer this with a little bit of journalism knowledge, which is a lot of times rumor reports are based on the best information at the time. And it's kind of hard to point at a report and say, well, that didn't come true. And therefore that information was bad because the situation

inside the company, the situation on the ground may change change my guess is that all of those inside sources saying that air power was going to be released were based on actual people at apple who thought that air power was going to be released because at the time they thought it was going to be released and it was only later that a decision was made to pull the plug for some reason and it's unclear whether that was because they had last-minute safety concerns or whether the FCC wouldn't authorize it because of the way it was built or it failed in some part of the process. But just more broadly, a lot of times, I know this sounds weird, but a lot of times the rumors are true when they're reported. But the thing is, things change. So, you know, everybody at Apple thinks we're

going to release, you know, Asteroid, right? That Firewire breakout box that famously never got released, but there were lawsuits about it. At the time, they thought they were going to release that thing. And then my understanding is then there was a demo where Steve Jobs threw it off a stage like a digital camera, and that was the end of that. So that's my guess about air power is like at the time, it wasn't just the tipsters or the sources, it was Apple thought they were going to ship it. And then things changed. And we don't know the whole story there. But clearly things changed. So I don't think they're wrong. I don't think they're lying. I don't think their sources are even necessarily bad one of the challenges with this is that the facts on the ground can change after you've heard from your

source and you know that that's part of the difficult business of being a tipster i suppose yeah and most of these things also they don't have a full picture right so if you're just involved in some ass one aspect of of the ecosystem that involves air power you will have seen over the past several years ever increasing signs of air powers in minute arrival if you're involved in the os you see or may even be working on ways to integrate air power into the os maybe you're doing 3d renders of animations that are going to show when air power is connected if you're working in marketing or pr maybe you're making display ads for is connected if you're working in marketing or pr maybe you're making display ads for air power if you're working on the packaging maybe you're working on the

packaging for air power and the manual for the airpods is going to mention air power and if you were talking to all these people over the last year they would all be saying air power is coming because i'm doing all this stuff already into air power and here we are we all i mentioned this we all bought airpods if you bought them on the day of release that come with a box that has a big sticker on it that mentions air power the person who made that sticker if they were a tipster would say air power is imminent because i just stuck a sticker on a box that we're sending out to customers that mentions air power and yet air power never arrived and all those people could be 100 right and every sign points to air power coming but

none of them are tim cook or whoever the decision maker is about canceling the thing so as far as they're concerned of course air power is coming we're doing at this company we're doing everything we can surrounding air power every aspect of support for air power which we saw from like people hacking ios and displaying all the air power animations and all the air power ads like but in the end someone said don't actually ship this product to customers even though everything else that mentions it shipped to customers so listener phil says what is john's mac pro hierarchy of needs so to review this concept this is from atp this is actually was just on the fly in the middle of an episode it was the uh the macbook uh hierarchy

of needs of saying we're all disappointed with the current line of laptops that have been for a while and we hope new ones are coming and we have all sorts of grand dreams and plans about they should include uh but if you had to list the things that you needed like number one it has to have this number two it has to have that number three like in priority order and that at each point in the priority order draw a line and say if they do, and 3, this will be an obvious improvement. If they do 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, this will be a great laptop. And if they do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, this will be the best laptop Apple ever made. Sometimes they're not mutually exclusive and it's not that simple.

But in general, that's the concept. So what is my Mac Pro hierarchy of needs? pro hierarchy of needs uh unlike the macbook pro they haven't been releasing disappointing mac pro models for years they've been releasing the same disappointing mac pro model since 2013 so it's not like there's been one after another like at this point any mac pro like the the number one item in the hierarchy is a new modular powerful computer because apple doesn't sell one they sell a tiny little modular computer where you can connect a monitor to but it's the mini it's clearly not your pro level thing that's it that's the only computer they sell it doesn't have a monitor attached to it right and so that's number one

item a the existence the proof of life an actual professional high-end computer that doesn't have a monitor built in that has the capacity to hold and run the most powerful stuff the biggest cpu the most ram tons of hard drive space the fastest gpu uh you know just existence uh second one i feel like is i'm tempted to say Apple monitor, just because I'm so obsessed with that, which Apple has also said is coming, but like a really good Apple monitor. It doesn't have to be anything more than 5k, but I want it to be at least as good as the 5k IMAX one. And I would prefer if it had something like face ID built in or whatever.

But anyway, the monitor, this is so boring. It's like I wanted the Mac Pro and then I wanted it to be an Apple monitor and then the number three for me is powerful GPUs GPUs more powerful than in any existing Mac because that's another thing you can't get you can get the biggest GPU you want in your iMac Pro and that's the fastest GPU you can get in any Mac and you can't get a better one and you can't upgrade it. So I want the Mac Pro to have a better GPU than any iMac and all things that come with that you have to be able to cool it, there has to be room for it, so on and so forth. Does it have to be upgradable? Probably, but I'm just going to say a good GPU and that's my basically those three items are my line of acceptability if if it exists comes with a really good apple monitor and has a powerful gpu notice i didn't even mention the cpu oh it has to be a

faster cpu than any iMac nope you can just use the same ones in the iMac pro it'll be fine like i don't i'm not saying it has to be the best in you know in that for me personally that's not the biggest deal i can continue to go down the line by listing ever more esoteric things like somewhere along there i would put in a face id on the mac which i think desperately needs to exist but yeah is lower on the list than all those items and i'm willing to wait for it swap ability of the gpu so that you could replace it with a better one later my fourth item would be upgradeability uh more extensive upgradeability like the line acceptability is there if they if they provide that and it has like even if like almost nothing in it is upgradable more powerful gpu sort of

implies that it would be on a card it doesn't necessarily dictate it but doesn't have to be like the old the old mac pro had very powerful gpus that were not upgradable um that's my line of acceptability those three it doesn't mean it would be great and doesn't even mean i'd be super happy with it but i'm saying okay you did the thing you made a mac pro that text all the boxes but upgradability is number four that it is more upgradable than everything else yes obviously i want to be able to upgrade the ram and the storage and the gpu and like is more upgradable than any other mac like because again otherwise what the hell's the point of the mac pro if it's not more upgradable than an imac pro like it has to be more upgradeable uh there are degrees

of that uh but i feel like the most important upgradable thing is probably the gpu because gpus change faster than all the other components and are generally sold as upgradable things in the whole rest of the pc industry so i don't think it's too too much of a stretch existence though that's a good number one i like it gotta gotta exist yeah i mean just like a product like the mac pro introduced from apple that is not six years old that'd be good you what are you what are your chances what do you think your chances picture yourself on it's new year's eve you're not out late because it's annoying to be out late on new year's eve is there a mac pro in your house if apple is selling it uh and if it if it fills these three items uh almost certainly yeah so as long as it's it exists has a monitor has a

powerful gpu yeah yeah you're gonna go ahead and buy it because i you know i don't what would stop me from getting it like because my backup plan is imac pro right um if this exists if it was if you know it's a modular computer it comes with an alpha monitor that's at least as good as an imac and it has a more powerful gpu than an imac there's not much that would stop me from getting that over an imac pro because it's better than an imac pro like It suits my needs better. It has a more powerful GPU. The monitor is separate. We talked about upgradeability as number four, but the fact that the monitor is separate means that

if they come out with a new Mac Pro, I can get it and not replace the monitor. I say as I sit in front of a monitor that is more than 10 years old. Listener Brian, this is Brian Hamilton, says, after two years of the Switch, have your feelings about the ergonomics of the joy cons changed at all i don't touch the joy cons because i use the pro

controller so that's a no your feelings haven't changed which is don't use them uh i mean but that's just for me personally like they're too small for my hands and have serious rsi issues that make it a very bad idea for me to even attempt to try them but for smaller people they're fine yeah i think we have a pro controller now um yeah they're they're cute and fun but i've tried to use them for an extended period of time and it's just painful they're not great for adult size hands i think the quality of the components is good but they are very very small yeah oh uh don't tell my son because we're keeping it a secret from him because it's for me. But I bought a PS4. Did you get a Pro?

No, I didn't. Come on. There are reasons too complicated to get into. You have a 4K TV. Yeah, but it's not hooked up to the 4K TV. Oh, my goodness. That's the point. This is for me.

The load times are better, too, you know. This is my secret PlayStation. All right. You got one of the new slim ones, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

I got a deal open box on Amazon with Spider-Man. So it's basically my Spider-Man box. I'm going to play Spider-Man. Not going to let my son buy any games for it. Not going to let him monopolize the TV playing games on it it it's just going to live out here in the garage one of these days he's going to notice that it's there and he's gonna be like wait what one of the things i like about spider-man is that it's it's got the settings and it's got the friendly neighborhood setting it's literally basically combat just happens and it's fine and you watch the story

i'm not playing on that i'm playing on the next the next setting up which is combat is easy but you do have to do it once you get the your your ps4 and you're looking for games i have my i finally put my games list up on my uh blog you should take a look at lots of good ps4 games there some which you might have already played but some which you might not have angelo writes if you could go back 25 years and warn your young self about something in tech in 2019 what would it be so the way this is phrased as a warning it's like it has to be you can't say like here are the stocks to invest in because that's not a warning that's like a it's like a tip or advice a warning is something bad is going to happen and i get to

go back 20 years 25 years and warn you about it and i think at this point the main thing that i would warn people i warn myself about is what the dominant platforms the bad effects of dominant platforms like youtube and facebook like the the the way and twitter for that matter the way that they've allowed toxic ideas to flourish and spread right i'm not sure what me 25 years ago could do about this but to it's because this phrase is a warning i would say facebook seems like a more pleasantly designed version of myspace now but here's what it's going to become and youtube you know there's going to be a thing called youtube and it's going to be seemed like a nice way to put your videos up and it might not be easy to see but eventually this is what i'll turn into you'll always be

you know three suggestions away from nazis right and twitter looks like it's fun but they will shirk their responsibility entirely to maintain any semblance of order on the platform and it will enable all sorts of bad things so that's what i would warn myself about i don't know what i would be able to do about it but i think it is the the most salient aspect of modern computing that is would not have been obvious 25 years ago and all the people who are talking about it 25 years ago sounded a little bit detached from reality because lots of people always warning you about terrible things they're going to happen like you know whatever it was like

uh this was the 70s it was uh it wasn't nuclear winter but there was some other like the world was going to freeze in the 70s you remember that whole thing or uh i don't know global cooling yeah there was there was something anyway or the idea that there's some sort of oppressive system that's going to be wide. Like, you sound like you're disconnected from reality. If you were to accurately describe the situation of those technology things in 2019, 25 years ago, it would sound fantastical. And people 25 years ago were saying that. They were also saying all sorts of other crazy ideas that didn't happen. So that's the trick about going back in time is you know the truth about what's going to happen but

it sounds so ridiculous and dire it just happens to be what actually ended up happening so that's what i would warn myself about i don't know what i would do with that information though yeah it depends on on exactly how you interpret this because i was thinking so 1994 um it worked out this way anyway but i feel like what I would kind of want to do is warn myself that, although the temptations to abandon Apple in the next four years, as it does its death spiral, would seem to be great, don't. Because Apple in 2019 will be enormous. And just stick with it, kid.

I would never consider that because i i might i never wavered and neither did you you didn't waver did you there was a time where where it felt like i was going to have to make a career change of some sort you were going to be unemployed in greenland exactly out of no decision of my own i was going to suddenly be writing about windows nt and i was not happy about this at all um but then again there were people when they shut down mac user they they gave people the option and some people did get go work at you know personal computing or whatever they had to write all their articles in all capital letters yeah with three dot extensions at the end backslashes jason backslashes i don't know i think you're right i think maybe maybe what

i would say is um you know watch for the rise of these social media companies and don't trust them. And if you can find a way to become an early investor and that's not a warning anymore and change their direction. No, no. It's like give Mark Zuckerberg cash. So you have a say over what he does because he's going to destroy. I think I think what you want to do is like, I mean, what what what's actionable with that warning would be to like befriend Mark Zuckerberg and distract him socially so that he never found Facebook. Like, you don't want to, you're not going to kill him. You're just going to be like, let's go hang out and do this.

I have got a great idea for a startup and convince Mark Zuckerberg to hang out with your startup that eventually fails and you've distracted him long enough that Facebook doesn't happen. It's a great, it's an awesome new vr startup it does vrml on the uh on the web but because it's a black mirror episode it turns out myspace ends up even worse than facebook yeah it's not it's not impossible i like this this is the uh the new fangled uh science fiction story where you go back in time to uh socially distract hitler well it's like the one where you make make hitler successful in art school right he just it just needs it's one thing to be just validation yeah if he was just a more successful painter then we could avoid a lot of heartache without having to murder baby hitler all right well we we don't alas have the time travel to go back 25 years and work more on our young selves thanks a lot angelo yeah exactly exactly well john thank you so much for being

on upgrade again it's uh i know it's been four months so thank you for returning and uh and filling in for mike while mike is uh flying over the atlantic between pen shows and his home yeah unlike mike i love the mac more than i love pens yeah well we got to talk about the mac and it's great because then mike's going to hear this episode and he's going to be like i'm glad you talked about the mac so i didn't have to because that's a thing that he does. Don't let him boss you around. We work together. We have a good partnership after 240 episodes of finding things we want to talk about.

You know, it's like Casey would talk about the Mac Pro. Like, he knows it's part of the deal. You got to talk about that stuff too. All right. Well, thank you to John. I would like to thank our sponsors as well fresh books express vpn and moo mike will be back next week with me i'm always here on upgrade that's the rule but until next time say goodbye john syracuse i'm not gonna do it this time jason that's it that's the end