Upgrade - 254: Downgrade

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

We answer a lot of your #askupgrade questions, then break down how Apple's changing its laptop line and retail stores. Also, Warner Media makes a big bet on the HBO brand name, and Apple News+ is unsurprisingly not succeeding. Then we start the show with #snelltalk! This week with Jason and Myke.

Goodbye. I hope you've enjoyed Downgrade, this episode of Upgrade in Reverse. You can find me online as iMike. Jason is at JasonL, J-S-N-E-L-L, and you can find Jason's work at SixColors.com. I want to thank our sponsors, Linode, ButcherBox, and Hello. Our show notes are at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 254 so let's finish up every episode of upgrade as we always do jason with some hashtag ask upgrade questions goodbye jason snell goodbye goodbye jason snell uh if our first question in downgrade today uh in the hashtag ask upgrade segment comes from james

and this is also a follow-up, which is interesting to have at the end of the show, but here we are anyway. If your favorite podcast moved to a service like Luminary, would you subscribe? I think the challenge is going to be what's the exchange of money for content? And that's how I always feel about this.

So if I had, if the money I would spend is worth it, then I would do it. But that's what it would require is it would be something that I felt like, and my hesitation here is that Luminary really wants to be like Netflix. So they want to charge you a larger amount of money to give you a range of premium exclusive audio shows. And so my gut feeling is if a podcast went that way, but it was priced that it only made sense if you want lots of them, I wouldn't do it. I would be frustrated by that, but it's one of those things, if that makes any sense like i i pay the flop house five dollars a month on max fun because i like that show and i want to give them money

but if they turned around and said well the flop house is now 10 or 15 a month as a part of luminary i'd be like is there anything else i listened to on luminary that would make it worth it because i don't i'm not you know then suddenly they're pricing it to pay for a whole service it's it's the dilemma everybody has when you have a show you're interested in. It's the Star Trek dilemma for people in the US where it's like, do I want to pay for CBS All Access for one TV show? Like, ideally, that service is priced as a service, not as a stream for a single thing. And if only one thing on that service interests you, I'm not sure the economics work.

So that's my challenge with something like Luminary is they really want me in their ecosystem. And if they move a show I like into their ecosystem, that alone is probably not enough to make it a good deal. Unless I really, really, really love that show, at which point I guess I should be giving more money to the Flophouse. I think my problem in this would be if I then couldn't listen to it in my podcast app of choice, because that's going to break my model of listening to the show. Like, I'm going to forget, right? So, like, if, for example, My Brother, My Brother and Me

became a paid show on a ward-off platform, or if they had their own app or whatever and it wasn't in overcast anymore i would struggle to remember to listen to the show because when i want to listen to a podcast i open overcast and i look at what's in there and i choose what i want right but if then that show's not in there anymore and i have playlists like yeah exactly i just put my priority shows in my playlist and i listen to my priority playlist and that's it that's like that's my podcast world so it would be super strange to me to then have something living outside of that i think that would be my biggest my biggest kind of pause would be well i'm not sure if this works in my model of

what a podcast would be for me anymore and that that might make me- I actually have this right now. I subscribe to The Athletic, which is a sports, it's an app and a website, and it's a subscription content service. It's like a sports page, sports website, and you pay. And I like it. I think it's really good content. I'm happy to pay for it. It is doing a better job most of the time covering sports than my other sports outlets are. Even my local paper is sort of like neck and neck

with it really. And so I want to do that. Well, they started doing podcasts and they're only listenable within their app. And I actually filed a bug ticket with them. And I said, guys, you need to be able to let me log in with my username and password in Overcast to a feed URL and get this podcast. Because I want to listen to it. I'm paying for it. They have a lot of shows, too. They do. I will never listen to a podcast.

I have listened to a couple. But it has to be, like, literally, I've got my phone, I think of it, or they push a notification to me and I think, oh, I have time to listen to a podcast right now while I go do an errand or whatever. So it's happened once or twice. But I would listen to those podcasts regularly if they were in Overcast. And Overcast and most podcast players have this facility for an authenticated feed where you can put in a username and password and they verify you and then you get to see the feed. And so, I mean,

I've already complained to them about it, but that proves my point, which is I am paying for a service that provides podcasts that I'm interested in listening to and I don't listen to them because I have to use their app and I don't want to them because i have to use their app and i don't want to

uh john asks what is your current robot vacuum recommendation oh boy i only have you i have a a uh a roomba 680 i want to say and it's running right now um i i like it but i if i were buying i bought it because i thought on a lark i was like i really want a robot this will be great uh i don't know if it'll work or not i got a deal on the kind of cut rate roomba i'm gonna i'm gonna use it and i really like it to the point that now i actually regret buying the cheap one because i would love the more expensive one with the mapping and stuff like that. And this one is just one of the dumb ones that just bumps around. So I have a Roomba 960, which we got them around. I got mine about a year ago. You got yours quite

recently, right? It was a... Yeah. Christmas, basically. Yeah. And I really like it a lot. It's it's great and i and i yeah but now they have this new one the well they have a couple of new ones now they're the i series which is the one that not only maps because mine kind of maps around but it doesn't remember where like the certain rooms are but with the i series ones you can say oh hey go clean this specific room yeah and that's the killer feature because and i would totally use that if i could say now go clean that room and this is also the one where they introduced that like the base where it can suck up the stuff for you so you don't have

to empty it as often yeah it comes with a little home when you run it a couple of times and you've got to empty out the dust tray so they made like a mega home that's like a tower and built a system where it empties the the dirt tray into a big bin which is brilliant i mean it's a lot more money to do that but it is kind of brilliant if you're somebody who doesn't want to clean out the roomba so yeah i found out today jason there is also a brand new series oh no s series. The S series, which is better at edges, like dealing with edges and corners. Oh, interesting. Because the Roomba kind of doesn't do a great job with the very edge of a wall or something. Right.

But they've kind of refined the design to make it better for that. And it has all the new stuff. And they're very expensive. But I love my Roomba. I do, too. I think it's a really nice little thing to have at home and i will say if you're listening to this at the right time it is prime day and there are always deals on rumors there are deals on rumors right now yeah i will also say that that uh we have somebody in the chat room who's pointing out that uh that they they they have a Nito that does

the mapping and stuff like that. And I will say Nito is a competitor to iRobot and Wirecutter really likes their stuff. So I haven't used that because I've only ever used one robot, but there are other robot vacuums available. If you're curious about this, you should go and investigate and maybe look at the Wirecutter's reviews and all of that. But I will say again, that as somebody who'd never had one, and I bought one in December, I have discovered that I actually really like it. And I set it up to go almost every day. And it picks up a lot of stuff. We have two pets. And, you know, it really does a good job with dust and pet hair and stuff like that. And now I regret not

with dust and pet hair and stuff like that. And now I regret not splurging on a higher featured model because it's really good. And I'm a little sad that I've just got the one that just kind of bumps around until it's done. But it's still pretty great. Yeah, when we bought ours, they didn't have the room remembering technology because I would have bought that.

That's the one I would have got because I know that I would have wanted it, right? But I just didn't have it. Yeah, because I had that all the time where I wanted to clean the hallway and in front of where the cat box is and stuff like that. And instead I have to pick it up and carry it over there and press a button

and have it bump around over there for a while. And it's dumb. So, yeah. Robert asks, do I still need iTunes Match? If you have Apple Music, you have iTunes Match and you don't need it. Now, it used to be that they were different. It used to be that iTunes Match let you upload your library and then download it again DRM free and the Apple Music version matched your library, but all your

downloads would still have the Apple Music DRM on them. And if you canceled Apple Music, your downloads would go away. That's what it used to be. It's not true anymore. It hasn't been true for a couple of years. Serenity Caldwell wrote about this when it happened. And this was quite a bit before she left iMore to go to Apple. And that was a year ago. So it's been a while now that this, I want to say two years now. So you don't need iTunes Match if you're an Apple Music subscriber. If you're an Apple Music subscriber, iTunes will scan your iTunes library, or I guess the music app come this fall, will scan your library and it will do the matching and it'll upload things that don't match and it'll make it

all available. And if you were to lose your files, I don't recommend that you delete your files, but if you were to lose your files and you downloaded the ones that had matched, they would be DRM free. That's my understanding. So you don't need iTunes Match in addition to Apple Music. It's sort of an either or. iTunes Match is a separate purchase if you're not an Apple Music subscriber

to just get your library synced to all of your devices. And it's a great product. But if you're using Apple Music, you don't need it. Kevin asks, do you have a system for taking notes while recording each episode about what kind of edits you want to make? Like, say, for example, somebody comes in and interrupts you, so you write down the time that it happened. Yes, Kevin, that is exactly what I have. I have a notebook in front of me. It's the PanoBook by Studio Neat, which is my favorite notebook for this type of stuff because it sits very nicely underneath my keyboard and every time either i talk over jason or jason talks over me i write down a little time code

except this time because this is just an example thank you and you know i knew you were going to do that i was waiting for the moment that you were gonna it was inevitable uh and then i will go back in later on and fix that and that is a this is a specific way of editing it's not necessarily the best way but for me i find it gives the best edit to account for speed which is what we're going for like i yeah i could sit like i do with some other shows and listen to this entire show and edit it carefully like that but then upgrade will take at least a day or two more to be released and that's not what i want um that's not what we want i like this show is is news focused and for us we like to be faster with it so over time we've just gotten better at the

way that we work together like that and i've developed my own little system and i'll take notes not even just tight like little times of when we talk over each other but sometimes during the show me and jason will make a decision about things maybe we want to cut out or change and i just write down a note and i'll go back in and fix it later on. So that's the system. I do the same. And this is actually why, for those who have read me,

my pieces about using Logic, this is why I use the remove silence feature in Logic, which basically takes all the parts where there's no sound and makes them disappear. So all that's left with are little blocks that each represent a noise being made in a particular audio track. And the number one reason that's valuable is you can very quickly see when somebody talks, which is a long block of audio. And then in the middle of it, there's a block of audio on another person's

track. And you go, oh, that's probably not good. I mean, it may be just a, oh yeah, you know, an interjection. And when people are having a conversation and they're going back and forth and you suddenly see a bunch of overlap, that's the stuff that I'm visually drawn to. And in most of the podcasts I do that, like Mike, that is what I'm trying to really clean up is I want to make it seem like we're completely simpatico and not in California and England and with Skype lag and occasionally having a false start. I want to make it seem, and I know you are the same way, make it seem like you stop and I start and then I stop and then you start and we're in perfect harmony because I think

it's a better listening experience. And a monologue like this one where I've talked for a long time, that's really easy because you look and you're just like, oh, Jason talked for a while and you go to the end of it. And Andreas asks, as independent workers, do you have specific working hours? Do you plan your day in this way or do you work on holidays and weekends? Well, my boss is a jerk and makes me work on holidays. Well, we do the show on a Monday, which is often a holiday, but we usually still do the show on the Monday. I was talking to somebody over the weekend and I said, the nice thing about being an independent worker is I can set my own hours. And they responded, but you work every day.

And I said, there is some truth to that. I can make choices about when I work and when I don't. But it's also true that it does bleed over sometimes. Like I still edit, and this is a vestige of when I worked on a Monday to Friday job, but I still edit The Incomparable on Saturday morning. I do that. That's just a thing that I do. And sometimes podcasts get recorded over the weekend because that's when people are available to do them. I try to be at my desk at a certain time and leave my desk at a certain time. But there are I do have the flexibility to step away and go do something else during the day. And the exchange for that is that I'm also sometimes recording a podcast at night or on a weekend or doing some other work in what would traditionally be downtime.

Being in the situation that I am in with the type of business that I run, I do work every single day. Like it's just even when I'm on holidays, there will be things that people need. But that's a choice that I make. Like I'm fine with that because I get to pick when I work. I get to choose that. Yeah, that's the trade-off. I was having this realization because my wife does not have a lot of vacation time. And it strikes me when we are choosing travel together that her priorities, we have to start calculating out

when she's going to work and what she's going to take off and all of that. And it is funny because then I go, i look at it and i'm like whatever like literally i have to move things around and schedule things but i can go if i want i can i can be gone for this day and i'll just make it work and and that is big that's great and that is the payoff but the other side of it is that you probably have to work times where you might not otherwise yeah but it's like i want to spend an extra couple of days on a vacation i'm planning fine i just know i need to keep my phone on me like and then and then maybe nobody will bother me that day like or maybe nothing will come up and sometimes that's the case and then i just get to enjoy the day so they're they're that's the thing you work every day but you don't have to work all day yeah all right so that was

hashtag ask upgrade well that is hashtag ask upgrade it's just beginning i'm not sure uh this episode is brought to you by our friends over at hollow who make insanely comfortable buckwheat pillows i don't know if you've ever tried a buckwheat pillow it's very different to regular fluffy pillows because it supports your head and neck fully it doesn't collapse under the weight of your head like you might be used to. Hollow pillows stay cool and dry compared to feather or foam pillows because the buckwheat filling inside them breathes better. Air can flow through more easily. There's no more need to flip to the cool side of the pillow because it always stays cool and you can add and remove the filling to suit your needs to make it larger or

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Our thanks to Hollow for their support of this show and RelayFM. So we should talk about our second topic, our main topic uh for this week's episode the big one new laptops that's hilarious considering last week's episode we're talking about laptop rumors will they won't they uh turns out they did with some of them didn't with some others we have a interesting couple of revisions we have new two new laptops and the departure of another or two new additions

two new uh types of things going on with the macbook air the macbook air now starts at 999 if you're a student it's 1099 otherwise they put a true tone display in it and they updated the keyboards to have the new quote new keyboard materials. Still the butterfly keyboard, but with the new materials that came in the MacBook Pro a few months ago. And then the MacBook Pro, what has been dubbed the escape, the MacBook Pro with the physical keys, that MacBook Pro is basically half gone, half upgraded. The product that now sits in that line, in that space in the line, has

a touch bar now. There is no more MacBook Pro with actual physical function keys on it anymore. It has True Tone display, comes with a T2 chip, and of course, because it has a touch bar, Touch ID. And also, the MacBook, the 12-inch MacBook with the one

USB-C port is gone. It is gonzo. We'll talk about the MacBook in a minute, but I want to kind of get your feeling on the updates to the laptop line. I would expect, Jason, that you were only further recommending the Air to people, but I wonder as well what you think about the consolidation of the MacBook Pro line in that they've really kind of made it all one now with the touch bar and stuff like that. Yeah, so two things going on here. So the Air is not much of an update.

It really is a tweak. The best thing was the price went down, honestly. Like that's actually the feature. $100 for everyone except education and $150 for education. And that's probably why they did this, right? So they could get it in before back to school and at the price point that everybody kind of wants it to be. And I had already done, I mean, we've got a story that I update on Six Colors that's like the right laptop, Mac laptop to buy for a student.

I already said it's the macbook air the truth is the 999 price i mean and that is the that is the right price and we always said that the old non retina air existed at 999 essentially for education and here we are education it's 999 is now the education price let's be uh open here apple has been making the Air available aggressively in specials at various online retailers for $999 for a long time now. Almost since it came out. This is the new one you're talking about. The new Retina Air. So saying that it got cut in price is good, but I will say that

$999, you've been able to get a MacBook Air, the base model for $999 for a while now, if you look for the deal. Maybe you get it for $899 somewhere now, who knows? Maybe, or maybe they were doing that as a way to keep the price up, and now they're sort of like, no, no, we're going to actually sell it.

But my guess is that you'll still find it for $999, but now the base price is $1099. Other big thing, and this is the Stephen Hackett thing, you guys talk about this on Connected a lot, is the storage upgrades, which used to be kind of laughable. Like you had to go up to one and a half terabytes or something like that and pay a fortune for it. And the storage updates seem to be a little more granular

and a little more reasonably priced, which is another nice tweak that they're making that I think is more education friendly. If you are buying a Mac laptop for a student this summer, which I may be because my daughter's going off to college, I have to see how she feels about her three-year-old MacBook, 12-inch MacBook. The MacBook Air, it's great. I mean, the keyboard, it's unclear whether the new materials keyboard is going to be more reliable. And a lot of people don't like it for lots of reasons that have been detailed. The travel, the arrow keys.

There's lots of reasons. But it's got Touch ID. It's got a beautiful display. Now that it's got True Tone in addition to that. It's a good laptop. And that's the one that I would recommend. Both of these have been put into the keyboard replacement program. They both in there so you know if there is a problem there's a reliability problem for this new materials model um you've got four years at least of coverage of

it i know there are a lot of people are going to say no i'm not going to buy a mac laptop until they change the keyboard fair enough sometimes sometimes people um sometimes you don't have that choice sometimes you your's going to college and you need to give them a laptop. So what are you going to do? Exactly right. And yeah, so the keyboard might suck. You buy them a PC laptop,

then they'll hate you forever. Or you could just buy the MacBook Air and it's nice. Like I said, I bought two. We have two of these in my house now. And they're pretty great, actually. They're pretty great. The MacBook Escape thing. Like, I know from a computer nerd standpoint, the MacBook Escape didn't go away.

It just got a processor update and a touch bar. Because it's still the lower power processor. But it is a quad core now, which it was a dual core before. It's got the touch bar um it's only got the two ports the two thunderbolt 3 ports whereas the higher end 13 has four so there's still two distinct levels of 13 inch macbook pro that said i think from a regular person standpoint and even from a product line, product marketing standpoint,

I feel like it's much more logical now. There's clarity. The MacBook Pro has touch bar, period. The Air is not even that much lighter or thinner than the MacBook Pro anymore. So that wasn't a differentiator. Yeah, so here it is. Now, yes,

there's the one with two and there's the one with four and there's variation within what the 13 inch MacBook Pro is, but they both look pretty much the same and have a touch bar and a discerning person will know the differences between the top and the bottom of the line models. But honestly, we'll know the differences between the top and the bottom of the line models. But honestly, lots of computer models have differences between the low end and the high end configurations. These are a little more extreme, but at least it feels like the same product. Whereas before, it really felt like there were two completely separate 13-inch MacBook Pros. Now it feels like there's one with some variation, even though behind the scenes, it, you know, it is the evolution of the MacBook escape into something that, uh, but I feel

like the, the touch bar is such a defining characteristic of that product line right now that to have one without it was super strange. And now, um, and now it's got it, which is, which is great. But the, for me, Mike, the big story, and I wrote about this at Macworld last week, is this is Apple finally saying, this is like the last shoe to drop in this several year drama of the replacement for the MacBook Air. Because they came out with a MacBook and was like, yeah, this is obviously the future. This is going to be the computer that replaces the MacBook Air. And then when they came out with the MacBook Pro line and that escape model, we all remember, I think, Phil Schiller standing on stage and saying, you know, this is a great replacement for the MacBook Air, except it costs like $400 or $500 more. But it was the same kind of processor class in terms of power, and it's got a fan, and it's about the same weight, and it's about the same size. So you're like, oh, this is like a MacBook Air, except it was way more expensive. And so there it is. Apple's got two products that it's basically put out over the course of about a year that are theoretically

MacBook Air replacements. And then the Air can fade away. And they didn't even name the MacBook Air because they're going to let that name fade away. And we know the story, which is the MacBook Air wouldn't die. And as of last week, those two products that really were kind of like claiming to be basically a MacBook Air replacement are dead. It's like the MacBook Air took them out. Like they were the, they were the pretenders. They were going to try to take the MacBook Air's place in Apple's product line and they're both gone. And the MacBook Air is here. Who would have bet on that two years ago? That's amazing.

But that's the power of the MacBook Air and it shows you what a miscalculation they made with those two products. I would say probably what's happened here is Apple maybe didn't realize how powerful a brand they had in the MacBook Air. I think that that branding has resonated with people for long enough that it was just strong enough right like it just it just it

hit just about right but i think it's also there's something something bad happened with the macbook right like i feel like you know i said this unconnected but i feel like this product didn't get the moment it was owed. Like it didn't get its place in the plan that they had for whatever reason, you know, like it feels like this was a product that was supposed to get better, but it never really did. It didn't have its jump.

So this is the thing I, and I was on Twitter. I was talking to Marco about this on Twitter last week. What other product has that exact same description? It's trash can Mac Mac pro. Right. And I think that, that that may be the source of this is that they wanted to make the iPad

laptop, right? They wanted to make the ultimate super small, super thin, no fan Mac laptop. And they did. And I, and,

and the story of the 12 inch Mac book, at least so far, maybe it will come back in some form down the road. There are lots of conspiracy theories about that, about this being a future ARM laptop design. But the story of the MacBook, 12-inch MacBook right now, is it never got better. And we expect these Apple products to come out and then to see Apple iterate on them. And the Mac Pro, we expected that. And the MacBook, we expected that.

And the MacBook never got better. I would have bet money, and I would have lost it, that in a matter of a year or two, the MacBook would have gained ports and probably gained Thunderbolt 3 and would have just kind of continually gotten better from its shaky, in a way, very limited start, it would keep improving. Like the air. It never did. Like what happened to the air. Exactly. Exactly. And it never did.

And my theory, as a person on the outside who is not a computer engineer, is that fanless design, right? Is that a thermal corner thing where the parts from Intel and the heat issues, like the way the whole thing, the whole premise of that product was based on this particular set of stuff from Intel that is super limited and didn't get better. And they end up with this product that they're just kind of stuck with a low end processor. That's not very good. And, and, and the USB-C port. And, and at some point they're like, look, they're like, look, we should not even – this is a sunk cost. We should just cut it loose and build a new MacBook Air. And I look at it now, and I think that's exactly what they did. A couple years ago, probably, they looked at the MacBook after it being out on the market for a couple years and said, this is a mistake.

We just need to do a MacBook Air, and we need to cut the MacBook loose. And the MacBook hasn't gotten any updates, and now we've got a MacBook Air, and then the MacBook is gone. So I think they just looked at it and realized we made a mistake. We made assumptions with this product. And it turns out that not only is it really limited, but it doesn't have any room to grow. And they made the MacBook Air, which is not, you know, not as advanced in a lot of ways as the old MacBook Air, because a lot of the, again, the same class of processor is really in that bottom of the line MacBook Pro, but it has a fan. It has Touch ID. It has multiple Thunderbolt 3 ports. It's better in every way than the MacBook other than size and

weight. So it is fascinating that they ended up, this is very clearly, like very quickly too, I think, if you think about the timeline, Apple realizing that the MacBook was a mistake and that they needed to do the MacBook Air again. So there's been lots of refinements to the laptop line this year, I think, like a bunch of speed bumps and stuff like that. I don't think we were expecting to see anything change

on the Air for a bit. Even on last week's episode, we were expecting to see anything change on the air for a bit um even on last week's episode we're talking about like oh well the escape's probably dead right like that was yeah except marco marco said he heard that it was going to get updated which it sort of did but in a weird way and yeah so is this encouraging to you this continues to be like something that you you like to see apple doing I think it is. I think that MacBook sort of head fake and then going to the MacBook Air is maybe a good example of Apple realizing that its priorities with the Mac were out of whack. Also, continually updating these systems. These were the two, the MacBook and the MacBook Escape were the ones who hadn't gotten an update and everybody was sort of like, well, what's going to happen? and the answer is one of them became a more of a macbook pro and the other one got dropped and

that's the that's your answer but apple has done a pretty good job of updating the laptops they seem to have realized that the macbook itself was just a bridge too far they have with the air i'm encouraged they are pushing the price down on that retina air which was the biggest complaint all of us had about it was that it looked really great but it was 200 more than the base model of the old macbook air and that was and now it's a hundred more uh and and it's so it's it's closer and again with a deal you can get it for 9.99 and that's a pretty good deal that's a great price for that laptop so i'm encouraged that they have a plan and that they have some clarity about what the Mac is now that maybe they didn't have back when they released

that MacBook and that keyboard, by the way, in 2015, right? Like, I think maybe we are starting to see the fruits of that change in attitude toward the Mac that we saw starting a couple years ago. So what about this 2019 MacBook Air with the new keyboard that our friend Roger predicted? Now, what do you think? Sometimes I wonder if maybe what we're hearing is some confusion based on what the parts are. So it sounds like there's a new keyboard, but what model is it? And I've heard, I think on ATP, I think Marco said, well, they could just do a new MacBook Air with a new keyboard this fall. It seems like they would not bother with this update, but it is a super minor

update that's just for back to school. So if they had a new MacBook Air with a new keyboard shipping in November, that would be too late for back to school. So maybe they swap in the new keyboard, which the old MacBook Air can get that keyboard if it's repaired, right? So that's not a change at all. They added the True Tone thing, but it may be that the MacBook Air mid-2019 is replaced with a MacBook Air late-2019. That's one of the reasons they do those early, mid, late

is sometimes models change during a year and that could happen. But I think it's fascinating. Like we've had all these laptop updates. So Apple theoretically doesn't need to update Mac laptops again until next year. But they often will do Mac updates in the fall. So I don't know. I think it's fun that it's mysterious about what they're doing. I think we all anticipate that we're going to see a new generation of Mac laptops. It's unclear what they will be. The MacBook Pro is the one that probably needs a new... I mean, the MacBook Air is essentially a new generation last year. So I doubt that it would be radically changed, even if they swapped in a new keyboard for it. But the MacBook Pro is crying out for that.

So I think the most likely scenario is probably that it is that 16-inch MacBook Pro that is replacing the 15-inch MacBook Pro, and that that design could come this fall or it could come next spring. Because I feel like the MacBook Pro needs it the most. And that's your high-end thing. It's going to pros who are going to be more finicky about this stuff. Like, that's the logical place to roll all this stuff out. And you got the MacBook Air ready to go for back to school. Like, do you need more than that? I don't know.

I still think it's possible that we see them. You know, I don't think that this update to the MacBook Air precludes them from putting a new keyboard in towards the end of the year. It doesn't. I really see this as like they wanted to get that price down. They had a way to do it. And if they did it, they could also change the screen over, which may have been some other economical reason that they would want to do that price down they had a way to do it and if they did it they could also change the screen

over which may have been some other economical reason that they would want to do that adding a feature doesn't necessarily mean it's more expensive right like also you know conspiracy theory wise and i think i mentioned this last week model can be, they can swap in that keyboard, the new keyboard for the old keyboard. They're the same size. It's possible that that size is the size and shape and all the dimensions, all the specs that is necessary for this keyboard and the next keyboard. I'm not saying that that's true. It may require a complete redesign, but I think if they're going to completely redesign the MacBook Air case, it's not going to happen a year after they already did it. It seems very unlikely that they would do it,

but it is possible that they already did it. And we just don't know because they're still using, because the new keyboard's not ready, but when it is ready they've got a place to put it i don't know i don't know it's what's great about this if you like mystery is all of it is possible like we could see anything we could see an arm macbook return to the lineup this fall or next spring too i mean there's all of these things are out there now that Apple has kind of cleared the decks of some of our longstanding Mac laptop questions, like what happens to the MacBook Escape and what happens to the 12-inch MacBook. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Linode. Linode serves their customers with the help of 10 data centers across the globe to help you instantly deploy

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Sure, let's do that. I love the mini topics. Let's do some. There were some changes in Apple retail that I wanted to point out, because we were talking about this a lot when Angela Ahrens left, and we've been talking about it before, like when looking at the way that Apple is selling their products in Apple stores. So some Apple stores have gotten new signage.

So there are these new display tables that have integrated stands that show the three iPhones next to each other and has a bunch of key details to show the differentiation between them. The glass cases on the Apple Watch stand has been removed, allowing you to easily try them on. And there is something called Express Checkout being tried out in a bunch of uh apple stores as well where it's basically a checkout desk for accessories and i just wanted to kind of get your feeling on this like this seems like a refinement to the look at our stores that these places of beauty and that may be trying to

make them a little bit more functional again yeah this seems to be in line with what we've uh talked about since uh angela errantz was was leaving which is and and for those who don't know our theory is basically that she was brought in under the assumption that apple was going to be able to continue selling iphones without trying to sell them essentially yeah that like the iphones were selling themselves effectively yeah and that apple stores were basically brand extensions incredibly pop popular profitable brand extensions because really beautiful buildings that just happen to have iphones in them right and throw off enormous amounts of money while you're focused on brand extension

instead of sales, which is a great problem to have, right? And what happened is the iPhone sales stalled and they realized they needed to start pushing those buttons. And we did an episode where we talked about that a lot. And I leaned on my, you know, Apple retail sources, people in the trenches who say this is absolutely true that starting last fall, especially the focus has really been on pushing people toward sales. Like not necessarily like sleazy sales tactics, but like if we do training sessions and education sessions in the store, which they do a lot of, let people try the new hardware, you know, basically like, how do we expose people to this stuff so that we are going to increase our chance of selling a new product to them? And that is something that they didn't have to do so much of before. So I look at this and I think this is all part of that change, which Angela Ahrens wasn't brought in to really do. She was brought in to do the pretty beautiful brand extension thing. And this is much more back to basics retail of we need to make our stores clearer and it easier for people to give us money because,

you know, any friction in the process used to be not a problem because people were beating down our doors to buy our iPhones. And now we need to coax them in and convince them to do it. And that's, you know, Apple still got one of the most powerful retail operations in the world, perhaps the most powerful, but they have to work harder than they used to. And this seems to be right in line with that. One of the other big complaints that is levied towards Apple stores is that it's so difficult to get repairs scheduled, right? So Apple released a press release about this, and I didn't really see many people talking about it. I only found it by accident that Apple have partnered with Best Buy. So there are now 1,000 stores across the US

that can do service and repairs for Apple products. And so this is going to significantly reduce the load on the Genius Grove. And also like Apple calls out in their press release that they now have service for places where they don't have stores and they have no plans for stores. So they can do same day iPhone repairs and they can do basically everything that an Apple store can do when it comes to fixing iPhones and stuff like that. Apple Store can do when it comes to fixing iPhones and stuff like that. And I just think that this is a very interesting partnership as a way to kind of give Apple a bit of a release valve on their technical support. Yeah, and it solves the problem of people not being close to an Apple Store. They talk about how so much percentage of the US population is near an Apple Store, but the truth is they don't cover. And a lot of those people are it's a long drive and you're driving there to hopefully get your computer fixed. And then you have to drive back another day.

And it's a lot of driving and it's really bad. And if you've got a Best Buy, you add another thousand centers of repair. That's going to be better. And honestly, they're trying to grapple with something that we talked about when we talked about this a few months ago, which is the dual purpose of a retail store. Because it's not just a beautiful place to come and be part of the community and browse products, but it is a broken product into one of those shiny apple stores it does not a good feeling because they are not it is neither job one nor job two when you walk in right it's people talking and having a good time and being at the apple store and it's people buying products and then you're there you know lugging in your broken computer wanting support

these stores are not designed for one of their primary functions no in fact i would i would argue that in the long run what apple needs to do is focus on finding a way to do and maybe this best buy partnership is part of that but like even in the main retail stores um find a way to have the repair and support experience be clearer and more defined and i don't know whether they should experiment with things like having a support center room on the side in the back something like that so that you're not any noisy everybody you know doing sessions and and playing with the stuff versus you trying to explain your problem, your broken computer. I don't know how you address that, but it feels to me like, at least in the stores that I've been in, they are wildly inappropriate in terms of tone for somebody who has a broken

computer in their hands that they're desperately trying to fix. And I'm not saying that they don't give good service. I'm saying I don't ever feel when I bring something in for service that I belong in the store, really, fundamentally, that I belong in the store. I feel, at least my gut feeling is like, they ought to have a side door for the broken computers because I don't belong here. I'm not one of these smiling, happy people who's saying, oh, maybe I'll be an iMac. I'm, I'll buy an iMac. I'm the kind of person who's sad and caring an iMac that is, that has a spider in it, you know, and it's, it's a, it's not a fun experience or you've got a laptop that won't

boot or whatever it is. And I just, I think it's a challenge that again, was not on the radar. I know that they have, they do it, but like Angela Ah again, was not on the radar. I know that they do it. But Angela Ahrens was not brought in to make an amazing broken computer experience or broken phone experience. That was really not why she was there. And it's not her fault. That was not what they were thinking about. And I'm encouraged by this because maybe it's certainly a way that they could be better is by figuring out how to do that better.

Because this means, this is two things. You can have your cake and eat it. You can keep making your stores these beautiful things that are not built for repairs, but also make it easier for people to get repairs by partnering with companies that can and do provide a different experience. The problem I have with the Best Buy thing is that Apple has also had a whole, like they used to have a very large Apple certified repair, you know, dealers and things like that. And those businesses have been decimated by the success of the Apple store. There are 1,800 authorized service providers in the US. Yeah. So this is my, 100 authorized service providers in the U.S. Yeah. So this is my larger point, which is if I was Apple and Apple retail, I think, and I'm just going to throw this out there.

This is just a wacky idea. I would invest in all of those certified Apple repair people and try to make an effort to make them stronger and to refer people to them so that these repairs are happening somewhere that is not my beautiful Apple store, at least to a larger degree, especially for things like maybe like Macs versus things like iPhones that are super small and complicated and you need specialized equipment for them. But even them, maybe. Like, that would be one solution here is to let the independent certified repair centers handle this stuff and get it out of the Apple store. And say, no, what you should do is, you know, you go and you click on a genius appointment.

I have a broken Mac. And maybe what they say is, have a repair center next to you, near you. You should go to them, not to us. And they could just push some of that stuff aside. Because one of the problems here is I think the fundamental idea, Apple wants to control everything. And so they say, well, we've got retail stores and we're going to do all our support in there and we're going to get everybody else out and we're going to do it all ourselves, which is fine if you do it. But the problem is if you are, if you're not focused on it. So you've taken somebody else's stuff and then because you're

Apple and then you don't pay it enough attention. That's the most maddening thing that Apple can do is, or anybody who wants to have complete control over something is okay, take complete control, but then you need to own it. And, and, and instead, these people who are independent, Apple, retailers and repair centers and things like that, that's just that business has been brutal, because Apple stores are so successful. So I don't know, I again, it's not like Apple stores don't do repairs, and that Apple doesn't you get in, it's nice to take it into the Apple store. And sometimes it's convenient if you live close to one. It's more that it really doesn't feel like the Apple store as it's defined today is built for it. Like they used to have genius bars in the back of the store, right? They don't even have those anymore. So you just hold your broken computer and stand there or

sit on a bench somewhere until someone comes to take it away. It is very sad. It is by, yeah, prop your broken iMac against a tree and wait for a magical Apple genius to appear it's not not there's more work to do here but I'm encouraged it these moves make me feel like they know that there's something wrong yeah there's one little thing it's one like one last little thing it's all coming from a press release so it's the squeakiest loveliest version it can be but that when they say about the 1800 uh apple authorized service providers that's tripled over the last three years that's good so that i mean you would assume i mean that means they didn't have a lot so when you talk about decimation that's what the decimation was right there were not many three

years ago yeah they they all yeah i mean the rise of the apple store killed all that i mean you used to go buy a mac at your local computer shop, right? I think a lot of people did that. Some people went to Best Buy or wherever, but a lot of people, or your Mac breaks and you take it to your local Mac repair shop and now you take it to the Apple Store and they lost so much of their business and a lot of those companies are hurting or gone. And so, yeah, yeah, more, maybe that was maybe just a little bit of a mistake on Apple's part. I don't know. And our first little follow up mini topic today. Publishers are unhappy with Apple

News Plus, according to a report from Business Insider. Many publishers are not seeing good revenue from Apple News Plus. In some cases, there have been reports from publications that they are seeing one twentieth of what Apple told them they would likely receive, or that it is about equal with the money that they received from Texture, which is not good if that's the case. Yeah, I was going to say, in journalism, Mike, we call this dog bites Okay. The most common and obvious of stories. Of course, everybody said this before. Of course this was going to happen. Apple was not going to be able to live up to their promise.

How many people do we know who tried it out on the trial period and then canceled it and don't use Apple News Plus? I'm, you know, it's, I am not surprised. It's not a great experience. It's, and the terms were never great for publishers so how how unsurprising is this the report from business insider sites that apple is encouraging feedback from publishers um who apparently seem ultimately unhappy with the magazine format like that that isn't what a lot of companies want to do, which, again, is not surprising. And it also seems that users are confused with the offering,

like what is free, what is paid. I don't think Apple did a very good job of communicating it. I don't think they've done a very good job of pushing it. Yeah, as you say, this is not a surprise to anybody who was paying attention because when it was announced, it was very much a, huh, okay. It wasn't much, and it doesn't seem like it's taken off at all. I don't know why this got launched. Just thinking about it now, I don't know why they launched this when all their other service stuff that they were doing is basically like this fall yeah why did this have to launch now

it was very clearly not ready that the app is a mess do you remember when it launched and you could just like on the mac version you could just get all the pdfs if you hadn't downloaded all the pdfs yeah yeah yeah and and it's not a good experience like Like I used it and in an hour using it, it was very clear that it was a complete disaster that I want to sign up for these things. You know, you want to sign up for the favorites of the things you want. You want to be able to browse them directly

or have them integrated in your newsfeed. They should probably be tagged as being part of News Plus. You should be able, like the whole app needs to be better. And then News Plus needs to be better integrated into it. Plus, there's this whole thing that it's coming from texture, so there's a lot of magazine PDFs, and that is not what Apple News is about. Apple News is about reading individual articles, and it did a bad job of that. And also, it's using a lot of magazine publishers when probably news publishers are better,

but they couldn't make deals with many of them other than the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times. So it's a mess. It should never have launched. It's not good. I will revisit it at some point, maybe in the fall. But unless they make major changes to the news app, which we haven't seen in any of the betas, right?

we haven't seen in any of the betas, right? Like it is, you know, wow. It feels like some senior person at Apple really believed the PR about how great Apple News was and that they were going to just be able to march on in here and solve everybody's problem with their amazing product. And all of us are like, no, Apple News isn't that good. And you're bolting to it something that doesn't work right and doesn't fit. And the terms are bad and publishers shouldn't agree to them. Wow. So I wonder about this thing because what I would say is if Apple is committed

to making Apple News Plus better and making the Apple News app better and working better with publishers, I think they could fix this. And I think it could be a good product. However, I have seen zero evidence that Apple is actually committed to making news better and making better deals for publishers and making it a more usable app. Zero effort. And my apologies to those who use Apple News. I think it's not very good. And I think any, and it's too complicated. And any added complexity, like a set of premium feeds, just makes it unusable. So I think it's a flop. And I'd like to believe that Apple recognizes that it's a flop and that they need to completely reconceive it. But they're going to have to show it to me because I see no evidence that they get it.

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That's butcherbox.com slash upgrade, promo code upgrade at checkout for $20 off your first box and six burgers for free all summer. Our thanks to But butcher box for their support of this show and all of relay fm sub stream time here we go hbo max who's max you say max is a new streaming service that's who they are uh this is the streaming service that hbo was created to try and compete against disney plus and netflix and you may say to yourself but Mike what about HBO Now and Go? Well you need to already be a HBO customer right to get Now and Go. Well not to get Go. Now is over the top and I think it's gonna die. Yeah it probably will. I think this is literally going to replace it that if you want to get HBObo content you need to subscribe to hbo max

and the hbo now product i would not be surprised if this is literally going to be hbo now that it's literally they're going to take the tech they use to build it convert everybody's subscriptions and say it's all of hbo plus now you get friends reruns Yeah, but so they will also have, and this is one thing that none of their services have right now, but Max is going to have original content that will live in the streaming service. So they have announced a bunch of deals with a bunch of big names, people like Reese Witherspoon.

She's got two projects with the Hello Sunshine company. She is a powerhouse in this streaming age. Anna Kendrick, Nicole kibman many more there's a i'm going to put a link in the show notes to a variety article where they break down all the original content they've got lots of tv shows lots of movies lots of original stuff uh is coming to hbo max um again we don't know what it's going to be like uh of course as well a vast array of warner content for example friends this will be the place that you will have to watch friends if you're in the u.s there is some question about international rights which is like a whole other thing so we talked about this at length on the tv talk machine podcast that i do with tim goodman uh episode 225

we'll put a link in the show notes last week and we had a nice letter on that episode from joe steel our friend and uh one of his points is that yeah all the international rights are sold in in various markets for a long time so that's going to stall their international rollout for a long time they also made a lot of bad mistakes or at least they lacked foresight for what they were going to do so like harry potter is sold is sold to NBC Universal until 2025 or something like that. So they can't get the Harry Potter stuff that they, it's their product, but they can't put it on their service until the mid 2020s. Like it is kind of a mess,

but this is what happens when you change direction rapidly in a year, basically, with a new owner and aren't prepared for it. That's the key. WarnerMedia had a plan. AT&T do not want WarnerMedia's plan. No, they want a new plan. And I'm going to say, too, and I talked about this with Tim, I do believe that HBO Now will just be retired

or turned into HBO Max. The differentiator there, HBO now was actually really a bold move. It was the idea that you could not subscribe to any traditional cable service and you could still stream HBO. So HBO Go is for people who have cable and have an HBO subscription and you get HBO Go so you can stream it too, like me. HBO now, you're a cord cutter. You don't need anything. You just pay them directly and you get HBO Go so you can stream it too, like me. HBO Now, you're a cord cutter. You don't need anything. You just pay them directly and you get HBO's content as a stream, which is great. It was a bold move on their part

because it's saying you don't need to pay our big source of money, cable companies and satellite companies. You can just pay us and we'll give you our shows. And like, it was a big move. The problem is, you know, Disney comes out, they say they're gonna be cheap at launch with their streaming service. They need a Warner Media streaming service. But how do you price it? If you already have an

over the top streaming service, all it is is HBO, and it costs way more than any of your competitors already. I think the answer is going to be you don't offer that anymore. You turn that into this HBO Max that's got even more content in it for that price or maybe even an introductory price that's lower than that and if all you want is hbo um you can get that through cable but if you want to do it over the top stream you need hbo max and you'll pay for that and you'll get all of this extra stuff i think that's where there's there has not been any reporting but i cannot it seems by far the most logical thing for them to do and honestly i think this is the right move i think they've got a lot

going against them because they're saddled with bad contracts bad deals bad international like this is going to be really rough for a while but i think it's the right thing to do because hbo is a good brand warner is not warner is an old brand if you're 80 or 100 years old or really like looney tunes warner is a great brand but honestly looney tunes yeah yeah but honestly it's a bad brand like hbo game we have the height of Game of Thrones right like HBO is a brand that means good TV and I think that it's the best piece of of branding they've got so they ought to write it and they've got this group at HBO and again this is that story that we talked about where it's you know the they get on stage and they tell the people at HBO thanks for being very profitable and winning lots of awards you've got a double or triple or quadruple your output

because we live in a different world now. And that AT&T executive was kind of a jerk. You know, the president of HBO who was so successful tried to spin it. He ended up quitting or being shown the door regardless, but he's out. They've got new people in there. The way they did it,

just like with their current position with all their contracts, The way they did it, just like with their current position with all their contracts, the way they did it, not great. I think that's AT&T maybe being more abrasive than they need to be. But were they right? I think they were. I think you look at HBO and say, thank you for winning at this game. That was the way to win 10 years ago. It's not your fault that the world has changed, but the world has changed. I mean, I went through this when I talked to people who are doing print journalism and I said, you got to do the web. It's the same thing. It's like, you're not doing a bad job, but the job you're doing can't exist anymore. The world is changing around you. Yeah. We need to do something new. So taking the HBO development engine and also pouring in Turner and the stuff

they've got there, like Adult Swim, and they've got a bunch of comedy stuff on on tbs and they've got uh you know they've got conan o'brien's over there and samantha b is over there and then they got john oliver over here like there's some good stuff there right but like hbo you're really good at making great stuff that people like and people like your brand and your new task is you're gonna have to make a lot more of it because we need to program a giant streaming service. And so it's been ugly. It's going to be ugly. And I think they're doing exactly the right thing.

It's just going to be hard because of all the decisions that have been made over the last 10 years by people who are probably not even there anymore. Certainly the old owners and probably old management. And they're going to have to unwind all that stuff because they didn't have those people did not have the foresight to realize like disney did um a lot sooner that they have to go direct to consumer with a streaming service so it'll be interesting to watch i think they've got a great library even so it is going to be messy but i do think that they've got a lot of compelling stuff and um and we'll see how it goes but like i i think it'll be um i think it'll be a player i'm i'm intrigued by it even though it's yeah yeah there's good hey we're the company that brought you harry potter we don't have harry potter ouch but we got a game of thrones spinoff how about

that have they uh yeah there's a game of thrones spinoff in the works the question is i assume that will run on hbo but of course i imagine imagine that HBO Max will be a superset. It will be literally everything that's on HBO plus originals and catalog content. And so the HBO or the Game of Thrones spinoff will presumably premiere on HBO and also be on HBO Max. So they'll be able to promote it that way. It's interesting that they have gone with the HBO brand, right? Like they're rolling all of WarnerMedia's stuff under HBO. Like they know where their cars are.

It's the best name they own, right? I mean, are they going to call it like the Turner or the Warner or those are corporate names, like TBS, TNT. It's not going to be the HBO we know, but it is a name that people recognize and it has positive associations it is a symbol of quality they win lots of awards it's the best they got and I think better that than they invent a new name for it some weird

Hulu kind of name for it like don't even just HBO Max and Max is it's a weird name I guess they didn't want to be HBO plus because everybody else is a plus but maybe that meant they should have been but but using hbo as the brand it's the right way to go i don't know if it'll work but i think it's the best of the the best hand for them to play let's put it that way based on the cards they've been dealt by the previous regime yep

set to debut in spring 2020. No word about international availability, which is a surprise. I mean, as we said, right, they might not want to do it until they can unwind some of those deals. So it might be like 2021, 2022. I thought I read somewhere they're going to put it in beta this fall. And I don't know what that means

other than maybe what they'll be doing. Again, if my theory holds, they'll just start adding some catalog content to HBO now. But it is funny that like Friends will leave Netflix at the end of the year, but most people might not even be able to watch it for a few months.

My guess is that's an example. If they do this beta thing, is that Friends will just show up on HBO Now at that point. And they'll be transitioning it to HBO Max. Or they'll call it HBO Max, but it won't all be there. It won't be originals. It'll just be the stuff that was in HBO Now. That's my guess but we'll see apple tv plus's c s e e is as expensive as we thought it was rumored to be one of the most expensive tv shows of all time and the

journal is reporting that apple has spent nearly 15 million dollars per episode on the jason momoa sci-fi drama to put this into context house, House of Cards cost $4.5 million an episode. So huge, massive. Yeah. Altered carbon, I know, cost a lot of money. That was, I think, previously had been discussed as possibly being the most expensive TV show ever made per episode.

And Game of Thrones, obviously, has cost a fortune, so it might be. But we had heard and we said and people were like where did you hear that and it's like uh places i am not able to reveal my sources but definitely heard through the grapevine that it was incredibly expensive and so it was fun to see this story that it's like yeah it's 15 million per episode that's what it cost yeah so whether it's the most expensive or not it kind of doesn't matter it's in the very very top top tippy top tier which is bold for a company that doesn't have any track record uh with producing content um there because like the reason i bring up house of cards that was the breakout for netflix

yeah that was their first major original and it was costing them a third of the cost by the end now i know sci-fi is obviously more expensive to make if you want to do it properly um but it is just a very interesting thing and also this report talks about and it rounds up some other stuff so the morning show so jennifer anderson reese witherspoon steve carell they are all earning over a million dollars each for appearing in it per episode. So that's another thing to think about. The reason I bring that up, you couple that in with the $15 million cost per episode or something.

See, I think Apple just don't care about that $1 billion budget anymore. That budget, that number that we heard about, $1 billion, I don't think that that is a thing because they are pouring money into this like i it seems like at this point you just got to ignore that billion they're putting in as much as they want to put in now i think because that's a lot of money being thrown around you gotta you know you gotta make a you got the money you gotta make a strong impression you gotta have stuff that you feel like how does apple this is a good question we've been debating how does apple differentiate apple tv plus because it's just more shows like hey we got shows but they can't do what they do with apple products right where it's like we we have made something that nobody else could make they're literally just working with tv producers to make tv shows so how do you do it i gotta say

one way you do it just spend more money because you're Apple. And then you say, we are making TV at a level that no one else can because they can't afford it. Like Netflix can afford it, but Netflix has to do a lot of shows. And they're being a little more ruthless with it. And they can afford it and they will. But like that's one way to play with the big boys. Well, and also there's like a different economy, right? Like Netflix has to make their money by making good TV, right? So like they have to make good stuff to make the money that they need to make more stuff.

Well, Apple has a literal press like money printing press so they can just keep pouring money in and it won't be a problem because they make so much of it that they've just got it sitting around. Right. Like they could just keep doing this. that they've just got it sitting around, right? Like they could just keep doing this. Every single show could be a flop, but it doesn't matter because they can just keep putting more money into it if they want to, right? Like if Netflix, all of their shows for a year flop,

that's going to harm them for the next year. But for Apple, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. They can just keep doing it. And that is what makes them a threat, but they still may fail spectacularly. just don't know yet right but it's like they could just the money doesn't matter we'll just keep putting more money into it until it until it works or completely flames out yep should we do some follow-up it's a good thing for the show yeah yeah let's do some follow-up um i have as of today put the

ipad os beta on my ipad congratulations you know i've been talking about it i haven't done it i've finally done it i'm very excited about it i like a lot of it a lot it's buggy like a beta is right like it's just stuff's weird in places using a mouse is as right? Like, it's just, stuff's weird in places. Using a mouse is as incredible as I wanted it to be. I think it's fantastic. It makes me very happy. I love the new home screen. And the Windows stuff is, it's taking some time.

I'm trying to get used to it. It's difficult because the apps that I would want to use, I can't, right? Like, I can't use Google Docs and Google Sheets yet because they don't support that, theing feature um but i like although you could although you can load it in a safari desktop view well uh kind of browser window i would say that the google differently doesn't work the google docs stuff is is good in a browser window it is not perfect like trying to select text and copy and paste is is not good right now and i i don't know what apple can do to try and fix that but i would like to

see them do that um somehow it's like basically the system and google docs on the web are fighting against each other as to who owns the cursor talking about that i'm struggling to get used to the cursor placement stuff and the copy and paste things because the little tips they still pop up and I wasn't expecting that so I'm still trying to get my head around a lot of the text stuff I've been looking at Apple's website

and trying to understand the gestures I cannot seem to do the one where you can just tap and select, like just drag and select a block of text. I'm struggling with that one. So I'm still trying to get used to it. But a lot of what's in here is really great. Dark mode is awesome. I think it looks fantastic.

So yeah, I am looking forward to seeing more of what's going on so i'm very excited about it yeah it really is the the typical beta thing where there are apps that you should be a lot better but they've got to be updated to support it and unless you're on a beta of something test flight beta you're not going to see that stuff and google you know it's google will do it six months later that'll be great when they do it but they're going to do it six months later because they always do. A couple of apps just launch and then quit, which is fine. Like, fair enough.

It's a beta. And the Files app is one that is funny because there's so much work in progress on the Files app in terms of adding external device support and server support and stuff like that. And I found from beta to beta, features come and go. Again, that's beta life. But I have had it on my iPad for quite a while now, and I'm still using it, and it's still fine. I've managed to get by. So that's good.

Hashtag Snell Talk question. To open the show, as we always do, you can send in a tweet's good hashtag snell talk question to open the show as we always do you can send in a tweet with the hashtag snell talk and it can be included in a future episode uh a question this time comes from scott scott wants to know is it acceptable to wear airpods in the bathroom um okay this is a funny question i would say if you're on the phone with somebody you should not be talking to them from the bathroom it depends how close you are but i would say i would mostly agree with you i don't think there's anybody in the world i would want to talk to when i'm in the bathroom but i know that that's the thing for some people yeah i

guess i i would i would caution against it um if you're just listening to stuff i don't think i have a problem with it in terms of acceptability i will warn you you are at risk of dropping your airpods uh down the drain or in the toilet or wherever a place that it should not go because then you would have to put it back in your ear afterward and that's not a good idea so i think if you're going to use any technology in the bathroom the airpods are in the level of it's okay because you're touching the other technology right like you're touching your phone or whatever when you're in the bathroom at least the airpods they go in the ears and they stay there so in theory they're more acceptable well i mean i i bring my phone

into the bathroom just to press play and you know and put it on a speaker and listen to it in the shower. That's not the same as, you know, yeah, again, hygiene is important. This is what I'm going to say. Hygiene is important. You got to beware dropping your AirPods in a place that you are not going to be able to retrieve them or won't want to retrieve them. won't want to retrieve them. And there's some social issues in terms of nobody wants to be on a conference call where you're talking to them and then they hear a flush. That's a bad idea. That's not good. So I would say watch out for those. But more broadly, if you're you wander into the bathroom and you've got your AirPods in. Sure, I find that acceptable. That's my devices in the bathroom. I see no shame in this I will be that person I will be that person Hey Mike did you know that it's

I was in Boston over the weekend and I got to experience a really nice kind of like a warm like a hot summer which is fun because back here in San Francisco we don't get that a lot From RelayFM this is Upgrade episode 254 today's show is brought to you by Linode Butcher Box.

And hello, my name is Mike Hurley. I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley.