Upgrade - 258: Ten Hours Is Not All Day

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

With Apple's new operating-system releases due next month, Jason and Myke check in on how their beta experiences are going so far, especially the ups and downs of iPadOS 13. We also discuss Disney's aggressive streaming-service bundling and how Apple might respond next month. And does Samsung's announcement of an ARM laptop with 23-hour battery life serve as the perfect reason why an ARM MacBook is inevitable?

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 258 today's show is brought to you by linode pingdom and ero my name is mike hurley it is still the summer of fun summer of fun and i am joined by jason s hi jason snow hi mike hurley you know so my wife does uh library programs for kids in the summer and because school is about to start here she's been talking about how basically her summer is over now and she's moving into school time and i am fascinated by this because i have uh you know, if we go by the weather, I've got like a good two plus months of summer weather left. So it's funny where like parts of our house, my wife and my son, their summer is over this week. For other parts of my house, me and my daughter, the summer stretches ever onward.

And for Upgrade, I think it stretches on for a few more weeks. Yeah. So we got today's episode, which is fun in that there was no real news. So we've got some stuff for you. This is true summer of fun where we're bringing together some little topics. Next week, I'm going to be in Memphis. Yes. We're going to do something hopefully with steven hackett and

mac related that is yet to be determined but steven and i i saw steven last week we talked about uh the idea of doing something uh bringing bringing somebody on who's um more again you get you get a bad rap okay let's talk about this for a second i was gonna say bringing someone on who cares about the mac that That's not true. You care about the Mac. You care about the iPad. There's this mentality. I have these moments, too, where people will say, oh, you know, these people who are iPad people like Federico.

I'm like, fair. And Mike. And I'm like, hmm. And Jason. And I'm like, eh. I'm very clear that I'm team both. But I think it's like, well. But I use a, like you, I have like big iMac that I work at at my desk all day.

And then I got an iPad that I use mobile. I'm using both of them. But it is very easy to say, oh, you're one of those Mac people or you're one of those iPad people. It's like, no, I'm both. We are iPad advocates. We are not iPad exclusives. Exactly. Oh, I like that.

I like that. I like that. So anyway, but Stephen loves the Mac going back at a level that I perhaps do and you perhaps don't. And so having you in Memphis give us a little barbecue flavor right there and then throw in Stephen Hackett and you're roasting up some barbecued masks. Roasting up some trash cans. And then the week after, it is very possible that I will be recording in person at the Snell Zone. Right here. With the lasers. Right here in the Snell Zone.

That's what we're hoping to do is an in-person, in my office episode of Upgrade. What would be more fun than that what i think as horrifying as this sounds the week after which would be the first week of september we are expecting to be drafting by then yeah that would be the the big fade out of the summer of fun right it would be the last hurrah the summer of fun would be drafting for the iphone event assuming the iphone event is the the week following yep which i think it will be i would imagine september 10th will be the iphone event right if we're not drafting on the 26th which i seem as unlikely we'll be drafted in the 9th i i can't imagine

them releasing the iphone in october and that will be the situation otherwise so uh we we will very likely be draft we have like two more summer of fun episodes and then it's iphone draft so there's a summer of fun update um that nobody asked for but we gave to you anyway we have a hashtag snow talk question from james and james wants to know how often do you change the wallpaper on your iphone ipad or i will add in or mac we just talk about the mac what about that one too um infrequently is what i would say i i change them infrequently i um have been using the stock it's actually really funny because people see it and they're like where did you get that wallpaper on my iphone

and it's the it's the six color apple rainbows yep going across and um that's a stock wallpaper in ios 12 you can just pick it and it's with a black background is the one i've got Yep. Going across. And that's a stock wallpaper in iOS 12. You can just pick it. And it's with a black background is the one I've got. So that's on my iPhone. I've got a bunch of great photography from the Apollo missions that I use frequently. So like my lock screen on my iPhone is actually an astronaut. I think it's an Apollo 11 shot on the surface of the moon,

which looks really great with the OLED display, especially because the blackness of space is super black on the OLED. And likewise on my, on my iPad, I've got a, I've got the Earthrise picture from Apollo. That's the, you know, the nice blue earth over the moon, which is great. And on my Mac, I, and I like, I do change them, but it's pretty rare. The summer of fun is my and on my mac i and i like i do change them but it's pretty rare the summer of fun is my backdrop on my ipad by the way right now the upgrade summer of fun uh image because it's still the summer of fun so i guess that'll be changing in a few weeks and on my mac i generally change it once every you know few months but it's not it's not that often. Currently, I'm actually using an app called, oh, what's it called?

Downlink, which we actually, it's downlinkapp.com. A listener to many of our podcasts, including Liftoff, Anthony Colangelo wrote it, and it downloads satellite photos from the high-resolution satellite that is over the Western Hemisphere. And so I have a shot of California. It's basically from California in the upper right corner. I mean, California, the Western US in the upper right corner and Western Mexico as well, all the way down the bottom left is Hawaii. And so it's the Pacific Ocean. And that updates every 10 minutes

or something something which is kind of cool so i'm actually using that right now kind of a live desktop how about you um i very infrequently change my wallpapers um like on my lock screen is a photo of me and nadina from our wedding on my iphone uh on my ipad i have it match up I was using, for a long time on both of my iPads, I was using different Mac wallpapers from Stephen's 5K resolution Mac wallpapers thing, right? Because I thought that was kind of cute and it was funny to me. So I did that. But I changed the Summer of Fun wallpaper on everything.

So my iPhone has currently got the Summer of Fun wallpaper on both of my iPads. But I didn't like the way it looked with dark mode. So then I updated on my iPads to a picture of the beach. So I just like a picture of the beach is what I now have on my iPads, but my iPhone is still rocking the summer of fun, uh, wallpaper. I think it might look better on,

um, the, uh, on the iPad iOS now, because originally when you use dark mode up until the last beta, it would automatically dim the wallpaper for you, but now it does it based on ambient light, so I should try and see what it looks like now.

Sometimes now if you've got enough light around you and using dark mode, it doesn't do anything to your desktop wallpaper. It will only do it if you're in like a dark environment now. So I might try that out again. It might look better. But yeah, that's what I'm doing. All right. If you would like to send in a question like James did to start an episode of Upgrade,

just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk, and we will be able to consider that for a future episode. Jason, I believe that the term follow-up is defined by corrections sometimes of things from previous shows as well as additional content. Would you like to provide a correction from a previous show? Yeah, I should do this. Mike, in the last episode, you said that the Apple Card was introduced at Worldwide Developer Conference in June, episode you said that the apple card was introduced at worldwide developer conference in june but it

was actually at the i think you'll find at the spring services event not at wwdc i don't know how you could make such a horrible mistake thank you for your corrections voice that is wacky listener wacky voice and um yeah nobody mentioned this We noticed it after we released the episode. Literally you and I were like, whoops. Well, that we're going to be getting people correcting us all week. And nobody, I think everybody's at the beach. So I'm correcting it for us. No, my theory about this. I think that just like everybody else.

Actually, I've just found the definition of follow up. Follow up as a means of continuing a previously discussed topic or correcting things from a previous episode. That is from follow-ups created John Syracuse. I wrote that down somewhere and now I've checked it. So there we go. We have the correct definition. That's good. So your theory, Mike.

My theory is that everyone was as confused as I was. As confused as we are. Yeah, okay, fair. That's probably what it is. But anyway, it was at the Spring Services event. I remember because I heard it when I was editing the show where I was saying, oh, I have literally zero memory of them debuting at WWDC. Well, that's why, because they didn't.

Smart man. Yep, yep. Anyway, so that's our self-correction, our self-own for the episode is we got that wrong. But I still don't have an Apple card, Mike. So, you know, who knows? I hear it's interesting. I mean, actually, what I hear is it's a credit card. Did you apply for it?

I think I signed up for the, like, let me know. So you'll be able to apply at some point by the end of the month, basically. I guess. If you're interested in what it looks like, MKBHD made a video about it. I was surprised that I didn't see more videos. Like, I read a bunch of articles, like, when we've been talking about this over the last couple of weeks or whatever um but i was surprised i hadn't seen any videos well if you want to see an unboxing of the apple card which i actually just do think looks really cool uh mkbhd has got a video for you mike the reason is that most youtubers are

too young to be able to qualify for credit cards sorry is this if we turn this into to jason's comedy special i was gonna say the reason is that most youtubers have such bad credit they can't qualify for an apple card but that seems meaner that's meaner i think that they if they're successful they definitely do not uh they have good credit i'm very sure uh It is August. Do you know what that means, Jason? Summer of fun! Summer of membership. Real AFM membership time. It's happening.

The Real AFM membership is something that exists all year round. You get perks as a Real AFM member all 365 days of the year. But we talk about it in August and into September. It's the only time we talk about it every year. This year does mark five years of RealayFM so it's an extra special year for us this year. If you are a RelayFM member, you will get access to a bunch of wonderful perks

like a monthly behind the scenes newsletter and RelayFM host crossover podcast that you can only get as a RelayFM member. You get 5k desktop wallpapers of your favorite RelayFM shows. Members membership start at just five dollars a month and this time of year is extra special because this is when we are publishing our members specials throughout august and september you're going to get a bunch of wonderful

member specials with wild and wacky things i am attempting to do really different stuff this year so trying to like make stuff that's not as per my, my usual types of shows. I'll be talking about more of those specials. I published one already, which is something that me and Brad, the pen addict did last year. And we're doing it again. We build a Lego set together,

but the difference is Brad has the pieces and I have the instructions. All right. It took four and a half hours. It's, it's there. If you want it, it was a lot of fun. It's one of those things

you just put on in the background and you just let us go throughout the day and you can hear me say things like 2x4 flat piece if you want to hear that. But don't let anybody else

know about this, Jason. Don't tell anyone else. Okay, just between you and me. The Crown Jewel is the Cortex Upgrade crossover special. Of course it is. The text adventures

that we do every year. This is our fourth text adventure and it's going to be coming out on Friday, August 16th. upgrade crossover special of course it is the text adventures that we do every year this is our fourth text adventure and it's going to be coming out on friday august 16th that is this friday we're going to have a trailer at the end of this week's episode it is called danger town beat down it is a cop like was it 80s cop it's like an 80s cop movie yep it has probably taken about 20 hours of editing uh which is you know why i call it the crown jewel because i have to put all that work into it so i'm gonna justify it somehow i am so happy with the way that this one came out i think it might be my favorite of all that we've done uh if not it's like tied with six gun showdown

which was our first so it was like special for that reason. This is so fun. We will play a trailer at the end of the show. You can get it. If you want to become a RelayFM member to get your hands on all of this special stuff, so all of these perks, and also to support some of your favorite shows,

you can click the link in the show notes, which you can find at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 258, or it should be in your podcast app of choice there's a but click you can click a link right there and you can open up and become a member and support this show but if you want to learn more and support other shows you can go to relay.fm membership so it's right there if you use some apps i think like overcast does this like on the main screen there's a little green icon with a money symbol in it you can tap it and it will

take you right there to sign up you You can use Apple Pay as well now. So super simple. You can become a RelayFM member if you do. Thank you so much. And we really, really hope that you enjoy the benefits that we give. I'll add one more inducement, which is for people who want to hear me talk about a movie. Stephen Hackett and I, for Liftoff, we'll take often a space-themed film

of some kind and discuss it. And this year, we are taking a highly profitable, super scientifically accurate film and talking about it. It's Armageddon oh okay yeah i i i saw armageddon once and vowed never to see it again but guess what i'm gonna break that vow and we're

gonna watch armageddon and talk about all the things about it that are probably bad. Who knows? Maybe it's great. Maybe I'll think that the science in it is great, and that that scene where Bruce Willis says, look, I'm not saving the earth for you. I'm saving it for my little girl. Maybe that scene will be just amazing this time. We'll see.

Realize.fm membership. You can find out more. But if you want to support this show, just click the link in the show notes, and you'll be able to do that. And we really, really, really appreciate appreciate it thank you so much all right should we do some upstream yeah i think so there's some stuff happened in streaming like right after we did our show yesterday or last week yeah it was fast luckily we spoke about it and knew it

was going to happen anyway uh yes you were completely spot on the money Disney are offering a bundle of Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and Hulu, the ad supported version of Hulu for $12.99 a month I've seen many people say this and I think that they might be right that this has basically changed

everything for everyone it will be available immediately on November 12th which is the date that Disney Plus launches you'll be able to sign up for that uh jason what do you think like it's i mean i've seen a lot of comments and and and i think it's an interesting take to make that like the streaming wars are over now that disney are offering this i mean disney disney it'll be interesting to see the uptake the awareness of this services is pretty high i'm somebody who pays for Hulu without ads. And so

I'm kind of curious if that will be bundled at a different tier or whether there will be a bundle for that or not, because I'm not really interested in Hulu with ads. I'm interested in Hulu without. Or that maybe you can take the $12.99 and give Hulu an extra dollar or two and you get rid of the ads or whatever it is. Yeah. Who knows what that is? And so there's a bunch of things going on here. So the bundle, we knew it was happening and it's so there's a bunch of things going on here so um the bundle we knew it was happening and disney was so aggressive with disney plus that we knew that they would keep that aggression with any bundle price that they did i think what's interesting here is they're putting their three services together i would uh it may be that all the bundle that they offer is

the three services together rather than you know i I get one and then I get another one. And it may also be that in terms of the price, getting the bundle is better than getting two. And that's some interesting kind of mechanic there about how it increases the overall viewership of all three of those, even if you only really get it for two of them. And I think that that maybe has some long-term benefits to Disney. For those who don't know, because we only talk about it sporadically, and I've definitely heard people confuse this, ESPN Plus is not the ESPN channel from cable. It's a different set of sports content. They have been making deals with sort of niche sporting leagues and things. There's some college football on there and college basketball on there. It's stuff that's not on ESPN.

They have like original documentaries and dramas too, right? Yeah. Yeah. They do have other content too. So it's definitely a sports thing, but it's not just sort of the ESPN channel that's on your cable. It's a different kind of thing. And then there's Hulu. So yeah, I think this is Disney pushing. It's consistent with the price they gave to Disney Plus, but it's extending that across ESPN Plus and Hulu. And definitely the reactions I saw were mostly just, this is a no brainer. Like, well, sure. Of course for that price, which is by no mistake, no mistake, right? It's like a Netflix price, except you get their three services instead of just Netflix, which is, it's fascinating.

We'll see how it works and how people react to it, but it's hard not to look at Disney's aggression here and expect them to sign up a lot of people. And the real question is, as they start to crank the price up, how do they get – will they have convinced people that they can't live without it so that they stick with it? Disney also announced they're going to be reimagining some Fox classics like Home Alone and Cheaper by the Dozen for Disney+. the dozen for disney plus yeah this is an interesting story because what what's really happening here is disney looked at the uh longer term planning from the fox movie studio and basically put most of the content that was happening down the road and just kind of said no we're not gonna we're not gonna do that so so it's it's very much we we took over we don't like the movies that you're planning. We're going to reallocate a bunch of stuff.

Obviously, the X-Men movies are going to Marvel Studios. And they actually picked out a few of these franchises from the Fox library that might have been part of the film slate. I don't know if these films were in possibility going to be made or remade at Fox. But what Disney did is somebody went through the Fox library and said, I think these would make good Disney Plus TV shows. So I don't know how Home Alone is a TV show. Is he always home alone? Home Alone? Or is it like one of these money heists or something where there's an eight episode season

which is essentially the whole rollercoaster of him being left home alone? I figured it might be a movie. I don't think they all have three seasons. You're right. They could just be movies instead of series. I don't know. There's possibilities. It could be an anthology series of just different children

being left home. Various kids left home alone. I like that. I like that idea so but but it is you can see what disney's doing here which is disney is methodically kind of rifling through the intellectual property that it has and that it has acquired and finding stuff that it thinks might fly on disney plus and then they will also reconceptualize like what fox as a studio is doing down the road now that they're in charge of it but this is uh part of a kind of this larger consumption of fox by disney that's that's going on i think it is interesting that they they disney plus is such a priority that they had somebody uh basically

rifling through the couch cushions at fox and like oh home alone dis Alone, Disney+, take it away. And that's what they're doing. We had an Ask Upgrade question from Rajiv, which I'll ask now. Do you think Apple will have to discount Apple TV Plus as a price or bundle it in with other services to remain competitive, especially in light of Disney's announcement? Well, keep in mind when they announced Apple TV Plus at WWDC. No, they didn't. I'm just, didn't i'm just i was testing you i was testing you no when they announced apple tv plus at the spring services event you know i didn't

notice that but uh you got me of course you didn't i'm sure a listener has already written in though uh no it's it's it's uh it was it was mike um when they announced apple tv plus at the services event uh they didn't mention bundles and they didn't mention a price and then disney announced what their pricing was so i think this is one of the things as disappointing as as it was for all of us to not have apple talk about its pricing strategy it was so smart for them not to do that because they have had the whole summer to think about what their pricing is and what their uh forgive the phrase go-to-market strategy is with apple tv plus they've had a lot of time to think about it and i don't know what they're going to do because part of me thinks it's apple they're going to price it way more than you want because that's the rule of

apple pricing is that it gets priced way more than than you want. Part of me thinks they want to be aggressive because they want people to sign up for this thing and they want to increase their services revenue, but they also want to get a lot of people to try it. So, you know, my best guess is that it will be bundled with Apple Music and they'll be pretty aggressive about it. It wouldn't surprise me if they bundle it with another channel, if that makes sense.

If they say like, get Apple TV and one channel of your choice for this price. And it could be HBO or Showtime or stars or epics or whatever they want to do. They could do something like that. And they'd obviously be kicking most of that money back to the partner, but they would be able to offer kind of like more content for the, for the price. Cause Apple's only really got, as far as we know, only got these originals.

They don't have a catalog of any kind, which is a tough sell. But if I had to guess, it would be that they will be aggressive in bundling it with Apple Music, that it'll be the cost of an Apple Music subscription plus a few dollars. And the argument they'll make is this is your best deal for getting music and video together. But I don't know. It makes it hard. Rajiv, the short answer is, yeah, they are going to have to do some work here. They're going to have to really sell it now. Yeah.

Yep. Especially with no catalog, right? It's like literally we've got some originals. We've got no back catalog. We've got no movie catalog. As far as we we know we've never seen any reports of that and that makes it a a series or a service with limited appeal and they're going up against disney which has got their whole catalog and a bunch of originals with these you know huge franchises behind them so um i i think honestly if this is at the ip event, and I'm not sure it will be,

but it may be, that's the best place for it. All eyes are on the iPhone. So if you want to lift your service, you would put it in the iPhone event at the beginning because everybody watches that event. That's the most popular, most watched event Apple does the whole year. They're going to have to, it's going to be one of the more interesting things that the iphone iphone event is a price announcement for apple tv plus and i know that seems really weird but i think it's one of the great mysteries that we have we have a decent idea of what the iphone is going to be but what apple's doing with apple tv plus we have no clue and that's kind of exciting i'm still going to stick on my prediction i don't even think they're gonna do it but i think they should do it if you give apple money for like apple music

apple news plus apple arcade you get apple tv plus that's where i'm gonna go with it like it comes as like a sweetener for another service if you're an apple subscriber you get access to their shows yeah all right could be talking of uh there is a teaser today of the morning show which is the you get access to their shows. Yep. All right. Could be. Talking of, there is a teaser today of The Morning Show, which is the Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell drama show.

It popped out today as like a teaser, really, along with a Twitter account, which is The Morning Show. So that is now a thing that exists. You can watch the trailer. I'll put a link in the show notes. It sounds very dramatic.

It was basically just audio and showing a walkthrough of a morning show set. There was no footage. I thought it was supposed to be funny. This is not a funny trailer. No. This is not a funny show. People think it's supposed to be a funny show. This is never a funny show. I've seen this set in a bunch of places.

This was a drama. this is never a funny show i've seen this set in a bunch of places this was a drama this is not this is not a comedy this was always like pitched as a show that that shows like the stress of this job and of women in this type of environment like that that was the kind of the conceit of the show as i remember it uh so yeah but i've seen a lot that like people are confused about where it's a comedy and i think it's not helped by the fact that people look at steve corral and they think it must be must be joke town but nope and and jennifer aniston yeah yeah but i think that aniston has done more right or at least sure well it does it does a good job of saying this is a dramatic show. Yes.

And perhaps it's the dramedy, perhaps there's some humor in it as well, but that trailer, which is just sort of images of the sets with audio, dialogue of audio playing in the background. But it's, yeah, we'll see. We're getting little clips now, right? The morning show and For All Mankind, we've gotten little bits and pieces.'re we're getting little clips now right the morning show and for all mankind we've gotten little bits and pieces so we know a little bit more about them now and that says again coming in the fall so your prediction about iphone event that's the time they're going to show it right it's coming in the fall um and lastly netflix has signed a overall deal with david benioff and db, who are responsible for Game of Thrones on HBO. This was said to be a huge bidding war amongst

all of the major players of Disney, Netflix, and Amazon fighting the hardest. It's a multi-year agreement to direct TV shows and movies, said to be worth $200 million. And their pair will still be working on their Star Wars movies, though. Yeah, this is like the J.J. Abrams thing.

There's a real question about how focused these guys are going to be since they've got the Star Wars deal. But they, you know, who knows? They've got a movie for 2022 that's a Star Wars movie, and they're supposedly writing and producing more after that with them. And this is a deal that, you know, is before this proceeds this.

So I don't know. Are they going to be distracted like JJ Abrams was for his overall deal? Um, but it's, the fact is that Netflix, Amazon, and Disney were all bidding for these guys because of Game of Thrones. And Netflix decided, uh, netflix decided uh they were gonna

they were gonna put up the money so yeah so they got them yep there is this strange because we were talking about this with jj right like this idea that like if i if somebody's done something once so they can definitely do it again and that's not always the case right i would also say jj abrams is a i think a much better person to be to make a deal with than benioff and weiss because benioff and weiss's track record is essentially they ran this show that became a huge hit so they had a hit do we have any real evidence that they can do it again i don't think we do so it's a bigger gamble jj ab.J. Abrams has produced a bunch of movies and TV shows that have been successful. He's written a bunch of movies and TV shows that have been successful. He's directed a bunch of movies and TV shows that have been successful.

So he's a writer, director, producer with a big track record in his production company. Household name that draws attention. Production company expands even beyond that right like the whole thing and and you know not everybody loves jj abrams's stuff but i'd say he's a pretty good bet because he's shown that he's not just uh somebody with like one talent but that he's got a bunch of talented people around him and he he and his production company have clearly got a sense for uh how to develop shows and develop movies and benioioff and Weiss, and I liked Game of Thrones a lot, but I don't see a track record there.

So this is a real risk. But I think in today's overheated content market, the big players who have maybe some money to burn are willing to take that gamble because what if they can do another Game of Thrones or two or three, then it would be worth it. I don't think they can, honestly. I don't think these guys are going to go away and never do anything good anymore, but I'm not sure that the fact that Game of Thrones was a success, it means that everything they do from now on

is going to be Game of Thrones. And that's sort of how this deal is priced. So, you know, Netflix has got the money. So there it is. Today's episode is brought to you by Linode. With Linode, you can instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode cloud and get everything set up in seconds

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reckon we're about three weeks away from an iphone announcement which typically would say that we're probably about four weeks away from iOS being released. It's about a month away. And I wanted to kind of check in with us both. I'm running iPadOS only. I'm not running iOS on my iPhone yet. And I'm not running the Mac beta or the watch beta or anything like that. Are you running everything?

No. Okay, what have you got going on right now so i've got catalina running in a partition we know about that one that one we know because of security uh but yes but it's on a it's on one it's on one disc and i've got so i've got an internal and an external and i'm booted right now into mojave on the external and then my ipad is running the beta my iphone is not although i do have a loner iphone that is running the beta but it's not what i use and my my apple watch remains untouched by betas because i like my apple watch and i'd like to use it so ipad os is probably the using the most or for sure yeah because that's on a

device which you know you use all the time and it can't be dual booted like the mac right so like right um so what are you thinking about the beta cycle right now from a reliability standpoint you know i've heard people say that it's terrible and i've heard people say that it's fine. Like, I've been seeing all these Steve Troughton Smith tweets. They're like, you know, it's fine. It's no worse than other ones at this point. And I don't agree with either.

I'm in the middle. Big surprise. I think I'm in the middle, too. I don't have an extreme opinion here. iOS, I've had OS 13 13 beta feels like a beta and the fact that it's now august and features keep kind of like ducking out and then coming back in various betas and uh like there are bugs the safari stuff which is super ambitious that they're doing where they're doing the desktop class browsing.

There's a lot happening in Safari and how web pages are rendered in iPad OS. And it's still not right. Like it still doesn't work right. It's getting better, though. It is getting better, but it's still not complete. And I genuinely think this will not be something that's complete in 13.0. Like this is going to take some time. in 13.0 like this is going to take some time like i have a whole lot if you load a page in holding uh an ipad pro horizontally and you load a page that's a responsive design web page

um it loads half the width of the page yeah in a mobile view and then you have to rotate and then unrotate and then it looks fine and it's And it's like, that's been there for like a month at least. And that seems like a pretty fundamental bug that has not yet been addressed. So there's stuff like that. The springboard crashes. Springboard crashes are quite frequent. All the time, right?

You're just like, oh no, everything goes black and the thing spins and you think, no, this is a disaster. And then it just comes back to the lock screen and you unlock it and it's fine. But that happens a lot. And that all said, I put the beta on it i use my ipad all the time including to get work done not just like looking at emails and twitter and stuff and i have been able to do that i have not at any point this summer said i gotta revert this ipad or've gotta get my old iPad out. I have had no problems with any third-party apps, right?

Like at all. They all work fine. All of the integrations to the system are totally fine, right? Things that are working on like files or whatever, it's not breaking anything, right? Like all of that stuff is rock solid. My biggest problem is

kind of around basic stuff with the system. Like anything to do with multitasking can be super janky. Like I get UI lockups all the time. Well, like I'm trying to use slide over and it will just stop. I can't slide it back over anymore. Like it just freezes.

There's like nothing I can do to get the window to go away. Keyboard shortcuts, anything to do with like command tabbing, going home, all of those they just stop working randomly and only a reboot will fix it and this isn't a bug as such but kind of just like in how i'm feeling i cannot get my head around these new text editing gestures i keep looking at apple's marketing pages and trying to do what they say i can do and i cannot get it to

work like to me it feels like it's just the same as it always was but i can yeah you got to put your finger down and hold it for too long and then drag because if you do it short you know and it's it's a challenge right because putting a finger down and then immediately moving it is a drag basically and so you have to pause for a moment but the timing there you know if you pause for too long then it feels like yeah like you're basically just dropping the the little uh loop cursor like you used to and the multitasking stuff like trying to open split screen windows from any app that's on the lock screen just does not work right like it just sends them all into the jiggle mode which doesn't make any sense considering there's that new rearrange windows shortcut like i cannot take an app from my home

screen and put it into multitasking without accidentally opening a folder like creating a folder so that but that still feels like something that's going to be fixed though sure and some of this stuff like a lot of this i could chalk up to performance issues that you know what uh until you're very late in a beta process i feel like you just got to let some of the performance stuff go and that's what i've been doing is just shrugging it off and saying you know it's it's not people always ask when i do beta stuff uh uh how's it what's the speed like it's like don't ask me about speed in a beta like it's not it's not done it's sometimes the speed is the last thing yeah it's the polish that they do yeah is they got to lock all this stuff down and there's no point in locking it down while it's still in flux.

So they wait until the end. So, and I'm not really judging here. Bugs happen in betas and it's fine. That's why betas exist. I will say that it is, this is a combination thing again. It's more usable than I thought it would be, but also more buggy than I expected it would be. Like it is, especially now that it is coming up mid August, it all feels a little bit shakier. And as a, an intrepid beta tester, I'm okay with

the bugs and I'm glad that I can still use it to get my work done. And so it's like a good mix for me. It's a little frustrating, but I roll with it. I can't imagine something like this shipping to customers because it is, by the standards of shipping software, it is a complete mess. But fortunately, it's not shipping yet. Still, if they're shipping it in a month or a month and a half, there's a lot of cleanup to be done here so let's actually talk about that so features are being pulled out shortcuts automation was pulled out but said it

was coming back iCloud shared folders has been pulled out it seems like Apple actually reverted a bunch of iCloud kind of system changes like from 13 to 12 which is kind of interesting like from the system that they were changing yeah i was 13 they seem to like roll it back so there's some stuff that's coming in and i don't know if that is because um they don't want to stop the beta process uh when something is broken so they just take it out temporarily and keep going and it's like you guys are working on it we're going to take it out in the meantime and we'll put it back in. Some of this stuff is probably that. But I think you also have to keep in mind that this will probably happen all the way up to the final where we've seen it before and it will happen again. I think it's maybe a

healthy thing where the final will ship and a feature that they announced as being an iOS 13 won't be there. And they'll say that's later and um because they couldn't get it to work right and that that may be the case with some of these features that are being pulled out but i think it's i think it's a a good sign i think it shows some discipline saying this isn't good enough right now so we're going to just pull it out so that the train can keep moving ahead and we'll put it back later when we're more confident in it. But there is growing concern about this release from people that pay attention. So I think Federico has been

talking and tweeting about this. I heard John Gruber talking about it on the talk show about whether Apple are actually going to be able to make the usual dates. So this is like a, there seems to be a concern that this feels worse in some ways or in some fundamental ways and it doesn't seem to

be getting better at the rate that a lot of observers think that it should be so there's like a question about would they delay so i wanted to kind of run through some scenarios with you jason and see what you think is the most likely to occur right so if they delay ios they in theory then need to delay iPadOS, watchOS, and macOS, right? And there's varying issues across all the platforms, but you would assume if they delay iOS, they kind of have to delay the others because there tends to be things that all tie in together,

and iOS should always come first. Like watchOS you cannot touch because you actually can't run them out of sync anyway on different versions. iPadOS shouldn't ship if iOS doesn't ship because in theory it also shouldn't be ready. And I can't ever really imagine macOS going before iOS because it always goes later. And Catalina doesn't feel particularly more stable and ready to ship than iOS does at this point. I would say macOS could ship much later. And it usually does. It usually comes in

October. Yeah. The problem with all of this is that there are features that Apple does that go across all of its platforms that are rolled into a particular version. And so Apple would prefer to offer updates to everything more or less simultaneously because if you roll out iOS, but there's no new watch OS, then has iOS been built to assume that it can run with the previous version of watchOS and iPadOS? Like you're now asking people to live in a world where one of their devices is upgraded, but the others aren't.

And that leads to some issues. It's doable, but Apple would prefer to like have everybody move in lockstep and they can say, well, to get this feature, upgrade all your devices and then all your devices get this feature.

Think about something like iCloud where they have built in. And I think it's notable, like if you're running Catalina or iOS 13 and you're using reminders, you have the option to upgrade to the new thing, but you cannot. And it sort of syncs with the old version, because once you move over, you're in the kind of like the new world now. And they would prefer to avoid that. I do feel like macOS could get pushed back fairly easily and often does. And really, if new iPads are coming, they're coming in October, you could probably push that back too. you could probably push that back too. But again, Apple would prefer if you,

they'd prefer to launch most of this stuff, especially the iOS-based stuff simultaneously. tvOS too. Yeah, I thought of that just a moment ago. I was like, is it worth, yes, it's worth including. So, okay, so let's imagine they delay iOS. Do they delay the iPhone? I don't think they can.

Keep in mind, we're about 40 days out from when the iphone will probably ship the new iphone models um so it's coming it's coming fast and i don't know like they're they have some contingencies here i think if i were apple i would always have some contingency plans for shipping the iPhone, right? I think, personally, I think that you should always have a plan to ship the iPhone. Considering how important it is to them, right? Like even like a week's delay, there should be every single year a plan to release it via iOS. Yes, yes. about ios yes yeah so that's that's what i'm saying is is um if i were apple i would have a contingency plan to release the iphone with a build of ios 12 in this case rather than making

ios 13 a uh you know a reason, like a limitation on shipping iPhone. Like, I don't think you can do that. I don't think you can say, oh, what happens if we have a big iOS 13 problem and it slips? Does the iPhone slip? And the answer has to be the iPhone does not slip. So either you have a contingency plan where you ship a special version of iOS 13 that is just on these new iPhones, which seems not ideal. Or you make sure that the iPhone can run a version of a special build of iOS 12. Yeah, because that special build would have to enable any hardware features that get added

to the phone, right? Like a triple camera. Right. But Apple has shipped, and this is something that I think people miss sometimes, Apple has shipped special OS builds to enable new hardware for years, for decades, really. Even just looking at the Verizon iPhone as an example of that. Sure.

Well, it happens all the time. It happens that Macs ship out of sync with OS release and they ship with a special build that enables special hardware. And then the next full- Mac OS update, then brings everybody up to the same version. But if you've ever had that situation where you've tried to install software on an old Mac, and you're like, well, wait a second, this, this page on the internet says that it can run this version of Mac OS, and you try to boot off of the disk, and it

says, I can't boot off of this. And it turns out, well, it was released mid cycle with a special build. And if you don't have that build or later, you can't boot off of that on that hardware. So they do that all the time. So, you know, I think my guess is you always keep around the possibility of enabling those hardware features that are essential in iOS 12, hardware features that are essential in iOS 12, and that you can ship a late, like the last version of iOS 12 on those phones just to get them out the door in case something bad has happened with iOS 13 that requires that update to come out, you know, a few weeks later. And then if it doesn't happen, then you ship it with iOS 13 and everybody's happy. Because going back to last week's conversation, if Apple don't release their iPhone at the planned time, they will miss their guidance for the quarter,

which is something they cannot allow to happen. The iPhone is everything about how they're building them, ramping up the factories. They don't want to keep things in their channel. They want to get them out and they want to get them sold. There's going to be a huge pent-up demand for them. They don't want to delay their announcement event. It's all timed.

It's already all timed for not just when they announce, but when they're storing them already at the factory, presumably, and then they ship them. And the whole thing is timed. It's orchestrated. Can you even imagine what the amount of money per minute would be that they would be losing like i would no one's ever gonna know that right but like what is the amount of money per minute that is lost by an iphone delay i bet it is like a hair raising amount of money right oh absolutely because having these production lines just sitting there right like all of this stuff just stopping right or like piling up or

whatever it is it's just like a wild thing to think about no so i think i think it's very much in apple's and i don't know the the facts here but i can't see how apple doesn't have a contingency plan to either have a uh i mean really to have have a version of iOS 12 that they can put on it. Yeah, I think that there has to be some option. That would be my expectation. Has to be. I am starting to like, I believe that it will be either some weird version of 13, but that seems less likely. Or that if they, you know, I'm thinking maybe it will ship with 12 and 13 comes a little later that that would be super interesting i mean the other option is

that they find issues with parts of 13 that they can do what we were just talking about which is they drop out some features and apple has not been shy about that about saying you know here are the features of ios 13 and they put little asterisks on their website that say this is coming later this fall and they just leave it at that coming by the end of the year, coming later this fall. And I wrote a column a couple of years ago where I encouraged Apple to approach iOS 13 or approach any of these milestone releases as a cycle. And now you can announce the features. Doesn't mean they all have to be there on day one. Maybe some of those features come a couple of months later. doesn't mean they all have to be there on day one. Maybe some of those features come a couple months later. That's okay. I would rather the update be solid and go from there. So I think

that would be the ideal thing would be to have a version of iOS 13 and pulled out some of this stuff that isn't working quite right. But I can understand that some of that stuff maybe just, you know, can't be pulled out. And, you know, we can't go back to the old version of reminders and the reminder sync isn't working, then what do we do? And the answer is, just have a version of good old iOS 12 warmed up and put it on the phones. And maybe they initially put them all put that on all the phones. Maybe that's what's loaded on the phones right now is that version of iOS 12. And then if they can do an update to 13 version that they like, they'll do that. Otherwise, they'll ship them. And whenever 13 ships, those people with those phones will get the note saying

here's a new version of iOS for you to install and then you install it and it's not the end of the world. Like it is not the end of the world to have new iPhones ship with iOS 12. As long as there isn't a major feature that's not supported. Like we have three cameras, but you can only use two of them for the next two weeks is not great. They can't do that. I'll take a break.

And then I want to just lighten all this up by giving a list of things that I love in iPadOS. Just, you know, share the love, right? Because I feel like there's a lot of conversation about the bad side, but it's not all bad. Today's episode is brought to you by Eero. Eero is a game changer because it means actually being able to access the internet

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that might not have been covered with a single base station are now covered because I've got the Eero base station and then I've got some Eero beacons in various places. And it all just works. It's easy. So, as I say, you can go and get your Eero. You can order it right now and you will have it as soon as tomorrow because they're giving listeners of this show free overnight shipping that's ero.com eero.com slash ahoy and the code ahoy at checkout you need to use that url and code to get your hands on this offer that's ero.com slash ahoy and the code ahoy for free overnight shipping our thanks to ero for their support of this show and all of relay fm so i have been using iPadOS

for the last few weeks, and I just wanted to talk about some of my favorite things. I think that the added flexibility that iPadOS gives in general is really nice. I think that they've done a great job of bringing to the front a lot more stuff that is great

about the iPad, and making the operating system sing in those areas. I love widgets on the home screen. I use my widgets way more now, because it's so much easier to get to that information. All I have to do is just press the key on my bridge keyboard to go home or just like, you know, or I just swipe up and they're right there. I don't have to swipe down, then swipe across. Oh, I accidentally swiped on a notification. I just do it like it used to be, right? Like none of that happens anymore.

Those widgets are right there. They added in a recent beta that you can just pin as many as you want, right? So like I have like a bunch there. So I have like my calendar, shortcuts, calzones, and timery, my time tracking. They're right there wherever I need them. And it's made it feel like a much more useful part of the operating system in general to have that information right at my fingertips.

Yeah, I agree. I love the widgets on the home screen. I've got the weather, I've got my calendar. It's really nice to have my home screen when I'm just switching between apps and I end up back at the home screen saying in an hour you have this event like oh yeah right that's the the next step for me it's very convenient and shortcuts there is really great because i have some shortcuts that can just run straight from the widget super nice yeah yeah exactly shortcuts this is wonderful to have there too um i really like the new like long press pop-up previews. So if you have, so let's say I have a link to something in Notes,

like a tweet or something. If I long press it to be able to bring up the contextual menu to copy it, it also brings up a tiny, tiny web browser, which is super useful because if I have, say I do this a lot with the shows, I'll save tweets to my Apple Notes and then I'll take a look at them to bring them into the Google Doc or to remind me of a piece of information.

I can now very easily preview all of these just as I would normally try and copy it, which is just much nicer for the iPad because it didn't have peak and pop. So now I'll just long press on it. It pops up, shows me a little preview of what the tweet is exactly, and then I can either copy it or delete it and move on. I love that. It's a great feature to add to the iPad and I'll be sad if 3D Touch does go away on the iPhone right like the way that they're doing it now and if it gets a bit weird but I will take that if it means this continued push on the iPad because I'm happy to have this

this kind of functionality there now this long press functionality um i like windowing with the apps that can use it i like being able to set up pairs of applications together in kind of what i consider to be little standalone things and i am really intrigued to see what this is going to look like when all of the apps that i use start using it i've've seen something in some like video shared in by Greg, the developer of drafts, where he seems to have made a button that can open a window. And I think that that's really interesting. I wonder if developers are going to do that. And if it's like something that can ship like he has, it looks like he has a button in his UI that can just open another window with the note that you're looking at or like a preview. So that looks really cool.

I'm intrigued to see what that sort of stuff looks like. Safari is excellent on iPadOS. As you said, like there are still some parts of it that are a bit wonky in places. But overall, it's amazing. Like I'm so happy with it. I actually feel like I'm surfing the real web now. And I feel like now

I did not realize how much stuff I was not seeing before. I feel like being able to have a full desktop browser on my iPad has shown me something that I wasn't completely aware of, which is super interesting to see that. So I'm really happy to have that. And I've already been able to make use of it in a bunch of places, you know, like stuff like Twitch. I always have problems trying to get the Twitch dashboard to load. And now I can get all of that to load very easily. So that's really amazing. The new pencil stuff in notes works great. It is incredibly responsive. I like the tools, but the latency, I don't know how they're doing it, but it feels absolutely fantastic. You know, I really, again, it's like one of those things

where I always felt like the latency was great before, but now it's like, oh, this feels almost Uncanny Valley. It's so close to real, which is brilliant. I love it. Screenshots, the screenshot UI I really like. I like the new editing tools in photos as well. I feel that they kind of go together. What do you think about the editing tools in photos,

like the way the UI is set out and stuff? I like it. It's still a little bit frustrating that it doesn't have all the features that are on the Mac version, but there are way more features there now. There's something like 15 different controls you've got to edit Photos. I'm frustrated that Photos still doesn't have a retouch tool on iOS. It's maddening that they don't because it's in the Mac version and there are other Mac apps that have a healing tool, a retouch tool. Perfect for the Apple Pencil, something like that.

Yeah, Pixelmator has it. You can open your photos file in Pixelmator Photos and then retouch the photo and then put it back in photos, which is nice, but why is that feature not in photos? But it's way better than it has been. It keeps evolving. The iOS version keeps getting more and more capable. It's just, there are weird lapses where it doesn't have something that the Mac version has that it probably should have. I love the tiny swipe keyboard. It's interesting. I have not used that even a little bit on my, I mean, I imagine I'll

swipe on the iPhone, but on the iPad, the tiny swipe keyboard has not been a thing that I've even spent any time on. I'll give you a use case for it that I enjoy. This is when I realized I really liked it. If you have two applications open, one is a application where text is being entered the other is where like content is being consumed you can detach the keyboard and have it in small mode and drag it off to the like one quarter application or whatever and it doesn't take the key the software keyboard's not taking up a half of the screen anymore. See what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I like that. I like that. It's just I'm not sure how I,

ergonomically, whether I like using that or not, but it's a nice idea. Yeah, I use swipe keyboards and Gboard on my iPhone all the time anyway, so I'm really used to that kind of method of text input. It's just not on my iPad. So, like, for, you know, I would use it, like, so as I have, I would hold my iPad and then use my index finger to do the swiping.

But yeah, so I really like that. Column view in files is really great. I am so happy to have that. That is just like, thank you. Yes, I need that. And files has a bunch of little improvements in places, like the ability to rename a file when you're saving it from the popover in places and the ability to rename a file when you're saving it from the from the uh the popover in places and the ability to open create new folders like all

of that stuff's really good um they had a feature which was added which has been removed but hopefully will come back where you can pin a folder or file which means it will always be downloaded and i hope that that makes its way back because that's just a great feature and dark mode i really like dark mode i think the operating system looks great in dark mode i was just using it uh last night because it i like how i i did not want we were watching a movie and i was looking some things up on the internet and it was super bright and it's like no dark mode is better except for the apps that don't support it yet but hopefully they will and uh yeah that was that was uh uh it's a good feature um you mentioned files files is much more stable now as the betas have been going along files has been getting a lot

better which is great i've had way less of probably less kind of these problems that i have even with third-party file providers of files not. Like it's not been happening to me where it was happening every single day on iOS 12. So I don't know what exactly they've done to fix that. Or maybe I just had something going on in my files app that needed to be kicked, but it's working way better. I'm really happy with that.

Yeah, yeah. We're at the point now where it's like, yes, I can insert USB drives. I can see my local server and files. The external file provider apps aren't a hundred percent, but they haven't been updated for iOS 13 yet. So I assume that most of them will get there. But it's, that makes the whole iPad experience a little more reliable when you know, you

have reliable access to your files and you can actually, because even before, like there were lots of times where files would get stalled, where you'd think, wait a second, it's not showing me the current right thing here. And that's all starting to go away, which is great. It's much more reliable because files functionality was already pretty good, but its reliability was poor.

And it feels like it's not only more functional, but more reliable now. So I want to talk to you now about arm laptops um this is the thing that keeps coming up but there was there's a specific reason you uh posted a tweet the other day talking about the tweet says this is why the arm macbook is inevitable and what you were talking about is the galaxy book s which should really be a product that not many people care about because it's just like samsung made ultra light windows laptop right like it's you know i don't you can correct me if i'm wrong but i just don't feel like a lot of people that use pcs have the kind of loyalty to their laptop maker

in the way that Apple customers do. I can imagine people moving from device maker to device maker more frequently. So the idea of somebody being excited about the Galaxy Book S just seems like a strange one for me, except until you hear a little bit about what the device has going on. So this was at their Unpacked event

where they showed off the new Note 10, which I think looks really cool, but that's maybe a conversation for another day. So this device is using a Qualcomm-made ARM chip. It has integrated LTE because Qualcomm's making it. It is a fanless product. But the thing that is super interesting, which is bonkers to consider,

it gets 23 hours of battery life yeah that is unbelievable that is absolutely unbelievable like you have taken that to a product where you would feel like your battery never ran out right 23 hours of continuous use is not a thing you can do in a day so as as long as you really, like, you could try, but like, you know, you've got other things going on in your life at that point. If these numbers are accurate, I don't see, you know, Samsung are in the business of being accurate as they can, right?

They said they tested it on continuous video playback, 23 hours. I mean, that is, that's unbelievable, right? A laptop with that level of battery life? Yeah, that's the dream. This is my, my reaction was definitely like, here's how ARM laptops look. Here's what Apple could do.

Would Apple do it? Or would they use all that power savings to reduce the battery even more? It's Apple, who knows? But this is a tiny laptop right like this is an ultra thin like thinner than a macbook pro laptop right like it is it's tiny so yeah they could make it smaller but they could make it smaller and offer a 20 hour battery or whatever right and people would still lose their minds it's 13 inch as well i mean this it's kind of wild right there's always a question

of how powerful an arm laptop can be right like you get all these benefits but what are you losing and i remember you know i i don't know what qualcomm chips are like i don't know what their power is like but apple can make very good chips right like the ipad pro on geekbench scores for what it's worth uh they're comparable to a 2018 15 inch macbook pro i know that's not everything but that's a darn good start right yeah i think i can assume that any apple designed processor running in a mac is going to be as powerful or more powerful than the iPad Pro is, right? Yeah. And the iPad Pro is already more powerful than most PC laptops. So, and again, you know, it is also going to be low power consumption. Apple has the bank cores so that

they can crank up power consumption when they need speed and they can crank it right back down when they have to, to the efficiency crank it right back down when they have to to the efficiency cores in the processor. So they've done all this work. I think the real question is just, I mean, what are they going to prioritize, battery life or lightness? They have room for both, to make both significantly better. I think what they want to say is that it's an all-day battery,

which is 10 hours is not an all-day battery. It's an all, like, work shift battery, but that's not quite the same. So if you could come out and say it's 18-hour battery life, 16-hour battery life, it wouldn't even need to be 23-hour battery life. You don't need 23, really. It's great to have it, but you don't need that. Yeah, I think that this is very exciting as a as a thing that exists yeah right and there are a question so i tweeted out this thing saying this

is why apple's going to make an arm macbook and i guess people who have not been paying attention to this discussion then jump in on twitter and say well but what about but what about and it's my usual complaint about people who um think apple can do anything except when there's a problem that's put to it. They tend to default to, well, I don't know if Apple can do that. It's like, well, look, I think Apple is full of clever people who can solve problems if it's to their benefit to do so. And this is one of those examples where it's like, well, what about all the existing process, all the existing apps that are written for Intel? It's like, okay, well, do we not think that everything is already built in Xcode? Do we not think that Apple would have a way to fairly easily recompile all that stuff? Do we not think Apple would have a code translator? Do we not

think Apple would not have already, if they were planning a move have analyzed all the things that they need to build to ease the transition to arm from uh from classic mac os uh like uh intel apps do we think that apple would say it's a mac but it only runs things that are come from ios or that are written in swift no i don't think that. I think that Apple will provide compatibility beyond that. I think maybe the 64-bit transition is a part of that. So I look at that and say, we can say, but what about software compatibility? My big picture answer is, I'm confident Apple has it figured out. And that's really all I have to say about it is that I'm sure Apple in every chip transition has found a way to maintain compatibility. Probably a lot of the moves

they've been making technically in the background have been about maintaining compatibility in some way or other as they move to a new architecture. And if Apple sees benefits in creating a whole new series of laptops using their processors. And I think they do. I think we can all see what they are potentially. Something like that's not going to get in their way. And I would expect that there will be a story that is relatively painless for developers. And perhaps, you know, apps will do what they did the last chip transition, which is unmodified apps will run slow and modified apps updated apps will then run fast that's what happens they will do whatever they can to get

20 hours of battery like right like it's just like it will just happen and this is this type of thing it's like well this is the next generation of what a laptop can be like if you can start to get this do you not think that apple is looking i mean this already happened with the ipad pro where they they called out the ipad pro speed versus laptops right yeah do you think apple and its engineers on these on these arm chips are not sitting there saying these intel chips we're using are terrible we can already do way better than them why are we not why are we still using their stuff and i i think that this is why um apple

is almost inevitably going to move its consumer laptops at the very least to arm uh as soon as they can and you know because then again they're going to control Apple doesn't have to be limited by Intel's release schedule at that point, because I am sure that Apple feels constrained by Intel's processors and thinks that they can do a better job at those mobile processors than Intel can, because they already are basically. So I just, you know, I don't know, I with all the effort that Apple is putting into the Mac now to change it and grow it and make it something new, which wasn't the case maybe a couple of years ago, it's just hard not to imagine that this is the next step that lets them do something that would really, I think, is big for Apple's kind of pride, which is to be perceived as being way out ahead again. be perceived as being way out ahead again. Ironically, not really ahead right now.

And matching up with Samsung is not way out ahead. But depending on what Apple does, they could at least feel like they're back out on the cutting edge if they have this incredible thin light, long battery life, ARM laptop that's got great performance because of Apple's chip making prowess, etc. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom. When you've been listening to the show, how would you know if your website had gone down? Would you know if your customers couldn't click

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Brad wants to know, do you use iCloud documents in desktop sync? If not, why not? I absolutely don't. I keep lots of big files. I wrote about this when it came out. I keep lots of big files on my desktop. My desktop is my current working and I have no interest in iCloud attempting. And in fact, the last time I checked, it was broken. Like iCloud is trying to sync these files that are like logic projects with audio files, and they're enormous, so that it's going to sync really slowly. I don change how you work, or you don't use this feature. And I choose not to use that feature. It has no benefit to me. And in fact, it actually broke things when I did use it because of the way that an app like Logic works. Apple basically said, don't, you know, don't do that. Don't use Logic this way on on the desktop so i'm i turned it off

and i see no value in it honestly i don't have another mac that i use all the time that has the even my laptop like it doesn't have a disk space to mirror what's on my desktop anyway i don't want it to be the same so for me it's irrelevant it's just not a thing that i want yeah i'm pretty much exactly the same i don't use my desktop as a place for important files it is purely for like projects in active work that mostly need to be completed on my iMac itself right and if i need to take an editing project and have it on my MacBook Pro i will put it in Dropbox because Dropbox can handle the syncing of Logic projects. I do it all the time. That's

how me and Gray edit. We put a Logic project in a Dropbox shared folder. I edit, then he takes it and he edits and sends it back to me. It's just syncing. It is very dangerous. You cannot both open that project at the same time or horrific things

will happen that would be bad yes but it does but dropbox can handle the syncing and as you pointed out right like through testing and just mentioned it there i can't but like yeah it for the same reasons right like the types of stuff that i'm keeping on my uh on my desktop it would just blow through the storage that i have and i don't want to do that. Jonah has written in and said, Mike, I noticed a number of tweets from UK Twitter users saying that Apple Card is no big deal and has features that have been around for a while in the UK. What is your take?

Is Apple Card innovative or just innovative for the US? So, one, to the last point, yes, definitely. Because the United States, I love America for many reasons. Banking is not a thing that is very advanced in America. Everything about the financial process there is kind of held back, right?

Like contactless cards, right? Like we all spoke about Apple Pay being accepted everywhere and still is like accepted basically everywhere in Europe. Still not everywhere in America, even if the contactless thing exists. Maybe it doesn't work. Maybe it is chip. Maybe it's not. contactless thing exists. Maybe it doesn't work.

Maybe it is chip. Maybe it's not. Maybe Apple Pay works. Maybe it doesn't. Did you see there was a story in the New York Times about how they're updating? They're going to get rid of the MetroCard, which is a card with a magnetic stripe on it. And they're going to go for further public transit. And they're going to a contactless system.

And Apple Pay works with it. And it's this whole thing that they've taken way too long to do to go to a full contactless system. And Apple Pay works with it. And it's this whole thing that they've taken way too long to do to go to a full contactless system. Great. Sounds great. But there aren't contactless credit cards in America. We made a run at it about five years ago, and then it seems to have fallen off. And so one of the funny things that's happening is, as a part of this transition, And so one of the funny things that's happening is as a part of this transition, banks are sending chip cards with a contactless aspect, with a contactless chip in it as well, to people with zip codes in the area of the MTA in New York. Because they're going to need it to tap to enter if they don't have a like Apple pay kind of thing. And so, and I just laughed when I saw that because it's like literally, oh geez, I guess somebody wants contactless credit cards, but they're not going to like send everybody a contactless

credit card. I think some, some credit cards will let you request one. Some won't, but apparently all the credit card manufacturers are like okay we got to send it to the people who live around new york city because they're going to need it to take the subway but uh it's so just uh it's ridiculous but uh so in regards to i think people a lot of people are talking about like the money management stuff right the grouping of transactions and all that kind of stuff this exists in many places in the uk but i have not seen any credit card company that does this so a lot of like debit card and like bank accounts like these new internet focused banks do this stuff but i've not seen any credit card that does it at least from any major provider

but showing stuff about like how easy it is to repay and focusing on showing you what your interest is a lot of that stuff is pretty new, especially in the credit card space, even here. But more than anything, the integration and the way that everything works and the way that cashback works and that sort of stuff, that is pretty unique to Apple Card. Like it is an innovative product, especially in the credit card space.

Even if some of these features are available in some other types of banking products, I think that it's still an innovative product in its own way. One more thing about the U.S. banking system that you'll like as a former U.K. bank professional. We just set up our business to pay people via bank transfer, basically, instead of writing them checks, which is like an extra fee to do this to set it up at our our our bank but we want to do it because we want to get stop writing checks because they're stupid and we want to have it all be electronic transfers and i'll tell you mike the paperwork and confusion at major banks in america about how to set that up is amazing. I am convinced now that the American banking system

is like layers and layers of tellers and customer service people and computers and web interfaces. But at the core, there's like a guy wearing a green eye shade and has like a little clicky clicky calculating machine and some paper files. and in the end you get this is actually how idg's accounting system was too back in the day is like we had all these

electronic things but in the end there was somebody in a room with paper who did everything and and our experience setting up our electronic payment system uh has not uh dissuaded me from believing that in the end the the American banking system is like eight people in a conference room with filing cabinets and pencils. It is hilarious to me that you even had that, like you had to set it up, that it wasn't just like a thing. Yeah, that was my thing.

It's like, yes, don't we just get? No, no, you don't just get. Don't be wild. Is there a web interface where we, no, no, you have to fill out a form and then countersign it and then press this button and then click over here in a web portal that is clearly from like 1999.

And yeah, yeah, yeah. So America, a little behind the times in terms of financial products, but maybe Apple will help drag us into the present. Let me tell you though, never spend too much time looking into or thinking about how banking actually works, because it is a really horrifying thought about how money exists. It's not good to sit and think

about that. And you realize, hang on a minute, it's all just not anyway, let's not do this. I don't want to freak everybody out. You don't want to think about how the money actually works. Will has said, I have a Mac mini that can no longer fit all of my photos library onto its hard drive. How would you go about backing up photos to a network attached storage or online backup service as new photos are added to the photos app without syncing the entire library to one Mac? Is that possible? No, no. What you have to do is you have to buy an external drive that will fit your photos library.

And then move it all? And then you need to back up external drive that will fit your photos library. And then move it all? And then you need to back up the photos library using an online backup service. But you need to have, if you want to have a separate backup of all your photos outside of iCloud, you need to have a Mac with keep all photos turned on, synced to iCloud, and then back that library up. That's the only way you can do it. So if your Mac mini won't fit your photos library anymore, the alternative would be you could take some portion of your library and export it and put it somewhere else, but then it's not in your photos library.

I don't like that idea. I think you need to buy an external SSD. They're not that expensive. You attach it to your Mac mini. I know it might be a little bit slower, but I feel like that's what you got to do if you, um, if you want to do this because, um, otherwise there's really no way to do it because if photos hasn't downloaded the full resolution version, you can't back it up anywhere else. And you can't, you know, that that's the bottom line is that photos is going to have to back is going to have to download the whole image and then you can back it up. And if

you don't have room for photos to download the whole image and then you can back it up and if you don't have room for photos to download the whole image then you can turn that feature off but then it's going to be deleting things randomly and then your backups are going to be not a complete backup and you can't do that so i i'm i'm sorry to jonah but or not to jonah to will but this is what we have is you gotta you gotta have a disc big enough to contain your entire photos library if you want to do it this way will at least had all the component parts right he was talking about uh an online backup service talking about like using some kind of uh network attached storage it's like yeah it's all of those things just in a slightly different configuration yeah i mean if it's really no go my next option is is again to export a bunch of your originals out of photos and delete

them out of the photo library and then back those up a lot in lots of places but you've just and you could even put them in another iPhoto library somewhere else but you're not going to have them in your iCloud photos library at that point which is probably not what you want. So I think you just got to bite the bullet and get an external SSD or something. We've spoken about security features in Catalina a lot, and Paul has a question. In Catalina, is there an equivalent of the iOS privacy settings that display so you can see which of your installed apps

have permissions and what they're for? Do you follow what I'm asking? So you can go in and say, oh, I want to see what apps have the permission to use my microphone. For example, does Catalina have this? It does. In the security and privacy setting, there is an app view that will tell you what apps have for, you know, everything. And in fact, there's one that's a, it'll say like what folders it's got access to and all that stuff so that is in the privacy tab of the security and privacy settings in catalina

and forgo tuna fish asks uh what do you think i like this this is a crossover question what do you think the over under is on marco armand buying both a mac pro and pro Display XDR on day one of them being available. Well, I don't know how you set an over-under on Marco on day one. Like, are we setting a time during day one at which he buys it? Let's just talk about our odds. Like, what do we think? What do we think? What do we think is going to happen?

What do we think Marco's going to do? I don't know about day one, but I reckon he's going to get both. Yeah. So I think if Marco was not, this is going to be my prediction. If Marco was not a podcaster and pundit and person who writes and talks about Apple a lot, I don't think he'd buy it. No. I don't think he'd buy it no i i don't i don't think he'd buy it but it's more than he's happy with what he's got it's not just being a podcaster it is

being a host of atp because john is not buying it day one no matter what and i think it would be a travesty if at least one of them didn't have that mac pro their entire show's identity is built around the mac pro one of them needs to get it so i think well that's true that's true my my larger point was just like i think that one of them needs to get it and it's going to be marco presumably if john is not there on day one and john john is now talking about how he wants to make sure all the bugs are out of it and maybe he waits for the next version and i don't i don't believe i don't believe him but um if i were you know i and i don't know how they run their business i imagine they just take

their money and split it up if if there was like an atp incorporated i would as president of atp incorporated yes i would authorize the purchase of a mac pro for john for atp and say here you go you got i agree with you there yeah but i feel like if john is not doing that um i think our marco will get one just because um he wants to have that experience who knows maybe he'll sell it to john or he'll he'll uh return it no there was that whole conversation do you remember which i completely agreed with this is on like this was months ago like weeks ago yeah where that was something that john said was a possibility and marco was like there's no way i'm selling it to you and i completely agree right that's true

because then i feel the guilt if it's a lemon went wrong with it you even if no matter what john would say you know that he would always blame you i don't care what he said in that regard i know it i would feel that way he would be thinking thinking, he'd be like, Marco gave me this lemon computer for like 15 years. He would be saying that. So yeah, I think Marco will buy a Mac Pro at some point in the first two weeks. Yeah, I don't know if it'll be day one, but I believe it will happen i reckon he will

have one on the day that they ship though right because it won't ship immediately i reckon they'll take pre-orders for a bit but i reckon he'll he'll have made his decision before the shipping window expires the display now i don't know if he would buy the display i actually think there is more there is a stronger chance of him buying the displayed in the mac pro know if he would buy the display. I actually think there is more, there is a stronger chance of him buying the display than the Mac Pro even, because he would buy it for a laptop. I don't agree. I think he's very excited about the potential 16-inch laptop.

And if he does that, he'll probably want a monitor and he doesn't want to use one of the LG ones, right? So he'll get the Pro Display XDR. I think John will buy a Mac Pro in the first three months and he'll buy that lg display do you think you'll get the lg one and he'll put like tape on it i do i do i do because here's why unless apple comes out with an apple branded thing which i don't think they are now that that lg thing got updated um i think he will because he's going to want the Mac Pro and because he's not... John is a very practical person and I can't see John buying an inappropriate and expensive monitor for himself.

But do you think he could take it though? Like just from a design perspective? I don't know. I think he's going to do stuff to try and mitigate it and then he'll complain about it. Is $5,000 worth the opposite of being completely frustrated every single day for the next 10 years? If you're just joining us, this is the Accidental Tech Podcast fan podcast

where we talk about what the hosts on a different podcast are going to do with their technology buying decisions. Hi, Casey. Thank you so much to everybody who sent in questions today with the hashtag AskUpgrade. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget there is going to be a trailer at the end of this episode for our

text adventure with a crossover for members of RelayFM. So we're doing a crossover with the Cortex podcast, which I'm also on, where me and CGBGrey play a text adventure led by the Snellatron, which is Jason Snell, who is our parser, which I am also on, where me and CGP Grey play a text adventure led by the Snellatron, which is Jason Snell, who is our sponsor, which is always a wonderful thing every

year. So you can go and sign up to become a RelayFM member. You can click the link in the show notes to do that, or you can go to relay.fm membership. You're going to hear a trailer for that to entice you into becoming a RelayFM member. And I think you will agree that once you hear it, you will in fact be enticed to get your

hands on that episode or your ears on that episode in fact. Thank you so much to our sponsors this week, the fine folk over at Eero,

Linode and Pingdom. If you want to find Jason online you can go to sixcolors.com or theincomparable.com and Jason hosts many shows here at RelayFM like I do as well

relay.fm slash shows where you can find those and many, many more. Jason is at jsnall on social media. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Goodbye, Mike Hurley. It's 1987, and Detective Jack Slade and his partner, Jetta Chang, must take down a crime boss and restore law and order. This is Danger Town Beatdown. Oh, yeah. Wow.

Rated Mature 16+. You're roused from sleep by neon lights streaming in through your window. It's 11.58 p.m. Time to start your day. Get coffee should be the first thing to do. Should we see what's on the answering machine? A voice says, Slade, you're going to pay for shutting down our operation.

We have your partner. Bring us the tape. Come alone. Uh-oh. Open up. Let's talk. The man kicks down the door and enters, blocking the exit.

We did that thing again where we took too long. He places an envelope on the table. Consider this an advance to cover gas and tolls. Oh, I'm slightly confused. We're trying to be paid off. They want us out of town. Oh, okay. Somebody does. I'm so't know i didn't realize what

was going on in this arrangement the badge is a santa marina police detective's badge your badge the gun is a loaded beretta 92s your gun you're outside a rundown apartment building there is a strip club here how quaint just like a Norman Rockwell painting. There's a bright neon sign and the words Tiger's Den. Well, let's go to the strip club. See, that's some good detective work there, Mike. You have to inspect the strip club. Mm-hmm. All right, take a look at the wallet. It contains a $100 bill and a California driver's license. Can we take that $100, Mike? No. That's not the bribe money.

We don't need the money. Can we take the guy's ID? That seems like it might be useful. It doesn't really feel like stealing. That feels like evidence. Yeah, evidence. You know, it would be evidence of bribery. The bribery money itself?

Yeah. That's not how that works, I don't think. Some gang members loiter outside an arcade. Gang members, okay. I think they have little hello, I'm in a gang stickers on them. Something to identify them as a gang member. Yeah, I mean, how else would you know, right? Yeah, they're color coordinated.

That's how you know. They're all wearing pink. And that's how you know they're in the gang. Wave to gang members. They toss their cigarettes pink, and that's how you know they're in the gang. Wave to gang members. They toss their cigarettes and head inside when they see you. Oh. Are you trying to figure out how to ask him if he's amenable to a bribe, Mike? Is that what you're doing at this moment?

I'm trying to figure out if there's anything we can do other than bribe him. Ask O'Brien, can we take care of this in Fargo? I don't understand that. I thought that was like the code. I have no idea how you've gone from not understanding the concept of a bribe to rolling out phrases like that. Why is this so hard? I don't understand. Look around the room.

Bosty draws a Smith & Wesson 38 special, shoots you dead, and escapes. The end.