Upgrade - 26: Ambushed on a Podcast

Episode Date: March 9, 2015

Jason and Myke get a little help in discussing Apple's 'Spring Forward' event, including the new MacBook, HBO on Apple TV, and more on the Apple Watch.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 26 today's very special episode is brought to you by mail route a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam casper because everyone deserves a great night's sleep and and Flywheel, simple hosting for your WordPress site. My name is Mike Hurley, but I am joined live from San Francisco, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Mike. I'm actually speaking to you live from my old stomping grounds in the Macworld podcast studio, which Susie Oaks, who's the editor of Macworld, offered up to various podcasters, and I set it up so I know where all the buttons are. So, hello from downtown san francisco today is march 9th 2014 is it i think it will be okay jason snell coming to you from mack world mack world's own jason snell i don't i like that

you're there i like that you're there yes it's it's a little weird. It's fitting. It's fitting. But it's good. So we're hot on the heels of a big event today. It's a huge event. A huge, huge event today. You're referring to the fact that I met Federico Vatici, right? Oh, yeah, of course. That's the only event that I met. Yeah, this is what was the best kept secret of the day. This is what was the best kept secret of the day.

It was that Federico Vitticci arrived in San Francisco today to partake in the Apple event. He got an invite. We'll talk about that on Connected. That's a whole big story. I'm looking forward to Connected this week, actually. Or we can talk about it now if you want, Mike. Oh. Hello. Oh, my God.

That really scared me. Hi, Federico. Hi, Mike. How are you? What are Federico! Hi Mike, how are you? What are you doing there? A podcast, are you? How long have you been there? The whole time. It's good I didn't say anything bad about you.

Hey buddy! Hi. Now, I know that I can trust you. Because you didn't say anything bad about me. Yeah, well it's probably something along the lines that I love you. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Jason was kind enough to invite me here.

It was awesome. Federico was kind enough to say, sure, let's do a podcast. He was like, do you want to do a podcast with Mike? I'm like, yeah. You're going to have to keep your special stories for Connected. You know it, right? You can't cheat on Connected. We'll focus on the news of the day and save those stories for Connected. That sounds like fun to me.

You could be like Moises Chuyon's podcast network and have like a crossover event where Federico appears on various relay shows to tell various stories about his trip to San Francisco. His feelings can be unanalog. Do we have a food show, Mike? Really? Yeah. Federico just ate some pasta in a restaurant in San Francisco and didn't hate it. Effectively on Connected this week, all I really want to understand is Federico Vittici invades America. Like that's kind of all I care about.

Like Apple Watch, so what? We'll get that when he's back in Italy. But now he's here in San Francisco with me because we went to the Apple event today. I have never been ambushed on a podcast before. That was very well done. It's the first time for everything. My brain kind of exploded a little bit.

I didn't 100% understand what was happening. I looked at my computer as if I don't know what I would have seen. Something's happening. You needed to process all the information and the accent all at once. Yeah, it was like Jason had learned a very, very good impression. He spends one day... We've established that I cannot do

a Federico Vittici impression, other than to say arrivederci, but we're not there yet. Okay, well, now I have the two of you, which is even better. I guess we can go through this uh kind of stuff in advance i think one of the most interesting things to me and i kind of uh i i don't want opening statements we'll cover those at the end kind of like overall feelings of

the event but i think leading up to this one of the interesting things was we were debating oh are we gonna see more than just the watch today? And everyone wasn't sure, but we saw a lot. Like of the two hours of the event, only one hour was the watch. And there was about an hour of other stuff, which I guess is probably the things that we'll cover first today. But being there and looking back on the event, does that surprise you too?

It doesn't surprise me. I think when I made my terrible prediction where I said I didn't think there would be an Apple Watch event, I think this is the good part of that terrible prediction, which is, you know, if all they're doing is replaying the event from six months ago, why have the event? Other than just to remind people. And it was still sort of an hour of reminding people of the Apple Watch, which you have to do because now it's real and now they're going to be selling it. So they had to do it.

But, boy, it would have been pretty empty if that was all that we got. And fortunately, we didn't. We got an hour of new material. We got a whole bunch of new stuff. They played the greatest hits at the end there, but they gave us some of the new material in the first hour. I think the explanation of the watch was a bit more concise and clear. Like they clearly divided the watch into three main features.

And I think they wanted to kind of re-explain it all from the beginning. And I think they knew better what they wanted to tell, like the story that they wanted to tell. better what they wanted to tell, like the story that they wanted to tell. And maybe my memory is a bit, you know, isn't precise when it comes to remembering the September event. But I think that the watch, the story that they painted today was very much kind of obvious in a good way. It's timekeeping, communication and fitness. And I think that, I mean, it's not new stuff, but I think they told it better i think one of the big differences this time um to what they did in the september event was because they could show more third-party stuff so when kevin lynch did that here's a day in the life that was that

was that to me seemed like a much better story than what they'd previously shown in september event because it gave like a real view of this is what this product will do. Well, let's be honest. Not only was the hardware not done last September, the software wasn't done last September, and Apple employees hadn't been wearing it on their wrists in public living their lives, at least not to the degree that they've been doing it for the last six months. We've heard these stories about how 1,000 Apple employees have Apple Watches on their wrists and have been using them for the last six months. And they'll even admit that they have the Apple Watch on their wrist.

They won't demo it for you because that's been against the rules. But they certainly would say, sure, it's an Apple Watch because it's been out there. You've got to think that that six months has not only led to this evolution of the hardware and the software, but I really believe that Apple employees living with this device have made a big difference in them understanding what people will actually use it for in their real lives. And that came through. It was a much more focused – there were still moments of – like when Christy Turlington came on the stage, there was no focus there. came on the stage uh there was no focus there i never i thought that would be a great moment to talk about her running and how it was a how she used it and instead it was more like christy will have a blog where she explains how she uses it in the future but you know that was an exception i think they did do a better job of focusing it more my stream kind of died during

that moment but i think of all the times for it to happen that was probably okay yeah that was solid because i was just watching people compare it to bono on twitter no it was i would say it was much more substantive than that and and it did sort of mesh with you know she's got a charity and it's sort of apple's whole thing about making a better world and she was in africa running the half marathon it just felt kind of i think all the parts were there and i could totally see how somebody at apple was like oh this will be a really good thing we should put this in the in the uh event um it just felt like all the pieces were there but it didn't come together for me i just thought it was you know also i have to say really interesting um strategy content strategy on apple's part where they're

going to have christy turlington blogging on. The phrase was, she's going to have a blog on Apple.com about her using the watch to train. And that's, you know, sort of celebrity blogging on Apple.com is a totally new thing. I mean, you know, I don't think Bono had a blog

telling us about his songs. You'll just be automatically subscribed to the Bono blog. Why is Bono's blog in my RSS now? Why am I getting push notifications when Bonner releases a new blog post? Why, don't you want to read the Bonner blog post? It's a gift. It's a free blog post. Everybody gets it.

I guess the interesting thing when looking at that is we were complaining about there not being a story, but now they're kind of providing it via means like this, which is quite interesting, I think. Yeah. Yeah, it's new. New Apple.

So the first big announcement was the Apple TV and HBO Go. Didn't expect this. And this seemed really weird to me. Jason, why do you think this got as much stage time as it did? Well, it's a big Hollywood deal. It's getting HBO's over-the-top service, which is you don't have to be a subscriber to get to watch this service.

And getting that as an exclusive, a launch exclusive on Apple TV. So the only place you'll be able to get the HBO over-the-top service, which is called, what is it called? It's not HBO. HBO Now. HBO Now, is that it? It's three letters. It's all capital letters. HBO Now, I think.

now is that it's three three letters it's all capital letters now um that is uh the only place you'll be able to watch if you're a cord cutter watch game of thrones like legally uh when it starts in april because it's i think a three month i saw the the wall street journal was reporting a three month exclusive before other providers can offer hbo now so that's a that's a big coup but that's also like also like an exclusive content partnership kind of deal. And I would imagine that that kind of deal includes a prominent appearance at an Apple event. It signals that Apple is kind of playing hard at the content game, which I think is really great. I also had to laugh. We did finally get some Apple TV news, hardware news, this event. It wasn't new hardware. And the new pricing. We did finally get some Apple TV news, hardware news, this event.

It wasn't new hardware. And the new pricing. We've got a bunch of old ones to move for $69 before we can make a new one, apparently. Why do you think they're doing that? They just want to sell them? I don't know. Yeah. I think that's – and it's so old.

The margins on them have to be great. So they cut the price, which is good because their competitors are cheaper. And they have this HBO deal. So they're going to – I mean the somewhat cynical side of me says they make the HBO deal. They sell a lot of $69 Apple TVs. And then they come in with a $99 brand new fancy Apple TV after they've sold a million of those cheap old Apple TVs. That may be the plan here. I don't know. But it's still a coup.

We've talked for a long time about having something come exclusive to Apple. And this is, I mean, it's temporary, but it is an exclusive to Apple, this HBO service. That's pretty cool. So that was good news. I felt like for a moment they were going to do one of those jokey videos where Tim said, you know, we keep adding channels all the time. You guys have noticed, and I was waiting for one of those videos with the funny music that shows somebody scrolling through like 8 million channels on Apple TV. But they'd only do that if they were going to replace the interface, and they aren't. So, oh, well.

I wonder if, I mean, it must be an America-only service, HBO Now. There's no way to use it as a European. I mean, unless you have like a fake US account. Exactly. The classic, the traditional way is to use it as a European. Yeah. The old-fashioned way.

Yeah. VPN, fake account. Fake account, and you use the American service, yeah. I have no idea what you're talking about. And then we move on to research kit. Totally out of left field, this is not something I think anybody could have put their finger on to guess about. This is interesting. Jeff Williams got quite a bit of time on stage to discuss this.

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong. on stage to discuss this. Now, please correct me if I'm wrong. Is Jeff the person who's heading up the health stuff? Or is it somebody else? I don't know. Isn't this the guy who famously drives a... Drives a... Camry.

Yeah, a Camry, an old Camry. Because there is an executive who is in charge, I think, of health stuff, which I remember seeing from the Apple event. I can't remember. I'm seeing that Jeff is in operations, but if that's just coming from Apple's website, that can mean anything. I know that there is somebody who looks after health stuff.

Anyway, Jeff got quite a bit of time on stage to talk about Research Kit. Now, I don't know if you guys were following along on Twitter. There were a lot of people talking about how boring this section was. And it maybe wasn't necessarily riveting, but it's a world-changing type scenario. Yeah. As I was sitting there, I wasn't checking Twitter, but I think I've gotten to emulate Twitter in my head pretty well. I thought there will be a lot of cynical people who will say, this is boring, I don't care about this, bring on the new products.

But I thought this is Apple making some decisions about wanting to send a message that their products do change the world, they change the world in ways that go beyond just your own personal interaction with a phone, that they're working to make interesting partnerships to find better ways to use those sensors for things that can improve the world. You know, it was sending that message. And sure, Apple's hardware is at the center of it all. You know, it was sending that message. And sure, Apple's hardware is at the center of it all.

I also think it's sending a somewhat subtle message about the fact that Apple is the company that you're more likely to trust with your sensitive health data because they don't make a business model of selling your information like many of their competitors do. They had this big slide, Apple will never see your data. Yeah. And I took a picture because it was, and I tweeted it because I think, yeah, it was kind of a, you were telling me before it was kind of like a subtweet in a way. Yeah. To Google and other companies. Well, we didn't say anything about Google. Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about. But, you know, I think it, yeah, sure, it's self-serving because everything in a thing like that is self-serving.

But I don't, I'm going to try to not be cynical about it and say, look, this is something Apple is proud of. And Apple wants these devices to do more than just be the thing you use to check email. They want them to have other applications in the world. And that's good for their business, but it's also good for the world. And Apple loves to send that message that their technology is changing the world. And this is one way that they could do that. And from their perspective, it's not a huge amount of effort to do something that can have a big impact. Yeah, I mean, I went through medical research myself as a patient

because when I was doing chemo treatments, they wanted me to try these experimental drugs. And to do so, at least I had to go through all this paperwork and to sign this stuff and to weekly or biweekly report all this information about how I was feeling. And, you know, when you're feeling sick, it can be a bit of a burden to do that kind of stuff and to sit there and say, yeah, I'm feeling this way or I'm doing this, I'm doing that. And the thought of having apps and the iPhone, so not special sensors that you have to wear or, you know, machinery that you have to operate,

just my phone and to take, you know, simple tests because it's got a microphone, because it's got other sensors. I think that's really, it's a big change because I saw one side of the equation myself as a patient and I think it's a big change because I saw one side of the equation myself as a patient. And I think it's a big change. And like the feeling that I got in the room was that it really mattered to people there. And as you said, I imagine Twitter in my head and I'm like, yeah, people on Twitter are going to be, oh, this is boring.

Bring us the Apple Watch. But I think personally, it's a big change, I think. And also kind of interesting, it is going to be oh this is boring bring us the on the apple watch uh but i think personally it's it's a big change i think and also kind of interesting it is going to be open source so we'll have to see it if it'll be open source like facetime was supposed to be or or if it will be really open source and available to to other companies to use it was jay blanick that i was thinking of. Jay Blanick is the director of fitness and health technologies for Apple. He was the guy who narrated the Watch Fitness video. So that was who I was thinking of. Solid knowledge.

Only because I watched the original keynote like two days ago. So I kind of got them mixed around in my brain. Oh my god. You watched them both. That's good grief. Did it feel a little bit like a rerun? Do you know what? It didn't. Oh good. Well that goes with what we were saying then. That's good. I'm glad. The demo room afterward felt like a rerun

because it was the same tables with the same watches on them. Although you could touch them now and they wouldn't look at you angrily. So that something they they the things that were the same they kind of covered those really quickly but the interesting thing is seeing how much of the ui has changed so you know the the people picker that's a totally different ui in the original yeah but a little circular thing yeah yeah um that was nice. Jason, do you think, what are your thoughts on the open source?

Do you think that Apple will be committed to this? Well, I think this one doesn't have the encumbrances that maybe FaceTime did. And the question is, will it be useful open source or not? And that's a mystery to me because, you know, is this code the kind of code that people are going to want to take up and use? And will it be valuable to somebody either on Apple's platform or some other platform? And, you know, I think it's a nice gesture that Apple's not trying to make this a trade secret. And so but that's where it ends as a gesture. And it begins as, you know, can it be used?

How is it built? Is this going to work its way into other projects? But I think it's a great, I mean, it may be as simple as like somebody saying, look, in order to get funding for my grant, I need to use open source software. I can't use anything proprietary. I don't know. I know some doctors who I'm going to talk to about this. I have a friend of mine who is a cancer specialist at UC San Francisco. And I'm going to ask him what his take on this is because, you know, the people who are in this industry will probably have a very interesting and different take than those of us who are just like, I've seen a doctor, so we'll see. But I think it's a good gesture. And then there's just the question of what's the code that's open sourced and who can use it? Is it all Swift and Objective-C that is not going to be useful outside of Apple's platforms?

I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how long it'll take for this, if it works as a plan, if it'll expand internationally to Europe and other countries, or if it'll stay, again, a U.S.-only thing. Because they announced all these bunch of apps that they will implement ResearchKit, and it's all US-based institutions, I think. I think I saw, I think there's an English Oxford.

Yeah, there was. You're right. So there's hope, I think. Yeah. One of the researchers was from the UK, and they weren't just British. They were in a UK environment, and it came up. I think it might have been Oxford, Jason. I think you might be right.

Yeah. But I remember seeing it at the time and thinking that was interesting. I thought, oh, it's going to be. No, it's not going to be. So there you go. Jason, are you going to be signing up to participate in your health data? Well, we'll talk about it. None of the apps affect me right now, but sure.

I would love that if I had information that was useful for something like this. I think a lot of people feel that way. Yeah, that's why I think it's good. You feel like you're at least doing something. Sure. Anyway. Okay, I want to talk about the MacBook next. Before we do that, let me take our first break for this week's episode

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you need Flywheel. And you'll get 20% off any plan for a year with the code UPGRADE. Thank you so much to Flywheel for supporting this show and all of RelayFM. So that's 20% off with the code UPGRADE. So, we saw the MacBook today, and it's called the MacBook, right? First off, that's a surprise, because now the MacBook Air is thicker and heavier than the MacBook today, and it's called the MacBook, right? First off, that's a surprise, because now the MacBook Air is thicker and heavier than the MacBook.

Yeah, well, you know, products change. This is another one of those situations. There used to be, a couple of years ago, I think some weird stuff about the MacBook lineup. It was like the basic MacBook, and then there was like a different... Gosh, I can't remember. I think it was a couple of years ago, and people were confused by the product lineup,

and they were like, why does this MacBook exist? And kind of now, in a way, there's this new MacBook and the MacBook Air, but it's still heavier and thicker than the other one. But cheaper. I mean, the MacBook Air now is the cheap laptop. It always was. But all those people who predicted the MacBook Air now is the cheap laptop. It always was, but all those people who predicted that this was the low-cost

laptop, and we said, well, it's going to be super thin and light and retina, nuh-uh. I feel good about those predictions that we made, because we were right, and this is not a... I mean, it's not super expensive either, but it's not a $999 or $799 or whatever.

It's, what, $12.99? Yeah, I think so. I don't have my notes. I just tweeted all my notes, so people can check the Twitter account. All the predictions about the lack of physical ports. And I think we talked about it on Connected, Mike, when we were saying,

well, they're just going to use it, you know, all the wireless technologies for AirDrop and other stuff. And I don't know if it's available on the website. I'm pretty sure it is. But Apple told me there's going to be a USB-C adapter if you want to connect multiple devices at once. Right, yeah, $79.

Oh, yeah? Did you see the product page? Okay. And it has a HDMI port, a USB, it has another USB-C, I think, and a regular USB. That's it, $79. Well, they'll be good. That's too bad. So basically you plug the power cable into the other USB-C,

so then you get one USB and a HDMI. It's kind of pointless. That's dumb. No, I have the Thunderbolt dock that I bought for my MacBook Air, and it's great because it's got video out and it's got multiple USBs and FireWires and Thunderbolts and all of that. And that's sort of more what I would want out of something like this. But, you know, maybe this is enough for somebody.

I don't know. That's weird. So some things that you guys might not be aware of, and Stephen is doing a great job. This is such a collaboration right now. He's telling me things at the moment. There's two configurations. They have a USB HDMI and USB-C and a USB VGA and USB-C.

They're both $79. And the really interesting thing about this, and Stephen has a good post on 512 pixels with with all of that of course he does of course uh where it's basically the configuration page is like an ipad page like all of the configurations are locked there's no build to order models you pick silver, gold, space, gray, and then you either pick the 256 or the 512 storage and a 1.1 gigahertz dual-core or a 1.2. That's it.

And they're both locked to 8 gigabytes RAM as well. Well, they said we took everything we learned from making iPads and put it into making this MacBook, and I think that's accurate. I think from my notes, one of the bits that I saved is how making iOS devices and the watch kind of informed the making of this MacBook. And you see that not just in the lighter and thinner hardware, but also in the way the force touch was implemented. Oh, man. That trackpad is the most notable thing about this product. You guys have used it. Tell me about it.

Yes. It freaked me out because I thought I was breaking it. Because basically when you touch it, Jason can explain this better because he has all the technical knowledge. He has all the technical knowledge. But basically, from my simple perspective of a not-heavy Mac user, when you try the trackpad, it doesn't physically move, but it feels like you're depressing, like you're going deep into the trackpad. But actually it doesn't move, but with your finger, you feel like little steps when you apply different levels of pressure.

But that's not actually going down with your finger physically into the machine. It's the haptic engine responding with feedback, and it responds sideways by moving the... Yeah, it's crazy. So, in fact, in the QuickTime demo, where you can actually have the different levels of fast-forward, and they're all based on different gradations of touch. You can actually keep pushing

harder and as you push harder every so often there's this little tick like the whole trackpad got a little bit, just ticked down a little lower. Like it's ratcheting down. And then you push harder and it ticks again and it feels like it's even lower.

But in fact none of that is happening and the taptic engine i don't want to say that when you click it it doesn't move because that's not true when you click the trackpad surface it moves what but but it doesn't move down because you physically pushed it down it moves because the force sensors feel the force of your finger kick the taptic engine into life and it does a shake that's actually side to side, not up and down, but you would never know. When you click, the first time I used it, I just moved the mouse, not even thinking, I just moved the mouse and clicked,

and I thought, wait a second, it just clicks like a normal trackpad. What's going on here? It's an illusion, but it's perfect. It's a perfect illusion. The difference being that it's all controlled by software. So you can change the sensitivity of clicks. You can have multiple clicks at multiple force points, like the QuickTime demo. Developers will have force touch APIs for third-party apps.

Yeah, and so this force-click idea is a new gesture that developers will be able to build in support for, that if you do sort of an extra hard click or you click and then push further, that something different happens than a normal click or a control click. This is going to be a feature of the iPhone 7, right? Yeah, yeah.

I think so. It's permeating across everything now. It's like the new retina It means different things and different products but it's kind of there across all of them Unless this turns out to be a dead end if this is a popular thing and Apple seems to think it will be

it would be hard not to see that this will go to the iPhone and the iPad eventually this idea that you can have pressure sensitivity as a different way to do gestures. I just want to be able to activate extensions with first touch. Just click down a link and it pops up the show sheet. Wouldn't that be nice?

Yeah, that'd be cool. See, now we're talking about iPads because Federico's here. Oh, here we go. Jason Slate 401 in the chat room is interested to know how the keyboard feels. Okay, so the keyboard. It's different. It is full-sized. The rumors that it was shrunken down seem to not be true.

The keycaps are larger than on the old model, so there's less space between them. It looks like the fonts in San Francisco. Am I right in thinking that? No, I don't know that. I don't have one in front of me, so I can't tell you that. The press shots the fonts in San Francisco. Am I right in thinking that? No, I don't know that. I don't have one in front of me, so I can't tell you that. The press shots do look different to me.

Here's the thing that's the weirdest thing about it. Oh, and every key has an LED behind it. They're individually backlit, which I was wondering, is there a controller for that? Can you have it light up certain keys? Probably not, but wouldn't that be amazing if you could? I'll have it light up the key you're pressing at the moment and make a little...

Can you hook up your keyboard keys to IFTTT? Oh, man. Automate your lighting. The, like a Christmas tree, except it's keyboard. The field, there's very little key travel.

So it takes some getting used to. And the people at Apple who were showing it off said, look, you know, it's weird to start, but you get used to it. And I want to, I was able to type really fast on it, like normal speed. I want to spend some time with it and get a better

sense of it. My sense is that you don't, you don't think about your keyboard style when you're typing. It's just your style. But when you're confronted with a very different keyboard, you start to think about it. And I think when I was typing on the MacBook, what it reminded me is that on Apple's current keyboards, which are all exactly the same, and that's basically what I use. And the Logitech keyboard I use feels exactly like the Apple keyboards too. What I find is that I'm pressing down until my finger makes contact, and then I'm almost like following through with an extra like flick or press to push it all the way down. And when I started trying to do that on this new keyboard, what I found is I would do that touchdown, and then the further press didn't do anything because it was already down. It couldn't go down any further.

And so then I started typing where I just said to myself, sort of like typing on an iPad screen. We joked about that with Federico. If you just tap and then you move on, you know, once your finger taps the key, the key is tapped. You just move on. You don't press it harder. Then my speed picked up dramatically. So I think some of it is just, you know, you get used to it. Your muscle memory changes and you know when you type on this keyboard.

I'm sure that people will be freaked out by it because people are always freaked out by keyboards. The last time Apple changed the keyboard, they were freaked out about it. Some people are very finicky with keyboards, and, you know, so I'm sure some of them will be unhappy with it. I approached it with a lot of skepticism, and I'm not sure I like it, but I was able to type it at perfectly fine speeds with it. And they're very proud of the fact that it's got this crazy

butterfly switch and they're the little stainless steel thingy that you press and it doesn't wobble or anything like that. They're very proud of that stuff. Apple likes to talk about that stuff, but you know, it doesn't, it doesn't feel cheap. Um, but if, if you're somebody who really likes a lot of key travel on your keys, you will not be happy with it because it doesn't have a lot. And they're not doing a – they have not yet – they cannot yet afford to put a Taptic Engine underneath each keyboard key, under each key that shakes an individual key when you press it and makes you think you push it down. But you know what? After feeling that trackpad today, that day is probably coming. No, seriously, Mike.

The trackpad is so weird at first. Like, what is going on? It feels normal. It's when they tell you how it works that you realize that it's all a lie. Basically, you try it and you form this thought in your head. It's like, okay, I know how this works. And then they tell you, and you're like, no, that's not true. You're lying to me.

And that was my reaction. I'm very interested to try this thing out now. Yeah. So, I mean, again, you can tell me what it feels like on the Apple Watch, but do you actually feel your finger going into it? It's not like that, right? Yeah, your brain feels your pressure that you're putting on the trackpad, and it feels the movement of the trackpad, which is the taptic engine.

And, well, I can't speak for your brain, actually, Mike. My brain translates that as I just pressed it down and it went down, even though that's not what happened. It's pretty crazy. But, again, if you didn't know and you were just using it, you would never think about it. Like I said, the very first time I clicked, I wasn't thinking about the fact that this was the new trackpad,

and it clicked, and it felt perfectly normal, and then I stopped myself and said, wait a second. They said there were new trackpads on these things. And then I kept looking at it and trying to see if it moved or not. And like I said, it does move. It just doesn't move because I – well, it does move because I pressed it. It doesn't move down because my finger is pushing it down. That's what doesn't happen.

Instead, you give it pressure and then it shakes itself to fool you into thinking you did it. It's weird. But it's good. It's really well done. And because it's programmable, it can be, like Federico was saying in that QuickTime thing, you can program in five different stops at five different pressure points if you wanted to,

and then it would feel like you were pushing through, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and pushing it down. Yeah, actually, in the demo that I tried on QuickTime, there was also a feature that basically you do the first touch, and you can change, I think, the template of a QuickTime movie. So you get like an extra menu if you do the first touch instead of having to right-click and choose a template, you know. So you get all these new shortcuts. Yeah, like QuickLook is going to be – QuickLook in the Finder is like that where if you force touch on a file, QuickLook opens.

And it can be implemented in any different app. They had a bunch of different examples. I think in Safari they've got it so that it does a dictionary definition or a Wikipedia lookup. It's basically all the Apple data detector stuff that they have. Those are all triggered by Force Touch now. This could be really good in Pro apps

as a way to bring up different tools and stuff like that. I'm thinking about Logic Pro. That it's like a control surface kind of thing. But on a MacBook Pro apps. Yeah. Yeah, because it is like Intel Core M. It's not exactly the top of the line. It's a power sipping.

It's a good processor, but it's, you know, it's, I don't know. Well, they've put this into the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. Oh, that's true. They did. That's true. So there you go. So you do your logic editing on the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. Oh, that's true. They did. The 13-inch. So there you go. So you do your logic editing on the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro with this trackpad. That's true.

Good point. And I had a couple people say to me, I wonder if they'll revise the Magic Trackpad to have it do this too. I mean, it would be, you know, not that they need the space, but although it do, as a Magic Trackpad user, if you get it in the right place, you can't click. If you get it in certain locations on a desk that's got like an angle or a bump on it, it depresses itself and then you kind of can't click on it. So it would be an interesting change to eliminate that moving part and instead have one that has force touch, which they seem to want in every product now. I can't believe how much time we've spent on the trackpad,

but it is really interesting. So I kind of have a little bit of a philosophical question about it. So this is going back to the movement in it, right? If it isn't moving, it's like if there's a tree in the woods, if it isn't moving but your brain thinks it's moving, like it's tricking you into thinking it's moving. Are you OK with that? Because I know that there will be people that just flat out won't be. But you two both like, does that feel OK to you? The fact that it feels this way, does it make a difference whether it is or it isn't?

I mean, the illusion is very strong. I mean, I just thought it felt really cool, you know? So I don't necessarily, I think based on my quick impression, I don't necessarily care whether it's true or not as long as it's implemented really well I guess my perspective I mean it's done really well once you try it like and they have a good reason for it

which is they're trying to minimize the space the moving parts in this thing because it's so thin I still have more I want to talk to you about the MacBook who is this product for? Because that's what I'm struggling with with this. This is what my original feeling about

when we heard about this product is that what Apple is doing again is they are creating the archetype for the next 10 years like they did with the original MacBook Air. So this thing is not really for anybody right now um like it doesn't you know this isn't a product that fits for people yeah it's it's well i mean part of it is this is the future product and part of it is this is for the person who wants the thinnest lightest coolest laptop because it is that and and it's you know i wrote a piece on Six Colors about this before it came out when the rumors were out there

that very much this is the spirit of the original MacBook Air. This is the no compromises, as thin and light as possible. I'm not so concerned about power. I'm not so concerned about convenience of ports or anything like that. I just want a really cool, thin, light, small laptop, which has good battery life and a retina display. So it's for people who don't have all of the specific needs that some of us tech nerds have, but just want this really great laptop. In fact, I would argue it's for the person who loves their iPad and also wants a laptop. I was just about to say, it's the iPad for

people who want a Mac. Yeah. So you're going to get one then. I need a Mac, Mike. I don't want a Mac. Yeah, it does. I mean, it has that feel. It is the laptop from the people who brought you the iPad.

And I think there's an audience for that. The fact that this is not a $2,000 laptop either. It's decently priced. And I think over time the MacBook Air will fade away or will just keep going kind of down in the market. But I think at some point, yeah, it'll fade away, and you'll be left with MacBook and MacBook Pro, and they'll both be Retina, and this will be the one that's thinner and lighter and less powerful.

But that's okay because there's an audience for it. In the short term, it's a better question to ask because the Air is still out there and the Pro is still out there. But like with that original Air, it's very clear this is the future of this product line. Because the technologies that they show is the reason that only one USB connector is okay. They're kind of not really there you know like you know they're saying like oh you can do everything with bluetooth and wi-fi well i guess sure not really they said that with the macbook air whatever five years ago too they said the exact same steve jobs made that same claim

well well you know wireless is fine and the fact is you know, I've got three MacBook Airs in my house now. Yeah, but like if you think of some of the other stuff they took away, like it was the first machine to lose an optical drive. And that's totally fine now. Like it's not a problem at all for like the majority of people. So, I mean, I just wonder, like, is it okay to take all the USB ports and Thunderbolt ports? Like is Thunderbolt dead? I'm not feeling very, is it okay to take all the USB ports and Thunderbolt ports? Like, is Thunderbolt dead? I'm not feeling very good about it now.

Because there isn't even an adapter. A USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter. Well, the MacBook Air got an upgrade to Thunderbolt 2. Yeah, got the upgrade to Thunderbolt 2. That's right. I don't know. I don't know. Or maybe they just think that it's not necessary.

We'll see how the USB-C thing does too. Maybe is Apple going all in on this or is this just this one weird product? You know, that happens with Apple where sometimes they do products and a year or two later you realize that they've taken a couple steps. They say, all right, that was a little too far. We went a little far. And this is the kind of product that that happens with where sometimes they say, all right, that was a little too far. We went a little far. And this is the kind of product that that happens with, where sometimes they say, oh, okay, we should have kept FireWire on that MacBook Pro. We're sorry that we took it off. Things like that.

And that might happen here, although there's not a lot of room for ports on it. So, again, our friendly neighborhood Mac nerd, Mr. Stephen Hackett, is telling me the intel core m doesn't support thunderbolt which is oh there you go so maybe that's the problem maybe other devices would have both still um interesting but that kind of sucks like so yeah there is a there is an ask upgrade question which will you know we'll get to those later on eventually yeah um but katie floyd asked like what do we do what what do us existing thunderbolt display users do well it kind of looks like nothing is probably the answer like you can't use this machine with that display yeah i would assume it's the case that's right i would assume if the chipset doesn't support it like no no no

amount of adapters can help you yeah so there you go weird it's a weird again i have to keep coming back to the original MacBook Air. That was a weird product that was non-standard in so many different ways. It didn't have FireWire, the weird little door that came down. It didn't have an optical drive. It was a weird... One USB port. It was a weird computer. And this is like

that. This is a weird computer. It's really... The things that make it cool also sort of make it weird. And if you're somebody who... I mean, there's this tendency, right, for you to say, well, it's not for me, so I don't like it. It's like, well, yeah, there is a whole range of people for whom this product is not for them. It's just, it's not for them.

If you've got a Thunderbolt display, it's really not for you because it doesn't do Thunderbolt. But there are going to be a whole lot of people for whom this is the right product. But it is not a product that's meant to appeal to everybody. And maybe it will be,

like the MacBook Air has much broader appeal now. MacBook Air is sort of like the winner in the MacBook product line, but it started out as the weirdest of weird, overpriced, underpowered computers, and it took a long the weirdest of weird overpriced underpowered computers, and it took a long time for it to evolve from there. Mr. J. Snell, I think it's time for a break and we can switch topic.

But for this lovely commercial break, could you please tell me about our friends over at Casper? I would be happy to. Now, the reason that I'm reading this out is that I sleep every night on a Casper mattress. And you do not, Mike, because you do not sleep, for you are not a human anymore. You are a vampire. I scoff at sleep. Yeah. Casper's an online retailer of premium mattresses, and they cost a fraction of the price of most premium mattresses because they eliminate the middleman. These are, I think, Silicon Valley guys who have ended up saying they want to disrupt the mattress industry and get away from forcing consumers to pay notoriously

high markups on mattresses. So it's this cool new kind of product. It's a hybrid mattress. It's got latex foam and memory foam combined. So you end up with the support of the memory foam and then this really soft, comfy latex foam on the top of that. And it's just a comfy mattress. I have one at home. My old mattress, you'd sit down on it. And if there was somebody else, like I have a cat, the cat would be on the bed and I'd sit down on the bed and the cat would jump up because it was like a trampoline. Like you sit down in one place and everything else goes flying. This bed doesn't do that. It's just super soft and comfy. And I really like it. Mattresses can cost over $1,500. Casper mattresses cost between $500 for a twin, $600 for a twin extra long,

$750 full, $850 queen, and $950 king. So they're really good prices. And you buy it online. This is one of those revolutionary things. You buy it online and it's risk-free. They will deliver a box to you in which will be a vacuum-packed Casper mattress. You open it up in the room where you're going to use it because then it expands upon getting sweet, sweet air and then fills the room to its full size. And then you try it out. And if you don't like it, you can return it. It's a mattress you can return. There's a hundred day trial period. So if you don't like it,

you don't have any risk of being stuck with a mattress you don't like, you can send it back. I've had mine more than a hundred days now because I slept on it like two days and I said, yeah, we're keeping this mattress. And it was a big happy change to have this nice new mattress. You can go to a showroom and lay on a bed for four minutes. It will have no correlation on whether you're actually going to be comfortable sleeping on it. And so now you can have 100 days to try it out. It's made in America. They want to mention that too on top of everything else.

It's not like those shifty countries like they have in the U.K. or Italy where there are untrustworthy people. they have in the UK or Italy where there are untrustworthy people. And here's where you need to go to find out more. If you would like to join me in sleeping on a Casper mattress, you have to get your own. You can't sleep on my mattress. It's mine. Get your own. Go to casper.com slash upgrade and use promo code upgrade.

You can get $50 toward any mattress purchase so Casper thank you for being a friend for giving me a very comfy mattress to sleep on and for sponsoring upgrade I would like to say on Casper's behalf that it's Jason Snell who thinks that people from the UK and Italy are untrustworthy yes that's true I'm just playing to my audience here

we love you I'm sorry that that it's made in the USA maybe you can also get it in the UK made in the USA but it's comfy, I gotta say that bottom line, I really enjoy sleeping on that mattress now, our lovely Italian

friend who gave me a minor heart attack about an hour ago he has to get back on a plane so he can be home in time to record who gave me a minor heart attack about an hour ago. Yes. He has to get back on a plane so he can be home in time to record Connected. Exactly. That's the reason. So we're going to talk about the watch,

but Federico, this is the first time that you've put your hands on one of these babies. Do you want to give me a couple of minutes? What are your first impressions hands on one of these babies uh do you want to give give me a couple of minutes like what are your first impressions of holding one of these things sure um my first thought and and i talked to other people and it seems to be a common impression is how uh small it seems to be i thought it would much, much bigger. I tried both the 38 and 42 millimeter versions, and I thought it was going to be much bigger. And it's actually pretty small. It's very compact.

The idea that I got from those 10 minutes of demo, it's really compact, and it feels... I tried the 42 version with the Milanese loop on me and it felt great. I mean, the loop itself was super smooth and when you touch it, it's all made of steel, I guess, but it's very soft and you can tell that it's been made in a very premium process. The watch is kind of different because there's all this bunch of gestures and the click wheel that you need to learn how to operate. It can be a little confusing at first. I got stuck myself a couple of times to navigate the home screen

because it can be a little different to pan around and then you've got to click the click wheel to return to the watch face and then you've got to activate the glances it can be a little different coming from the iPhone and iPad perspective because it's not the same iOS structure the way that things are laid out and arranged on screen I think based on iOS structure, the way that things are laid out and arranged on screen.

I think based on the limited time that I had, it is going to be, and I'm talking personally, it is going to be useful for me when it comes to exercises, when it comes to tracking my daily physical activity. And I cannot wait to see how developers will plug into these new features, you know, the heart rate, the activity monitoring, and the way that you can use an iPhone app as a backend and sync a specific subset of functionality and data back to the phone. What I tried was, so I didn't get a demo of the communication features because I focused on the home screen, notifications, and the fitness stuff.

So it was really, I mean, I guess I have big hands and big fingers, I don't know, but it felt really small to me, even the the 42 version and so that was kind of that was kind of off-putting i wasn't expecting that and touching the icons on the home screen is also quite strange because like the way that you pan around and zoom and and use the click wheel is It's kind of, I don't know, it felt different to me. But I think also the sensor is super cool that you have in the back of the device. Apple didn't let me exchange the band on my own.

They told me that they were taking care of changing the bands for me. Not sure why they didn't want me i saw other bloggers saying that the that apple the apple representatives didn't let them change the bands just yet uh probably because they don't want to see you know don't want to make people try the mechanism i don't know i saw panzerino tweet that the you know that he mentioned and he wrote about the like what do they call it like the port that's in there? Yeah. He says that he was able to confirm that the ones that are in the demo unit still had that port in them.

Okay. And he doesn't, maybe they've still got it in there, the diagnostics port, and they'll be coming out in the shipping version. So they didn't want you to see that maybe. That makes sense. So it was smaller than I was expecting. to see that maybe. That makes sense. So it was smaller than I was expecting.

The screen looks gorgeous, very colorful, very high quality, I guess. I'm really excited about the fitness features and getting reminders on my wrist when I'm walking or exercising in general. I think it'll be a big deal for people who want to keep track of these sort of things. But also I think for, so I couldn't get a demo of the communication features, but based on what I saw on stage,

it feels really intimate in the way that you talk to people and interact to close friends and family. I think it'll be an interesting addition to the iOS lineup. I think it'll be sort of, I mean, I still don't know. Will I use my phone less? Will I still use my iPhone just as much as I'm using it now? Will I do some tasks on the watch? I was talking to Jason at lunch and, you know, all these apps that are promising to do all the things that you can do on a phone now on a watch, I'm very skeptical of those kinds of apps. I do want to see apps that do only some stuff on the watch because it makes sense to put that kind of functionality on the watch. So we'll see.

But yeah, from a hardware perspective, much smaller, and the Milanese loop is super fashionable and really premium feeling overall yeah thank you pederico and uh thank you for for joining us today thank you guys for having me surprise yeah it's great to talk to you even though you you short my life expectancy a little bit i'm sorry and i'm very happy that you were there. And I'm very excited to talk to you on Connected this week. Me too. About the experience and some of the things that you've gotten up to today, which I cannot

wait to hear all these stories. I said it was a little bit like being on the set of a TV show or something. Federico said earlier today, it's like seeing everybody from Twitter in person. Real life Twitter. It was weird. So Federico Vittici, where can people, where can they find you? They've never heard from you before. Please not at the airport today.

Don't come looking for him. Don't come looking for me, please. I'm super tired. They can find me on Twitter, V-I-T-I-C-C-I. That's at Viticci. And my website that I guess I run with other people, that's maxsories.net. And that's the two places where you can find me. And the Connected Podcast and Virtual Podcast.

Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. I just take it for granted. All the great shows. All the great shows. On RelayFM. Yeah. I just take it for granted. All the great shows. All the great shows. On Relay FM. Yes.

Including this one now. You know, this is the first time that Federico and I have been on a podcast together. Just together in general. Well, that's true, too. But I've been on The Prompt and Connected, but only when you weren't there. That's right. That's right. I know.

So I had to get him to California to make it happen. If you've not had him on Clockwise yet. No, we haven't. Oh, we should do that. Oh, that's a good idea. Clockwise is branching out. We have all these European people on Clockwise now. Yeah, because the time works really well for us.

Because the time really works well for that. That's true. That's very true. No, this has been great. It's been a real treat. Everybody has been excited to meet Federico. I've been really enjoying the introductions where I say, oh, have you met Federico Mattucci? Here he is.

It's like he's really here. Jason has been super awesome. You, Mike, you've been super awesome with all your advice and messages. And everybody has been so kind. Well, don't forget my live blogging of your entire day that i have been completing was amazing everybody was super kind and yeah i had a great time here and now i'll go back to italy hopefully it'll be a smooth flight back you can take a nice long rest on the plane yeah all right well so here's this is the weird thing that's going to happen. We are going to break

Let Federico Go and then we will resume Upgrade. And those of you listening on the podcast will never know that there was a delay in between. All right, Mike. I'll see you on the other side.

Okay. Okay, so Federico is gone. It was a pleasure having him it was but he's gone now he's gone to the airport and i've gone home and uh an upgrade continues it does so we should talk about we should talk about the watch then so you this is you know everybody's seen the the video before but this is also your second time having a demo. I mean, my assumption is the demo that you've got yourself today has been more comprehensive than the demo that you had previously. Well, it wasn't the don't touch.

The previous demo was you could put a watch on your wrist that was running in a loop of samples. No interaction. And then an Apple employee had one and they would go through a script of sort of you could do this and you could do this. But it was very much like you couldn't get them off the path because there was stuff they just didn't want to show and that wasn't ready

and that things would crash or break or whatever. This time, when they put the watch on your wrist, they still told you what you could do, but you could do it. So it was a little more advanced. They were definitely further along than it was. So a little more sense of it. I mean, it was very similar. I've seen it before, so it was very similar to, you know, I've seen it before. So it was not new to me.

I'm glad it's close, but it wasn't new. For somebody like Federico who had never seen it in person, you know, I think that was a really valuable thing. For the rest of us, we've sort of seen it before. It definitely is not. It looks bigger, I think. I think it's bigger in people's minds than it will be on their wrists. I guess I could put it that way. I think, and as somebody who's been wearing a pebble, you know, it doesn't look that big. It's not that big. Even the big one is not a huge one. It's not big. And they're pretty. I was going to say this when

we were talking with Federico. Apple has, for years now, since the big Bob Mansfield days, I think, Apple has prided itself on its metal work. You know, they've got videos with Johnny Ive or with Bob Mansfield where they talk about the enclosures of MacBooks and, you know, the unibody MacBooks and all that. the enclosures of MacBooks and, you know, the unibody MacBooks and all that. Apple really thinks one of its key attributes that it has over its competition is its ability to really understand materials. And you see it in the two videos they showed in the event and the other one they put on the website about the materials that make up the watch.

They're really proud of that. But at the same time, you feel it in the products, the materials they use on their products, on iPhones and iPads, on Macs, and especially on this new MacBook. And on the watch, they're extremely high quality, made extremely well. And the watch, you know, you wear it, you look at it, you can tell. This is, you know, not to bring up Pebble again, but it's a nice product. But the hardware, you know, it's pedestrian hardware. It's fine. But Apple's playing a different game from Pebble.

And you can see it. So the advantage of seeing that watch in person, not only do you get to gauge the size of it, but you get to look at the metal and how it's been built. And that's a skill that Apple has. We talk about the combination of hardware and software and their clever hardware design, but their materials and machining and all those things that go into that finished product, they're really good at that too. And the watch is a really great example of it because there's not a lot of hardware there, so it needs to be really good.

And the watch looks and feels really good. You can make some style judgments about it. I know I've heard some people say that they think that the Apple Watch looks ugly. Fair enough, but it is purpose-built. It is made with a lot of care and uh it is beautiful in that way i want to come back to this in a second i want to talk about the videos but i want to go back to the macbook again um talking about machining and we didn't really talk about this the things that they're doing inside of that computer it's like witchcraft like ah yeah like the logic board and the stuff they're

doing a battery and the terrorist the terrorist batteries right it's insane it is insane and i i had that thought of like how do you so then you need a battery replacement or something it's like well there's a custom there's a custom well you you go into the Apple store and there's a custom battery that they'll order or that they have on hand that they put in there, part seven that goes in that corner. But that's how you do it. This is the thing about Apple is Apple is not a company that's taking stock parts off of a parts list and putting them together and saying, look, we made a computer. And in fact, Apple of today is not even playing the same game as Apple of five or 10 years ago, where there's so much that they do that's original. And that allows them to push the categories that they're in forward. it's it's amazing to see that that logic board

on that macbook is super tiny i mean there's nothing to it it's a whole computer on this little tiny thing and then and then i i love what apple um said about it what phil schiller said about it which is you know what do we do with the rest of it fill it with batteries what are we going to ship a product full of air no No, we want it full of battery. That was my favorite line. Yeah, and it makes sense that you would, and they did. To the greatest degree possible,

every other space in that entire thing is just battery. So, back to the watches. My girlfriend arrived home. I was watching the event on the TV that I use for the Mac Pro. Oh, right. And so it was nice to watch the videos that they were showing,

especially because they just started showing the way, the sort of vignettes that they have for each material. And they only showed the steel and aluminium videos, I believe. And she kind of came in and she was just watching it. I was like, the level of care they put into these videos, nobody else will do this. We were talking about that at lunch. I think I had that thought while I was watching them

that I wonder who they hire to direct those. Because that looked to me like world-class, A-level commercial director or maybe documentary director. that was like filmmaking that the the shots of the of the metal work and stuff were art artful and beautiful which is crazy that's a crazy level of detail it's totally unnecessary totally unnecessary but amazing the i've uh piece in the new yorker suggested that they were doing the previous watch videos in-house do Do you think that there's a chance that there's maybe somebody who works in the design team now whose job it is to make these videos and they've hired a filmmaker? I don't know. I don't know if it is. It felt much more stylish. But this wasn't the Johnny Ives sits in a white room kind of video. It was a different kind of video. And if that's an in-house person, then yeah, I think that person or the people who built this are very talented because that's what it felt like to me.

I noticed how good it looked and how it really didn't need to look that good and be that attractive. And I thought, you know, this is the kind of thing where they hire an A-list commercial director or photographer or somebody who also does commercials, somebody who is just really talented at this sort of thing. Because it was, yeah, it was much more artful and beautiful piece of work than a thing about the metal that goes into a watch ever needs to be. Johnny's role in these product introduction videos seems to be increasing yeah i think they've decided that he is the narrator of the um of the product creation experience at apple really for lack of a better way to phrase it that that if you're creating this i always used to say that steve jobs was doing like techno technological advancement live on stage as a stage show, which is not true.

But that was like how you felt in a Steve Jobs keynote was like, and we just invented this thing and here it is, which is, you know, the work of doing that is long and boring. And to make it exciting, you need that showmanship. I think that maybe the Johnny Ive videos are like a different version of that. They don't have Steve anymore, but they've got Johnny Ive. And he doesn't want to be live on stage, but he's pretty good at doing those videos. And it captures some of that mystique. It captures some of that only Apple kind of approach, as well as telling a story about a way that they're very different. As well as telling a story about a way that they're very different. So I think it's an interesting way to spin that same idea that you're trying to communicate these things that are probably not going to be interesting in some other format. And you've got Johnny Ive narrating it and he brings some weight to it as the, you know, the Mr. Design Genius tells you why this is, this product is awesome. I mean, that's a good, that's good for Apple to have that, that kind of thing that it

can play. So I do think they're kind of coming into their own as a standard way where Johnny will explain the, the thinking behind the product and why, and it's always, too, why we put so much extra work into it. We reinvented keyboards so that we can make the keyboard in the MacBook with this stainless steel thing here and this butterfly thing here. I mean, Apple loves telling those kinds of stories, and the Jonathan Ive videos are a very good way to tell those stories, I think. Yeah, like they mentioned in the MacBook introduction,

they spoke about it a little bit. I can't remember the exact words, but just about the amount of invention that has to occur for a product like this to exist. Every piece has to be reinvented. That's how you create something like that. Yeah, and not many companies are doing that right now. And Apple knows it. And Apple knows that that's how you create something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And not many companies doing that right now. And Apple knows it.

And Apple knows that that's how they're different is by having these things, not just the, like I said, this loving, you know, material science kind of stuff that they do. Also the things like the custom logic boards and things like that. I mean, that's what makes Apple, Apple. Why would you? Yeah. Why would you do that you know but they do because you're never satisfied and you want to you want to make it uh you know that much thinner or that much better and i love that apple's got that drive they don't that that will you know when when i was ranting earlier about the the some you know the macbook the new macbook is not for a lot of people and it may be pushing it a little too far like the original MacBook Air. That's true, but that's a side effect of being, you know,

being unsatisfied with things the way they are and always trying to push forward, which is something I really admire about Apple's approach to product design, that they are always trying to do that crazy next thing and they're never really satisfied with where they are and sometimes yeah that leads to kind of weird crazy products but um it also drives them to innovate and that's the stuff that pushes not only their products forward but a lot of times is influential in pushing the whole you know whatever category it is forward it's like a relentless march forward like it's just part of that right that that's what it is that drives them to do this they just will keep keep pushing keep pushing keep pushing yeah um did you find out or have you come across any any additional information about the watch that

has intrigued you in any way oh uh the thing that intrigued me the most is probably the price because i really had talked myself into thinking that the apple watch collection also i i'll pause for a moment to say i laughed when they uh said uh when tim cook described the the formation of these three different product lines as curation we curated the watch into these different lines really curated is the word you're looking for that i guess that means we pick what bands go with what watches yeah it was just like such the wrong word like yeah it was like oh there were all these watches that existed in the world and then we brought them together and got rid of the ones we didn't like. No, no, no. No, they're all yours. You make them all.

It's a very peculiar word. And I think it's because they've kind of boxed themselves into a corner of the words they can use by taking the word edition and then also by calling one of the collections Apple Watch. I feel like they've ended up with the naming that they've chosen they've put themselves where it actually makes it very difficult to describe what's what um i think that's yeah they kind of found themselves in this weird naming problem but so tell me what you think about the pricing then so i was really happy that the

that the the the apple watch was less than I thought. But then I walked into the demo room and I looked at them and I thought, you know, the Apple Watch blank, the stainless steel one, it's this shiny stainless steel. It reminds me of a back of an iPod, the early iPods, you know, those shiny stainless steel backs where they get covered in fingerprints and stuff. And then I looked at the, uh, anodized aluminum that's got as, as the materials video said, a satin finish, aluminum with a satin finish. And I thought, um, I actually like that better. So now I don't know. Now I, I kinda, I kinda think the sport looks better. Um, although the, the space black, uh, of the, of the Apple watch nameless looks pretty slick too. So I don't know. I don't like that rubber band, uh, which you have flora, flora, elastomer, flora, elastomeromer i don't like that one so um i don't know what i'm gonna

do but i like that the the the middle one is cheaper and i'm just not sure if i want a shiny stainless steel watch so this might be something you're not yet aware of um but there are a whole selection of straps that you can buy on the apple store. They're basically selling them all. They are selling them all. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Well, that was what I was saying, and people were doubting me and thinking,

I had people asking like, oh, Apple will just make them that they're not compatible or something like that. I can't see that. I can't see that happening. Yeah, so basically what they have is there are certain SKUs that you can buy. Like, for example, with the Sport, you can only pick up the fluoroelastomer bands but they have a selection on the store and it's got all the bands there and you click through and it doesn't tell you that

they can only be used on certain watches so they're just the the perceived notion is that you can use it and i've seen people uh some journalists and people tweeting that they have they had they confirmed with apple that you can use any strap on any watch yeah yeah which i think the ones that are missing here are there's none of the edition ones which you know also makes sense right right which actually is the way that they described it on stage, was these are special limited edition watches with special super high quality materials. Although the Milanese Loop, I was impressed that you can just go ahead and buy that. I mean, it's $150, but that's what you got to do. I think right now, if I were going to say I'm placing an order,

I would probably place an order for the Sport with a leather band that I would add on. But I don't know. Which leather band? Probably the black classic. The classic buckle. I think so. Yeah, I have a lot more looking at these pages to go before I'm even nearly at the point

where I have any idea what I'm ordering yet. Nearly every watch that I own is, or have ever owned, has had a, since I had a Casio keyboard or Casio calculator watch with a plastic strap. Since then, they've pretty much all been black leather or in the case of one, it was brown leather strap. But that was that was always sort of like that. That meant watch to me. And in fact, my dad, my dad gave me his Rolex and it came with this metal link band. And I just, I hate metal link bands. So I actually have a leather band for that, even though I'm sure

that the right thing to do would be to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to fix the broken links in the metal band. But I would never wear it because I hate wearing watches with metal bands. So we'll see. I'm looking forward to it, but that's good. I think it would have been crazy for Apple to sort of say, we're only selling certain bands with certain models. I get the curation part of it. Pardon the expression of like, well, the Sport Edition comes with a sport band, period.

We're not going to make it more complicated than that. And if you want to buy another band, go buy another band. But we're not going to have you build to order your watch with 80 different band choices because that's too crazy so fair enough so battery life this is we have more information on battery life well we have some yes information where previously we had none uh what's your your take on on the battery life well they had to do a they had to do a uh a day i i wrote so i wrote two things after we talked last week i wrote two things on on the apple watch one for mac world and one for i'm more and on the i'm more one which is my list of like things that the the the apple watch needs to do one of them was it needs to last all day doesn't

need to last two days but it needs to last all day. It doesn't need to last two days, but it needs to last all day. And they said 18 hours, which should be enough for most people, I think Tim Cook said. And 18 hours, how do you get that number? I'm sure they've got some sort of algorithm that they use, some sort of testing suite that they use,

which is it's for every hour, it's this much of this and this much of that. And, you know, just like trying to emulate, probably based on actual user data, what the average day is for an average apple watch user they've got a lot of user data now if they've truly got a thousand people at apple wearing these things they've got a lot of user data i can tell you actually what they think it is because they've got they've got a page as a as an apple.com slash watch slash battery page. We make a great team. The guy who's looking at all the webpages

and the guy who just went to the event and doesn't know anything about what's on the internet. This is perfect. This is the reason why I turned down all the invitations that I get. Yes. So I can be here with my finger on the pulse. You're needed.

All day battery life up to 18 hours. Testing conducted by Apple in March of 2015 using pre-production Apple Watch and software paired with an iPhone using pre-production software. All day battery life is based on 18 hours with the following use. 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45

minutes of app use and a 30 minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth over the course of 18 hours. Battery life varies by use, configuration, and many other factors. Actual results may vary. I think that's pretty good. I think that's pretty good.

And then they have a couple of other things, like how much talk time you can get, how much audio, how much watch. And one of the things that I find really interesting, two things actually, sorry, charge time. It takes about one and a half hours to charge it to 80% and two and a half hours to 100%, which I think they're pretty fair. I mean, if it... I agree. I have no problem with it taking an hour and a half to charge to 80%. Like, that's great.

You just sit it down. The use case is you go to bed and you take it off and charge it that's the use case and that makes sense the 42 millimeter typically experiences longer battery life it says on the page as well yeah i think and so i think they they made it we'll see we'll see whether those models really match reality but i bet you they're pretty close i bet they have a pretty good idea of of this how it gets used. And that's good because it does need to last all day. Your watch cannot die because it's four in the afternoon. No, it cannot do that. So they have to make it that way. Or that product's a failure if it doesn't last all day.

So I think they made it last all day. I think's great i think that's great to hear um and who knows what kind of things will we may find out what kind of things they've done in the software in order to get it to to work like that but um they had to they had to do it that's a number they had to hit it had to last all day i mean my personal history with apple battery estimation has always been good so i'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that i'm going to believe this yeah yeah they those numbers are real i should i actually um you know some i don't know if he worked on this one or not but you know people i'll put it this way. People I have worked with in the past who worked at Macworld and Macuser in the labs now work at Apple. And this is

what they do is they do, they do product testing, but instead of publishing the results on a website, they, you know, they come up with what the tests are and they, and they do the methodology and they come up with the numbers and, and that helps inform how they market the battery life and other things. And I don't know, literally don't know anything about what they've done since they've gone on the inside, but I do know that there are a whole bunch of people who used to do, you know, public tests for magazines and websites like Macworld and Macuser back in the day are now doing that at Apple.

These are professionals. They know what they're doing. These numbers, you know, Apple is always going to pick the numbers that reflect best on them. But they are not, Apple is not motivated to make up bogus tests that are not matching the real world. And actually, for the last few years, that's absolutely been the case, that Apple tries to pick fairly realistic, again, reflecting positively on apple of course they're going to do that but fairly realistic uh tests of real world usage so that they don't they don't want to get in that game where they claim that there's 15 hours of battery life but that it turns out that everybody knows it's only four they don't they try to avoid that and they've done a pretty good job of making their tests more realistic than they used to be i did have a little gripe that i just wanted to to mention which is not

with apple it's with people um so apple said that all day battery life for the watch is 18 hours and they said that the the new macbook gets 10 hours of battery life and that's also they called it all day battery life yes and i've seen people say like how is that the same, two definitions of all day I was like no, it's all day for what you use them for like a watch all day is whenever I'm awake a laptop is whenever I'm using a laptop which shouldn't be for every hour

I'm awake. When I'm walking somewhere I'm not using my laptop but I don't take off my watch at any point during the day so they are different. And, yeah, you use your laptop in a very different way than you use your watch. You've got to get people to the end of the day, right? That's the – I mean, really, your feet hit the floor in the morning and you – maybe, okay, you step out of the shower in the morning, you get dressed, and you put on your watch.

That should be the start of the clock. And the end of the clock is it's the end of the day and you take off your watch and click it into the little charger and then go to bed can you make it from start to finish and apple that's apple's challenge and uh you know they seem to think that they made it um availability so it seems that we're going to be getting pre-orders on April 10th with availability on April 24th. The UK is included, which is great news. So I'll be pre-ordering. And there's also going to be select Apple stores. Yes.

And I have seen, and I saw this fly by a couple of times on Twitter today. I do not have a clarification on it just yet, that in the UK, in London, they will be having the Apple Watch in the Selfridges department store as well. So you'll be able to go in and see them in person. Now, I need to get that confirmed, but that would be very interesting if that was the case considering there

are two of the world's flagship stores and one of them is just a stone throw away but it would make sense because Selfridges is a world known department store so it would be very sensible I think because as well the incredible luxury. So the way that

I expect it to be is the editions are there and the regular stores have the other models. Going back to the availability a little bit about the edition, they said select Apple stores, limited edition. I think Apple have answered the question of store redesign. There ain't going to be one. Yeah, I mean mean maybe there will be but it's not about this i think that's the i think that's the way to do it they don't need to redesign

the stores because they'll just for the stores that have them they'll just have a room in the back that you go to by appointment like it's whatever yeah in the special stores yeah yeah i think that's right and i wouldn't surprise me if one day they're in uh the additions are in uh high-end you know specific high-end jewelry stores or department stores um but uh apple retail is in lots of places and they're in the places where there's the most money so starting there seems like a good idea yeah so we'll uh i like what they're also going to do is they're going to have demo units from the 10th. This is the way it should be. I think this makes a lot of sense for this product is there will be a pre-ordering process and then a buying process.

And in between the two of them, you'll be able to go and try them on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pre-order, well, the pre-order is April 10th, right? And that's when the try-on, I think, starts around then too. But yeah, it's a good, the try-on thing is good. That's going to be new for Apple to do that, but you've got to do that. You've got to get it on people's wrists and have them understand it before they put the money down for that. They showed the table, right? Which is very similar to the table I think you've seen. Yeah, it's the same table. They had it again today, although they had it with glass over it.

And then we saw that table at the event six months ago, too. They are going to be swamped. It's going to be a nightmare in the stores. That's a good problem for Apple to have, I think. So I'm hoping that they'll do pre-order for in-store pickup. That would be my dream scenario there. Apple to have I think yeah so I I'm hoping that they'll do pre-order for install pickup that's why that that would be my my dream scenario there um the I have found with with Apple products delivery to be lacking in some instances I've had many problems in the past with things not

getting delivered because of demand on launch days and in courier companies just stop working at certain points in the day. You're lucky, though. I don't think we mentioned this earlier. You are one, unlike Federico, you are one of the nine countries that will be getting the watch on day one. Yeah, I would have been surprised if it would have been outside of the U.S. It wasn't my concern that if it was outside of the US, would the UK be one? My concern was, would it be outside of the US?

Right, right. But I was surprised that nine countries are getting it on day one and not just the US. So that was something. Because the UK has been part of the launch countries for a long time. Or at least of the kind of the launch countries for a long time um or at least you know of the second round always in that one with the first round just being us and canada or whatever um so i'm yeah i'm very i'm very happy that we're getting it um yeah that makes me makes me smile because

that sucks to wait it's yeah whatever it just it does um now we have some ask upgrade uh but i kind of have two two last questions um and then we'll do some quick fire ask upgrade um do you have any more thoughts about the design or overall about the apple watch um and what were your overall impressions of how this keynote played out uh i have my let's see my only other thoughts about the design of the apple watch is um i i'm interested in the fact that there are these very specific um bands that they've created and i'm not a enough of a watch person to have had experience with lots and lots of bands like i said a traditional leather band is about all i have used i'm struck by the fact that they all seem to have clever ways of clasping and uh i suppose you get used to it But I had that moment where I thought to myself,

oh, the Apple Watch isn't good enough to just have a regular band that everybody knows how to use. They are all a little bit clever. And that's fine. Maybe I will figure that out. But like, even the sport band, I'm like, you know, you got to kind of figure out which hole there's the little thing and you push the little thing into the hole. And I don't know, it just seemed kind of complicated to me. And I thought that was kind of funny. And it's like I get that they're trying to make these a special experience, but I think it takes a little getting used to. So every time I've had one of these Apple watches on, it's been like a like I have the Apple person.

They apply the watch to my wrist i thought this is is this weird that uh none of us or at least you know me and and i think some of the people around me couldn't put it on ourselves that we that that it's it's odd enough that we had to have the expert who's been trained in putting on our watch band do that for us? I don't know. It's just, it's not, they're more, they're different than what I'm used to. So it's going to take some getting used to. And the only other thing I would say is, like I said earlier, the stainless steel is really shiny. The stainless steel space black is shiny black. Uh, whereas the, the sport is that anodized aluminum. So it's a, it's a, uh, uh, satin finish and it's more matte. And I like, I like that.

Um, and it makes me interested in that one. Um, which I surprised me a little bit because I was thinking much more about the stainless. The stainless is really beautiful too. They all look, they look great. they do definitely look um beautifully manufactured and i think that apple has worked hard to make this a super high quality uh product in terms of the manufacturing so that's about it interesting stuff cool um why don't we thank our Ask Upgrade sponsor? Ah, yes. And I'll fire these out at you. Okay. Ask Upgrade is brought to you, as always, by... As always? Okay, maybe not always.

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Good friend indeed. Okay, Mr. Jason Snell. Let's try and look through some of these. Mr. iMichael. I guess some of the answers to these questions are like, I guess it's going to be what do we think rather than what do we know. Will HBO Go continue with HBO Now around?

Yes. They may be similar or the same, but HBO Go is for subscribers to HBO, and HBO Now is this over-the-top service. So I assume that they will be... that there's sort of like, you can subscribe to

HBO, or you can subscribe to HBO Now. And HBO subscribers also get HBO Go with it. You know, are there going to be two different icons? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. now and HBO subscribers also get HBO go with it. I, you know, are there going to be two different icons? I don't know. Maybe,

maybe not. I don't, I don't know that part, but I feel like there's a differentiator there between HBO go, which is the mobile service for people who are buying the television subscription. And then HBO now is the unbundled just HBO streaming. That's my guess.

And that was from Brian. Uh, Rob asks, why no new Apple TV? We got a lot of old Apple TVs to move. We're going to cut the price and sell those out and then we'll make a new Apple TV later. That's my guess is that there will probably be a new Apple TV and new interface and that's coming. But whether it's because they've got a lot of stock

or whether because it's just not ready yet, I think the 69, whatever, is it 69 price point for the old Apple TV? I mean, that kind of makes sense. There are huge margins on that. They can sell that because it's been around so long and the margins have got to be pretty good. And yeah, there really needs to be a new Apple TV, but not yet. Not yet. Maybe soon.

If I were Tim Cook, I really wish that I had made an Apple TV announcement today that was not just HBO. And maybe I would be unhappy with the person who was in charge of getting that new Apple TV out the door.

Or maybe not. But they desperately need one, I think, just because they're falling behind their competitors. But now they've got HBO on their side. So that's something.

Oh, Joe Steele asked a asked a question yeah it's similar like are there any hardware changes to the tv at all not my not my understanding but i don't know i don't know any details but it seems to me that it's just uh whatever the last rev i mean they they've done a lot of stealth updates to that thing that are incredibly minor but uh yes it is a two plus year old box discounted to 69 and um you know with any luck they'll introduce a new one and that one will fade away okay and then let's move on to the macbook uh jason asks this isn't you this is somebody else why won't apple go two millimeters thicker and add a cellular modem to the 0.92 kilogram Ultra Ultra portable? Now, I think Apple answered this themselves, but why do you think this is? I think tethering is built into macOS and iOS, and if you want to use cellular you are going to use it attached to your

phone and or your ipad and so they are not going to bother and they've never bothered and now they need to bother even less because of the features they added in yosemite so i think it's that simple they don't it adds complexity it takes up space um they must have some some research that shows that most people don't use it and that if people who opt for that on PCs, let's say, or don't want it, and the feature's there to connect pretty easily to your phone or your iPad to get on cellular. So I just think it's not a priority for them. I think there are perfectly fine other options that don't require them to engineer a space

for a cellular modem. Yeah, they literally said it. Like at one point they were like, you can just use the tethering. It's like, well, that's why they built it into the OS. Like why add it? It's not needed. Absolutely.

And it's much easier. It used to be more complicated, but now, yeah, it's fine. Look, I understand that not everybody has an iPhone or an iPad, but it's got to be a small percentage at this point, I think. Yeah, it's not their priority to provide cellular data for laptop users who don't have another device that can give them cellular data. I just, I totally see it now.

I would have really liked for there to be a cellular option on MacBooks at some point, but, you know, I've got a cellular iPad with a free T-Mobile plan that gives me a little bit of data every month, and I never use it. I just never use it because I've got it on my phone. Right. So what else do we have here? John. Yes. John Voorhees wants to know, what does the new MacBook mean for Thunderbolt? I guess we kind of spoke about this a little bit earlier. We talked about that a little bit, that it seems like that Intel reference board doesn't support Thunderbolt. I don't know if it means anything. I think it's not a great sign that Apple is embracing USB-C, but I feel like Thunderbolt may still be kicking around in

lots of other systems because it's versatile. But if Apple finds that USB-C is this versatile and good, then it might decide that it doesn't need Thunderbolt anymore. That could happen. I don't think it's a good sign. I don't think it's a sign of Apple's complete abandonment, but I don't think it's a good sign that Apple is going down that path with anything. But we'll see.

We'll see. And then John asks about the gold. Does the gold look... John doesn't think it looks good what do you think uh yeah his question was is it as ugly as it seems in photos and the answer is i haven't seen any photos of it um i've only seen it in person uh so i'm gonna say no because i think it looks pretty cool um would you buy one? Would I buy a gold MacBook? I'm more of a space gray guy, although I do like the gold MacBook, but I'm more of a space gray.

I think I would go with the space gray MacBook. Okay. Now we have Aaron. Aaron, what do you think of the MacBook naming? It seems more high-end than the MacBooks of recent history. I think this is a repositioning of the MacBook name. I think if you look out two, three years, we're going to have the MacBook and the MacBook Pro,

and that's it. MacBook Air will fade into history at some point. I feel like Apple have never gotten over taking the PowerBook name away. Yeah, Steve Jobs was tired of power he didn't want to he didn't want to talk about power anymore and it's fine it's fine i've gotten used to macbook but i think i like the macbook with no adjective name and i'm kind of glad it's back and i think they're all thin and light and the air thing doesn't need to kick around anymore

on uh i'm actually surprised it's on the ipad too but um i don't think it needs to kick around in this product line in the long term um so i i think it's fine to restate that this is a you know i know there's a generation of people who think of a macbook as the the cheap plastic laptop but you know apple's shown that they're not afraid to redefine the names of uh of stuff that they've that of old products and to reuse them and uh i think it's fine i like i like that it doesn't have another cutesy suffix i i'm happy for it to just be the macbook yeah i i think it's just they're gonna get rid of the macbook air again sure in a couple of years. You know, the, I don't know,

today it may have gone away. I don't know. But last time I checked, the 13-inch non-retina MacBook Pro was still on the price list. So these things tend to stick around for a while. And like I said, the conventional wisdom is

the margins get better and better the longer those products are out there. And that's their low price laptop right now. That's the one that they can sell for under $1,000. So they'll keep selling it for under $1,000. And it may stick around for longer than we expect. But as a non-retina system, it suddenly looks like the low end and is priced to match it. Joe on Twitter has asked, how can we charge and use something via USB at the same time on the new MacBook now?

Yep, get a hub. Yeah, if you buy one of those fancy, extremely expensive USB things, you can use that. I just wondered if maybe you had heard or seen anything different. Nope, I assume not. Get a hub.

I think there are going to be some... Apple's got the one. I think there'll be some other really interesting things eventually uh out there that will be other options for people and you'll be able to pick sort of what works for you and apple's will probably be the most basic which is you know usb and video out um but uh that's it there's no other way to do it you can't uh you can't you can't. You can't. You can't charge and use something via USB at the same time without getting an accessory. Pretty crazy.

David on Twitter. Where am I going to get MacBook benchmarks without Macworld Labs? That's a good question. Macworld will probably test systems. They won't use SpeedMark, but they'll probably use some benchmarks and run some tests. I will test everything that I get,

but I don't know what I'm going to get. I don't know if I'm going to get new MacBooks. I don't know if I'm going to get, you know, I don't know what I'm going to get in terms of reviews from Apple, but I know Macworld likes to get review units. I'm not sure whether they've got the budget anymore to do what we used to do at Macworld, which is buy all the units that Apple couldn't get us ones of. So, you know, Apple would say, we'll get you one of each of these two,

but there are three other SKUs out there that we can't get you. We just buy those. And I don't know if they have the budget for that anymore. So we will see. But I'm sure Macworld will do reviews of some of these systems and will test them. And, you know, I tested, I ran tests on the 5K iMac and will do so any other MacBooks or other Macs that I review on six colors. I will run some tests and compare them. But it's not like the good old days, I think, anymore. But there will still be people out there running tests on this stuff. Now we have some, to round off the episode today,

some Apple Watch-related Ask Upgrade. This comes from Jeff. Does the Milanese loop pull at arm hairs? I wish we had gotten this when Federico was here. I don't know, and I am curious about this too. Federico said it was really um it was really soft and and and a little more like uh like uh fabric than than metal this would be my question too because it looks great but and this i alluded to this earlier the reason i don't like metal link

um watch bands is that they pull all my arm hairs out and it hurts and it sucks and it snags on them and it's just crappy. So I can't wear them. I just can't. If this doesn't do that, then, you know, certainly very attractive, then I would be interested. So I'm going to have to try one on and see, but I don't know for sure. My guess is that maybe not because it's woven. but i i but i don't know for sure my guess is that maybe not because it's woven um so it's much more like fabric than um than the kind of metal bracelets that you think of but i don't know for sure i bet i bet it still would though probably i think it still would probably i don't know i have to see that's why i'm going leather yeah more than instead basically it's going to be infinitely more than leather does you know how much it does it goes from uh uh oz to mayor on twitter i've got a couple here uh do we do you have any details about water resistance anything additional a bunch of us overheard tim

cook in the area after the event talking to somebody who asked about uh waterproof and he said you can take a shower with it you could probably swim with it just don't take it diving so I think it's going to be that I think it's going to be like you see on a lot of these products I think the pebble is like this too that that what they're saying is you know whatever five meters or something

like that there's some there's some qualification that basically means you could take it in the pool but don't take it scuba diving Ahoy telephone that basically means you could take it in the pool, but don't take it scuba diving. Ahoy Telephone. Yes, we got... So Ahoy Telephone happened today because they did a demo, and I heard from a bunch of people on Twitter

who got Ahoy Telephone by Apple during the event when they demoed, when the guy who used to be at Adobe demoed the fact that... And we... I don't think we knew this for sure, because all of Apple's documentation on the website says you press the digital crown and you can get Ahoy telephone.

You can get Siri to appear and then you talk to her. But it turns out, yes, you can say Ahoy timepiece and then she will listen to you. I assume that can be turned off, but I don't know for sure. But it's a good question because we all did get ahoy telephoned or ahoy timepiece today. Do you have any sense of what the Apple

Watch can do when it's unpaired from a phone? Unpaired, I'm not sure if it does anything. When it loses its connection when you go running and you leave your phone at home uh it'll do steps and it will do the onboard apps that are apple's onboard apps like the music player so you could actually take bluetooth headphones and go for a run and it would do step data and it would play music that you had loaded on to the watch those are things that it can do it doesn't have a play music that you had loaded onto the watch. Those

are things that it can do. It doesn't have a GPS, so it's not going to be able to map your run, but it would be able to monitor your vitals and log that stuff. And when it reconnected back to the phone, put all that stuff back in the health app and all of that. So it's not super useful, but it's also not useless. And if you were validated and you went for a run and stopped off at Whole Foods to buy some peanut butter and manchego, you could buy, you could use Apple Pay on it too. He doesn't need to have the phone. Once it's authorized, you could use it for Apple Pay. If you took it off, then it would de-off itself. But if you're wearing it, you would be able to use it for Apple Pay too. Brian Hamilton asks,

do you think the Apple Watch pricing is alienating to Apple's core audience? Does it matter? I think because they start at $349, I don't think it is. I think it's fine. And then the other one is five something. These don't feel like alienated prices.

10,000, there were gasps in the hall when he said they started 10,000, but also you got a lot of, for the edition, but you got a lot of downplaying. They were like, and then there's the edition. It's a super special thing. It's limited quantities and it's in special stores and it's very special.

And it was the nicest way possible of saying, saying if you need to know how much it costs don't ask you can't afford it uh but he was really trying to say look that's a thing we're doing that is like special and not like you know this is our ten thousand dollar watch but very much more like it's jewelry and will be sold as such here are our core products these are and these are more reasonably priced. They're not cheap. They're expensive things. We're talking about $500, $600 for a watch, but I don't think it's... It doesn't feel alienating. Apple's always sold to people who

spend more money on technology. I don't think this is any different. So I think not. I think it's a really good question to ask, but I think not. People in the chat room, real-time follow-up, we have not waterproof, submerging Apple Watch is not recommended. That's what Apple says. All I can tell you is what Tim Cook said, which was don't go diving with it. So we'll see. It's supposed to be, you know, we'll see. Somebody will take it swimming and we'll find out whether it survives that or not it is supposed to be pretty water resistant so you know but i don't know that this is the problem with the way that people always get the lines between waterproof and water resistant right blurred right i think i i think you know what tim cook was saying

is basically like yeah if you want to if you want to shower with it, it's fine. Obviously with the sport band, not with the expensive, nice materials bands because you'll ruin them. That would be my guess. But they may not want to say that in their marketing materials for fear of some class action lawsuit. But it's a good question. But I don't know. CEO of the company seems to think you just need to not take a diving. So I'm going to go with that. I think you don't need to be terrified that it's a piece of electronics and it's going to get wet and it's going to get ruined. I don't think that's the case. Whether you can wear it while you're swimming, I don't know. And that's a good question because that would be a great use case right is to wear my apple watch sport while i'm swimming

and have it log my swimming that would be great you should be able to do that i don't know if you can that feels like a really ambitious thing to do in a version one with the amount that's going on inside of the thing. Like for it, you know, to, to, to be that all I know is I, I,

I never took my pebble swimming. Yeah. And you're supposed to be able to do that too. But it's just, there are certain things where it's like, I'm not going to do that. Yeah. Jason,

I think that about brings us to the end of this bumper post keynote. Two locations, surprise guests guest i have no extra extra guests for you to surprise you i don't want to kill you uh big day big day much much more to talk about this week on all of your other podcasts but um and i've got a lot more to to think about and to write and all of that. I haven't written anything yet. It's all been just like running around and then doing this podcast and then getting home. But it's good. It's fun having an Apple event.

And there's so much more to talk about. And I'm so happy that it's not just a rerun of the old event, that we got the new stuff, that we got the tidbits about Apple TV and the research kit stuff, and then we got the MacBook. That is really exciting, too, that we got. And upgraded MacBooks that merited one slide. But still, I'm glad we got that kind of news, too, and it wasn't just a replay of the Apple Watch with a few more details. They had to do that. Six months is a long time. Six months ago when they announced the Apple Watch, I was working at Macworld. A lot has happened between then and now, right? That's how long it's been since they introduced the Apple Watch to the world. People forget. So they had to do it, but I'm glad they did a lot more than that.

That gives us a lot more to talk about rather than just rehashing the aluminum videos from Johnny Ive and the like. If you'd like to find the show notes for this week's episode, then you should head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 26, or you can find them in your podcast app of choice. If you would like to find us online you can find mr jason snell he is you i'm going to call you the editor-in-chief of six colors that's what it says on my business card it does it it does awesome well i mean you do have people there you know it's not just you it's not just you it's not just me no you're not you're not like these other apple bloggers you know you have a you have a team, Six Colors Incorporated. Yeah, well, me and Federico both. We got people. You got the people

to do the work when you're off gallivanting around there. Exactly. In San Francisco. You can find Jason on Twitter. He's at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L and I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E and if you have enjoyed this episode, I urge you to go and check out

other episodes of this show. You can find them at relay.fm. And also go to relay.fm and find out about the other shows that we have on this fine network. I want to thank you all for listening. Thanks to everyone who submitted their questions, as always. Thank you to Federico for joining us. Thank you to Casper, MailRoute, and Flywheel

for sponsoring this week's episode. And we'll be back next time. Until then. Arrivederci. Yes. Adios. Bye.