Upgrade - 27: The Batman of Cheese

Episode Date: March 16, 2015

With an extra week’s perspective, Jason and Myke discuss the new MacBook, the Apple Watch, and what makes Apple different from its competitors.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 27 today's show is brought to you by lynda.com where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts igloo and internet you'll actually like and pdf pen 7 from Smile. Take control of PDFs on your Mac. My name is Mike Hurley, but I'm joined as always by your host of mine, the one and only Mr. Jason Snell. Hi Mike, how's it going? I'm very well, sir. How are you? I'm doing good. We were just realizing that at this moment that we record this, one week from this moment is the big upgrade meetup

in central London first annual right sure we'll use the coffers of Relay FM to do future meetups well people will come and visit you it's sort of a pilgrimage to see Mike in London

you have to go to the man if the man won't come to you so yes we'll be there we have details now of where we will be we're going to record in the kings cross area we're going to record in person um an episode of upgrade next next week um and then we will unhook all of the technical things and all of that and we will we will go to the meetup which will will be at six o'clock or as you might say, 1800 GMT. And where is it going to be? So the place I've been to a few times in Kings Cross called the Big Chill House.

The reason I chose this place, it's got some nice large areas because we have no way of, well, you know, we could have done a thing where people had to get tickets, but I kind of didn't really feel that that would be necessary. So it's a really big venue and it has lots of like rooms and stuff like that so um it will definitely be able to i hope unless thousands of people descend on king's cross thousands swarms of upgradians uh it will probably be able to house everybody that comes down it'll be really great and me and jason will be there and we'll be uh sharing beverages and it will be a fun time so if you are in London or in the surrounding areas

and you can make it starting at 6pm over at the Big Chill House in King's Cross we would love to see you indeed and yeah this is for Upgrade but if you listen to any incomparable shows, any relay

shows and you enjoy them then you should come say hi. Yeah if you want to listen people listening to any relay shows and you enjoy them then you should come come say hi yeah if you want to listen i mean the people listening to this on upgrade you are already invited but um i'm going to mention it to the people who if they if they know us from other other venues from other relay shows as you said are incomparable or six colors and mac world and all that um everybody everybody welcome we will be we will be. I will be drinking beer of some sort or other and probably dark. A dark sort. Also a dork sort.

A dorky kind of beer. Nerdy beer. So look for that. Look for the giant nerds drinking beer and we'll be there. So I'm excited. I'm excited equally about the meetup and also the in-person episode

of Upgrade. We're going to do two of those in the next two weeks. One in England and one in Ireland. Upgrade on tour right now. We should get t-shirts made. Sure, why not?

They're t-shirts for everything else. Why not this? Yeah, so this should be a lot of fun. And we were saying right before we started that it's much more a relay your feels kind of aspect of it. But I'm at that moment coming out of the insanity of last week with the Apple event. And in my new life as an independent writer and podcaster and also a freelancer um planning for a two-week trip is very different because i've got i don't have like a staff to do can you do this for me can you do that for me i kind of like have to keep things going and i i have to um figure

out where when i'm gonna write things and i've been stockpiling podcasts to release while i'm gone um i'm gonna be as of tomorrow i'm gonna be five weeks ahead with the incomparable I've been stockpiling podcasts to release while I'm gone. As of tomorrow, I'm going to be five weeks ahead with The Incomparable because there's going to be a big gap and we're not going to be able to record anything. And so it's kind of crazy. And then I'm also going to be away from my family for a couple of weeks, which is sad, but I will be with my pals on the other side of the Atlantic, and so I'm looking forward to that.

Right. We have a little bit of follow-out. A little bit. and so I'm looking forward to that. Right. We have a little bit of follow out. A little bit. It's a very special vertical to address. Yes. We had Federico on last week. I ambushed you on a podcast with Federico

and that was great. That was a classic moment. We got a lot of feedback from people who thought it was great. We thought it was great so we're glad you thought it was great too. Almost killed a classic moment. We got a lot of feedback from people who thought it was great. We thought it was great, so we're glad you thought it was great too. Almost killed Mike, but nearly. Very nearly. And Federico, he was just smiling while the whole thing was going on, like, oh, this is really going to get Mike. Oh, that was beautiful.

But his more broad story of his trip to San Francisco and the Apple event and all that is on Connected30, so people should listen to that if they want to hear more from Federico about that trip to San Francisco. And then he also wrote a piece on Mac Stories about it. But a good place to start if you are a podcast listener, which you are because you're listening to this podcast, would be Connected30 to hear more from Federico. So I have a little story. About a week or so ago, it was about 8pm in the evening and I was working on

one of the scripts for Inquisitive. I was in another room in the house just kind of trying to get a different perspective and working on something I was stuck with. And then there was a knock at the door. This is 8pm at night. I was very surprised. I didn't really understand why anybody would be knocking on the door at 8pm at night. And I opened the door and there was a man standing the door. This is 8 p.m. at night. I was very surprised. I didn't really understand why anybody would be knocking on the door at 8 p.m. at night. And I opened the door, and there was a man standing with a package for me.

And I didn't... I had no idea why this would be happening so late in the evening, and the package I wasn't expecting. So he gives me the package, and it just says on the side of the box the word Pong. P-O-N-G. I had been telling you that a package from Pong was coming for you. That was when it all started to click into place.

I tore open this box to find inside some chili jam and some manchego cheese. It finally had arrived. Jason had teased me with the cheese for long enough, had arrived jason had had teased me for with the cheese for long enough uh but the fine fine made sheep cheese of manchego has arrived and i uh procured some crackers good i didn't i didn't send you crackers i sent you a little chili jam but i didn't send you any crackers and so then shortly before we recorded today i sat down with a little cheese snack. I got some crackers and some grapes, some of the chili jam. And I had a small selection of cheeses. I had a cheddar cheese from Cheddar, as we established.

Some red Leicester cheese, which is my favorite cheese. I think that was from Gloucester in England. And some manchego cheese. And it was very enjoyable. Manchego cheese doesn't taste anything like I expected. I don't know what I expected, but it's quite strong, but it's not overpowering.

And it was very nice on these crackers that I had that they had salt and pepper in them. And I must say, Jason, I am now a fan of the manchego i'm in the manchego club all thanks to you i recommend now that for the full jason experience you listen to an episode of the flop house while eating manchego but i i'm very happy that you like it i you know again i don't have a huge amount of my self-worth invested in various kinds of cheese i only discovered manchego a few years ago but i really like it and. And I'm glad you do too. Also, we had many people point out that when Casey mentioned Manchego on this week's analog,

he said it was a dry cheese to which all the cheese snobs out there shouted, no, it's not a dry cheese, but be that as it may, it's an enjoyable cheese. I don't really know. It's crumbly. Yeah. Well, and it's hard. It's a hard cheese. But it's good. It's tasty. And like I said, I usually eat it with this tomato jam that we made at home from a recipe by Scott McNulty's wife, Marisa McClelland, and her book sponsored by Food in Jars, a fine cookbook about canning. And it's a great recipe, and it's great with cheese. cookbook about canning and it's a great it's a great recipe and it's great with cheese so that's why i got you the chili jam as i thought some kind of tomatoey or or slightly spicy kind of thing would be a nice uh thing to try with too but i'm glad you like it i did indeed i did indeed so thank you very much for that very kind of you it was after the velveta right you couldn't yeah that

was that was it i could not believe that casey got to you with velveta before i got to you with manchego i i figured i gave you some time to buy some manchego yourself without it being an explicit sort of assignment like mike watches movies like go buy some manchego i figured you'd stumble into it and that didn't happen so i had to take uh matters into my own hands and send you dispatched to you directly from a courier, some manchego. So the Batman of cheese, basically, is who I am now. I'm sending my minions to deliver cheese when it's needed. On that note, let's take a break. We'll thank our first friend of the week. And I think we're going to spend some time today

looking over and thinking back to last week's event and some of the things that changed now that you've had a bit more time for the things to settle in a bit more a week week more time this week's episode of upgrade is brought to you by lynda.com the online learning platform of over 3 000 courses of on demand these are on demand video courses that are there to help strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills. For a free 10-day trial, visit lynda.com slash upgrade. S-L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash upgrade. lynda.com is for problem solvers,

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That is, again, lynda.com slash upgrade. Thank you so much to lynda.com for being such a great supporter of RelayFM and of Upgrade. Yay. So, last week's episode, of course, I think people could hear it

in the show you were very fresh having come out of the event and there was a lot of things that i was telling you because i had had the time to dig through more of the product pages or exactly you know you see that the weird things that people recognize or ask on twitter right you see like these little things where someone is oh look at this at this, you know, there's this thing or there's this thing in the store that we didn't know about, that kind of thing. So I kind of want to know, how are you feeling about last week now,

like about some of the products and the overall feel of the event? Yeah, it's funny. It comes up occasionally and I realized that it's inside baseball, but I was glad that we could talk about it last week a little bit. There is this, it's not, I mean, there may be a reality distortion field, but there's also a bubble when you cover these events that all you get is what Apple wants you to get. It's akin to just watching the video of the event and not ever visiting any of the website. But our colleagues in the media who are not at the event, they've got the video on, but they are scouring Apple's PR site and Apple's marketing pages on apple.com because there are

always tidbits. There are products that get released that aren't mentioned on stage. There are features that are mentioned in detail that don't make it into the final presentation on stage. And if you're at the event, you miss it all. You don't see any of that stuff. And so you come out and you're blinking, you know, you can come out into the light like you've been in a cave and your people back at the office or whatever, all of your colleagues, they know more than you do very, very quickly because you've been in that hands-on area getting information other people don't get, which is the hands-on experience with it. But what you lack is some of the quirky details. So in the last week, I've, you know, I think what I found is that there weren't that many quirky details about the Apple Watch. My impression of that was that it was much, there were some

changes, but I feel like they were all about how it was presented during the event more than anything else. And then on the MacBook side, I don't know, I wasn't as turned around by it in terms of new information as I was just thinking about it, learning more about USB-C, a little bit more about what exactly its possibility and limitations are and where it may or may not have come from, which was an interesting little conversation this week. And then I just spent a lot of time thinking about my impressions of that time I spent with the MacBook. Because I invested far more time in the MacBook than the Apple Watch. I know some of my colleagues at the hands-on area spent a lot of time with the watch, and I felt like I had already spent a lot of time with the watch. I'd worn it.

The only difference was going to be some interaction stuff, and I saw some of the interaction stuff. But I really emphasized the MacBook because it was completely new, not going to be out for several weeks, and I wanted to spend time with that keyboard and that trackpad. So I actually wrote a couple of stories last week about MacBook stuff based on, you know, thinking about that, especially the input devices and also thinking about the USB-C connector. Because I think the MacBook is going to affect how everybody who uses a Mac interacts with their Macs over the next five years because it is going to usher in, at least some of this technology is going to make it to many or all Macs in the next few years. And so I think it's really worth thinking about that, because that's a huge story in the long haul. Now, the Apple Watch is shiny. Literally, it is shiny. But I don't know. It was also not, the percentage of new material in the Apple Watch

stuff was not as great so although I'm excited about the Apple Watch for me the MacBook was the thing I spent this last week thinking about most of the time Alright so let's look at this a little bit more then because I can't remember if I asked you this question last week but maybe you're thinking about it

a little bit more now Are you going to buy one of these no okay so tell me i'm not i'm well because i have a top of the line uh i7 mac 11 inch macbook air from 2014 and so i'm and my primary system is no longer my laptop. It's this Retina iMac that I have. So for me personally, this doesn't make sense. Would I buy one of these down the line? Absolutely. If IDG hadn't given me my work laptop and I was using the old laptop that I had kicking around at home, I would be more interested in it,

especially now that I have a desktop. I think if I can just keep on playing these scenarios, if I was working at this desk with my external monitor and my Thunderbolt hub, then I would have a problem because I couldn't plug this laptop into it. So it's not, it's just in all these scenarios, it's not a really great fit for me right now. But given, I'll put it this way, given how I use my MacBook Air now, I would absolutely buy one of these because I don't plug it into anything ever. I used to plug it in on a desk and dock it with this Thunderbolt dock and have like multiple devices,

like five devices coming off of it and Ethernet and audio out and all of these things. But now my MacBook Air is largely a, you know, roam around the house, sit in the backyard, take it to a briefing or when I travel kind of system. And it could do that. travel kind of system. And it could do that. I'm interested to see how that Core M processor works in terms of something like Logic, which I use. But again, that's a high-end kind of pro kind of thing. And I bet it'll be okay. Not fantastic, but with the SSD in it, I bet it'll be fine to edit audio even. Because these computers now are, all of these computers are so powerful that unless you're using it for very specific, powerful needs, which our audience is much more inclined to than I think the

general public, you know, I think it's enough. So I feel like for me, I would buy this system, but right now I don't need to buy it because I've got a pretty good Mac, small Mac laptop. I've got a pretty good small Mac laptop. And although it's not Retina, I can live with that. So, you know, we'll see. I could see myself getting one of these in a couple of years. Or if my kids were agitating for, you know, a laptop or something like that, I would consider the, you know, do I get this and hand that down? Or i get them one or all that i i could i could see that so it's definitely not a no because of anything other than the fact that um i'm not that at that point in the buying cycle what about you so i i have was it mac lust i have hashtag mac hashtag math glass thank you phil schiller yeah i i do i i definitely do it's it's a beautiful computer and oh yeah and and i keep hearing you know people mention about travel um and i'm i'm traveling a lot

more this year uh right than than i ever have before and i expect that that will will continue and there's probably things i'm going to be traveling for this year that I don't even know about yet. And I have a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, and it's fine, but it's still a bit too big for an economy seat. And I guess anything you can do to make that smaller is going to be better, right? Yeah, you've got so many USB things, though. Again, for you personally, and we may not be the best examples. Like, I've got a USB mixer, you know, USB type A, B mixer. And so then you're throwing in an adapter, and then you have to also power it. And, you know, it is smaller and lighter. That's true.

But you opted for the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro over an 11-inch MacBook Air. Yeah, so let me talk from my decision for why I went with the Pro. I went with the Pro just because I wanted power. And the difference in weight and thickness, I feel, is not as harsh as the power difference. I wanted a machine that could do everything and that I could also push if I had to. Like if something happened and I could only use this computer for recording and editing, then great, I could do that.

Also as well, I really don't like the silver bezel on the MacBook Air. Especially on the 11. It looks like you're looking at kind of like a, to me anyway, when I see it, it looks like a postcard on a billboard. Like it's just, I don't like it. I'm just not a big fan of that design anymore. And I much prefer the way that the MacBook Pro looks in that. I need to spend some time with the MacBook because it's got the edge-to-edge glass screen too.

I've found that, and maybe they've changed the glare coating on it, but I always preferred the MacBook Air screen to the MacBook Pro screens because I found that even though the silver bezel is not pretty, it allows them to have, whatever screen coating is on that screen i find i find it to be much less glary than the macbook pro screens much less glary i may be less sensitive

to it i don't have any problem with that and plus as well i run it i maybe my anything i wanted a retina screen yeah um and you know the And that kind of wired no other choice. Now, the reason that... I mean, I really like the look of the MacBook Air. And probably for the majority of stuff that I actually use this MacBook Pro for, I could use the MacBook Air for. Because I do all the production, really, on the MacBook Pro. And the MacBook that I use is for my general day-to-day work.

My MacBook Pro, I've said this before, it's my main computer. But the reason that I won't get it, I actually have a few reasons. It's the way that I use this computer means that the MacBook Air wouldn't work for me. So quite frequently I have my MacBook Pro plugged in and I charge my iPhone. That is something that happens. Or I like to charge my iPhone whilst using the computer and I appreciate I could get another adapter and a plug and a dock but it's just something that I don't have. But more than anything and the main reason that I wouldn't get it is because I wouldn't

use most of the functions of the MacBook Air on a day-to-day basis. I sometimes suffer with some wrist pain and arm pain so I elevate my MacBook Pro and use a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and a Magic Mouse. So I need the Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. It has a little USB Bluetooth thing that has to be plugged in constantly. So I wouldn't even be able to plug that in. And also the trackpad and the new keyboard, I would never use them or I wouldn't use them that much so the big advancements of this machine I wouldn't really use

so I really think it looks incredible I think that for some of what you need it's too early but it has to start at some point we're not ready we're not ready for usbc yet that's okay but but we we will be eventually and the only way we will be is by there being computers for it so i think that the macbook is is a really good machine for most people provided that they know exactly what they're getting into. Right. Because you can't even...

I know we were talking about, like, oh, you can't plug USB in and power, and we're talking about hubs and stuff, but if you have anything USB, you can't plug it in. You need an adapter to just plug in one USB. Maybe you have a hard drive you like to back up onto or something like that. So, you know.

This is... I don't know if you even were paying attention to anything when the imac came out were you like a a very small child at that point i don't know the original imac yeah the original imac yeah i don't want to tell you how old i was but i was young yeah that's that's enough um i don't want to hear anymore out out of you, you kids. But this is exactly what the conversation was then, which was, oh, it's underpowered. It doesn't have a floppy drive. It doesn't have Mac serial. It doesn't have ADB. All it has is USB. What the heck is USB? It was very much like this. Oh, you'll need an adapter and blah, blah, blah. But you had to

start somewhere. And Apple's not afraid to do that. And I love that about Apple. And so, yeah, this is going to be a weird computer for a while. And then in five years, we're going to look back and say, oh, that's where it all started. And it's going to be the root computer of all of this new technology that we're seeing. Like USB-C will be like, oh, USB-C. Well, that started with that crazy MacBook where that was the only port. But now everybody's got it. And that's just, and so this is all happening in slow motion. And we can sit here and this, you know, Apple focused world has been talking breathlessly about this for a week. We're talking very quickly about something that's going to happen very slowly. But it will happen and it's fine. But we're entering this weird transition. So I wrote a piece on the formerly Paul Farad's Windows Supersight, winsupersight.com, where I try to explain Apple things to spent a lot of time on Apple's dance, the dance of the connectors.

Like, over the years, Apple has had so many different connection technologies. It used to be even crazier in that it was only on Apple products. The Mac serial and Apple desktop bus and even really SCSI for most use cases were only things that were on the Mac. And then they didn't run Intel processors. I mean, Macs used to be so not PCs that it was just a totally different, it was a parallel universe. They didn't connect at all. And then over the course of the last 15 years, Macs have become essentially just PCs and they've got all the same stuff. The only difference is the operating system. And I mean, the design and stuff, but I mean, the ports are ports that you could find on a PC,

more or less. And so I wrote about that. And one of the things, if you're a technical support person or an IT person that you care about, is that we had entered a period of stability where sort of, if you had a mini DisplayPort connector or adapter, you were good. You could get, where sort of if you had a mini DisplayPort connector or adapter, you were good. You could get – all the Macs had that. And we just left that period because now we're going to have this weird Mac that doesn't use mini DisplayPort to connect to a monitor, and you're going to need another adapter or two in your conference room, or users of this product who do presentations are going to always have to bring that with them

in case they need it. And that's just – this happens. These are growing pains. Mac users always complained about, and Apple fans in general, always complained about the fact that, or they didn't complain, they would point and laugh at Microsoft and the struggles Microsoft would have because Microsoft had this huge install base and they wanted to maintain compatibility. And that was what Microsoft excelled at, was dealing with the people who do support and big organizations. And that was a weight on Windows. But this is the flip side of that. Apple not caring about continuity and just making it hard for everybody in the transition

because they want to move to something that's new and that's better gets us where we are with this product. And so, yeah, it's going to be a pain. And yeah, I'm not looking forward to that moment where I realize that all of my adapters are now useless because I have a new computer with a new set of ports that are totally different. And although they're better, they're also different. But that's, I mean, that's what you get for being users of products by a company that is pushing the ball forward. And that's, you know, that's what Apple is doing with this. So I don't know. It's just kind of funny. It's all true. Yes, it is a weird product. Yes, it's probably not for everyone. Yes, it is going to be a pain for all involved for a while.

But that's how change happens. We just got to deal with it. It can be difficult and it can be frustrating, annoying and expensive. But like without trying to be, you know, an apologist, I love that, you know know my chosen team decides to do this stuff yeah that's one of the reasons that that we that we like apple is that they do stuff like this right and it's very apple it is i said in that super site column this is the most appley thing that you could imagine hey it's got one port and that includes the power plug what but you know then and then google released the new or announced and shipped the new chromebook pixel which also has it has two usbc ports so

you know it's the start of something that's going to be everywhere it's going to be everywhere even a year ago we were all talking about how they have finally done a reversible usb connector which is this one and how it's like ah finally, finally the USB consortium has figured something out about ease of use and all of that. Well, it turns out maybe Apple was involved in the development of this standard too. I think it was on the talk show this week. Yeah, it sounds like John maybe overstated Apple's... I think in the talk show, John Gruber said something like Apple invented it and then...

And handed it over. Yeah, and that's maybe not entirely true, and there's a lot of politics involved. But the nice thing about it is this is not an Apple proprietary standard. This is a standard standard, an open, available standard that other PC makers are going to support, presumably, that Intel will support. It will become the new generation of USB. And Apple, if Apple got to be influential, you know, I think it's good for Apple to have this connector exist. My understanding is that this is just USB 3 with a different connector, right? Like it doesn't give anything different.

well it is it is usb underlying it is usb 3.1 but uh the the issue is that this this connection standard is different enough that adapters are required so it's more it's more than the old school is my understanding it's a little bit different that you need you need a little bit more in the adapter but i don't i don't know a lot of the details i haven't read as much about that but it is underlying it is usb 3 and 3.1 and what those can do. But this is a totally different connector thing. I think what they said was this connection change will require adapters because there's specific things that need to be adapted between USB A and B and connector type C, but that they built this with forward-looking whatever so that they say this shouldn't happen again. This should be the last time that you need a totally crazy adapter to get your USB stuff to work.

So these adapters are the adapters with apparently the little computers inside them? That's my guess, and I don't know that for a fact, but that guess is that these are these are like the Thunderbolt adapters that we've seen where it actually needs to like do some more sophisticated stuff than then just a cable okay but I don't I don't know for sure you've we've reached the end the edge of my knowledge about USB C all I know is that we need adapters for everything if we're gonna use USB C adapters everywhere we need adapters for everything if we're going to use USB-C. Adapters everywhere. All the adapters.

All the great adapters. I mean, we got a lot of feedback that I didn't put in follow-up, but we got the same feedback everybody did, which is essentially, look, if you need to connect to big displays and external drives, this computer's not for you. On ATP this week, John Syracuse went on for quite a while about how he was going to, he was going to be painted as the guy who said, I can't use, this computer is no good because I can't use it. And he's like, no, no, no, that's not my point. My point, you know, he was making

a different point, which is if you're going to have more than zero ports, maybe you should have two, which I think that's a fair point. And I actually, I would be surprised if there isn't a future MacBook in a year or two that has two ports on it. I just wouldn't. That's what happened with the MacBook Air. I kind of find it inconceivable that they would stay, inconceivable that they could stay with just one.

That just seems weird. But they've made a choice. Like they've made a choice, but like, why would you do that forever? Wouldn't it be great to have one on either side so that you could charge or attach peripherals from either side? That would be really nice. So I think that'll probably happen. And then we had one I wanted to mention.

Listener David represented a larger group by saying, why do MacBook commentators seem so hung up on a single port and not the retina screen, lightness, and battery life. And, you know, I got a lot of this, and I sense with some of the people who make this comment that they're frustrated that people are focusing on the negative and not the positive. And I get that, although at the same time, it's not really our job to focus on the positive. It's our job to kind of the positive it's our job to kind of like figure out everything that that a product means i do agree that uh people who write about this stuff are sometimes the most demanding technical people of all and that they totally lose

perspective about about a product like this i feel like the the stuff i've listened to and read has been a little bit better than in the past about this. Unlike the original MacBook Air, for example, I feel like, you know, John Syracuse is a good example. The nerds are realizing, are better at realizing that just because a product's not for them doesn't mean that it's not good or that it's not good for a certain kind of audience. You know, it remains to be seen when we actually use these things, how all of us feel about the actual performance and how that keyboard actually feels. But I feel like we're getting better at having a little more perspective and saying, our use case is not the common use case, because that's true. I think of how my kids use laptops. I think about how my mom used her laptop

before she switched to an iPad. I think about how people use iPads. And I think this is the product for them. And there is this tendency, all of us have it, to see a product that is not targeted at you and get mad at it because I can't use that product. But I think that's okay. There are other products for you to use. You don't need to use this product. This is like the iPhone 6 Plus. It's not for everybody. And that's okay. There's also an iPhone 6. You can choose whether you want the big phone or not. We're not going to make you use it.

Nobody's going to make you buy a MacBook with one port. If they stop making all other Apple laptops and this was the only one, then I think you'd have a better reason to complain. But they're not going to do that. So I think we're getting better at this but it is an important I think it's right in the people who are trying to kind of keep us honest by saying look you know you guys are not

I am sitting here with this Thunderbolt dock next to my computer and it's got like five things plugged into it it's like that is not a common use case that is crazy me editing podcasts in Logic not a common use case. That is crazy. Me editing podcasts in Logic, not a common use case. And that's okay. When I review the MacBook, I'm not going to be judging it on whether I can use it or not. I'm going to have to think of the bigger picture of who is this

for. I learned that really early on when I was writing reviews at Mac User and Mac World. One of the questions you have to ask and answer is, who is this product for? Who's it targeted for? And does it meet that? Will it serve those people? And it's very easy as a reviewer to lose complete perspective of that and make it all about you. And a review that's all about you doesn't tell anybody anything unless they happen to be exactly like you, which is probably not possible. I think the thing with a lot of this stuff is like everybody is just bringing their own personal experience to it like so the people that you know that don't don't understand the one port or focus on the one port like maybe we have is because like how i just explained like with the

way that i use my computer i can't use this computer like there are some things where i could adapt but there are some things where it's like adapting could could cause me physical pain. Right. So I can't I can't adapt to one port. And and like it's the same with other people like who say that, you know, one port is fine. It's because that's what you use. And it does take the more considered approach where I think initially it's been a lot of kind of first impressions and feelings which tend to come from personal experience. But I've put a lot of thought into it and been thinking about why is this interesting?

Why would I want one and why wouldn't I want one? And that's kind of where I've come to. I would very much like to have this computer, but there is no world in which I will own two laptops. It's crazy. But I think it would be very, very nice to own for the specific uses of like traveling and stuff. But I'm not going to buy a laptop just for traveling.

But I can see for people that do travel a lot, especially or are writing in environments where it's very constrained for them and they really need the space. This is kind of the perfect machine because it's got a bigger display for the size of the case. And it's got a bigger display for the size of the you know for the size of the case and it's got you know you with it being retina you can really ramp up the resolution on the thing and it's an interesting it's a very very interesting

product and there's a lot of innovation in there that that i'm looking forward to trickling down to the lines a bit more so for my upgrade in an in or two when I want to upgrade my MacBook Pro then I will be able to benefit from the work that's been done on the new MacBook. I have two other pieces of listener interaction that I want to mention here before we move on from the MacBook. One of them is from listener Matt who wrote in, we talked about whether

this is a sign that Thunderbolt is going away. And he wrote in to say he doesn't think, he's a pro, he says he doesn't think Thunderbolt's going anywhere. It's got a lot of support in a lot of places in pro applications. And, you know, when I replied to him and I said, you know, but is this going to be like Firewire, where it just sort of ends up more on pro systems and their consumer systems that don't have it? He said, yeah, that may be the case. And we'll have to see. It looks to me like over time, USB-C is going to be able to do for consumer applications at least more or less everything that we want Thunderbolt for. And that maybe Thunderbolt will fade away eventually, but it would be a longer and slower fade and something

that really happened more on the consumer line where it would stick around for longer on the Pro line. I think that's probably right. And then Upgradian Sam, I just varied it because I know you like to say Upgradian, wrote in to point out something interesting. The LG G2 and the Moto X both also use, these smartphones also have stepped or terraced batteries. I also had somebody write in after I was on MacBreak Weekly last week to point out that HP actually had a laptop with a force based trackpad that didn't move a couple of years ago. Although interestingly, and it was good, I didn't know that. I really appreciate the person writing in. But interestingly, that was the whole

feature was there was a force sensor and it didn't move. If you wanted feedback, if you had the speakers on on the laptop, when you clicked it, it played a sound of a trackpad click. And to me, this is the kind of thing that Apple does really well. stuff of the force sensors and the existing stuff of haptics and write some very clever software and integrates the hardware together and create something that feels like you're depressing it when you're not which is way better than hearing windows play a click sound so uh that's i think that that is like a little microcosm of how apple does things and whenever apple announces a new a new feature whether it's the terrace battery or something, especially if you're in the distortion field at the time, you're like, oh, wow, that's a really cool idea. And even if you don't say Apple thought of it first, and you write about, like, hey, Apple introduced this cool feature, there's always somebody in my experience who writes in and goes, they weren't first with that.

Somebody else did that first. And they're really angry about it. And usually I try not to make claims that it's first from Apple because that's usually not the case. This though, is what makes that Apple stuff different is that Apple puts a lot of this stuff that totally not, they're totally not first with any of that stuff or most of that stuff. And they put it together in a really clever way that are the first ones to make something that makes sense as a whole. And who wants to bet? Okay, so it's been a couple of years since HP had that force sensing trackpad, and nobody seems to have really picked up on it. Who wants to bet how long it's going to take for PC makers to create force sensitive trackpads with

haptics in order to have the same effect? You will see them. Whether they sell well or not, who knows? Whether they're well implemented, who knows? But because Apple's kind of packaged this whole thing together, that's what makes people interested in it. And it is very compelling. It is kind of an amazing product, the trackpad. I really kind of love it. And I want one for my desk here. I want a Force Touch Magic trackpad. Could we add more words in front of the word trackpad? Probably not. But anyway, I think that's an interesting angle that a lot of times these aren't the original things.

The Terrace batteries existed before. The Force trackpad existed before. But, you know, Apple does a good job of selling it. Apple does a good job of selling it and often will put a bunch of different things together to tell a story about why a product is good that include those things where sometimes it ends up just being a fact in a product and there's nothing really connected to it. Because, you know, they say on stage like we invented this and it's like that that word can be taken quite can be taken literally or more loosely because they probably did invent it for their purpose like they didn't take it off the shelf uh but they may it doesn't mean that they were necessarily the first person to to ever consider the idea does that make sense yeah like you know they they made it but they weren but they didn't necessarily come up with the original idea. Right, right.

And that's, you know, it's okay. I get why people are mad because Apple oftentimes will act like something is something they invented and it's not quite. But there's usually more to it than that. It's usually not Apple just saying, look, we invented this. It's Apple saying, you know, we've done all these things and made them into this product that tells this story and that's different should we take a break? yeah let's do that, let's thank our friends over at Igloo and then we'll address some stuff about the watch as well

I want to thank Igloo, the intranet you'll actually like for helping support this week's episode of Upgrade with Igloo you can share news, organize your files coordinate calendars and manage all of your projects and tasks all in one place. It's a fantastic way for you and your team to work together, socialize together, no matter where they are in the world. Because Igloo's platform is fantastic.

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as people upload it to Igloo, they download it, it's really cool. But one of the new key things that they've added is the ability to track who has read critical information. So imagine like a read receipt in an email, you send an email off to somebody and then you get a notification back to tell you that they've read it. So sometimes that's useful because you know it's there, you can either question them about it or at least you know they've received it and it's good. Igloo have implemented this to documents. So let's say, for example, you're sending around a

document to your colleagues, which is a really essential piece of training documentation or legal documentation, and you have to know that people have seen it and so they need to acknowledge it. Well, you can do all of this now. Rather than like somebody running around the desk and getting everybody to put their initial on a piece of paper like they used to do in my old office. You would now, everyone just knows, like you should get a list of people who have seen it, and then you can just go and talk to or nudge the people that haven't. It's really, really cool.

And if you work in a company that has these kinds of needs, which are probably many, this is a really, really nice addition to Igloo's platform. Igloo is super customizable. You can change how you want Igloo to look and what functions you want to have. You can even do this with certain groups and all of the changes that you make

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Thank you so much to Igloo for supporting today and all of relay fm so we also have the watch um what what has been your kind of feeling now about this what is my feeling about the watch i feel uh no it's um i'm starting to feel desire to buy the watch and use it i've been thinking about it a lot more and i mean some of that is just oh new thing is coming um that happens but i you know i like the approach that Apple is taking. The presentation was simplified from the one six months ago. I think it's, you know, focusing on keeping your phone in your pocket is a good thing or bag. A lot of women don't have pockets for phones. So having that thing on your wrist that you can very quickly see what's going on and look something up and dismiss it and have it be these short interactions, a few seconds. There have been pieces written that say, oh, no, this is even worse because it's going to put your phone on your wrist and it's going to make our little bubbles that we live in where we're not paying attention to the people around us even worse. That could be true. But the more I hear about how Apple's trying to approach this, the more I start to think that Apple is trying to

do the reverse here. Apple is trying to make your interactions with the data from the internet and from your phone faster and easier and more convenient and more sort of seamless with the world around you. And I think that's a good thing. I think reducing the number of times we have to pull out our phone and stare at it in order to check on something, that we can do it much more quickly with a glance even, say, oh, that's not important, or very quickly go glance, tap, tap, done, and then move on without having to get out our phone. I think

those are admirable things. And if this device can pull that off, I think that's going to be really powerful. The line that I've been using, and I probably used on this show, but I've used it on some other shows and some presentations I've given is the line about how, you know, a hundred years ago, people decided that pocket watches were inconvenient. And if we strapped a clock to our wrists, that would be more convenient, and it worked. And I think that principle may hold through again if it's done right. So I'm excited to try it out. I think that it could have a lot of value that goes beyond just being seen as a redundant accessory for an iPhone and that pulling that phone out of your pocket is good enough. Because if they do their job right with this thing, it won't be good enough.

This will be better. This will make everything smoother and faster. And I do think it has the potential to do that. So I'm getting excited about it. What about the edition? Now, we didn't really talk about the edition last week. And I haven't heard your thoughts on it. Now that we know kind of very basic information about the edition,

it's still shrouded in mystery, which might be part of the whole mystique of the thing. What is your personal feeling on Apple offering a $17,000 watch? So I'm going to turn this around and make it about people like us talking about this. I think people are getting derailed by the edition and by the gold material and the price. I keep seeing stories that use the edition as a jumping off point for a rant about why Apple's totally lost the plot and they're doing crazy stuff for the super rich and they're losing what they're all about. But I actually think that Apple was really soft peddling their talk about the

edition. I do think the reason the gold video wasn't played, the reason that Apple was really soft peddling their talk about the addition. I do think the reason the gold video wasn't played, the reason that there was one that the price wasn't put up on the screen and it was just sort of mentioned in passing is that, you know, Apple knows that there are people out there who will spend a huge amount of money. pay third parties to take iPhone cases apart and replace them with the actual case, not a case to wrap around the iPhone, but replace the actual case of the iPhone with carved wood or with solid gold because they're super rich and they want a super awesome iPhone and they can afford to pay for that. And I think there's a part of Apple that says, why not us? Why don't we do that? And then when you talk about watches, there is a luxury segment to the watch. There are people who want gold watches. And I can totally understand them saying, well, we're just going to do a stainless steel watch and have everybody say, we're never going to get the rich and famous to wear our watch if all we have is a stainless steel model. We need a gold model. And at that

point, you're talking about, well, that's so impractical. And I can totally see how that conversation becomes, all right, fine. Who's that market? What's the market for a gold watch? If we sold a gold watch for $10,000, would some people buy it? Would that be the one that shows up in fashion spreads and in shots of celebrities on the red carpet and all of that, yeah, probably so. And that's the one that the very rich people will buy, and we'll make it a limited edition. I think it's all tracks. I think it's why would we turn those people away if they want to give us a lot of money for a gold watch? But the point of the watch is not the gold version. I think for its importance, maybe not culturally, but for its importance as a product, it gets way too much attention. In fact, we're giving it too much attention even by talking about it this way. I think it's just been over-talked and that nobody's going to buy it. The people who are going to buy it are people who've got lots and lots of money.

And everybody else is going to be buying the sport or the adjective-less version. And the product will live or die based on that and not the gold. So I think the gold is a big distraction and I think it's one of the reasons why Apple sort of underplayed the gold model at the event was it's kind of distracting people

from the actual product and they don't want it to be seen as an unattainable product. It people from the actual product. And they don't want it to be seen as an unattainable product. It is an attainable product. Like all of Apple's products, this is a, yes, it's a nice product, and you could even argue that it's a luxury product, but it's also a luxury product that starts at $350. And I think that's important to Apple, that it not get lost in the $17,000 model,

that there is a $350 model. I actually don't think they're going to sell this in Apple stores at all. Well, I think they are going to sell it in select Apple stores. I think somebody, maybe Matthew Panzarino, got them to say that it will be in select Apple stores. But yeah, I think, is this where you're going with this? stores but yeah i i think um is this where you're going with this i think that it'll be in high-end jewelry stores and some apple stores in really specific locations that have the place to do the high-end kind of uh sales and that's it it's going to be a super exclusive it's going to be where the

people who shop for the fancy stuff like this are it's not going to be at the shopping mall in your local apple store so the places that i think it's going to be, I think you're going to get it in Regent Street in London. You're going to get it in the New York Glass Cube one. Where is that? Is that Fifth Avenue? Fifth Avenue, yeah. There'll be one of the Paris stores and maybe a store or two in China, maybe one in Tokyo, maybe one in Rome or Milan. I think that'll be it. And then outside of that, they will use the existing facilities of high-end department stores. And I saw a picture today of a department store in Tokyo. I saw this on Twitter.

That looks like it's having a pop-up shop fitted into it. And I did see somebody tweet that Selfridgesges in london a very large fancy department store will have them it answers so many of the problems that we've been asking ourselves for weeks as to how are they going to do this they do they do this by just not having to worry about it and use the existing stores those existing stores all the security that they have and just all the facilities that they have and the environments that they have to make people feel comfortable to buy these products and they just kit them with some very specifically trained apple employees and that that's how it's done and you go in by appointment and it's you know that's it that's that's how they'll do it

like and and that way they don't have to worry about any of the stuff that we've been talking about about like teenagers selling seventeen thousand dollar watches to right to millionaires oh would you like a gold watch we don't want that i i agree with you i think um there there's a whole question about support and things like that in service but high-end watches if you look there are a whole question about support and things like that and service. But high-end watches, if you look, there are a limited number of places that will service high-end watches too. And I'm sure that they would say, well, you can come back to this store and they would have a connection with Apple. And again, it probably doesn't happen on site, right? It all gets shipped somewhere.

But yes, sir, very well, sir. We'll get this back to you in a week, sir, whatever it whatever it is just call the special telephone number that's in the box yeah exactly right you just press you just press on the box and think about service and it reads your mind and uh it teleports the watch to apple but yeah or you take it down to your apple store and they have got a uh and they've got a concierge service thing that happens where they just come out and go oh well thank you very much, ma'am. Yes, indeed, we'll put it in this leather case that's the special thing and it's magic and then we'll get it back to you immediately in its service. I'm sure they'll work that stuff out.

But having access in the places where you would expect luxury, super luxury items to be sold is natural. Of course that's going to happen. Good news, Angela Ahrens knows people in the luxury, high-end luxury retail game. So I think it's all going to be fine. But yeah, I would expect that these will be in places that are not traditional Apple stores, as well as some of the highest of the fancy Apple stores. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Union Square in San Francisco and Fifth Avenue in London. And there'll be places, some places like that. And whatever fashionable district in China, for sure, because that's definitely a focus of Apple's too.

Anyway, I have one other item about the watch that I wanted to talk about, which is Greg Koenig, who does Luma Labs. They do the Luma Loop. Did a blog post on his site, Atomic Delights, talking about how Apple makes the Apple Watch with lots. And it's been linked a lot, but I wanted to mention it because it's great. I love that story. It is from somebody who knows a lot about manufacturing, about Apple's strengths in manufacturing and how for certain materials with certain methods, Apple is essentially the leader. And we don't think of them, I mean,

he starts by saying Apple is the leader in manufactured goods in the world. And the way he puts it is, at one time I would have said consumer goods or electronic goods, but as he puts it, last quarter Apple shipped a Boeing 787's weight worth of iPhones every day. And he said, when we add the rest of the product line to the mix, it becomes clear Apple's supply chain is one of the largest scale production organizations in the world. Apple is the world's foremost manufacturer of goods.

And then he talks in detail about how Apple does things with aluminum or aluminum, if you prefer, that nobody else does. I knew you were like that. He says, it would be hard to argue Apple isn't the world's foremost expert on the volume production of high-precision, high-finish aluminum components. on how one of Apple's great advantages is that Apple has not only the scale and the money, but the knowledge about making things, making physical objects, working with metal, working on these massive machines that have to be used to process this stuff. And so then he goes through the three videos that Apple showed. And in know how nerds will do frame-by-frame analysis of an Avengers trailer to say, look, those eyes, that must be the Vision. And we know that Paul Bettany is playing the Vision and he played Jarvis. And what does that mean? Is Jarvis related to Ultron in some way?

They'll do that kind of Zapruder analysis. The frame-by-frame, the Zapruder film from the Kennedy assassination is what that reference is, where people would take it, like in JFK, the movie, back and to the left, back and to the left. Like, we're through the rabbit hole here, people. We're looking at every individual frame of this video, and it's going to tell us something. Well, Greg does that with these three materials videos, gold, stainless steel, and aluminum.

And it's great. And you don't have to be an engineer to appreciate it because I'm not. And I really loved it. I thought it was fascinating to see how they make this stuff and what it means about sort of like Apple's expertise in areas that as users of your product would be completely invisible to you. Users of Apple's products, completely invisible. But they still have to do them. That's one of the ways Apple's products, completely invisible, but they still have to do them. That's one of the ways Apple's products end up being as good as they are is because of this expertise that we don't even see. So it's fascinating. So I just wanted to put in a plug for Greg's thing because it's awesome. So we'll put the link in the show notes.

It's at atomicdelights.com i've been thinking a bit about this kind of stuff recently like having worked i worked for a massive massive organization previously to this and like there are so many things that apple does that they don't have to do um and i think that's what fundamentally sets them apart from everybody else. Like, with the amount of money that they make and these sorts of things, there are so many things, so many details that they talk about, the things that they do with the way that they produce these products, that they could actually just do it for cheaper or do it easier.

But it just seems like that they make very specific decisions about the way the products are made due to a level of care and love that that some of their competitors don't seem to have yeah i know i'm not saying nothing that's new but from from the perspective of somebody who worked in a really really large organization and i have no doubt that apple have their own organizational issues and struggles uh like you know with a middle management level type, you know, stuff that goes on on a day-to-day basis. It just seems like so many of the decisions and that they make come from a place which is very, very different to some of the other companies, especially companies of their size. Yeah, it's a lot of Apple's competitors are companies that buy components and maybe they've got some expertise in putting together a plastic shell or a metal shell.

But Apple, because I think because of its history, because of it having to do a lot of stuff itself and wanting to be self-reliant and not and build custom stuff, not the ADB ports and serial ports and all of old. But, you know, we want, how do you stand out? How do you make something different? And the unibody enclosures on the laptops were like that. They've ended up building up this crazy expertise. When Tim Cook started at Apple, there was a time when Apple was a kind of laughingstock in terms of its supply chain. It had way too much inventory. Dell was held out as the extreme

example of good kind of in-time inventory. You don't have stuff hanging around in your warehouses or anything like that. Over the course of the last 15 years or whatever, 15 or 20 years, Apple has become this monster of efficiency. And that goes to all of these different parts of its business. And their competitors, I don't want to say they all don't do that, but most of them don't do most of it. And if you're Apple, people say, why is Apple so successful? Why does Apple have so much market share and profit share in all these different categories? This is one reason why. There was a story that I linked to a while ago that was in a similar vein to Greg Koenig's

story. And it was about how it was from, I think, a venture capitalist or a president of a startup saying, don't try to make your product at Apple's level of quality because you can't, because Apple has mastered this. And if you're expecting Apple levels of fit and finish, give up. That's what it's required. You can't do it because only Apple can do that. And maybe some others, very few. It is really a thing that they're great at. And we see it in their products, but we don't know just how much goes on behind the scenes. It's not like some of their competitors are choosing not to make products that have the fit and finish of Apple's products.

It's that they can't. And that's a huge advantage for Apple. You probably just can't afford it. I would assume that a product like the MacBook, the margins on that at the moment must be really bad, I would assume. I mean, I don't know. By thinking about these things, if you've by thinking about these things if you've had to create new machinery and you've had to spend all this time in r&d and all this time trying to work

out how can we do this how can we do this and you go round and round and round and round on it and then eventually you know ultimately you're creating tools parts machinery processes like it must be paying your manufacturing companies money to buy, to build factories for you, which is something that they do. Here, just go build a factory to do this. You know, because then ultimately they know that if they do that, they will be rolling in cash after X amount of time. But the thing is, is other companies don't have the money on hand where they can do that kind of stuff. You know, you're saying about inventory management a moment ago? One thing that really helps your inventory

management is when people can't stop buying your products. That's a really great way to manage your inventory. That does help. But yes, it's just something I've been thinking about. They're just... It's not new to anyone, but

just when you see these new products, you know, entirely new products coming from Apple, it just gives you pause for thought when you watch those stunning marketing videos. It's true. Do we want to move on to Ask Upgrade now? Yeah, we most definitely do. This week's episode features an Ask Upgrade segment that is

brought to you by our friends at Smile. And today, I want to tell you about PDFPen 7 for the Mac. PDFPen is the ultimate all-purpose PDF editor, and now Smile offers 10 great tutorials from a good friend of the show, the wonderful Mr. David Sparks.

Each of these videos are around 2-4 minutes each, and will teach you how PDF Pen can help you do things like applying markup or adding signatures to a PDF, helping you fill in PDF forms, how to use iCloud and Dropbox to sync PDFs with PDF Pen for iPad and iPhone. This is something I didn't even know you could do. You can touch up images in PDF Pen 7 for Mac, and David can teach you how to do that.

Perform OCR to convert scanned documents to usable text and correct and redact text. These are some of the great videos that you're going to find on Smile's website that are presented by our good friend, Mr. David Sparks. These courses are really going to help you understand all of the amazing things you can do with PDFPen. And these are just some,

you know, there are even some additional courses that can help you highlight and even take into account things that you can do with PDF pen pro seven as well. So there's some additional stuff there with some of the pro features that you get with the pro version of PDF pen for the Mac. I was using PDF pen very late last night to sign a document that I needed. And I have a couple of other documents sitting in my inbox right now before I was a user of pdf pen and I had to do things like this I was like I am not 100% sure I can do it I can try and use this app or that app to try and get this done but pdf pen just makes so much of my business life so much easier so it's like oh I created this pdf or this is pdf come from a sponsor and I need to change this word in it

well you know what do I do open up Photoshop and put a little white block there and then put some text in no you just open it up use OCR to check what the text is and just change it I love PDF pen and I think that you will too you can learn all about PDF pen from Smile

by going to smilesoftware.com slash upgrade and when you go to that site you'll see all of the lovely information and you'll be able to look at the great videos that our friend Mr. Davis Barks has created. Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this week's episode of Upgrade and Ask Upgrade.

Responsoring. Hashtag Ask Upgrade. Indeed. Alright. Do you want to ask me things? Yes. Oh, I'd love to ask you things. So this comes from for sponsoring hashtag AskUpgrade. Indeed. All right. Do you want to ask me things? Yes. Oh, I'd love to ask you things. So this comes from listener David. The Retina MacBook Pro got the false touch trackpad,

but not the keyboard change seen in the MacBook. Why, Jason? My guess is that they're not... That new MacBook keyboard doesn't have a lot of travel. It seems to have been built very specifically for the super thin laptop, and it's not really necessary in the Retina MacBook Pro. They may even be waiting to see

how people feel about that keyboard. I'm on the fence about the keyboard. I'm pretty skeptical about it. It worked, but it felt weird to me. I want to give it some time. I want to try one out for a while and judge it. But that's asking a lot to get everybody who's using your pro laptop to now use this brand new, slightly weird keyboard. So I think it's some combination of it being new

and it being strange and it really being built for the super thin laptop and not being required in the MacBook. It strikes me that that keyboard is more of a compromise in order to get something that's thin, whereas the Force Touch, I think Apple views that as being not a compromise, but actually an enhancement that everybody could use and want the Force Touch trackpad because not only is it thinner and then helps them build that thing thinner, but it's also better because it has the same features of a physical trackpad, but you can click all over it and you can use software to have multiple clicks built into it. And so I think that may be the difference is that they're adding the thing that is uh is a feature enhancement and not the thing that is more like a a compromise

so uh i have my own theory about this as well that the false touch trackpad can be put into the existing macbook case relatively easily whilst the new keyboard if they did want to do it they would need to to change the spacing of the keys on the keyboard. It's just such a radically different thing. Yeah, that may be too, that it was a much easier swap. Although, I don't know. I'm a little surprised that they swapped in the Force Touch trackpad too, but it may be that that was something they could do

and that the other they couldn't do without a bigger redesign of the product. I don't know. It's a good theory. theory yeah so there you go um this is from listener scott uh he had a little thought when you plug an iphone into the new macbook does the iphone charge the mac or the back the iphone that one made me laugh you know uh you could it's bi-directional charging when they they do a USB, I don't know whether USB-C can specifically say whether something is charging or charged, whether a device can say I'm only available to be charged and not to charge other things. I don't know. It's a good question.

We'll have to try that out perhaps. But you'll need, I think you'll need a USB-C iPhone for that to happen. And that may never happen. Because the Lightning provides power out but does not. Oh, no, it takes it both ways because it can power a little device. I bet it can't power the amount of power that is required by the MacBook, though. So I think it would probably say, nope, can't do that. So with the adapter. We'll see. It's a funny idea. One of the things that we should mention is

USB-C being a standard, you're going to be able to have USB-C chargers from third parties that work with a MacBook, which is great, like external battery packs and airline adapters and things like that, because Apple's no longer using a proprietary connector to charge the MacBook. MagSafe was Apple proprietary, and that meant there weren't a lot of MagSafe things out there, but there'll be a lot of USB-C things, and that's good for the MacBook. Listener Jorge is interested to know if... So he said the space gray gray so I think this is

kind of the confusion but actually is the space black watch as dark as it appears in the picture is it darker than the space gray on the iPhone so here's the thing there is a space gray Apple watch sport and there is a space black Apple watch adjective list

the space black is that shiny it's in the video it's the shiny diamond like carbon that is Apple Watch adjective lists. The space black is that shiny. It's in the video of the, of the, it's the shiny diamond like carbon that is added on top of the stainless steel. Whereas the space gray is a, an anodized aluminum,

aluminum on the Apple watch sport. And in the pictures, it looks darker. I don't think I saw that one enough to judge it. My guess is that it's the closest, but I don't know. I can't confirm whether it is as dark. It does appear darker in the pictures. The one that's jet black is the space black, though.

So they differentiate it with the space gray. You know, remains to be seen. My guess is that it may actually be a little bit darker than the iPhone, but that could also just be an optical illusion. We held the gold iPhone against the gold aluminum of the MacBook, and they're basically the same. So it looks like Apple wants these to be color matched, so it would be a failing on their part if they called something space gray

and it didn't match. So my hope is that it does, and it's just photographic, but I can't confirm that. Cool um what else do we have here so listener nicholas how does the watch connectivity work uh when its parent iphone when it and its parents iphone are on the same wi-fi network the watch has wi-fi and um this was a conversation I heard somewhere last week. I can't remember where this came up. But the idea here, maybe it was on MacBreak Weekly. The idea here is that if you've got a Pebble, like I do, and you walk 15 feet away from your iPhone because your iPhone is charging somewhere, it loses the connection. The Bluetooth connection drops. Apple Watch has

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. And apparently Apple has said that if your phone and your watch are on the same Wi-Fi network, they can still talk to each other. So you can plug in your phone and then roam around your home and it's all your same Wi-Fi network. And as long as the watch is on Wi-Fi and the iPhone is on Wi-Fi, they stay connected and they stay sharing data, which is awesome. That's a great feature because I'm not always right next to my phone, and my watch stays with me, right, because it's strapped to my wrist. But I put my phone down sometimes. So what this is saying is if you're on the same Wi-Fi network as your phone,

they'll stay in touch, which is cool. And we have, this is someone from the chat room, dnwrld the dan world is one of them world uh can we get a quick recap of what models you and jason are leaning towards jason what do you what what are your thoughts is it the gold with the red band like you told me privately the other day you were gonna buy the 17 it turns out the indie podcasting and writing thing is so lucrative that i'm able to buy the 17 000 apple gold watch with uh no problems uh i am torn i am torn between the black sport and then buying an add-on leather band because I do not believe that the fluoroelastomer band will please me. So then I would buy the leather band and it wouldn't be an exact match,

but it would be cheaper. Or buying the stainless steel in black with a leather band. Okay. But I'm going to go, although I also want to try the Milanese loop because I didn't get a chance to try that on at the event. And I want to try that because I've had people say that it doesn't pull arm hairs and stuff like that, that it's super gentle. And I want to see how it looks and how it feels and whether I'd consider that instead of a leather band.

But I've been a leather watch band guy my whole life. I don't like the plastic bands. The first thing I did with my Pebble, in fact, was replace the crappy plastic band with a with a leather band so we'll see so i'm going sport um definitely because i actually just think for my taste the aluminium looks nicer than the steel uh and i'm gonna go with the standard silver one and i'm thinking i'm probably gonna get just like a crazy bright colored strap. Like I might go like blue or something just for fun. But I will be buying another strap that I will wear on a daily basis.

It will either be the black sport strap or I'll get one of the other ones. For my secondary strap, I'm not sure. I may just buy the black one, and then after i've had a bit more time uh i'm gonna go and take a look at some of the others and and get a feeling uh for what for what additional strap i want to buy i am tempted to go to an apple store on april 10th but i'm also terrified of the thought yeah yeah i think you can make an appointment oh then i'll do that to come see the watches i will have already ordered mine but i just want to go and take a look at the straps a bit more right right yeah i i um i think the the one of the challenges i have between the sport

and the adjective list model is that the sport has got the you know it's the Ionex strengthened glass, whereas the Adjectiveless one is the Sapphire. So presumably it's heavier, but also a little more damage resistant. But I'm not sure whether that's enough of a thing to matter versus just choosing a look. But the black one, the space gray, actually, that we talked about earlier is the one that I'm very tempted to get. But, you know, I haven't decided 100% yet. I'm tempted by the coming over to the dark side. And I like the dark watch thing.

So I'm thinking about that. But I do like the stainless steel look too. It looks very nice. Listener Kevin, can you use Apple Pay on the apple watch if you don't have an iphone 6 yes i think we heard that from apple um or somebody i know at the event somebody i talked to said that it it should work with the apple or with the iphone 5 that the the secure thing in the watch can be loaded with apple Pay and it should work. I haven't confirmed that, but I believe that's the case, that you can actually use Apple Pay on the watch. I remember them saying that specifically. Yeah. So that's great. That's

awesome. Right. Because you can use the 5 with the watch. So you can also use the secure features of the watch to use Apple Pay, even though you've got a 5. That's cool. So listener Dan Jason is interested how the kind of the feature to turn on and off as you are raising it the watch to and from your face works. And in reality, is that a good way to check the time? Yeah, I only checked this briefly, but it seemed to me that, you know, the whole idea here is the sensors are paying attention and trying to divine from your movements whether you're looking at it. And it worked pretty well to me. I, you know, when I would lift my wrist or turn my wrist to look at it, it lit up and showed me the time. So it seems to work pretty well.

But it's not like with the Pebble, the screen's always on but um the backlight turns on with a certain amount of like a tap but you really have to kind of like whack it hard to get it to light up and the apple watch you know i would glance at it and it would have the screen would come on and show me the time so um that's how it should be so it seemed to work but i didn't spend a lot of time with it this is one of those products that you know we're all going to really need to live with them to really form more clear opinions about them. Yeah, see, because my feeling about the Pebble was it was so hard to come on so it doesn't trigger accidentally and that was where they drew the line.

So it's like in daily use, does the Apple Watch turn on all the time? You know, they're the things that we don't know yet which we'll have to wait and see. Has Apple really nailed it or is it, you know, is it yet, which we'll have to wait and see. Has Apple really nailed it, or is it more sensitive? We'll have to wait. Okay, so this is from listener Tumokas. What a great name. I want to know how to say that properly.

That is a great name. Do you agree that all iOS devices will be false sensitive this year, so with false touch? I don't. I think the iPad will be next, and the iphone will wait for iphone 7 um i don't i don't think that i think that's too big of a of a thing for the for the s but i i would love to be corrected but um i would be surprised if we saw if we saw it in the iphone 6 plus s is i. I agree with your general premise that this is not going to happen this year

in all devices. I think there's a decent chance that it could happen in an updated iPhone or an updated iPad. I think, I'm not sure. The iPad might be a little more likely, but I think it's possible it would happen in the iPad Air and in the iPhone

they're both chances all iOS devices I think not because I think the iPad Mini is going to be lagging behind now one generation at least behind the iPad Air kind of where it should have been always boo boo

well no I mean like but then Apple kind of iPad Air. Kind of where it should have been always. Boo boo. No, I mean like Apple kind of... I'm an iPad mini user, so I'd really rather it have stayed on the line with the iPad Air instead of going back a step. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I do agree that naturally, but I just think that

that time when it matched up was a... I don't know why they they did that but it was maybe a mistake um to trick people into thinking that this was going to be what happened that the ipad mini was going to be this tiny powerhouse yeah well not anymore but anyway i do think that ios devices are going to get force sensitivity and and taptic engine i think that's going to happen and we'll, we'll see it start to spread into the line from what, you know, from one device or the other.

I think that'll happen. I think the home button being replaced with a location that you touch and that gives you taptic feedback so that they don't have to have the moving in and out home button anymore. They can just have, and moving in and out touch ID sensor. They can keep that a non-moving part. I think that would probably be preferable. So I think it's going to happen. I think it's just a matter of time. I don't think all will be this year, but I would

not be surprised to see an iOS device with force sensitivity this year. False touch is the new retina. Yeah, I think so. I think Apple feels like this is a thing that they can innovate with. And that's why, like putting it in the Mac and having those shortcuts, that seems to be them saying this is going to come everywhere in the Mac. Because they've added all these different gestures now on the Mac. And they only work on one laptop, or two laptops with a 13 Retina update. So that's going to have to change, because right now it's just this,

you know, you can't count on that gesture being there. This is from Phil. How many years until Apple devices are shipping with only USB-C ports, including iPhones and iPads? with only USB-C ports, including iPhones and iPads? Ha ha. I love these specific things that make the question easier to answer. I'm not sure I believe that iPhones and iPads will ship with only USB-C ports for years, if ever.

I'm not sure that's a drop-in replacement for Lightning. Apple appears to have had advanced knowledge of USB-C and still gone ahead building Lightning. Lightning is thinner. Lightning has some very specific features that Apple wants iOS devices to have. Apple gets to control that port and choose what connects to it because they own the connector and they have to license it. connector and they have to license it um i think i think every mac that's sold will have a usbc port by the end of next year because they'll just update the whole line irrespective of anything else maybe yeah and there'll be some straggler you know there'll be some straggler but in the

fall there'll be new macs there'll be imacs that have a us in the fall, there'll be new Macs. There'll be iMacs that have a USB-C port. And eventually the Mac mini and the Mac pro will add USB-C ports. And so I think, I feel like 2016 might be a good, like end of 2016, all the new systems, maybe there'll still be something kicking around that's like an old model that's still for sale, like the non retina MacBook pro. But I, I, I, I think we're going to see USB-C, not only, well, they're saying only USB-C. I don't see that happening for years.

That's going to be a long time before we have only USB-C, even on the Mac. I think it'll appear in the next year and a half, but only. That doesn't make sense. That's never, never, never, I would say, because there will always be other ports on Macs. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to replace everything.

Yeah, it'll be on every model. Yeah, I don't think so. The fact that Apple never went with mini USB tells you everything you need to know about the iPhone and the iPad, in my opinion, because they could have solved the 30-pin size problem with one of those bad boys a long time ago. They even went so far

as to create this EU-specific weird adapter because of EU laws that make them do it. They're never going to go with a non-controllable, completely Apple-controllable standard on iOS and iPad

because they don't need to. So thanks to Phil for throwing in enough absolutes that it made it a much easier question. Yep, and also to prove how wrong we'll be in the future. So thanks to Phil for throwing in enough absolutes that it made it a much easier question. Yep, and also to prove how wrong we'll be in the future. So I look forward to that. And finally today, this is from Mark.

Is Apple Watch considered an iOS device or is it a third OS? That's a really great question. Yeah, it is. My guess is that we'll consider it an iOS device like we consider the Apple TV an iOS device because I think from a development standpoint you know watch kit and everything that's going on this is all coming from an iOS perspective so I'm gonna I'm gonna guess that when you when developers can compile apps that actually run on

the the watch they will be iOS apps with some very specific traits but they will be iOS apps is my guess. So I think this is going to be an iOS app or iOS device in the same way as the Apple TV, which is you kind of don't think of it as that, and it's not the mainstream iOS. It's a variation, but I think in the end we will probably just consider this an iOS app.

Yeah, I feel like maybe it's more than the Apple TV because it's more than the Apple TV because it shares more parallels with other iOS devices than the Apple TV does. The Apple TV interface is web-based, right? It's this weird thing. Stuff could just show up. And also

developers can develop for it. There's an app store for it. It fills more iOS than the Apple TV does to me anyway yeah well the apple tv yeah i think everybody's hoping that they will eventually announce an apple tv that has developer access to develop apps that are more than the the really simple things that are in there now but that just that rumor's been out there for a while it just hasn't happened yet but uh the potential's there but i think you're right Out of the box, the watch is going to feel more like an iOS device

than Apple TV. That's the end. That is it. Excellent stuff. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. If you want to find our show notes for this week, go over to relay.fm

slash upgrade slash 27, or just scroll around in your podcast app of choice and you will find them there somewhere. If you'd like to find us on the internet, there's a few ways you can do that. If you'd like to find Mr. Jason Snell on Twitter, he is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L, and I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Jason is the editor-in-chief of The One and Only Six Colors. You can find Six Colors, and sixcolors.com is the place for that.

Spout however you want, and you'll eventually find your way there. Well, not however you want. Don't use the number. Don't use the numeral. Or like just other letters. Yes. Yeah. Z, Z, X, Y, Y.

Yeah. You're not going to get that. Dot info. Not going to do it, no. Or Carlos with a Z. Don't do that either. No, don't do that. Also, it's not Zed, it's Zee.

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