Upgrade - 272: Double Secret Vice President of Keyboards

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

A week later, we're pondering the 16-inch MacBook Pro and what it means about how Apple listens to customers and criticism. We also look into the future to wonder where Apple will take touchscreen devices and whether we're uncomfortable about Apple's interest in augmented reality.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 272 today's show is brought to you by pingdom linode and fresh books my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley i uh am in california no longer in New York. No longer holding a microphone and looking out the window at the streets of Manhattan. I'm just in my garage. Nobody cares about any of that, Jason. It's hashtag Snow Talk time. And the question comes from Jack today. Jack says, do you have an on-air light outside of your room that you switch on when you record? says do you have an on-air light outside of your room that you switch on when you record i don't i have thought about it i realized i could probably do it i could probably set something up involving like a smart light or a smart switch and do that but the truth is other than for the sheer drama of it i actually think it would be less effective than my current thing which is that i have a little plastic doorknob hanger thing, like you

would get at a hotel to say, do not disturb. Yep. That I had printed up that says podcasting in progress and it goes on the outside of the door. And that is the cue to my family not to come in under any circumstances. And I actually made a bunch of them and sent them to friends one year, a few years ago, and people use them and sent them to friends one year a few years ago and people use them for the same purpose it's a nice low-tech way of saying please don't come in here unless uh you know unless there's an emergency you should text me or whatever because i'm actually recording right now yeah mine you have something mine is purely if my office door is closed then don't come in i'm working on audio whether i'm recording or editing but basically

text me or open the door very carefully very carefully so i i have to have two steps for mine because i will also especially when there's people at home, like, um, you know, kids after school or on a break or whatever, um, or even on a holiday, sometimes when I'm, I'm working in here, sometimes I'm closing the door to provide some sound separation and because I need to focus. And that is the cue to be like, you know, don't interrupt me. Um, you know, don't, don't bug me, but if the thing's not hanging on the door, you can come in because we've got like, you know, don't interrupt me. You know, don't, don't bug me. But if the thing's not hanging on the door, you can come in because we've got like, you know, if you're doing the laundry or you need to get something out of one of the cupboards, you can, you can do that.

But it's more of a signal of like, if I'm working and the door is open, I am inviting people to walk in and ask me questions. And then there are times when I'm writing where it's like, I got to close the door because I don't want you. I'm not open to interruptions right now. So I have that middle step. Yeah. I want to thank Jack for sending in that question.

If you would like to ask a question to open the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk and yours may be picked for the future. Jason, do you know what time it is? Is it merch time? It is merch time. Oh, I got it. We have a new Dongletown tee.

You can support your local sports team, the Dongletown Butterflies. Yes, there's a great debate that I want out there about what sport that they play, but we're not going to define it now. It is a local sports team. I know that Simon, the designer of the, yes, the designer of the shirt and you

have decided what the sports team is, but I would say it's whatever you want it to be. It is, we are extending the Dongletown, the Dongletown universe, the Dongletown cinematic universe is extending further with the addition of a sports team. I would actually like to hear what the Upgradians would like the sports team to be in their minds.

I want small, obscure sports, personally, because I think that that's funnier. But maybe there's some good puns that we haven't quite stumbled across. So we have a regular tee and a raglan tee, which is a baseball tee, so it's like the three-quarter sleeves.

I reckon, like, the Brainball one, just me and Jason will own the raglan tees. That's fine. But I want that one. So that's why that one's available. But we have lots of wonderful colors in the regular Dongle Town Butterflies tee. I'm sure you can get the joke, but we're obviously referencing the Butterfly Keyboard,

having recently departed from the MacBook Pro. We are also bringing back, due to popular demand, the original Dongle Town tees in both orange and navy. The orange is the first time the orange has come back. We brought the navy back sometime earlier in the year, but the orange is back. And it is the season, so upgrade hoodies are back, too. We haven't had those around for a while. So all of this is available until December 4th.

Go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com and uh you can uh grab yourself and some wonderful dongle town merch for the holidays just put it under the tree sure sure why not you know that's how some people want i mean who doesn't want wonderful dongle town merch this is a this is a good t-shirt line we have going on for us here i think the dongle town stuff i think it's a lot of fun so you can get those upgrade your wardrobe.com and also you should follow the upgrade twitter account which is underscore upgrade fm because we will be giving away some codes for free t-shirts over the next couple of weeks so if you want to get those you can do it we're not going to make you work like john syracuse like to guess a frame of a movie Jason if you want to come up with something you can but my

typical thing is here is a code guess a missing character the t-shirt is yours but if you would like to play a more elaborate game less complicated than the frame game we'll talk about it you should follow us underscore upgrade FM

and you can grab yourself maybe a code maybe you'll be lucky enough to get a code but everybody should go and buy these we also have a very small amount of pins in stock as well but this is a very small amount very limited edition the upgrade pin so go buy it now uh jason yes we need to answer a question. Uh-huh. About why the episode was late last week. About our subterfuge? Yeah. And whether we're just liars and we lie?

People think that we're big, stinky liars who lie. Yes. But I actually was traveling last week. Yes. Our episode would have been delayed regardless, or I wouldn't have been on it. Or you wouldn't have been on it. I would say that we originally were planning that I would get a guest, and then it turned out that I was going to be going to New York. And then we decided,

instead, you demanded to be on that episode, because how could you miss it? But when we said that Mike was traveling, and so we were going to record Upgrade as soon as Mike got back home, that was absolutely the truth. Yep. We just didn't mention the other part, which is that I was also going to be in New York right now. There were no lies. There were no lies told. No lies detected, no.

No lies told because I actually was traveling and so therefore wasn't around on Monday to record. We told the truth. No lies were told. It's true. In fact, on that night, I actually mentioned to somebody who asked, I said, well, we've recorded our episode, but it's very, very late where Mike is, so he's going to get up

in the morning early and post it. Also true. I actually do want to give some follow-up about last week's episode. I don't care if anybody cares about this, but I want to talk about it anyway. Last Wednesday, I clocked in 13 hours of working time in one day I was editing our episode for 5 hours from 7am

to get it up in time because I cared about it no one made me do that I wanted to do it because it was an episode that was important to us and I wanted to put it together because again, like Rick is saying in the chat room the interview that you did with Shruti was so good I wanted the rest of the episode to be the best it could possibly be um and and i also

when we get these opportunities to hopefully be able to provide news to you like breaking news i want the episode to be as good as it can be because hopefully also we get some new upgradians coming along as well that's also nice i uh i laughed so i was at the airport when the uh the embargo dropped and my plane was very slightly delayed and it was perfect because i was able to be on the internet when the embargo dropped check everything out answer some questions i did laugh though because i immediately got the push notification for atp which uh you know we usually record and release on very different parts of the week, but we did a simultaneous release and I knew Marco was at the venue on

that day, but, um, I didn't re I, I just didn't think about like, of course he's going to get the boys together and do a, uh, do a flash, uh, episode for posting at the embargo time. So that was pretty fun. I got to listen to that on the flight, which was great. And thank you for all your hard work. Yeah, Tuesday was a big day. There was a lot going on on Tuesday. That was one of those days where you get to the end of it because after we recorded the episode, I then got some dinner relatively quickly and then edited the interview portion to get that to you so that

when you woke up in london you would be able to process that further and put it in the rest of the episode that you were editing and that was one of those days where i got to the end of the day and um my wife called um and she was like so so you have time to talk tonight? And I was like, no. Like, I said, I'm trying to put my stuff in my bag so that I can get up in the morning at 6 in the morning Eastern time and go to the airport. And I'm having trouble putting objects in a bag. I should probably go to bed now. So, yeah, it was a busy day, but it's all worth it, right?

It's so exciting. It's a great opportunity. It to uh to talk to the people i got to see phil schiller and uh you've got a new product and we got to do that interview and put it all together and drop something in embargo which is awesome so yeah it was all good it was uh it was it was fun and then uh and then i i came home and that was that next week Mike at the Movies we're starting off the holiday season with the best holiday movie Die Hard

next week so go watch Die Hard what a shame to go watch Die Hard great movie such a good movie this is again rare Mike at the Movies we've both seen it but we both just really want to talk about it. That's going to be the end of next week's episode.

We'll be devoted to talking about Die Hard. I have a couple of items of follow-up. Apple, according to Mark Gurman, is reportedly still looking at bundling services or at least leaving the options open. Contracts with publishers for Apple News Plus have a provision in them that Apple will allow for them to bundle Apple News Plus with other services. This is not a huge thing.

It's not a topic. It's merely a piece of follow-up. But I just thought it was worth noting that the idea of the bundle is still around. I actually want to talk about Apple News Plus with you at some point in the near future, kind of to just catch back up on that, because there's been some interesting news about, like, or just like some rumblings about the fact that no one's using it.

But we'll talk about that another time, I think. But yeah, they're still looking at bundling. I still think it's going to happen. I just don't know when. Yeah. And Jason, I'm sure you're very excited because I saw this go by on Twitter a couple of days ago. Kevin McLeod tweeted that,

I can't read the entire tweet because I would have to censor myself, that the Catalina beta has added the column browser back to the music app. That would be great. They just pulled it out because they thought nobody cared, and I care, and apparently other people care, and it apparently is back.

I am not on the beta, so I don't know, but that would be great because I use the column browser all the time to zero in on a custom kind of shuffle of a couple of albums or whatever, and I hope it's back because why not? It's all coming up, Jason. I,

I guess, I don't know. I think it's weird that they would bring it back, but, um, who knows? Maybe they, maybe they are responding to the criticism of,

of, uh, removing a feature from the app that was fine and didn't need to be removed and wasn't on by default and i don't know but that's a feature i use and i have missed it since i switched to catalina so i would love to have it back should we do some upstream yeah there's a lot to talk about so we should there is all right so uh disney have announced that the 4x3 aspect ratio of The Simpsons will be coming to Disney Plus in 2020. So this was after a lot of people were upset

that it was the 16x9 version, right? And they just cropped it. So Disney has said that they're going to be, in 2020, they're going to have more new features in the applications. And one of them is going to be like viewing options. And so that will allow you to change on the fly between four by three for the first 19 seasons which are in four by three um or 16 by nine and obviously the rest will be 16 by nine so they're bringing that back

yeah that's uh it's good our uh our friend todd faziri will happy. He's been talking about this on Twitter. I feel like this shows what behind the scenes, what a scramble it is to get something as massive as Disney Plus launched and how many people are involved. And even though they've got the, you know, we saw the login issues. Like, it's hard to get a service of this scope up and running. And they definitely have had issues this is a weird one because the content existed on the simpsons app the fxx which is every simpsons ever app which is now dead but the content was there they let you choose

aspect ratio and so for disney to make a statement saying oh you know we we made a decision because blah blah blah blah blah but we'll give people options in early 2020. I kind of wish they wouldn't make that statement about like, well, we made the decision, blah, blah, blah, because it's nonsense. They should have just said. We didn't think about this. Or we weren't able to get both versions available in time to launch the service because of, you know, they could make an excuse or they could even tell the truth and say it's probably like we couldn't build our app to support multiple aspect ratios of a show out of the box and so we have waited for a software update or something like that but anyway that's good there are other animated shows that are similarly

affected is my understanding on disney plus where there's stuff that is in 16x9 and it's sort of squashed and stretched and stuff. So, well, I bet not movies, but there's a lot of TV that they squashed and stretched. So I hope they figure this out over time and get things back to original aspect ratios or at least let people have options i personally i feel like something like the simpsons should probably just be shown at four by three because it was made in four by three and the jokes work in four by three and i know that that doesn't fill your widescreen tv but you know too bad there's i don't i don't think i think cropping out fine i think i think cropping out... I think the choice is fine. I think cropping out information that was there for the filmmakers as a choice

so that you can miss the jokes is not great. Well, I think have the choice, but it should default to the original. Right? At that point, you might as well just not have it. I just, you know, I get the idea, but like the care... Let me put it this way.

If you really went back and made 69 by 9 versions of the simpsons that actually worked and you went shot by shot and all of that which would take forever because there's 30 seasons of it um i would be okay with that but and that's what they did with the wire there have been some other shows like that but if you're if you're just going to kind of slap it together i i don't think you should make it available i think that that's a mistake to have a it's widescreen but it's slapped together um but anyway i i'm glad that something is going on here and so uh congratulations to disney they win the uh mclunkey award for this week 10 million customers disney has reported signing up for disney plus in the first day

so they may have had problems did not matter yeah i'm unclear on is that really the first day or does that include everybody who signed who like signed up for it in advance 10 million by the end but no it doesn't in my opinion it doesn't matter like 10 million people's a lot of people and yeah no it you know it's it's huge it's huge oh speaking of mclunkey i i will say i you know apparently having those 4k hdr uh special special special extra special editions of star wars ready to go um it was a thing that they were that was a closely guarded secret i think it's really telling about how people feel about george lucas continuing to mess around with his movies that disney isn't making a big deal about that for the first time 4k hdr versions of the original star wars movies are available yeah you know like that would you'd think that would be a marketing point but um i

think it shows you just how embarrassing they are and i'll point out that the special editions are older now than the than the original movies were when they did the special editions so like why do we need is star wars now a document of 90s computer graphics is that what we want our view of star wars to be is that it's a movie from the 70s with graphics from the 90s i just don't disney needs to do something about it and and i i look at their embarrassment about this and their unwillingness to heavily promote the fact that these things are new additions maybe is a good sign that they know i figure it's just how bad it is you know i will commit half heresy here i figure at this point you either go back to the originals or redo all the special

effects again yeah no i think that i think those are the two options in fact i would say i think you should do both i think you should restore the original and the ultimate collector's restoration of as this movie as good as it could possibly be but basically the 1977 version and that's that's your uh put it in the vault most important like historic document and and you can clean it up but don't change stuff in it like don't change the content like george lucas did and then if you want to make a version for modern audiences that uses all of the most modern techniques and all of that like i believe these versions were going to be the ones they were going to do a 3d re-release they actually went down that road for a little while where they were going to do a a 3d back when 3d was huge in movie theaters um they were going to build 3d versions of this and

release into the theaters and they were going to use this version as the basis for that so we get 3d mclunkey um but with that off the table monkey vision you know maybe maybe the answer is yeah yeah i would be okay with that like at this point the special editions have been around for so long that if you wanted to re-specialize them with modern tech i'd be okay with that but if if they're just going to sit there parked with with this kind of 1990s tech um i i don't think it's worth it i think you'd be better off restoring the original and walking away because i would expect that a lot of the effects look better in the original than they do in like because you can see the realness of it right no 1977 star wars has a lot of like bad mats and things just because it was it was so new i've never seen i've never seen the originals i've never seen them i've only ever seen the

special editions right oh yeah okay yeah right right've only ever seen the special editions, right? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. You've seen the special editions of the movies, but not the... Yeah. I... Yeah. They don't... I mean, the first one doesn't look great. It was groundbreaking, but it was also... They were trying to figure it out.

And I get why George Lucas wanted to clean that up. But there's clean up, and then there's what if we insert this scene where Jabba the Hutt is talking to Han Solo. Like, no. How about we change so Han doesn't shoot first? No, no, no. Anyway, maybe that'll happen now that George is out and his additions are out,

or maybe they'll just let it sit the way it is now because otherwise they're going to get more headlines of George Lucas complaining about how they've ruined his movies. I don't know. I think he did a good job. It'd be kind of funny, wouldn't it, really, if he made that kind of complaint just like didn't you do it yourself anyway uh so that's disney plus jason have you been watching i just out of interest do you have any impressions on disney plus content um i have only watched well i mean i watched the mclunkey scene

had absolutely happened um and and that uh that version of star wars it looks great it looks great but it's the special edition so i'm not really that interested in them um and the only thing that i've watched all the way through has been the mandalorian which is the original star wars series the john favreau yeah which i've liked which is not what i expected at all but but I've really enjoyed it. And it definitely, so Dave Filoni, who is one of the producers of the animated Star Wars series, is one of the producers of it. And it has a little bit of that influence, I think, in the way that the storytelling does. It's very interesting, very visual. interesting, very visual. I thought episode one was okay and I thought episode two was fantastic.

So I'm excited to see the rest of it. I look forward to seeing it in March and I'm super happy that everybody's tweeting spoilers all the time. It's great. Can't wait to know everything about it before I get to see it. Thanks, Disney. According to the Wall Street Journal and Variety, ex-HBO boss Richard Plepler, who has come up many times in Upstream, is in talks with Apple to sign an exclusive production deal.

Plepler is currently said to be working on building a small team of people to create a boutique production company, and Apple wants to be their exclusive client. This is a big deal. Yeah, Plepler is very respected. This is a big deal. Yeah. I mean, Plepler is a very respected, he sort of built the prestige HBO that people see and know about that is sort of being dismantled as it's turned into something different by AT&T.

And this is a, this is his next act is apparently he wants to create a production company and Apple's like, why don't we just, it's funny. Cause it's like, rather than like being an apple employee the way he wants to structure it and i think this there are probably good reasons

to do this is build a production company and then sign an exclusive deal with apple for what he produces so that after that deal is over he could renegotiate he could go somewhere else whatever but he would you know it's it's potentially apple just saying, you know, we want to buy your output of whatever shows you're producing. And keeping in mind that Apple right now does not produce its own shows, it's starting to gear up to do that, like, because that's the next step. But right now, if you watch these shows, like, a good example for all mankind is Sony. It's actually the studio that the people who run Apple TV Plus used to work for. And Sony's producing that show.

So, you know, there are existing studios producing Apple's content. One of the next steps is for Apple to produce it themselves. Which they are doing too, but at the same time. Yeah. And then Plepler is sort of like a little hybrid, but it's like it's a production company that apple would own the output of and that's you know that's that's another aspect of their strategy so yeah interesting and finally gary oldman has been cast in a new apple tv plus show it's an adaptation of a book series called slough house it will be called slow horses and is about a group of british mi5 agents who serve in

a quote dumping ground department of the intelligence agency it's being written by former veep writer will smith so i expect this is going to be a comedy based on the description and who's writing it uh but i actually don't know that to be the case but as my expectation this is going to be oldman's first recurring role on a tv show ever he's he's done guest appearances this will be the first time he will be starring in a regularly appearing tv show i would say that this will probably be a combination right like a show like barry um right is a good example of a show that is both funny and serious um killing eve is a little bit like that too right like that it's a combination of kind of uh maybe espionage and and stuff like that with comedy because this is

the the dumping ground um same same joke as the office uk version of the office right that that slough house the idea there is that slough is not a particularly pleasant thing pleasant place in in england it's just like a dumpy uh suburb and saying nothing on this i'm just gonna let you keep doing that no right i mean because that's where the office is sent set in the uk is slough and it's you know you're just kind of out on the outskirts and and the the purpose of it is to say you know these these are mi5 agents but they're working in slough which suggests to you that they are they are they are parked in an in a location that is not glamorous yeah and uh i get it is what i'm saying so that could

be yeah that could be fun i have high hopes for this yeah because gary oldman very funny in a dry way i think it's gonna be a very interesting project yeah yeah so apple you know continues they're renewing shows they're buying new shows they're premiering more stuff there's a lot going on like the apple tv machine continues to roll by the way i'm continuing to love for all mankind oh my god it's so good latest episode was really great so i'm also really really really enjoying The Morning Show. Yeah, I'm way behind on that, because Lauren and I are going to watch that together, I think,

and we've been watching other stuff. We've been watching Watchmen and Mandalorian and things like that. And I've watched four episodes of Sea now, and despite thinking the premise is ridiculous and thinking that the show looked questionable in the trailers, I kind of like it. Okay. I will never go go back to it but i'm pleased you like it i do i've watched a couple more episodes of dickinson too and it still holds up like that show is very weird and funny i would just say that if the violence and c uh put you off a little bit uh it's good that you stopped when you did oh god not not every episode is violent but there is an episode where jason momoa uh kills a lot of guys in a brutal way and uh yeah yeah i can't i can't do that yeah but uh

for all mankind i think is my favorite right yes for sure the most recent episode lost fighters episode i was sweating by the end of it yeah very good. Yeah, I'd say my favorite show running right now is Watchmen, but that is a close second. We're going to start watching that. We're going to watch The Watchmen. It's weird. Yeah, but I think I'd like it. I have a lot of fondness for the graphic novels,

so I think it's worth it. All right, so let's take our first break and thank Pingdom for their support of this show. Holiday shopping season, Boxing Day, Black Friday, all of these big dates are all around the corner. I'm going to be looking for some good deals. I'm looking for deals on a new television, actually. I think I would like to upgrade my TV.

And that's something I'm keeping my eye out right now is because we have Black Friday in the UK for some reason that doesn't completely make sense to me. It's just like an arbitrary day for us because there is no Thanksgiving that falls before Black Friday, but we have it anyway. And even now, it's kind of funny. This is the first time I've seen this. Companies are already doing their Black Friday deals now, which it's just like, what are we doing? It's just sales in November. Anyway, but when I'm shopping online, there's little worse than having a shopping cart fail. I don't want that.

You know, or for a website to be suddenly unavailable. I don't want that. And if you're selling something, you really don't want that. Pingdom will let you know the moment your website goes down in whatever way is best for you. You can use transaction monitoring to get alerted when cart checkouts, forms, or login pages fail before they affect your customers and ultimately your business. You can customize how you're alerted and who is alerted depending on the severity of an outage.

Just go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM right now and you'll get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the code UPGRADE at checkout to get an awesome 30% off your first invoice. So thanks to Pingdom for their support of this show and RelayFM. Thinking about getting one of the LG TVs, Jason. Interesting. Because they have AirPlay and stuff and HomeKit and all of that.

And I've heard that the webOS is actually a pretty good interface. Seen some good deals on those. I'll let you know. I'll let you know what I go with. But I think I will be buying one before the end of the year. So you're going full big 4K HDR, smart TV? Yeah, we've got a 42-inch TV right now, and we have way more space than...

As soon as we bought it, it was like, oh, we could have gone bigger. Fill it with TV. Yeah. Well, we have a very large TV cabinet, right? So we could very easily go up to 50, 55, and it would be good. So, yeah, I think we're going to go with the OG one,

but I haven't decided which one yet. There's a couple of different ones in the 2019 models. I would like to know what people recommend, actually. And also, TV shopping is the worst thing in the world because the names are impossible. Yes. It's so difficult. Anyway, this is not what we're here

to talk about now where nobody wants to talk about that nobody wants to hear that 16 inch macbook pro let's talk about it some more so we have some follow-up and then i want some more from you because i know you have more to say uh the first thing of course we need to talk about the keyboard the thing everyone was waiting for ifixit ripped it apart iFixit have confirmed in their teardown that the scissor switches in the new keyboard seem almost identical to those in the magic keyboard so much so they are interchangeable between the products like parts are interchangeable they've made some advancements but effectively you can move the keys from one to the other the clips that attach to the keycaps to from the keycaps to the switches also appear to be reinforced now this makes them stronger but also therefore easier to

remove or repair so it's effectively the same keyboard with some slight modifications but if you still had concerns right that like oh maybe it's influenced by or close to no it's basically the same keyboard mechanism which is good news i think yeah yeah i mean we didn't know last week like inspired by the magic keyboard what that actually meant but it sounds like it's you know strongly influenced yeah by the magic keyboard which is what you want yeah uh and you wrote an article over on Macworld, right? In your column on Macworld. And there was something that you spoke about called the Ive Doctrine. Because I think you called it Jobs' Law, right?

It's Jobs' Law, but it extended beyond Steve Jobs. I think Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive collaborated on it, honestly. And then Johnny kept it going. So effectively, this is Johnny's thing. The idea of always thinner always lighter always removing yeah and my point there and we talked about it a little bit i think on on last week's show but there was so much going on there and i wanted to kind of get it down in writing it's the idea that you know this isn't like apple has said oh we've completely changed our approach. It's just that I keep getting these little signals from Apple, from its behavior and from things they say in their marketing and when they're talking to the press and all of that, that they're

changing their priorities just a little bit. And it comes back to that same idea, which is that the implication has got a little out of control, right? Like that they, they ended up saying, well, we're going to solve for thinness and lightness, and then we'll see what we can do about the rest of it. And, you know, we, to paint the picture even more broadly, it's like, we made it about design more than we made it about what the customers want. And, and I mentioned in the article, it's that old thing about how, if you ask people what they want in the early 20th century, they'd say, I think I mentioned this last week, faster horses that old thing about how, uh, if you ask people what they want in the early 20th century, they'd say, I think I mentioned this last week, faster horses. And it's like, aha, but that what they really wanted is a car. It's like, yes, but that attitude can

also go to being, um, really bad because you are, uh, it gives you license to ignore your customers and what they want. And it's not always a car that you have. Sometimes it's like some kind of ramshackle gadget that is worse than a horse. Right? No, I just want the horse because the horse is reliable. It's like, aha, but I have not a car, but a soapbox racer that is pulled by a rabbit. I'm like, no, that's not what I want, right? But it's different, but it's not what I want.

And so that's the danger of doing the faster horses thing is that you can, I think it builds up a dismissiveness of customer needs. And while I don't think that Apple should ever be guided by focus groups in the sense of, please tell us what we should do next. I do think that there is an important part of this, which is listening to customers. And if you listen to like Phil Schiller's interview that he did, if you, any communication from Apple over the last couple of years about this has kept on talking about their customers, their pro customers, especially. And I feel like that is again, one of those signals that they are, they realize they,

they went too far. And, and as it was described to me last week, like the goal of the MacBook Pro 16 was to emphasize the power and the battery life and that the thinness and lightness would be what they could be. Again, they want them to be as thin and light as possible, but they would be what they could be given the constraints of the needs of the customers. And that is kind of a subtle difference in priority, but it's enormous because I think it goes to the very specific problem Apple has had with some of its products the last few years, which is, you know, saying, saying that our, our design priority is more important than your priority as a product user,

which is just, which, you know, you could argue maybe as a consumer product that that's a, that's the right emphasis maybe to a certain extent, but certainly for professional tools, it's the wrong emphasis. And just like every signal they keep sending, the fact that they talk about the research they did on the keyboard, which to me very strongly implies that they didn't do, they didn't make that effort for the butterfly keyboard that it was much more of a now this may not be true but the leaving it hanging there is the implication that the butterfly keyboard was really just something that was put together with a very small group of people and was sort of focused on the design or on the desires for it to be thin and that they weren't really thinking seriously about how people used it and that's why they got in this mess yeah and it was also worth not right like this there is a trend right they did the same thing to the iphone right like the iphone got

bigger and thicker and heavier yes right there there is that is that is also the case right that the iphone this year didn't get thinner and lighter and that was a choice they made because and and what we got out of it right was the improved battery life across the board yep and that that's a because because here's the thing i mean you can see it if you're a product person inside apple and you say to the people to the designers let's say who are like always thinner and lighter that's our watch word we're always shooting for thinner and lighter first thing we do when we think about a new product, thinner and lighter. And then you raise your hand as a product person, you're like, our customers want more battery life, period. They want more battery life. It's the number

one thing. We don't do a good enough job of battery life. And you keep squeezing the battery out of the product. It's got to stop. And at at some point somebody at apple somewhere who has authority said you know they're right you need to listen to them you can't you can't make that your top priority it's still important but if we're making our product worse because of the battery and so it's like look it's worse but it's lighter like it's not that's not right you gotta you gotta stop that so again sort of a subtle thing but i think it speaks to the idea that perhaps there were and and the easy narrative is there are designers out of control or something like that i think it might even be more complicated than that having worked in a

large organization not nearly as large as apple i will tell you that even in an organization are small, like you get corporate culture and you probably experienced at the bank. There become things that are like true isms. They're like, they're just, this is how it is. This is what we do. And, and I experienced this firsthand. Literally, if the person in charge of the whole thing says, don't do it that way anymore. We don't do it that way anymore. We don't do it that way anymore. That's no longer the rule. Everybody nods and agrees and goes back to their desks

and then continues to follow that rule because it's just completely baked into the culture. And so if I had to guess, my guess is that the Jobs' Law, Ives' Law from a period, or Ive Doctrine, from a period where it was super important for Apple to strive to be as thin and light as possible, because there was a period where that was absolutely the case, that it got baked in to the point where they're still doing it and they're hurting their products because of it. And that somebody has to really shake it up and say, no, no, no, you've taken this too far. We need to do this differently. And if I had to guess, it's something that's probably more like that, which is not as dramatic

a story, but still shows that somebody in a position of authority kind of has shifted the priority list a little bit. And I think the customers will benefit. You know, talking about that, Jonathan Morrison, who has a tod today on youtube he had two interviews exclusive interviews i think on video at least with phil schiller um we'll talk about the main one in a minute but he published a second one which was like just a clip of talking very briefly about the 14 inch macbook pro this wasn't included in the main video because obviously schiller didn't answer that question morrison asked he didn't ask he didn't answer the question he cut in the main video because obviously Schiller didn't answer that question.

Morrison asked. He didn't answer the question. He cut it out of the main video. But Schiller took this and kind of spun it into a different narrative about Apple not caring about pro customers. And in that, he reiterated that they made design decisions internally to focus on making all of their pro products right this was the round table right so like they had the round table and they decided that they were going to make all of their pro products even though they had started to just focus on notebooks only and leaving the desktops away they were like no we're going to do all of this and we're going to do it all at the same time and i thought that that was interesting because it kind of felt like he was almost referring to

debates being had inside of apple right and i think it's like a similar kind of thing it's like there were debates about thinness and lightness and then they moved to the pro idea. And then the pro idea said, you know what? Those things are in conflict, right? And I mean, I've said it in this interview. He talks about like, you know, people on podcasts and stuff like that. I think that was a shout out to him. I'm going to come to that in a minute. You know, but I think the truth is that they're connected in the sense that I don't generally believe that somebody in a position of authority at Apple hears somebody complain on a podcast or read somebody complaining on the internet about a product and goes, you know, I've been convinced that I did it all wrong. I think more likely what happens is the person who's been arguing that point uses that as fuel, right? And says, see?

See, they agree with me in the internal debate that's going on. Yeah, so there was a couple of things that Phil said. He said, the more you appreciate these products, the more we want to do. And he said, the best input is positive. The best criticism is constructive. And I kind of was like, yeah, okay. But I have a counterpoint. It kind of felt like what he was saying was give us a break,

like it takes us time to work on stuff. Yeah. But if you want us to give us a break, you have to be more open at the same time. So like people let off about the Mac Pro when we found out there was one coming, right? Exactly. You could have told us that you were working on changes to the MacBook Pro keyboard, but you didn't.

That's right. So if you then continue to release more and more laptops with the same keyboard, and if people don't like it, they're going to keep criticizing it. Right. it they're gonna keep criticizing it right and so like i and i get i get from a human standpoint the idea that you do a keyboard everybody screams bloody murder it doesn't work right um people don't like it and it's unreliable and you immediately inside have a meeting let's say this happened i don't know if it happened but let's say it happened where they're like oh boy we blew it with this keyboard we're're going to do two tracks here. We're going to design a new keyboard that people like. And we need to fix this thing in the meantime

as quickly as possible to make it more reliable. And then you spend the next three years having people beat you up over the keyboard. And there's nothing worse, right, than you've already recognized the problem. Yeah, you've already recognized the problem. You've already started to take steps to fix it and then people are beating you up saying why you know why won't you listen to us that this is a problem and and why would that be so painful because apple has

a policy that they will not discuss anything that they're doing before they release the product with the very very limited uh exception of the mac pro where they did that thing two and a half years ago. It still hasn't shipped, by the way. I did the math there. It's like 30 months between them saying that they were going to do it and them actually shipping it. It's amazing. More than two years. So yeah, like I get Phil Schiller saying, you know, these things take if but but if we don't know that you're changing i mean is the is the alternative to say well you don't like the keyboard just say nothing and sit around and hope that within five years the keyboard changes like that no because we don't actually know whether apple has heard our criticism of them and in fact you could argue that keeping

up the criticism is the thing that keeps the the um the change prioritized right like if there wasn't another round of laptops where apple got beat up about the keyboards even more and another round of articles saying don't buy this laptop um would if those didn't exist would the forces inside apple who thought that the keyboard was fine regain the upper hand and say look why are we doing this like there's an argument to be made that until you actually commit to this thing and maybe until you ship it that you got to keep the pressure on so while i understand the human cost of being like and and that and phil schiller is totally right like people on the outside don't know actually how Apple works.

There's a lot. I see it. You see it. There's a lot of like assumptions about things that are going on inside Apple that I look at. And I think that is almost certainly not how this is going down inside Apple, right? But people have, they like to believe in a conspiracy theory or they like to believe whatever they want to believe. But while I get all of that, the solution is change how you communicate to the

outside world. And I get why you don't want to do that. I get why you don't want to say, oh, we're still selling these laptops, but the keyboards are really bad and we're going to be fixing them. I get that, but there may be an artful way to do it. Maybe not. Maybe you're too afraid of it, but maybe there's an artful way to do it to say we've heard the complaints and they finally did it with this product but like we've heard the complaints and um we're confident they could have said a year ago we've heard the complaints we're confident that the new keyboard design that we just released is far more um uh robust and will will continue to work which they did sort of say and then you could you could say we also are aware that there are a lot of people who don't like this particular style of

keyboard and we have we have heard you and we are working on the next generation of keyboard now i know that is like not what apple is ever supposed to do you could do it again it's a rule supposed to do you could do it again it's a rule that's part of the culture you could change it yeah like i understand why they don't like i get it but like this is one of those things where like i don't think you can have your cake and eat it too yeah right you can't say we want people to be positive but we're also going to keep secrets from you like it doesn't like the positivity changed around the pro market for apple when they were open yeah i mean there there have been plenty of cases like the talk show and places like that there have been plenty of cases where phil schiller to a very narrow let's face it in influential but narrow audience could have said and again breaking apple's rules but for a purpose

could have released a lot of stress on this issue by saying look we know that we know that a lot of people don't like the keyboard we're aware of it suffice it to say that the next keyboard will be different and i'm not going to say any more than that but we hear you that's all that you you really have to say is we hear you and we are making changes, but I have nothing to announce beyond that right now. That would be a big step for them. They could take that step. And this is the thing that we get from Apple a lot, which is the, our hands are tied kind of thing when their hands aren't tied. When they, you know, it's like, well like, well, we just can't say anything about future products.

Sorry, I wish we could, but we can't. The truth is they can. They can change the rules. It's their rules. So I get, I mean, what I'm saying, I don't want to beat up on Phil Schiller here because I get the other part of it. I get how frustrating it can be

and how some of the stuff that gets thrown at them is not based in reality. It's just based in frustration or an imaginary view of how Apple works when it actually doesn't work that way at all. But there is another aspect of it, which is just like, you know, don't be so mean. Why do you keep harping on this stuff?

It takes us time. And some of that could be solved by Apple changing its own behavior and disclosing more to its customers why do you keep harping on this stuff it takes us time and some of that could be solved by apple changing its own behavior and and disclosing more to its uh to its customers about what it's planning on doing and you know perhaps without disclosing everything but just enough to say we hear you your your you know your criticisms are understood and we're working on addressing them in the future and in the meantime buy our laptops and if they're terrified that nobody's going to buy their laptops because there was a very narrow

signal that there would be new keyboards uh eventually then you know i guess you get what you get the question on that is because i mean i don know, but if you have everybody talking about the laptop keyboards being useless, right, or that they will break all the time, by the same outlets who would report on there being a change in the keyboard, which one gets you more or less customers? Exactly. And I would say over time, disclosure will get you more sales. Because here's the truth of it. customers exactly and i would say over time disclosure will get you more sales because here's the truth of it if apple had been more open about this uh it would not have to do like apple is going to have issues of people asking do i trust apple's keyboard for years now yeah for years now on laptops apple laptops are going to be um and i'm not saying it's fair i'm just

saying it's going to happen consumer reports is going to write a snide piece about Apple laptops that all have the butterfly mechanism or all have the new mechanism, the magic keyboard. And they're going to be like, well, we really don't know anything about Apple keyboard reliability because their last keyboard was so unreliable. And that's like, it's going to be there and they're going to have to deal with it. And they're going to have to deal with just the buzz in the background of like i heard that apple apple's keyboards were bad no no this is the good keyboard oh i don't know i just i heard they were bad and you could have nipped that in the bud maybe you would have paid for it in terms of some lost sales but perhaps it would

have been better for you in the long run i don't know it's a hard it's not easy like this is why phil schiller gets paid the big money, but it's a choice they could make, and they've chosen not to. And this is, so complaining about the result of the choice they made is, I guess they're welcome to try, but I don't buy it.

Alright, we have more to say on the MacBook Pro, but let's take our second break thank linode for their support of this show with linode you can instantly deploy and manage an ssd server in the cloud you can get it up and running in seconds you have your choice of linux distro resources node location so much more linode has hundreds of thousands of customers that are all looked after by their incredible 24-7 support team. If you run into any problems, you can drop them an email, you can give them a call, you can chat over IRC in the Linux community, whatever suits you is best.

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a try today that's lino.com slash upgrade l-i-n-o-d-e.com slash upgrade the promo code upgrade 2019 to learn more sign up and make the most of that $20 credit. Our thanks to Lenovo for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. So we didn't talk about this last week. It's a very Mike and Jason-y topic I think, so it's worth maybe talking about now. Another new laptop,

no touchscreen. So maybe the MacBook Pro isn't the product to do this with anyway, but it does feel more like Apple is putting their stake in the ground on this, and they have Macs, they have tablets. One is touchscreen, one isn't, and that's that. And Phil Schiller, we mentioned he did an interview with Jonathan Morrison, and the main video, they basically spoke about this a little bit,

where Schiller was saying that like we have these two products we have the best personal the mac is like the best personal computer in its standard form the ipad is the best tablet that you can buy and was kind of like we're going to run those two things the way that we think that they should be and in my mind it's kind of just like well that means no touchscreen do you think it's time to give up on the idea of a touchscreen MacBook? You know, I think I, listening to Phil Schiller talk about it, and you know, there's always the Steve Jobs. We're never going to do an iPod video, whatever it was. Nobody wants an iPod with video.

But I have a hard time listening to what Phil Schiller said and not read it as being pretty clear that Apple views the Mac as defined by traditional input methods. And that they may noodle around the edges, right? There's the touch bar and there's the trackpad, right? Those are touch interfaces, but they're not up on the screen, up on the main screen. And the way he said it, I mean, he defined it absolutely correctly. Like the idea that this is a traditional kind of mouse trackpad keyboard interface, it's two planes that are perpendicular to each other. There's the one that has stuff on it, And then there's the surface where you're doing your interface. And that is a very, very traditional computing thing. It's been like this since the early nineties in terms of laptops. Um, and that

Apple views the Mac line as the place where you get that and when he when jonathan morrison asked him about like the ipad and and all of that he said you know we do have a touch screen device and it's the ipad and that's where that you know that's that's what that product is for and you know again he may be just saying all the talking points that are there until the thing gets pulled off of the product that is not either of those things. And everybody goes, what? What did you just do? But I don't know. It feels an awful lot like this is pretty clear Apple policy rather than just being a head fake. And it's him saying what, I mean, I got to be honest, they have been very consistent on this point for a very long time, which is the Mac is a traditional computing environment. And while they have tried things to make it more interesting, I think they believe rightly so that Mac users are traditional. And the last thing Mac users want is for you to introduce new weird stuff into their computer. Because the reason they like the Mac is because it's a computer, not because it's a touchscreen tablet convertible, whatever. It's because it's a computer

and they've been using a computer for a long time, or they like the shape of the computer. And you know, my kids, my kids are both born this century and they both have laptops that they use as their primary device, not iPads. So although I love my iPad, and I'm sure that the age distribution varies widely, but still, some people just want that shape and that experience. and that experience. And while I can make an argument that adding touch to the equation, in addition to the traditional would be a nice combination. I think Apple just feels like if they want to innovate and do weird stuff that's in this new paradigm, they're going to do it on the iPad side and that the Mac really is there to be stable and reliable. And, you know, which is the irony of doing that keyboard. I think maybe that's a little lesson to them of like, you, you even push the keyboard too far. So you can push the touch bar too wide, narrow that touch bar too. It's like, you went too far back off a little bit because if you,

if you introduce too much change into the Mac, uh, what you're going to get is people saying, well, why do I even have a Mac anymore? Like it's not, I use the Mac. I think they really believe people use the Mac because it is a traditional computer. That is what it has going for it. If you break that, why would you even do that? Like these people could use an iPad today if they wanted to, and maybe they do, but when they use the Mac, they're using it because it's the Mac. So I just, I walk away from this thinking that if there's going to be a weird laptop-y like thing with a touchscreen from Apple, again, it's going to be an iOS device.

It's not going to be a Mac because the Mac, I think they've just defined the Mac as what it is. And while they will make those changes around the edges a little bit like the touch bar, like in the end, they just don't believe that the mac should be more than what it is i think that there's still a possibility for something right that's like the form factor of a laptop more hopeful than me i don't mean that there will be a touchscreen on a mac right as we know it now but i think that there is still enough change possible in the future for products in that form factor

that something might happen, right? Like, I feel like the idea of an ARM laptop still is up in the air as to what that might look like, especially as things like SwiftUI exist, right? And it's like, as UI paradigms start to move. I think it's very difficult to put

touchscreen on Mac OS, but it might not be so much again in the future because we really don't know what an ARM laptop could look like, right? Like what it will be, like what will it run, right? Like would it run Mac OS as we know it or will it be something a little bit more hybrid? I don't think we're going to see touchscreens on Macs as we know them. But I don't rule out Apple releasing something in that form factor that has a touchscreen.

I'm just starting to think that by far the most likely scenario, if you want to envision a touch-based laptop-ish device that has more pro capabilities and better file management and command line and who knows what else i'm starting to think though that the better bet is that apple will continue to progress the pro features on ipad os over time i agree then it is that apple is going to take the mac and continue to sort of like i-ify it. I think that was the point of iPadOS, right? Like, I think that's the point. Yeah.

So I am in agreement with you on that. And I wouldn't rule out Apple releasing something that was iPadOS in a laptop form factor. Like, I still think there's a possibility of that. They totally could do that. If they think that there is something to be gained there, whether it's against Chromebooks or whether, you know, they may think that the smart something to be gained there whether it's against chromebooks or whether you know they may think that the smart keyboard is enough you'll notice that the smart keyboard has

come to every ipad now um except the mini like the smart keyboard is everywhere so they know it's important they may think that's enough um i think they could do more there because i think that the soft keyboard is not always enough and that they could build something that's either a laptop or a convertible that runs iOS. The pieces are in place now to do a lot of this stuff. It's just a matter of philosophy and will and whether they think there's a market there. We'll see.

But yeah, I think the Mac OS is not going to get touchscreens anytime soon. So I want to ask you any more thoughts about the device? Like, have you tried using it on a plane, for example more thoughts about the device like have you tried using it on a plane for example what's the size like in general how is it holding up like so i had it in my bag on the plane there's just no way like yeah there's no maybe if you're in in in business class or first class or something but i was in coach and the guy in front of me was reclined and uh wasn't gonna happen I didn't even try. My iPad was a tight fit as it was.

So yeah, it's a, what I said before, I think is, you know, when I view it as a mobile iMac pro, I feel like it makes a lot of sense, but it's huge. And it's not for me.

Like I, I always gravitated towards smaller laptops. I never was going to be the audience for this in terms of size. I totally get why if you want a big screen and lots and lots of power, it is fantastic. It's the perfect thing for you. But, you know, I've gone a different direction where I've got a powerful desktop. And then I at this point, when I'm not at my desk, I'm basically not even on the Mac. And that's just how it is for me. But when I do have a Mac laptop, it's the 11-inch Air, not this enormous 16-inch laptop. So I'm not the audience for this product. It is,

every time I pick it up, it's huge. But I felt that about all of the large Apple laptops over history as I pick it up and I think, oh my God, this thing is a lunch tray. It is enormous. So, you know, it is a pro Mac that you can carry around with you. And it has a keyboard that is much better than the keyboard that it replaces and a physical escape key and inverted T keys and et cetera, et cetera. It's a very impressive, you know, portable with an asterisk Pro Mac. I have one more thing that has struck me because I don't own a Touch Bar Mac. Like, we have laptops in our house, but they're all MacBook Airs. And the Touch Bar, I don't hate the Touch Bar like some people hate the Touch Bar, but I don't love the Touch Bar. And I think what bothers me the most about the Touch Bar is not that it exists.

It's that if you had asked me what I thought the Touch Bar would become when it was introduced three years ago, I would have said, well, you know, what's going to happen is Apple's going to iterate the software side of it, and it's going to be much more functional in three years. The fact is, there are minor changes to the Touch Bar software, but it's not good enough. Like, that's the bottom line here, is that we could debate the Touch Bar as an input device, but let's leave that aside for a moment. Whoever's in charge of the Touch Bar software in macOS, again, I don't want to characterize their situation, but I will say either they're not getting the resources to take it where they want or they've done a bad job of executing because the Touch Bar should be integrated into the system far more than it is now. You should be able to customize that touch bar in so many ways that are not hoping that a particular app has an edit touch bar function. You should be able to do more system-wide stuff and customize it. And I know there are third-party apps that basically hack the touch bar to do that, but like the touch bar, if you're going to have it,

it just should be a lot better than it is. And that I think gets lost sometimes in the whole debate about the keyboard and about the escape key. But let's take a moment to ponder just like how well integrated is the touch bar into the Mac experience. And if you're in a particular app that is super well integrated, fair enough. But like system wide, I feel like I have a bunch of stuff in my menu bar you know that i'm using i've got i've got keyboard shortcuts i keep thinking i would really like more control over what goes in the touch bar and the fact that the mac by default just doesn't

provide anything really just sort of control strip and what's in a particular app and even there i feel like it's backslid because you used to be able to see uh the quick actions and now they're like hidden under a button um i just that's the thing that struck me having not used a touch bar in earnest in a little while is that it's not any different really and it's just disappointing that it they introduced this thing three years ago we've had two mac os macOS updates in the meantime, and the touch bar is not appreciably better than it was. And not only that there has been two updates to macOS,

there's been multiple versions of this machine that has the touch bar. So they could have updated either at any point, and they have updated it really at no points. Well, I feel like ultimately what should happen is that it's a macOS feature. It's a hardware thing, but it's a macOS feature, and then macOS should embrace it. And I get the, like, well, oh, it's new, and we don't really know. And so for Mojave, we're going to just kind of lean back and not worry about it too much.

Okay. Or for High Sierra, maybe. But then there's Mojave and then there's Catalina. So it's really three, right? It's like, at some point, if you're going to ship this thing on your pro laptops, you should probably embrace it and really do some good stuff to integrate it and have more power usery kind of control over the system on these pro laptops.

Instead, it's just like, nah, it's got a context per app view and it's got this little control strip. That's not extensible. And that's it. It's like, I don't know.

Anyway, it's just, that's the thing that struck me that surprised me. Cause I, I don't really spend a lot of brain power, a lot of cycles on the touch bar because it's not in my life. And other than like when I brought up the what's the name of it? The new feature in Catalina that puts it on the on the external display. I can't even remember.

Sidecar. Sidecar. Then I was like, oh, look, it's the touch bar. Oh, I remember the external display. God, I can't even remember. Sidecar. Sidecar. Then I was like, oh, look, it's the touch bar. Oh, I remember the touch bar. But with this laptop, I have gotten to spend a little more time with the touch bar, and it's just let me down. It's like, oh, I wonder what it does now.

Could I do this? No, I can't do that. Can't do that. Can't do that. I can go to Logic, and I can customize it there in Logic. Great. I can do some minor customization of the control strip. Great siri button off because i'll hit it accidentally if i don't that's about it it's too bad but overall though the laptop's great yeah i mean it is

would you like to carry an imac pro with you wherever you go now you can yeah because that was something that I was seeing Marco, like he was posting a bunch of tweets about this and stuff, like, it will do a lot of the most heavily intensive stuff, like build overcast or whatever, about as quickly as his iMac Pro would. That is

wild. Right? Yeah. That is wild. I mean, I hope there's an iMac Pro update at some point when there are new Xeons to put in it, but yeah, that's right. Right, I hope there's an iMac Pro update at some point when there are new Xeons to put in it. But yeah, that's right. Right, I hope that they update the 13-inch. And he's got the 10-core, so he's got a faster iMac Pro than I do. I really do hope that they update the 13-inch at some point. I would like that machine in my life.

It's only a matter of time. Only a matter of time. Yeah, for sure. So you wanted to give some follow-out, actually, to moving on to a different topic which is apple's ar glasses because we spoke about this last week on connected um i will give a summary about all right what it is we're talking about and what we touched on because you told me you wanted to expand on it a little more so in summary according to the information which is a website with a funny name when you say it out loud. Apple held a meeting for over 1,000 employees that laid out their plans for AR and VR over the next few years. They discussed a roadmap, a product roadmap that stated they would have a mixed reality device,

think something like HoloLens in 2022, that would be used for stuff like games and virtual meetings and video at home. It would be a home device. Then they would have in 2023 AR glasses that you'd be wearing on your face out in the world. Walking the streets. Walking the streets. Like you have, you know, like probably an accessory to the iPhone,

like the Apple Watch is an accessory to the iPhone right now. And as we were talking about this, me and Federico and Stephen touched on the, the uncomfortable idea of having a device strapped to our faces that we cannot get away from that has all of our apps on it and stuff like that and information coming in and it's in front of our eyes the whole

time and this was particularly troubling to us considering that there is a quote from the information that says that Apple apparently believed that these glasses this product could replace the iPhone within a decade so that's kind of the outline of it yeah and i think i mean you guys expressed some skepticism which i think is good

um you then questioned yourselves and said are we becoming old men who are like nah there's never these kids with their glasses it's like and that i think that is a good we don't know the answer right we don't know if if you are and i i'm somebody who is always fighting that impulse like never the moment that you express disinterest in something because it's new you're in real trouble like you're you're at that point you are yes you're just an unreceptive old person who is gonna kind of fade into irrelevance it's not it's bad for people in our business. But I think it's always worth that question, right? Of like, am I resistant to this because it's new or because it's dumb? Like, it's a healthy question to ask yourself. I think you guys had a good conversation about how we're currently in a position where we're all debating sort of like, do our phones and

does the ability to have all this information in front of us, does it have deleterious effects on our personal relationships and our relationship with society? There's a lot of good questions there. And then if we're having that now with phones, what happens when you're just wearing glasses? And as Federico said, right now I can just not look at my phone and not look at Twitter, but if Twitter is in my eyes, what do I do? Do I just close my eyes? And I thought that was great. Like literally, yes,

just close your eyes and say I'm taking a little break from Twitter right now by not looking at anything. And the idea that the rumored feature here of like if you're pulling up AR information while you're talking to somebody, your glasses dim,

which reminded me of something outside of from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There were glasses in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that if anything threatening was in your vision, it would just darken so that you couldn't see the threatening thing anymore. A great feature. But the thing that I stumbled on in that segment,

which is a really great segment, and I recommend that I listened to it while I was raking leaves. You can do that, or something else. Do whatever you. It's the moment where you guys talked about something that also came up on ATP, which is this idea of why does every company have to do everything? And like, why does Apple want to do this?

Maybe Apple could just not do this. And I get it. And yet at the same time, I think this is the, the, the way you have to follow this, which is if it's possible that AR glasses replace not just necessarily the phone, but like replace all other devices. in a perfect world is, you know, any screen in your life can be an augmented reality screen in the, in the future on an infinite timescale, right? Like I'm sitting in front of this iMac pro 27 inch display right now, but if I was wearing AR glasses and they had a virtual 27

inch display, you know, it's just replaced my computer or at least my computer's display. So like the, if you, if you're thinking longterm, the threat, if you're a dominant player in computers and phones, is that these things are going to be the replacement for that. And that if you're not there, then you're going to have either be way behind or you're going to completely miss the window to be in this area. I think that's one of the motivators for Microsoft because they missed phones. It's the same for Facebook as to why they bought Oculus, because they missed mobile. Right. And for Google as well, and for Apple. And so the way I would phrase from an Apple perspective, the way I would phrase like, why would Apple do this?

I think the answer is really because what if this is big and it's just google and facebook i think that's the i mean the ultimate answer is not necessarily that apple looks at the computing environment of 2030 and says because keep keep in mind we're not, you know, we're what, 12 years out from the iPhone now? So we don't even need to say 2040. But like, what is the computing environment of 2030 or 2032? And if this is the thing in 2030, do we want it to just be our competitors or do we want it to be us? I don't think it's necessarily an endorsement of it. And I know this is a,

this is a funny thing where, you know, if you're a company that believes that this product category is going to make the world worse, but it's also going to cannibalize your existing product category. What are you going to do as a core, as a corporation? What are you going to do?

Are you going to say, we're going to sit this one out and just like counter money and serve an older population that rejects it and fade away from irrelevance? And the answer is that won't actually happen. What will happen is you'll all get fired and replaced with people who will do it. Or you just kind of embrace it. And I think if you're Apple, maybe you think, knowing what we know and knowing what we know about Facebook and maybe even Google, if we're a participant in this and if we're leading this, it gives us influence over what these products are like, potentially. And so it gives us the ability and our values to kind of steer this a little bit and say here's how like the thing about the glasses dimming right it's a weird dumb example but i think what it says is apple is trying to think of the social impact of devices like these and and unlike something like

google glass right which ran into these issues and was a teachable moment. Think through all these issues and try to find ways to build the product with those issues in mind to make them less corrosive to human interaction. But it's a hard problem because they can't say,

we'll sit this one out because what if this is the next big thing? That what if this is literally, we've said in our lifetimes, like the iPhone is the biggest product ever, but like, what if this is the next iPhone? Finally, the Apple watch was not the next iPhone, but what if this, these things that you wear on your head and you don't even need to carry any other device ever. And it's your entertainment system and it's your communication system and it's your work system and it's your communication system and it's your work system and whatever else if that's the thing can you as a tech company not play in that field you have to

so i just think it's a difficult it's a difficult thing because if you're apple you're looking at and not only saying our future may rely on this thing it may not it may not be anything but you're also saying do i want a world if we sit it out then it's a world that's dominated by who facebook and google like that's not a better world it's difficult right because i agree with all of you all the stuff that you're saying there but i think like my wider thing that i'm thinking about is I just don't, I just, I'm just not sure that this is something we should be doing anyway. I'm not sure.

And that's the awkward part. I think that is very perceptive because I think, and I think asking those questions is important. And, and I would, again, this is why I think having people who are working, even though they're working for companies that are motivated by the future of their profits human relationships and interactions and that with things like screen time they are they are trying to exert at least a little bit of control on this

and again i i think you could you could say yeah but they still want you to buy a phone they just you know you can use it less but they still want you to buy it it It's totally true. But I would like some companies involved in this. I mean, heaven help us if the future of human interaction with technology is defined by Facebook, right? I don't want to live in that world. So if Apple, is Google better than that? I think they are a little bit. Is Apple better than that? I think they are. They may not be saints, but I think they're better. I think I would rather have a company that is, we talked about Apple's priorities earlier today. I would rather have a company that at least struggles with putting the customer first and worrying about the customer experience for a product that is going to completely, potentially like take over our senses

and how we interact with the whole world, large and small. I would like a company that cares more about that stuff playing in that thing. I would say Microsoft too actually cares about that to a certain degree and that's good. But I feel like if this takes off, it will be because it was inevitably the right thing to do. It may just crash and burn and people may reject it and it may be another 50 years before they try it again.

But I feel like I want Apple to be involved, even if the result is a product category that I'm a little squeamish about right now. Should we do some Ask Upgrade? Yeah, that's a good idea. All right, today's Ask Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at FreshBooks. FreshBooks can help you save time when it comes to invoicing, expense tracking, getting paid online. If you ever send invoices to anybody you deal with money in your business, maybe you're self-employed, maybe you're a contractor, maybe you have a small business of your own, you should be using FreshBooks to be sending out your invoices. Their super simple cloud accounting software saves millions of people

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So you don't have to actually spend time chasing people down to pay the invoice because fresh books will do it for you and they have payment systems and that you can get all set up so everything can be paid right there by card by the person it's super super simple but you can give them other information if you need to be paid in other ways i love fresh books i have been using them for over five years now if you have yet to try it out and you ever send it invoices, you should be trying them. Just give it a go. They have a 30-day free trial for listeners of this show. There's no credit card required.

Just go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and you can sign up for that trial right there. And if they ask, how did you hear about us? Say, on the Upgrade podcast. Thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. So our first hashtag ask upgrade question this week comes from nate and nate says i'm new to podcasting but i'm recording solely at

the moment from even my 10.5 inch ipad pro or in some cases my iphone 11 other than using airpods as a microphone what is a better solution for me first off i think maybe the iphone microphones i haven't tested this but i think maybe the iphone microphones might be better than your airpods i would expect it probably is the iphone microphone is really good like a built-in microphone like literally open voice memos and press record and talk into your iphone better on the 11 as well like yeah they did work to make the microphones even better as well so so that that may be like i've done that i've recorded things in a pinch yep i'd record an ad when i was in hawaii and i just did it on my iphone and it sounded really good i've done it too yeah um so beyond that um i'd recommend the audio technica the atr 2100 usb which is sort of my go-to mic that I recommend to people. It's not that it doesn't have its issues, but it is relatively cheap in the US right now on Amazon. I am seeing it for

$6230, right? So it's not too expensive. It will work as an analog mic using an XLR cable, but it also just has a USB and you can plug it in. So you could get a USB cable and, or it comes with a USB cable and you get a USB lightning adapter for use if you are also occasionally using it with your iPhone. Was that the microphone you used last week? That is the microphone I used last week. So there you go. It's got a headphone jack on it

so you can hear the other person and you can hear your own voice a little bit. And it's a good price. Like again, it's not the best microphone in existence, but for the price and for what it does, it's a good price. Like, again, it's not the best microphone in existence, but for the price and for what it does, it's pretty good. So, and I recommend that. Give it a shot. Your 10.5 iPad Pro means what?

Is that, that's, it's an iPad Pro, so it's USB-C. So yeah, you can get a couple of cables if you need to. Is that the USB-C or is that the lightning? No, the 2.5-inch is lightning. That's lightning. Okay, well, so yeah, what you want is a USB lightning adapter to use with it. Which you can get. I don't think they're too expensive.

I don't know. I think you can probably pick one up. No, Apple sells that. And I would recommend you get the one that's got the additional power because for some USB devices, I'm not sure if the atr needs it but you use the lightning plug on the adapter to give it extra power and then that powers the devices but atr may not need it it is a good uh theoretical or hypothetical from mark what job title is missing from apple's leadership organizational chart in other words what position should they create

to fix one or some of Apple's recent problems? So like on the executives page on apple.com? Yeah. I was thinking maybe just like ahead of like user experience, i.e. somebody to oversee everything to try and stop bugs, right? So you don't have somebody in charge of software you can still have that but then somebody who is in charge of like how old does this work like quality assurance you know like uh what is it called what is what is it called in software

there is a qa i think it is quality assurance yeah that's what it is quality assurance that's what they should have. So that would be like, yeah, vice president of bugs, vice president of user experience. I would say user experience is the name for it because that sounds better than like vice president of solving the buggy stuff. Yeah. Okay. We could have a double secret vice president of keyboards.

Maybe we already do. You know, one of the vps is out there and like like deirdre o'brien she's like i hate this keyboard fix it you know and then the double secret vp of keyboards appears you know that person was in your office the whole the whole time didn't even know and you know why because they don't have very much travel so you can't spot them um the uh i kept thinking of like an official like head of product but my understanding is that this is kind of this is actually what coo jeff williams is kind of is owner of product like at a high level because i feel like that's that's the thing that we always have talked about is like there's software and there's hardware. But who is the person who says this is the product, right?

I mean, failing a complete sort of division-based system where there's a Mac, head of Mac and head of iPhone and head of iPad, which I know they do have some people who fit those roles. But like at a high level, maybe saying that, you know, it's not software those people are on there too but they officially had a product but again i think maybe the coo is that um the only other thought i had was uh separating internet services from entertainment that if as you're expanding your tv and music deals especially tv and film but also music that maybe what you want to do is is have somebody who is essentially the head of your studio and that may be how this ends up getting put out is that they do build their own studio they'll have a studio head and that won't be the same as the head of apple tv plus but it will be a studio head but i just it was another thought i had is maybe you take internet services where it's a a job that's more

about things like icloud and stuff like that maybe even financial services in there and separate that from the person who's a hollywood executive who's that's their job is a it's an entertainment industry executive um sorry to eddie q but like eddie q has inherited a lot of this stuff but does that really make the most sense or should there be an entertainment industry person on apple's page i should have said this earlier in the variety uh article about plepler said that apparently one of the reasons he was considering apple was that him and eddie q are friends oh boy actually that was funny like eddie you did it you did it boy you did it you finally did it, boy. You did it. You finally did it. Good work, Eddie. So apparently they became friends during the HBO deal that Apple did.

Look, I mean, Eddie Q maybe would be that person because he's such a schmoozer now. In which case, what if we put somebody else in charge of iCloud and all other web-based services that Apple is offering and say that's also important. Because apparently, right, like Eddie is good at deals, right? Like apparently he is good at doing deals, right? I.e. he's a good schmoozer, right? So that is probably more needed, definitely more needed in the entertainment arm of Apple services division. The head of icloud

could be somebody else at this point probably is honestly but at least it's not listed on the page probably so anyway good question mark rick asks in the era of catalina and apple music how do i get music that i've purchased from other places like bandcamp onto my mac and iphone uh this is not uh this is not a problem so if have Apple Music, then that means you have iTunes Match built in, which means what you do is you take your MP3s from Bandcamp and you add them on the Mac to the music app and they will sync. That's it. They will sync using iTunes Match and they'll be part of your music library. If you don't use Apple Music, you would be syncing directly from the Finder to your iPhone and you would add them to your music library and set in the Finder, you would set music sync

that way. But you can still do that in the era of Catalina and Apple Music. And I think people don't know, or a lot of people don't know itunes match which was a separate product is a feature in apple music you can literally upload and you know anything that's in your music library if it doesn't match and get automatically added it will upload it and keep it on apple servers and go to all of your devices and i have lots of stuff that is not on apple's catalog that I have, and it's all in there. And Chris asked finally today, Jason, as you use the MacBook Pro during your review period right now, what thoughts do you have in regards to your switch to the iPad versus this laptop? I mean, I said this earlier, but I have no regrets about it.

Like this new laptop, I would never I said this earlier, but I have no regrets about it. Like this new laptop, I would never under any circumstances have bought. I thought this, this was not your thing anyway, right? Like it's too big. It's too heavy. It's too big. It's not for me. I, I would have to be in a situation where I didn't have another computer, uh, and was doing this for all of my, you know, audio work and all of that but you were using it as like a multi-purpose like home and on the road machine right which is makes sense for a lot of people even then i generally gravitated toward the smaller laptop yeah because i guess as long as it was had a good power right like as long as you could soup it up enough you could still use it both in both circumstances and you'd still benefit from more portability on the road, right?

If it was the 13. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. When I managed to, I had a, for a long time, I just had the top of the line 11 air. So it was like an i7. And again, not super fast, but faster than you'd think and very small. And so, I mean, my point there is that if I can survive on an 11-inch screen, I don't need the 15-inch, 16-inch in this case screen.

I could get by with a smaller one as long as it had the power that I needed. But as it is, I mean, I don't use laptops for mobile. And, you know, I do still occasionally travel with my 11-inch Air for very particular technical reasons. But that's about it is if I need something that I just have decided is safer if I do it on a Mac. Usually it's podcast related. It's usually this podcast, in fact. So, yeah, I don't. I think it's a great laptop.

But, like, my life now is big Mac desktop and iPad and I'm just fine with that. You like big Macs sometimes. As long as I don't have to carry them. That's the thing is that my iMac can be as big as it needs to be because I don't, I don't carry it around with me. It just sits on the end of the little arm and hangs in the air and i don't do you know i don't carry it whereas with a laptop i was trained more than a decade of of walking to and from the bus

stop on this end and in the city every single day with a laptop in my bag i was very much interested in having that laptop be as small and light as possible it makes me feel like a fuddy daddy like an old fuddy daddy but when i talk about this but that 11 inch macbook air what a incredible machine that thing was yeah i i have one used it as my only computer for years years loved it it was absolutely fantastic machine such a just like good in every single possible way and what one of the things that made it so good is the machine that it replaced right like the 11 and 13 replaced the original air which basically sucked and then the 11 got better year like every time they updated it just got so much better than the previous version for years, right?

Like it's just like a fantastic machine. Well, the 12-inch MacBook Air today is not that much bigger than the 11-inch Air. Or I mean, sorry, the 13-inch MacBook Air of today is not much bigger than the 11-inch Air because they brought in the bezels and all that. It's actually a little deeper, but it's not very much wider at all. And so let's see if they fix the keyboard.

That's the machine I want, right know i was saying earlier like oh i would love a 14 inch macbook pro i would but what i would like most to replace my current macbook pro my 13 inch macbook pro is a 13 inch macbook air with the butterfly keyboard because it has the power that i need and it has the keyboard that I want. But what's most important for me is portability because when they do update the 13-inch, if they do go to 14 inches, it will be bigger and it will be heavier than the MacBook Air. And I don't want that.

What I want is portability and enough power, you know? So what I really want is an updated MacBook Air with a new keyboard. That's what i would like personally for my limited use of a laptop which is a few trips a year where i'm recording but the thing is the times that i'm recording tend to be some of the most important shows that i will do in a year so i need to have a laptop which is powerful that i can rely on you know it's like the wwc shows like the wwc episode of upgrade which is powerful that I can rely on. It's like the WWDC shows.

Like the WWDC episode of Upgrade. Which is one of the most important episodes we do every year. Recorded on whatever laptop I have. And then edit it on the same laptop. So I need some power and performance. But I also don't want it to be big and heavy. Like the MacBook Pro is big and heavy for me. For what I would prefer. As thin and light as possible.

So I hope that they do update that MacBook Air with the new keyboard at some point. That'd be nice. All right, that's it for this week's episode. If you'd like to send in a question for us to talk about at the end of the show, hashtag askupgrade. We'll do that. Just tweet with that hashtag and it could be included in a future episode. Thank you to everybody that does this.

It's really, really appreciated from us. I have a good backlog of questions right now, but I always want more. So please send them in. Don't forget, we'll be watching Die Hard next week and talking about it after Ask Upgrade at the end of the show in the Mic at the Movies segment. So make sure you follow along and watch that over the next week.

Thanks to FreshBooks, Linode and Pingdom for their support of this show. If you want to find Jason's work online, go to sixcolors.com and he is at jsnl on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. Jason hosts many shows here on RelayFM and on The Incomparable as well. If you want to get more Jason in your ears,

that is a way to do that. I am imyke, I-M-Y-K-E and you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, places like that with that handle. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. Don't forget, upgradeyourwardrobe.com to buy some wonderful Dongletown merch,

some Upgrade podcast merch until December 4th. We'll be reminding you a couple of more times. So you don't forget to buy that. I'll take the Casey Liss role right now, you know, like don't forget. Don that. You know, I'll take the Casey List role right now, you know, like don't forget. Don't forget. That's what Casey says.

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We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Justin Snow. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.