Upgrade - 282: The iPad at 10

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

It's the 10th anniversary of the announcement of the iPad! Myke and Jason discuss why the seeds of the iPad's success were visible on day one, the changes in the iPad's life cycle over time, and how the iPad fits in our daily lives today.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 282 today's show is brought to you by doordash pingdom and booze allen my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley it's good to hear your voice as always on the upgrade podcast we have a wonderful hashtag snell talk question this week from art art wants to know jason what is your favorite time travel movie oh boy there are a lot of great time travel movies time travel is nonsense a lot of the plots of time travel movies are nonsense and full of holes yeah yeah i mean and there's a whole philosophies about like which kind of time travel which is hilarious because there is no kind of time travel

that works but like narratively there are like the kinds where you change the future by altering the past and they're the ones where the future can't be changed and all of those things anyway um i will point people to an episode of The Incomparable, episode 153, titled Monkey with a Tin Foil Sandwich, which includes two of my favorite time travel movies. 12 Monkeys, which is a really good movie starring Bruce Willis, that has a very interesting time travel philosophy involving the inviolability of the timeline, which I kind of like. I kind of dig that. You can send somebody back in time, but everything they do will just cause what already happened to happen. There's only one timeline.

So if you go back in time and do something, that thing already was always going to happen and you were always going to do it. I like that. Part of the timeline included the going back in time. That was just the way that the future was created was because the past was altered and there was no way you could change it. You go back to stop the Kennedy assassination and time like that was just the way that the future was created was because the past was altered and

there was no way you could change it you go back to stop the kennedy assassination and somehow what's going to happen is you're going to cause the kennedy assassination you trip and fall on the gun right like yeah it's just it's going to happen but my favorite time travel movie also covered in that episode of the incomparable is and and there's a great debate uh about how you pronounce this word because it's it's it's preme yeah or as i like to call it uh primer uh which is a word that means a uh it's like an educational book that tells you how to do something um but there's also a word primer which generally means like paint that you put on a wall before you paint it a color. But anyway, people use that pronunciation for the meaning of

primer too. So you can call it primer if you want. The director started calling it primer and then he gave up when everybody called it primer. So lesson learned, then he just called it primer after that. However you pronounce it though, I love that movie. It's nuts. It is a very different philosophy than 12 Monkeys. It kind of continually writes over itself. And it's about these two guys in Texas who invent a time machine by accident and keep going back in time and altering things in a extremely confusing and weird way. But I love it. I love how confusing it is and strange. And it was shot for like $30,000.

It's a low, low, low budget film. And I love it. So that's my favorite time travel movie. Check it out. Primer or Primer or whatever. P-R-I-M-E-R. It's worth, I'd say it's not worth a watch. It's worth many watches as you try to figure out what the heck is happening. And then you bring up the big chart on the internet that explains what's happening and then you shake your head and say i still don't understand it's that kind of movie but i love it i love back to the future it's a great one there are a lot of great time travel movies of different kinds back to the future is a really good one and then there are lots of movies that just include time travel which are good too. Sure. Like Avengers. Yeah, yeah.

Actually, that's a really good one. Back to the Future, we talked about this, I think, at one point when we were talking about Back to the Future on this show. If you think about how time travel works in Back to the Future, it gets a little bit disturbing. Because Marty comes back to a world that's different from the world that he left. Like his parents are uh are are happy and uh and wealthy and he's got a truck and stuff like that and you know that makes you ask the question what happened to that marty mcfly if he really does it again though right and then like biff's in like the power seat and whatever like it's he messed stuff up what are the rules there and did is another Marty that left that world

and what world did he go to? I got a lot of questions about time travel. But anyway, time travel movies are fun and Primer is my favorite. Thanks, Art. If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question to open the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snow Talk and it may be included in a future episode.

We should let you know, we are recording this on Monday the 27th, which is significant for a reason we'll get to in a future episode. We should let you know, we are recording this on Monday the 27th, which is significant for a reason we'll get to in a bit. But on Tuesday the 28th of January 2020 is Apple's Q4 results, right? For the calendar Q4, Q1 2020. That's right.

It's holiday quarter of 2019, but it's technically their first fiscal quarter of the 2020s. Yeah. So that's's gonna definitely occupy some discussion next week um for sure you'll be able to see some charts on six colors.com where there are currently even more charts which is just that you got uh you got a bit chart happy didn't you over the last couple of weeks i think i i don't want to commit to it but i'm i'm kind of

trying to do a chart every week that's like that's kind of what i'm trying to do is eat fun with charts every week we'll see how long i stick with it until i run out of charts but i wanted to challenge myself with some recurring bits so i'm going to try to do a chart well of the week and so i made some chart i started with some financial charts there are other charts too that i might make but i i kept and what's funny is every time i write an article about a chart uh in the article i end up looking up something that gives me a uh note for a future chart that's happened every time now that like i've done it three times and every time i've come out of it with a note for another chart that was the next chart you should just keep going you should start charting those uh i would say okay that this whole project has been worth it for the decade of iPhone revenue chart,

which is on the decade of Apple growth post, which I'll put in the show notes, because the chart for iPhone growth is so huge. It's like bigger than the webpage. Like you can't look at the chart in one. And I think that it is like, I have it like a max size in safari right like i have the window the size of my imax screen and i can't see the whole chart on one screen uh

vertically because because iphone growth exploded so much that it like broke graphs so it's kind of hilarious to see that yeah this is one of those things that it started with me i had a back and forth with john gruber actually about a previous chart article where I actually changed the scale. Originally, my scale was about percentages and the scale went to 50%. And he sent me a text and said, you're killing me. And I knew what he was talking about, which is if you're showing percentages, the most appropriate way to do it is to show all 100% because then you get an idea of within the volume of 100% how much of each percentage is it. But that got me thinking about scale. And I made these charts. And I had

that same thought, which is when I do these charts about revenue for iPad, Mac and iPhone, the scales are totally different. And it's not just like the I don't have the scale set the same because then you could basically the iPad and the Mac would look totally flat if they were the same scale as the iPhone, because the iPhone's numbers are so much bigger. So I make them a different scale. And I thought, well, how could I express this? And the answer was, I made a version of the iPhone chart where the scale was the same as the iPad and the Mac charts. And as a result, because iPhone revenue is so much more than those, it's this incredibly laughably tall chart. But it expresses exactly what I wanted it to,

which is you may misunderstand when looking at charts just how much bigger the iPhone is than the other parts of Apple's product line. By a lot. And the growth that it had over the course of the last decade. So we have some stuff we want to talk about today, but there is obviously a story that occupied most of last week, but it was after we had recorded, was a conversation about Apple and end-to-end encryption,

especially in regards to iCloud backups and why they're not encrypted fully and potential reasons for that. I just wanted to do a follow-out to episode 278 of Connected because I don't have the energy to get back into this conversation again because it riles me up, Jason. So I recommend if people want to hear that because

you know sometimes if like if you just listen to this show and we don't and we skip over a topic like this you may think we're omitting it right but it's purely because there's only so much we can talk about every week so if you want to hear more on that you can go listen to connected or you could also listen to atp right episode 362 and I spoke about it there. If you want to just hear people talk about it. But like, you know, my views are they are what they are, you know? Yeah. Glenn Fleischman talked to John Gruber about it for three hours on the talk show.

You can listen to that if you've got three spare hours. Short show. And yeah, it's all covered pretty well. I find the topic really frustrating because i i think that there's a lot we don't know and they're um so you can talk about a very small amount if this comes back in the news we'll talk about it again but yeah i think i think it was well covered elsewhere and and the idea of um you know balancing and what we may get into it later in this episode too a little bit obliquely, but the idea of this being, you know, encryption is offering end to end encryption to your customers is complicated. And it's not just because of governments wanting access to your customer data. It's also complicated because of customers wanting access to their data and forgetting their passwords.

access to their data and forgetting their passwords. And so then you start to ask, what about making it optional? But then that has issues because then it's not on by default. It's a whole can of worms. There are other podcasts that discussed it in depth. We probably will discuss it again because this will not stop happening. But we're going to give it a pass this week. We should talk about something that is particularly pertinent to our typical discussions. I will frame this as an upstream topic, which is going back to Apple and original podcasts. So Apple create podcasts of their own. There's been two news stories about this in the last week. One was a Bloomberg report.

This came from Mark German and Lucas Shaw. They stated that Apple are indeed planning on making original podcasts that, as I think we predicted quite a while ago, focus on its Apple TV Plus shows

as the content. So they apparently started sending out requests for pitching to production companies over the summer, podcast production companies. These podcasts would likely include production assistants and appearances from the people involved in the shows themselves. This is much like the podcasts from networks like HBO, right? That there is an accompanying podcast to a TV show.

This is the easiest way for Apple to get into the game. And then in an interview with Forbes, Lee Eisenberg, who's one of the co-creators of Little America, said the following, Apple is such a worldwide and multifaceted brand. We're doing a podcast to delve more into the stories and the music on the show there'll also be a playlist for every episode we're also putting out a book apple as an

infrastructure that just felt like it would be able to touch all of the different pieces that we wanted so do you think that's going to be one of those uh iPhoto books where you just uh you know you get a little hardcover book with some pictures in it definitely made in iBooks author whatever it is right um you know this is we we spoke about this before right that like as Apple move more and more into the entertainment industry their ability to get people to keep their mouth shut is going to become harder and harder um because Eisenberg has basically said that he's given the confirmation we were looking for that Apple are indeed creating podcasts for their TV shows, because

he's so much has said it. This may be for the second season of Little America. This makes perfect sense. What it doesn't answer, which is the bigger question of like, this will be how Apple show their feeling about the podcast market as to whether these will be available with RSS feeds or whether they will just be available in Apple podcasts. I think this isn't going to problem unless, unless they make them restricted. I think it won't tell us anything because the idea is they're,

they're about Apple TV plus shows. So, um, why not make them as widely available as possible because it's about your product and that you have to be a subscriber to watch. I agree. My guess is that they'll be out there for everybody. I do think this is a best practice.

I don't think it's being done as much as it should be. As somebody who enjoys podcasts and enjoys TV shows, there should be TV shows. There should be official podcasts about every TV show. You should do an official podcast. And I know I was having this conversation with a mutual friend of ours who will remain nameless who said that he listened to the Chernobyl podcast on my recommendation and hadn't listened to it before because he was worried. And I think this is the problem that it was just going to be a self-congratulatory exercise a marketing exercise about um i remember back in uh when dr who started back in the uk they did a podcast and it was the two executive producers and literally it was just hooray

hooray for that person isn't that great isn't everything great and it didn't provide any insight into like the making of the show it was was, it was not helpful. Um, the Chernobyl podcast was, you know, they're not, they're not saying, wow, this episode sucked, right? Because it's the people who made it. And, uh, but it was insightful about how the show got made and the choices that were made. And, uh, the good place podcast is a little bit like that. Again, nobody's slagging anybody off and saying this is a terrible episode or that actor is a jerk. That's not going to happen on an official podcast. Nobody's going to say, wow, this one was a stinker, right? But that show, the Good Place podcast, has been really great and educational in terms of getting people from all over the crew to talk about their job.

So it's not just the actors and the writers, it's the actors and the writers, sure, but it's also directors and producers and set decorators and special effects people and script supervisors and things like that. So I find those two podcasts especially, and the Watchmen podcast was pretty good, although there were only three episodes of it,

which was very frustrating to me. But as somebody who listens to podcasts and watches TV, let me just say it, your show should have a podcast. Like every show should have a podcast. This is the brand extension. It's easy. It won't take too much time. It's fairly cheap.

And it will give your viewers more of what they want. So I think it's a natural that Apple's doing this. So I'm looking forward to it. I want the official For All Mankind podcast. And yeah, morning show podcast and whatever else. Do it. Let's make it happen. I want Ron Moore and his writing staff to go back through the first season of For All Mankind.

And I'll watch those episodes again and then listen to the podcast. Give me the director's commentary that i so greatly want right like that's that's kind of how i feel about this stuff right like i want that content give me give me give me give me i do i feel i feel for people like yourself jason who make podcasts about this type of content right because things get a little trickier to compete you know like when all the tv shows make the tv podcasts about tv shows it can be harder to stand out yeah i don't agree mostly because we as an independent podcaster about a tv show so i i'm doing that right now here's here's a plug i'll put in a plug i'm doing that right now. Here's a plug. I'll put in a plug. I'm doing that right now for the current season of Doctor Who and for the new Star Trek Picard show. And you can go to the

Incomparable. The Doctor Who stuff is in the TV podcast. And there's a podcast called Vulcan Hello where we talk about new Star Trek. So I'm doing it for two shows right now. And I did it for Game of Thrones and Star Trek Discovery. And I've done it for some other shows. The difference is that we can say, wow, that was a bad episode, or I didn't like that performance, or what were they thinking? We can be critical, we can be fans, and we can be excited, but there's no fallout from us saying that this episode was bad, or I questioned this performance, or I don't understand what they were doing here. Plus, we're not constrained by knowing what happens next, where you're not going to speculate about what happens, which we can do with a lot of these shows. Like, I wonder what will happen next.

Well, they know, so they're not going to say anything. They're not going to touch that. So I feel like, you know, it's the classic, maybe coming from journalism here is what colors this for me. But, you know, what we're doing is we are free to say whatever we want. What they're doing is marketing. Marketing can be really good content because they have access, but it's still marketing. So I want from the official podcast, I want to hear from the people who made it about the choices they made. I want to know about the creative process. I'm less interested in other stuff because it is marketing. But I don't think it's an issue for people who are on the outside because you're never going to get that from insiders, right?

You're never going to – that person won't last long in Hollywood if they appear on a podcast and say, yeah, my co-star really mailed it in. That was kind of a weak performance. I don't think he did a very good job. I don't want to work with him ever again. Like, that's never, ever going to happen. weak performance. I don't think he did a very good job.

I don't want to work with him ever again. That's never ever going to happen. Alright, this episode is brought to you by DoorDash. Whether you're super focused at work, having a chill day, or you forgot to do your meal prep for the evening, you still need to eat. And with DoorDash, you can have dinner from your favorite restaurant delivered right to

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Our thanks to DoorDash for their support of this show and RelayFM. your dinner and that code is upgrade for five dollars off your first order from doordash our thanks to doordash for their support of this show and relay fm jason i said that today january 27th was a uh was a was a day in the calendar a monumental day and it's because the ipad has turned 10 years old today would you like to talk about that for us? Yeah, it's, I mean, happy birthday, iPad, I guess. But it's, you know, 10 is a milestone for us, 10-fingered humans. And so I wanted to talk about it a little bit, like think about a decade of the iPad, and also to go back to the original event event that happened um 10 years ago the uh but you know first i think it's worth mentioning um john vorhees did a story about this on mac stories that just went up

about like all of the rumors and mock-ups and things about the ipad beforehand being a friend and a frequent iMessage compatriot of john Voorhees has been amazing over the last couple of weeks as he has been finding these super weird mock-ups that were being made in the months leading up to it. And most of them are in the article, at least the best ones on Mac Stories. But it's just hilarious to see what we thought this device might look like before it showed up. I mean, what the people who make mock-ups thought anyway. Yes. But yeah, but it's true.

Like the Mac, so 2010, like the iPhone had been out, but there was also this legacy of speculation that Apple's tablet computer was going to not be an iPhone. It was going to be a Mac. And that had been going on for a long time and it sounds like you know they were working on something like that inside apple and it was just it never it never really worked we also now know that the ipad actually was in process before the iphone and was impractical enough that they decided to go with the phone, the little phone first, and then come back to the bigger device.

Do you remember the Modbook? So this is, I wanted to mention it for people who don't remember it. Not only were people really intrigued by the idea of a tablet computer, because there have been tablet PCs. Microsoft had been making Windows and all the PC licenses with tablet PCs for a while. They weren't very good. They were actually kind of a failed category um and the if you if you look at my ipad my original ipad review

i say you know this is a failed category that it's coming into um but there was a company that was making the modbook a a it was a macbook it was a one of the plastic the polycarbonate macbooks like the white macbook and they basically bought one and tore it apart and then put it back together with a touch screen and so it was like thick but it was one slab and it was a touch screen and the idea was this is your touch screen mac this is your touchscreen mac this is your mac tablet uh which is funny because we you know there there has never been a mac tablet it is not a thing because the ipad happened instead but there was definitely in that in that era the the mac people had been agitating for an apple tablet that was based on OS 10. And a lot of the mock-ups pick that up, right? And they,

and they are showing, you know, not a big iPhone, but a big thick mod book, like Mac OS 10 thing. You can still, you can still get them. Mod book is still around.

Their website makes it seem like it has never changed, especially when they talk about the fact that you can put FireWire 800 on this thing, but you can still order from them a product like, I'm looking at their ordering form now, like you can get an

i7, bunch of RAM, they will still make these things if you want one. Oh, it has Touch Bar now. Isn't it wild? So they move the parts around and then put it in a new case. Yeah, so this is a thing. So anyway, at the time, that was what a lot of people were thinking. Also, the rumors, in the keynote, Steve Jobs even puts up a thing from the Wall Street Journal

that says it's the most anticipated tablet since the one that had commandments written on it. And it's true. The speculation was enormous. And the big bit of speculation that I remember is us arguing about the price. Oh, the price. Yes. And I would say that the most common price prediction was $9.99. But, you know, and they were arguing,

it's like, no, no, no, it's going to be $7.99. I don't think anybody, and certainly not very many people, predicted the real price, which was $4.99. And you can see in that video of the keynote that Jobs knows it, right? He knows that everybody is over-speculated about the price. And you could spec it up, right?

You could put it in cellular and more storage and it would be more expensive. But the base model Wi-Fi was $499. And he actually put up $999 in the slide and then has the $499 slam down and replace it. And that was a huge deal, right? Because Apple was saying, we have this incredibly hot new thing and it's the future of computing or whatever, and it's $4.99. And they optimized for that. In the stories go that they designed it to hit $4.99 and they made it. They didn't want this product to be more than $500 as a base. It is super hard to understate how much of a surprise that price was. At the time, nobody expected less than $1,000, like realistically.

You know, that was like, people like people were like oh if they can hit 999 like that's going to be great but like 499 for this product was incredible no matter what it was going to be right because it could have ended up being something way worse than what it was for 500 you know but for them for apple to release this product which was believed to be like their next big thing for 500 was a huge surprise i mean yeah it was basically the price of an iphone right like if you bought one but nobody was buying them we're all getting them on contracts and it was very different the iphone was i think more expensive than this but you didn't buy them outright you just bought them on contract but yeah

yeah so the idea of getting a much bigger tablet product from them was wild. Also, I think we were calling them slates, right? Like that was the thing then, more than tablet as well? It's not, no, it's even worse than that, Mike. It's worse than that. Tablet PCs was a thing for Microsoft, right? And Bill Gates tried to make tablet PCs happen for a long time.

HP had one. I remember he used to do all these presentations with them. Yeah. We just had it come up in the chat room where people were like, you know, Bill Gates was right for some definition of right, which is exactly right. Like Bill Gates was like, I'm a believer in this. But the stuff that they shipped was rejected by the market largely because it was just, it wasn't good.

It wasn't ready. It was not acceptable. But that was tablets. And so tablets was the category. Slate only became a thing, and this is hilarious, because there was a rumor in late 2009 that Apple's product was going to be called the iSlate. And there were other rumors about what it was going to be called. iTablet. I'm not sure if iPad was out there, but like the iSlate was the rumor that everybody kind of jumped on and said, well, this must be it.

And this is where CES comes into the story because of course, this is January 27th as we record this. So late January, CES had already happened. Well, those rascals at the Consumer Electronics Show who show you products that don't exist and stuff like that are also quick to jump on a trend. And they wanted to preempt Apple. So all of these products get shown at CES in 2010

before the iPad is announced. And they are all called slates. They're referred to as being in the Slate market. This is a new Slate we're going to create. And it's all because of this rumor that Apple's thing is going to be called the iSlate, which it wasn't. So that's where Slates come from.

Slates was an attempt to jump on Apple, and they failed. Also, I'll point out ipad name was widely mocked as a ridiculous name yes it's fine right like in the end this this shows you why as a marketer sometimes you just need to ignore the fact that they're going to be some wags who mock you a little bit uh if you think you've got a good name because it settled down very quickly and the iPad is fine and it's just that's what it is and it's not a big deal there's one of those it's like one of those things with all names eventually the name of the thing just becomes the thing

and there's no more association to it other than what it is right like you can have a name which seems funny for a little bit but then eventually everybody forgets why it's funny and it's just well it's the ipad like ipad becomes a word of its own right so then its associations wear away but yeah people didn't like the name the name was you know it was ipad is clunky when you think of it in the abstract but now we're so used to it it feels like the perfect name yeah it's and i think it's not much more clunky than ipod in fact i think the strongest argument against ipad is that it's so much like ipod and it gets confusing and back in the day you would you would think ipad but type ipod and have to fix it and now you think think whenever I am writing about the iPod, I type iPad.

And I'm like, God, no, it's iPod. It's not iPad because they're so close. But we've come a long way in 10 years. But also as well, you could probably see like, it was still a while,

but I think in Apple's mind, they were like, the iPad's going to be around longer than the iPod. So let's not worry about this association, right? Like they knew where it was going. Yeah, this is the era where the iPod, so let's not worry about this association, right? They knew where it was going. Yeah, this is the era where the iPod was becoming an app, right? It was the music app,

what used to be called iPod on the iPad and the iPhone. So it was headed that way. A widescreen iPod with touch controls. Sure. The event is great. I watched the event last week um stephen hackett did one better it's a great idea he watched the event and recorded his commentary with a little video inset about the event so you can go watch that and hasn't yet been copyright claimed no

not yet yeah still there uh 10 years on stephen hackett watching the apple event uh yeah uh i was thinking you could you could maybe argue that it's transformative but it probably isn't but anyway it's it's fun to see steven kind of do a commentary over the event about it and it is an amazing event um some background about that like so it's an event it was in san francisco at mosconi west i think in january apple had just like divorced itself from idg and idg world expo and said they weren't going to do mac world expo anymore and part of the you know idea there was that they didn't want to be limited to have to do like events whenever the calendar hit, like January events. And then they did an event in January in Moscone. I remember at the time thinking, well, way to show your independence, Apple.

It's a January event in San Francisco. You don't say. Like, you know, of course they could have done it at Macworld Expo. And it's a remarkable event because of the chair. It's got that chair that's on stage that they used, the jobs, but not just jobs used. And I think it's a remarkable event because of the chair. It's got that chair that's on stage that they use, the jobs, but not just jobs used. And I think it's so brilliant. I wrote about this at Macworld last week,

and we can put a link in the show notes. Having people sit in the chair and lean back and use the iPad, it's so smart because this is the education process of, here is how you will use an iPad, and here is what makes it different, is that you don't have a laptop in your lap, and you're not just holding onto a little phone. You've got this thing, and it's super comfy in the chair, and we're going to scroll around and look at the New York Times website for a very, very, very long time. That's what happens in that because they're so proud of Safari.

long time because that's what happens in that because they're so proud of safari at a lot it's iphone safari on a larger screen and look that real web you can actually read the words on the page now um so the chair is important um and of course steve jobs gets a big hand because he had been sick and people hadn't seen him in a while and there he is you could see it standing ovation right like he he was very very thin right like he clearly that was you know You could see it. Standing ovation, right? Like he was very, very thin, right? Yeah, for sure. Clearly, you could see that he'd been going through. Of course, he passes away in October of 2011, so he was around for about nearly two years after this,

but not that much longer. But it's often said in biographies and stuff how important this was to him to be able to be the person to show off this product to the world. Right. So my argument in the Macworld column is that the iPad succeeded where other tablet devices have failed because of what Apple did in this event to a certain degree and what it meant for where they where they took it. So, you know, tablet PCs still exist. And in fact, they're now like two and ones and convertibles and there's a whole PC category of running Windows. And they're they're better than they were.

But, you know, and we could argue about it but Microsoft has never been able to get everybody to convert everything to a tablet environment. You use a tablet PC and you're using a PC that can sometimes be put in a tablet configuration but it's really a PC

and it really wants a keyboard and a mouse and it's worth noting they're trying again right? Windows X which is coming for like the foldable and that they're trying this again like it's going to be wild to see if they're able to finally pull it off but the apps make it hard right yeah every attempt that they have had so far has has not worked out the way that they wanted all of their apps are you know or most of their apps want to be pc apps their their strength is that they've got this whole catalog of pc apps and the challenge is if you're using a surface and it's just a tablet and then you're in this you know pc mode

and it's it stinks like the the tablet interface is good but then you fall back and this is the important of apps like they tried they've tried a few. And this is the important of apps. Like they tried, they've tried a few times to do a new version of apps, including office that are like very tablet oriented, um, and touch oriented. And then, you know, so much of Microsoft stuff ends up being like, yeah, but the reason we use your stuff is because we have all these windows apps and it all kind of like pull the gravity kind of like pulls you back to using a pc apple oh i should say android tablets have a different problem and even though android tablets still exist and you can get them but they're basically a failure like they're a failure and the reason they're a failure is because um of apps again because of apps because on android

there were there are just not enough apps that are actually optimized for the tablet experience. Most of them are built are blown up phone apps, because the app developers aren't particularly motivated to serve the market of tablets. There's a little bit of a chicken and egg thing there where there aren't as many tablets as there maybe should be. And there are so many Android phones. And the Android developers are really focused on the phone apps more than anything else. And so Android tablets have also not done particularly well. And then there's the iPad, which has done well.

And it's because of the apps. And it's visible on day one in this presentation why that is. Modern history shows that it's kind of strange that android phones succeeded because every other category so watches right so smart watches uh tablets like apple has dominated them to the point that really there's only one company making truly successful products right in those fields right like if you want a smart watch the apple watch is so much better than the competition same for tablets so it's kind of funny really when you think about it that like there was the ability for other companies to make compelling and

excellent smartphones that are popular when all of the other consumer technology products made by apple and by the same companies making the smartphones that are succeeding are not working it's kind of weird right yeah well i mean the smartphone one is the big one and you know to google's credit like they got android out there and they got the partners they used the microsoft model of third-party hardware developers and they did the core stuff and they built up their app platform but it's like they tried the exact same thing with google wear and and tablet uh versions of android and it just it hasn't worked i think the answer is it's partially the quality of the platform but it's partially the weight of the size of the category that smartphones and i'm going to get to this

about the iphone in a second or the ipad in a second but like android phones like that's a gold rush you you want to be on android because there's so many android phones and if you can make money you know which is harder to make money on android but you can make money on android as an app developer uh in volume because the sheer volume of it and android where you know there is a chicken and egg problem there and it's like people didn't really it didn't it didn't really go as well as people thought it might and you know maybe there were development issues but it's also like i feel like on the android side there's so much of like well let's see i could do that or i could just do the phone where i'm going to make a lot of money because there's so many people who have android phones i think

maybe that's part of it all right so the three different things that they did about apps in my thesis about the ipad succeeding where other products failed and dominating kind of the mind share of what a tablet device is, it's an iPad, that's the answer, is it's all in that presentation. So it's three things they did. First, they showed the built-in apps, which, you know, it's like, how is this a little bit different?

How is this device different from an iPhone is basically the lesson that's being given there. Look at these iPhone apps. How is it different but familiar, right? That was the key. Yeah, it's given there. Look at these iPhone apps. How is it different but familiar, right? That was the key. It's like, look at all these iPhone apps. Oh, they're different because they're on a big screen and that you can do more with them. And this is why there's so much Safari

and so much New York Times and why Steve Jobs is just going, let's go to the National Geographic website. Yeah, let's look in mail and all that. It's to say, hey, even when it is just a big iPhone, you guys know the iPhone. You like the iPhone, right? Well, it's way better if you can have a sidebar with your list of messages and then tap on one and then see it on the right. Or it's better to see a webpage full size instead of in a little tiny phone window.

And so that was like step one was iPhone apps apps are better on the ipad because they they stretch to fit and they and they uh change to take advantage of the space that was that was like message number one for jobs which is super important i think so um number two is the third party apps and this is something that i had forgotten just how hard they hit this this is like bringing out Scott Forstall to talk about iPad app development and the way they do it is really funny too it's like hey it'll run iPhone apps and they spent some time on that it's like look I got an iPhone app oh it's little I'm gonna press this little button and now it's gonna be big it's still an iPhone app but but look at it um and I remember at the time thinking, and just afterward thinking,

well, this will get better, right? Apple will make the iPhone app emulation on the iPad a little bit better over time, right? Nope. Never touched it. Never touched it. And this is part of their message. But it looks exactly the same.

You run an iPhone app today today you can make it two times bigger it looks like crap and it runs like that they never change that it's like steve jobs reaching out of the past and saying if you want to use just an iphone app it's gonna suck okay like get get a better app get get a developer who cares about the iPad. In a way that is almost like un-Apple-like, right? Where they're like, no, we're just not necessarily going to make this bad, but we are not going to do anything to make this better. Right, because we want to force our developers to have a bad experience on the iPad and inflict a bad experience on their customers

in order to force them to do an iPad version of their app. That is absolutely part of the message. So he talks about that for a while and it's like, hey, you know, and I think the sense there is that some other companies might say, good news, we have this development, this emulation thing, this phone mode for these apps. And Apple instead is like swerving where they're like, Hey, we've got this thing. It sucks. So here's what you want to do. We've got three months until we ship this thing, uh, developers. And, uh, so you, and the SDK for this, the software development kit for this, for third-party app developers is available now. So you've got three months to turn all your iPhone apps into iPad apps and be there on day one of the ipad keeping in mind that we are in this period in the throes of it's like the

height of the iphone app store gold rush so everybody is like oh new apple product apps make a lot of money i want to be there on day one for the ipad and he says, Forstall says, like, if you are using an iPad and you go to the app store, you can find iPhone apps, but we're not going to show them to you, which is still the case today. Like you can get to them, but, uh, developers, if you just having a, an iPhone app in the app store is not going to get you on the iPad at launch. People want, they won't even see you in any of the pages unless they look for you. Yeah.

Right. Which is like, how much clearer could this message be? But, but, so, so you got, you're a second class app on this new platform.

We're giving you three months to fix that. And everybody's already hyped up with those, like I became a millionaire because I wrote a fart app kind of things that are going on.

And so it was the perfect storm for Apple to get broad developer embrace of the iPad. They had existing apps that were already on the platform with iPhone. They had reasons to bring it to the ipad that apple was kind of bringing down the hammer and saying we're gonna you know not display your app if you don't do this and we will highlight you if you do and everybody's kind of pumped about the money that's being made in the app store and you put those things together and there were a lot three months later two months later there are a lot of ipad apps on day one lots and lots and i think one of the things for that is like you saying that the stories were because when the App Store launched

there wasn't a lot of apps. There weren't like a million apps. There were some, but there were enough that it was still pretty normal for people to look through the App Store and just browse everything and buy what they wanted right

like i think you know anybody that was around then in like 2008 or what i think it was 2008 that's what we did right i think if i look at my first apps i have like a french translation app you know it's just like why did i i don't know why i bought that right but but i but people were just buying stuff because it was available and i think that the the promise of that again was incredibly enticing to people right like the app store is launching again this device will be popular if we make an app and get it in the app store we might make millions in one day because people were looking for new apps which is why when the ipad app store launched we were full of apps that were like something something hd do you remember that was the like

the naming convention for apps was like flight control hd and like evernote hd like that was like the the kind of the the naming du jour for like ipad versions of applications because you got to remember as well there were no universal apps at this point right this was just like you had an ipad app and you had an iphone app and they were separate oh you're right you're right it wasn't even universal was it so you made a brand new build and the great thing about it was you as a developer were able to charge your customer again and when when does that happen, right? Yep, yep, it's pretty good. But there was another part, right?

It wasn't just the third-party apps. Apple kind of put their money where their mouth was. Yeah, so this is the thing that I remember at the time thinking, wow, this is a big move and it's a surprising move because that could have been enough, right? Like, hey, this is a great platform. It's got built-in apps that we're doing that are great, that are made better on the iPad than they are on the iPhone by adjusting them. And you could do that too, developer, and make money.

That's not where they stopped. They went and put another stake in the ground that still is having an effect to this day. Apple has been remarkably consistent. This is not one of those things sort of like with the Apple Watch where they threw a bunch of stuff against the wall and then sort of figured out what the Apple Watch was.

The iPad from day one, anybody who tells you, oh, well, the iPad was a content consumption device and then Apple pivoted and tried to make it into a work tool and did the iPad Pro and added keyboards and stuff like that. But that was a change.

It was not a change. On day one, on announce day, Apple announced full iWork apps for the iPad. They rolled out. They said, we're going to do iWork apps, numbers, pages, keynote. And they demoed them. pages, keynote. And I demoed them. And this is the message that was, I think, really important to send up front, which was, this is not just a big iPhone. The size doesn't just give you a broader canvas. It allows you to do more. And this is the part of the demo where Apple's starting to shift a little bit and say, this is a laptop competitor. there are things you can do on a laptop

that this thing can do. Like don't think of this as a big iPhone because it has a spreadsheet and it has a word processor and it has a presentation program. Think of this as an alternative to a laptop and that you can use it to do real work as we still say. But it was there from day one.

And there was even, and everybody including me forgets, there was even a keyboard accessory on day one because Apple announced that they were shipping this thing that was the keyboard dock. Now it didn't last. They didn't do another one. They only did that first one. was the keyboard dock. Now it didn't last. They didn't do another one. They only did that first one, but there was a keyboard dock that was literally a, an Apple keyboard, uh, with attached to a stand with a dock connector on it. And you put the iPad in, in vertical in portrait orientation and jobs actually makes a joke about like, you can type Warren peace on it or something. He's, I don't think he loved that

accessory very much i think he didn't like the idea necessarily of the ipad being a uh a writing tool at a desk because he liked it in his hands but whoever was making these decisions like there it is like it's it's right there the so we have these arguments about can you use the ipad to do real work and who are these people and i think it's funny that this was not um a a you know a change in direction by apple this was part of the plan from the start the message was there from the start uh not just to users but also to developers and i remember like um talking to a wwdc i think maybe talking to the Omni group that year and how they had committed to basically bring all of their devices, or maybe it was even earlier than that, all of their apps to the iPad. And they were emboldened by what Apple did. They got the message and other app developers got the message that like, don't just think of this as a place for big iPhone apps.

message that like, don't just think of this as a place for big iPhone apps. Think of this as a place for you to deploy apps that do the kinds of things you expect a computer to do. And I think that was really important to set that as a goal from the very start. And yeah, that original iPad was limited, but it was there from the start. That keyboard accessory is funny, but you look at it now and it was just, you could put your iPad, just attach it to a magic keyboard. They just put a dock connector on the end of a magic keyboard.

Yeah, and a weight. It actually was really heavy because they wanted it to be like not slide around or flop over. Because you'd be tapping on the screen, right? But it was a needed accessory. The idea of the creation versus consumption, you know, that was the phrase that became a meme in the end, really.

But, like, that was the phrase for years. And I agree with you. Like, what I would say on that is, I would say for most of the iPad's life up until 2015, it was mostly a consumption device for most most people but i agree with you that this was not what apple wanted to put out into the world right it was a different thing when it got into the hands of consumers and the way that they used it and it was a different thing when like you know the the market started to change around the ipad and sales started to decline which i'm

sure we're going to talk about in a little bit. But the the and then really like use cases changed and it became like this is an entertainment device. And that was that way for a while. But I agree clearly when it was being announced and Apple was showing off, that was not their intention. It was great for consumption, but as good for creation. Right. I think that was what they were trying to show. And this was what they wanted. They wanted the platform to go in that direction.

This is also Apple declaring its intent. Like, we cared enough to build the iWork apps for this thing. And this is where this thing is going. And they weren't wrong, but you're right. It took a lot longer for it to get there. And, you know, they may have even known that up front, but it did allow them to set that course and probably start selling them into businesses, right? Because Apple to this day

talks about how they have so many enterprise partners, very large corporations that are doing all these deployments using iPads. And I think it was a key part of the iPad's growth over the decade that we don't talk about when we think about consumer tech, but that Apple used it as a way in, along with the iPhone, a way into Fortune 500 companies with their tech, where the Mac maybe couldn't go because they had PCs. But with iPad and iPhone, they could get in there. And the iPad turned out to be a real success story.

they could get in there. And the iPad turned out to be a real success story. I mean, very rarely does a quarter go by where they don't mention the success with examples of iPad in Fortune 500 companies on that analyst call that they do after the results come out. Every time there's a we, and they'll pick an industry and they'll be like, we have seen a great success in the shipping industry where iPad is being used. And it's always in there. So it's a huge part that doesn't get as much attention of what they're doing. And that's a result of Apple putting that stake in the ground too. All right.

Let's take a break and we can continue talking about the iPad at 10. Today's show is also brought to you by Pingdom. Look, our friends over at SolarWinds make a great product for Pingdom because it helps make websites run better. It makes them faster. Today's internet users expect fast, reliable web experiences. Our internet connections are not the problem anymore, right? Like you don't have, when typically when a website doesn't load, it's because there's something wrong going on on the website. And no matter how good your content is, no matter how effective your marketing might be, people are going to leave if your website is loading too slowly. With real user monitoring from Pingdom, you can discover how website performance issues

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It is classic Jobs. It's not, you know, the iPhone demo, which is for lots of reasons, the kind of pinnacle, but it's really good. It's also really funny to see the other stuff that maybe you erased from your mind. Your mental picture of what the iPad launch event is,

is probably not what the actual event is. You know, we mentioned jobs getting a standing ovation. It was obviously, you know, everybody knew that he was not well and that this was a big moment and that he was back on stage. And he was delighting in it as well.

I think people were thinking at the time too, like, Oh, he's so sick. He has to sit in the chair. It's like, that's not why the chair is there. I mean, maybe, but that's the chair is a really effective prop. Um, the other thing I wanted to mention here is just that I, you know,

I went to the event, but then I watched it. This is one of those things where you go to the event and then later you're like, you know, I was taking notes. I was sending messages around. I need to watch this again to get the full picture of it and take more notes and then write more about it. And I remember I was at home watching a replay of it on the TV and realized that my five-year-old son was standing behind me, behind the couch, staring at the TV. And I had one of those moments of like, Oh no, I've exposed a young child to a completely untempered reality distortion field. This is very dangerous. And,

uh, and he's standing back there and his eyes are wide open and he's just like, Oh, this is great. I want it. When are we going to get it? I want it.

And for the next like months until we got one, he just kept on saying the iPad, we got to get it? I want it. And for the next like months until we got one, he just kept on saying the iPad, we got to get it. It's amazing. Just like a young mind exposed to the Steve jobs, uh, selling points. And he was completely enthralled by it.

It was amazing to watch. And I also felt a little bit bad because it was like, Oh no, you're a kid who grows up in the 21st century and a house that basically doesn't even have commercials in it anymore on TV, and you just saw the iPad launch event. The best commercials. The biggest commercial. Steve Jobs demo.

The best commercial available. Yeah. Sorry, kid. We should also mention, you touched on it briefly, like mention the sales curve of the iPad. The iPad had a real interesting story or really interesting life because that initial surge of interest, they had a couple of years where they sold like 30 billion in iPads, $30 billion in iPads. And then it went down for, as we know, because we watched it fall, it kept going down and down and down and down. And we're like, where does it end? Where does the iPad hit? And everybody had theories about like, well, there's a buying cycle and there's a long buying cycle for the iPad. And there was initial interest and that was great, but it's not something that's sustainable in the long term. And it turns out the

last few years, it has stabilized as a business that is in the $20 billion a year range. And it's the size of the Mac, more or less. And it is growing a bit. So, you know, it's not the iPhone. Nothing is. But in 10 years, it has become as big a part of apple's business as the mac is and keeping in mind the mac sales are about as good as they've ever been yeah i mean it took its time right and and i think one of the reasons you know we spoke about this already but the reasons it took its

time is it needed to find its place right a little bit more than the just the original idea because frankly like a screen that you use in your home for entertainment is a thing that people were used to and we don't change them a lot and it's televisions right so the idea of this device which is mainly used for entertainment in the home it's probably not going to get upgraded that much or people bought it and realized that they didn't have a need for it it took the ipad pro to really i think show that there was something more and reinvigorate apple as well into making the device more of what they thought it could ultimately become and that's where we are today right like ipad os is is just another example of showing that this product deserves

even more attention right like it deserves to be treated with the respect of the mac it deserves to be treated with the respect of the iPhone as even the Apple Watch, funnily enough, as like a platform deserving of its own, you know, like focused development from the platform holder. And that's kind of where we are today. But I think maybe it would have,

back then in 2010, would have even maybe seemed to be more likely that that would happen than it was in 2019. Yeah, I think if I'm surprised by anything, it's that the road has been longer. And I have some theories about why. I think some of it is consumer acceptance. I think people got this thing because it looked super cool and then realized that they were mostly just going to use it to look at web pages and watch videos.

And then they didn't need to buy a new one to do that. It just did that. So they didn't need to buy it and the sales go down. And then there's this sort of upswing of using it for other things that has happened and it's all kind of like come together but um part of it is on apple you know i think directly or indirectly iphone sales from those charts that i did right iphone sales in this decade exploded. Like after the iPad came out in like 2012, 13, 14, as the iPad sales are going up and having their kind of bubble,

but the iPhone exponentially accelerated and it didn't stop for like, there's like five years where the growth in the iPhone is enormous. And I think, and I'm not able, you know, I'm not someone who's inside Apple who can say for sure, but it sure looks to me like Apple looked at the explosive growth of the iPhone and said, we got to put our foot on the gas. Like we have to focus on the iPhone because look at what it's doing. And even as the iPad was growing, it was nothing.

Like that chart shows like two or three years, the iPhone had achieved liftoff. It was off the chart of the iPad. Like it was never going to return there. The iPad was doing nice growth. And then there was the iPhone. And I think probably for a lot of good, legitimate reasons, Apple was like, we got to focus on the iPhone now. And as a result, pace of innovation on the ipad really slowed like we because it talked to anybody who's an ipad fan today and they will tell you they will lament the slow pace of iphone or ipad development that you know every other year we get some software

updates the ipad you know some of it like i said is consumer acceptance and not being ready to think of this as another device that could replace their laptop but like the ipad pro could be at the level it is today it could have been at this level five years ago yeah yeah but it's kind of funny right like i was just talking about ipad os there is no greater proof of this like fear and distrust in ipad updates that the year after apple say it's going to get its own operating system we're still scared that they won't give it any updates this year yeah right so like this has been the kind of the feeling of the the ipad faithful over this time is that it's just not going to be loved as much. And I think the reason was,

it was as you mentioned, the iPhone went wild. But I think with the iPad, Apple were hoping they were going to get another iPhone-sized business, which they got until the iPhone business became a lot bigger than they expected. So what they ended up with was another Mac-sized business, which would have been

great in 2010 but you know but by 2011 that was very that was a very different thing because the company started to change because it became the iphone company and that changed the trajectory of the of everything to do with them right every part of apple was changed because of that i think it's also the source of some of apple's problems in the tooth in the 2010s with both you know we we talk about all the mac issues that they had yep like it's very easy to say they took their eye off the ball when it came to their other products because of the iphone i think to a certain degree they did but i think also to a certain degree you could argue they should have the other ball in the room

was so big it pushed the other balls out of the room it couldn't keep their eye on the ball because the ball was too big yeah the room was full of one giant ball and then there were you couldn't even see the other balls there's like two tennis balls and an earth ball right

and how could you not? Your eye was literally stuck to the giant ball. Anyway. You couldn't see past the ball. Couldn't see past the one ball. Yes. Anyway, Apple, that's our metaphor about Apple being a room with a giant ball in it. Enjoy.

It could fit inside of the spaceship. There's a big hole in the middle. Yeah. The ball would go right in there. there's a big hole in the middle you just put the ball in there um that's a carnival game put the ball in the apple park hall uh i i and this is why i have to say it would be easy to be like shame shame apple on how you treated the mac and the and the ipad during this decade but it's like you know they had a rocket ship with the iphone and they needed to do it and while i wish they had put more attention on the ipad the ipad especially like was part of

the iphone and the iphone operating system and i'm sure it didn't get the love and attention that could have made it like an apple that just had the ipad and the mac during the decade of the 2010s could have lavished and would have lavished way more attention on both and they would both be further along as platforms except they wouldn't be because all of the money that came in because of the iphone accumulated to apple in some other ways including making the app environment on the ipad more vibrant and you know and having a halo effect where people love their iphone and came to other apple products and like so you can't pull that thread really like the iphone needed to exist but because it was so huge which was good for apple as a whole i do think that the ipad story

over the its first decade was at least, you know, in the middle of the decade was a missed opportunity. They have done better and we're all hoping that they will do better in 2020. So we should wrap this up by talking a little bit, a little bit bigger picture about like the iPad in our lives. Is that like where it fits today, 10 years later? Yeah, I think so. I had a real like stop, start relationship with the iPad where at first,

you know, I was absolutely blown away by the iPad. Like I spoke about this on, I think it was on in our draft, right? When we were last week that the ipad my excitement for the ipad started my career in podcasting because i was so excited about this technology i felt like i needed a place to talk about it and so you know 2010 april 2010 which was when the ipad came out was when i started my podcasting career right because i was this was like technology was getting to a point

where it felt like it was changing and changing again significantly in my lifetime you know like i felt like we were moving the you know the iphone the ipad this was new stuff like this was stuff that was being created and i was watching it right and i could talk about it rather than i came into the world where the mac existed and where pcs existed and they grew and they were always a part of my life but this this was just touchscreen technology this was new this was it for me right but then kind of as time went on i was off and on with the ipad for a while you know like it didn't do what i wanted it couldn't do what my mac could do you know i believe it or not mike hurley big mac fan right like has been a mac user for 16 years right like big time right and over time my my interest kind of waned the ipad mini really

brought me back in for a while you know i loved that ipad mini used to use it all the time used it everywhere right it was just a great little device and i would be off and on right like you know an ipad would come out for size one and it would be impressive in some way like the ipad air or whatever right like it's like oh this is interesting but then uh ios nine right with the multitasking i think it was nine that was when it really kind of started to feel like again for me i hadn't used an ipad in years like quite some time in that point like seriously but it was like oh this is interesting and i was at wwdc i bought an ipad air 2 to put the beta on it um and was like oh yeah okay i can see this and so when the ipad pro was introduced i had been tinkering around with the ios beta for long enough to feel like i could see how this could become and it had started to become a more serious work device for me

during that point, right? Like just with the Bay, or just with Apple's apps, right? Like Notes, Safari, and Mail, I'd started to use the iPad Air 2 as a productivity device again in a way that I hadn't really seriously done in quite a while. So when the iPad Pro came out, I was like, oh, all right. Like, that's what I want, right?

Like, I didn't know. I couldn't see, like, the forest from the trees, right? Like, I know we were talking about it. There were rumors. But the idea of this, like, it was the keyboard, right like we knew i think we knew we knew the large ipad was coming but it was the whole package i don't think we could have foresaw that in the way that apple showed it off and then when i saw what they had and i could see how i could compare it to what i was already doing with the ipad air 2 right it was like yeah i get this yeah i think

the magic for me about that ipad pro launch which was like a year after i left idg and started doing this like the ipad pro launch i had started to push the ipad and i'll get to it in a minute because i'll talk about how you know how it my story here too but I'd started to get it like like oh let's use this more and that was when the iPad Pro came out I was like okay let's do this right like it was I was kind of primed for it in a way where it didn't I didn't like the iPad Pro didn't come out and I went oh yeah we were we were very clearly on a similar trajectory then and we were definitely I'm sure you could go back in the history of this show and find the conversations. But Federico was ahead of us, right?

And had been in for a while. And then people like me and you would start. It really was iOS 9, right? I think that, again, if that was the one with multi, it was iPad multitasking. It was one of these things that really was like, I can do a lot more with this than i can on an iphone right like that was what showed that it could be done because the ipad was still one app at a time experience the difference being you had a larger software keyboard or maybe a third-party keyboard that you attach to it right and so it was you know you could start to see with multitasking that this was a product that you could push,

and it was powerful, and it can handle it. So the iPad Pro was like, yes. So then when the iPad Pro came out, I bought it and then immediately replaced my laptop with it. So I was still using a laptop at that time. But when it came out, I just stopped using macbook pro for anything i would use a macbook pro for because the ipad pro with the smart keyboard just and the apple pencil just made complete sense for me in my life and i have not looked back since like the the ipad pro is my favorite computer ever right like you know the current one that we have because the

ipad pro keeps getting better and better right like i don't uh yearn for the 2015 ipad pro the way that some people might yearn for a macbook air right like we're still very much in the in the world of like this product continues to improve so whatever is the current one is my favorite but it's it just works for me the ipad os ios before it right like it works in a way that makes sense to my brain um it i can make it sing the way that i want to right like it it works in ways that i can't really express right right? There are times where I know, I know not only that I can get things done faster with a Mac in some areas, like I know the way in which to do it.

It's not like I'm held back for a lack of understanding macOS, but it is just pure preference in hardware and operating system where it's like, I just enjoy enjoy this more and it is like the full package that i love and so now like i'm in my business is run from an ipad and the mac for me is a tool in the same way my microphone is right it is a very powerful piece of equipment that I use for a purpose. But my computing, my personal computing, my business computing, right, all of the work that I'm doing that isn't sitting in front and

recording or editing is all done on the iPad. And I don't want it any other way. Like that is for me where the iPad sits. Like it is the most important computer in my life yeah i'm i don't think i'm as far along as you but i did as people to listen to the show will know i stopped using a mac laptop basically entirely a few years ago um and it was a progression right like so much of what i used my laptop for at home especially when i was you know working in an office but even once i was working in my garage here i would have my macbook air in the living room in the bedroom and i'd be like reading email and looking at twitter and reading web pages and all of that stuff was so easily replaced by an ipad because it's so much more comfortable. I just think those exact things, an iPad is better than a Mac 4, like in my opinion.

Well, I mean, why do I need, if I'm writing an email, having a keyboard is better. But if I'm just sort of like, the things that I would do, it's the evening, it's the weekend. I'm not intensely working, but I am, you know, looking at Twitter and making, you know, little comments and answering quick emails and stuff like that. And it was just so easy for the iPad to replace the laptop there because I didn't need that laptop shape. It wasn't as convenient. And that had a knock-on effect, which was it meant that when I traveled, I wanted to travel with the iPad, which meant that I now had an iPad and a MacBook Air because I could just do it all on the MacBook Air, but oh, it was so much nicer to watch videos on the iPad

and to read Twitter on the iPad and all those things. So now I'm traveling with two devices. Next step is, why do I have two devices? I'm not leaving the iPad behind. Can I leave the MacBook behind? And there was a gradual process of like, what can I do on my iPad? And this is can i can i leave i'm not i'm not leaving the ipad behind can i leave the macbook behind and there was a gradual process of like what can i do on my ipad and this is the pre-ipad pro time i have a very clear memory of sitting at my in-laws uh kitchen table writing an article for mac world on um the uh that uh that origami in case origami thing where you'd snap in an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and then fold it back and put the iPad on it and you got

like a little iPad case thing. The Studio Neat guys did their version of that with the canvas. Canvas? Is that what it's called? Canopy. Canopy. That's it. Can. Whatever. The canopy. And that was way before iPad Pro.

But I remember that was me on a trip pushing, like, do I need to bring my laptop? Can I just use the iPad for this? And some of the stuff wasn't good enough. Some of the stuff wasn't ready. But it was me kind of pushing and exploring there. And then the iPad Pro comes along. And that helps a lot. And the smart keyboard and multitasking helped.

And all of these things start to kind of like to roll to the point where, as we talked about on this podcast a lot, like other than recording some podcasts, which even then it's more possible now, like most of the reasons I would travel with a laptop just dropped away. And the iPad pro was enough to the point where today I even edit. I've been editing the incomparable on the iPad using ferrite since last summer. And this is not just when you're traveling.

This is just always. I there was the we did our big clip show episode that I did on my Mac and it was the first episode of the incomparable. I'd edited on my Mac since June. Um, so I just, I, and the reason why it's not like on a dare, I dared myself to do it. I did a little bit cause I like ferrite.

And when I started using the Apple pencil with ferrite, I really enjoyed it. And I think it actually makes me a better editor, but also I edit the incomparable on the weekend. And even though I work at home now and I could edit it on the Friday, I kind of like, it sort of fits in my life as a Saturday morning, usually sometimes Sunday morning editing job that I do. And I wanted to do it in my house where my family is and not out closed up in the garage where I spent the week.

And that was sort of a motivator to put it on the iPad because the iPad is the thing that I use outside of my Mac at my desk. And that is sort of how the Mac has become defined to me. Similar to you, a little bit different because I do work mostly at my desk during the day. I am writing not, sometimes I will switch to the iPad just to do my writing. Other times I'll just write at the desk, but everything else I do, I'm kind of at my iMac. But when I'm out of my office, whether it's traveling or just in the house, I'm using the iPad. So if I want to be in the house to edit The Incomparable, where we have a heater and my family is there and it's more cozy

then i need to do that on the ipad so i do um i i every now and then think to myself like would i abandon the mac entirely or more than i do now and i think it would be really hard i think i would need a very strong motivation to do it because there are a lot of things I still just avoid on the iPad and say, I will do that when I'm back on my Mac. But I will say this. Dating from 1990, so the last 30 years, the only two computer platforms, computer, I'm going to say, I'm going to leave the smartphone out of it, that I have used, that I have embraced and have gone deep into are the Mac, because I bought my first Mac in computing platforms in my life. There are the, you know, the early days computers, like the first computer I had was a Commodore PET. The second computer I had was an Apple IIe.

Then I got a Mac and I'm still using the Mac 30 years later. The only other operating system that has stuck with me and that has insinuated its way into my life is the iPad. I am also an iPad user. And it just strikes me because I always thought of myself as a Mac user for 30 years now, a Mac user, that that was who I was. And I'm a multi-platform computer user and have been for like five years at least. And it's because of the iPad. So I have a loyalty to the iPad that is kind of unexpected, but here's where I am. Like I ended up there for a lot of reasons that I think going back to that initial launch 10 years ago are elaborated on in that keynote in certain ways. I can look back and say, I see where you're going with this and I see why it fit with ultimately how I wanted to use a

computer in my life. And, uh, so yeah, that's, I think Steve jobs, I, you get a real sense when you watch Steve jobs in that, that he knows that, you know, he's, his health is questionable. How long am I going to be able to do this? Um, and that his glee in doing it, I think ties back to the original Mac premise, which is, this is a computer for the rest of us that like the ipad allows you to drop even more of the trappings of personal computers the the most recent generation of personal computers macs and pcs and replace it with something new um and i you know it's not replacing everything those things still exist but on another level i think he wasn't wrong that this fulfills the same kind of thing they were trying to do when they brought out the Mac. And it was so different from the command line computers of the time. 2010, which was now you don't need the keyboard and the mouse anymore either. We've pushed it even further. And that's the thing that I walk away with 10 years later, most of all is seeing

Steve Jobs on that stage, miss that guy, really loved it when he came out and said, good morning. It was really amazing. Every time he did it. And when he died, I remember thinking, I'm not going to get that good morning from the PA system anymore. But here he was making his, what turned out to be last definitive statement about the kind of the mission he'd been on all along, which was to take this technology and make it different and simpler and more intuitive for regular people.

Cars and trucks. Yeah, right. It's all cars and trucks. You use a truck now. Your Mac is a truck now. My Mac is kind of use you use a truck now your mac is a truck now my mac is kind of becoming more of a truck now it's true what was that it was like at the d conference right when when you spoke about that like yeah there can be space for both the ipad is like a car most people just need a car but every now and then you need a specific use case

you know you're moving house you need to try and i understand we are our podcast reaches a lot of truck truck drivers like i mean first off first off literally i have heard from them long haul truck drivers listen to a lot of podcasts we're big in the trucking industry but second metaphorical truck drivers also because computer people like technical people we have needs that are greater needs we're both truck drivers yeah but metaphorical truck drivers but you don't always need our trucks sometimes sometimes we just drive our cars but the truth is the smart the smartphone shows it right the smartphone shows it like everybody's almost everybody in the world's most important computer device by far is their phone what is that like a bird scooter or something yeah phone and no i mean you could

argue that it's the it's the the the walking the real car the basic car okay but uh but it doesn't yeah it doesn't do everything that is super computery so then you sometimes but yeah it's just uh it's funny 10 years it's it's worth looking back I think at again something that took me by surprise and became like the other computing platform that I'm that I use a lot and I didn't really see it coming in a way

I'm pleased that we spent some time talking about this today alright shall we do some Ask Upgrade to round out today's episode? It's a great idea. This episode is brought to you by Booz Allen. Modernizing for the future is a challenge, especially for large organizations.

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And Jason, I will start our hashtag AskUpgrade today. We have a question from Eric, and Eric has this question for me, which is, I apologize for starting with a question for myself, but that's just the way that the Magic 8 Boulevard upgrade has shaken out today. And Eric wants to know, Mike, now that you've had your iPhone 11 Pro Max

clear case for a few months, can you give a quick review of how it's going? Has it yellowed yet? Are the buttons any easier to press? Let me just say, I do not use this case anymore, but I do have a long experience with it. I have switched to one of the Otterbox pop socket cases because it's just cool to have a pop socket

constantly attached to my phone and the case is nice. But I actually ended up wanting to move away from the clear case. It didn't yellow. Honestly, I don't think it will. from the the clear case it didn't yellow honestly i don't think it will uh my mom had a uh clear case for a iphone what was the colored iphone 5c yeah um she had a clear case for that i don't remember where we got it even was that that was the one that apple made a clear case for right oh i don't remember you Testing my Apple accessory knowledge. I'm really trying now. I'm really reaching

back into history for that one. I'm not sure if they made... They didn't make a clear case for that phone. What am I talking about? I don't think they made clear cases until recently. They made a clear case for the XR. This is what I'm thinking of. Not the 5C. The colored, bright colored XR.

She had one of the weird circular hole cases for the 5C. That's what I'm thinking of. Oh, colored bright colored she had one of the weird circle hole cases for the 5c that's what i'm thinking of oh yeah she had one of those swiss cheese cases the swiss cheese case but she did also have a clear case for her 10r and this has had that long enough in mind and that's working great um there's there's no yellowing on that reason i mentioned it's because she's had that one for a couple of years now and it's and it's perfect so there was no yellowing on mine either. I don't think the plastic is going to do that, honestly, in any space of time. But the buttons got a little bit easier to press, but it was still harder than the buttons

on the other cases. The main reason I changed is that clear case traps a ton of lint. All cases do, but you can't usually see it. So there was always dust and particles in the case in places that i would basically have to take the phone out to clean it but as soon as i put it back in in 10 minutes it's collecting more lint again so you know i like the idea of being able to see it but then again after a few months of owning the uh the midnight green phone i wasn't as excited about seeing the color all the time right so didn't mind about switching to a different color case i have like

a blue uh pop socket autobox case now which i'm very um i have a very quick answer to this question which is my daughter has an iphone 11 and she has the clear case for it because she wants to see the purple and i asked her about it when we saw her last weekend, and she said she still likes it, and it's great. So there you go. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's fine. I just didn't like the lint.

But if that doesn't bother you, then go for it. It's cool to see the colors. She wants to see the purple, although it's funny because she doesn't see as much of the purple because she's got one of those stick-on wallets on the back. Oh, okay. So it's a compromise right like she wants to see the color and it's it's really nice but then she has to cover some of it up because she carries her stuff it's like that was a that was a uh deal

breaker like she has to have she used to have a bendy iphone case and she had her cards in it and on this one it's not you can't really do that so she got a thing that sticks on the back and it wears off after a while so like she's on her second one now but um and she seems to like it um i i do wonder over time as pretty as that purple phone is if she might not be better off with like a case that's got a wallet built into it instead but we'll see phil asks what are your recommendations for password management i'm currently using a password protected apple note she probably shouldn't tell people that phil but now all the upgradians know uh i feel like i should be using something more secure. Jason, what do you use?

1Password. Yeah. I think that's the answer for most of us, right? Yeah. I mean, I started one of the smart things that they did is there was a period like a decade ago maybe where they just gave it away. Like you could, any product you got and free 1Password, they were like bundled everywhere. But the smart thing is it got people using it. And as they did updates uh they you know they converted those people into paying customers and i started using it back then and now i have a you know i have a family account

and i share you know the one the passwords that my wife and i both need are in the shared bundle and all that and i just i use it for for uh everything and and notes um are secure in there and i put my passport information in there and like there's although you think of it as an autofill password thing it is for everything like it is you can stick a bunch of encrypted stuff behind that password and one password it's very convenient i use one password too i think it's the best app out there. I've trusted it for years, right? Like for all of those reasons. I have multiple team subscriptions now for business and personal rights.

I have a team and family, like just the whole shebang. They recently announced a significant investment, which is very new for them. The company had taken on an investment. And they appear to be going through some business changes because of this. Now, this stuff doesn't inherently mean that there's going to be a problem or a change,

but things could change. What they want to do as a company could change because of this. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. We'll have to wait and see. So basically, I say this because it's'm i am choosing to reserve my judgment on this and evaluate one password over time to see if they're still the right thing for me but like i think that it is worth noting that whilst i still wholeheartedly recommend them something has changed at one password right and we don't know what that's gonna result in yet but it is definitely like a fork in the road situation where it's like, do you carry on doing things

the way you've been doing them forever, or do you change your business? And they've decided to change their business. I'm really happy with all of the communication that's come out since the initial announcement, but I still think it's something worth keeping an eye on, right? For sure. Joshua asks, what are your

top three personal favorite streaming services or platforms right now i don't think you have to do these in order i haven't done these in order um so i have netflix apple tv plus and youtube i'm choosing to count youtube i think it counts right um i also i don't have access to a lot of people's favorite ones right now because i'm in the united kingdom but these are the three that i use the most right i use youtube netflix and apple tv plus all the time the you know youtube and netflix every single day apple tv plus when they have a show that i want to watch but content wise i've been happiest of apple's

content like i love the content from like hbo? But we have to watch it on Now TV, which is a service that sucks. It's so bad. They're, like, the worst app of any streaming service. I hear people complaining about the apps of streaming services, and I'm like, ha, you've never used a Now TV app on Apple TV. It is an absolute disaster. Do you know how it looks, Jason?

It looks like a front row app. Oh, no. They modeled it after front row i am not kidding it's like carousels and just tiles it is absolutely horrific so that's run by sky they are now tv like if you don't have a sky subscription you can pay for a now tv like entertainment package or whatever which is how we get hbo stuff so what are your three what are your favorites uh well at this point in time is really the key here so at this point in time i'm watching star trek picard on cbs all access so it's there i'm watching

letter kenny on h, so it's there. And I'm currently going through Sex Education Season 2, which is on Netflix. So I'll pick those three. Today, it'll be different in a week. Yeah, like I know that in a couple of months' time, Disney Plus is going to be big in my house. I can't wait for it. For sure. And if you would ask me while The Mandalorian was on, I would have said that. And Apple TV Plus, while For All Mankind was on, for sure.

And this is the point, right? I don't think that it's necessarily the streaming platforms themselves. It is the content that is available. That's right. Glenn asks, do you ever think Apple OS would be a thing? I think no. I think this is the speculation of like a unified apple operating system for

everything and i will point you at ipad os and say no i feel like apple philosophically thinks that uh products should have their own tuned operating systems and even if ultimately all of apple's products are running a version of the same operating system they will still um brand them based on the device category that they're in unless they have a major shift so like even if they were to undergo a like transformation of the mac where they do a a variation of ipad os that is more like the mac and they try to like call it, well, this is the new Mac OS, it's Mac OS 11 or whatever. I don't think they would call it Apple OS. I think they'd still call it Mac OS

even if it wasn't the Mac anymore. So like I was very much on this train for a while, right? Feeling like that there's gotta be a next generation thing. But I'm now feeling like it's not, it's not the platforms themselves. It's like everything that goes on top of them now, which is SwiftUI. I feel like SwiftUI and those projects,

the idea of developing once and it can be interpreted on multiple platforms, that's more like what we were thinking a unified operating system would be, right? Because the idea is you would create a unified operating system so you only have to develop once. But now they're creating a system where you can develop once. I'm oversimplifying this, of course.

You can develop once and then all of the separate platforms can interpret it in the way it needs to because of declarative UI, if I'm remembering the phrases correctly but that is more the kind of thing now i think where it's you can have all the platforms but you only need to you don't need to think as distinctly as you did before and i think that that is this might be the maximum or something like advancements of this type of technology i think is the closest thing to

unification now i think apple's making that quite clear where my my like previous feeling of like oh they're definitely going to unify one day that has moved away in the sense of like oh well really they're just going to provide tools to make it easier to be on everything right yeah evan asks if you could have modern day specs in any previous or current macintosh form factor which model and color would you choose um yeah this is a hard one this was not hard for me at all, Jason. Well, I'm trying. Okay, Mike, you put your answer in the notes and it's the best answer. Oh, okay, okay.

Can I just say it then? So you say yours and then I will make something up. The iMac G4. It's the most amazing, in my opinion, like Mac hardware design that has ever lived. This was, if you're not familiar, the iMac that looked like a lamp it just had a little base and then an articulating arm which came out of the base which had the monitor on it so you had like so much flexibility in the way that you could

move the monitor around right like just built into like way more than any product that Apple makes now right because you could like adjust it to the exact height that you wanted uh but also this computer just has so much personality to it in a non-cheesy way right like because it looks like the lamp from the pixar animation right like that's what it looks like and i just imprint on that and just feel like this is so so cute and beautiful at the same time as being genuinely useful so i would love apple to come back to a design close to this like i want an imac with a built-in arm right like right like you know i love i

absolutely adore this design always have and it still looks modern to me yep i'm looking at one right now i have one in my office it looks great yeah it looks modern to me in a way that no other mac does like it looks more modern to me than Macs that came after it. You can show me an iMac from 2012, and it looks older than this thing does. It's just absolutely beautiful. I love it. Well, I'm tempted to say something like, I want a modern Mac Pro in a blue and white Power Mac G3 case. But I'm going to be a little more serious and say i would love to have a modern day uh mac in the 11 inch macbook air like i want a retina screen

and i want modern processors in the 11 inch air because when i use a mac laptop that is the laptop i use i love it it's small the macbook was to it, but of course it's been discontinued now. And it only had the one port, which was a little bit silly. And the modern MacBook Air is a little bit bigger. So, you know, I'll choose one of those. But the iMac G4, I think is the right answer. Mac or a iPad Studio kind of device with its own little monitor arm, screen arm thing. I think something like that would be beautiful. iPad Studio is a lovely name.

We're back in that room again, making suggestions to Apple. I can't find that ball right now, Mike. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. If you want to find our show notes, go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 282. Thank you so much to everybody who sent in a question. If you want to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade, and it will be included in a future episode, or maybe.

Thanks so much to DoorDash, Pingdom, and Booz Allen. If you want to find Jason's work online, go to sixcolors.com. You should follow the Six Colors event Twitter account, right, for information following along with the... Yeah, Dan will do a blow-by-blow probably of the analyst call. So that's always a good one to have. I'll put some charts there. It is a low-volume Twitter account that is high-volume at certain times,

which I love for that reason, right? Like when that account is fired up, you're going to see a lot of tweets from it, but then it's quiet waiting, always sitting and waiting for a big event, but it's also really good for grabbing little quotes. So thank you to Dan for doing that.

And you'll be making charts. Won't you like a big chart boy over at six colors.com more charts this week than ever than ever. Yeah. Charts, charts, charts. You can find Jason on Lannies at Jason L. I am at iMike. And we'll be back next time.

Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.