Upgrade - 287: Constant Applause

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

So is Apple really releasing a Smart Keyboard with a built-in trackpad? That's the latest report, and Jason and Myke have a lot of questions about it. Is iPadOS 13 good enough to support a trackpad? Would a trackpad only for text editing and gestures make sense? Are we going to have to wait for iPadOS 14 for everything to make sense? And in Upstream, Disney+ gets its "expensive NBC" moment on Instagram.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 287 and today's show is brought to you by linode squarespace and kiwi co my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell esquire hello Esquire. Hello, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley, LLC Limited OBE. Selection of things right there. Hashtag Snell Talk question comes from Zach this week, and we're going to continue on the train we've been barreling down over the last few weeks. Zach wants to know, what wrist do you wear

your watch on, and what side of the Apple Watch do you keep the crown? So which which wrist and where does the digital crown go now how is this not just a uh an ask upgrade i want to know what makes it a snell talk question it was in the snell talk document okay all right fair enough uh left wrist uh and i keep the crown on the right side. Yeah. Like, you know, a normal person. Sorry, everybody. Oh, gosh, Jason. I'll just state for the record,

I guess it's probably worth mentioning here. There are like typical wrists, right? Like some people wear on the left and some people wear on the right. Like there are various reasons for that. I am exactly the same as you because that was kind of how I grew up. Even though i am

left-handed i wear my watch on my left and i wear with the crown pointing out to the right that just feels like the natural way for me to wear a watch having worn watches it's how i wear my regular watches it's how i wear my apple watches it's how watches are designed um it's nice that you can flip it around and there are people who do that and that's great but like i wear it the same way i've worn every watch since i got a casio calculator well no before since i got a mickey mouse watch when i was a kid like this is how i wear a watch so that's how i wear it david has pointed in the chat room that some people wear watches on the inside of the wrist and i do find that one peculiar.

Yeah. I mean, I get like Craig Hockenberry was talking about how he likes having the crown on the inside because he feels it's more natural to sort of spin it with his thumb on the inside. And, you know, fair enough. If it works for you. I think what's great about the Apple Watch is because it is a digital watch and the software has been built this way, you can wear it on either arm and you can wear it in either orientation and that's great. That's great, but I wear it the boring way. Yeah, I do hear

from a lot of left-handed people who say I don't know how you could wear your watch on your left, but I don't, you know, it doesn't bother me at all. Yeah, yeah, I don't, you know, it doesn't bother me at all. Yeah, I don't know. Thank you to Zach for that question, and I look forward to all of the feedback.

I would like to just point out for the record that I am accepting of left or right in this one because I just want to be on the exact opposite of Jason's position here. We have some follow-up. It's kind of follow-up. Apple released what they've called white papers technical white papers for the mac pro and pro display xdr these are really interesting i don't recall something like this being released in the past they look a lot okay a little inside baseball they look suspiciously like the content that goes in a reviewer's guide

that you get if you get a product from apple and they give you they give you a pdf that's in a reviewer's guide that you get if you get a product from Apple and they give you a PDF that's like a reviewer's guide that's got like specs and it's got a list of features and it's meant to help reviewers understand what's new in the product and all of that. And they're giving their spin on it and what they're promoting, but those can be useful. And this isn't something to try and guide you specifically. Yeah.

It's more like if there's information you need, like speeds and feeds, it's all in there. Right. This feels very much like that with a slightly lighter touch style sheet. I mean, seriously, it feels like it may actually even be because I never reviewed the Mac Pro. So I don't know what the Mac Pro reviewer's guide looks like,

but I have to imagine it basically looks like this. Yeah. I mean, the little that I've seen of these types of documents as well, like, it looks exactly like one, right? It's just like a PDF of a bunch of information, a bunch of images and stuff. But it did have some interesting tidbits, stuff that we didn't know, or stuff that may have changed. One of those things that Stephen hackett noted was that the mac pro technical overview document stated that the feet and wheels will be able to be interchangeable via a customer installable kit so at some point in the future people will be able to buy wheels for their mac pro if they hadn't already and put them on themselves where previously apple had said

that you would need to take it into an apple store to do this um so that seems interesting sure nice tidbit yeah if you want to do that here's your uh here's your big insider piece of information apple's product review pdfs reviewers guides are landscape and the the white paper is portrait we crack the code but they're very similar in that it's all the little bulleted items but you're right there are things to be gleaned in there that we didn't know like the fact that you can take off the wheels and put them on yourself which means that the the wheels are now a third party opportunity as well which is interesting so look for you know like monster truck wheels, something down the road, something like that. That'll be great.

Oh yeah, because I guess what that does mean is like, if it's possible or to change it, it means other people could add to it. Because there was that thing where everybody's seen this, I'm sure, but MKBHD tweeted a video of his Mac Pro just rolling away. It's like a shopping cart at the store. It's just rolling along.

But yeah, it does mean that maybe you pick up, whether it's for cheaper or whether it's that there's a different design. I would be shocked if somebody didn't come up with their own take on Mac Pro wheels. Like snow tires or something. I used to have, back in the day, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this here,

but when I had my Power Mac G4, I had for a while this thing that was kind of like a skateboard. It was like a Lucite thing with wheels on it. And the way it was designed, it had little plastic things at the ends that basically hooked into the handles on the bottom of the G4. So you pop it on there and now it's a now it's a rolly g4 that's that's how we did it back in those days and uh that was you know it's kind of there are advantages to having um having your computer on wheels in certain circumstances so um it would be interesting to see if uh the the the mac pro because there are so few of them presumably um the the number of products built specifically for a mac pro is going to be fascinating to watch because

on the one hand there are almost none of them you know globally speaking on the other hand it's very modular so there's an opportunity to make accessories and the people who bought the Mac Pro spent a lot of money on it. So there's potentially a lot of money to be made from each individual one. So the question is sort of like, how many accessories are made for the Mac Pro and how expensive are they? Because there's no reason, like if they're spending all the money on the Mac Pro, then the argument is they've got more money to burn and that you should price everything high so that the Mac Pro only stuff is worth making and worth selling and worth profiting on. And I'm reminded of if you listen to John Syracuse on ATP talk about his quest to get a hard drive bracket. And like the only hard drive bracket he can get is this $400,

I think, hard drive bracket for the Mac Pro. And it's kind of ridiculous, you could totally 3d print one or make one. But right now, there's only one and it comes with a hard drive. And, you know, this is the this is one of the things for us to all kind of watch from afar, if we're not Mac Pro buyers ourselves, of like, you know, what what ends up being the accessory, um, market for this thing. And I'm sure Apple would love a thriving third-party accessory market, but how, how does this sell, especially at the price that it it's in there? Um, you don't even have a kind of prosumer layer who's paying two, $3,000 for it. It's so expensive that it's a it's a very small market and a very pro market so um i don't know it's something fun to watch upstream uh disney is offering launch pricing discounts for the uk and europe ahead of the launch of disney plus in march on march 24th so uh you can get 10 pounds or 10 euros off a yearly plan if you sign up for disney plus now this is very similar to what happened in the u.s for sure i haven't seen any like you can get disney plus with such and such like because

there was was it at&t were offering it who was it oh oh i don't know maybe so or maybe it was t-mobile yeah um t-mobile does a lot of bundling things. And of course, in the US, they have ESPN Plus and Hulu as well. So Disney has bundled three services together, and that's not available in Europe. So not all their marketing plans are going to follow. And the content isn't going to be exactly the same either. So one thing that hasn't been exactly confirmed but seems pretty clear based on the way that disney are talking is that for some reason they're going to be rolling out the episodes of the mandalorian on a weekly basis what yeah which is so stupid

because the show has already aired right like we've already lost out all of the reveals because the internet exploded because of certain characters. But yeah, we're going to have to watch that weekly. And also, Disney Plus outside of the US right now will not include The Simpsons. So in the UK and Europe, The Simpsons are not included because of The Simpsons being locked in

with other providers like Sky here in the UK and I think in Europe as well. So Sky is the rights of the Simpsons and that's not changing. So we won't be getting the Simpsons. Class. Bob Iger has stepped down as Disney CEO to be succeeded by another Bob who goes by the name Bob Jappek.

This was, this is an expected thing but came out of nowhere. Like the news just Bob Jappek. This is an expected thing, but came out of nowhere. The news just dropped one day. They say that they've been talking about it for a while. This is a big deal. Bob Iger is one of the most popular and well thought of and successful CEOs

in the entertainment industry, certainly. His relationship with Steve Jobs goes back a long way. A lot of the Apple Disney stuff and Apple ABC stuff, like in the early days of the iTunes store and selling movies and TV, of course, they bought. They had a good relationship involving distributing Pixar. And then it was kind of a fraught relationship. And then they bought Pixar. And Steve Jobs became a board member and a big shareholder and all that.

So Bob Iger's got a long history with Apple, a long history with technology, and a long history with the entertainment industry. He set a retirement date at one point and then extended. It's been a conversation for a while now that he was planning on retiring. And it was a question of when. And I think in the statements that have come out after this, it sounds like the big plan was to get through the 20th Century Fox purchase and start figuring that out. And then he would set a time. And I think the other thing is they decided on who his successor was. And there seemed to be a moment where Iger said, well, if we've got this done, let's pull the trigger now. What he says is, let's pull the trigger now, name my successor, and then I'm going to take, because he's under contract through the end of next year, I'm going to take as the executive chairman of the board, so still the boss, still the boss, but not the CEO anymore, I'm going to focus on getting our creative endeavors, is the phrase that he used right over the next you know nearly two years which is interesting because i mean the way i read that is there is some upheaval in terms of

integrating the fox acquisitions and also like uh i i would say what is happening with star wars is an interesting question because it's kind of had some issues and like trying to figure out the creative stuff uh which is something that he's very interested in and i think has been working on and letting his successor focus on all the other stuff and get up to speed and have him there to answer the question so even though this happened suddenly it's also kind of been going on for a very long time the discussion of him leaving um. And I think maybe they finally decided that they were at the point where there was no point in trying to keep it a secret that they had figured out who the successor was and they might as well move on it. So it was a not rumored thing that it

was imminent and yet everybody has known for quite a while now that Bob Iger was planning on leaving. So it's a big deal though, because like I said, Bob Iger has been a big mover in how Disney has changed its culture, how it embraced technology working with Apple initially, how it has strategized for Disney+, which has put them way ahead of a lot of their competitors who are playing catch up with them now. So it's a big deal to see what will happen when uh this bob chapik who is apparently has been in charge of the theme parks and their uh and and some other stuff and and theme park people have issues with him and he was behind the disney vault strategy that withheld content from retail and people don't like that except the vault is gone now because of disney plus but anyway so but you know he's he's uh he's gonna be next the next one so we'll see how that goes but uh i'm fascinated

to see what kind of creative endeavors bob eiger is diving into over the next nearly two years we'll see i did see somebody say this on twitter i don't remember who it was now but it was a very good point like this is probably what would have happened if steve jobs had lived longer this is probably the setup that would have occurred at apple right with tim as the ceo and steve as the chairman of the board and basically holding a kind of overview over everything that he wanted to right and focusing on yeah i think it's a good analog the difference being that i imagine steve would have done that forever if he could oh for sure i mean it wouldn't have been a he would have just carried on going until he died which is what he did anyway right but but i do think that that was the plan when they when they set that up before steve job passed steve jobs passed away that um that that

would have been it is like steve would have focused on the stuff he cared about which is which i think was already kind of happening right when as he was as he was sick he was focused on the product stuff that he really cared about and tim ran the business and and then they they made that official that tim is running the business now and steve's going to be the chairman and that that seems to be what's happening here except that i don't think bob eiger will get a you know an extension and and continue to be the creative spelunker on the board through 2022, 23, 24. I think, you know, he've set a time on it that at the end of December 21, he will, he will leave, but he's got a lot of time to get that part of the house in order.

And I'm fascinated by the idea that he feels like that's what he needs to focus on. And that to me suggests that we're going to see some very interesting things happen on the creative side of of disney in the next you know again 22 21 months uh hillary duff has publicly asked disney on her instagram account by using a note screenshot which i know is jason's favorite thing yep to move the upcoming lizzie mcguire reboot to hulu so it can address more adult issues she is now a 30 year old woman and she's continuing with the with the role this is fascinating because this is kind of like that apple story about does apple want to be expensive nbc which seems to have been proven to be completely wrong and sarah grapes by somebody because there's all sorts of stuff on apple tv plus that is rated tvma and uh there's sex and violence and nudity and all sorts of things it's like no

that was that was an angry producer who uh wanted who had some sour grapes but here we really see it because there's nothing more than pg on disney plus disney plus part of the kind of like implicit uh content guarantee that's being made by disney is that this is a family service which means the rougher stuff is not going to go um and they the rougher stuff goes on hulu presumably because that's where the fx on hulu thing just launched by the way and disney have already done this the reason that she posted this was because there was a another tv show that got moved to hulu it's a show called love love simon and all the all the fx content is going over there and the and they're doing originals for fx and there's other adult material on hulu and hulu is a place where you can get have racier edgier stuff that is not

quite in the the disney umbrella and the challenge here is lizzie mcguire is a disney channel show they want to do a show about where lizzie mcguire is now where she's an adult she's 30 this is not a new lizzie mcguire who's 16 this is hillary duff is lizzie mcguire when she's 30 and uh what what hillary duff says is the whole premise here is dealing with her issues. We dealt with serious social issues on the old show. We need to do that now. But now there are adult issues. There are the issues of a woman in her 30s.

And apparently she and the showrunner had agreed on this and were working on it. And they did two episodes. And it looks like Disney saw those episodes or saw the scripts for those episodes and said, you've got to cut it back. You got to make this PG. And there was so much pushback that it sounds like they fired the showrunner. And so it's really interesting that the star of the show is basically calling them out and saying, you're having us make terrible creative decisions in order to fit under this umbrella. But I get Disney's strategy here too, because they're saying, well, wait a second. The reason we this on disney plus is that this is a disney channel product a legacy disney

channel product and so this it it's a match like it's it was in the disney brands so we should keep it in the disney brands but i also see their side which is you know the remake of Lizzie McGuire with another 16-year-old girl should go on Disney+, but a continuation of Lizzie McGuire where she's a 30-year-old woman trying to deal with all sorts of serious issues as an adult, maybe Disney Plus isn't the right place for that kind of show. So it's interesting to see this conflict. And the whole thing exists because there's a certain level beyond which Disney is not willing to go with Disney+. They're not willing to have a content warning that this is only for adults on Disney+. Maybe they'll get there, but look, we're months into Disney+, and we are already seeing that people are chafing at this restriction.

And with almost a million likes on the post on instagram kind of being disney's best interest i think to just do this it's good marketing for the show i'm not sure instagram uh votes are are are scientific in any way but i do agree that this is you know presumably the people who want to watch hillary duff as lizzie mcguire today are adults right like i grew up with the show a disney version of this i would watch a like hulu version of this because i am more interested in actual issues of her as an adult like in dealing with that then like a i don't know like a silly family sitcom but i see both i see both sides here because there are people who feel like well no i want the i want the guarantee of the content i would

like to watch this show i'd like to watch this with my kids and i think that's part of the conception here is they don't want to make a show for kids this isn't a show for kids this is a show for the people who watch this other show when they're kids but now they've grown up and they want to deal with serious issues i this actually is happening now with the Star Trek show Picard. So based on a 90s show, Star Trek The Next Generation, that was a family show. And that's a modern drama and it's TVMA and it's got swearing and a little bit of gruesome violence in it. And there are people like me who are like, well, little bit of gruesome violence in it and there are people like me who are like well that's what tv is like now and that's a more kind of gritty realistic view of how the world works and it may you may be jarred by it because you're thinking about the standards of of a show from the 90s but

we're not in the 90s anymore but there are other people who are like i want to watch star trek with my kids and i can't i can't show them this and i i see that i i don't i don't have that opinion but i see why that would be troubling to you there is already a lot of star trek though right there there is but this is the this is the new stuff and all the new stuff so far has been tvma that's actually one of those things that i think they need to as they expand their product line with star trek that they need to do is they need to make star trek shows for everybody and that means they can't all be mature audiences only that's not what they should be doing with star trek yeah so you know they need to make a show that that is uh a little bit more you know restrained with what it shows and the language it uses um just just in the

mix they don't they shouldn't all i think all be that way but i think there should be some that is more and they're they are working on like a nickelodeon show that's animated and there's another animated series we'll see what um what its rating is but i don't know it's a conversation that we are having again in streaming like in broadcast there are like in every country there are like broadcast restrictions. There are standards. In the UK, you have the watershed times where certain content can't be shown until after 9 p.m. Then it's fine. In the US, there's a hard limit up until 11 p.m. on certain kinds of profanity and other content.

And then there's also a view of 9 o'clock, some things can be can be on and 10 o'clock and you have to have ratings and like it's complicated, but there have been some standards for that. And on streaming, it's really like open. It's wide open. It really comes back to what does Disney want Disney Plus to mean? to do clearly going into this there was a disconnect about from the producers and the star about what the content could be and what disney plus thought the content could be either that or disney plus thought it said go ahead we want you to deal with serious issues and then saw the scripts and went oh no serious uh fascinating knives out director ryan Ryan Johnson recently said in a Vanity Fair interview that Apple does not let, bad guys have iPhones

on camera when doing product placement stuff. I just thought this was a funny little thing. Well, I get,

so yeah, Dan wrote about this in Six Colors. Like, I get that if Apple's paying, because product placement is not,

we want to show an iPhone. Product placement is Apple is giving you money to show the iPhone in your show. And I can see them saying, you know, I don't want the murderers. The reason we're paying you is to have our heroes use Apple products, not the bad guys to use Apple products. And we're not, you know, the bad guys can use Apple products is my understanding, but Apple's not going to pay you for the bad guys to use use apple products and it's funny dan dan mentioned a great example which is steve carell on the morning show you know like everybody in the morning show they use iphones and steve carell's

character he is not a good guy he is not a good guy but he's got an iphone so it's like what dan says is is it like only murderers like where's where's the line there i think it's i think it's a little bit because it's apple show but it is apple show but but i think this is a great view into the commerce of this like i was watching it was leap day on saturday um you know february 29th and i watched the 30 rock episode called leap day which, which is a great, hilarious, super weird episode. I love it. And there's a huge product placement in that because I'm watching and there's this whole subplot about Tracy going to Benihana because he has a $50,000 Benihana gift certificate

that expires at the end of February. And at the end of the credits, it's like product placement furnished by, you know, Benihana. Like they paid to be in 30 Rock. It was super weird, but like product placement happens. Whenever you see promotional consideration furnished by whatever that is, by Apple, you know that Apple paid to have their products in there that they actually paid to do that and that's why sometimes you see generic tech in tv shows is some some some companies some studios have a have a uh a policy that they won't show brands at all unless you pay them otherwise they'll they'll have it be generic and which is why you'll often see a generic

computer like here's the clue. If you see somebody using a laptop that's very clearly a MacBook and it has a sticker on the logo, Apple didn't pay. If they don't have a sticker on the logo and you can see the Apple logo, Apple paid. True story.

Apple is developing a limited series about WeWork. It's based on a podcast from the Wondery Network called We Crashed, The Rise and Fall of WeWork. And's based on a podcast from the Wondery Network called We Crashed, The Rise and Fall of WeWork. And Lee Eisenberg of Little America is co-writing and producing. So this is, I assume, going to be a documentary style series.

It's not actually said how they're going to present the content. Yeah, I don't know. It could be docudrama kind of style. But I mean, WeWork is such a strange story that I think I'm kind of fascinated by. I haven't listened to this podcast, but I'm kind of fascinated by it. I hope there such a strange story that i think i'm kind of fascinated by i haven't listened to this podcast but i'm kind of fascinated by it i hope there's a whole episode about the the guy saying that um you can't eat meat on a business trip anymore i'm sure there's

going to be stuff like that in there that was my favorite we work moment is the like we think you should all not eat meat anymore so if you go on a business trip and buy meat uh at a restaurant we're not going to cover it yeah what uh there's actually this is like one of multiple we work projects it's probably going to be like that fire festival thing do you remember like do it multiple fire festival documentaries at the same time this will probably be a similar thing did you watch a little america speaking a little america i haven't seen it yet no okay i've i've only watched two so far i i've actually just been watching it.

It's an anthology series, so every episode is different, but I watched the first two. It's great. It's great. I'll get that on the list next. It's touching, but it's really funny. It's exactly what I would expect from the executive producers of The Big Sick, which is such a great movie. And it's got that

kind of feel, which is, it's about immigrants. It's about America. It's about people just being people. It's funny. It's good. I have enjoyed both of the ones that I've seen. So if you haven't seen Little America, maybe a circle back, especially, I think, especially if you want to see something that ultimately is kind of uplifting, because at least the two episodes I've seen so far, maybe there's a terrible, depressing one coming. But the first two I've seen have been really kind of nice and uplifting in the end, which I've enjoyed. The first episode is about a kid whose parents get deported. And so he runs their motel himself as a kid for years. Oh, I remember the synopsis of that one yeah yeah and the and the the second one

is about a a girl who is um her mom is an illegal immigrant and she doesn't have citizenship and they live in a garage and she becomes like a uh without spoiling it i mean like she she learns how to play squash of all things and becomes really good at it and learns a lot of lessons along the way and it's funny and uh yeah so i'll put a shout out for little america i've been enjoying that today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at kiwi co kids are the ultimate explorers and creators looking for new things to learn and play and grow every day a kiwi co subscription is the perfect way to nurture the budding explorer, engineer, or artist in your life. KiwiCo creates super cool hands-on projects for kids to make learning about STEAM,

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So we've been talking about this a bit recently and there has been a lovely little rumor uh according to uh well i wouldn't even say rumor a piece of maybe information it's a report it's a report that's just in right it's not just in breaking news breaking a few days ago uh wayne ma at the information says that Apple is indeed working on a smart keyboard for the iPad Pro with a trackpad. This is something that we'd hoped to be the case. This is something that we've long pontificated on, and it seems like it's happening. So just from the article itself, The Information Source says that the keyboard will be made from materials similar to those in Apple's current smart keyboard folio designed for the iPad Pro. And that Apple is preparing the keyboard for mass production right now and is expected to release the new accessory alongside the next version of the iPad Pro.

Current rumors suggest that the iPad Pro could be refreshed as soon as March, and Apple is expected to hold a March event to announce these devices. That's kind of where we think it's going to be right now so I want to come back to this in just a second because there was a little we've been talking a little bit about some of the stuff that's coming in iOS 13.4 from the betas about kind of keyboard support and Steve Troughton Smith posted a great tweet which sums kind of everything up about why there is definitely even more smoke to this rumor or to the fire of this rumor. Steve says, iOS 13.4 is most definitely a keyboard release. Full keyboard access, new key event APIs for apps,

key modifier remapping. If there's a new iPad coming in a March event, no prizes for guessing Apple will have a keyboard story to pitch a shiny new smart keyboard seems a given yeah and when this four keyboard access thing that's one of the newer things i don't think we mentioned this but like there are going to be keyboard shortcuts for everything including rotating the screen turning off the ipad like it's a there's a lot of stuff going on so yeah there's a lot that's to say that there is a new keyboard right so we can assume there's a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, there's a lot. That's to say that there is a new keyboard, right? So we can assume there's a lot of stuff happening.

We've said this, right? It seems interesting that you would do it now. It would make sense if you had a new smart keyboard coming. So we can assume that there's definitely more keyboard stuff happening. Apple prioritizes a lot of software updates based on their own hardware, right? So if you're watching, you can say, oh, well well that must be a thing now right so here we go but this particular rumor is not just saying that there is going to be a smart keyboard but that there is also going to be a smart keyboard which includes a trackpad and you wrote a great article on six colors where you kind of asked and answered nine

questions and i want to go through those nine questions and talk about them together okay i should have made a 10 but i i counted when i was done there were only nine so it's like all right nine nine is fine there you go that's fine rhyme uh the question number one is this replacing the current smart keyboard or is it priced above it right i think that's i think that's a good question right do they only make one and it's maybe the same price or maybe more expensive or are there two options for you you can get your kind of basic smart keyboard that's just the one we know that currently exists which might still be given the shape of the ipad like are we really expecting the ipad to change shape i would imagine it's still going to look like the current ipad pro and have the same smart connector on the back so it's still going to look like the current ipad pro and have the

same smart connector on the back so it's entirely possible that the existing smart keyboard will work on the ipad pro as now so they could keep it around and then make this the you know premium pro smart keyboard thing or they could be very apple-like and just sweep it away and say, no, everybody gets this one now. I think that you kind of said the word that's key is pro. I think this will be smart keyboard pro, and it will be a separate, more expensive device because it's probably, I mean, what is the current, how much does it cost right now?

It's not cheap. I think it's over. It's not cheap. Like the bridge keyboards are way cheaper than the smart keyboard which is saying something yeah yeah so that would be the way to do it is to keep that and maybe even lower that price and then make this more expensive one that's got you know the rumors are like backlighting is a part of it and then you'd have the pointing device part of it and it would be just like more maybe it's got another another row of keys maybe imagine that like there there are are things that they could do uh to make it a pro product and price

it over that and that would be if i had to make a bet that would be my bet too is that they'll sell both but i wouldn't put it past him to just sweep the old one away and say nah you got to buy the really expensive one now and i i have a hard time imagining this being sold at the same price. $200 is the current smart keyboard folio. I can imagine a product like this at $300 or $350. I don't know. Really kind of like just juicing those numbers, you know, like getting that ASP up. Could be. Could be. Gotta get that ASP up, Jason. It could be $250 and then they could lower the price of the other one but again i feel like that's wishful thinking i think one thing that would be interesting is if it would work with previous ipad pros uh yeah i mean part of me thinks that

they're not going to redesign the case and so it should probably work with it well it depends on on how they do it right like if it covers the back like the folio then the camera cutout is going to be different oh well that's true that's true you're absolutely right if the camera cutout the camera cutout would have to be different and that could could preclude it from working so why would they why would they make it for both models at that point so yeah that's probably true it's probably true if they assuming that it's got a it's going to have to have a different camera cutout, and therefore it's not going to be compatible with the old model, I hadn't really thought about that. I think that makes it even more likely that there'll only be one.

Question number two, what does it mean to have included pointer support? I will read a little quote from your article. The information report says built-in trackpad which would imply a keyboard that's pushed forward with a trackpad underneath in the wrist area the problem is that the current ipad keyboard doesn't have a wrist area at all this would require a pretty dramatic rethink of the smart keyboard in order to create a space for a trackpad to live right it's it's the smart keyboard now that's all there is is the keyboard part and then and it's so it's not like the size of uh the whole screen it's a little portion of it and then it folds over the screen so what does it mean if they have to make room for the pointer

for like a trackpad below the space bar then they they're gonna have to change the geometry which is another question that i have for later i I guess my question here is there have definitely been rumors of at least Apple investigating the concept of a touch sensitive surface on keys. So is it a built-in trackpad like we know, or is it more like a thing where you put a couple of fingers down on the keyboard and just move your fingers around as you do on the screen could they build that could that be a thing where where you actually like sort of the whole keyboard is a touch surface and if you move with two fingers it treats it like a mouse instead of like you know you're not pressing the keys you're just running your

fingers over the keys um i don't know because, because it will require a complete rethink if they have to make room for an actual trackpad below it. Yeah, it would be super weird to me if they did anything other than actually put a trackpad there, right? Like if the trackpad was underneath the keys, I just don't think that I could can't imagine that being a very nice experience. Have you ever put two fingers down on the smart keyboard and sort of run your fingers around it lightly without pushing down keys you can do it it would be if they could make it work it would

be okay i think it'd be strange it would be maybe maybe i i have no evidence that that technology actually exists is the thing other than that they did a patent a long time ago about it so it would be a real surprise if they they had cracked that code yeah i think to really answer this question we have to also answer the next question which is what does a trackpad do to ipad geometry so yeah what is going to happen here i genuinely think that they will just do something which is kind of probably no which would be a more elegant version of the bridge keyboard model which is you push the ipad all the way to the very back there's some kind of hinge built into the the product and you therefore basically make it look like a laptop so you

have the keyboard that you have currently but then a a trackpad underneath it. That's what I think it will do. So the problem with that is that they do have the advantage as the platform owner that they could build in hardware into the iPad that connects with the keyboard to create a hinge. The problem is weight, which is the iPad has a lot of weight and if you put the ipad in a laptop style configuration you have to counterweight it on the cover which makes the cover the weight of the ipad which makes it way too heavy so i my guess would be that they're still going to do a fold thing and it might actually be more like the first generation smart keyboards where there are layers because the second generation is really thin because it's a single layer it doesn't fold over the keyboard but the first generation they had to do that in order to get kind of like the origami system right so that they could they could you could you know prop it up with maybe you maybe the trackpad could

fold out so maybe you know so here's the um here's the concern that i have which is microsoft solved this problem by putting a kickstand on the surface and i hate the kickstand i think it's really bad i don't want to extend i think it's ugly they're uncomfortable on the lap it's they're they're you basically can't use them on your lap you You really need to have them on a table. And then just the action of folding it out and then having to reach around the back and flip open the kickstand and all that. It's like, I don't like it. And if you like the Surface kickstand, that's great.

But I have tried them time and again, and I hate it. I think it's the wrong decision. So I really hope Apple doesn't go that route with this because it's an, it's a, an accommodation that's kind of bad for everybody. It's bad for people who don't need that keyboard, makes the iPad worse in general. And then it actually isn't that good even as a stand. So, um, so yeah, my money is on them doing, unless they have something super clever with the, um, with the keyboard being a touch surface

i think they're just going to have to redesign the folds so that you know you unfold it and then fold out this other part and it then it becomes a uh enough of a uh a prop on the back that it it stays upright yeah it's a good point that you made about the weight thing i hadn't really considered that but i think for me it's just i don that you made about the weight thing. I hadn't really considered that. But I think for me, it's just, I don't imagine, I imagine them putting an actual trackpad on this thing. So Apple would need to work out some kind of system to help you balance that somehow. And you're right.

I reckon if they are going to do this, probably the route that they go is a little bit more like the original, where it has some weird origami to it but you're able to basically just keep unfolding this thing until you have what you need right and i could imagine i really could imagine like that there is a front part that also folds out which includes a trackpad somehow but i i don't know i don't know i don't it's difficult to imagine but i would be really surprised if i would just be really surprised if the trackpad wasn't as you would imagine it to be which is a which is a nice trackpad apple make trackpads me too and i'd be surprised if the smart keyboard isn't more or less what we expected to be which essentially

takes it back to the fact that apple always tries to find interesting ways of just folding over and that's been true since the original ipad well no since the second ipad since the smart cover right the original ipad you had to slide it into a thing but uh after that they started doing the smart cover and it was all about like there are these three folds and there's magnets and you turn it around and it does this. And I imagine that they will just continue to do that. What kind of keyboard is it? Right? Like Microsoft makes keyboards. So this rumor, the information report says it will be made from materials similar to those in a smart keyboard folio. So that would suggest that it will be one of these kind of fabric keyboards, which honestly, it's a good keyboard. I kind of like it. It's okay for what it is. I actually think it's okay. But, you know, Microsoft does make some of these keyboards that are like, they actually have key caps.

They actually move more like a traditional key. But the fact is you don't have a lot of travel in these because you want to keep them super thin. So I think it's worth asking the question, would Apple do something different in order to get backlighting or something like that? But they might also be very happy with the material that they've got. I don't know, but it's worth asking the question, right? Would the pro keyboard feel more like a real keyboard than the existing smart keyboard?

Yeah, is it going to be a magic keyboard or a butterfly keyboard? Which yeah is it going to be a magic keyboard or a butterfly keyboard all right like which one is it going to be because if my memory serves the smart keyboard mechanism is similar to the butterfly keyboard mechanism but it's covered so there's no reliability problems completely sealed in exactly and i i learned that was reminded of that from our holiday special i'd forgotten about that um but but you don't you get the benefits from it because it's covered up so it's stable and it was fine and really that keyboard works because when you're dealing with the constraints of how thin it is it's like oh you know what this is actually perfectly fine um you you mentioned

there but this wasn't one of the questions backlighting do you think that that is a is a thing that could you could see on this or would you want backlighting on an ipad keyboard i generally don't care about backlighting i very rarely use it even on the keyboards that i've got i mostly have it turned off i know people who really really want backlighting and it's and it's definitely been on the list of smart keyboard features that people have asked for so i think it's worth along with the function row, like it's worth putting on the list of, well, what about backlighting?

And I think the challenge is going to be, how do you do that, right? Like, how do you do that on one of these keyboards? Now, maybe, you know, Apple's very clever, right? Maybe they have a way where you've got the, you know, the key labels are translucent and there's LEDs underneath the fabric that shine through and all of that,

that would be great. I think having backlighting is better than not having backlighting, all things considered, because you can turn it off if you don't like it. And it makes it nicer for a lot of people. Ming-Chi Kuo's report that has been referenced a bunch of times talks about illuminated keys.

There was like I remember me and Federico were joking but like the idea of it being glow in the dark as opposed to which would be kind of hilarious wouldn't work very well I don't think but would be funny anyway what we've done is we've created a little spotlight

on the iPad and when you turn it on the spotlight shines down on your keyboard so you can see it i would personally really like a backlit keyboard i just like backlighting it's just something that i enjoy i mean you know would i want it to be rgb colors sure do i think apple would ever do that no i do not think that they would do that uh jason i have a keyboard that i love very much at the moment. I've got another one, another mechanical keyboard. It's called the Dygma Raise.

Okay. And it is like one of those split keyboards, and it has this beautiful backlight and an underglow and stuff. I'm a big fan of this keyboard right now. I'm using it on my iPad. It's, I think, everything I want in a mechanical keyboard. Don't think this one is for you, but wanted to mention it. No split keyboards for me.

Thank you very much. But it also, this one does actually lock together and you can then detach it if you want to, which is nice. So you can actually have both if you want, if it's your thing. But if it's not your thing, then you're probably not going to like it.

All right, should we take a break and then continue talking about this? Sure. All right, today's episode is also brought to you by Linode. Whether you're working on a personal project or managing your enterprise's infrastructure, Sure. storage option and a next generation network, Linode delivers the performance you expect at a stunningly good price. Get started today at Linode with a $20 credit for listeners of this show, which could be you, and you will get access to a native SSD storage, 40 gigabit network, and industry-leading processors with nano plans starting as low as $5 a month, GPU compute plans suitable for AI, machine learning, video processing, and so much more. Go to

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be for assistive touch? So is there going to be major updates to the current accessibility feature, which exists, the cursor support that's currently baked into iOS 13, that would make it usable for everyone? So this is the question that comes out of me using that bridge keyboard prototype with the trackpad,

which is, it's great that in iOS 13 they added assistive touch support for an external cursor. It's like a floating finger. It has some, there's some places you and I've talked about it. There's some places where it's very useful. There's some places where it's not useful. There are certain gestures that are like, you know, you know, tap and swipe that are unnatural with a pointing device. It is like in the context of a laptop, which the bridge is really very much like a laptop keyboard and trackpad.

I found that it exposed all the failings of assistive touch, which again, assistive touch is an accessibility feature. It's not meant to be the quality of the MacBook Pro experience, but that said, using it, you really start to judge it based on what a MacBook or MacBook Pro experience is. And it just doesn't live up to it. There are so many issues. There are so many holes. And so when there have been rumors about Apple supporting building a trackpad into its own devices, I think to myself, wait a second, like the software Apple

is making is not good enough for them to do that. So unless they've been holding back a bunch of stuff that is going to roll into an OS update at the time that this product comes out that involves way better trackpad support or mouse support then they're releasing like i can't conceive of it that they would release a trackpad and say assistive touch is there go to town as it is currently because it's just not very good so this is my my question like, are there software updates hiding that will be part of this hardware release that will make this trackpad more usable for generally using the whole interface?

Because I just don't think it's good enough right now. It really works for me. I don't have any problems with it. And I understand that I am on a different level it really works for me i i don't have any problems with it like it could you know and i understand that i am on a different level to other people here like i care about this i use it a lot more yeah and i think you're i think you're an outlier and also you use it a lot in the context of an external mouse yes right yes and this is a laptop trackpad right which is also different like i i find it more pleasant to use with a bluetooth mouse but when i put use that bridge trackpad it was like

no it like really i think it's i think uh well first off a mouse feels different than a trackpad but i think there's something about having that trackpad and keyboard setup where you feel like you're using a laptop like i said i think you judge it by having that trackpad and keyboard setup where you feel like you're using a laptop. Like I said, I think you judge it by how a laptop works. And I find it wanting. Like every time I need to flick on something with a – it just – it doesn't work for me. And I feel like it's not a main – it's not good enough for most people. And if they're going to try to sell this trackpad to people, it needs to be good enough for the people who are going to buy it and i i just my my gut feeling is that if apple with the existing trackpad stuff if it said yay now there's a trackpad on the ipad with the existing ios 13 stuff um it the response from

everybody is going to be what are you talking about this is this is really bad like i just don't think i don't i think that what they have right now is the beginning of a full cursor mode for the ipad and if you were releasing an ipad pro keyboard to be with a trackpad then you would have to improve it from where it currently is it's too early and it's it's what it is is fine but the moment it gets the endorsement of an apple accessory it goes from being this quirk for people who want it has to be first class at that point it does and and what's there now is not no like it's you is it it's usable and i'm glad that you like it and i use it in certain circumstances but what's there now is it's not I agree good enough so if if that's their strategy here they have to have a whole

raft of updates to assistive touch that we haven't seen yeah my feeling on is right now I love it because it's better than not having it but it is not ready for everyone right so the second question here which is another part of this is what if the trackpad only controlled the text cursor which i've seen a lot of people thinking about and you've mentioned like what if they just added trackpad support for text cursors you've been talking about this a long for a long time if they do something where it is this idea of like capacitive keys right you could swipe on the keys then sure maybe but all of this seems like way too much work to release a keyboard with a trackpad and

charge more money for it if all it does is control the cursor that would be a massive letdown in my opinion all right so i'm going to give you the counter argument here okay which is get ready you ready um so imagine they release this product and it has a standard trackpad so it's right there in your face this is a trackpad what do i do with it well i can see how they sell it which is you need a keyboard because of text that's why you use a keyboard primarily is because of typing. You want to do typing. Well, when you're doing typing, you're also probably doing editing of that text and move. And we have a text cursor that's on the screen when you put two fingers down,

but you don't have that when you're using the smart keyboard. So now we added a trackpad that lets you do all this great editing and you can select things and you can drag and drop and you can copy and paste and you can probably also do some gestures um which we'll get to it's another question that i have but like i could see apple saying we made this thing with the trackpad it's for text editing if you need it as a pointer you can turn on assistive touch turn on assistive touch but by default it's just for text editing and maybe gestures i could see them trying to get away with that and letting that be enough until ios 14 or ipad os 14 i could i could see it i'm not saying it's great but i could see them trying to sneak by and say well it's a it's a trackpad on a keyboard of course it's for text editing. And the text editing cursor is there, and it works, and it works pretty well.

So I think they could get away with it. This actually is like a... You've touched on something there, which also leads into what about iPadOS 14, right? About maybe actually having a cursor mode, full cursor mode as part of one of the big features of 14, which has made me wonder, like, would this definitely come out in March, this product? Well, so I think this is all the rumor is it's going to come out. It's part of the new iPad.

They're announcing it. It's going to come out now. I think what we have to do is think of it in the context of the last iPad Pro, where it came out. And it came out because Apple needed to release it then. They just said, now is the time for this product. We have to get on. They have a cycle. This is when this is coming out. And everybody said, this product is not good enough because it needs more features. And that's going to be in the next OS release, which is all the way next summer and fall. I feel like that's sort of what they're going to do here, which is the iPhone is important enough that the release is timed to the release of the new iPhones. The iPad is not. And so you end up with these weird kind of interim steps.

And that's what I'm sort of proposing here as my counter argument to you is this is the, this is an interim step that makes sense for me, which is text editing is good. You can use text editing. Text editing is the default. Assistive touch still kind of weird, not the default, but you can turn it on if you want to. And therefore you can get like, get the, the finger, the floating virtual finger if you want it. But by default they can sell it as

it's for text editing and maybe gestures we'll get to that and isn't that great and then they just do that and get it out the door and then when they roll out ios ipad os 14 it's got a whole new cursor mode in it and everybody's like oh of course this is for the trackpad yeah um also by the way that thing we talked about last week i think about um arm max like well if you sell an ipad that runs on arm that has a keyboard and a pointing device you could turn it into an arm mac development machine couldn't you you could because now you've got a built-in keyboard and mouse just like you could use that run mac os on arm on it um but i i you know anyway does this make sense like it's it gets them something that they can

they can sell and and have it be like palatable and then worry about having ios 14 actually implement it right yeah if i could like so if they if they did because like right now trackpads don't work with ipad os with assist touch so they don't work at all for me if they release this said it was primarily for text cursor and but either they said it or they did actually enable this product to work with the current assistive touch mode i would be perfectly happy because then i'm still getting what i want right yeah yeah exactly so i would be happy with that for now and i think that i think that gets away from the issue of assistive touch isn't good enough because i don't believe that they've got a secret version of assistive touch and cursor support that's been that's great

that's going to just get baked in to the i mean like i think it could be in there now if they had it because people are already using it now and they haven't put it in there. So I think they just don't have it. So this would be a way for them to have, like, something that's very constrained but decent. The text editing stuff I think would be really good. The assistive touch is there on the side if you want to turn

it on, and it lets it kick the can down the road until 14 and lets them ship the product now and deal with iPadOS 14 later. And one would hope that iPadOS, this is an open question, one of my questions is like, one would hope that iPadOS 14, if this product exists, would have a much more comprehensive, well thought out cursor mode now that there's a first party product that has a pointing device and that all other third party you know pointing devices would also be able to get it but it would be because there's a trackpad on a smart keyboard i could get on board with this

you've answered my like main concern which was like if they only had this product and all it did was move the text cursor around, it seems like a waste. But if they did enable it to work with the current system with the thinking that there would be great improvements to that system, I could understand the timing. Yeah, I can't see them making a pointing device and saying, oh, you can't drive assistive touch with it. Like it's an accessibility feature. You should. It's actually for people who need it for accessibility purposes it's kind of great right like you should be able to turn that on even if that's not what it uses by default um i don't know i don't know well this is all just kind of tea leaf reading here but uh this is the scenario that

makes the most sense to me multi-touch gestures we should talk about the gestures because that's the other part of this all my questions are kind of like they all follow on each other and they're all interconnected because I will tell you as somebody who uses a trackpad, so I use a magic trackpad as my pointing device on my Mac. So I'm using a trackpad all the time. And then I go to that bridge keyboard and the thing I miss the most, honestly, were the gestures. And I think gestures is a perfect example of where a trackpad could be great on iPad OS. this trackpad and there are also gestures baked in in addition to the text editing i feel like that's a whole other layer of look at this nice functionality we brought in and this is not like complicated stuff this is like three finger swipe to switch between apps this is you know a swipe up to reveal the reveal the app switcher and a swipe down to go uh to the home screen or something it's

it's a basic kind of mission control expose kind of stuff that I think would actually be really nice to have on the iPad. And I missed it when I was using that bridge keyboard with the trackpad because it doesn't do that. It doesn't support that. So I think that and also two fingers down to scroll, which you can do with assisted touch, but it's not great, but you can do it. I use two finger scrolling all the time.

I would love to have two finger scrolling on an iPad trackpad. So I think if you throw that into the mix, I think you can see Apple's argument being text editing and great gestures and more to come. Turn on assistive touch if you want you know talk to you later and then they're out of there so i don't know i i think i think it makes it compelling given because really what we're doing here is we're not imagining our ideal product now we're trying to imagine like if this hardware exists how do they cobble together from what they have lying around a story that makes sense and i think you could potentially throw

gestures on on that list because there are some there's no no great gesture support for stuff like that in ipad os today other than sort of like the scrolling thing which is like emulating a scrolling wheel but you could do it and it would make it would make it a lot better and then your last question which i love will people complain about how the ipad isn't a laptop and doesn't need a trackpad or a keyboard or a stylus and the answer is of course they will because they always do they've complained about all of these things since the beginning there are some people for whom the idea that you need to add that you not not need even that you might want to add anything to it offends them and And I don't know why these people feel this way,

but there was literally a guy wrote back to me on Twitter and said, or he retweeted me and he said, he said, this is just, why don't you just get a laptop? It was the simple thing. And I wrote back to him on Twitter and I said, that last question is about you. And he said, fair enough. But yeah, so of course people will complain. Like Apple making the keyboard dock for the first iPad didn't stop people complaining about iPad keyboards. Apple making a smart keyboard, a literal Apple keyboard for an iPad

did not stop people complaining about people using keyboards on the iPad. Apple making the Apple pencil did not stop people complaining about styluses on Apple touch devices, right? Like they're never going to stop because for some people, the iPad is only a touch tablet and should never be used in any other context. And that's fine.

But Apple's going to, it looks like Apple's going to release an iPad accessory with a trackpad on it. And so I deal with it i guess and then there are the the other class of people which is like a similar thing which was uh something that federico was talking about when he was on the talk show with john gruber this past week which was a really great episode about the idea of people like you you mentioned you you start using it this way and so why don't you use a laptop you know know? Yeah. I have my standard answer. My standard answer when they say, why don't you just use a MacBook, is they don't make

a MacBook where I can rip the keyboard off and then walk around with a screen. I mean, Federico will also talk about how he prefers the apps and all that. And there's a lot of truth to that. But for me, the number one thing is 95% of the time I use my iPad, if not more, it has no keyboard attached to it but i can attach a keyboard to it and then use it in that configuration and then tear it back off and like max don't do that that's it so i found this whole news particularly awkward for bridge you know we mentioned that they were making the pro plus keyboard which is actually should have

started shipping, but it's been delayed until at least April due to production issues caused by coronavirus. Yeah, I feel bad for them because they tried to get out in front of this and in talking to them, there was always this question about what is Apple? You're a third party. What is Apple going to do here?

Because Apple's decisions about software and hardware severely impact the future of their products. Because if Apple makes their product in a first party version, they're it was conceived. If they make big software changes in the new iPad Pro, this might be a problem for them. If they don't, then it's probably okay. But there's potential benefit here. Apple's solutions never work for everyone. The Bridge keyboard has an audience

even though the smart keyboard exists. Not only is it cheaper, but it gives you the laptop feel, and it has the clamps and the weight to use it as a laptop. And I love it, and you love it, and a lot of us love it. So if Apple does this, the good news for Bridge is that their trackpad presumably will have better OS support than it did before because Apple is playing in that market.

So any benefit that they would have had for being out there, like it was going to be kind of a weird product anyway, because of the very limited support that Apple offers. You could argue that Apple's presence in the market will hurt them, but that if Apple does some software things to make the trackpad experience actually decent on the iPad, it will benefit them because their product will be better because it will be more usable. So, um, you know, I don't think Apple's going to make a heavy laptop style keyboard with hinge for the iPad. If they did that, I will be really surprised if they don't do that, then bridge is going to be fine i think because they're going to have the software support they need and apple's not competing against them directly

and there are going to be people who want the full-on laptop keyboard experience that apple maybe isn't providing i just really i want this product whatever ends up being though because it's you know i i want the product but i also want the i want the software oh i really want this product, whatever it ends up being. I want the product, but I also want the software. Oh, I really want full-on. If they fix assistive touch to make it better, or if they put in, by default, a cursor driving mode, then presumably that will work with external devices as well. I would also really love it if they brought in proper trackpad support so you could attach a magic trackpad to an iPad and it would actually work. That would be really cool too. I'm also excited about the potential that everybody else who's tried to use an external pointing device will be able to pick up some benefit from Apple rolling this feature in.

So I'm excited on a bunch of levels yeah yeah this will be this will be really really great um and it will also make sense to me why they decided to go down the route of ipad os if they're gonna make it like a that you can use a cursor it's like we are so far away from the iphone at this point that maybe it needs to be its own thing. Some system-wide keyboard shortcuts, which I've been complaining about for so long now. Like the keyboard up and down for app developers. Like even though this is going to be a middling step because we know that there's iPadOS 14 coming around. But this little set of updates that are going to be timed around this product release, it's very clear where Apple goes with iPadOS next, which is they are going to stuff a bunch of things that we think of as Mac features in the iPad now. And it may be that they feel kind of freed from confusing things with the iPhones.

Like, of course, you don't want that stuff on the iPhone, but on the iPad, you really do want it. And they seem to be going there. All right, let's finish up today's episode as we always do with some hashtag ask upgrade questions. But before we do, let's thank our final sponsor. And that is Squarespace.

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Hashtag ask upgrade. First question comes from Justin. Justin says, we're about to have our first child. Congratulations, Justin. Yes. And we'll be recording videos more often now. comes from justin justin says we're about to have our first child congratulations justin yes and we'll be recording videos more often now and i'm sure and also taking more photos than you've ever taken ever is what is what seems to happen uh justin has an iphone 11 pro can't decide if i

should shoot videos in 30 frames per second 4k or 1080p i do not currently have a 4k tv do i future proof videos or maximize space so if the argument see you said 30k or 30 fps k right 4k so it's it's 30 frames per second of 4k resolution or 1080p which i think you can shoot at a higher resolution if you want to that i think is worth the argument about like do i want a higher frame rate for my videos or do I want a higher resolution? I think I would choose higher resolution anyway, but it's at least worth the conversation. So here's the thing. As somebody who's got a daughter in college and a son in high school, I have seen the curve of quality affect all of my beloved childhood photos of my kids. beloved childhood you know photos of my kids um which is why i'm going to say if you've got the room shoot at the maximum quality because in 15 years in 20 years the space isn't going to matter

space is only going to get cheaper over time and the quality can never get better you know presumably it's always going to be, even if there's machine learning and stuff like that, going from the best source material is always going to be the best. And you're not going to believe this, but in 15 years, 4K video is going to be like crap, and 1080 video is going to be garbage. So choose the highest quality you can if you've got the space to do it.

If you just can't do it, if you just can't make it work, then 1080 is fine. It's actually pretty nice. But I'm just saying I feel like over time you end up looking back and going, oh, I wish that this wasn't a one megapixel image of my newborn baby. And that's something that I have to deal with now. And the baby pictures for jamie look they look nice they're they're pretty good with the standalone camera i got but the and the videos are awful because they're all sd video and that's just that's the early 2000s that's what it was like but if i had the opportunity to have shot that all on hd video even if it would have been

more tapes and more hard drives and more expensive, I would have done it thinking back now. So I would say go to 4K and don't worry about the space. Don't worry about the space in your iPhone. Pay more for iCloud. Do the maximize

storage option. And then have them all download to a Mac or something. And then back them all download to like a mac or something and then back them up there right so these these videos can live in the cloud mostly as long as you just make up you have make sure you have a backup of them somewhere right like on some machine that has a bigger hard drive or something um don't i wouldn't say because we have these options now where you can have things just automatically be pushed to icloud and you should do that so then you end up with the 4k video and i think for me personally i like 30 frames per second i don't like 60 um yeah it's it's it's

weird i i wonder about the future and if we'll be like oh this is so weird or whether whether like the fact is that resolution matters and frame rate doesn't matter um which would be what i would i would go with personally i think i would go with that yeah because i think i'd go with resolution i would go resolution because i think the 30 and 60 thing has been around for longer and i think it is more of a personal preference but you would want to make sure you have as much resolution as possible as screens get bigger and more detailed. So that makes a lot of sense. Chris asks, do you think that the design team of the first generation Apple Pencil knew full well that the second generation would solve all of the big problems from the first generation, like its ability to roll off a table, charging via lightning

port, and then having a cap that's easily lost lost or do you think that they made the generation one then thought how that they needed to fix these issues um perfect is the enemy of good is what i would say and great artist ship you know real artist ship um i'm sure everybody at apple knows at least inside that the first generation one will ultimately be embarrassed by whatever comes after it but you have to ship yeah so there wasn't you know i maintain that the charging method for the first apple pencil was perfectly fine considering the situation in which it was born there was no way to charge that thing better than what they did. Yeah, I think that's true. Keep in mind, the amazing things about the Gen 1 pencil were that it existed. Yes.

And that it worked with the iPad. The only way to actually have an Apple Pencil be effective is it needs to be charged by the iPad. That has to be the case. If you have to charge it somewhere else, it sucks and you won't use it. Like, that has to be the case. If you have to charge it somewhere else, it sucks and you won't use it. And the second generation Pencil, they literally built the iPad around the concept of charging it.

Because it needed the flat edges. It needed a flat edge. That's why the flat edge is there. That iPad has that thing just for the Apple Pencil. The first generation, they kind of had to figure it out, right? They weren't ready for that yet. And there were other things like making it exist. So, you know, were they aware that it rolled off a table? Yeah, probably.

But they had other concerns. They had other concerns. The lightning port, that's what they had available. They maybe didn't ever know at that point that the generation two would be different in that way, because you wouldn't create a product and be like we'll redesign the entire ipad for this because you don't know if it's going to be successful right right but like the apple pencil was very successful which is why it is now available on every single ipad right like apple knows that the apple pencil is a big thing you couldn't buy one for months right so it months, right? It's kind of a magical product

and I know Apple, everybody rolls their eyes when you say that, but I was thinking about it the other day and the new one is even more like you can't even tell that it's got anything. The old one you could take off the cap and find that lightning port underneath. The new one, you know, it's just like a little block. It's like a thing. It's like a pencil.

It's just a thing. It doesn't feel like a technological product with a battery and software at all which is amazing and the original one felt that way too so there's so much there and then yes it's successful and and then they say well you know the next ipad needs to be built with the pencil in mind and it was ding asks do you think apple will ever return to the sub 13 inch mac laptop or do you think that anything below 13 inches will be ipad only from now on if i had to guess i'd say there'll be a small mac laptop at some point i keep thinking that the uh that there may be the arm macbook may be a macbook and not a macbook air and that they'll keep the macbook air around

because they learned their lesson about trying to kill the MacBook Air. The MacBook Air will outlive us all, Jason. It would be logical for them to just do a new MacBook Air, but I feel like that's arm-based, but I feel like that they won't. For whatever reason, my gut feel is that they won't, that they're going to like,

all right, you people like the MacBook Air, we brought it back. It's got a styling that they don't really actually like somebody there doesn't like, but the customers like. And so they brought it back kind of, it took time and it was kind of reluctantly, but they did finally get it there. My gut feeling is that, is that they might make a smaller laptop. That's an arm laptop because they can, because they can have it have a smaller battery and it will be thinner and cooler and lighter. laptop because they can because they can have it have a smaller battery and it will be thinner and cooler and lighter so i do think and the mac can handle an 11 inch screen because i used one for ages and i've got one right here right like i i think it i would love that i would 11 11 11 inch

or 12 inch retina macbook running on arm with really long battery life uh that would be awesome that sounds like a great product. Right? I think so. So I think we will see, if I had to put money down, I think we will see a sub-13-inch Mac laptop at some point. Elizabeth asks, for podcasts that you don't listen to all of the episodes of, you just pick and choose based on a topic, do you subscribe then delete the episodes you're not interested in,

or do you check the feed periodically and add ones that you're interested in so i guess you never subscribe to them but you just check and add stuff i don't subscribe in fact i always complain to marco about overcast that if you add an episode uh it used to be the behavior i think it isn't anymore that if you added an episode to your library it subscribed you to the podcast and like i would hear about like somebody I know is on a podcast, some, some podcaster I like is guesting on another podcast. And I add that episode so I can listen to it. Or somebody says, oh, you should listen to this episode of so-and-so. I don't, I don't subscribe at that point. I don't want to subscribe at that

point. I want to listen to that episode. And, um, it, so for podcasts where i don't listen and pick and choose which i you know i do the incomparable it is the ultimate pick and choose podcast like it's so unless you're me and you're interested in everything that i'm interested in which is you know even then i don't host every episode right um it's a pick and choose kind of podcast in those circumstances yeah i i generally subscribe and you know keep three or something and then we'll uh hang on to them uh sometimes yeah sometimes i will end up finding that i go into the archive and add old episodes back in because i wanted to listen to them there are i should say there are some podcasts that fall into that camp and there are others where I don't subscribe, but I will visit it periodically and add them in. That's generally because Overcast does not yet offer Syracuse mode, which is going from the

beginning forward. And so for a lot of podcasts, I am in the middle of, I'm way back in the archive and those I manually add and don't subscribe to because I don't want the new episodes. I'm just manually going through the old episodes. And when I get to the end of the stack, I'll download a bunch more and add them to the stack.

So we're pretty much the same. Different approaches. I do pretty much all of those things too. And Kevin asks, given the growing coronavirus situation, do you expect other upcoming Apple events like the Rubber March event would be canceled or postponed? I don't think Apple is going to postpone a media event.

What if they can't make the products? Well, okay. If they can't make or ship the products, that's true. What if these iPads that they want to ship just can't get out of China or can't get assembled in China? if these iPads that they want to ship just can't get out of China or can't get assembled in China? Well, then that event is going to get cancelled or postponed.

Or the truth is, they will never announce it. So it will be one of these, like, we thought they were going to do it, but internally they postponed it. They never told us they were having it, so is it really postponed? Yeah, because that's the benefit of the way that they do this stuff now, is they send out the invite like a week, or maybe a week and a bit before.

And then it's like, you know, you can just, whenever you know you're like three weeks away from having them. You don't announce something unless you know you're ready to ship it. And if they aren't ready to ship it, then they won't announce it. And so all this stuff we just talked about, it may be that it doesn't happen for a while if they can't get the parts and they can't get the stuff out of China where they assemble most of this stuff. So it's true. Maybe that will happen, but I would say that they won't announce an event. I can't see them announcing a media event and then canceling it. They just won't announce it. And media events, I think it's a good question of like,

would Apple avoid doing a media event where it's a very limited guest list for fear of virus transmission versus a general public event? I think it's possible. I think the truth is that Apple could do an event without anybody if it wanted to. And it also can just do briefings and press releases if it wants to. If I had to put money down, I'm doing a lot of betting. You are. If I had to put money down, well, this is the thing. I can have lots of opinions, but in the end, it's like, what's the one that I would be like, all right,

what's the most likely scenario? I think the most likely scenario, assuming that they can get products at some point for what we were supposed to have at a March event, I think the most likely scenario is that they will do press releases and briefings and not do an event at all. Because honestly, an iPhone SE, a new iPad Pro with an accessory, but it looks more or less like the old iPad Pro. These are updates. These are not earth shattering products. Apple got a lot of coverage for that 16 inch MacBook Pro, and they didn't do an event for that. They just did briefings. So that would be my most likely scenario is that Apple's going to convert a bunch of media events into press briefings. WWDC is a public event,

so I think if my money right now would probably, I'm leaning toward that they will do it as a virtual event and they won't have it be in person. I am in agreement with you on this. My current feeling is WWDC will not be going ahead in its current guise this year. And because that's a big rollout, they might do that as an on-campus let's say media event so so the media events become press release and briefing events

the giant conference becomes a media event with ancillary stuff that's streaming and then the iphone event who knows what the situation is going to be like in September, but that's an event that I'm sure they want to do as a media event. And again, they control the guest list too, so they could make it really constrained. They could not invite people from places where I imagine by September, the coronavirus will be everywhere. And so it will just be what it is. And who knows what our cultural feelings about international travel and going to large conferences or big event spaces will be. Maybe they'll have to do that as an Apple event in an empty or employee-only Steve Jobs theater. There'll be a lot of applause then.

Who knows? There should be constant applause. You just won't be able to stop them. Yeah. It'll be just long, long applause. Tim Cook does some crowd surfing. My feeling is just, I just can't imagine any company within the next month making an announcement about their conference that is happening.

I just can't imagine it. Me neither. I'm waiting for Google to change their mind on the ios apple has apple has april has till april really to to do this they've announced in april before so they've got time to watch this but the way it's going just because this is a virus and it spreads like that's gonna happen i have a hard time with them saying, hey, everybody from around the world fly to Cupertino. I can't see it. So I imagine that they're working very hard on what their non-event contingency is for WWDC. And I think they can do it. This is the thing about Apple. Not only has Apple proven that it can call events and get people to show up and report about what

they're doing, they've also proven that they don't have to. So I think they'll just go to that approach. I think they will have people go, I went to New York for the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the Magic Keyboard. I didn't actually mean to call it the Magic Keyboard. I was kind of being sarcastic, but it is the Magic Keyboard. They did that, right?

And people came from all over and they ushered us into their flat and they gave us the demo and they showed us stuff and we walked away with review hardware. And like it was a very small number of people in a controlled space and they got plenty of coverage. So they can do that. They can do that for anything they want to so if i had to predict i think maybe that'll happen this time with the caveat being something that you pointed out which is very good which is that's if they can ship this stuff because the other part of this is just the the harm to the supply chain that like if factories aren't working then there's no product to sell.

And that shoe hasn't dropped yet, but that's when it's going to get really interesting if not only events get canceled, but the products start not shipping. Like what if, and there's no evidence for this yet, but like what if Apple can't ship the iPhone? Like, and all its competitors can't ship the iPhone? And all its competitors can't ship their products, right? I think that there is a strong possibility at this point that there will be issues. It might not be terrible.

It might not be catastrophic. But issues that lead all the way up to the end of the year. And even if they have products to sell there there will certainly you would think be constraints right like even if you can make these products you may not be able to make as many of them as you would like and i think it's going to be this year is going to be super interesting for technology without products which companies come out of this okay and dealing with i mean like financially it's not you know for pretty much all these companies it's not going to be reckoning but like what what happens and how do they deal with their year if they can't release the products that they want to release within

the time frames that they want to release them in and it's going to be really fascinating to see how this stuff unfolds over the next year yep if you would like to send in a question uh could be about coronavirus or could not be i don't know how many more there will be but you never know uh just send out a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade and you can send in a tweet with a hashtag snell talk if you have something a little bit different to help us open an episode of the show. If you want to find Jason online, you go to sixcolors.com and he is jsnell on social media.

I'm iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. This show is a part of RelayFM. Go to relay.fm slash shows if you listen to Upgrade and no other or maybe listen to one other RelayFM show. I'm very confident there is something in our catalog for you that you may enjoy. Thanks so much to KiwiCo, Linode, and Squarespace

for their support of this week's episode. And as always, thank you for listening. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Early.