Upgrade - 289: Not So Fast, Uma Thurman

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

This week we discuss how the global pandemic has affected Apple, from retail to TV shows to Apple Park workers, and potentially even product launches. Your hosts, experts at working at home, offer some advice to new homebound workers. And to lend a little normalcy to the proceedings, we leave a little time for speculation about some future Apple product releases.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 289 today's show is brought to you by our wonderful sponsors linode direct mail and same box my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how are you i'm very good i'm very good indeed we have a hashtag cell talk question from jacob and, and Jacob wants to know, now that so many Upgradians are working at home, we're going to talk about that later on in the show, Jacob was wondering, how do you deal with lunch during your work days? Wow.

I usually have bread and generally turkey sliced in the fridge, and I will go make myself a turkey sandwich. I also try... Not real bread though, right? Well, it's gluten-free bread. It's real bread, Mike. It's just not made with wheat. Is it got a different spelling?

No, it's bread. Why? It's bread. I'm sorry, Jason. I'm sorry. Breath. It just ends in an F. B-R-E-A-F.

The F is for free. Yeah, it's real bread. And although I did have, I bought, and they're super expensive. These gluten-free loaves of bread are incredibly expensive, which is okay. Although it is, I actually had a checkout person at Whole Foods look at me when they scanned it. They're like, is that right? And I said, oh, yeah, that's right. It costs $7. He's like, wow. I'm like, yeah, well, gluten-free, man. It's all really expensive, but this is the only way I get to have bread. But I opened one, a loaf the other day to make a sandwich, and I discovered that there was a giant air bubble, like a giant yeast gas bubble had gotten into it when it was baking.

And so like the whole, it was like a donut. It was like holes in every single slice. You should have tried to work out how much money was lost to that air bubble. Just in terms of surface area and all that. Well, no, actually what I did was I went on social media and I tweeted at the company and I said, I love you guys, but your bread's really expensive. And then I put in a picture and I said, I don't think I'm getting my money's worth with the giant hole. And I got three free loaves of bread out of that. So that was a pretty good deal.

Anyway, so I take the bread and I take the turkey and I make myself a sandwich and you all know what a sandwich is. So I'm not going to explain it. Although the other thing with my daughter away at college, most of the time, one thing that I've been trying to do, you know, we make a lot of meals for four people and there are only three of us. And so there are leftovers. So if my wife doesn't take the leftovers to her job, I will also, you know, look and see if there are leftovers to be had, and I'll do that instead. So it's nothing exciting for me. I do sometimes don't know. I don't have all the right stuff, and that's really sad because then I'm left to make some

microwave macaroni and cheese, which I had to do last week at one point because there was nothing in the house for me. What about you, Mike? I try to limit my carb intake um and so i tend not to eat carbs at lunchtime because lunchtime is typically the easiest one for me to skip carbs because it's it's just a more uh i i kind of treat lunch as more of a functional meal than one that i enjoy because it's usually something i need to just get out of the way because i'm otherwise occupied or whatever. So what I will do is I will find a selection of things that I enjoy to eat at lunch

and then just rotate through those for a while. So at the moment, like today, I found some pretty nice chicken hot dogs. So they're hot dogs with chicken. I had those today. I had two of those today before uh before lunch just just the hot dog just a hot dog yeah and then that will that will sustain me i try and just find something protein um and and we'll just try and find a protein and we'll go with that for

a while that tends to be my typical i will and this is something you can't have because it'll kill you but i will sometimes literally just have a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter and move on with my life yeah yeah like if i'm trying to do a lunch like that I'll maybe eat like uh some kind of cheese snack maybe like a baby bell um and I find found these a while ago like peas like dried peas that are flavored with maybe uh salt vinegar or whatever really nice really nice especially for somebody who can't eat peanuts or whatever. That's a good functional snack. Thank you, Jacob.

I guess this is a good thing, especially if you have questions around homeworking, send them in. Hashtag Snell Talk and we'll try and answer more of those over the next few weeks. But we are going to, later on in today's episode,

give you some working from home tips if that's the thing that you are currently experiencing in your life. But we do have some follow on in today's episode give you some working from home tips if that's the thing that you are currently experiencing in your life. But we do have some follow-up. And Jason, I have another Apple Arcade pick for you. Two for two this past couple of weeks. It's a brand new game called Roundguard.

It is a cross between Peggle and a roguelike game. And Peggle is one of my very favorite games of all time. Uh, and this game is a very nice adaptation of that mechanic in that there's like spells and combat, believe it or not in a game like this, which is basically pachinko. Um, but roguelike means that when you die, you die and you have to start again. But if you collect certain items, you can carry them through. So you actually get a level of carry them through so you actually get a level of progression even though you're starting afresh each time so uh that is uh that's another game that i want to recommend that i have been enjoying uh very much and it's called round

god it just came out um and so yeah i recommend people trying that nice i'll check it out i hadn't i hadn't heard about that um and i'll check it out yep could be fun um i wanted to put in a plug can i put in a plug one last time yeah for uh so you and i have been playing or have played dungeons and dragons together your first time we did adina's first time tiff arment's first time james thompson's first time since he was a kid um and i'm not sure if it was liz miles's first time anyway we played we played dnd with tony cindylar as uh as our dm and if you didn't hear about it when we announced that we started doing it i thought i would mention that this, the final episode of that season and that story concludes with episode 21. So about 21 hours total. You can listen. You don't need to have heard any

other episodes of Total Party Kill. You can start with ours. There's even a feed for just ours. But if you're looking for something to listen to that is closed, ended, and finished, closed, ended, and finished tomorrow, the last episode of that posts. And then all 21 parts will be there for people to listen to. And we have a good time and it's fun. And there's also a YouTube playlist.

If you would like to see us play, you can go to the Incomparables YouTube page or all the individual YouTube videos are linked to on the show page for the episodes. So you can do it that way too and there's a adventurers pyramid that's the name of our group a uh a playlist so i just uh we finished it a little while ago but uh the episodes have now have now uh all rolled out good plug jason check it out it's fun good plug indeed uh i saw that dr drang posted something in regards to your calendar uh updates you're talking about last time it's the grand life cycle

of the internet where um dr drang does a thing and then i do a thing and then he does another thing and then we mention it on upgrade which prompts him then to do a different thing related to it because we mentioned it and he heard himself be mentioned anyway what he did was this is this is the feedback about how i do spring cleaning with hazel and i also use hazel to do things like uh run dr drang's python script that cleans up um the southwest airlines downloads so that they're much more functional and that prompted him to do some exploration including building a shortcut on ios that does the same functionality and it does it in a different way and he's been experimenting with shortcuts and he has this script where he can like

show you the steps of a shortcut and and explain them he built like this table. It sections the shortcut screenshots into little bits. It's very clever. That's nice. So he can explain how he does it. Again, different methodology entirely from what his script does, but it totally works.

And then later on in the week, he also tried to experiment with what it would take to build that same functionality on the Mac using AppleScript or the JavaScript automation extension, which is basically using the same Apple events, and discovered that it's a lot slower than just running a Python script, which was kind of good for science to see how those shell scripts and scripting languages that are deep

inside the Mac are often by far the most efficient way of doing it. So if you want to take a nerdy dive in, or you're just a Southwest Airlines person and want an iOS shortcut that makes those items much more useful, check out Dr. Drang. Apple's company, Beats, has released a new version of their PowerBeats product.

So this is the PowerBeats Pro. There are a couple of different wireless Beats headphones. You have the Beats X, which are like the Beats versions of AirPods, right? But then they also have the PowerBeats, which is maybe an even more

workout-focused headphone. It has a 15-hour battery. It's $149. It's actually cheaper than the product it replaces, which is interesting. It's come down $50. They now feature the H1 chip that's in all the new headphone stuff. But the big difference between these is there's actually a cable that connects each uh that connects the earbuds to each other um so you can you can have them basically connected so if you one fell out that you wouldn't lose them right they're connected to each other and you could maybe drape it around the back of your neck or whatever yeah so it's like a different it's just like a different way of using the headphones

um these do not have wireless charging uh you plug them in to charge via lightning so it's not nothing major but it is a new it is a new thing um apparently we had heard about this before because they were in ios 13.4 there was like a little icon for them like you know how each version when when you plug in uh your any type of earphones that apple makes, then in Control Center, you get a little icon for them. Well, the icon for this one showed up in 13.4 because they do have a slightly different profile to the ones that they're replacing. That could potentially indicate that 13.4

is either A, going to drop this week, or B, was supposed to. We're not sure yet. We don't know. So Powerbeats Pro, not a product that i am interested in in the the slightest i think it's weird that this product still exists but well beats you know beats are a headphones company right they may as well make a bunch of options and everybody has different things that they look for i look at these and i think oh yeah i remember

when they made wireless headphones that had a big wire between them. But I get that, you know, variety is good. And if they're still selling these and these are popular, then it sounds fine. Yeah. Like I can understand it. Like I can imagine. I had a pair of something like, sort of like these and I hated it because I hated that cord. It felt like not really wireless headphones, just a cord to nowhere kind of thing. It's like I have a cord, but it doesn't plug into anything, and it just is hanging around, and I hated it. But everybody gets – more options are good. We're on the cord to nowhere, Jason. Congratulations. There's a – yep, reference acknowledged.

So for those who are excited about Powerbeats Pro, there they are. A couple of upstream headlines for you related to Apple TV Plus shows. Uma Thurman has joined Suspicion coming to Apple TV Plus. This is the show that we've mentioned in the past that was based on an Israeli award-winning program called Force Flag. The plot of the drama revolves around a prominent businesswoman who is going to be played by Uma Thurman and the kidnapping of her son. The crime is caught on video and goes viral and then a quartet of British citizens become the lead suspects

and the show asks whether the suspicion is warranted. That's kind of what the show is all about. But another A-lister joining an Apple TV Plus project. Yep. Apple have also shared trailers for two shows, Home Before Dark, which is the story of the young reporter who ends up uncovering...

Yeah, the nine-year-old journalist who uncovers a murder. Based on true events. And then also Central Park, their comedy musical animated show made by the Bob's Burg create bobs burgers yeah you you got it it is it is animated from the people who did bobs burgers and it's musical and it's got a remarkable cast lots of people from hamilton in the cost the original broadway version of

hamilton yeah it uh that one i'm i'm very much intrigued by and i love bobs burgers that's a great show so but that's coming at the end of may i think that i think but all of this was supposed to be announced at south by southwest because apple apple were at south by south was supposed to be at south by southwest right right um and we'll be showing off stuff well they didn't get to do any of that so they probably released a bunch of this stuff afterwards on their own social channels sure all right let's take a break and we should talk about the news of the day. Yes, we have to talk about whether Uma Thurman will be going on a

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and the promo code upgrade2020 for that $20 credit. Our thanks to Linode for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Okay, so let's talk about coronavirus, COVID-19, and how Apple has been responding, because they have done a lot of responding in the last week. There's lots of things going on here. The biggest thing is that WWDC is going to be online only. This is an interesting thing for me now,

because I feel like I've kind of forgotten about it, because I have resigned myself to the fact that this was happening, to the point that now that it's happened, it's just the way it is. This is really big news but like if they dropped this out of the blue we would have just lost our minds right right but because i think we'd resigned ourselves to the fact that this was going to be the case it doesn't feel that big now it's that creeping realization which all of us are going through i

think as we watch the news right you go through those steps where it's, could they? And then they probably should. And then it's, you know, they probably will. And then we went to, they certainly have already decided. They're just deciding when to announce it and how. And then they finally, like, you know, you talk about waiting for the other shoe to drop, like eight shoes dropped here. So we had all come to terms with it and actually on a larger scale i feel like that is a thing that you can see repeating in all of these stories is a lot of it is about people coming to terms with the inevitable of what needs to be done and sort

of trying to you know taking a path there and hopefully taking it fairly quickly of going from well of course we're going to have our event to eventually hopefully quickly getting to of course we're not having our event and and that's been happening a lot so you know no details really right a couple of paragraphs in the press release about this and you know it's going to be an online event it's going to be for all apple developers they said that specifically um that they're gonna you know there's early access to the future of the platforms which means that they'll be you know they're still planning on doing their their beta cycles

although they're again i think it's worth asking the question, does that still make assumptions about Apple's capability to develop software that may be hindered by what's going on with the pandemic? But at least for now, that's their plan is they're going to do it online. They're going to do a keynote online. They're going to do sessions online. They haven't given us a date. It's going to start in June, but it's unclear when. It also didn't say stopping in June, right? Like, I think that it's an open question about whether they might take more time to roll this out, whether they want to do it in a whole week. The potential problem of they're just not sure when it's going to be ready, maybe, right? Or it's like, these take a lot of work and they're just not sure who's going to be in and who's not going to be. And so by not fixing a date to this because frankly they don't need to um they're giving themselves a lot of room i like that they are at least sticking to june uh because i think that's good i mean obviously i find it to be you know as i'm sure you do really difficult because we have a lot to plan around it but we get the point right like yeah you know it's not the worst thing i'm sure we'll get more information when we get closer, but you know, there is another story

that's on our list here that we might as well talk about now, which is there is a challenge in a work from home environment, which Apple is trying to do with their people that, you know, Apple has incredibly strict security, especially about things like future products, future hardware products, but also even future software products. And I think this is one of those things that's going to be a challenge for them and that they're going to have to work out is if they want to keep their employees safe, are their employees going to be able to have the wherewithal to do the work that's necessary to get the platforms where they need to be to do a release and sessions and all sorts of stuff in June? Or is it all going to slide a little bit? And hedging and saying June, I think is good. It would not

shock me if it's later than we're used to, not early June, but later in June. It also wouldn't shock me if it's even later, because I feel like we live in a world now where there are a lot of assumptions that haven't yet been questioned. And then over the course of the next few weeks, people are going to realize, oh, we can't do it that way anymore. And things are going to change. So we'll have to watch. But the idea about, can I use this?

Can I check this out? Do I have access to this, even on their VPN or whatever they've got for their security? And then do you have to come into Apple Park? And are they spacing people out in Apple Park, right? Keeping them away from one another, maintaining social distance? It's a, I mean, let's not assume that they're going to have new versions of their platforms all ready to go the first week of June like they usually do, because I would probably bet against that right now.

Yeah, like they said it, right? Oh, you're going to find out about iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, watchOS, tvOS. But that was written like a week ago. Who knows where we're going to be in three months' time, right? We just don't know. We just don't know what the next few months are going to look like, right?

And so I completely agree with what you said there. I think that's a really good way of putting it is every assumption we have right now needs to be challenged so I did like something that I saw Becky Hansmeyer tweet saying that she was actually more excited

than usual about WWDC this year it has this we're all in this together vibe that makes me feel even more part of the community it's all the joy of WWDC with none of the FOMomo the pure and perfect dub dub for those of us who can never attend and i actually thought that was really nice it's like yes we actually are all together and you know i'm trying to think like ways that we can do things differently um this year because of the fact that like it's going to be different and so

like i'm trying to think of ways that things can be done differently i don't have any ideas yet but trying to make the best of the situation you know yeah uh apple has halted production of its television shows joining many not so fast uma thurman networks obviously they've they've they've shuttered everything but have noted foundation c the morning show servant and for all mankind yeah they were all shooting apparently season two of all of those shows or season one of foundation yep and uh yeah yep the knock-on effect here, which I was thinking about today, which is interesting, is they need all these shows in theory, right? Like they need all these shows to have their season twos so they're ready for when people will start paying for this thing in a year. And this will impact that.

And maybe the shows won't be ready in time. that and maybe the shows won't be ready in time my my prediction is that if the shows aren't ready in the fall when they're getting all of those free subscriptions to lapse that apple will extend the free trial i think that makes sense right delays and just kind of put it off a little bit because yeah they totally want to have uh people hooked on season one of these shows and then have season two come out and then needing you know you'll need to pay to stay at doing apple tv plus and if they can't time it that way uh wouldn't surprise me to just push the free trial a little bit longer apple followed up their wwdc announcement a day or two later with a more comprehensive um response to coronavirus so there's a few things that they've done.

Apple is donating at least $15 million to organizations around the world to help with this. For example, something we didn't mention, that they've donated $1 million to organizations in the city of San Jose because of WWDC not being there. Because that, I'm sure, will make an impact, right? On restaurants and such. Yeah, definitely. Right? Apple is closing... This is the big one. because i'm sure will make an impact right on restaurants and such um definitely right uh apple

is closing this is the big one they are closing all retail stores outside of greater china until march 27th i would say at least yeah last week we talked about them removing chairs and canceling like their their events their demos and things like that, and how quickly things move that by the end of the week, they're all closed, except in Greater China or in mainland China, where they were closed for a while and now are reopening. Yeah, because China's situation is more under control now. Apple is encouraging remote working wherever possible. We spoke about that.

And like many other large technology companies, they will continue to pay salaries for people who cannot work at home, like people whose jobs are fixed to a position, who cannot be in a safe location. And of course, if people are sick, they'll continue to pay as well. And the idea here is this is a thing that you're seeing a lot in a lot of different industries where you've got a very rich company and they've got the people who work in the cafeteria and they close the cafeteria.

And what a lot of these companies are stepping up and doing, which is really great, is saying we're going to pay them even though they can't come in and do their job because they are part of our company and this is going to affect them severely. And let's be honest, these companies have a lot of money and those people are not the most compensated people at their company. And to take care of them when there's an act of nature, essentially, that is put them out of work is the right thing to do, I think. Also, you're seeing a lot of this about people who are sick, because one of the other issues here is if you get sick, but the only way you get paid is by coming into work because you don't have sick leave, sick time, it spreads disease because those people force themselves to go to work even though they're sick, and then they transmit the illness to other people so you're also seeing much more expansive sick leave policies in place for a bunch of different companies and apple's definitely doing that where they've they've added some extended um sick policy so that people who feel ill should just stay away and they'll

continue to be paid uh they're doing uh they have actions underway to support their authorized service providers so throughout march and april apple is going to be giving like the repair centers that they have not like the the third-party companies that do these repairs they're going to be giving them the maximum payouts for qualifying repairs irrespective of usual performance metrics i tried to get my head around this one a little bit what it seems like that apple pay also pay the service providers some like bonus i guess for certain repairs that they do but they are graded on a scale but instead they're just giving people all the money that the top of the scale level so this is well i think one of the reasons they're doing this is not just to help these companies out but also to kind of like incentivize them because apple will not be providing these services now

over the next few weeks because their stores are closed there is a weird thing about like then kind of incentivizing these businesses to stay open which is strange but you've got one of two paths that you can take with this and this is the thing that they can affect for people looking back at this podcast from the future i guess i should qualify that it feels very much like we are in this in-between moment where it's really unclear what lengths uh society and governments will go to to stop the spread of this or slow the spread of this uh by shutting down services and in some countries this has already happened i feel like it's inevitable that it will happen everywhere but this is one of those interesting questions of like what stays open and what closes and you read about like everything is closed except for uh grocery

stores or and pharmacies and things like that but there's a there's a question we just had this today where um my daughter is back from school because they shut her school down and the car she uses to drive has had for the last week basically a flat tire and we took it in to be fixed this morning um in part because I would like that car to be drivable. And I don't know how long the tire place is going to stay open. But that's a question, right? Like, do you close everything? Or is a car mechanic, the kind of thing where you can still like leave your car, and then come back later and pay them and throw them your credit card or whatever you need to do? Or does all of that stuff cease to? And we don't know exactly what the rules will be. And we don't know exactly

when, but it's already starting to happen in parts of the United States and Seattle. Definitely, that's starting to happen. And so that's where we are now is how does this world work when we lock everything down for two to eight to question mark weeks? So I guess we'll see. I mean, there was something on Twitter about how somebody took their laptop into the Apple store because it had a replace battery warning. And they said, okay, we'll take this and we'll give it back to you on Monday. And then they closed all the stores. And that person was saying, well, I need my MacBook Pro back. You have my computer. I need it back. And what I heard is that there are some people still in Apple

stores to do things like return that laptop to the person who needs to come and get it. But we're all just kind of finding our way here and learning what the rules are. The overarching rule should be don't go outside. Don't be around other people if you can help it as much as possible to slow the spread of this. But the specifics are still a little unclear depending on where you are, of what's closed and what's open and what's okay and what's not. Apple, with the Apple Card, have launched the assistance program. So they're allowing customers to skip their March payments without incurring interest.

So I guess if you are financially impacted because of this, they're kind of allowing you to skip payment for a month. They're just kind of like, don't worry about it, which is nice. And in regards to the App Store, Apple is expediting the approval process for apps that are related to COVID-19, provided that they are from reputable sources like government organizations,

health-focused NGOs, companies deeply credentialed in health issues, and medical or educational institutions, so they're able to just go to a special team to be approved quickly. They are also waiving the developer fee for apps that are free and distributed to select groups

that are about this, and games relating to coronavirus will be rejected from the App Store. Sounds about right. So that's where, I guess, you know, we talk about Apple in this show, and the entire world is talking about coronavirus, so we

talk about Apple's response to coronavirus, and as it stands, that is it. For now. Today's show is also brought to you by direct mail. If you have a business, I bet that you're always looking for new ways to build your customer base, right? Or to build a following. That is something that we all look to try and do in our businesses. A super cost effective way to do this is email. For over 15 years, Direct Mail for Mac has been the go-to email marketing app for businesses, nonprofits, and schools, also other organizations who want to expand their reach, connect with their customers. It is designed for the Mac, so you can get your work done in half the time

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their full featured pricing plans. Head over to directmailmac.com upgrade to experience the top rated email marketing app for the Mac and see how they can help your business grow. That is directmailmac.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Direct Mail for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So as we expected, last week was full of more iOS 14 and more leaks. And I figured we'd maybe just talk about a few of those here, Jason. There's too many again to talk about on this episode,

but maybe some of the more interesting ones. I wanted to get your take on this. So there is talk of a new AR-focused application. So Apple is working on an app as part of iOS 14 that will let you use your iOS devices to get information about products and things in the real world. They're trialing it in Apple stores and Starbucks. So, for example, you could hold, I don't know, like some kind of Belkin charger up to your iPhone,

and you'd get a bunch of information about it. They will either have an SDK or an API, but it's unsure which will be taken advantage of, but this will be available for third parties. We would expect that this is all in preparation for a dedicated AR device from Apple. What do you think about something like this? I, you know, I don't know. I don't know.

It's, I feel like I wrote a piece about this actually over the weekend for Tom's Guide about how we can look at these leaks and we can see Apple's development priorities. And with AR, it's been the case for Tom's Guide about how we can look at these leaks and we can see Apple's development priorities. And with AR, it's been the case for a while now that Apple's really, really interested in AR, but doesn't have a product. So we end up seeing these kind of weird AR

inside iPhones and iPads stuff that is cool, but not really practical. It's not really stuff anybody's looking for. Yeah, but the reason they're doing it is not because everybody's going to be holding their iPhones out and looking around so much as that this is heading somewhere. And that's the best tool we've got right now, even though it's not very appropriate for this. even though it's not very appropriate for this. So I look at this stuff, it's hard for me to get excited about it because it does feel like even Apple realizes

this is not so much for today as it is for the future. But do you can, I mean, how do you feel about AR right now? Just in general. I will, I'll believe it when i see it yeah that's kind of how i feel about it like i i i don't share tim cook's enthusiasm which he hasn't talked about in a little while in any of those calls but i haven't shared his this will change everything kind of feeling it pops up in like speeches and stuff that he does, appearances that comes up. I see the potential of having augmented reality, right? AR, an overlay over reality where you can take stuff that's been processed from the internet and by intelligent agents that can filter things out and the idea that you can see, you know, where you need to go or

who this person you're talking to is or call up information with while essentially giving you a heads up display while you walk around. Like I can see the idea. I'm a little skeptical that that tech is going to be good, especially since we're limited by our biology. Like you have to put something in front of people's eyes in order to do this. And that's already asking a lot because a lot of people don't wear glasses. And then even if they do wear glasses, you've got to get something right up in front of their eyes. I think,

I just think it's a real challenge. And that's, there's a reason why there hasn't been anything that's really taken off in terms of AR is that it's just not, there hasn't been anything that's really taken off in terms of AR is that it's just not, it's not only not very good, but what there is out there is not even at the level of like, what was available as an MP3 player before the iPod came out, or what was available as a, as a smartphone before the iPhone was announced. I don't think we're even at that level where there's a market of stuff that is people are using, but not very much because it's not very good. And then Apple swoops in and says, ha ha, we figured it out. Like, I don't feel like we're even at that level yet.

So unless Apple is way ahead, I'm skeptical. I'm when we talk about AR, we've talked about how like the the different modes in the the AirPods Pro feel like real augmented reality. And I think that's true i actually think that there are maybe other senses that are much further along and also much easier to augment and like you know i know that apple is very interested in this visual overlay, I think there is a lot more that can probably be done with AirPods Pro, let's say, in our ears and Apple Watches on our wrists in terms of talking and listening and tapping and providing a quick glance. And Apple's doing some stuff there, but sometimes i think that that's the real augmented reality stuff that that works and that the rest of it is is uh i guess i'm skeptical of it i i think it could be great but i'm having a hard time feeling like it's close i i think i'm pretty similar to you like i don't

I think I'm pretty similar to you. Like, I don't... I've yet to see anything that I could imagine being a trade-off I'm willing to make. And really, Apple needs to show me the hardware, right? And that's the point, right? They need to have created something that's compelling, but we're not there yet. Maybe we'll get there whenever they have something to show.

It probably could... You know, we may have been able to go back and hear some skepticism around something like an apple watch right before before that came out um even though i think it was generally more accepted as a thing before um which is interesting but we'll see like i said the biology is the part that has stopped me from the beginning i know that like fighter planes have things where they have lasers that actually paint the back of your eye so that the display is right on your eye like there there exists technology but the thing is it's expensive and oftentimes it's again about the angles like where is that thing and then you start to think okay well i can do it in a jet cockpit i can do it when i'm wearing a helmet but can i do it if i'm just walking around with a let's say a pair of glasses and how much do they weigh at that point? And I don't know if

you've ever experienced this, Mike, because you wear glasses, but like if you, if something's wrong with your glasses, like one of the pads is tilted wrong or something on your nose, it becomes like really painful really quickly. Yes. Like one imbalance. So to add a lot of weight of tech gear onto a pair of glasses and have it on your face, like that's a hard problem. That's not like, oh, we made some glasses.

It's fine. Like talk to people who wore Google glass. Like it's not quite right. It's not weird. Heavy glasses are not a solution. And our eyes are still where they are on our face and need to have light shined into them in order to see the size of a fingertip, because it turned out that that was the pointing device, was the fingertip, and our fingers were never going to get smaller. So everything about touch interaction had to be based on the reality of our biology. And the same is

true of AR, and I think it's a limiter for that. So, yeah. Sorry, Tim Cook. iOS 14 could see some app layout changes. So on the home screen, for example, you may now be able to bring up a list view of your applications with various different sorting options. We have been arranging home screens on iPhones

for over a decade at this point, longer. Those icons have been wiggling for so long now, Mike. So long, the wiggle. Would you want to see it change? Or at least there'd be an additional option that we haven't had before? Yeah, there was a good bit in Connected last week where Federico talked about this, and

I agree with what he said. I think the truth is, you look at Android. Android has sort of two modes for apps. You can choose apps that appear on a screen, on like a home screen. These are the apps that you care about. And then you don't have to have, it's like, imagine if your Mac had literally every app on your Mac was in the dock. That's basically what the current iOS is. And there are tiers, at least I have, I really have tiers of apps. I have the apps that I launch, I want to launch all the time, and they're on my first page of my home screen. And then there's everything else. And do I swipe to page two to find those apps almost never i search for them and then i launch them so having a new layout where we could see all the apps in a list i think is great i and i i agree

with something federico said last week which is i don't think every installed app needs to have a physical location in the geography of the home screen. It has to be in a folder somewhere. It has to be on a page. I would really like to be done with that. I think app icons should be earned. If I care enough about you to put you on a page of my phone, great. If I care enough to have you around, but I don't want to see you until you're summoned, that's how it should be. And the idea that iPhone users have these folders called, you know, junk that have like 20 apps in them, it's dumb.

We shouldn't have to do that. But that's something that we've been stuck with for more than a decade. So I hope this is true because it's needed a rethink. I mean, it's needed a rethink for, what, five years at least, if not longer, and it just hasn't happened. There is apparently new Apple TV hardware on the way. There are references in iOS 14 to a new version of the apple tv and a new version of the apple tv remote don't get too excited new version the last time we got a new version of the apple tv remote it was a white circle around the menu button yep so we'll see we'll see wouldn't it be great if they

put a new version that was still like ridiculously, but the big feature of it was that it was a clicky remote? I would like that. Having used the Logitech Harmony as my primary Apple TV remote for the last few weeks, so just clicky buttons, almost everything is superior about that. The only thing that's inferior is if i need to jump way to the beginning or way to the end of something because i don't really use siri to search so i think they could do it i i'm skeptical about whether they will because i do think that they are worried that if you don't provide that um touch pad experience on the uh

on the remote that some apps are not going to work right. There's some new accessibility features coming, and this one's really interesting. So using sensors and mics on an iPhone, they'll be able to detect fire alarms, sirens, door knocks, doorbells, even crying children. And then from nine to five mac presumably ios will translate these alerts into haptics for people who have hearing issues yeah if they can get it to work i think it's a really cool idea that your phone is listening for you and that it can if it if it hears a siren or or whatever you set it up that it you get a push notification that says i hear i hear a siren i hear somebody knocking on the door uh how well it works it's kind of a mystery but this would be a really clever accessibility feature

if they can get it to work so um and i wonder if it would have some other like features does it tie with home kit where you could like have a light flash or turn on or something like that if it detects something like that but my skepticism is again how reliable is it going to be is it really going to be able to tell when a baby is crying or when somebody rings your maybe your doorbell makes a little more sense but when there there's a siren outside somewhere i don't know i don't know but it's an interesting idea i like what they're i like what they're exploring here so we'll'll see. It's all about the details, but it's an interesting idea. And then there were a bunch of additional rumors, reports about Apple laptops that came out last week as well. It was a very busy week last week.

Ming-Chi Kuo had a couple of reports. The first saying that there will be new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models with the with this is a switch keyboard coming by june so again it's it's all of these things are pretty unclear like with the details i mean you'd naturally assume that if that's going to happen that would mean the 13 inch would become a different design right like it would become the 14-inch or whatever. Like they're not just going to put a Sysoswitch keyboard in the current 13-inch MacBook Pro. Like that would be very peculiar. But the other interesting part of that, of course,

is that that's the MacBook Air as well. MacBook Air getting the keyboard that we want and having the Butterfly keyboard then gone from the line completely. And that that should, if if this is correct that should be by the end of the month i hope so i mean we we don't know again everything has a footnote which is who knows how this is going to change and apple rolling out new products when there isn't an apple store is interesting but there is a whole you know Apple store. So that's another way to do it. Um, it would be when we did the Apple report card at the end of last year on six colors,

the most common comment I think I got from all the people I surveyed was it's great that they got the butterfly keyboard out of that one laptop, but it's in all the others and this feeling that they hadn't finished the job, so they shouldn't get in all the others. And this feeling that they hadn't finished the job, so they shouldn't get full credit for it. And that, you know, they're going to be, it's going to be years before all of those butterfly keyboards are gone. Because if you bought one last year or bought one yesterday, you're going to have it for years and you're going to be dealing with it. So if Apple has prioritized getting it out of everywhere and that happens soon, that's fantastic news. Because my fear was that they were going to drag their feet on it and

the MacBook Air wouldn't get them the new keyboard for a while. My hope was that the MacBook Air was designed with the idea that they'd be replacing that keyboard because they knew they were going to have to do that. But there are lots of things we want Apple to do and Apple doesn't do. So, uh, I, I, I hope so. I hope that the, that keyboard is gone soon from every, you know, every new product Apple sells. It's, it's, it's way past time and they don't deserve credit for fixing the issue until it's truly fixed across all their laptops. Quo also says that either in Q4 2020 or Q1 2021 we will see the first Apple

laptops with Apple designed ARM processors Oh that was a laser Yeah, maybe they made the processors of lasers Maybe Oh, that was a laser. Yeah. That was a laser of surprise. Maybe they make the processes of lasers. Maybe. That's what all the processes are made. I have been predicting this. I know I've talked about it on here before. I've been predicting this forever. And just like, this is the year.

This is the year. No, no, no. This is the year. It would be great if this was the year. It would be great if next year was the year. But I think it will be quite a thing if their big chip transition announcement happens at an event that's entirely virtual, right? Yeah, that's the shame, right?

Like if they do announce it at WWDC, it's a shame to not be able to announce it in front of a group of people who will be excited right there will be you know maybe hardware there you know it's a shame that all that all said it affects every mac developer even the ones who aren't there it is a big it is a big story um i it feels like apple's been moving forward in a whole bunch of directions to get to this point, getting rid of 32-bit stuff. Mac Catalyst is probably a part of it. The, you know, bringing a cursor to the iPad because that sort of like ties the iPad apps and the Mac apps that are in Catalyst together a little bit more potentially.

There's a bunch of things that they've been doing that it seems like are converging in, you know, later this year or next year. ARM transition at WWDC, the big question is, what hardware do they use if they offer hardware to developers for them to test on? Because the Intel transition, you could get like a Power Mac G5 that had an Intel motherboard in it. And it was the Intel development machine. Like, this has been a thing that Apple has done in the past. And I had two thoughts. One is they'll offer an ARM development card that you can put in a Mac Pro. So they'll make everybody buy a Mac Pro. But the other thought I had, and I just, I'm not 100% on this, but I think it's a serious

possibility that one of the reasons that all of this, there's all this heat around that iPad Pro with a pointing device on the smart keyboard and all of that is that it could also be a Mac arm transition machine that you basically sacrifice your iPad and, um, turn it into a, an arm Mac for the purposes of software testing, not for regular people, but for the purposes of development wouldn't put it past them to do something like that because i'm sure the ipad pro is pretty close to what an arm macbook might look like but um i don't know i don't know it seems like it's actually happening so thank you to mingji for giving us some more tidbits about this that idea is so weird and interesting to me like if they actually just have it,

what, mean that you could run macOS on an iPad? Yeah, I mean, I think you absolutely could. I think that you wouldn't want to if you're a regular user. Well, I mean, you would. You might want to, but you probably don't. You probably shouldn't. I will. So many people will, right?

Like, there's so many people going to do it. My guess is it's going to be like to get out of this, you've got to like do this complicated restore. The touchscreen just doesn't work anymore. Like I, right? Because it's not meant to be a user thing. But wouldn't that be something? And yes, that would be fascinating. You start to think, well, what would a mac be like if it was in an ipad and the answer is useless unless you attach a

pointing device but if you had that smart keyboard not necessarily useless so yeah i don't know it's uh maybe maybe not maybe not maybe it's too different but that's that's a particular mind-blowing fantasy that I have thought about from time to time after this announcement came out. Because like there is an ARM system that has a keyboard and a mouse. If this iPad Pro with smart keyboard ships

that they could use as a development machine for ARM Macs. But who knows? Min-Chi Kuo is also saying that Apple will introduce an all new design to its laptop lineup in Q2 or Q3 2021 no indication of what product this is, it's probably an ARM based MacBook Pro I reckon

that's what I put my money on sure Mac Rumors is reporting still that we could expect new laptops sometime this week. So they are citing a tip from a person who gave them a tip last year to that week of product releases that happened in March. Now, of course, it may have been the plan.

It may still be the plan. It may not be correct at all. That's right. This report is from Friday. And who knows when they got it. And it's just from a tipster. And the world has continued to change out from under us since last Friday. So I guess I'll keep my eye out for new Apple products.

I don't know anything about them, and I would love to know about them, but we'll see. How does that even work? I actually think having the stores closed could help them do this if they wanted to because they wouldn't need as much stock if the stores are closed because the online system is still continuing. So if they did have limited supply, just selling them online might help them do that

instead of also then needing to have stock in stores. Could be. Who knows? This is it. We don't, right? We are in a time where the typical tea leaf reading that we do means nothing that's right because we read the tea leaves based on history so we may be sitting here and everything we're saying is exactly what apple want to do but can't right like that's the

difference it's not it's not the typical thing with them we'll be trying to guess what their plans are they can't control their plans right now that's the world we're in at the moment yep yep it's an uncharted territory yeah speaking of which let's give upgradians some tips for working from home from people that have been working from home for five years yeah two two guys who have been in their house self self-quarantining self-isolating for fun for a long for a long time yeah yeah yeah it seems like this this is a good time that people in our line of work have been sharing with people who are maybe not used to working at home especially for extended periods of time like i used to work from home like a day a week,

sometimes kind of thing, but that's not the same as doing it every single day. So, um, do you want to start what, what's some tips we have here? Um, sure. My number one thing is about routines because humans like us respond well to routines. They can become ruts. They're good routines and bad routines, but I think routines are important and they provide structure in your day and in your week. And so I feel like setting some rules like, oh, I'm working at home. There are no rules. There's no structure. I can do whatever. That is a trap. Like you need structure. You can make the structure. You can make the rules, but to have no structure and no rules is a very bad idea. So like number one thing is

pick a starting time. When do you start work? When do you start work? And it can be any time. And depending on how your work is structured, you know, everybody needs to be in your work's slack at 9 a.m. Then that is going to give you that time. But if it's a little bit broader than that, so like my son, his school is shut down, but they're still assigning him work, which is terrible. But this is where we are. So he got all down because we're like, you need to have, you need to do class time. You need to have put in class time here. You can't, you know, and the teachers are available during school hours. So you can't wait and do it all in

the afternoon because your teachers will be gone and you can't ask them questions. And he got sort of sad. Cause he's like, Oh, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to get up at 8.00 AM. And, and, and we said, you don't need to get up at 8am just because that's when you get up and go to school. Like, so we said 10am just 10am is, is when, you know, you'll start doing school stuff and it gives you a time to shoot for. And I feel like for me, it's a similar thing. Like I'm in my desk by whatever the time is, 8am, 9am in and working. So pick, try to, try to structure yourself. That's my number one is get into a routine. It is comforting and helpful. And you'll feel like you have control over your life a little bit in a time when we don't have a lot of control over our lives, it feels like, because of what's going on.

To say, I'm going to work at this time. I'm going 10 to 10 to one and then have a lunch break. And then I'm going to work two or one 30 to five. And then set an end time is the other part of that. Don't let your work just spiral off into forever, set an end time of like, and then I'm going to clock out. And if there are things you can do as a part of that, like for me, because I've got my little office here i do things like i shut down my computer i turn off the light and i close the door and i do that because it's creating barriers time barriers and physical barriers and those are mental barriers too to say you're done you're done for the day and that's really important because you could go on

forever otherwise what about you uh in the same vein i will say to have a dedicated place in your home to do the work don't try and avoid doing work in places that are usually used for relaxation so you know maybe don't do work on the sofa or definitely not in bed, maybe at the kitchen table or maybe get a small desk and put it in the corner of a room, right? Like try and have a place where the work is done

and do the work in that place. It's like another thing of the routine. You know, it really helps like when you're going into the second bedroom and starting work or going to this place it's a real shame like that people are enabled obviously to like go to a coffee shop right because that's a thing that really helps new working from home people do because you're still going somewhere you know but we can't do that so try and sequester a part of your home

for being the workplace. And not everybody has the ability to do this. It's really hard. Like when I was proposing that we do more work from home at IDG, one of my parts of my plan was going to be to offer people like a coworking space reimbursement

because not everybody has the fortune to have the space to set something up i will say there are different ways we had that listener who wrote in a while ago um who had a was that maybe that was on free agents and not on upgrade but there we had a listener who who wrote in and said that um that he had like a folding table that's exactly the kind of thing i mean right got in the got up in the morning and he had this thing where he like unfolded it and put it down it's like a card table but it it became his office and then it was office mode and at the end of the day he folded it back up so he found a way i have one of those and and used to use it all the time when I didn't have an office in my house was like, there was a side of the couch that I didn't sit on. Cause it faces away from the TV,

right? Like I would sit on that side facing away from the TV, uh, sort of out the window and I'd pull our, our coffee table closer to me and put like my cup of coffee or cup of tea in my case down on it and papers. And it was not a, a way i sat and a direction i faced any other time and believe it or not that was enough to make me think okay now i'm now i'm

working when i'm standing at the bar in my kitchen with my ipad in the stand. I'm working. I don't do that. Any other scenario. So sometimes it's. If you can't make. Carve out a space for yourself. Maybe carve out a unique. Ergonomic. Set up.

Like something that just feels. Different that you only use for work. Because believe it or not. That will have an impact on how you focus. You could even like if you're in a shared accommodation you and everybody who lives in that shared accommodation could maybe agree to not use the shared space for anything other than work right now right and that you know so like you change the way that you use your home a little bit and do your like relaxing in your

bedroom and that gets to another issue of rules right setting rules and agreeing on because if you live with other people whether they're uh they're just roommates or whether they're family um talking to them about what the rules are is really important because if you can agree on the rules and that can be like you said using a space it can be when that space gets used it could be for me it was a lot of rules about like interruptions because when you one of the problems that happens when you're working at home especially is that you get interrupted it breaks your focus so uh set some rules up like we did that in the first few months that i was working at home like what does it mean when my door is open what does it mean when my door is open? What does it mean when my door is closed? What does it mean

when your headphones are on? You know, and if everybody can agree on the rules, it gets a lot easier because then you don't have those like, Hey, can I bother you right now? Which just bothered you, right? Like that, that, that, and so like in certain circumstances, I will get a text message from my wife who's in the next room because the door is closed and she will say, can I, you know, can I bother you about this or whatever? If the door is open, she'll come in and, and stand in my field of vision. But rather than immediately starting to talk, because this was one of the rules we set down, because I would be in the middle of writing a sentence and she'd start asking me a question and I'd be like, ah, right? That she now knows to sort of like, give me a minute to stop my thought

and then turn and we'll have that conversation. So like you work it out over time and it can be frustrating, but it's incredibly powerful to get everybody to agree on some rules about, you know, when are you available and when are you not available and when are you focused and how do I communicate with you? So I highly recommend establishing that, especially if you have multiple people doing it in one space. If you can all agree on the rules, everybody will be happier. Try and have some kind of water cooler uh online water cooler with friends and colleagues like be it slack twitter i message somewhere that you can jump in and jump out and have fun and chat and converse and share information with friends

or colleagues that you otherwise will not be seeing for a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, we have today the ability to connect. This is why I've always been a believer in virtual workspaces and having people out of the office. The tech keeps getting better and better for this. So Slack is great. I have these Slack groups for Relay and for The Incomparable.

And like these keep me connected to my colleagues and my collaborators. And we are productive in them. And it's also an outlet for what would be water cooler conversation, would be sharing kind of personal things. Right now, all of us are going through frustration, right? Sharing it talking talking it through not bottling it up i think just there's huge value in that yeah so um you could also think like if you're really missing out on human interaction make a make a date with a group of people to go on uh you know skype or zoom or whatever zoom give will give you up to 40 minutes

of conversation for free. A 40-minute chat is free at Zoom. You can make them, and then they cut them off. There's a free tier for Zoom, so you could use that, or Skype, and even do video. And do a, over lunch, let's, at 12 o'clock, let's all get on the, whatever the VOIP, get on the video chat, FaceTime, whatever, and we'll just chat while we're eating our lunch or whatever. Do that. We have the ability to do this. We have video phones and things now on all our devices. We have the ability to do that. I will say the downside of that is set your own rules about interruptions. So nobody's breaking your focus from those conversations. Slack has a lot of powerful notification features and you can mute channels.

You can set your notifications to only be when somebody mentions you. So I have a lot of Slacks where I just have a lot of channels muted and I go in there from time to time. But what I don't get is constantly pinged that there's a new message because that is frustrating. And you can do that with like iMessage groups. You can mute them. And I would say on the Mac, especially quitting apps is powerful. Like if I'm writing an article, I quit Slack, I quit Twitterific and I work on my article and then I get to a breaking point and then I open Slack and say, oh, let's what's going on. And then I'll quit it again.

So having, exerting some control over it to put it at arm's length. Now, if you're in a, in a work slack that you need to be in, you can't quit it. But what you can do is set yourself to a way for a period of time in any non-essential channels, or you can mute those channels or in non-essential slacks that you're also in. So, you know, take, take control over those tools because while they're a blessing they can also be a curse if they interrupt you all right let's take a break and we have some more we have some more uh let's take a break first and then we can continue with our hashtag work from home tips mike and jason hashtag we can make it a hashtag it's a very long hashtag

I was going to say WFH tips but I'm sure it's overrun right now I was going to say yeah advice from

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I get lots of email and lots of email that I have to deal with. So having the email newsletters that I have to deal with. So having the email newsletters that I choose to subscribe to filtered out for me and put in my SaneLater folder means that they're not clogging up my email inbox. I can come to them when I want to, and it means that I'm actually reading that stuff rather than just archiving it because it's filling up my inbox. See how SaneBox can work its magic to remove distractions from your inbox by getting a free two-week trial right now. Go to SaneBox.com slash UpgradeFM, and you can start your free trial,

and you'll also get a $25 credit if you sign up. That's S-A-N-E-B-O-X, SaneBox.com slash UpgradeFM. Our thanks to SaneBox for their support of this show and RelayFM. Love it. So take a lunch break away from your desk hey good idea right so get away from the place that you've set up and have a lunch break and i will also give a personal tip to something that made my life better when i started working from home now that you have some time back because you're not commuting, cook for yourself. That's my recommendation. If you never cook, maybe you order out a bunch or you just go for easy options in the evenings.

Learn some recipes. Cook for yourself more. It's a great skill. It's a wonderful thing to be able to do. And you have maybe an hour if you're back to yourself every day. So why not do something like that? Cook for yourself and people that you love that's my recommendation uh and i will say take a walk one of the things that really happens is you get stir crazy yeah now you have to be allowed to go outside should i should i not go outside but here's the thing is if you live

someplace where you can go outside and there aren't crowds around, you live in the suburbs, you live in the country, go outside. Go outside. Keep social distancing. Even though I live in London, I could conceivably go outside for a walk and keep social distancing. I could do it. Yeah, we just went for a walk yesterday, and we saw a couple of people, and we stayed a couple of yards away from them and chatted briefly and walked our dog. If you've got a dog, the dog's got to go out, so take the dog out. And again, be safe. Don't go out and interact socially, but if you can stretch your legs, and yeah, if you've got a backyard, just walk around the backyard. That's fine, too. stretch your legs and yeah if you've got a backyard just walk around the backyard that's fine too but like i really recommend um going outside if you can if you have the ability and again you don't need to talk to people but just go outside and move your legs move your body it can

help as yoshua is saying in the chat room in big cities like london social distancing is pretty normal which is no one talks to each other just move away from each other a little bit more and we're all in the same boat everybody understands why you're doing it they're not going to be offended i recommend finding some music that you enjoy preferably of no words so there can be sound in the home or maybe in your ears whilst you're getting some work done because you will now be working in quiet environments that you might not be used to. I recommend the artist Tycho, Tycho, T-Y-C-H-O.

Lots of wonderful music. We're mostly about lyrics. There's also an entire genre of music called lo-fi hip hop. It's very good for working too. Yeah, I have a... I listen to music that i know by heart music that i know well i can listen to and focus i know a lot of people can't do that can you write with lyrics in your ears

yes wow jason snell yes but only if i know the songs well if i don't know the songs well i can't do it but if i know the songs well i can because it all fades into the background and i don't even hear it because i know i know every sound those songs make um i do have an instrumental recommendation which is uh if you if you don't if you want more rock kind of stuff or they're called post-rock but explosions in the sky they're great rock instrumental um i love them if you ever saw fr Night Lights, all the music in Friday Night Lights is basically explosions in the sky. It's great. And a lot of people I know who work at home, like Dan Morin, listen to film scores. And Spotify and Apple Music have all of this stuff, which is the great thing.

It's like, well, I'm never going to buy a movie soundtrack. Well, you don't have to if you've got a streaming service you can just find this stuff so put on star wars put on you know put on a favorite film with a score that you've got or find an artist the composer and follow that them down but there are lots of things out there that will make noise that will not have words in it that will not um if you can't listen to music with words and work uh take advantage if you have multiple computers or machines at home maybe you're used to having two monitors so you could use your ipad like a second display you know

you could have slack on it or you could use it as a literal second display with Sidecar. Don't forget that feature exists. It could be useful if you're now working from a laptop, but you're used to not working from a laptop. And Sidecar can be used with, it isn't just send this window mode, right? Like it also will just do a monitor mode where it just becomes a second screen of your Mac. And you can do it that way. Or you can just have the iPadad there and have two things but if you're used to having a multiple

screen setup at home don't forget your ipad or even like an like your old ipad or something like there are options there that's a good one and similarly don't forget your ergonomics try and sit up straight use correct input devices um watch your neck, that kind of stuff. Because again, you may not be working in the most ideal environment that your employer may have provided for you. So don't forget that stuff. It's very important.

It's very, very important. I'm going to use this as an example, as a excuse to tell people to track your time this could be a perfect time to get into time tracking because you may now that you're at home find yourself slipping into working too much or maybe feeling like you're not working enough so toggle is what i would recommend for you to track your time so you can make sure that you're understanding when you're working and when you're not. This also might be a really great way

to help you keep that break, that like divide in your mind. When the trackers are running, I'm working. When they're not, I'm not. And if you sign up for Toggle, their app is mostly part usable, but not that great. There is a wonderful,

one of my very favorite iOS apps. It is an upgrade-y, award-winning application, Timery. That is just a fantastic app that uses Toggle as a service. I believe Toggle have a free plan which you can use.

So sign up for that, try it out, and give it a go. If they don't, it really is worth it, but I'm pretty sure that they have a trial anyway. So just give it a go if they don't it really is worth it but i'm pretty sure that they have a trial anyway so give just give it a go i really really recommend that and uh although i'm not into time tracking mike i'm gonna distribute with this one i'm gonna recommend to-do lists

have them which is against most of what i traditionally have stood for. But here's what I'm going to say. Reminders is free and comes on your Apple device. Plus you can do things like to-do list. And there are lots of them, right? If you turn around, you will bump into a to-do list app. But here's the thing. If you're not into to-do lists, like I'm not, they can still be useful in one particular way, which is to keep score. Now, I apologize if you've heard me tell this story before, but one of the reasons I was so dissatisfied at my last job is that most of what I did all day was not something I actually considered real work. It was work, but it wasn't work that I counted. It wasn't work that, that got a score. So, uh, I would, I, because I was like making things and writing articles and stuff

like that. That was, that was the real stuff that gave me that. Yeah, I did something today and dealing, you know, fighting for development priorities or trying to keep ugly ads off of our webpages or dealing with an HR issue. I didn't consider that work that actually scored and it led to a lot of unhappiness. So I find to-do lists is one way that you can get a little bit of score keeping into your life, which is even if you don't actually need to remember all the things, you could still use to-do lists at the beginning of the day or the beginning of the week. Make a list of the things you could still use to do lists at the beginning of the day or the beginning of the week, make a list of the things you're expected to do that day and then check them off. And if you get to the end of the day and they're all checked off, guess what?

I think you'll feel like you did what you needed to do that day and it feels good. So I think as a mental exercise, not even as a reminder, but as a mental exercise to check off all the boxes to see where you are to in that down moment where you're like i don't know what i'm gonna do do next to be able to look and say here are the things that i have to do in order to score in order to have checked all the boxes today and use that as a motivator i think that it can help i really really agree with this um I do very much should we do some hashtag ask upgrade before we finish up today

I'm going to start off with a question from Steven which ties into our hashtag work from home tip Steven was a Wunderlist user and that has now gone away Microsoft bought it a long time ago and they have killed off that product Steven wants to know if we have a recommendation.

I recommend Todoist. Todoist is my recommendation. I think that it is a very great app. It can be used very simply. It can be used very complexly. It has all of the things that you would want. You can organize things into projects. You can look at things under different view types.

You can have reminders. But one of my favorite things about recommending Todoist is it is completely cross-platform you can use it everywhere and i think that is very valuable yeah i use todoist in its free form in its simple form they have a free version you're gonna love this mike so i'm also using the new version of fantastic how which has todoist integration which which is giving the ultimate Jason Snell approach to Todoist. I think this is fun. They appear on my calendar. Yeah.

So on my Macworld, I used to have a do the Macworld column because I write a column weekly for Macworld on Todoist as a repeating item for wednesday i think and i also had time blocked off in my schedule that said write macworld column maybe it's tuesday um now i have a todoist to do for writing the macworld column every wednesday at 2 p.m yep and it's in my calendar yep which means that the time is marked i know that i need to write my column then and when i'm done writing it i check the box yes off i think this is totally fine because you are getting the best of both worlds you are seeing it on the calendar so it works for you but it's also not disappearing if you don't do it which is like my biggest worry with people that use calendars as to-do lists is like if you

actually got distracted and weren't paying attention to the calendar the calendar event is gone the calendar events don't come back they don't bug you but to-dos do they stay right like they're still there they're still unchecked so i actually think this is a nice version of the new version of fantastic how is being able to do it i have don't have it on all the time because then my Fantastic Hour just becomes unusable to me of all of the items that then start appearing. But I have a calendar set that includes Todoist if I want to take a look at everything in one view. Nice. Corey asked if we're still using the Clear look stand for our ipads this is my favorite stand not jason's favorite stand i'm i'm not um so the first one that i had i had the clear look

stand and it it failed um it no longer was able to hold my ipad in the stand it the tension on the little clips were reduced to the point where my ipad very slowly just sort of slipped down and then fell out not good uh so i i wrote to them and complained and they sent me another one that one holds the ipad in place but the stand itself that you extend to get it high uh very slowly lowers until it's all the way at the bottom i've had no problems with the with the original one that i bought and this is just the way this stuff goes sometimes the thing i can't figure out is if i could use part of one and part of the other and put them together i would have a good stand but yeah it doesn't and so i'm back to the viazon stand which is the first one i wrote about, which looks like an iMac foot.

The problem is it's a little bit lower, which is too low for you. But in my setup, it's fine. So I'm back to that one. And it is solid. It is rock solid. I wish it was a little taller, but it is rock solid.

I would like to petition our users, listeners at this point, I should say, if anybody knows of a VESA arm mountable tablet holder, I would love to know it. So an iPad holder, like just the grip part that can be attached to a VESA arm. There are a bunch out there. I definitely see them. You're going to take the plunge. You're going to have an arm mounted iPad. That's the plan. Yeah. Yeah, I could see them. You're going to take the plunge? You're going to have an arm-mounted iPad? That's the plan, yeah.

I can see the appeal of that. Because I have, in Mega Studio, I have a desk with two VESA arms on it. It's one pole and then two arms come out from it. One's going to have my iMac and then I want the other to have my iPad. But I have yet to find a VESA mount that I'm completely happy with so i would love to know if people are using them right and then that that's the help that i want then uh chris wants to know what are your thoughts on people posting twitter screenshots to instagram i think this was fun to me because it's the evolution of your favorite thing, which is Apple News screenshots being posted on Twitter.

Apple Notes screenshots. That's what I mean, sorry. Yes, Notes. I saw a thing going around that was supposedly from the Centers for Disease Control yesterday that was an Apple Notes screenshot. And I thought, really? Really?

And we reached this point where the CDC is giving advice in Apple Notes. I'm not sure if that was an official CDC thing or just somebody copied and pasted. So people are taking screenshots of tweets and then posting them on instagram apparently yep this is the thing i have no problem with it it's just a way for people to get information out like it's the same as the apple notes thing it's yeah screenshots of things is never going to be as good as what the thing is intended for but it's people finding a way to do something useful and you know that's how a lot

of social media stuff got invented was that people will find a way like how do i get this thing communicated in this medium and um and if it's a screenshot then so be it and finally today cory asks since there will almost certainly be no event to introduce any products in march like we were hoping do you think that apple would even want to announce new stuff in this current environment? It could maybe seem frivolous and would absolutely be lost in the flood of other news. So we don't know.

We're off the map here. We really don't know what is going to happen. I would say that you got a lot of people who are tense and frustrated and checking the news and not really getting a whole lot of information and stuck at home. And I think if Apple has the products to be announced and released and for sale and delivered to your house, announced and released and for sale and delivered to your house that i would probably make the argument that people would love to see some news that wasn't just more virus stuff i can see the counter argument which is you're never going to be close to the top of any site because of that

and like all of the virus stuff and then then, oh, and Apple has a laptop. Like, so we live in an era where some people are seeking distraction and it would be a nice distraction. But I think you could argue that everybody is so distracted already that they may miss it entirely. Then again, if these are just revisions to existing laptops to do the new keyboard and some other things, and they're minor updates. Why not get them out? They're not going to set the world on fire anyway. And the people who care about them are going to want them. And I'll also put out in a plug for how supply chains work, which is if they've got new MacBook Airs and new 13-inch MacBook Pros coming, they've stopped making the old ones, right? And they're making the new ones and they've stopped making the old ones right and they're making the new ones and they've been making the new ones at some point you have to switch over because you're out of the old ones

and the new ones need to go into the supply chain so it may be that they just need to do it and again this these are not enormous announcements even the 16 wasn't an enormous announcement but at least the keyboard was a big deal and they wrapped a whole message around it. But if this is literally, well, it's what we did to the 16, that keyboard is now in the air and the 13 and otherwise they're just, you know, a little bit faster, but there's nothing groundbreaking here. I would lean on the side of releasing them just because if they're ready to go, put them out there. They'll still be there in two weeks and six weeks and eight weeks and six months when people want to buy a new laptop. And, you know, honestly, people are working at home now. They might also see this and be like, oh, God, I need a new laptop and buy the new MacBook Air with a new keyboard.

Like that would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. So I think if they're ready to go, they should just do them. Press release. I think if they're ready to go, they should just do them press release. You know, I would love it if they would like if they're not going to bring in people in the press to get briefed. I would love like for them to they can FedEx me a review unit and I'll write my review and I'll send it back to them. And maybe that's the world we live in now. But I, I think they should just go ahead if it was something huge where they really wanted to make a splash and it's a brand new product category or something like that like an apple watch kind of thing if they wanted to do that again now is not the time for that but incremental updates it's fine yeah i completely agree with all of that like i just feel like if if they do have it they have them there's no point sitting on them it's it's not helping anyone. Yeah. And the launch, I mean, how much energy does a launch of a MacBook, minor MacBook revision really get Apple? The most important thing it does is it gets the product out in the supply chain.

People can buy it. When the stores reopen, it'll be there and people can buy them. So why not just go ahead and do that? They're not, know it's not boy this would have been stop the press's news if the virus pandemic wasn't happening it wouldn't have been right it would have been a lower down story below what various government officials say that's dumb or smart or you know questionable or whatever and then down there there'd be like a little apple story so and for people who care about tech the tech press will be desperate for anything and they will write about it so you know i think i think it's fine all right that's it for

this week's episode if you would like to send in your questions with hashtag ask upgrade hashtag snell talk choose whatever if you have questions for working at home stuff like seriously send them in uh we might be able to help and it also gives us something that extra for us to talk about over a time where we may end up walking into a spring of fun sooner than later we'll find out um i noticed i just checked us that's we have like about twice the amount of people right now listening live to this episode than we usually do um so you can if you want to join us live we don't talk about it very often but every monday 9 a.m pacific uh we we broadcast this show at relay.fm live if you get the relay fm app on your iphone you can get notifications when shows go live yep

so you can listen you can do that you know because this again like you may have an opportunity to listen live to an episode when you don't normally and there's a google calendar that you can look at too that will tell you when everything is recording uh live when you're broadcasting live so lots of ways to get at relay.fm slash schedule. Yes, it is. Right. I was correct. So, you know, you can go there and you can check stuff out and listen live if it helps. You know, we are continuing to do everything that we're doing here at RelayFM because luckily we're all home workers pretty much.

We don't have any offices that we need to send people home from yeah um and i feel at times like this a great responsibility to be able to provide people with entertainment and or things that they can consume so i hope that you've enjoyed this episode and we'll enjoy future episodes you can find out more about today's show and show notes hopefully in your podcast app of choice so you can go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 289. Thanks to our wonderful sponsors, Linode,

Direct Mail, and SaneBox. You can find Jason online at sixcolors.com. He hosts many shows here along with me and many other people at relay.fm

slash shows, but you can also go to The Incomparable for more content, more Jason Snell-focused content and many others over at The Incomparable. shows but you can also go to the incomparable for more content more jason snow focused content and many others over at the incomparable yeah make your make your heart full by listening to us play dungeons and dragons exactly how about that uh at j snow at i mike we'll be back next time until then

say goodbye jason snow upgradians stay safe stay healthy and stay away from other people and each other just know Upgradians disassemble.