Upgrade - 290: You Are The Button

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

Jason's got the new MacBook Air and iPad Pro, so it's time to dig in. But the most exciting new Apple development is an iPad accessory we won't see until May--and an iPadOS software update we all get to see this week. Plus, Myke gives his surprising reaction to spending a few weeks with a 16-inch MacBook Pro.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 290 upgrade today is brought to you by indeed my name is mike hurley i am joined as always by mr jason snell hi jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i'm very very well indeed. Today's sponsors are Pingdom, ExpressVPN, TextExpander, and Ooni. Jason, I have a hashtag SnellTalk question to begin today's episode that has come from myself. Because every now and then, I want a question, can't find an example of it, and just ask it on my own. And I want to know, because I think this is going to be important for today's episode. Jason, what are your preferred computer input devices for controlling the cursor? So when I was in college and stuff, I used a mouse, like a regular old Mac mouse.

And I got a trackball in my PowerBook. When the first PowerBooks came out, the pointing device wasn't a trackpad. It was actually a trackball. And I liked that. And so when I got to Mac User, my first, actually it was my internship, there was an editor there who had a Kensington trackball, and I really liked that. And when she left, she left the trackball behind. I was like, I want that, I want that. And that was my trackball. And I used a trackball after that. ball um and i used a track ball after that i really liked the the the control and the kind of big arm gestures and not the fine like tense movements of gripping a mouse that i was i was just kind of like rolling the ball around on the screen and um and then the track pads track pads

happened and the magic track pad happened and that was basically converted me to using a track pad because it gave me a lot of the same kind of feel as the trackball did and trackballs were not as good they got like weirder and worse over time and the last one i had had like a bunch of buttons and i had a weird like wheel on it separately for a scroll wheel because the concept of a scroll wheel didn't really work with a trackball and um and then i made the switch and so I've been using Magic Trackpads since the first Magic Trackpad came out. And I use the Magic Trackpad 2 today. So I'm all in on those. I've not regularly used a mouse since the early 90s, let's say.

A very long time since I've used a mouse. It was a trackball and then a trackpad. Interesting. Obviously, I rotate quite a lot with my devices but my absolute favorite is a wacom tablet so i use the wacom intuos pro for similar things that you were saying about like big arm movements less fine motor control um is what is one of the reasons i really like using a Wacom. RSI aside, and there is RSI, but aside from that, I found the mouse, you know, that gripping that mouse, and maybe it's the way I did it, but gripping that mouse and doing fine movements and all of that was really

fatiguing. Even as a teenager or somebody in my early 20s, it was fatiguing. Even as a teenager or somebody in my early 20s, it was fatiguing. It would be devastating now as somebody who's in my 40s. But back at the time, it was still fatiguing to just tense those muscles. And I felt like, yeah, it was something about bigger movements

and not requiring that fine detail. And it was just kind of more pleasant to do. So, yeah. So if you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of upgrade just send a tweet with the hashtag snow talk and it'll be and if mike doesn't have a question that he wants to ask me he might ask your question it's typically the other way around but i take your point uh obviously we have a lot of new apple products to talk about today and a lot of new interesting things happening with Apple products. But we should talk about coronavirus

because we can't get away from it. COVID-19 is affecting the entire planet right now. We hope that you out there, listener, are staying away from people and washing your hands. They are the two pieces of advice we will give you. So do that as much as absolutely possible. And remain indoors.

Remain indoors if you can. And we're sure that we have many of our listeners working from home. So again, if you want to get any tips from us from working at home, you've got any questions, you can always send those in to us as well. But we have a couple of technology-related things that I want to talk about in regards to COVID-19 today. So we had mentioned on our last episode that Apple was closing its retail stores

until the end of March. This has now been updated to until further notice, which makes sense. So they don't have to issue another note at the end of March because it's not going to be okay by next week. I think we can all agree on that. So they have now closed their stores until further notice. Google I.O. is now completely cancelled. So

Google I.O. was cancelled in the sense of having a physical event before WWDC, but Google have now announced that they will be doing no google i o of any kind this includes online there will be no keynotes there will be nothing um this is because google is saying that like they're not able to produce this content because people are staying at home and instead they're going to be um and making all their announcements separately via google's blogs pr channels and in their forums. And I guess really the question here, when again looking towards WWDC, is how do you

make good quality videos if nobody is supposed to be together in offices, right? Like, how do you make session videos? How do you make presentation keynote videos? How are you supposed to do them? And I think Google has decided that they think the best route for them is to probably just present everything via text. as I do about talk show hosts, actually, which is the technology exists to do this stuff and do it pretty well, even though it's not what you're used to.

So when I see Stephen Colbert, who is a late night talk show host here in the United States, do a monologue with AirPods in his ears sitting on his deck, I think surely there is somebody somewhere who has access to a microphone or something that they could, they could like ship to him and leave it outside his door. And then he could remove it and wash his hands and all those things. But like we, we, the equipment exists. So my first thought was for like Apple sessions, sessions, you could just put microphones, like send them microphones. And if that fails, maybe what you do is you create like a studio space and have them bring in their laptop and you disinfect it and it's just that one person in there and they come in and record it. There are ways to do it. But like, I feel like you could do those presentations, especially if you're not doing video and it's just their slides and audio. You can do that fairly easily. I also think that people will accept at least a little bit degraded quality, given that

we all know what the context is of all of this. Apple did some video stuff last week about product releases that we're going to get into here in a minute. And, you know, it was a little bit different, right? Like some of the stuff was different, but we all know why and it's fine. Like it's fine. So, um, I do think that it's an open question. How do you do WWDC content? If you're Apple, um, what does it look like? What does it sound like? Uh, you know, it's all, we're all figuring this out and I would imagine they're figuring it out too, but they do have resources and there is

equipment that will make it better for people who are working at home. So, you know, I feel like it's a problem that can be solved. Yeah. I, you know, we are doing what we are doing right now from our homes it is possible to do it can be difficult to do for some people if you're not aware of what you're doing of course yeah if you're starting from nothing we this is our livelihood and already was and so that's that that is one of the great ironies of this and i know that we have a i think we have a uh a question coming at the end of ask Upgrade about this maybe even. But one of the funny things about this is that there are professionals who are used to working in studios who now are trying to do what we do. And it's interesting to see them struggling with it because they didn't have to do this before.

They would go into the office and then there was a studio there. It was set up for them. Yeah, exactly. And we have built this stuff. would go into the office and then there was a studio there set up for them yeah exactly and then and and we have built this stuff so i've had i've answered questions from some people about this um because you know podcasters had to had to figure this out and now a lot of these professional people have to figure it out too and there's a there's a radio sports guy here in the bay area who i think found his best quality quality recording studio is in his car with like blankets and stuff. It's bananas. But again, you got to do what you got to do. So

the technology exists. People will figure it out. And Apple certainly has the resources to make this work if they wanted to. And finally, Bloomberg is stating that the 2020 iPhone is still on schedule. This is partly because production is not expected to start until May. So it's still a big question. But I think this is going to be an interesting story to just keep track of,

like what is going to happen with the iPhone? Clearly, Apple believe products can be made because they are releasing new ones um but it's going to be interesting to see how things continue to unfold as the year goes on right right yeah we'll we'll keep an eye on it because nobody knows right we're in uncharted territory here yep if we look at some uh some interesting news in parallel in the streaming industry, Disney have put their new Pixar movie, Onward, out for sale early. So it's out for sale, I think, now and is going to be on Disney Plus next weekend. And keep in mind, this movie was in the theaters like a few weeks ago and would still be. Yeah.

And it didn't do well for, I think, some obvious reasons. And it didn't do well for, I think, some obvious reasons. And they have decided to cut their losses, essentially. And they think that there is, I think, rightly so, a greater demand for which is a funny way. It's like a different version of the rental window. So if you want to buy it, you can buy it now for $20. But if you wait a couple of weeks, it'll just be on Disney+. And if you're a Disney Plus subscriber, you can just watch it there.

But I think it's an opportunity for them to experiment with something that they're making the best. They're making lemonade at this point. That's all they can do. Disney Plus is launching in more countries this week. So we're going to have it in the UK. the best it's you know they're making lemonade at this point that's all they can do disney plus is launching in more countries this week um so we're gonna have it in the uk uh but it's gonna be reduced streaming quality in the uk and europe disney is joining a large selection of countries that have been asked by the european union to degrade their uh streaming quality to ease the

stress on uh, online infrastructure. I've definitely had internet slowdowns. I don't know if you've seen them. I haven't seen them. They've come and gone, but there were a couple of days where the internet got really slow for me. And then it's sort of been, it's sprung back up. I wonder if they're doing some network management things because they're presumably the network

traffic is greater and also it's in different places than it used to be but reducing quality in order to keep bandwidth available in the internet and in europe makes makes a lot of sense um and and then the big thing that you and i have talked about i think here and there for a while which is what would you do if you're taking a movie that's in theaters and putting it at home too? Universal out of, basically they've been forced to do this, has done this with a bunch of movies that they had in theaters or were about to be in theaters. They took, I think it's four movies, including Emma, which just came out, and they're putting them on as $20 rentals, which if you think about it,

is about the cost of two people going out to see a movie. So they can recoup more of the cost than they would from like a $5 rental. And they're going to try it. And, you know, again, it's interesting. It's because of extreme circumstances, but I wonder, you know, sometimes these things really work and sometimes they fail

so we'll see which one it is but i think it's an interesting uh attempt by universal to kind of say well the theatrical uh exhibitions aren't happening so we're gonna we're gonna try to do you know at home new releases where you pay twenty dollars and your whole family can sit there you know where you've been sitting all day and watch a movie. But a lot of the movies are just being outright delayed because there are big budgets and they haven't spent their marketing budget and they're not, you know, the Fast and Furious movie got delayed a year and the, you know, Marvel delayed their movie

and like all the like big movies are not just going to a 20 rental yet at this point they're all just kind of being pushed into the future instead yeah and i guess if you're a company like universal you're just like well we can't push everything so let's try and make the best of what we can and a movie like trolls now trolls would have done big money in cinemas but they have made I think the right decision in that well it's probably going to do big money on home rental or buying as well world tour is coming out as one of these $20 rentals and I think yeah the idea there is that parents and kids are home and this is a new movie and instead of taking them to the

theater they'll pay 20 bucks and they'll all sit there and watch it it's a 48 hour rental for 20 bucks yep but again if you think about how much that family a family of four would would pay let's say to go to see that movie in the theater it's a lot more than 20 bucks how much you'd universal get though? Yeah, well, I guess that's a question, right? They would get even less. But it's a good, from a consumer angle, it seems like the $20 rental's expensive until you think about how much you spend going out, and then you realize it's actually not,

unless you're just there alone. But even with one other person, you're in the ballpark. And if it's a family film like Trolls World Tour, it's even more so. So we'll see how it goes. I'm not saying that this is going to destroy the movie theaters, although it might and the virus might. But it's going to give people more data points, both consumers about like how do I feel paying for a new release that costs $20 instead of a rental that comes later for $6. And from the studio's

perspective, like how did this work and what did we learn and did some movies work better than others? And I don't know how it's going to shake out, but I think the one thing I will make a bet about is that the relationship and the decision-making about what movies get released, when and where and how, when we come back from all of this, it's going to be different. I don't know how it's come back from all of this it's going to be different i don't know how it's going to be different but it's going to be different yes especially over the next few years as all of these companies continue to see the benefits of owning their own platforms right i think that there's going to be different decisions made about what is quote unquote direct video and what isn't well and and and what do people want to go to a movie theater for?

Let's assume that this whole thing ends, but still everybody will have gone through this and through social distancing and all of that. Some people are going to not want to be in crowds. So that's going to hurt theatrical. Are there certain kinds of movies that play well in movie theaters? Are some movie theaters going to go under because they realize they just can't make it in the new world we don't know any of that dynamic yet but um you gotta think that just by by doing this and trying this and people being at

home um that something will change whether it's the behavior of consumers or whether it's the assumptions that corporations were happy to make in normal times that when forced to make a different decision, they discover interesting results, right? That shake them out of their complacency. Something will change. We'll be interesting to see exactly what and exactly how. But again, I will note that the big budget movies that they're really banking on, that they need hundreds of millions of dollars, those aren't coming out on home video

right now. Those are just getting delayed. I'm like, please, no. Fast and Furious, see you next year, right? Like just, we're not going to do it. So it's more like movies that are already out or their marketing budget was already spent and this is the best time. Or they're just cutting their losses. Those are the ones that we're seeing right now. All right. Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Smile and TextExpander. You can save time typing and boost your productivity with TextExpander. TextExpander lets you instantly insert snippets of text as you type using a quick search or abbreviation.

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Our thanks to TextExpander for their support of this show and RelayFM. The 2020 iPad Pro. Yes. You have one? I have it. That's why this show got posted on tuesday yeah instead of monday i can admit that i have it right in front of me right now it's here and i think there's a ton to talk about here but we wanted to talk about it with the knowledge and when we could talk about it somebody who has one rather than just reading spec pages because i

guess it's even more difficult to understand which is spec pages how this thing works but i guess one of the key things here is power differences there are some they're not huge but they're there right it's okay now are they there basically not so here's the thing the new processor in this is the A12Z. So it goes from A to Z. The old, the 2018 model had the A12X. And, you know, Apple, what Apple has told me is limited. I have asked, but the thing is like, it's an eight core processor, just like the old one. It's got four high speed cores and four efficiency cores, just like the old one. It has a graphics processor with eight cores instead of seven. And Apple says that the thermals are better on this, that they did some changing to the thermals. And the idea there is that it dissipates heat a little bit better than the older iPad. And that means it can run a little bit hotter, which means that for extended work at high performance, it won't have to throttle down as quickly. So that is potentially good,

harder to test. I did run the usual Geekbench series of benchmarks on it. And it looks exactly like what I just said, which is it's basically the same. Like single core and multi-core, basically the same, and graphics, slightly better. So if you want a faster iPad, you didn't get one. So that's not a reason to buy this if you've got a 2018 is the faster. The big differences are the one terabyte model on the old 2018 had six gigs of RAM and the other ones had four. That's not something Apple talks about, but it was widely known. And my understanding is that all of these have six gigs of RAM. And I believe all of the 2020 iPads have the U1 chip in them, although Apple didn't talk about that either, but that seems to be the case. So if there are,

you know, other ultra wide band features that happen and the smart in the meantime, the smart airdrop, I think that this device will get those. But like and there's like Wi-Fi 6 support if you have a brand new Wi-Fi something which nobody has. So it's minor stuff like this is the really the thing that changed in the hardware is the camera like the camera is different before we talk about camera can we do wild conspiracy theory time with mike and jason okay sure the six gigabyte ram everywhere is weird right like that's just strange like why did they why did they do that without really changing anything else i mean it might just be a price thing but you're gonna say there's a wild conspiracy behind it. So let's talk about it.

Which is, you know, like we remember, everyone remembers the good old iPad Air 2. The way too powerful iPad for when it was released. But one of the reasons is because iPad multitasking needed it. But iPad multitasking didn't exist yet. So I'm wondering if the 6 gigabytes of RAM is needed for something coming at WWDC, potentially that thing is the ARM device that we've been wondering, right? Oh, like if this can boot macOS for ARM for developers?

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know either. I just see like, you know, I just see that. It's like, that's weird that they put that in there. I think they saw the difference in performance between the 4 and the 6, and they could afford to put the 6 in this time, since they're keeping the price the same, but all the components are presumably cheaper 18 months later.

But this is the most, sorry, sorry for people who are excited about this, the most minor of speed bumps. Like this is not, it's not even a speed bump. It is a camera bump. And literally the camera bump bumped out. And that's the story. They say that they changed the architecture of the microphones. Like the iPad Pro had five microphones before and it still does.

But they say now it's using the architecture that the 16 inch MacBook pro has. It might sound better. It doesn't sound any different to me. Okay. So that I, you know, if, if it sounds better,

like I looked, I compared the reviewer's guide that Apple gives you as a product reviewer from the 2018 one to the current one. It's like almost nothing is different. It's basically the same iPad. They refreshed it and they added the camera. So we should talk about the camera. And then even when we talk about the accessories,

which we're very excited about, and we'll talk about in a little bit, those also work on the 2018 models. So, you know, it's minor. This is a really minor update. It's great. i love the ipad and if you you know i can jump into who it's for in a little bit but you know before we get there let's talk about the camera okay so we have a 12 megapixel main camera it seems the same camera

that was in the 2018 as far as i can tell but it gains the ultra wide from the iPhone 11. Like this is actually the iPhone 11 system-ish, not the iPhone 11 Pro. It is. It's a 10 megapixel ultra wide. And I think the 11 is a 12 megapixel ultra wide. So it's actually a little bit less, but yeah, it's the same idea. It's got a second camera.

It's an ultra wide, like on the 11. It's not a telephoto like on the earlier iPhones. It's like the iPhone 11. It's got an ultra wide. So if you want to take further back shots, which I think on an iPad is actually a pretty good use case, you can do that. And then they have this LiDAR sensor,

which is a pretty wild thing. It is basically doing light-based range finding of objects in order to build a better depth map of the scene so that it can do augmented reality and how much of a difference does the lidar make over the current system so here's the thing and i don't know whether this is related to everybody scrambling because we're working out of our homes now and people at apple are scrambling as well usually there are examples and they have some demos in their promo videos and stuff, but I haven't been able to test this thing with anything,

any app that's out there that explicitly supports it. But it does sound like the system in general is in the background just using the LiDAR to build a better depth map and it is better um the example i can give you is when i opened so i use safari because safari is built into the system and apple has a bunch of ar models on their website so that's what i used to try this feature out you open the open up the ipad pro 2018 model and you go to an ar model and it says wave the ipad around basically it needs to like look around and try to build a depth map based on your movements and the parallax and all these things that are going on on the 2020 model it just knows it's impressive like it knows the composition of the scene. And if you drag

that model off the floor and onto a desk, it just hops up onto the desk and it gets it right. And I was impressed at that because that is what is supposed to happen is it now just knows the depth. And you can see how all the rumors are that this will be on the new iPhones this fall as well, how it's much better for AR because you're building a much more comprehensive depth map. What I find weird is that it's not using the two cameras or the LiDAR to do a portrait mode. Portrait mode is still only on the forward-facing camera. I'm a little surprised that they don't offer a portrait mode since they have all that depth data on the back, but for whatever reason, they don't. So maybe that'll be a software update down the road,

but it is again, is this a feature you're going to buy unless you're an AR developer? Are you going to buy this new iPad because the LiDAR? I don't think so. And that gets us to the real crux of this, which is who is this for? Who is the 2020 iPad for? And the answer is it's actually kind of like when we talk about iPhones and we say, you're probably not going to upgrade from last year's iPhone to this year's iPhone, you're probably upgrading from two or three years ago's iPhone to this one. That's who the 2020 iPad is for. It's for the people who didn't buy the 2018 iPad Pro. It's for everybody who's back on an earlier iPad Pro or doesn't have an iPad Pro and is thinking of going because maybe they're tempted by some of the accessories that we'll talk about in a minute, but that's who it's for.

If you have a 2018 iPad pro, I don't, I mean, again, unless you're like an AR developer or really, really, really into high performance of augmented reality, like there's no real reason. It is basically the same iPad as it was before before and the a12z like i think that says it all like this is just a slightly recast a12x it isn't an a13 or an a14 it is you know you want to get conspiratorial i do wonder there are some rumors about like 5g ipads in the fall i i have a hard time believing they would release a new iPad six months after releasing an iPad. I feel like it's going to be another 18 months, but I do wonder about the 5G and wonder if they might have a new processor at that point. But

my guess is that they figure the iPad Pro, you talk about that iPad Air being way too powerful. When the iPad Pro came out in 2018, it was way too powerful, like way more power when the ipad pro came out in 2018 it was way too powerful like way more power than the ipad could really use and i would argue that's still the case and so i don't think i was feeling like the ipad pro was getting slow and you did a speed boost no not even remotely so uh that's good because it didn't it's the bottom line here it didn't the excitement about this product is that it they they pushed it forward in a couple of areas. It's basically just a refresh and it's an opportunity to launch their new accessories and make software changes. And those are by far the most exciting part of this.

Unfortunately, the most exciting accessory is not going to be available until May. So in the meantime, we have the iPad Pro, which is great. I love the iPad Pro. You love the iPad Pro. These are great. However, if you already have a 2018, you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference. I do think that there is a potential for iOS 14

to maybe have some doubling down on AR stuff, right? That maybe they then want to have LIDAR available in all their products. And if you think about LIDAR and ultra wideband, this is another example where like, what about these AirTags? We had all these rumors that Apple is going to do these smart tags

so that if you lose something, you can find it. The U1 chip does nothing. Nothing. Right now it does nothing. It doesn't make sense. So if that product comes out, that makes this iPad Pro more interesting, right? Because it would support that presumably at that level of precision, just like the iPhone 11s would and the 2018 iPad Pros wouldn't.

But right now it does nothing other than like smart airdrop pointer thing, which is not even a feature. I have never gotten that to work. I don't even know what i'm supposed to do so again that might be a thing that becomes something but right now it seems like it's nothing so there's it's it's again it's nice that they updated it a little bit but it's really marginal and the story here is really the accessories and the accessories can be used with the 2018 models so it's they're not a reason to force people to upgrade and i you know i applaud apple for bringing those features to the older

model but it they're definitely not doing the thing where the the ipad is almost exactly the same but you have to buy it again because it's shaped slightly differently so that you can get the hot new accessory they didn't do that they refrained i think maybe for good reason i think so it would have been a bit spiteful considering the fact that the ipad did not get meaningful upgrades to it yeah right right so this is fine i'm not disappointed by it because i didn't feel like desperate for updates that didn't happen um the ipad 2018 is very capable and remains way ahead of the competition in so many different ways but it is not a must if you love the 2018 ipad pro you have to update to the 2020 ipad pro that's not the case at all so maybe even more exciting i think definitely more exciting than our friend

the 2020 ipad pro is the magic keyboard oh boy the magic keyboard jason so now it came down from high to us i am so excited about this it was cantilevered down cantilevered slowly lowered uh keeping its weight forward until it reached us here standing on the number row of our giant keyboard we call it so you've probably seen the magic keyboard by now it's coming in may um you know i've seen a lot of people say and i understand that like potentially coronavirus has delayed things but i think it's worth remembering that the smart keyboard and the ample pencil when they were both debuted they came really late and supply constrained so there is a history to ipad pro peripherals coming late i actually don't really think it's a coronavirus at all

no probably not i mean it might be a factor but it is interesting that they're announcing this product so they announced the ipad pro and they announced the new magic keyboardboard for the iPad Pro and see you in May. Two months out. The iPad Pro this week. The keyboard, May. And probably hard to get in May. But they want to tell that story together. Even though this new keyboard with trackpad, it's kind of even hard to believe it,

will work with the 2018 iPad Pro. It will work with that model. So it's backward compatible. So you do not have one of these, nor have you seen one, right? No, I have not. Only the bizarre augmented reality version that Apple has on their website but uh no this

this is not a thing that uh that anybody has right now it seems they're the i have it on good authority that there are a very small number of these even at apple so like it's it's it's not it's not out yet they don't have it yet right like so it's not surprising you know these things are probably starting to be made now right like that might be a thing and for all we know apple may have wanted to stage this out a little bit i mean we're going to get into this but i think there's lots of potential reasons why this product isn't for sale right now um but i think one of them might have purely been not wanting to tip their hat earlier than yeah because this was a big surprise like not just this product which is absolutely fascinating and bizarre but also that we have cursor support which we're going to talk about separately in a little bit but those were big things and maybe they

didn't want to necessarily tip their hat on it i don't know yeah see you say tip their hat but that i think you mean tip their hand which is like a poker metaphor tip their hat would be like i recognize you ming chi quo you found out about our keyboard well both my hat to you so it works jason i've worked it out mike it makes total sense now uh we salute you game recognize game yeah so here here we are with it with an unsurprise or a super surprising product uh took us by surprise uh lots of rumors about it we we spent a while a few weeks ago talking about would they do one or both and they did the both thing in a really unexpected way where they're keeping the smart keyboard and i feel like we did call that a little bit that that you keep the smart

keyboard and then you make an even more expensive smarter keyboard and that's what we have here this is this is not cheap we're talking about 300 plus dollars for this thing because we were talking you know we've been talking a lot about what we imagined our best case scenario would be and for us to get that best case scenario which i think we have actually, we knew it would be an expensive thing for Apple to do in the way that Apple would want to do it. Like you can make a cheap version of this product, but it's not going to have a cantilevered hinge, right? Like it's going to be a very, very different thing. And I think a lot of the expense of this product is in the design, the mechanism. I think a lot of the expense of this product is in the design, the mechanism. So can you help explain the cantilevered hinge, what it's doing?

So the effect here, and I am not... Actually, Dr. Drang, our friend who is an engineer, actually posted a thing on his blog that we can link to that is about the weight and how it gets distributed which i think is uh very clever um but it's all about uh putting the weight in the right place because you don't want it you don't want it too far in the back because it'll flip over backward now i i suspect that this that this case is is heavy maybe not as heavy as a bridge keyboard, but I suspect it's heavy. I'll also note that nowhere does Apple talk about

what they weigh. Like, nowhere. It is not announced. I'm sure they know what it weighs. They're not talking about it. Someone knows. It has to be heavy. It has to be heavy.

Otherwise it would flip over backward. Although, the clever thing about it is, with this design, so there's a hinge down at the base behind the keyboard and the the that's got a usbc charging port in it it's kind of bananas so that's there and then and then up from that comes a folding part of the of the back and then at an angle back behind that is the larger part of the back that's attached via the magnets on the back and it's attached to the smart connector and so you end up by doing that and having that fold

and the hinge you end up being able to apply enough pressure that it's kind of floating over the back part of the case which moves its center of gravity forward a little bit which is good for stability um so uh yeah it so this is surprising because i think nobody nobody imagined a floating ipad above a keyboard with a big hinge because it seems too complex it seems too compact complex thick potentially heavy potentially and expensive and i think what we've seen is Apple didn't care about those. Apple wanted to make this thing happen. The instruction here seems to have been, we want to make a smart keyboard, essentially, or a magic keyboard for an iPad with a trackpad. How do we get that to work and not have it look like the bridge keyboard or have to build a kickstand on the back of the iPad,

like the Surface. And this is what they came up with. And it seems really inspired. I mean, nobody's actually seen it. We don't know how wobbly it is. We don't know how solid it is. It's a bit of a mystery. But if it works like we hope it does, this is, albeit expensive, this is uh albeit expensive like pretty amazing bit of engineering it is kind of i mean honestly like i'm blown away by it like i'm so excited about it because it because it is so bizarre and it is so bold you know as a as a devout ipad user I love to see something like this. You love to see it, Jason. You love to see it. As people who clip on, you know,

big heavy keyboards onto our iPads from time to time, to see, it's also to see Apple say, yes, not only are we going to give you cursor support, which we have to talk about, but we're going to give you cursor support and a device for an iPad that has a keyboard and a trackpad built into it.

Like we are going to go to the trouble. We think this is not so strange a thing that we're going to leave it to third parties. We are going to build one of these ourselves. And that is, that's quite a stamp, right? Because that's Apple saying, this is not a third party opportunity, which is code for Apple doesn't care because nobody cares about this except you weirdos out there. This is, no, people want to buy this.

People are going to want to use it this way. People are going to want to use a cursor on their iPad. So we're going to build one with a trackpad on it. That is like beyond just the engineering of it, the statement that that makes that like this cursor on an iPad is going to be so mainstream that there needs to be a trackpad keyboard version of the you know for the ipad pro but so like because one of the things that i love about this is that the magic say the the smart keyboard the keyboard was kind of solved right you have you're going to be super thin you can have butterfly switches and you just cover the smart keyboard, the keyboard was kind of solved, right? You have,

you can be super thin, you can have butterfly switches and you just cover them with fabric. Yep. We can call it done. And I mean, I don't know about you, but when I was imagining what Apple was going to do, I figured that they would find a way to build on that keyboard.

Like even when knowing about back lighting i was like well they will have some kind of i didn't ever say it but my mind was just like would i have some kind of semi-transparent fabric that will allow the light to come through yeah but to actually put what seems to be essentially the same keyboard that you can find on apple's laptops the magic keyboard with the inverted t arrows and the whole shebang like that is a that's amazing right like it again it's like an additional step making me as a professional user using the ipad feel like that you are willing to trade some weight and some thickness for better keys. Because the smart keyboard, and I like the smart keyboard.

I think the smart keyboard folio or whatever version it is, the fabric keyboard, I think it's good. I think it's actually kind of a pleasant typing experience. I think it's good. I think it's actually kind of a pleasant typing experience, but it is also a solution to the problem of how do we make this thing as thin and light as possible. And with this keyboard, it's Apple saying, okay, we get it. You want a better keyboard and it doesn't need to be as thin and light in order to do this for you. So we're going to make that. And then on top of that, there's, we also need to move the keyboard up because keep in mind on the smart keyboard, the bottom row keys is at the bottom of the device and they had to slide it all up, which is why that thing has to hang over the keyboard a little bit in this design so that we can put a trackpad. Now it's not like a magic trackpad or even a MacBook track trackpad size thing it's going to be much smaller than what modern mac users are used to for a trackpad but they are doing a multi-touch trackpad there um and so that you know that makes it even more of an engineering challenge i would argue that trackpads

have maybe gotten too big and like i'm not saying that like we should all go to small trackpads but i have a magic trackpad here it's much bigger than I need it to be. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say is you don't need it to be big. The value of it being big is that you don't have to be precise, right? You can put your fingers anywhere on it and just gesture and it works. Whereas in a small one, the target is smaller and you've got to be more precise and you've got to fit it inside the boundaries of it. But they don't have that room on this so they did what they they did what they could but like you know for me i obviously am very

excited about this product and i imagine it becoming something that would be oh we use a lot but it's not it's probably still not going to be the primary way that i use input on my 12.9 inch ipad pro like it will be for when i'm not at my desk because it's still a laptop, right? Like in that form factor, I'm not going to put a laptop form factor down on my desk and it'd be permanent, you know,

like it will be when I would in theory be using a laptop, right? So like in different working environments, maybe in different places in the home or the office, but not like at my permanent desk, which is why I am so happy that they are continuing to expand the iPad to support so many different input methods because it allows for that flexibility. that really is its greatest strength is that it's what you want when you want it. So if you want a tablet, just a touchscreen tablet with nothing attached to it, it is that.

That's its bare center. That's what it is. It's the naked robotic core, as John Syracuse would say. And then you want a pencil? Great. You want to attach a Bluetooth keyboard? Fine.

You want to put it in a stand with a keyboard and a trackpad or a mouse? Yeah, you can do that. You want to make it laptop-y with a keyboard and a trackpad or a mouse yeah you can do that you want to make it a laptop with a keyboard we got one of those you want to make a laptop with a keyboard and a trackpad we got one of those right like it could be so so of course you aren't going to use it unless you're in a laptop sort of shaped context but the beauty of it being not a laptop is that then you move to a different context and it becomes a different device at that point you just pull it off the keyboard and now it's something different and that's that's one of the things i love about the ipad is that it is so flexible to be able to do that and this just changes that and yes it is the classic apple story right which is they make a

first party accessory that requires software updates to enable something like a cursor. And it has the side benefit of finally blessing that interaction type for everything else. So like everybody else who's got other iPad accessories or just mice and keyboards and track pads that are out there, like it makes all that stuff better too. Like we can use, and we'll talk about this more

in a little bit but like the cursor stuff is there in beta in beta already and shortly this week you know as a final 13.4 ios release like it's just there we don't have to wait till may to use the cursor it's there now and everybody who's got a pointing device they want to attach to their ipad can benefit from that today and then apple will have its hardware in may i know we're both dying to talk about the cursor support so let's just round up the final thoughts on the magic keyboard and nice touch is that it has the horizontal apple logo um which is which is great and the smart keyboard folio too the idea that that if you're using this iPad in that configuration, those cases didn't have logos on them before still considers it a portrait device when we tend to use it? You know, and not everybody does, but I certainly tend to use it almost all the time in landscape.

And you put in a keyboard case and you're using it in landscape and then you, you know, but you turn it on and the Apple is still portrait. portrait well a crack in apple's view of the ipad is that both of these cases have an apple logo on the back and it's the pointing the right direction it's great yeah i mean other other stuff is the same right like the the uh apple logo on the ipad itself is still in portrait but you know when it's in uh in those in those keyboard situations, it's considered landscape. And I should mention while we're on the accessory front, a complaint that I've had, it's been on my wish list for a while. The case, the without keyboard smart case, smart cover, whatever it is, whatever they call it, smart folio. I don't even know what they call it. The folio case for the iPad Pro, the one that has nothing.

It's just magnets on the back, covers your case in the front. Comes in colors. It had one color before. It was like, you know, remember, originally it was sort of like you could get it in gray or white. And now you can get it in like black or pink or blue or green. Like there was a long period where Apple seemed to think that the iPad pro should never have color on it and it should be as boring as possible.

And it was a lot of their accessories were super boring. And the, the keyboard cases are still kind of boring, although there are darker gray than they used to be, which I think is good. But, um, there are color options now that weren't there before so i i like immediately went out and ordered a blue case because um i'm very happy to have something that is not boring i never use those cases i i i use them a lot i actually that's my primary case for my ipad is one that has nothing on it. Because if I want to use a keyboard, I'll go get a keyboard and attach it.

We've already mentioned this, but I want to just, before we move on, like completely underscore this point. That this product is available for the 2018 iPad Pro, both sizes, as well as the 2020 iPad Pro, which is really great if you have a 2018 iPad Pro because there may not be that much reason for you to upgrade to a 2020. But I also think it's very clever on Apple's part because lots of people are going to buy this that wouldn't have necessarily bought a new iPad.

So they are creating a pretty much $400 device that can be purchased as an upgrade to a product. Now, that is one of the interesting things you can focus on with iPads as compared to MacBooks. You can sell people additional things, new things to attach to their product. You can't really do that so much with a MacBook Air. If you're, I mean, and you can do the math of like how many people would update from the 2018 to the 2020 iPad Pro. And again, my gut feeling is maybe not as many as you would think. It's not that big a change. But you are going to be able to generate more revenue out of all of those iPad Pro buyers from 2018 and 2019 who are interested in one of these cases. And all of them are compatible with all of the iPad Pros of this generation, the third and fourth, the second, the one like 2018 and 2020,

all of them are, it just, you know, it's magnets connecting. There's going to be a little more open space because the camera cutout is bigger, right? So it's not, you can't take your 2018 case to 2020 because it won't fit on the camera bump, but you can go the other direction. And yeah, they will be generating more revenue in the case of a 12.9, you know, a lot more revenue from somebody without them actually buying a new iPad. It is the price of a regular iPad. Yeah, yeah. And I'm, look, do not get me wrong.

I am not complaining about that. There are options. You don't have to buy this. Like you do not need this to use an iPad. Like I'm happy there are options and i want this product yes it's expensive but it's something that i want in its exact configuration if i wanted less i could go to the smart keyboard or i could go to bridge or i could go to any company making a keyboard or i could just not get one at all and just connect a magic keyboard

via bluetooth and use that right like there are tons of options or us a usb keyboard yeah there are so many options i do right like i connect my digma raise split ergonomic mechanical keyboard via usb like that is what i'm typically doing because I don't have it in a stand and I use the keyboard that I want to use. There are many options available to you. And I am happy that this option is now available. This is a professional product for a professional user. And I am very excited about that. Just to be clear, because I know there's a conversation, there was one you guys had on Connected last week about the room for third parties here it's so often that apple comes out with a product and everybody says well all the third parties are dead and that generally is not the case because the third parties can differentiate from apple and reach the edges

and yes they're they're reaching the edge cases instead of being the primary so like bridge with its keyboards is no longer kind of the primary purveyor of a laptop like keyboard for the ipad because it's going to be apple for the for the these two models but just as a point of reference they're still going to differentiate their their more expensive keyboard with trackpad that Bridge is shipping next month, they say. 120 bucks cheaper for the 12.9. And I mean, I spent some time thinking about this because at first I was like, oh, they're done and I'm going to cancel my order.

But I have spent more time thinking about this since and I feel like I overreacted to that and connected for that reason. But also, this is a very different form factor what bridge are making compared to what apple are making and that laptop form factor i know that works in the situation that it works the magic keyboard for ipad but i don't know how it's going to work in every situation yet because it's a very different design like we don't know there may be some very clear differences in how they work versus something like the bridge which makes it into a more

traditional laptop shape and we just we don't know what it weighs we don't know how stable it is who knows which is better on a tray table on an airplane i don't know yet right um so one thing i actually have i'm keeping my order of my Bridge Pro Plus because I want to be able to compare them to inform our listeners about such things. Right. Yeah. We'll find out what the differences are as these products roll out. But I do think there's going to be a place for third-party stuff.

Plus, keep in mind, there's also a lot of iPads that don't work with this keyboard. It's only for these iPad Pros in 2018 and 2020. And we saw that Apple and Logitech made an announcement about a case for other iPads. But the door is open for all iPads to have keyboard and trackpad support. The keyboard support's been there, but now there's cursor support.

So there are lots of different options that are going to be out there. Apple is going to be the most commonly chosen one because it's right there, but there's going to be some other stuff going on that is at the edges that is not what Apple is doing. And price is a great example. Seriously, people look at that bridge keyboard and they think, wow, that must be really expensive, but it's always been cheaper than the smart keyboard. And this one, the Pro Plus with the trackpad is going to be a hundred plus dollars cheaper than Apple's keyboard with trackpad. So I'm sure it'll be heavier and thicker

too, but it's cheaper. So, you know, there's room and we'll see what the market does, but there's room. Sometimes when Apple swoops in with a new product and that's bad for third parties, but they're also blessing that concept, right? If that makes any sense. So like it's bad that Apple's making a keyboard and trackpad for the iPad for bridge because they were making it and they were probably the most recommended one. And now Apple's going to take a lot of the oxygen out of the room with their product. However, bridge no longer has to make the case that it makes sense to have a trackpad and a keyboard on an ipad because apple has basically made that case apple has blessed the concept and that makes

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to have uni back as a sponsor jason i'll order a billion pizzas that sounds good to me ios 13.4 cursor support so this so you may not be able to get the magic trackpad keyboard i'm never going to get that name right uh but you can get cursor support with probably products existing things that you already own uh shipping this week probably by the time you're hearing this you will have be able to update to ios 13.4 i downloaded the developer beta and updated so i was able to uh to check that out and so i've been playing with it for best part of four or five days the best support for this cursor mode is in the magic trackpad 2. Any mouse will work great, and we could talk about that a little bit more, but the Magic Trackpad 2,

the original Magic Trackpad, not so much, but the Magic Trackpad 2, as well as supporting the cursor, also has tons of gestures. There was a demo video from Craig Federighi at Apple Park, which I've seen put on the Six Colors YouTube channel, which has seen great success in viewer numbers, Jason. I'm sure you're very excited about that.

Yeah, well, they didn't post it on their YouTube channel. I don't know why. And then everybody was like, oh, hey, The Verge has this exclusive video with Craig Federighi. And I'm like, that's in the press kit. That's not exclusive. And so I just posted it on YouTube and put it in my story.

And yeah, whatever. People are like, why is this on this random youtube channel it's like ask apple i don't know they just gave me the video so i posted it thank you 800 000 viewers yeah i mean and this is clearly a video that is ripped from a presentation yeah it's his it's his uh on stage demo yeah and i. So, you know, leading up to these potential products being announced, there was a lot of conversation, right? About are they going to have an event?

Is there enough to have an event? I really do think that the Magic Keyboard was event worthy, as well as the trackpad and cursor support in general. But like this whole thing, I think, would have been a very very very big story to tell about the continued advancement of the ipad pro but you do get to see the gestures in this video you also get glimpses of the magic keyboard jason will you allow me a few minutes to talk about how excited i am about the cursor support having used it now for a few days yes i will allow it go ahead

we have spent a lot of time talking about this and i think what apple have given us is the literal best case scenario that we could have ever asked for you know we were talking about like oh will we maybe just get support for editing text but down the line we'll get everything and maybe they'll just say oh hey use accessibility and you'll be fine but no out of nowhere apple dropped in 13.4 a absolute complete overhaul of the cursor support and beefing it up to places that i don't think we could have imagined right so the cursor is now a tiny little semi-transparent circle which is really really cool much smaller than the assistive touch way smaller way smaller it is i mean i mean i don't know what you think but it's just the size of a cursor like the regular arrow cursor which is a different shape no we're we're gonna talk about this a lot but i will say

it is what they did there were the rumors about like oh they're gonna have an arrow cursor and a watch cursor or whatever. Like, it's like, oh, just like the Mac. That's not what it is. This is a modern reconception of what a cursor should behave like. Like, this is a new take on a cursor that Apple is doing here.

And it starts with the circle and it goes from there. I will mention my favorite feature of the circle, if you haven't tried this yet, is you get this semi-transparent circle if you haven't tried this yet is you get this semi-transparent circle you get this thing it's like okay well i've got this darkish circle and then i move over a dark area can i not do i lose it do i lose track of it sometimes that even happens on the mac is that you lose track of it it's got and and that's why the pointer has the the arrow has the white around it the white outline that's not what they do the system detects when you're over dark things

and makes the cursor light and when they are over light things it makes the cursor dark the cursor changes based on what it's over yeah it's just a little and there are a lot there are a bunch of animations when it changes to different things the level of detail that went into creating this cursor is bananas. Like this is, they, they, they sweated some cursor details that they probably didn't need to sweat, you know, as a Mac user, of course, you know, you move your, you move the pointer over text and it just turns into an I-beam. That's, it just click. It's now a different kind of cursor.

On iOS, every cursor change that I could see is animated. There are in-between states. It animates into, morphs into a different cursor. Just like, they didn't need to do that, but it's beautiful. But it's so great. I agree. It is. If you were creating a cursor from scratch today, this is where you, what you would end up with something like this, where you're not using these, what are now decades old

interpretations of how these things should look. They don't need to look like that. It doesn't need to be a pointing arrow. It's just not necessary. Like it can be whatever you want it to be like that. It doesn't need to be a pointing arrow. It's just not necessary. Like it can be whatever you want it to be. Right. And so what Apple's done is like it adapts in different scenarios. So as you are scrolling across, scroll the cursor across an app icon, and it kind of snaps to it for a little bit and will let you easily click the app icon. It's got this behavior that's interesting that is taken from tv os where when

the cursor is over something a button an app icon whatever the cursor disappears but the whole item like lifts up and then as you move your pointing device it gets that parallax effect like you're like you're moving it and And then if you keep moving, it breaks out and then the cursor reappears, which some people are like, well, I'm really confused by that. I actually think most people will totally get it, but there is actually a setting.

I think it's an accessibility. There is actually a setting where you can just say, always show me the cursor, even when I'm highlighting an item. So for people who are kind of distracted by that, but like, it's such a nice touch of saying, you know, you're not just hovering over this button, you are the button.

Yeah, and it also will kind of attach itself to buttons inside of applications, which is nice, right? So if you, for example, got a plus button to open a new tab in Safari, as you hover over it, it kind of attaches to it, so you can click it really easily. But it also does this for system things. So like the little pill, which is in the middle of two split-screen applications,

it will attach to that. It will attach to the home indicator. And what I like about this kind of magnetic attaching of the cursor is it doesn't require as much precision, right? Like you can kind of just be in the area and you'll get what you need. Exactly, exactly. Because they've definitely given this a lot of thought.

The kind of the way that text selection works has changed. And I almost at this point can see why Apple made so many changes to text selection in ios 13 which on the whole made it way harder to deal with text selection on the ipad by touch but has made it way nicer now for the for trackpad stuff yeah they just need to watch it right they need to make sure that the that you shouldn't sacrifice touch usability for pointer usability, right? No. So I think that's something that they need to watch

and revisit how it works in touch. They need to tweak the touch selection of text, for sure, in iOS 14. But basically what happens is you hover over text, it just turns into a little I-beam, and you can just click and select the text. And I love it. And at the moment, it is a very inconsistent experience um on ios this is one that you know they're saying like the the cursor stuff works pretty much everywhere

but we have a lot of applications the text selection is going to need to be tweaked and adopted by developers like for example in all of the in google docs does not work and i will give you a tip right now if you are not finding that the cursor is changing here think of your cursor as your finger so double click on a word and then you can drag the little typical blue highlighter yeah it's not great um it's it's actually very similar to the experience was that i hated using assistive touch yeah to edit text where you get a cursor that's not you want the text editing behavior and the text editing cursor and it does seem to be like the more custom your text editor is on ios the the less it will be supported by this so like i use one writer it has pretty

standard text editing support it works fine pages has to to be updated. And it's nice because the Pages developers presumably knew that this was coming. Whereas if you're the developer of a different text editor, that you're going to have to scramble to try and get it, do an update to support this cursor. But a lot of apps will pick it up just automatically. There are lots of swiping gestures throughout the system now. So you can swipe up to go home. You can swipe up further to enter app expose. You can swipe left and right between apps as well. Yeah. And, and it's if you're using the magic trackpad too, it's just completely natural. Like all of the multi-touch gestures and including the ipad

version of them like you said where it's sort of like you start up if you flip up it goes to the home screen if you slowly go up it will pop into multitasking view just as if your finger was on the ipad doing that same gesture it's just they really did a good idea or did a good job and then swiping back and forth between apps is a it's a really natural gesture again a gesture i make on the screen all the time that i can make on the trackpad and it does the same thing so with assistive touch and my support you were able to kind of assign buttons to do different actions you know like maybe to open the multitasking or to bring up the dock. This is not a function in the new iOS 13.4 kind of top-level trackpad and mouse options, but you can actually go back into accessibility and turn on assistive touch

and assign these buttons to mice as you would have before, and it doesn't change anything. You don't then get an assistive touch cursor. It just keeps the mouse cursor as it was so if you're deciding if you want to use a mouse with this and want to be able to for example i don't know click in the scroll wheel and go home you can still turn those buttons on and it doesn't actually change your experience in any way which i really like um you can also then there's another thing to like throwing the cursor at the screen edges will do things.

So you can kind of like throw it down to the bottom to bring up the dock, throw it up to the top and get notification center, top right for control center and the right hand side for slide over. And there's a very particular behavior here that I really like, which is this idea of pushing further. pushing further. So what they don't want to have happen is that if you move your cursor to the right side of the screen, you know, you slide it over there and slide over pops out. You're like, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. I just wanted to move, click on something over on the right side of the screen. So it's trying to sense what your intent is. And one way you express your intent that you want to bring up control center or notification center or the dock or slide over is you move your cursor to that side or that corner and then you push through right so you move it over there and then you push further out it's like almost like a second gesture and it does exactly what you'd expect it

to do now in some instances you're also highlighting an item like the home indicator or items up in the status bar that you can just click on that will bring those things down but you can also just kind of push further, push your cursor out beyond the edge of the screen and that functions as a gesture. And one of my personal favorite things here Jason is that you can have multiple pointing devices

paired to an iPad and use them both. So I can, and have been, which I love, I can use a mouse in my right hand, trackpad on my left hand, and you can use them both at the exact same time. Yeah, I'm not a dual wielder like that, but it's a big deal for you and it's great that you can do that so i'm very very excited about being able to do that because it helps with

my uh with my rsi to be able to rotate things quickly and not like you know to be able to like i don't know i can do the swiping with my left hand and the point of control my right hand and it's been a great help for me with my Mac over the years. Right now, I have a Wacom tablet, a trackpad, and a mouse where I'm sitting here at my iPad Pro. And now when I... My iMac Pro, I should say. And then when I go to my iPad Pro now,

I have another trackpad and another mouse. And that works great for me. And I'm really happy that I have that flexibility again with one of my, if not my most important computer. happy that I have that flexibility again with one of my, if not my most important computer. So this whole thing is absolutely fantastic. I am so excited about it. It is completely changing the way that I use my iPad all over again. And I am so enthused by this. I'm so happy that Apple have done it. Like my heart goes out to the people behind this project to Apple, because I cannot imagine that it was an easy one to get to fruition.

And I am so thankful for it because, you know, I consider myself a big professional user of the iPad, right? Like I am on the thin end of the wedge here and this is something I want. And it seems like lots of people now who use the iPad to the level that I use it, right? You and Federico and many more want that flexibility of being able to have an iPad at a desk. Because once you get used to a thing, you want to be able to use it more and more with all of the tools that

you want at your disposal. And adding this into the system is going to be able to use it more and more with all of the tools that you want at your disposal and adding this into the system is going to be a big kick and like it's such a good reason to have ipad os exist in the first place and i'm so pleased that they've not waited until i was 14 for this like they they had it they were ready they were done they shipped it and i think it's awesome i'm so happy yep same and this could maybe open up some different use cases for ipad os apps in general like i'm really keen to see if or what changes could come of ios 14 and and how it could maybe change development like what it could mean for the future of the ipad in general and talking to some developers about this um you know there are going to be new apis that aren't out yet which is

annoying because the os is going to ship but like when you've got a cursor you can have what's called a hover state which is that software knows that there's a cursor hanging over it and you don't have that with a finger right the finger is either touching the screen or it's not and you don't have that with a finger, right? The finger is either touching the screen or it's not. And you see it in places like Safari with its desktop browsing, like web pages often have a mouse over state or a hover state. Well, you could support that now when a cursor is present.

Apps can do that too. So they can put up like little tool tips and stuff. They can behave differently. And my understanding is that some of the same stuff that you would do to make a Catalyst app on the Mac will be able to be used by this in cursor mode on an iPad. So it's all kind of like coming together. So apps can be a lot smarter about this in this mode.

Again, the base mode of an iPad is that it's a touch tablet. So that should not, you should never download an app and have it say, you really need a keyboard and a mouse for this app on an iPad. Like that should not happen. And those apps should be rejected from the app store probably unless there's a very good use case that requires them. But I'm even more excited about what this means for hardware right like this is potentially like federico uses an external monitor for his ipad and ipad os 13.4 does not change external monitor support on the ipad he's using a mirrored view of his ipad screen but you can see how you don't need to do that anymore, right? Like how an iPad could now have either run in lid closed mode or have a second display with apps on it. Because

when you're driving with a keyboard and a mouse, you don't need a touchscreen. You don't need anything. It also means that Apple could make a Surface Studio-like device. It means Apple could make a laptop or a big iPad of some kind. And you've got options now in how you build those things running iPadOS. You know, I don't like to say the future of computing, but I'm just going to invoke it here for this period. Like, this feels more to me like a future computer because it can be so many different things yeah and and i would say because apple's trying to do things differently still like the give up would have been just to put the old mac arrow cursor on it right but what they they spent the time to reconceive of what a cursor would be like on a device like this and that says something to me a keyboard that had you know one side of it was a case and you just slot your ipad into the case and now it's a laptop right that was

the easy way to make the magic keyboard but they didn't do that they tried to do something different yeah so it's it is exciting and um and you know we'll see where it goes from here i i've talked about this before but i just want to mention one of the things that happened in a bunch of stories that I saw when this happened was Apple admits, the headlines go, that Microsoft was right, and the Surface was right, and the iPad was wrong. The headline is kind of clickbaity garbage. The story is actually quite good. Talking about the different challenges that Apple and Microsoft have had trying to get to these new devices. And like, of course, Surface was all about you need to have a keyboard and a mouse because Microsoft's entire strength was in traditional PC operating systems and apps. And they were trying to build a next generation touch tablet computer from a position of strength in traditional non-touch, non-tablet computers. Apple, because of its success with the iPhone, came at it from the other perspective, which was,

we have a thing we designed to be little and have touch and not have any computer things at all. And now we've got a bigger one and it probably should be more PC-like, but it has nothing to do that. So we're going to have to sort of start from way over here on the touch tablet side and try to push back in terms of functionality to something that like more PC power. Microsoft has been struggling with the other direction, which is they've got some good hardware and they've got the PC side. But how do you make the Surface a good touch first tablet? And the truth is that they have tried again and again and again because their user base just wants to use a PC. They're like, I use Microsoft stuff because I have PC apps and I want a keyboard and a mouse. And it's been hard. So they're both, I think Microsoft and Apple are both trying to reach

this promised land and they're both handicapped by their success, if that makes any sense. They are limited by the thing that makes them strong because it prevents them from moving as quickly to the center. And they're both headed for the same place, I would argue. I think where it's right in saying Microsoft was ahead of Apple in knowing where it wanted to go, I think there's some truth in the sense that I think Apple got caught up in its propaganda, maybe a little bit,

in a cultural thing about what the iPad was not. And like, oh, we shouldn cultural thing about what the iPad was not. And like, oh, we shouldn't do X on the iPad files on the iPad, because we've decided that we're elevated, we shouldn't do external USB storage on the iPad, because we've evolved to be to not need files anymore, and not need USB keychain drives anymore. And it's just like, it wasn't true. And they had to get past a lot of that. i think they gave up years of lead over microsoft by getting caught up in that but that said i and if you read tom warren's story in the verge he basically makes the same point that said apple still the one to beat here because apple is getting momentum on the ipad now. And it is coming from a purer, clearer place

because they started with the next generation device and are now adding functionality to it. And Microsoft has shown repeatedly over more than a decade that although the people at Microsoft who build this stuff know exactly what they want to do and have done some really great work,

the challenge is that their customers don't want to go with them and it's happened time and again. And so that's a real challenge for them. So, you know, I think it's way more complicated than just, oh, well, once you see a pencil, then Surface was right. Once you see a mouse, surface was right once you see a mouse uh surface was right it's it's not quite right like of course surface wanted to do those things that was their strength i apple apple was coming from a totally different world where there were no files or devices or anything it was a big iphone world and they've been struggling and anyone who uses the ipad knows they've been struggling for years and i think think somebody tweeted me this week. They're like, do you think Apple finally has realized what the iPad is?

And it's like, well, I think they realized it a while ago because we've seen the smart keyboard and the Apple Pencil and Files app and all of these things. Like, we're seeing it. It's just there was that five years before that where they just refused to do anything. five years before that where they just refused to do anything and i also think that like you know it's like in the same way that you wouldn't have said just because the surface existed that apple were right you know just because microsoft decided to make another tablet product i mean they've been doing tablet pc for longer right for years yeah bill gates knew that a tablet was a really interesting thing in 2000. It's just that the world and the technology and users, nobody was ready for it back then.

Where are Apple's pro apps? Give me Logic. Yeah, Xcode, Logic, Final Cut Pro. MKBHD did a tweet last week that was it was dead on which is like okay great apple where's final cut for the ipad it's like there's a pro ipad it's like you can buy kit it out thirteen hundred dollars it's the cost of a macbook pro it's got incredible performance faster than most pcs most mobile pcs and where are the apps? Like, I think it's just it there. There's the question. Where is Xcode? Where's Final Cut? Where's Logic? If this is a pro system, why is Apple's own pro

software support non-existent? You know, I think we just got a name and shame every now and then when they do something like this. It's like, it's great. You know, what one major pro software vendor that isn't supporting the iPad? It's Apple. There's no excuse. No. All right. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom. Pingdom help you make sure that your website is running perfectly well. If you listen, when you listen to the show, how would you know if your website gone down? Would you have to wait for your customers to inform you that they couldn't click that buy now button or read your latest post? You don't want that. You need a system. You need something to tell you when everything's running smoothly on your site and when it isn't.

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of this show and RelayFM. So you spent some time with the brand new MacBook Air. I did. I did. I've got one right here, and I wrote a review and everything. I think that your headline to the review, No News is Good News, tells a really good

story of what's going on here. Because, you know, everything was great about the 2018 Air, except for, you know, there could have been, it could have been a bit cheaper, should have had a different keyboard, maybe could have had more options for expanding it. And they did all of that in 2020, right? Yeah, I mean, I titled titled my review no news is good news and that's basically you know that's basically it which is hey you know that old macbook air hey you know that keyboard from the 2016 macbook pro well there you go it's like it's it's the macbook air was already the laptop that i recommended to people who wanted a mac laptop it was already like this is the mac everybody should get and apple said it's the best selling Mac model. It's issues where it's price and it's keyboard. And now it starts at $999 and it's got the magic

keyboard. And then in addition to that, remember it only had the one processor and they've changed to offer three different processors and you can get them in any configuration. You don't have to like buy the high end one with lots and lots of SSD in order to get the expensive processor. It's all to play for. You can get any with any configuration. But they's an i3 dual core. So they've sort of made a tier below the 1099, which is fine. That's how Microsoft got theirs under, their MacBook Air equivalent under a thousand was that it was really underpowered and understoraged.

And that's actually kind of funny because the MacBook Air now starts at 256 instead of 128, which is great. It's much more usable at 256 in terms of storage. But add on another 100 bucks and you get a quad core, the first time, quad core i5 in the MacBook Air. And then if you add on 250, you get a quad core i7. And both of the quad core processors also have more graphics. I forget what they call it. It's like graphics units or something like that.

So the graphics performance is also improved on those models, not just the CPU performance. So it's, I mean, they're all Intel on board graphics. They're not going to be spectacular, but they're okay. And so, yeah, I mean, like really it on the outside, it looks almost no different. It's so thin. It's thicker in a way that you cannot tell, and it's heavier in a way that you cannot feel. So it's essentially exactly the same. But you would never notice them in daily use, right?

It's minute, minute. And the battery, quota battery life is actually down a little bit. But again, I think they are trading for power. And it's a, is it exciting no i mean the excitement was when they did the macbook air in 2018 18 months ago same time they did those ipad pros they did the macbook air and that was that brooklyn event and that was exciting because that new product existed this is just a bump but in a lot of good ways, like it fixes, you know, it addresses all the issues and then some with that older model. So now I would unequivocally recommend this laptop as the Mac that people should buy if they're looking for a Mac to buy.

And we have two of the old one in the house right now, but like, and I like it, but all of its issues have basically been fixed with this that i think are relevant we can you know plenty of other podcasts can debate whether laptops should have sd card slots or not i'm not going to do that i think two usbc ports is uh is good enough for a 999 laptop and it's a nice laptop i like it a lot happy i mean the keyboard it's the same keyboard does it I assume it feels just the same as it does on a 16 inch yeah yeah it doesn't have as much travel as on the old macbook air non-retina macbook airs and I still have one of those and that feels a little bit better but it's good it's good it's just like the 16 inch macbook pro it it's a real keyboard with a millimeter of travel and after the butterfly keyboard you know and some people don't care

I asked my wife to try them both because she uses the butterfly keyboard on there and she's like well whatever like some people do not care but if you do care the point is some people do care and yeah what you want to do is make something that everybody kind of like is fine with on your apple laptops and they seem to have done that but i guess the important part i think is even if you don't care reliability improvements if they are there and they are significant and i think at this point it seems like the 16 inch macbook pro keyboard has been an improvement there on reliability whether you notice or not the difference in your keyboard, the absence of requiring to take it back into the Apple Store every six months will be a much better feeling overall, right?

Like, you don't know that your keyboard is more reliable if you're not paying attention, but you'll really know if it isn't, right? And so I think that there's a good thing in that, where it's like, well, you go back to that keyboard, so then people can have the reliability that they were used to and that's a big win for everybody right?

Yeah for sure Now we said $9.99 is the start it also starts with double the storage 256GB you can get it for $8.99 in education and you can go all the way up to a 2Tterabyte SSD and 4-core CPU stuff, as you said now.

I think all that's really great. It's still not as powerful as the iPad Pro and Geekbench scores, which is funny. It continues to be promising for a potential ARM future, and so I think that's interesting. And you already mentioned, right, like this is an easy recommendation to people now as a machine right like this is easily slot back in there as like there isn't a caveat now it's just like yeah you should get

that one yeah it's this is the one to get i mean it's that simple like i i no longer have to say well you know does the keyboard bother you or maybe there'll be a new keyboard it's like no this is the one get this one it's It's going to please everybody. Well, not everybody. Maybe not everybody out there listening, but it's a crowd pleaser. This is the center of the Mac world even more than it was last time. Are you surprised that this came

before the 14-inch MacBook Pro? So my feeling on this, to answer the question I asked, like yes but in hindsight no yeah well it is the most popular mac right so getting it turned over makes sense but we were all worried that apple was going to be like shady and do something weird like uh you know oh no you have to wait macbook air you just you get the cheap lousy keyboard and everybody in the macbook pro gets the expensive nice keyboard and that that't happen. Exactly right like we were all expecting the 14-inch MacBook Pro or a different MacBook Pro because the 16 was already done so we're like oh obviously that's next but it does make more

sense for many reasons to to make the to improve the Air first because it is the most selling and for all we know the 13-inch MacBook Pro actually sells less than the other two. I mean, we don't know. We assume Apple's putting its resources behind the decisions that makes the most sense. I still expect we will see an update to that MacBook Pro. I don't know when now. Like, I really can't put my money on when I would expect that to be because a window has closed now. But I'm happy to see the MacBook Air get this treatment because it has now reasserted itself as the easy recommendation for a laptop where, you know, like it was.

It's been a while, right? Without caveats like the MacBook Air was amazing. And then it became old then it got refreshed but it was too expensive and was lacking some updates that it still required but now it has slotted itself back into the price that it should be at with all of the features that you want and has made it just like a very very cool machine and so yeah i expect at least one of those will find its way into our home before the end of the year, for sure. Speaking of laptops, though, Jason, I have been using a 16-inch MacBook Pro for a little because I think I may have some opinions

about this computer that most people would not have and I thought it might be interesting to share. Yeah, go ahead. So it's massive, which, you know, I have not used a laptop of this size in a while, if ever. I don't think I've ever owned,

no, I've never owned a 15. I've always been 13. So it's a very, very big machine. The screen is huge and great. And honestly, like I feel like ergonomics aside, a 16 inch laptop screen, I could use that as my only computer. Like it's enough, right?

Like it definitely is enough. If things are more cramped, but like I could get by with that. Like it's, I think kind of at the point where it's usable as your only screen. So all of that's great. Keyboard's great. Speakers are amazing. They do produce a really rich sound. I think if you had me walk into a room with my eyes closed and told me it was a HomePod, I would believe you. Like, we have a large office where I was playing it in, right? Like a 600 feet square room.

And it was filling that space comfortably, not at full volume. It was, like, really great. But the main thing that I wanted to talk about, Jason, was my feeling about the touch bar. So, this is the first time I've ever used the Touch Bar outside of just seeing somebody else's or going to an Apple store. And I kind of had some feelings about it

and some things I noticed on it that I didn't expect. And I wanted to share them for people that also may have never used one. So there were things that the Touch Bar was doing that I hadn't expected it to do. So like, for example, when you get a dialogue box pop up with like, you know, like OK or cancel, the buttons, the OK and cancel buttons

show on the touch bar, right? And I actually kind of liked this because my hands are on the keyboard. They're there. I could just hit those buttons rather than use the trackpad for that. like that felt kind of natural to me um and as an ipad user i'm kind of always reaching up for a screen at times and this was like a nice thing where like you know like maybe if i'm using the track pad my i could kind of just hit the button with my other hand. That kind of worked quite nicely for me.

I like the shortcut buttons that you see in apps like Notes, the shortcut buttons that I'm used to seeing on the Quick type bar, like the bold and the italics and stuff like that. All of those were there, and I could use them. The same as having an emoji picker was really useful. You recommended Better Touch Tool to me as something to be able to really tinker around with to make the touch bar even better.

And oh, boys, there are a lot of interesting stuff in there. I was able to replicate all of my dock in there and set up a bunch of macros and stuff that I could trigger. So I have one for recording, which would open a bunch of applicationsros and stuff that I could trigger. So like I have one for like recording, which would open a bunch of applications, press record and audio hijack, right? And you could just have that button permanently there for me to tap whenever I want. I was like, oh, that's really interesting, right? Like you can do some very, very powerful things with the touch bar by using an app like BetterTouchTool. And I really liked that.

I thought that was really cool. Yeah, my question remains why Apple hasn't done more with it, but it is nice that something like BetterTouchTool is there to make it much better. I really liked audio scrubbing. That was nice to have. I scrub audio a lot

and being able to use the touch bar for that felt much more natural than trying to like hover a cursor over a button and then use a trackpad. Like it felt much more natural for me to be able to just scrub the audio with my finger. But it wasn't a perfect experience by any stretch of the imagination. I found myself accidentally triggering Notification Center a lot because it was on the top right. accidentally triggering notification center a lot because it was on the top right and i found out that what i was doing very frequently instead of pressing delete i was hitting that area and it would just swipe the notification center in or just resting my hands on the keyboard i

would hit something that i didn't mean to and i did also have the control strip area become completely unresponsive like the top right area where you kind of have your brightness or your volume. And I had to Google and use terminal commands to kind of reboot it, which was not great. That's not very user-friendly by any stretch of the imagination. But I would say overall, I really enjoyed having this feature on a laptop.

Now, if I was buying a laptop to use as a laptop, and I'll get into why I say that in a moment, I think I would want a MacBook Pro over a MacBook Air for the touch bar. For me, it definitely had frustrations, but it adds way more than it took away like i was able to have more functionality available to me like even just something like the emoji picker and audio scrubbing and being able to hit the occasional confirm dialogue button i really liked those things like they were not taking away. They were adding to my experience. I did not find myself getting distracted by it like I know some people

do because I am not a touch typist. I look at the keyboard when I type. And so for me, it wasn't in my peripheral vision. If I was going to be buying a laptop to use on a desk or to use around, I would definitely consider buying a MacBook Pro for this feature. Now, the problem is, my next laptop, I am planning to get as a machine

that will be used when traveling, like I currently do like for editing and for recording but also to power my editing area my editing desk and workstation in my new studio and then to have my imac pro on a separate desk which doesn't have all of the sound like the extreme sound isolation that i'm working on around the recording desk. And then I will edit on my iMac Pro using all of its power, but I don't need that much power or flexibility on a recording area, so it's on a laptop. So this machine will actually be elevated in an evasive stand, like it's not going to be on the desk with me. So at least that's the plan. So it's like, well, maybe I don't need the Touch Bar in that instance.

So I haven't completely decided where I'll go yet, but I just wanted to kind of say that I was super surprised about how much I enjoyed the Touch Bar. It made the MacBook Pro a more pleasant device to use for me because of its existence, which is not what I would have expected because everybody that I know doesn't like it. But I really did like it.

So I wanted to kind of share that because it's different. And these things are different strokes for different folks. And for me, the base functionality of that was really nice. I also used Catalina for the first time, Jason. There's lots of dialogue boxes in catalina um didn't like it did not like it things weird things are happening like i got a prompt in one password for one password wants to record my screen which i'm sure it doesn't but like what did it actually want to do it does want to record your screen because it wants to be

able to put that little thing over a barcode on the screen to record a one a two-step authorization thing but like this is the thing i would love more information in those dialog boxes because that dialog box didn't tell me anything just that it wanted to record my screen and i think a developer should be able to customize the text to say why like why do you want to do that? Yeah, I did not like all of that stuff. Like, setting up a new app is so much more complicated now. But I did like having Catalyst apps. Being able to have a Twitter app rather than using Tweetbot, it was nice. Or using the website. Like, I like that. So that is my complete review of Catalina. It's just like I don't really have much to say about it.

I found it more annoying, but I liked having more applications that I don't typically have. So I'm going to be continuing to use this MacBook Pro for a bit, so I might have more to say on it. But that was kind of just what I wanted to talk about today. All right, should we do some hashtag AskUpgrade to wrap up today? Sounds like a good idea. All right.

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online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. The first comes from NeatFreakGeek, and they say, are there any Apple services that you do not subscribe to? Do you consider them a business expense,

the ones that you do subscribe to since you cover Apple? If you didn't cover Apple professionally, would it be any different for you? I definitely don't subscribe to Apple News because I didn't find it valuable. Although I did for, you know, I used the trial and I will sometimes go on and off of Apple services in order to try them. Like that's a good example of like every now and then I'm going to need to look at Apple News again. But it's not worth paying for. i'm on most of their services um some of them i do actually consider a business expense because uh or at least a portion of them because i write about them and i need to have them um and that's true of some other services too like streaming services and all where i consider it

part of my job to write about those so there's some amount of that that that goes to there but um you know that's that's apple news i suppose is the biggest example apple care i don't do any i'm not on the iphone program i don't know that's about it yeah i didn't even think about the upgrade program but yeah i also don't subscribe to apple news because i just have no interest in it but i would pay for all of the subscriptions that I do pay for regardless of whether I was covering Apple and actually all of them I pay for myself they're not business expenses it would be too difficult for me to try and split all that up and decouple it like everything that I buy

digitally through Apple I just pay for myself they're not paid for by my business but like TV Plus and Apple Arcade, Apple Care, I pay for additional iClouds. I just want all of those things. I'm sure that there could be something in the future that Apple launched that I would just pay for to check out so I could talk about it and then cancel it.

And Apple News could have been that thing, but Apple News wasn't exciting or interesting enough to really cover in detail about the content anyway, so I didn't bother. Chris asks, why are podcasters from major news organizations who are now working from home instead of in their fancy recording studios

telling us how they are recording from under blankets? Is that really necessary? Well, they have high standards because they used to work in studios, and now they're trying from under blankets. Is that really necessary? Well, they have high standards because they used to work in studios and now they're trying to get that same audio quality in their homes and they're not getting it. And that's because they haven't needed to record from home before and they haven't created a home recording studio and houses are noisy and there are big glass windows and bare walls and other things like that that reflect audio and make it everything really echoey or there's street noise or there's noise from other rooms because everybody else in their

family is also home and so they try to like leo laporte tells a story about how he did a bunch of ad reads from a hotel in new york city and he basically just went into the closet and did his ad reads in the closet and then they sounded perfect i have recorded from inside of closets when we were in san francisco in the summer i recorded i think an episode of analog and connected from inside of a closet because it was we were in like a just a our hotel room was didn't have a desk in it and it anyway but it was just like a big box so i set up the ironing board in the closet as a desk and recorded in there. It was great.

Like it did the job perfectly. Yeah. So why are they telling you? I don't know. I mean, because they think it's interesting or they're sharing or they're, they've, or they're apologizing for how weird it sounds.

The telling you is not necessary. The audio quality, like it is distracting. If the audio quality dramatically drops, you're listening to a radio station and you're used to it sounding a certain way. And now it sounds very different and that can be disconcerting. But it's mostly that, you know, these poor people are used to having a studio to go to. And they haven't had years like we have to make our home our studio.

And you'll find the people who have home studios, they sound fine. It's the people who don't, who have to scramble to try and figure out what we all had to figure out when we started doing podcasting. So I feel for them. And it is hard. And yes, you can, depending on your equipment and your location, it can sound really terrible and you try to make it sound better. So hiding under blankets in closets is actually a way to do it. And it may be your best bet or as i mentioned earlier um the guy uh steve baker from kcbs in san francisco who has been doing his sports reports from the car there is something kind of kind of funny about like some podcasters realizing podcasts can be recorded at home and but i do wonder about this like if we're going to spend

the next six months to a year with a lot of people doing this kind of stuff, potentially, are these studios going to need to continue having studios? Like, you know, you can record really good-sounding podcasts from home with just the right equipment. Yeah. You don't need a soundproofed booth. Yeah, that's how I feel about, um stephen colbert and jimmy fallon and people like that too is is that um i get that this whole caught everybody by surprise

but surely your network can send you some stuff and you and like facetime call with somebody who will tell you how to set it up at home and then you will have a setup that is pretty good our tech for mobile uh video and audio it's pretty good it's actually pretty good and i know that everybody was caught flat-footed by this but like you figure it out you can figure it out and and people will like as a tech technology podcast that i really love i will not name names um they will stay record in person and they were like hopefully we can find out a way to do this it's like you can yeah you know especially technology podcasts right like look at your contemporaries like you're gonna be fine like it's very easy it's actually much easier to do this way um but it is it's just like a funny

thing i get it like i sympathize with people trust me i am i've been trying to soundproof a big room for a while right like it can be very difficult to do but it's definitely possible and luckily like audio it is much easier to fix podcasting from home than recording television shows from home like that's the one thing we have going for us. Astro Phoenix asks if the Apple Pencil has any additional functionality in iOS 13.4. Can you use it to control any of the system stuff? Can you bring down control center? With notification center, can you bring up the dock?

No. The Apple Pencil is not considered a cursor or pointing device. Nothing has changed there, unfortunately. You use it the way you use it now. There's no change. And finally today, Andrew asks, are there any good family-friendly board games that can be played across the internet

so families that can't get together can still have a game night? There are a few. Dan wrote a piece at Six Colors about streaming some games with your friends, which you can do depending. I mean, he's describing a very particular situation, but there are ways to screen share. If you want to do a Jackbox game

where only one person has to buy the game and then everybody else just logs into jackbox.tv and plays. And if you can share your Jackbox game using Skype or whatever you're using, you could do that. There are online games. I'll put a link in. Go to horsepaste.com, and it's game codenames, which you can play on the web, which is fun.

For D&D, we use Roll20, which is basically a common game board, so you could play with that. That's about all I've got. Parsley Tech's adventures, Jason. Sure. Anything that just requires audio, you could absolutely do just using FaceTime or any other voice over IP kind of thing you can do. But if you can screen share or you can see a common game board or something, it gets more interesting. And I wanted to say like Upgradians, if you have suggestions for good games that can be played online you know maybe ios games mac games games that you know like that you're playing with family and friends send them into us you can tweet them at us and uh we can record we can kind of suggest some on a future episode

sounds good big show today if you want to find notes, you can go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 290 or you can find them in your app of choice. You can find Jason online and all his coverage over these new products at sixcolors.com Jason is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L

I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E Thanks to all of our sponsors this week, the five folk ExpressVPN, Pingdom, Uni, and Smile. And I'd also like to thank Indeed for supporting this episode. And if you want to tune in live, don't forget we record this show live.

If you're working from home and you want to hear us every week instead of waiting for the show to come out, you can do that. We record live at 9 a.m. Pacific time every week on Monday over at relay.fm slash live. And you can also find a schedule there for any of the shows that you want to listen to. Thank you for continuing to listen to the show

under any circumstance that you might find yourself in right now. Don't forget, wash your hands and stay away from people. Stay inside. That's, and then we're all going to get together. Yeah. Take care of yourself.

Find ways to distract yourself. Listen to your favorite podcasts. You know, we're all in this together until next time. Say goodbye, Jason Snow. Bye everybody.