Upgrade - 302: The WWDC Keynote Draft 2020

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

It’s time for our fifth annual competition regarding what will happen at next week's WWDC keynote! Will there be a stage? Will there be enormous Mac announcements? Will iPadOS and Apple Watch get some love? This week is for guessing, and next week is for harsh reality. Also, we introduce Upgrade+.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 302 and it is the wwdc draft for 2020 today's episode is brought to you by Text Expander from Smile, Pingdom, Linode, and KiwiCo. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by my friend, my compatriot, and my combatant in the draft today, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell. Let's get ready to rumble! We will indeed. Oh god, it's Monday morning, I can't do that. Big episode today, and I can't do that Big episode today

And I am starting out this monumental Episode of Upgrade With a first Jason I have two hashtag Snell talk questions For you Are you stalling are you afraid to get to the draft Do you think that's what's happening here do you Alright pick number one

No we're not going to do that Question one from Albert Is Jason Aren't all lists kind of a draft albert you have cracked the code all lists are drafts and i have used on many podcasts especially the incomparable in fact i'm planning one of these right now draft format can be used as a way to compile a fun list right like that is a that is a common way to do it so i would recommend the next time you're making a shopping list with the people you

shop with in your household maybe do it as a draft and dan's question is which is your favorite word of the homophones draft or draft draft meaning the one we're doing now or draft meaning like beer okay well i think you did that wrong it's d-r-a-f-t and d-r-a-u-g-h-t and the answer is i'm an american it's always spelled d-r-a-f-t is it for beer too yes it is okay i didn't know that so like for us it basically looks like the word drought i guess with an a instead of an o but that's there's there we go. We all learned something today. Which one do you prefer, though?

Draft beer or drafts? Don't make me pick. Don't make me choose between my children. Okay. We can move on today. Thank you so much for those Snell Talk questions. You can send in a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk to help us open the show. We have some very big news here around Upgrade today,

and that is the introduction of Upgrade Plus. You can go to getupgradeplus.com, sign up right now, and you will get this show with more content and no ads starting this week. It costs $5 a month or $50 a year. Basically, this is an adaptation of the Real AFM membership program. So now, if you choose to support Upgrade directly, so when you sign up, you get the money straight to us, you will get an additional bonus feed, which is Upgrade Plus, so there are no ads in the shows, and we have a bonus topic for every episode.

Like today's episode, we're going gonna be kind of commiserating and kind of like looking at our drafts together after we've picked them and kind of see how we usually feel that's a good time to be like oh no i don't know if i did a good job or maybe we'll be really confident so that's going to be the bonus topic for this week's upgrade and so you can sign up get upgrade plus.com. Of course, we went with Upgrade Plus, right? Like it was the perfect name. It had to be this name, Mike,

because we talk so much on Upstream about how every single service should be a plus of some sort. After Apple TV Plus, like just all the pluses just keep on accumulating. You know, Peacock Pro Plus, all of those. So Upgrade Plus, it seems logical to me. Yeah, it was a good one. I'm really pleased that we could get it. Obviously,

you can't use the plus sign in a URL. So it's PLUS, right? Getupgradeplus.com. There's a few things about this that I want to just dig into a little bit because I think this is a fantastic deal. But because we have an existing membership plan, there's some things here. So if you're an existing RelayFM member already, thank you, you can add Upgrade Plus on top of your current membership. So you can have multiple memberships if you want, or you can switch it. So you can sign up for Upgrade Plus and cancel your existing plan, or you can get in touch with us and we can try and help you out. out. If you are a Upgrade Plus member, you will also still get all of the other RelayFM member benefits like our bonus crossover content, access to the RelayFM members discord and more. But then you also get access to this new feed, which gets you more of the show with no ads. Once again,

that is getupgradeplus.com or you can click the link in the show notes. Once you've signed up, it's super easy to sign up. It takes you immediately click the link in the show notes once you've signed up it's super easy to sign up you go to them it takes you immediately to the member for podcast page there's a little drop down so you get access to the relay fm crossover content and upgrade plus so you just select which one you want from the drop down and we have buttons when you're on mobile to immediately launch you into any open podcast player which is wonderful you do that super easily you just hit one button add it to to Overcast, add it to Castro, Pocket Cast, all those. Or if you're on a desktop, you get QR codes and you can scan the QR code and it immediately opens in your app of choice. So two feeds of a bunch of great stuff if you sign up at getupgradeplus.com

for just $5 a month. I think this is fantastic value. There's so much content there. You'll also be helping support this show, getting that extra content from us, no longer hearing any ads. That's at getupgradeplus.com. I'm excited. We have been working for about three months on this. It's been really complex to get done.

And I want to thank Stephen and our developer, Ben, for making it happen so we can produce this. If you remember a few months ago, we published a letter at RelayFM where we spoke about wanting to spend time on having more available for our listeners if they want to support us directly. And this is another part of that. So I'm really excited about this. And I hope that all of the upgradians sign up and then they'll get even more of the show so yeah and last week's show is an upgrade plus show too yes so you should listen to that last segment if you subscribe because we did it we already did one as a test as a test and and we

we do a lot of we say a lot of dumb things and do a lot of nonsense and the show spills over after we're done yep and we've never really done an after show per se and you know it's sort of like this is this is not quite that but it's close to that we're kind of i think channeling our um our extra stuff in a a little more structured way in order to have extra content in the upgrade plus feed so the and and we should say if you don't want to do that that's fine the the show will remain free with ads and there will be a little bit less stuff in it, but we're not going to make a show with a cliffhanger that only is accessible to members or anything like that.

We're not going to be jerks about it, but if you do want to hear more of us, um, it will be, there will be more of us in upgrade plus. And if you really want that content and don't want to pay like you can listen to our live stream yes it's all there even the extra upgrade plus content is streamed live still so you can get it there but not everybody can not everybody will want to it's not an edited show right like i know for me i like edited shows and it will continue to be that so when you become an upgrade plus member you'll hear a little bit of the music and then the music fades out

and then a whole new topic starts. So that's getupgradeplus.com. Right. And Upgrade Plus is the edited show, right? It's not a bootleg of the live stream. It is a fully edited show, including the extra material. Yep.

So very excited. Very excited. And thank you to everybody that signs up. So Apple have announced how wwdc is going to work so it's about time uh yeah i know the keynote will be at 10 a.m pacific on monday um it's worth noting that basically as soon as the keynote ends we will be going live with our kind of reactions episode to wwdc So if you, I don't, obviously we don't know what time that will be,

probably around noon Pacific at relay.fm slash live. This is a great, if you become a member, you get access to the RelayFM members Discord. There's a great chat going on there all the time. And you can listen to the live feed inside of there as well. You can also listen on our website, but for me personally, I think that the Discord is the best place

to get that content. So you can do that. I actually think as well that some of our Discord mods are planning like a watch along for the keynote as well. So that's a really awesome thing that they're looking at trying to do.

So yeah, we will be streaming the show live basically as soon as we can after the keynote ends. Then the State of the Union is at 2 p.m., so we have some time, which is great. I'm very pleased about that. There's over 100 session videos that are going to be going up over the week. And this is interesting, but new videos will be going up at 10 a.m. Pacific every day. It's a binge drop, isn't it?

It's frustrating for me because I will wait all day, right? And then at 6 p.m., stuff will start happening. So this is going to be the weird thing about WWDC Infomint this time anyway. It's like everything's going to be happening so late in the day for me, which is, you know, maybe I just won't watch anything one day and then just catch up on it all the next day or something. The next morning when we're all sleeping? Yeah. Yeah, that probably works. An all new Apple developer forum is coming on June 18th. I'm fascinated to see what this is going to look like. During the week at WWDC, over a thousand engineers will be in the forum to discuss

new APIs, answer questions. Anyone can view the conversations, but you have to be a paying developer program member to actually ask questions, which is probably a good move because it would, I'm sure, be absolutely unbelievably rammed by anyone, right? Like it's just because you can have a free membership to the developer program or a paid one. You have to pay to get the beta and stuff. And then they're also doing one-on-one developer labs by appointment only for paying developer program members only. So this is basically what we'd hoped it would be, right?

I think that they're doing all of the things that we would want, right? They're trying to replicate as much as they can and have an open discussion forum, which, you know, that forum is interesting because that's more than what you would usually get at WWDC, right? Like, not all developers get to see

what Apple engineers have to say about things. So this will actually give them maybe a little bit more than they would normally have gotten. Which I think is kind of cool. I think it's really cool. Yeah, we'll see in practice how it works. This is going to be an interesting experiment.

But I hope it goes well because I really like the idea that there will be, you know, potentially if this works, you can have other, you know, forums with Apple participation or labs with Apple participation. Maybe not all the time, right? Because presumably the people at Apple have to do their regular jobs most of the time. But maybe there's a subset of people at Apple, people in developer relations or developer technical support who are in here more often going forward, or maybe they set up

developer lab weeks throughout the year or something like that and spread this out maybe quarterly or something like that. So once they build all of this, I hope that they will put it into practice, but they're going to learn a lot about how well or how poorly it goes this first time. It is going to be fascinating

to see what happens to these forums after the week of wwdc did it become like a ghost town like what what are they what is the plan with that so yeah i'm i'm genuinely like really pleased to see that we now have a plan the plan includes the bare minimum plus extra things we'd hope they would do so i think apple has done a really good job and you i think you can see here that like you know this is the reason why wwdc so late in june they had to get all this stuff ready this was not what they were planning and i think that they've so far at least on the surface done a really good job of outlining a good replacement for the week yeah well just we just have to see how it goes it's draft time now oh it's draft time now are you ready jason snow i'm not at all ready can we talk about how you have dominated wwdc's drafts historically we sure can so here's some draft stats before we get into the rules

uh in 2019 jason uh he won again getting both the march Services event and WWDC drafts. That was actually Jason's first and only win at the WWDC draft. We have done four WWDC drafts, 2016, 17, 18, and 19. I had 16, 17, and 18 in the win. Jason got 2019. I remember it was incredibly close last year as well. It was. I have actually only won four drafts in total of the 12 that we have done.

And three of those were WWDC drafts. So historically, this is my draft to lose. However, in the overall picture, Jason always wins. So this is why the WWDC draft is the most interesting. Because I seem to do good in this one. But Jason does really well overall. Yeah, it's true. It's true.

Yeah, three of your four wins are at the developer conference. Interesting. Interesting. Isn't that interesting? But again, I've only won four out of 12. I'm a little concerned, but let's, yeah.

What are the rules? Let's remind everybody of the rules. 10 rounds, 20 overall picks between the two of us. The winner of the previous draft gets first pick, which is Jason. For an item to count, for it to be scored, it must either be clearly announced on stage or on a slide during the presentation. If it happens before the presentation, after the presentation, does not count. Stephen Hackett will adjudicate in a case of a scoring stalemate between the two of us.

We always prefer to score ourselves, but sometimes we do need outside help. No half points awarded. No points awarded for any ridiculously obvious items. Like we cannot pick iOS 14 announced. Does not count. The points awarded on the episode are final. So if anything is...

Even if something is misscored, it doesn't count. Whatever we say on our next episode is the final. And in case of a tie, we have a tiebreaker question. We have instituted the rule that the loser... That's such a harsh thing.

The not-winner gets to pick the tiebreaker uh first our tiebreaker question is does tim cook present from a stage that is the entire thing so is there a stage the stage could be so we'll talk about this stage could be any kind of stage but it's a stage right so he is on an elevated platform yeah as opposed to like on a floor at apple park right it's a stagecraft tiebreaker question which is you know is this going to seem more like a stage presentation or more like an infomercial and i think i think we both agree that seems kind of like a take your pick proposition, which is the whole idea behind the tiebreaker is that you could pick either one and you just

have to pick one. So we'll say that too. We do like picking our own winners. We've not had to resort to Stephen Hackett a lot, which is good. I mean, he's got better things to do with his time, quite honestly, than dealing with us. And when I say that it's ridiculously obvious items, I should say we are picking from a list that was agreed upon by both of us. So that if you, dear listener, quibble with something and think that it's ridiculously obvious, fair enough, but we agreed on a list of items yeah so that's that's a really important part of the rules because we're not picking blind here like jason isn't saying stuff that i haven't heard before we are picking from a pre-approved list of stuff that we've been working on for the past week or so and then we have take from that list and we both order, and we make our own little secret pick list that we then surprise each other with.

I will note that, as always, there will be a scorecard. There will be two scorecards in the show notes, one PDF scorecard that you can put into an app and drawing if you want, but the best scorecard is Zach Knox's interactive scorecard, which is in the show notes today, so you'll find that. So I guess for that tiebreaker question, I think it's pretty obvious that i do believe that tim cook will present from a stage so i say yes jason gets no so if tim is not on a stage then jason will win the tiebreaker point but the tiebreaker is only if we're a tie it's not an actual point in the draft right i am fascinated to find out

apple's decision about whether they want to emulate a traditional apple keynote or whether they're going to do this infomercial style i'm because because they're both yes we talked about last week both perfectly valid but um are they going to embrace it or do they think that there's just so much legacy with the apple keynote presentation and quite honestly for people who are watching remotely, which is almost everybody, that's what it looks like, right? You could do it now and it would still look like a stage presentation, even though nobody is there. So we'll see. So I don't know if you saw this, but I'm sure you did, that Tim Cook announced Apple's racial equality and justice initiative, which is like a great thing it's a really cool video

it's going to be led by uh lisa jackson who was running the environmental stuff at apple i assume i don't know if still is or if lisa's moved to this or if it's become part of uh their role i'm not sure but the the point i want to bring up now is the video is shot with apple park in the background he tim is in like an office or something and i just bring this up because it's like is that what wwdc is going to look like or are we going to get the stage right like we don't know um and federico uh mentioned this to me today what if they use the outside stage that apple have they have like that's the stage for concerts and stuff that could make sense in the ring right so this is one of the things that i'm really excited about and actually when we one of the things that's making this draft complicated is

we have way more weird picks than usual to pick from because there are a lot of unknowns just into how this presentation will be presented. And that's one of the other kind of wrinkles in this draft that makes it a little bit more complicated. Now, we should probably get started with draft picks one to three. But before we do, I want to thank our first sponsor of this episode, and that is TextExpander from our friends at Smile. TextExpander lets you use abbreviations to expand simple things like a phone number or an address.

Text Expander updates these little snippets that you can create on all of your devices. So you can use them when you're in the office or when you're at home. No matter what you're doing, no matter what type of work you're doing, you can always have them with you on any device. So a Text Expander snippet, you'll create some text. It can have some fill-in fills like drop-downs, or it can just be a wall of text that you have to frequently type or send to people. And you can expand it with just a couple of key types. So maybe two or three letters will expand 20 paragraphs if you want.

It's an incredibly powerful tool. You can use fill-ins, pop-ups, or more to make sure that your customized text looks fantastic. So it's not just boilerplate. And it's available for teams as well, where you can manage and share snippets across teams or departments. This is something that we use here at RelayFM. We have customer support queries.

We have things that we need to send out to the clients that we work with. And having all of that language shared amongst all of us means we're not all having to write this stuff every single time. And it gives an element of consistency, no matter what's being said in our company. If you want to learn more about TextExpander, they do webinars

every month. You can sign up for beginner advanced and team webinars to learn more about boosting your productivity with TextExpander. Just go to TextExpander.com slash webinar for that. TextExpander is available for Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad, and upgrade listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just go to textexpander.com slash podcast to learn more about TextExpander today. Check it out and see your productivity improve at textexpander.com slash podcast. Our thanks to TextExpander for their support of this show and RelayFM. Are you ready, Jason Snell? Draft pick number one in the

2020 i'm terrified wwdc keynote draft what is your first pick well since i get the first pick which is very generous i'm going to go with the thing that is the closest to a certainty but it's not a certainty it is a report that we've heard a lot about and mark german reported it but of course he couched it. And of course, they could make changes. So I'm going to go with the ARM transition because I want to believe. And I think it's probably a pretty good bet at this point. But it might not happen.

But I'm going to pick it. I'm going to say that Apple is going to do that thing that they've done a couple of times before, which is stand in front of developers and say, we're going to make a chip transition. And there's been a lot of conversation about this. And a lot of people, like Jean-Louis Gasset did this post that references the Osborne effect, which is the idea that you pre-announce something and then nobody buys your products. But we saw with the Intel transition that the truth is most people don't pay attention to stuff like this. And it's not going to be a cataclysmic compatibility break with the past. And so, you know, if Apple were to say, announce a new Mac and also an ARM transition, that Mac's

not going to sell less well. It's not because most people don't care. And Apple's whole goal with a processor transition is that you should not even notice, essentially, that there's something different. So we'll see how they play it. But I do think after many, many years of rumors, it's going to happen. And as well, the Osborne effect, it doesn't matter for Macs, for Apple. Like the Osborne effect is a problem when your whole company relies on the product that you're selling. And you'll go back out of business if you don't have anything to sell for six months.

It's true. Because that's what it's referencing. That is the Osborne effect. Osborne Computing went out of business because of this. But also, it's not a thing that... We've had a chip transition in the Mac before, and it didn't matter. It just didn't matter. And in fact, I think Apple plans this.

If you look at the Intel transition, the Intel Macs were the same models as the previous Macs. So Apple, everything it was doing was just selling continuity. It didn't matter. It didn't matter before. It didn't matter after. The nerds cared. The developers really cared. And there's work that will have to happen on that front.

But the developers will be the ones doing the work. And the consumers will just be kind of like happy because the truth is and this is not just about like oh dumb consumers they don't understand the truth is that if you buy an intel mac in 2020 it's going to live its normal usable life and it's not going to be a problem right you're going to use it you know casey liss's 13 inch macbook pro is going to have the same usable lifespan as it would have if there was no ARM transition, if there is one. It doesn't matter because a computer has a lifespan, whether it's two years or three years or five years or seven years, however long you use it, it gets old and seems slow compared to modern systems. That always happens.

The fact that the next generation uses a different processor type i don't think is going to make any difference and there will still be a lot of people that won't that will want to buy intel max because they won't want to get the first arm mac right so people in like businesses and stuff might you know they're still going to make those purchasing decisions if they need them yeah i get that i get that fear of missing out as a thing but and and some of us will feel that for sure and be like oh i want to try this out but like in the grand scheme of things i think it's going to be fine and it's going to kind of be irrelevant so but i i would like to believe i i said in my year-end uh column this year for macworld i believe that um i've been picking been picking the year of the ARM transition

for like three years. It's bound to be true eventually. So like I said, I think it's going to happen, but also I totally want to believe that we're finally there and that it's going to get announced. So I pick it. It was my second pick in my list.

I kind of assumed you would pick it, which is why I didn't have it as number one. There isn't a lot of logic to that, but nevertheless. One that I feel is like, this feels pretty strong to me as a pick, and my first pick is that there will be changes to the home screen layout on

iPadOS. I think it's time. Oh, interesting. We've spoken about this. I mean, it could be widgets, it could be different ways to display files. It could be anything. But I think we're at the point where we need to see some change to the way the desktop, the home screen looks on iPadOS to continue pushing forward the idea of the iPad as a computer.

I think that it is an important part of the way that the iPad should continue to grow. And more than, I think more than anything, we've had this design, this standard app icon grid design for too long now. So are you, you're saying iPad specifically, so if they change the iPhone home screen and not the iPad home screen, you don't get this. But you think this is, I like your logic, which is that they're trying to make the iPad more like a computer. And the home screen that it's using was already inappropriate, by the way. Yeah. Because it was the weird spaced out iPhone home screen.

And it was for a different kind of device. So it's certainly right there. So I get your logic here. The reason I said iPadOS is if they make changes to ios they will come to ipad os i'm almost certain of that but that isn't necessarily the same in the inverse that there could be things they would want to do on ipad os that won't find its way to the iphone but like if widgets exist on the iphone they're not like on the actual home screen they're not going to be like i'm taking that bet anyway they're not going to be like ah we're not going to bring that to the ipad like that just seems weird but i could imagine them

saying ipad os now has this new home screen view in the same way that like they started that last year right like the home screen on the ipad can now have widgets pinned on it you can't do that on the iphone so i'm going to stick with my pick to just say iPadOS. All right. Second pick, what you got? I'm going to go again with the rumors, and I'm going to just embrace them and embrace our friend Mark Gurman. The rumors are important when it comes to draft time.

So step one, ARM transition. And remember what I said, which is, what if Apple announced a Mac? It would be fine. And that's what they'll do. They'll announce a new iMac with a new iMac design. But a new, I'm not going to pick the design. New iMac. New iMac.

New iMac announced on the stage or not on the keynote. New iMac. So I'll give, I'm going to, I'll maybe tip my hand a little bit at this point. So I can kind of tell you what I think about this. We have a lot of potential hardware picks that we can make for this draft because there's a lot of potential hardware floating around right now.

An infinite number, some would say, of potential hardware. It's all fantasy until it happens. More than normal at this time there seems to be like a lot of stuff that's like could happen i know and i denied most of it this is the one where i was like you know what i not only the rumors are strong but it's really desperate because you're right it's not usually a strong hardware announcement platform but it is an announcement platform and this one i don know, it felt right to me.

I discounted almost all of those floating around potential hardwares as being a stretch. And a lot of them I kept saying to myself, it's probably for the fall. Probably do that in the fall for the iPhone. Probably don't do it now. But this one I couldn't resist. WWDC typically has Pro hardware as its release platform. Well, there may be a Pro story about the iMac because we haven't had an iMac Pro announcement either

since the original iMac Pro. So it could all be wrapped together as an iMac family announcement as well. But it is just worth noting when it comes to people scoring, new iMac Pro is a separate pick in our list so if they announce the iMac pro Jason does not get this point there has to be a replacement to the current consumer iMac product yeah this pick so I will say the I have in my potential

pick list I've listed kind of like drafted between 20 and 30 things out of our whole list that i'll be picking i'm picking from the imac is the only one that made it before the halfway point of my list everything else is way lower because this does feel like if they're going to do something hardware related it's going to be this um but we'll see okay so we'll see. Okay, so. We'll see. I'm going back to software for my second pick. Okay. That Apple will announce the ability to change default apps on iOS and iPadOS. So this has been rumored for a while. It's been rumored as an iOS 14 potential.

So this would allow, for example, you as an individual to say, I don't want my mail app to be Apple's mail app anymore. Now, I know Apple kind of, I'm sure, do not want to do this, right? This is not a thing that they will want to do. However, I think that they will do it now before regulatory stuff starts to come down on them right you know that yeah before the eu or or the u.s congress says you're you know you're not playing fair with your app store etc etc so i think 2020 is the time that we are likely to see this because it just feels like a time where if they do it now they will avoid avoid what is clearly a groundswell of pressure for this

before they start getting told to do it. So make it a good consumer story rather than a look how evil Apple is and we've made them change its story. Yeah, I think it's a bold pick because I think like a lot of these picks, it seems super solid when we're discussing it in a bold pick because i think like a lot of these picks it it uh it seems super solid when we're discussing it in a normal episode of upgrade and then you think but what i pick it in

a draft that it's tangibly going to happen next week on stage yeah it's definitely a risky when yes you're right when you look at it like that it's like putting my draft picks where my mouth is is like a it feels a little bit more uh uncertain but because here's the thing i agree with you that this is probably going to happen and it's going to happen exactly for the reasons you detailed which is they don't want to do it but they want to diffuse criticism of them now whether they make it a banner feature in their operating system or whether it's more like something they slide into a November update and don't talk about, that remains to be seen. It would require presumably some work on the part of the third-party developers who are making these tools.

They might actually have a whole new thing they need to do in order to support being a default app that might withstand WWDC. It also might be the kind of thing where they don't even talk about it on stage and then it's in the state of the union or it's in a session they're like not even talking about it but they may they may fly the flag and take credit for being so generous to third-party apps we love app developers and we're gonna let you be the default apps it totally could happen so it's it's risky but i can say i imagine that this could very well show on one of those word clouds yeah and that counts by the way if if if it's if it's in a slide on the screen that counts it doesn't have to be spoken aloud it has to be visible in the presentation yeah the the

live chat and the members discord are saying that it feels like a very state of the union thing which definitely could be and would make sense it does that's part of the risk doesn't count if it's in state of the union so i'm yep unless it's on the cloud i have some less bold picks but i wanted to make some bold ones to start off yeah that's good it's exciting what's your third pick jason i'm going to go with the other shoe dropping regarding the fact that you've got appointing support on ipads now and say that ipad os 14 is going to support external displays for ipad in a better way you went bald it's you know i don't think it's that bold a choice i think it's obvious i feel like this is part of the whole migration external external keyboards and trackpads, not just the magic keyboard, but external keyboard and trackpad support on iPad. Once that exists and the iPad already supports external displays, right?

It just doesn't support putting the UI of the apps on them. So I don't think it's that far. Now, maybe it will be limited. Maybe it will be only one app or maybe it'll be split view. Maybe there'll be something that feels a little more like expose. But I think there will be something, because now that you can do external keyboard and mouse and have a cursor on iPadOS,

and it does external display support, it seems like they're so close that all of the conditions have been met that this should be the next step which is yes you should be able to just put an app on an external display and use it so i don't think i mean yes i'm i'm making this up right but i'm fairly positive that uh they could do this and therefore I'm going to throw it in that they're going to do it. So, like, this is one of those things where

I agree. It was on my list. I think that this will happen, but it feels like one of those things where it's like, ah, but I could imagine they leave it another year. Or it comes

in point three like the trackpad support did could be but even then maybe they maybe they would announce something like this now i yeah i think like just default apps it's a thing that kind of makes sense and i expect will happen the question is will it happen monday yeah from 10 to noon pacific right because that's what we're picking here. My third pick is about as close to an obvious pick as you can get. Okay. Big AR improvements. Alright. I mean, I think so augmented reality stuff

is obviously a focus for them. And so talking about, and this is big AR improvements in iOS. Yeah, in iOS. Yeah. The, or yeah, with the LiDAR sensor, AR improvements in iOS? Yeah, in iOS. Yeah. With the LiDAR sensor, LiDAR scanner in the iPad Pro, this allows them to talk about enhancements that will come to the iPhone. Everyone knows will come to the iPhone in the fall, but isn't there yet.

This is the reason you can ship the iPad Pro with that LiDAR sensor, is that then you can spend a lot of time talking about using the LiDAR sensor, knowing that it's going to do more. So we'll have to see how they play that. And if we consider that a big AR improvement, the only thing that gives me hesitance, and this is why I didn't put it on my list, because they love talking about AR, but they especially love talking about AR in the context of the iPhone. love talking about AR in the context of the iPhone. And that's where I get hung up a little bit is do they hold stuff back for the iPhone launch event? But I think on your side of the ledger is the fact that it's probably a new version of AR kit that enables even more stuff in LIDAR. And that's a message for developers. So I think this is good. I don't think that's a message for developers so i i think i think this is good i don't think it's a layup this is why it was on our list right i don't think it's a layup i don't think it's super guaranteed but i do think it's a strong pick because apple loves talking about ar so much

because they you know again this is like one of those things like it or not apple have decided this is an important future for them for potential products that they may or may not release, but they're continuing to... I mean, look, they put this sensor on the iPad for that one reason, right? It's for AR, and it's coming to the iPhone. So I think that one of the reasons they put it on that iPad is so they could talk about it at WWDC,

so they can have developers starting to work on stuff, so they're not announcing these big things that LiDAR can support with ARKit two weeks, three weeks before the iPhone ships, developers starting to work on stuff so they're not announcing like these big things that lidar can support with a r kit two weeks three weeks before the iphone ships with the lidar support like i imagine they want developers working on lidar stuff now and the hardware exists it's like if you imagine the the idea of a uh we haven't spoken about it yet but like an arm transition mac right where apple will ship to developers so some kind of product that can run ARM. The 2020 iPad Pro is almost like the LiDAR transition kit for the iPhone.

It is a product that exists that allows people to develop AR applications with LiDAR support in mind because it's coming to the iPhone later on this year. So I think that there will be a new version of ARKit, which will have some big improvements. One of those will be LiDAR. I mean, I know LiDAR is already supported by ARKit, but I'm sure there's more stuff that can be enhanced with it, along with some other stuff. Apple really believe in this AR stuff.

You know, it could even be a case of them talking about, like, being able to use this stuff inside in stores and stuff, which has been some rumors around that, that they actually have a partnership with Starbucks talking about being able to use this stuff inside in stores and stuff, which has been some rumors around that, that they actually have a partnership with Starbucks that they're working on now to kind of use indoor and position tracking and all that kind of stuff to make these things better. And that AR will help enable that.

So we'll see. We'll see. I'm starting to imagine a demo that involves like an augmented reality version of the presentation that shows a giant audience for it where there is none. Yeah. But we'll see. I think it's a good bet, but it's still a bet. So that's perfect. Perfect kind of draft pick to make. pick to make. I also do believe that right now, the only people that think AR is super important

is Apple and maybe Niantic, the Pokemon Go people. It hasn't hit that mainstream yet, but I think they will continue to drive this home until people start picking it up, because they know it's important for what their future plans are. This episode is also brought to you

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Let's go back to the Mac. Despite my better judgment and my despair and my pessimism about this, I am going to go with Catalyst improvements. We had down, by the way, dear listeners, we had down as available choices, Mac Catalyst will be improved. No improvements for Catalyst mentioned. Those are both options.

And I was honestly torn, so torn between them. But I'm going to go with the optimism that it's worth Apple saying we got a lot of great feedback about Mac Catalyst over the last year. And it's going to be even better. And we've enabled creating even more apps from it. Now, that may come in adapting iPhone apps. That may come with specific changes to improve certain kinds of things with Catalyst. But although part of me thinks just despair and be sad because Apple doesn't care, I'm going to say that they got to improve something in Mac Catalyst, right?

And that's got to be something that they sell for a new version of Mac OS, that Mac Catalyst is better in some way. So in some form, saying that Mac Catalyst is better in some way so um with you know in some form saying that mac catalyst is better is my pick so here's your problem with this i think the year that mac catalyst was introduced it was just mentioned and moved on right it's true like last year the keynote the thing is they made a big deal of it the year before and they didn't have a lot new to say

other than, yep, here it is. But now it's been a year of developers using it. So now would be the revision year. But I agree with you, the alternate way to read this, and that's why the other item was there, is they've already moved on to SwiftUI.

They don't care. Catalyst is just going to be what it is. And if that's not good enough, too bad. Move to something else. But I'm hopeful that they will have, at least pay lip service to the idea that Catalyst could be a little better. If people cast their mind back to Mark

Gurman's original report about all of this stuff, one of the things that was mentioned is that the second year would see iPhone apps coming to Mac Catalyst. Exactly. So I'm wrapping that in here too, as a possible, that would be an improvement of Mac Catalyst. Should that happen? Oh, it'd be a big one. Be super intrigued to see how they would handle that, if that's what they do,

but that could be your big thing right like that could be it and and that would be a definite improvement and it would be something worth talking about on stage for people who don't know mac catalyst is this technology that lets people who have developed apps from ios and specifically the ipad to bring a lot of that over it's it's basically uh providing a bunch of the programming interfaces from the iPad on the Mac. So you can take your, theoretically, you take your iPad app and with some work, you can turn it into a Mac app without having to do what you used to have to do, which is essentially rewrite it for the Mac. Now you can bring it over. And there are some apps out there that do it. Some do it better than others.

some apps out there that do it. Some do it better than others. A couple of Apple's apps use this technology. It could be a lot better. There are ways to work around it, but again, it could be a lot better. And the people I know who are developers who are working on Catalyst apps are very interested in the possibility that Apple might fix some of the problems with it so that they could not focus on workarounds there. But we'll see. Maybe Apple thinks it's as good as it's ever going to get. My fourth pick in the draft is new Apple Watch faces. Oh, that is an easy pick, right? That's a pretty easy pick. They're always new watch. I think I picked it last year. So it's a it's a gimme. It's a good one. Yeah, I just feel like it's going to happen. And you know, it's, I don't really know what they're going to be again like what i would love

is personally i don't want new apple watch faces i want the ability to them have them much more customizable than they currently are right like i don't need apple to keep delivering new designs to me what i want honestly is like a tool to build my own watch faces from components that they provide you know something kind of like from a visual design perspective, something like underscore David Smith's watch Smith application, right, where you can make your own complications. I want a basically a tool set to create my own design from components that Apple has, because it's like, I really like this design, but I want to add this complication type, but you don't let me do that even though there's space for that

so that's the kind of stuff that I want to see Apple do but I don't think it's what I'm going to get but I do imagine them always to continue to add new Apple watch faces of some description and I think that 2020 WWDC will be no different there are always new Apple watch faces

they're always kind of underwhelming, but I agree that's a good pick. What is your fifth pick, Jason? I'm going to go with an Apple Watch One, too. You've inspired me. And I'm going to say that last year in the fall, they announced the new Apple Watch Series 5 has always-on watch faces. And they're okay. They're not great. They have some issues.

So I feel like this is a natural time for them to improve the always-on watch face design, perhaps give better choices over what gets displayed, or maybe the content is better. Maybe the complications have more ability to display things there. Maybe it's user settings, because definitely there have been some complaints about, you know, you're doing certain tasks and the always on face is this boring face and not the face you want because you've got an activity going. So I'm just going to say improvements to the always on mode of watch faces, because there are plenty they could do and this is their opportunity to take a second cut at that because they just launched that feature with the uh with the watch in the fall

last year i would like to see it um i would like to see them really for me like just mirror the ui right like stop making it look different like i don't want it to dim i kind of want it to do more that would be a good thing for me like to keep the color that want it to dim. I kind of want it to do more. That would be a good thing for me, to keep the color that I've chosen, that kind of stuff. I would like that. I'm going to go for my fifth draft pick, enhancements to messages. That's one that I think we're going to see. So this could be, I don't know if you want me to pick here, Jason, whether it should be on a specific platform or not what do you think well this was in our iOS list yeah let's let me keep it in iOS then I think

we're going to see enhancements to messages on iOS uh there was a report of this before about like basically having a lot more control in group chats so being able to at mention someone in a group chat and people get notifications for that whilst being able to keep the notifications muted, right? So you're not getting notified for every message, but just when somebody at you and also typing indicators, kind of like a Discord or a Slack. So you can see if in a group message, somebody's typing to you, that kind of stuff would be great. I'd love to see that. There is, you know, I was, as I was thinking about it, right? Like if they do these enhancements to messages anywhere, they're going to do them everywhere.

So I'm happy to just say like on iOS and we'll see where it goes. But I would love to see those features find its way to messages. I'm in a couple of group chats that are quite busy, so I have to mute them. But then people can't get my attention, right? And so I would like to have a mixture there. I would also really love to have the typing indicators. It's useful in one-on-one chats i would love to see it in group chats too yep sounds good what have you got for pick six oh it's getting harder um i'm going to

say this is slightly different from the the pick that is the uh tiebreaker i'm going to say a little meta we see the inside of the apple park ring in the background is fine something we see the inside of apple park like in all these infomercial videos so i'm sort of picking the infomercial but i'm sort of not i just uh we see the inside of apple park in some video somewhere i had this as my sixth pick as well sniped yeah you got me this is they're gonna do it because even if they have tim on a stage somewhere not everybody's going to be presenting from the same place because you can't have that happen like i even think we may not see two individuals pass each other at any point during this presentation that's a pick that's a pick you can make is no apple executives actually appear on screen together right it's a pick you could do that not high

up on my list because it's a complicated pick. I feel like even if they do the stagecraft, everything that they've done since the pandemic started has involved shots, because it's so beautiful, shots from inside Apple Park with the interior ring that's just those trees and water and stuff

in the background because it's beautiful. Why would you not do it? I have a hard time believing that nothing in this presentation will show that off, even if there's a stage somewhere. By the way, if the stage is inside the ring, I win that pick there too. But if they do a stage, if they do it on the Steve Jobs Theater stage, let's say, I'm still betting that there will be some video that happens that shows the Apple Park ring because

it's just too good. I expect as well it's probably been a little easier to do filming there if they've done stuff in advance which i expect there'll be some stuff that's been pre-recorded at least because there's been less employees at apple park so it's probably been easy for them to if they've wanted to use the outside space for filming and stuff like that they've probably been able to do that or use different conference rooms or whatever however they've done it or inside spaces um because you know we again we have potential picks as to whether we think this will be presented as a live thing or not uh it's probably going to be a mixture of both if there's going to be any live

i can't imagine they would do it all live because why would you when you have the opportunity to have pre-recorded stuff if you want to exactly it is a it would be a fun stunt to have it be outside on the interior of the apple park ring on that stage live but i don't think that's gonna happen because they want to control it they could they could do it live from that stage and have a socially distanced audience and have them people coming out one at a time uh you could do it but i don't think they will so my sixth pick in the wwc 2020 draft is updates to swift ui that's a good one i mean it was it was just announced so you'd think they are doing more work on it maybe it gets the catalyst treatment but uh i

don't think so i mean even if it did get the catalyst treatment it's still meant updates or mentioned or whatever but i think that swift ui i think is more important to the future for apple than thing catalyst is um like catalyst is a thing for now swift ui is a thing for now SwiftUI is a thing for the future and I think that they're going to want to continue to evangelize this to developers and I expect it will get much more time in the State of the Union but I think will be mentioned again

on stage with some updates like here's what we're doing for SwiftUI as part of the keynote presentation as well even if it's just like a small thing, I mean, this could be honestly something that we see in a word cloud, but I would expect Apple will have something to say about SwiftUI at WWDC 2020.

I think it's a perfectly logical pick. I think it's a good chance of happening. And I hope that it makes people happy because the feedback we've gotten from developers is SwiftUI is very exciting, but then when you start to do things with it you think oh it's you know right they run into the the the limitations of it pretty quickly so it could definitely use um more visible progress right to make developers feel better about where apple's going with it this episode is also brought to you by our friends over at linode whether you're

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That is linode.com slash upgrade and the promo code UPGRADE2020 for that $20 credit. A thanks to Linode for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. All right, we are approaching the home stretch. As I said earlier, we have 10 rounds today and we're into round seven.

What you got, Jason? Mike, what would a modern iOS update presentation be without new Memoji options? I feel like it's a lot. So I'm going to pick new Memoji options. I feel like it's a lot. So I'm going to pick new Memoji options. Yeah, that feels pretty good to me. I had this one reason to be high on my list. Unless they're fooling us, right?

And they're like, oh yeah, not this time. That's too stale. We're not going to do that again. But I'm going to pick it because it just seems like there's, there are always new Memoji options. In a year when Memoji are front and center in the WWDC marketing, you would expect them to have something, right? It would make a lot of sense.

You really would, right? That's an excellent point. Why would you do that and then not have them there? I'm going back to the Apple Watch for my seventh pick. Wow. And I'm going to say that we will see a focus on mental health features for the apple watch obviously the apple watch is a health focused device it's one of the primary reasons for its existence i think from a selling point it's probably the the highest like

marketing point now for the apple watch is the health and fitness stuff. I think that mental health is an area that they could start to tackle in some ways. There's been lots of conversations about the things that they may or may not do here. They have the Breathe app, which is something, but could be more. They could, I've seen people say, expand that into maybe more of like a guided meditation type stuff. And I think that the world right now has shown that people could probably do with this stuff and it would be a really nice story for the apple watch itself so i am leaning on the fact that i believe we will see some new mental health features for uh watch os this is seven watch os seven all right i don't know seven okay we're on six right now yeah i think that is a little bit of

a risky pick but i think i can see how they would pitch that right this this could be something that they need new sensors for right like i'm very aware of that but but i think that there could be an element of we have some stuff that we can talk about this in software and then maybe some stuff that is going to be hardware related announced later on in the year. I'm going to pick a, I know this is broad, but it's also not necessarily a thing that will actually be discussed on stage. And that's why I'm picking it because I think it's risky, but there are a lot of different ways it could hit. And that is improvements to Siri. Siri could use some improvements.

And I don't know whether this is specifically like we've added a bunch of ways for apps to talk to Siri or whether it's we fixed the Siri backend services so that they work better. But I want somebody on stage or in the presentation somewhere, because there may not even be a stage, say we've made some aspect of siri better like any aspect of siri acknowledging that it could be made better and has been made better that's what i'm looking for i do wonder if that's this year i mean we've heard recently of apple buying some companies to try and help make siri better they keep buying companies they keep putting it in people in charge of it they keep doing lots of things to make Siri better. And here we are. Yeah.

I want to believe. I know. See, that's so much so true in this draft. For me, what made me pick this is that it's broad enough that if there is a targeted way that apps can respond to Siri better on one of the platforms, then I'm going to count it as an improvement to Siri.

Because I think the bigger question is, are they really going to improve Siri? So I'm going to say yes. In some way, surely, they're going to improve Siri. We'll see. Okay, so my next pick, this is round eight, right? Yeah. Okay.

Focus on performance and stability for iOS. all right so it's the tiktok thing so here's my thinking on this there was a very strong chance that they were going to go with a reference to improving performance and stability because ios 13 was not good right it was one of the buggiest ios versions for a long time through the whole beta cycle and into release to the point that the iPhone shipped without 13 on it. Remember that? So I, you know, this is, oh no, they shipped. Sorry. 13.0 that only ever appeared on that iPhone.

Yeah, but it was only on that iPhone. The other devices did not get 13. And it was very clear that it got 13 because it had to have 13 to run and the iphones were going out the door right so i think they would have no matter what said it was a performance and stability release for ios this year and then i also assume it's i think it's fair to assume there's probably some features for ios that have got pushed this year because of all of the i'm, huge complexities Apple's had in trying to move their team home.

And it seems like there might be some other big stuff, right? Like we expect potentially the ARM transition stuff. We expect big improvements to iPadOS. The iPhone iOS experience can be put on ice a bit for a year. It's going to get some stuff, right?

If they get messages, they get Memoji, they get regular emoji, they get other things that we're going to talk about here today. That's fine, right? Like that's like what iOS 12 was and it will do its thing. But I think the iOS 14 is going to see a performance and stability update for iOS. So I think, and I honestly think it will make people happy, right? Like people want to see that. And I think it will make this release much more stable at a time when Apple will need that stability. Okay.

I think it's not a bad bet given that that's what happened the last, that's a pattern now, right? Tough release, stability release, tough release, stability release. Okay.

Well, for my ninth pick, I'm going to go with some bad news for people who love the regular appearance at Apple events of interminable

game demos. I'm going to pick no game demos. Oh. Now, part of that is that how do you do game demos in a pre-recorded or whatever this thing is how do you have guests from outside places come in and do a game demo uh game demos are better

served at the iphone event anyway my risk here is that there's some ar game that they show um but you know what if i don't get this right i I just want to say no game demos because just sort of out of spite because they're boring. So no game demos. I've decreed it. Ah, screw it. Pick nine game demos with guests from game studios is my pick. All right. It's a showdown round.

I love it. Here's the thing for this, Jason. Apple Arcade exists. They're going to want to keep showing it it's true ar might exist they're going to want to keep showing it it is not difficult for them to ask someone to film something all right and and or just have some footage of a game playing and somebody talking about it, right? Like it's a game. I think game demos are very possible.

And let's just hear before we end up with problems later. Jason, what counts as a game demo? Yeah, this is what we need to get. So now in our list, what you picked was called game demos with guests from game studios. So there're not only do they have to show gameplay but there needs to be somebody it can't just be a person from apple

saying we've got great games like this game on apple arcade right yeah um i i think a game demo is somebody showing somebody actually playing the game not just rolling a trailer of footage from the game. Right? So somebody has to be like, I'm here with the game and look, oh, I just died. Oh no. That is what a game demo is. If we can say it's a little, just if I can maybe twist it just a tad, it can be pre-recorded footage, but there has to be some kind of context being given from somebody who's not an Apple employee.

Okay. I'm going to actually split this so that we could both get it wrong which is i'm gonna say for me i need to we need to see somebody actually playing the game it can't just be footage somebody has to play the game that is a game we can call it gameplay demo if you want for you you just need a guest ah okay game studio okay and and showing i mean of course if they're gonna if there's a guest from a game studio. Okay. And showing, I mean, of course, if there's a guest from a game studio, they're going to be showing some footage from their game, but that doesn't have to be gameplay.

How about that? All right, so your pick is, okay, we need to reestablish this now because we maybe made this a little bit more complicated because no gameplay demos and game presentations from guests at game studios, we could both get that pick. Right. guests at game studios we could both get that pick right we we could or we could both get it wrong but yes okay no i guess we couldn't get it wrong well no we could anyway so there it is showdown in round nine that one's going to be that round is going to be tricky to score i can see this already So you have picked no gameplay demos. So there could be a video, a trailer.

Or a montage of games or whatever. But I'm saying let's stop everything. Let's stop time and then sit there while somebody plays a video game. I'm going to say no. And for me, there just has to be a presentation of some description with somebody who's not at apple talking about the game right yep cool wow that one that one's gonna be funny that one's gonna be a funny one to uh to pick all right okay this episode is also brought to you by our friends over at kiwi co a science and art subscription box for kids of all ages. You may feel like your kids'

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all of which are about the arm transition and are developers as they were for the intel transition going to be given or you know sold made available to them some kind of arm hardware on which arm mac os can run a lot of conversation about this. Could it be on a secret ARM processor on a new iMac? Could it be on a developer transition kit that is a one-off that's never sold to people that's like a Mac Mini or an Apple TV? It's just for developers. Would they let you install it on an iPad Pro and turn it into a really weird Mac just for development purposes? A lot of debate out there.

I've decided to make my pick that a one-off ARM transition hardware device, something that's for developers but is not available to the general public, will not be offered. Whoa. Whoa, Jason. Also, by the the way if there's no arm transition i'm right i just put that out there if there's no arm transition that's good i'm right but here's my here's my feeling which is there are so many apple developers now that i have decided to bet

against apple committing to making a large number of these. And if they make a small number of them, it's going to be a debacle because people who need them are not going to be able to get them. I just, I, where it would be nice to have transition hardware, I have a hard time imagining Apple going through the motions of having transition hardware that's essentially temporary that they're handing to developers. I feel like they will either have a better option or no option rather than this option.

So that's what I'm going to do. I like this better than the other two, and I wanted to pick an ARM transition hardware story. So this is it. This is very bold, Jason. Like, I could even call that a risky pick. There's a Ricky right there. It's a Ricky.

pick there's a ricky right there because it's a ricky i feel like this the idea of there being transition hardware is just considered a given amongst everyone right like when we're talking about this isn't it i i agree and the more i thought about it i was like and again the chances are really close right the chances of the ipad or a piece of one-off hardware uh are also pretty decent i would say but i think the just betting against it entirely is uh because then i i get the either it's an existing computer like an ipad pro or they just don't do it and say it's fine it's all going to be fine um but i know it's also the 10th round mike and so consider this my spinal tap pick if you like yeah well i i'm this is not my pick but i just wanted to double down on something i said i think last week or the week before i'm convinced that if

apple do offer arm transition hardware it will be a mac mini that's what i think it's going to be if they do it the more i thought about that the more sense it makes to me sure um that that would be the box because i think i was talking about it's unconnected too it the mac mini would be the easiest i'm sure to replace the hardware inside right like it's a it's a box they understand you know it's much easier than trying to offer a laptop right like that kind of that's what i think that they would do i i agree i think that kind of, that's what I think that they would do. I agree. I think in terms of hardware, that's the one that makes the most sense because the shape,

because the shape is all that matters. So having a little thing that you can send out to people with a, you know, a 12 Z or whatever on it is that's, that is a perfectly legitimate idea. That's probably the most likely transition bit of hardware that they would offer. But again, are they going to do that? Are they going to put together a whole program where developers pay them to send a loaned thing like they did for Intel? Maybe that would be a repeat of what they did 15 years ago. I don't know if Apple is going to repeat what they did 15 years ago.

But hey, 10th round, room for a bold pick in there, I think. I would love a good bold pick. Oh, man. Man, I'm really excited about the WDC now, now that we're getting through this. All right, okay. I don't know whether to go bold or boring, Jason. What should I do, bold or boring?

10th round's a great place for bold picks, Mike. Oh, man, I have a very good boring one i'm gonna go bold i'm gonna go bold i'm gonna go bold now i don't know how bold to go do i go bold as in okay so i have a boring pick i have a bold pick think about the glory if you get the bold pick right i know boring pick i have a boring pick. I have a bold pick. Think about the glory if you get the bold pick right. I know. Boring pick. I have a bold pick that has been rumored. And a bold pick that has been rumored but seems unlikely.

And I'm wondering where to go in that range. I'd go with the bold italic. All right. I'm going to go with the middle one. I'm going to go with bold but has been rumored. Okay. all right i'm gonna go with the middle one i'm gonna go with bold but it's been rumored okay that there will be third party wallpaper packs as a new thing available in ios you're sure that's not the boring pick all right okay forget it forget that one forget that one take it out of here that was my that was my semi-bold pick but clearly not enough now see now i have a couple of other things that i want to pick

from here oh you know what i'm gonna go mega bold jason new apple display oh mike you know that was almost my pick here that was almost my pick here so tell me about it because i i had my whole presentation worked out for that but i i decided not to go there i wasn't as bold as you if we are assuming there will be a new imac that new imac is not going to look like the imac that it is replacing i think we can all feel that that feels pretty confident at this point that if they are going to give keynote presentation time to an imac that thing is going to have one of those wild like zooming in panning across the hardware like zooming you know is going to have one of those wild, like, zooming in, panning across the hardware, like, zooming in.

You know what I mean? Like, one of those, like, oh, you could never imagine such a thing, right? And they heard rumors of, and we spoke, we didn't speak about this, did we? That came out in the intervening time since our last episode, that there's a rumor of a new iMac coming with the similar design cues to the 2020 iPad, right? We've talked about it before, but yeah, that is a thing that's out there now is that they may finally, the rumor is, and this is why I picked it, that they're finally going to do their redesigned iMac because the exterior of the iMac hasn't changed in like seven years

or something. And now let's look at the previous picks in this draft you have a new iMac you have better external display support on iPadOS Apple don't want you plugging that into an LG display and and let's remember that last year the uh the the fancy display came out with lots of laughter about how expensive it was and the thousand dollar stand and all of that and we've all been talking since then about how the hole in Apple's lineup is that they're not making a good external display that's not a reference display. It doesn't cost that much. And that they could still sell it.

They could design something. It would look great with Apple hardware. They could sell it with an obscene amount of profit margin, and it would still sell a lot to a lot of people, including a lot of people who have Mac Pros and are not interested in a studio reference display. Plus, yes, throw in the iPad, throw in other Macs that could use it. I think it's a product that should exist. This would be a great time to release it. I hope they surprise us except for the except for draft strategy i hope they don't yeah because i want you to lose you want it but both

don't want to lose but also don't want to lose the draft that's the best kind of thing because it's a thing that if you get a point but it's something i i that delights me the worst is when you get a point and it's something i don't like that happens that i don't. I would much prefer for you to get a point on things that make me happy. I think it's time for Apple to reenter the display business. Yeah, in a different way other than the giant XDR. And honestly, I think that we all felt this way, that the Pro Display XDR again opens the door for them to have a lower range product. XDR again opens the door for them to have a lower range product. And if we really want to keep talking through this, if they're going to offer a Mac Mini with an ARM chip inside of it for developers, it would also be another reason to also have

a monitor you can sell them, along with wanting to plug an iPad into it and have a great support story there, and being able to plug in the Mac Pro into it if you want to. And that new iMac, if you want a second display, it matches from a design perspective. There is a lot of potential options for a new Apple display to exist, but I know that that is a bold, bold choice. So in a moment, I will tell you what my boring one was that I actually wanted to pick in the 10th round.

But we have a bonus round. So there is an 11th bonus round and that is this is a difficult one i think it's especially difficult for me easier for jason i was thinking this last night pick the name of the next version of mac os can i go first. Go ahead. Because you do have an advantage here in that you live in California and I know nothing about California. Yeah. I basically predicted something in sort of half-heartedly in my macro column last week.

But go ahead. I'm going to pick the name. I saw this mentioned in the RelayFM members discord last night while I was thinking about this. Someone was talking about it. This was not on my list. I didn't know anything about this place.

I'd heard the word before and then Googled it and was like, that makes sense. I'm going to go with Mac OS Avalon. That's what I picked last week on the Macworld columns. Okay. Yay! So Avalon is a place... It's the city on Santa Catalina Island.

It is the city on that island. So if you were going to do a mountain lion, snow leopard, high Sierra kind of reveal, Avalon, not only a pleasant name in a lot of ways, but directly relates to Catalina. So it makes sense. There was a part of me, though, that was wondering if I would want to Catalina. So it makes sense. There was a part of me, though, that was wondering if I would want to pick something else because they might want to make a big deal of this. This could be a big version of macOS.

Even if it is just like, oh, because during this version of macOS, ARM chips will exist. And they may want to give it a bigger name for that reason was another thing that was like i i don't think that it is as easy this time to pick that they will make the like tick tock of the naming that they've been doing right where they pick a big name and then a name that relates to that place you know like snow catalina or whatever um like i you know so i still think whilst there is some

logic to avalon it's still a risk what do you think it is and i'll tell you the two other names that i thought all right so my backup beyond avalon is another channel islands island which is san clemente which is also the name of a city in Orange County. It's a beautiful city. And so San Clemente is pleasant. It will make people pronounce things with Spanish place names like El Capitan and you'll just have to deal with it. And it's my fallback because I thought,

I also think, could we come up with a theme that follows on Catalina rather than completely erasing it? Because I think it's better, more likely than not, let's say, that Apple views this edition of Mac OS as a, you know, we're taking a year to tighten everything up and it's not a heavy feature year. So that would be the kind of name you'd use. What else do you have? Sequoia. Sure. It's another national have? Sequoia. Sure.

It's another national park. And Santa Cruz. Mm-hmm. That is not only like San Clemente, it's a city and also one of the Channel Islands. So could be. I just think that both of those sound really nice. So what do you get for the bonus round?

You get a bonus point? It's a point. It's a full point. All right. Yeah. Well, I'll be very sad if it's avalon given that i let you go first and you picked the name that i wrote last week so okay okay well i will say i didn't remember i actually hadn't read that column yet it's in my notes and kit for the next episode but we don't need that do we because thank you for avalon yeah you're welcome should we talk about what we didn't pick do you want to know what my actual 10th round pick was yeah improvements to facetime improvements to facetime

like siri it could use improvement yeah and also is like you know would be a thing that people would especially want now it would be a thing that i'm sure has bumped its way up apple's priority list right because they've already done some stuff they've already made some changes to to facetime in the intervening time right like they did the it wasn't like improvements as much as it was fixing something that was annoying people uh which was the the in group chats the bubbles changing size and moving around. They gave you the ability to turn that off. I don't really know what improvements to FaceTime would be exactly, but, I mean, honestly, I could imagine them just making an almost Zoom grid-like display option, you know?

But, yeah, we'll see on that one. I'm not sure. I had a couple left since you took the display which i didn't pick in my last round so it was there for the taking but that was literally my other way to go um i had a couple of meta picks that i was thinking of seriously i didn't want to overload the the draft with too much presentation even though i'm very curious about the presentation so i had a photo or video of a past wwdc in san jose so like trying to yeah i had this remind remind you of the good times basically and be like i know we can't do it this year but remember the good times and remember when there were people in in a convention center and outside on the streets and wasn't that nice. So I was going to pick that,

but I decided not to go that meta. And then the one that I think is a reach, but it struck me actually over the weekend, I was taking a walk and had my mask with me and all of that. And I thought, well, I imagine that the presentation will acknowledge protests and the Black Lives Matter movement. I would also imagine that it will acknowledge COVID-19, right? And so my pick was going to be a COVID-19 related new announcement. And I think it might happen. I don't

have any information about this, but the idea that perhaps there is something going on in the background where Apple is working. It could be as simple as we're releasing our tracking app today or this week or our official turned on by everything tracking stuff. um or it could be uh we're announcing that we're working with these countries or these states or whatever that there will be some kind of we're announcing as a part of this event that we're doing all of this other stuff that you didn't know about regarding covet 19 um or it could even be like we're donating or we're you know but a new covet 19 related announcement that was one that i i toyed with because i think there's a chance. I know they'll talk about it, but I think there's a chance that they would make a new announcement regarding it. I have two others that I want to mention.

I have more on my list, but there's stuff that we've spoken about a bit in the last couple of weeks anyway, like keyboard stuff and that kind of stuff for the iPad. One is new iPad hardware, some description. One is new iPad hardware, some description. I think we could, like how we see in iMac, we could see an update to the regular iPads here or an iPad mini, something like that. There have been lots of rumors of some new stuff going on here. We could see that now.

We rolled that into a pick that was new iPad hardware because it could be the Air or the mini or the nameless iPad or or whatever i think that it you mean there's never a bad time to update an ipad so maybe so and then the last thing is a new podcasting initiative i don't have any sense as to whether apple's doing something there so i'm going to say that completely up, right? Like, I don't know, right? Like if they're working on something, they haven't told me what it is. But I do think that if Apple are working on something related to podcasting, something that may establish them or again, or try and put up some fight against Spotify, they might want to talk about it now, right?

So I have no idea what they're going to do there, but I think they could have something in the works, something to offer to podcasters, something to talk about. I don't know what it might be. This is more than just like, hey, we updated the podcast app, but like some real stuff

that they might want to talk about. But I could also imagine this thing existing, but as a session at WWDC, which I've done before. They had a podcasting session last time. Over the last couple of years, they've announced analytic stuff in those sessions. But I think that this could be something maybe a little bit bigger.

But there's a lot of smoke around this, right? Apple have been hiring people for podcasting. I had the Apple News Audio announced on my list as well. And that's not pod, not quite podcasting, but it's related. This like audio stuff that they're doing, audio initiative. We probably could have rolled it all together and like a new audio initiative and it would have counted for both.

And it might've been a better choice to pick. yeah there's a lot of rumbling and this could be i i was really unclear about services in general like how much are they going to pollute the wwdc keynote with services especially since this is something that i keep thinking about about this event is it's a it's an event that'll get people watching. So it's an Apple event. That's worth announcing things. If you've got them at the same time, it's also a completely virtual event. Apple could do another one of these as a press event at any time, right? Like once they do this, they could come back in six weeks and just do a press event and everybody gets to watch it live. right? So do they address services deeply

or do they not because it's a developer audience? And I think that there, again, are strong arguments both ways, which is why I am so fascinated by the stagecraft of what they're going to ultimately do because there are lots of decisions to make. This could be the most developer-focused event ever. I suspect it won't be.

I suspect that because people are going to be paying attention, they're going to use this as an opportunity to roll out other stuff, including maybe an iMac, right? But I do wonder, because they could section that stuff off and do another event whenever, right? Especially if they don't have to invite people, they just have to produce it. Because the services bundle is out there as something that continues to be suggested and something they could talk about. But I think about that and i think are they really going to do that at wwdc that would also be something you could roll into the fall for an iphone event because those are the two events i think the only two events we can count on this year so even though they could do

one on the drop of a hat if they wanted to so i i didn't pick services or the Apple news audio stuff because I'm just not sure how they're going to deal with that. Yeah. I, I, this could very easily be a September thing, right? For the services bundle, unless they have other stuff to announce.

I don't know. I also didn't, I actually wanted to pick the, there were a couple of watch entries that I was really tempted to pick and didn't go with because I thought we were kind of overdoing it on the watch, which to be honest, doesn't interest me that much, even though even as a watch user, I'm like, and it was true independence from iPhone. That totally could happen. I doubt it will happen, but it totally, they're, they're on the precipice of letting you set up a watch. And actually I have in my mind that i think one of

these days apple's going to announce that i that apple watch will support android i think that's going to happen i think they're going to just slide in there and say we got it all baby we're taking it over forget forget all those android watches we're not we're going to just take it over it's a wacky idea but i'm like that's a that's a power move and they're not beneath that right and you know like so it's so sad android wear has failed apple watch to the rescue and it won't be as good as it will be on an iphone but we'll let you do some basic like you know notifications and things like that and mostly apple watch is independent anyway but it will talk to your android phone when necessary right because that's the next step after true independence

is well what if i'm an android user it's like, okay, we can do something for Android users. I think that that's part of that. But I don't know if they're ready to do that now, but I think they're going to get there, especially the independence thing. And then activity rings is another one that, again, will happen now or will happen in the fall when they have a new Apple Watch. But I think we want them to let people redefine activity rings in some ways because not everybody wants those three, right? Like for me, the sit-stand ring is dumb. And I would honestly rather have a sleep ring than that,

but that goes to sleep tracking. The Android thing was initially sounds like a wild idea. When you think about it, right? Like people say, oh no, you know, it's about being in the Apple ecosystem. Well well this then becomes a way to give people a taste of the apple ecosystem it's like look how great the apple watch is with your android phone by the way it's so much better if you have an iphone on iphone interesting i'll give one last thing here jason because i'm just going to keep picking it now whether it's in the draft or not uh it would just like it's a thing that i think what has to happen at some point air tags air tags i gotta

release them at some point um it could be now could be uh randomly in like july it could be in september it could be november but we know this product exists in some form we've seen you know everybody's seen like screenshots of code where it's mentioned. We've seen it on support documents. This product exists. It's definitely a product in Apple's lineup. We're going to have to wait and see if they do it now. But I think if they're doing other hardware, maybe, maybe, maybe.

All right. That is the draft. That is the upgrade WWDC 2020 draft. In our show notes today, you can find links to get a PDF scorecard and an interactive scorecard so you can score along with us during the keynote. And we will be back next week as soon,

going live as soon as we can after the keynote at relay.fm slash live or in the relay.fm members discord and then we'll get the episode out as soon as we possibly can after the after we finish right like I bust as fast as I can to get that thing through and

if you are an upgrade plus member thank you so much if you have subscribed during the time that you've been listening to this episode in upgradegrade Plus today. We're going to talk about a bunch of stuff. We're going to talk about how we did with our draft picks. I'm going to talk about something weird that happened to me during the episode today, which should be fun to share. We've got a bunch of great stuff there. Don't forget, go to getupgradeplus.com, or you can just click the link in the show notes. It's the click the link in the show notes is the very

first link in the show notes for this episode you can get upgrade plus you'll get extra content and get the show with no ads i want to thank everybody that is an upgrade plus member and i also want to thank our sponsors for this episode that were kiwi co linode pingdom and smile thanks so much for listening we'll be back next time with our wwdc reactions until then say goodbye jason snell farewell upgradians Thank you.