Upgrade - 306: That's Beta Life!

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

This week Myke and Jason discuss John Gruber's essay about Apple's App Store priorities and then assemble a list of apps that are missing key operating-system features. There's also more news about ARM Macs, Apple continues to make TV deals, and we discuss our favorite features of the iOS and iPadOS Public Betas.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 306 today's show is brought to you by pingdom doordash and kiwi coat my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how are you i'm fine and d my friend. I have a hashtag Snell talk question for you from Patrick, and Patrick wants to know, Jason, do you follow any English Premier League football team? Is this a setup? Is this a setup? I don't know.

Is it? Oh, well, I'm just pointing out that just yesterday I got to watch Arsenal score in the 16th minute, immediately give up a goal in the 19th minute to Spurs, and then give it all away in the 81st minute and lose the North London derby to Spurs. So it's a particularly sad moment among many sad moments in the life of Arsenal to say, yes, I follow Arsenal. And I have seen them play at the Emirates. moment among many sad moments in the life of arsenal uh to say yes i i i follow arsenal and

i have i've seen them play at the emirates i actually have a friend who's a chelsea supporter who lives right next door to the emirates and so uh he got uh neighbor season passes and lauren and i went when we were there a few years ago and um i've also been to another premiership match i went to a fulham match against Hull at Craven Cottage. That was really great. A lot of fun. English football experience is delightful. And I even had a meat pie at halftime at Craven Cottage,

which I felt like I had to do because it felt like a quintessential English football thing to do. But it was a beautiful, warm, sunny day. So I didn't get that part of it. And the best part, we were right behind the, at Craven Cottage, we were right behind the ads that they put on the sidelines. Right. Which means we were right down at the bottom of the stands, and we were on Match of the Day.

You could – I mean, nobody could see us, but we watched Match of the Day when we got back. My friend Simon and I, and I was like, there we are. That's me and Matt and Simon. We're right there. Because the guy took a pass right in front of us and then scored the one – I think one goal. and I was like there we are that's me and Matt and Simon we're right there because because the guy took the took a pass right in front of us and then scored the one I think one goal one of the two goals of the match so we're like we're gonna be on match of the day and we were anyway so Arsenal unfortunately though Arsenal is the answer like of course there are lots of like

issues and difficulties around sport existing right now but it is also kind of great for people that sport exists right now yeah i i am happy that it exists even though there are like you said lots of issues uh and you know i want everybody to be safe and i hope that they're taking precautions and all of that but it is nice to have some stuff like that to pay attention to in the midst of all of this it's it's not quite normal but it's a little hint of like the the world as it was and something to a little bit of a distraction and you know here in the u.s where we have a out of control virus escalation all the major sports are attempting to restart or start and i i don't i think it's going to be a disaster probably but uh within a larger disaster but i have some hope that if some of them get up

and running um it will be you know at least a little bit of a distraction for the rest of us so we'll see but but yes the english english premier league is back and and uh the way they've scheduled it, it's spread over six days a week or something. There are different matches on different days. So I've been watching a bit of that, which is kind of fun. The thing I'm really confused about the Premier League is that they're doing the matches

at the respective grounds of all of the teams. It just feels like they've added more variables in than I would have assumed. Because most other sports, they seem to be trying to constrict the movement a bit. Well, the challenge is, where in England could you put everybody for the entire Premier League in a bubble?

Oh, that's not possible. And have them play, right? Yeah. See, that's the challenge. Because Major League Baseball is actually trying to do something very much like the Premier League, which is everybody's going to play in their home stadiums. So there is going to be travel.

Because it doesn't... I'm not sure the bubble thing is going to work for the NBA and the NHL because they're both doing it and Major League Soccer is doing it and they've had teams that have had to drop out and they're in Florida too, which is... So we'll see we'll see how it goes but yeah i think the real challenge is how do you how do you have a place that is large enough that you can put all of the assembled teams in one place and uh you know versus trying to to keep safe with the travel part of it because you know these teams have like charter airplanes and stuff and if you go charter airplane to hotel room to stadium uh you know then you may that may

be enough of a a bubble if you've got protocol but nobody really knows and it probably isn't going to work but uh at least they've played you know they're going to play looks like the premiership to the conclusion and that's that's fine so um me and nadine have recently got into formula one oh after watching the truly excellent netflix series drive to survive so we watched that on after a friend's recommendation and then we're like we we must start watching formula one and there's been two races and it's been absolutely fantastic. And it's just nice to have something like that. Like there is actual content being produced now. It's happening live and there are people doing it. And it's weird, right? Because they're doing

a bunch of things that are really weird um but it's also at the same time like i just a fun thing to enjoy and so that's nice formula one's great we're having a great time with that yeah doesn't really do it for me but i know a lot of people are really into it i used to care about auto racing more um at one point but i don't now so you know there you go if you would like to send in a Snell Talk question to help us open a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk, or you can use the question mark Snell Talk command

in the Real AFM members Discord as well. I would like to do some follow-up with you about R-Max, Jason, because a friend of the show, Ming-Chi Kuo, has released a report, which is... He does not know who we are. He's our friend, you know, you can consider someone a friend even if they don't know you. Okay. I don't know if that's true, but I like to think so.

Fan of the show? Show of the fan? I don't know. Yeah, fan from the show. Okay, that's great. That's probably it, fan from the show. Okay, so this is the report. Still expecting the first ARM Mac to ship in the fourth quarter, and it will be a version of the current 13.3-inch MacBook Pro, and around the same time, an ARM-powered version of the current MacBook Air, with redesigned MacBook Pros of 14 and 16-inch variants for mid-2021.

Does this make sense? Because what we're seeing here, if this is true, is that the first Apple Silicon Macs will be the current models with different chips inside. Yeah. This, it would be more like what they did with Intel. And coming out of WWDC, it was very easy to look at it and think, as we did a couple weeks ago, that Apple is going to really change the Mac. They have this opportunity now that they control the chips to change the Mac.

And I believe that is true. What this report suggests is that while that's true, they're not going to make those changes right away. Because his report here strongly suggests that next year they're going to just sort of slide an arm processor into the existing macbook air and 13 inch macbook pro and the macbook air actually makes more sense to me the macbook pro i sort of like they already have a 13 inch macbook pro update that just happened so other than to maybe show that it could be a demonstration of a computer worth calling macbook pro can have an apple design processor in it right they don't start with just the macbook air but um it is a little disappointing in a sense that i think we would love apple to just

come right out of the gate with completely redesigned and re-conceived mac systems using this processor well but there is still one which isn't mentioned here which is the imac which might get its redesign for apple silicon but also run intel you know like there'd be maybe two variants now we spoke a lot a couple of weeks ago about this right like what we think intel so apple silicon max can be and i still stand by all of the stuff that we spoke about and for me personally i think that it makes a lot of sense to launch with a big splash and it be this incredible thing with all these new features but the one thing that i will say that i was thinking about today when reading this report was if some of the benefits that you have available to you are power efficiency speed all that kind of stuff there is something to say if you want to show

how good your chips are by saying we have a new version of this computer that you know it has double the battery life now right right and so like you can stack these two machines up next to each other and like really drive home to people why they should use your new chips well and like i said i think i think not shying away from the macbook pro also sends a message that this is a pro you can make pro hardware yeah right it's not just oh it's well sure they did it but it's just the macbook air what does that mean it's like no we also did this um it's just funny because then what if you think of the timing it's like okay new 13 inch macbook pro in the spring which isn't that new i know but it's got the new keyboard and and stuff and then

in the fall another version of it with a different chip and then the next spring a new version again it's it's just weird it could be a little bit later right but around that time like still middle of the year yeah and i mean it is strange i get is this is this is gonna be the next 12 months are gonna be wild for mac purchases right like yeah you know like it's it's all up in the air and so i still think that it makes sense to launch these things with a bang and i think that that means new designs but if you are able to make some serious jumps in performance and stuff like that, which obviously we believe that they can, there could still be an answer for, oh, hey, we're just going to revise these with the chips in them so our developers can get them, you know? And that's that, right? Right. them so our developers can get them you know and and that's that right right provided in my opinion that they do have something new and that new thing could be the new iMac and by look it isn't here

yet right it might not be here for months if that's the case they may on day one of the new iMac design offer both right like if that comes in like September which it could that's so weird that would be very weird to offer the iMac and in both like I've never I don't know I don't know but you're right like the longer it goes the weirder it gets like well are you going to ship an intel iMac and then two months later ship an apple silicon iMac is that really how you're going to do it how close are those things really gonna gonna be right like that's that's the funny part to me because like remember that original iMac there was a long different that long long time difference between the intel version and the PowerPC version that came before. Okay, follow me here though.

Maybe what they do is they release a speed bump, essentially, version of the current iMacs and that happens in the next month. It's literally, essentially, the last Intel iMacs and they're the same ones that we have now, same iMacs. So they're outax and they're the same ones that we've we have now same imax so they're out there and they're like okay we did it and then in the fall you ship what is essentially the next generation imac yep new design arm processor and it's an intermediate size right it's not it's it's neither of the current sizes of imac well because they're saying it's an intermediate size right it's not it's it's neither of the current sizes of iMac

well because they're saying it's like 23 or whatever 24 but it's the same physical size as 21 but you obviously get the bigger screen size right because of the bezel reduction currently we have 21.5 and 27 so maybe what they're going to go for is 24 and 30 with the bezel reduction bigger screen you know new design who knows what's what's a part of that and according to reports they're only going to have the 24 by end of year but that might make sense of the iMac rumors right to say one last revision of the existing iMacs that you know you if you need to buy another one for your school or for whatever, we still are going to sell those for a while. And you can keep them on the price list. And you want it to run an Intel chip.

Yeah. So you keep those around and say, well, we still sell the Intel iMac. But at the same time, you do a new iMac that's at 24. That's the new design. And then next year, presumably, there would be a larger iMac too, right? Yeah. Which is what they've done, and we saw it with the MacBook Pro, right? Like, the plan is always to, whenever you have a product line, have all of those products in the product line look the same and have the same features,

but you start with one version of it. And when it's new, like Apple did this with the first retina mac pro they did it the 16 inch with the new keyboard they did it you have the one and then later on the other product in that line matches it so you would have a 24 inch 23 inch iMac and that's it and then later on you bring the 30 and it replaces the whole thing and if they did it this way that you're proposing what i do actually quite like i could imagine them saying right like today we have apple silicon versions of the macbook pro and the macbook air we also have an apple silicon version of the new imac which is a representation of what we think the future of the mac looks like right i could see that yep i like I like that. We did it.

So, well, and as much as we get excited about the idea that Apple is going to redesign all of its Macs now because it's unhindered by Intel and it can just envision what it wants it to be because it's writing its own ticket.

Okay, great. It's still the case that Apple has a limited, and I know they're a big company and all that, but they have a limited, and I know they're a big company and all that, but they have a limited set of hardware designers. They cannot, they are already doing new iPhones every year and new iPads every year.

And we've seen it. They can't turn over every single Mac in three months. They can't. They can't. So this scenario suggests that what they've decided to do is, you know, in this scenario, the iMac,

which boy, the iMac has been hurting for a design update for so long. Right. So maybe that's, they roll them out over the course of two years. Maybe, you know, the first ARM Mac laptops we get are familiar and then there'll be new unfamiliar ones later,

but the iMac goes first. And then maybe there are other models that go later. Yeah, because the iMac is the oldest current Mac design, right? Everything else has had at least some kind of touch to it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the iMac, you can point it at a few different points, but it's early on in the last decade that the iMac really substantially changed.

Yeah. What it's. And in fact, it doesn't have a T2. It, uh, it's got all that room because they have to have spinning discs in it. It's like,

cause the iMac pro got a redesigned enclosure with, uh, with a T2 and with SSD only and the new cooling system. But the iMac proper, even though it got Retina and all of that, but externally, and in terms of the fact that it's got the existing cooling system

and the existing spinning hard drive options, has been around for not quite a decade, I think, but pretty close. It's like 2013, 20. And you could argue that the look on the front of it is from 2007 right they slimmed it down but in terms of the dimensions when you're just looking at it on its face which is most of the time right i use an imac every day most of the time it's just in my face like i've got i have a 2007 iMac that when it's off

because you can't see the non-retina screen like and if you don't look at it from the side like it's the same i mean it's the same computer so if they were to revisit the iMac um yeah it's it's due it's due more than any even the Mac mini i think has has been changed you know to be bigger and flatter more recently when it got rid of the optical drive than than the imac has but certainly it's it's hurting for for a real rethink so perhaps they decided to save it for now all right let's run through some upstream headlines so i I have a couple more Apple TV Plus deals that have been done. Apple has signed a multi-year deal with the Maurice Sendak Foundation to create children's content. Sendak was the creator of Where the Wild Things Are, as well as many other properties. So Apple's going to be working with the foundation that

holds the rights to all of those properties along with a production company to produce some content for children so they're continuing to as we said before you you expand the breadth of types of content you have and also at the moment children's content especially i guess all of animated content which should probably be in some regard is unarguably the easiest type of content to produce at the moment because it doesn't require people in the same place as much.

So you've got to keep pushing on that, right? Makes sense. You want to keep getting stuff in the pipeline. Apple Studios has also acquired the right to Snowblind, which is a graphic novel adaptation and will star Jake Gyllenhaal. This movie joins Kill killers of the flower

moon and emancipation which we spoke about on previous episodes as movies under the apple studios production banner so this is the production company that apple's created so it's not relying on always using uh production companies that aren't theirs. You know, like we've spoken about the, well, Sony and stuff like that. This is a film that is being made with Apple's money. Apple is a producer. They are putting this film together, which is different from Apple buying distribution for a film someone else made and paying the people who essentially, you know, paid the money to make it.

This is Apple paying the money to make it. So a little bit different than, you know, you can have an Apple film and we've seen a few. It's not quite the same as Apple Studios where they're bankrolling it. They're involved as a studio in production of that and interfering or not, as is the right of a studio. But yeah, it's different.

Tom Hanks has provided a follow-up message regarding his feelings about apple so we spoke about this last week yeah we joked about it because we i we correctly like it was an interview where he was kind of making jokes and then it was reported in in the guardian i think uh in text and it made him seem really uh like like he was slagging off Apple. But he was really just kind of joking. And we said at the time, he's obviously disappointed that this didn't get a theatrical release. And he's making some jokes. But obviously, there's some pain there, too.

And yes, Tom Hanks, the world's nicest human being, Tom Hanks, had to walk it all back last week later. And he did so there's a new statement uh that says hanks is quote thrilled that apple tv plus is making it possible to everybody to see it that it is quote a magnificent gift we feel as though we were rescued at sea by a convoy of a big apple logo of a bite taken out of it yeah but he he couldn't he couldn't resist the also showing like what he actually feels about this which is like and we mentioned it before right like he's clearly upset because he made this movie to be shown in cinemas and it can't be and it's not just he's an actor right

for people don't maybe don't know this yeah he was a producer and wrote the screenplay for this movie this was a very personal, important project for him. And it was always planned to be a theatrical release. It was going to come out on Father's Day. And then it got pulled off the schedule and had no home, essentially, no place to show it. And Sony sold it to Apple. And so you've really got to look at it

through the lens of the disappointment that you spent years on a movie and now it's, it's going to just debut on a streaming service. It's totally disappointing. At the same time, Apple did rescue it, right? Because it's getting seen and, and, and also they, they spent money on it. So like Sony and all the participants in the participants in the movie will get their money. But he's also disappointed. And I get it.

And he's right. Like Apple did save them, but it's also disappointing. Both can be true. But, you know, people are always like, oh, Tom Hanks, he was mean to Apple. And so he had to come out and say, no, it's good. They saved us. It's a shame. I mean, he's obviously super sad that they had to save him but they did and they did um i watched greyhound last night i did i liked it i liked it a lot um it is a very specific kind of film it is um first off there's

one scene with a woman in it it's elizabeth shue and she is a flashback where we see tom hanks's character before he leaves to go to the war um which is interesting and i'm not sure like i mean it adds some dimension to his character but like it's funny because the rest literally the rest of the movie is men on a on a ship in the middle of the atlantic that's that's what it is it's a war movie it is men on a navy ship that's on the one ship you see the other ships in the distance but it's the one ship and uh what i loved about it is it's non it's essentially non-stop action it is the harrowing journey they are they are protecting a convoy that's going with people and materials from, or material, I guess, from America to the UK during World War II.

And there's a period of about three days where they're out in the middle Atlantic where they don't have air support. And that's when the U-boats come and the u-boat sunk you know people may not know this hundreds of ships and and tens if not hundreds of thousands of people died in the mid-atlantic as a part of this because the the nazis wanted to prevent the soldiers and material from getting to the uk because that was and so that was a calculation they made. And so Greyhound is about one of the ships that is their US Navy ship that is part of a multinational collection of ships

that are trying to protect these defenseless ships from the U-boats. And it's during that period where they have no air support. And it is, so it's intense. And then also, I think, I find it technically fascinating because it's about how,

how do you captain a ship in the middle of a battle with a sub? And Tom Hanks is the captain. So he's running around and shouting out commands and they're going to the sonar and the radar guy is shouting things back that are being relayed

and he has to get on the radio to the other ships and they're looking to the sonar and the radar guy is shouting things back that are being relayed and he has to get on the on the radio to the other ships and they're looking for the subs and you know it's it's a lot of a lot of terminology a lot of technical stuff i would say um if you're if you're somebody like me who is kind of fascinated by the technology side of this uh old school like how how does that work like it's not like a guy with a joystick and a button driving a ship right like he literally has to shout commands for dozens of men and they're all men dozens of men to like steer or shoot or do the radar or whatever like he has to do all of that himself so i think i think it's fascinating um it's not like it is very specifically that like it's it's not anything more than that it's it's

not gonna go down as like the greatest film and tom hanks's canon but i thought it was a very entertaining and intense way to spend you know 90 minutes so so yeah check my list if that sounds interesting to you yeah yeah we're doing a leonardo dicaprio marathon right now we just keep picking we did uh we did um a bunch of tarantino movies yeah doing a bunch of dicaprio movies i don't know what catch me if you can have you done that one yet oh yeah yeah yeah it's great movie that's a good one. I love... Caprio's my favorite actor. Interesting.

I love so many of his movies. Anyway, moving on. CBS All Access will be showing UEFA Champions League and Europa League football matches in America. Yeah. That was part of an existing deal, and Turner let it go

because of coronavirus, and CBS picked it up. Yeah, so CBS was already going to be doing it in the future and then Turner was going to broadcast these in the US and then they dropped out and CBS basically said, we will pay more to extend and pick up the rest of this. Interesting mostly because it's yet another live sports on streaming for a long time, maybe even a decade, but certainly for the last five years, we've heard that live sports is a bulwark against cord

cutting, that how you keep people on cable is live sports, which has truth in it. I think it's the only reason that I'm still on cable is live sports. But the counter to that is the streaming services want live sports too. And the question is, when does it cross over where it's worth it more for streaming services to rip the live sports away from cable than it is for cable to keep the live sports? And it's probably going to be a battle that we watch for the next decade. But this is an interesting example of that where CBS All Access, by the way, is already the exclusive home

of the National Women's Soccer League. They are doing a tournament in Utah that replaced their season. They put everybody in a bubble in Utah and they're playing there. That's all on CBS All Access. So, you know, all sorts of streaming services experimenting with this.

And of course, we've talked about it before. Apple is going to do this too. So keep an eye on that. And we spoke last week about Quibi. We were thinking, oh, the Quibi 90-day trial is up. So what's going to happen now? According to an analyst firm, SensorTower, Quibi apparently lost 92% of its subscribers

after the free trial period ended. They estimated that just 72,000 people who signed up in the first three days stuck around after the free trial period ended. They estimated that just 72,000 people who signed up in the first three days stuck around after the trial period. So they just seemed to be measuring this in the first three days, which again, like this was reported a lot, a lot, a lot. We're like, hey, Quibi has no subscribers.

It's based on a sample period. Katzenberg said that this was, quote, incorrect by an order of magnitude. They said that 5.6 million people downloaded the app and they are seeing a quote excellent conversion to paid subscribers but they wouldn't say how many that was so my feeling is i reckon if you extrapolate that 72 000 figure you're probably pretty close to what they actually do have because what katzenberg's like oh 72 000 is wrong but sensor tower didn't say that was the total they had right so i reckon you've got somewhere in the middle there because

when things go really well they will tell you the number like they had no problem telling you 5.6 million people downloaded the application but they wouldn't say how many people were paying so it's not as impressive a number you would assume so i can't wait to find these numbers out i assume at some point we'll find out how many people are paying for quibi and then i would like to ask every single one of these people why so we'll see about that one this is one of the more interesting things i think to keep an eye on over time because i don't know what is going to happen to that company, but I can't imagine it being super good for them. Right?

I mean, they'll run out of money eventually, right? I guess so. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at DoorDash. You've got so much in your to-do list, from laundry to emails to errands, goodness knows what else. Give yourself one less thing to worry about and let DoorDash take care of your next meal. DoorDash is the app that brings food

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forget that the code is UPGRADE for $5 off your first order with DoorDash. Our thanks to DoorDash for their support of this show and RelayFM. The public betas are available, Jason Snell. They are. This is just iOS, though, right? iOS and iPadOS, right. Watch and Mac are not available. Right, okay.

I was wondering that when I was putting our notes together this morning because I realized I'd only seen iOS and iPadOS. I hadn't seen the Mac anywhere. I didn't even think about the watch because the watch typically doesn't get it at all, but I think it's going to this time. It is, yes. Which is interesting.

So, you know, in our audience, there were tons of people already running the developer beta. I'm sure that this is going to increase that amount significantly. I have also put the developer beta on my iPhone now. I would have been flirting with this. I was really intrigued.

I wanted to do it, and I did it. So I'm now running iOS 14 on my iPhone, and my 11-inch iPad is running iPadOS 14. So I thought we could maybe talk through it a little bit because I have some thoughts now about the app library and widgets that I didn't before because I hadn't used them in the way that they're on the iPhone because, I mean, well, app library is not on the iPad and the widgets, it's a very different beast on the iPad, right? So this is some different stuff. So I wanted to talk about it a little bit. I remember when I'd asked you this

question before, I think that you are running it on an iPhone, but not your day-to-day iPhone. Is that right? Yeah. I am not yet at the point where I want to subject my day-to-day devices to the betas. So I've got it running on an iPhone and I've got the iPad beta running on an iPad, but not my main devices. I might, a little spoiler hint thing, which is I am probably going to install it on my iPhone soon because it seems pretty great, honestly,

on the test phone. And as you pointed out time and again, I'm not really, none of us are really in a position where we desperately are relying on our iPhones. I have other devices and I don't leave my house very often. So I'm thinking of it. But right now it's just on test devices. Like I have no idea if like battery life's being impacted. It's just like these aren't things that I'm having issues with at the moment because i'm at home all the time when i'm recording shows my iphone is on a charger right so like it's being topped up all the time anyway so um but

the the thing i wanted to talk about first was uh the app library so i think this is a pretty cool feature so this is the idea of uh you can you don't have to have all of your app icons on and home screen anymore um and it has some auto categorization which is seems pretty logical to me like the the categories they typically it seems like they're sorting it by you know things like entertainment productivity and stuff like that um but i like there's a couple of uh categories that they do one is suggestions so i guess this is based on the series suggestion stuff like these are the apps you might be looking for right now um there's a every now and then i'll get a couple of apps and suggestions that are on my home screen and i feel like they don't need to suggest those to me because i've already gone past it to get here but nevertheless they have a recently added which

i like right because that was my whole thing of like when you do this where does that app that i just downloaded go right they surface it in the recently added which is nice i like that and these categories they look kind of like folders but they operate slightly differently to folders because you have, if you have one that has more than four apps in it, which is probably most people's categories, it gives you three large icons and then four smaller icons. And if you tap on one of the larger icons in the little grid, it opens that app immediately. It doesn't like open the folder like a folder does when you have it on the home screen. But then if you tap on the little grid of smaller icons, it then opens the whole category

for you to choose the app that you want. And they're then in alphabetical order, which is good. And the animations are pretty nice. Then there's also the alphabetical list, which you can get by pulling down or tapping in the search field. I don't think I'm ever going to use this because to get to it you get you have to like your keyboard pops up so it's inviting you to search so i just search and you're you're swiping and tapping to get to it right it's like a lot of extra stuff so i just

find myself if i was searching the app library if the app that I don't see is in front of me, or I'm just doing what I've always done, which is just search for applications from the home screen. So I'm kind of doing a mix of both right now. I'm deciding to kind of trust the app library is going to show me what I want. And most of the time, the app that I'm looking for is one of the three large apps in a category. So I've always found the Siri suggestion stuff for app recommendations to be pretty good

for me. And it seems like that's what's powering this as well, right? So the phone is learning what you're using, when you're using it, and is surfacing that stuff to you. And I am now down to just one home screen. That's where I am right now. I wanted to get to one home screen and hide the rest of them

and just use the app library. And I think it's pretty great. Yeah, I have some issues with the app library and it's not that it isn't nice. It's more that I feel like I have questions about how people are really going to use it. And I think it comes back to what other options do I have for finding apps on my device?

Because the truth is I can find things very easily with a search interface because that's how I've used it all the time. And that's from any page of the home screen, you swipe down and you get a keyboard and search box and you type the name of the app and it's there and you tap on it and you go. Whereas with App Library, you swipe to the right or right to left a few times

till you get to the last page, depending on how many pages you've got. Maybe it's only one, maybe it's more. And then it pops up. And then you tap to search, which so it's many more steps. I'm also also, by the way, Siri suggestions is also on the search screen. So the Siri suggestions of apps are also there. They're not just an app library and they've always been there. They've been there for years now. So app library is a nice idea. And I actually like the alphabetical list. I think that sometimes people are like, where is that app? And you get a little scrolling list and you can find it. Maybe you don't know the name of it.

And you're like, what is it? Oh, that's the one. Like, I like it being there. And some of the suggestions are nice. There's like a test flight group if you're beta testing apps. There's some nice things there. And the fact that the ones that are the larger icons, you can just tap and it launches them. But I'm not sure how much I'm really going to use App Library. Even though I kind of like it because of where it is and how many different interactions you have to do to get to it. And the fact that there is a quicker interaction to get to the search menu.

And the search does a lot more. In fact, in iOS 14, search does a lot more. You can do more Siri-like commands in it if you want to, and it'll give you Siri-esque responses. There's a bunch of other stuff in there. But so what it feels to me is basically that Apple built a new feature because it was easier to build a new feature than rethink everything, right? Because it always is. But it feels like they need to rethink everything. Because I'm not sure that the app library plus the search screen plus we'll throw in the today view of the widgets that are off on the side.

Like, does that all really act as a cohesive whole? I would argue not. And I think it's a problem that like a bunch of the best parts of what you can do in app library, I can already do. I can do them from the search field. So why am I ever going to go to app library? So although app library is a nice idea and in isolation, I feel like it, it makes sense. I'm really skeptical if I'm ever going to use it because I'm not, you know what I'm not doing? I'm not going, Oh, I would like an app. I, but I don't know which app it's just, I would like to use an app, but I don't know which one. Could you show me your app menu, please? Look at these categories in the library.

Oh, here's sports apps and here's entertainment apps. How exciting. I don't see it. I don't see it. For me, the biggest benefit of having this is no longer needing to manage my home screens. That's like the thing I'm most happy with, right? Sure, sure. And this is a softer landing

than just saying you can delete or hide your home screens and then use search, right? Because they must feel like not everybody's going to use search. And so you can put it out in front of them. But I don't know. It's just like the search is right there

and it's super convenient. And maybe the default when you pull down search should be app library and then if you search you also get the rest of search but that's not what they did they put app library over there and search is right here so uh but but i do appreciate that they're trying to make it a soft landing if you hide a bunch of pages of your app list and then can't find an app, right? I appreciate that about it.

So now we're going to widgets. Are you using any, if you set the home screen up on the iPhone with any widgets? Yeah, with a handful. But again, it's not my stock phone, so it's not. And also, you can only choose apples. And let's be real. Exactly. They're nice, but the widgets that exist for two out of the three that I use,

I will replace as soon as the applications I actually use for those purposes has a widget. Yeah. And that's the challenge with the betas, right? Is that unless you happen to, you know, later in the summer, you might happen to know the developer or talk to the developer and get on their beta if they are able to build a beta that they can distribute in test flight which they often can't i believe that right now it is possible for you to distribute test flight with the widget kit stuff in it okay well that's that's nice so this is the challenge is that you still have to be on a on a test flight in order to do that so that this nice so this is the challenge is that you still have to be on a

on a test flight in order to do that so that this is the thing it's like we aren't going to really see with so many things with ios betas you can't really see its full impact until the developers have written to it and release their apps and that is oftentimes you know basically in september or october when they get those apps out there so So it's harder to judge. That said, yeah, I have done it with Apple stock apps. Apple stock apps are nice. The weather widget is fun. I actually made a widget stack with my local weather and also my mom lives in Arizona. And so I put her weather in there so I can flip over and be like, oh, it's 75 degrees. It's a very nice day. What's it like in Arizona? 112. Well, I'm glad i don't live there flip back to my weather like

i'm doing stuff like that which is fun yeah i'm i have one uh widget stack on my home screen of like the medium-sized ones and i have notes weather and calendar there um and i have them doing the auto rotation thing like it should be trying to guess which one of those i want to see at any time and i like it right like i like that I have the weather right there. I like that most of the time it's my calendar that I'm seeing. I actually really enjoy having that information glanceable on my home screen because that's the type of information, especially the calendar one, where I just like to have a rough idea, like in my mind of what's going on and getting those visual reminders when I'm doing something else, I actually find to be quite useful. But as I say, right, like

the, as we said, the impact of widgets in general, I won't feel properly until I'm able to actually use like a carrot weather widget, fantastic cow am i gonna get widgets for slack am i gonna get widgets for do am i gonna you know like what what are they gonna look like what are they gonna mean then i'll understand if like the current situation where i have i have a four by four grid of apps on my home screen am i gonna keep that will it get less? I don't know, right? Like this is, I want to see how this changes over time. But I will say that so far, I actually do really like having these widgets

with this information available to me at all times. And tapping it opens the app super fast. You're a lot of the times, you know, you can go to a place, right? So I can tap and be in my upgrade Apple note from the widget faster than if I open the app and then navigate it to the note. You can go to a place, right? So I can tap and be in my upgrade Apple Note from the widget faster than if I open the app

and then navigate it to the note. So there's some benefit to it and I like it. I think the truth is that we're going to end up overdoing it and then scaling back, right? I think that's the way it's going to go is that we're going to be like, oh, every widget, every time, we're going to do widgets everywhere

and then we're going to go, that's too many widgets. Where are my apps? This is what I actually like about the fact that you can stack the widgets, right? It's like I can go wild and install all the widgets, but just stack them, and then I can just swipe through over time and work out which ones I actually like more.

When I put, like a few days ago, I had the Apple Music widget in that stack as well. And I realized I don't need that. So I just removed it. So that's what I like about the stacks. But you're right. I'm going to want to use the widget of every app that I use frequently. And it might end up being that I don't need that.

But we'll see, right? But I like that it's here in my notification center or the left of home which I think is what I heard Craig Federighi call it on some podcast interview somewhere. I have the shortcuts widgets. I have three of them stacked on top of each other

because on my iPad, I have two stacks, one on top of each other, which is great because I can swipe through for different reasons it's fine on my iPad on my iPhone that takes up the whole screen so that's too much so I've just stacked them all on top of each other and I'll see how I go there I honestly like I don't think they're gonna do it but I would really love to see Apple tighten the size of that shortcut widget up quite a bit um like comparing it the old widget to the new one, the tappable areas

have doubled in size, and I don't think that that's needed. You could quite easily put 10 to 16 widgets in the space that they have 8, but I don't think they're going to do that now. I would like to see them do it, but I don't think that kind of stuff's going to change.

But I would say overall, I also do really like the widgets. didn't do it but i don't think that kind of stuff's going to change but i would say overall i also do really like the widgets um in your article that you wrote on six colors you had a screenshot of the new call ui so when someone calls you i had this uh i received a call when i yesterday and i had my phone unlocked and it was nice just a nice little notification i found it quite tricky to actually hit the call answer button. But to be honest, I don't care. Right? Like, I don't really, it's very rare that I will get a phone call and answer it immediately. Because it's either a call I don't want, or it's a call that I can't answer

at that point. So I like not having the whole screen taken over. It does, your whole screen is still taken over if you're doing nothing with your phone so if you get a call and the phone is locked you get the old ui still which makes sense right but i do like that new kind of small uh the small the small little uh cool widget thing we just don't need to be don't need to be interrupted by that and this goes to a lot of interesting a lot of design decisions about the phone are based on the fact that it's got a small screen and that also it's a phone and you've seen it like although i i got a you know it's true for the ipad too like a call comes in and it takes over your whole ui of your device and you're like why did that just like it makes no sense right but at least in in on the ipad you've been able to uh

switch out and look at an app in facetime and do picture in picture which was something that was also not available to the iphone that is now available so i like this this is kind of cleanup of some assumptions that were made going back to 2007 about like a phone should be the most important thing you're going to do on your phone is receive a phone call it's like but if you frame it as what i'd like is a special kind of notification where anyone in the world can input your number and completely interrupt whatever you're doing on your phone no that's ridiculous who would allow that so it's good that it doesn't you know you get a little slider and you can tap the button to to accept or to to block it but it

doesn't get in your way it's uh it's much better have you spent time i mean i saw it in your article you spent a bit of time with the maps app and i'm intrigued to see what you think about that i mean i haven't i'm not an Apple Maps user, so. Yeah, well, and they don't, the data for a lot of this stuff is not in a lot of places yet, but I live in the Bay Area, so it's available here.

The bike directions, I'm excited about that because that like, that you can get directions and it'll show you the bike paths and it will route you the way you want to go. You can avoid hills. You can, it shows you the incline and how much climbing you have to go. You can avoid hills. It shows you the incline and how much climbing you have to do if you're trying to get a flat ride versus something that's really super uphill. So I was impressed by that feature. There's also a feature that I haven't

had a chance to try because I don't leave my town basically at this point, but I've definitely experienced in both San Francisco and New York City, this issue where the buildings are so tall when you're in the city core that they can't see enough of the GPS satellites. And they get confused about the other kind of Wi-Fi data and other things that are used for location. And you end up with, I mean, have you had this where you look down at your little dot and it just is drifting around? It has no idea where you are. it just is drifting around just like like it has no idea where you are so it's like you're tethered to a balloon and are floating around a city it makes it's so frustrating um and they have this bananas feature where you hold your camera up to the buildings on the other side of the street and it uses machine learning to match them to their uh database of where they've driven around and says oh that's

where you are which you can also see is i wonder what they might want to use that for yeah i mean yeah but but that's super super clever because i have had that moment where i've been in mintown manhattan and i've been like where do i go i don't even know where I am. Oh, I've had it where in large cities like that, it tells you to go in the wrong direction because it's got confused with the GPS. Yes, yes, exactly right. And then you walk a block that way and you're like, no, wait a second.

This is the wrong number. I'm going uptown when I should be going downtown or whatever it is. It's quiet uptown. Need a little moment emotionally process that so uh so that's that's clever and yes it is very obviously one of those we're building ar glasses features but it's it's nice in the meantime to put it in the world's most popular smartphone yeah i guess whatever and then they i have a an electric car and they've got this whole ev charging thing in it which is very exciting until you realize that it's only for supported vehicles and um presumably that includes

like either current model phone or cars or maybe it's if you've got the app installed and your car maker's app supports it or something because apple maps wants to know like the make and model and it wants to know the range and i think it wants to know like what your battery status is and so it's one of those things where it's like oh great now now i can plot out when i need to charge my car and then apple sort of says no not your car like uh and my car has terrible range so it doesn't really matter but i think it's one of those interesting things where I don't know if there's a specification that they're that they're meeting or something, or if it's all about like, connecting to the car makers app. But like, if you have to rely on your car maker to update their app to support this, like,

like, it's just a funny moment where I think, oh, Apple's doing a feature. Oh, it relies on compatibility with somebody else. And I'm just less excited about it then because then you're relying on someone who isn't Apple. Apple can be really excited about this feature. But, you know, are the car makers excited about it? I hope they are because it's a good idea to be able to say, I need to go on a road trip with my EV and for it to be able to mark out where you need to stop to charge. There are third-party apps that do this. They are not very good. I'm confused why Apple needs support from car manufacturers for that. That doesn't seem like it's something that has to happen. So some of it doesn't have to happen and it frustrates me.

Like you should be able to say, here's my car and here are the, maybe even like, here are the, one of the things that needs to know is what your charging types are because there are different chargers that have different charging types but there's like a nice visual way to do that like here are a bunch of charges which ones can you use right but apple seems to have punted on that and just said well we need to connect to your car or your car app or whatever and then we'll know instead of just letting you the other apps that i have used that aren't as good. We'll just say, what's your make and model. And then do you have this plug and do you have this plug? And if there are, if it varies within a model, if that's an option

and then it, it does that, I guess the other thing that it's doing here, it wants, I think what Apple really wants is Apple wants maps to know how much charge you have so that if you're driving somewhere, is Apple wants Maps to know how much charge you have so that if you're driving somewhere, it's monitoring your range and it knows to tell you, and could adjust where you need to stop based on how much battery charge you already have in the car,

which made me immediately think, shouldn't it do that for gas cars too? Shouldn't it be able to talk to gas cars and see how much gas you've got left in a tank on your road trip and automatically build in stops at gas stations too yeah it probably it probably should but maybe apple is more focused on the electric future than the uh gas present i get that but there are so many variables based on like the age of the car the wear on the battery that like i

don't unless carplay is being like hooked into the car's computer for that information and that's why they need it you know like the car can talk to the system or to maps or whatever and say like well because this isn't even is this even isn't even just a carplay thing though no it's not related to carplay well it's on my list of things that i need to bring up with apple and ask them can you explain this feature more to me? Because, you know, is it, well, car models being released in the fall of 2020 will support it. Or is it any car model can support it if they have, you know, if there's a way to talk to it via their app or something in between. Or maybe if they support this standard for car data communication that we now support.

I don't know, but I had a lot of questions and it's one of those features that I immediately sat forward and I was like, yay. And then I saw the footnotes and I thought, oh, okay. The last thing I wanted to mention was just, again, to talk about how much I'm enjoying the new shortcut stuff. Because my favorite thing about shortcuts in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 is how much stuff you can do without opening the app anymore.

So, like, I have shortcuts that I run from the widget or I can run from search, and this is especially good on the iPad, where it used to, like on can run from search, and this is especially good on the iPad, where it used to, like on iOS 13 and before, it had to open the application for me to give it the information. But now it can do all of that stuff via what is effectively looks like notifications, right? And I just type in, or I can choose from like a date picker or whatever, and it never has to open the application or I don't have to leave where I currently am in the system. That is fantastic. I love that.

You know, we mentioned it before, and I just want to say it again. They've made massive changes to shortcuts that got absolutely zero time outside of just the sessions. And there's some really fun stuff in here see i'm looking forward to using shortcuts more the challenge with using shortcuts during a beta is that um stuff just breaks like yeah stuff just stops run really slowly between beta one and beta two like different stuff got fixed and different stuff broke and like this is going to happen but but when it's a shortcut and it's a stack of you know 40 actions um if one of them breaks your whole shortcut breaks and that it's beta life that's what it's like but that's limited my ability to try that

stuff out but i agree one of the ultimate goals one of the things that we've always had on our wish lists for shortcuts is get out of my face, right? Like there's so often where it's like, oh, well, you can run this shortcut. Here's what's going to happen. It's going to open the shortcuts app separately. It's going to open that shortcut. It's going to scroll through every item and make you watch like every line of code. And then it'll get to the end and it'll do its thing. It's like, well, I'm glad it did its thing. Why did it get in my face like that? So the more of this that they take away and put in little notifications or things that just happen, running them from widgets, right? You can run specific shortcuts from widgets, which, you know, again, gets the shortcuts out of your way. Because I don't need, like when I run an Apple script, I don't see the script editor because why would i want to see that but uh shortcuts hasn't

gotten there yet for for reasons that have to do with it previously not being a an apple app and all of that but like i'm glad they're pushing more of that stuff underneath the surface because i don't want to see it yeah but i think the the beta is great right now like i'm i'm definitely enjoying my time with it it's fun to have it to play around with yeah i think so and and all the usual warnings apply because it's a beta but um you know now that it's a public beta you could try it if you want and my experience with it's been positive for the most part. But again, it's one of those things where, well, I put it on my main iPad that I use every day. It's like, you know, I run shortcuts that don't run on iPadOS 14 right now. And so I would just have to forego them for the summer,

and I'd rather not. But on my iPhone, I could probably get away with it. This episode is brought to you by KiwiCo, a science and art subscription box for kids of all ages. Parents out there, you may feel like your kid's summer vacation started early if you've been at home together for a while. Now the actual summer vacation is around the corner. So you might be struggling to think of ways to keep your kids busy.

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So this is a perfect example of a summer of fun topic where we are taking a topic that we would normally talk about, but also adding in something fun at the end of it. but also adding in something fun at the end of it. So we're going to talk a little bit about a really interesting and wonderfully written article that John Gruber posted on Daring Fireball at Tailend last week. It's called A Moment of Clarity Regarding the Raison d'être for the App Store. In essence, this is an article that is framed around whether Apple could or should

enforce different kinds of rules on apps in the App Store. So Google made the headlines over the last week for finally adding split screen support to Gmail, which is a five year old feature. Now, when I saw this headline, I was like, oh, people are calling multi-window split-screen again. No, Gmail, the Gmail app, did not support split-screen multitasking on the iPad. Five years ago, this feature was introduced, and John was saying this is an incredibly popular app,

should have supported this feature long before now, and goes on to like reference recent app store issues so like with the email app hey for example where it seems like apple was putting their focus on their kind of rule enforcing for apps for uh basically trying to get money out of them as a and say you know as a really which is for in many instances worsens the user experience because it makes signing up for applications and and their paid parts more complicated right because we've all seen this like you download the netflix app and all you can do is sign in and there's nothing else right and is that a better or worse user experience but that's the stuff that apple's been focusing on

and john posits the idea of should Apple actually be using their heavy hand to push developers to support more standard OS features? Yeah, and it's about priorities. I feel like this is a very much a kind of modest proposal kind of thing where he's not necessarily proposing that Apple use its heavy hand for this as much as saying that it says something about Apple's priorities priorities that it's willing to lean on developers and get cut up in the press over um cadging money out of developers basically but seems to not put nearly as much effort into making sure that the quality of the platform's apps is high.

And there are lots of different ways to do that. I think, in fact, I think I saw, or maybe it was on Dithering, Gruber's podcast with Ben Thompson, that they mentioned this, but there may actually have been an Apple deadline saying, if your iPad app doesn't support this, we won't approve any more updates. I've seen some. So it's kind of like yes and no. Basically, there was a deadline which just passed, which said that you had to support multiple screen sizes. So you had to build to the iOS 13 SDK.

Apple strongly recommends, is what they say, that you support split-screen multitasking. But what's worth remembering is not every application should be split screenable sure right yeah i i think but this this comes to the core of it for me which is again the larger issue here is is groupers using this moment to point out that apple seems really concerned about getting its money but not concerned i actually think even larger than not supporting its features of its of its platform is the scams and the spam apps and the and the scam subscriptions that are like a 99 cent trial followed by 40 a month or something that the only purpose of them is to trick you so you get you get you know weird apps that are using

other people's intellectual property you get you get ripoffs of other of apps that steal their name or steal their icons all of these things litter the app store but a company trying to make money without apple getting a cut is what makes them say stop. And I get that we probably don't see, like we probably see the scams and the stuff that gets through, but most of it doesn't. That may actually be true. But I think John's point is strong in saying

maybe Apple's priorities are misplaced and that there are lots of ways you can clean up your store that don't involve getting money and that benefit the user. And you seem to be more focused on benefiting your bottom line financially than on benefiting the user. And that that is antithetical to the way Apple should behave as a corporate culture.

And I think that that point in the essay is really strong. My, my, my read on it immediately in terms of like, well, what Apple should do for something like Gmail is I do think Apple should be more aggressive in telling app developers what platform features they need to support. And I'm not saying like you literally can't be in the store anymore if you don't support split screen multitasking but i can see apple saying here's a new feature and then two years later saying if you're using an if you're an ipad productivity app

um we won't we won't be accepting new submissions unless you support this feature five years is too long yeah yeah that's that that was my thought is that the big the big leverage that apple's got is saying our app store apps will support key platform features you need to do it and i know that that if you're a developer it's like oh just what i want is apple telling me what to do it's like apple is telling you what to do apple already makes you have to work all summer when you would rather be outside fixing things and also adopting new technologies if you're an developer, a lot of times for the fall for those releases, but certainly fixing bugs and making sure your app works on the new platform. I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple to say, hey, we're introducing big new platform feature for the iPad. It makes the iPad better. Screen sizes is actually

not a bad example, right? Where all of us with 12.9-inch iPads, we know the offenders who spent years not supporting that size. So you get a weird, upscaled, not quite right version of your app because they aren't supporting the 12.9 iPad. That happened for ages and was really frustrating. So I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple to say, as they do with some of the iPhone stuff, and they have done, saying, not by this fall, you need to support all of the features we're introducing at WWDC. But maybe saying, by next fall, or the fall after that, we're not going to, like, we built this exciting new productivity feature for the iPad. And if you're making a productivity app for the iPad two years from now that that doesn't support it we aren't going to let you update your app anymore like bottom line you can't be on our platform if you don't use platform features i don't think that's unreasonable and gmail like this is the this is the perfect example it's like how apple should not have allowed gmail to be updated way before five years right apple should have come down on them two years in and said, you got to support this feature,

period. Yeah, I like John says, they don't, you know, like, don't, don't, they can't scrutinize a million apps, but maybe they should start by scrutinizing apps with a million users. Right. And I kind of like that. It's like, that's just an easy way to draw a line and be like there is a level and if you're at that level well you need to do it and he lays out some stuff like video app doesn't support picture in picture you're out the store app doesn't support dynamic

type size but clearly should you're out poor accessibility you're out email client doesn't support split screen you're out like and he's being you know he's he's taking it to a real conclusion here, which everyone knows Apple isn't going to do. It's a modest proposal thing where it's like he's not really proposing this, but he's saying, let's look at the extreme version of this and let's compare the priorities. in agreement of if you are going to push people so hard to do something that actually makes user experience worse, like not allowing me to create a Netflix account when signing up for Netflix, because it must go through your payment processing. If you're going to do that, then also do this other thing, really do it instead of like make the user experience better. this other thing will really do it instead of like make the user experience better. Nobody's user experience made worse.

If Google put the work in to support multi window support for our split screen support for Gmail, Google docs or whatever, right. That makes everybody's stuff better. Now, so one thing I wanted to press on this, like,

I think a lot of people would say like, Oh, you know, like Google's apps don't look like ios apps so apple should make them uh apple should make people comply to that i disagree with that strongly myself because google has their own design they have what they think is good design and they should be allowed to do that whether you like it or hate it i think that's up for debate like i don't think apple should be able to say like this button should look like our button i don't agree with that i i think google um and i've written about this and i got harangued by

somebody at google about it at one point i think there is a level of arrogance that comes with a owner of a different platform coming onto your platform and saying, well, we're just going to use our platform conventions over here. That is my, all of us Mac users saw Microsoft do that. And Google has changed its attitude. Google tries to be a better iOS citizen than it used to be. But at the same time, Google wants its apps to look like Google. And I wouldn't, yes, I wouldn't advocate for Apple to say Google can't use material design, right?

Microsoft's apps look unique and also look like other Microsoft apps. But I don't want Apple to say, no, you have to change what your app looks like. This is about, for me, it's about adopting core functionality of the platform in a vaguely timely fashion, right? This is like saying, if your app can't do copy and paste, it shouldn't be in the store anymore. Like, it's pretty simple. Like, there are lots of extreme examples we can come up with. Speaking of which, in the spirit of the Summer of Fun, what we thought we would do here is we're each going to pick a list of five or so applications that we use that are missing what we consider to be a core iOS feature. So we'll pick an app and say what it is that this app should have that it doesn't have. That's right, everybody. It's the disappointing app draft.

Can I go first with the obvious? Yes. Google Docs. Uh-huh. It was on my list too. Go ahead. I'm going to start with saying I would like Google Docs to have full multi-window. Actually, no, I'm going to go full trackpad, full for trackpad support because that at the moment is more important to me than the multi-window which i have made many arguments for for google docs for a while but the right now i want to be able to select text easily and correctly with the trackpad on my ipad where at the moment i'm doing like you double click a word with the trackpad then you try and hover over the little blue selecty thing and just get it in the like this is ridiculous i want to have full trackpad and cursor support in google docs yep i am going to go with dropbox and proper support for the

files app it's a joke they have files app support. It's never worked right. It generally doesn't work unless you've recently launched the Dropbox app, which like that's beside the point. And as a Dropbox user, it's extremely frustrating because I have files I need to get to on Dropbox. It should work like a file provider. It should just work in files. That's the system file interface the mac version of dropbox uses the finder and yet dropbox seems to just not care i believe a bunch of new files features were added in ios 14 still not supported and in in 13 we're now almost at 14 dropbox is still not there so frustrating and you know it does it what do they want i'm an ipad user i'm not going to stop using my ipad because dropbox is bad it makes me less likely to use dropbox so it frustrates me

greatly uh and and i you know and maybe apple maybe apple is partially at fault here i don't know but i i can tell you though that there are there are other apps that do a better job of file support than Dropbox. So I'm going to put it on the list. I don't think Dropbox is trying. Because that was what I was going to ask you. Have you ever used a file provider that actually works well with the Files app? I've used file providers that work better than Dropbox. I'll put it that way. Because I would say, I agree with you. I want it to work better than dropbox okay i'll put it that way because i would say like i agree with you i want it to work better uh i feel like there maybe needs to be more work on both

sides of that but there is clearly an element of dropbox not working right and we have spoke about this tons of times in the past and the bugs have gotten better but they still do exist in some places that even like icloud and the files that doesn't work very well yes that's true but and yet I find iCloud far more reliable than Dropbox and so if somebody at Dropbox wants to wants to correct me and say actually Dropbox would love to be a supporter of all of the files apis but there is a bug or Apple hasn't done a good job I'd love to hear it my feeling is Apple hasn't done a great job. I'd love to hear it. My feeling is Apple hasn't done a great job and there are bugs and that's being used as an excuse

and that Dropbox really just doesn't want to do it. So, you know, correct me if I'm wrong. You know, when you try to share a link or a file and you open the share sheet and you get those suggestions to send messages to people, you know, you can pop up, you're like, hey, you've recently messaged Jason. Would you like to message us to

Jason? It would not be surprising if you had forgotten the fact that this is actually something that third-party developers can do as well. It's not just a messages feature. And the reason that you may forget this is because so very few messaging applications

have actually implemented this iOS 13 API. I was only reminded because Discord supports it. So if you've recently messaged someone in Discord, you can send them a link. Or if you're recently in a group, you can send it to that group. Discord is the only third-party messaging app that I use that supports this. And I would like to see Slack do it because I think it is a super useful feature that you are talking to someone and you're like,

oh, let me go grab that link. And you go to share it so you can copy it. It's way nicer if you can just tap the button and it automatically goes there. Slack have an extension, but it's ropey at best. It works, but not very well and not all the time. And there is a better way to do this. And I would love to see Slack implement this messages, suggestions thing in the share sheet. Yep. That's again, an iOS feature. Wouldn't it be nice to support it? Been around for a year now. I have Slack on my list too, but I'm not going to get there just yet. I'm going to bring up apps that I read articles in. So newspaper apps and other things. So the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, not the Washington Post because they do this. The Athletic actually, and there's a footnote there because I'm talking about dark dark mode dark mode also has been

around a while yeah and if you're reading uh at night with the lights out to have the blinding white background with black text on it is no good and uh many of my newspaper apps don't support it the athletic my my sports subscription content service that i enjoy they added dark mode support in their articles but then when you go back out to the menu of stories no dark mode so you're like reading an article you're like oh this is good and then you press the back button and you go oh it burns why why why would you do that so dark mode support in places that where i read things just for pete's sake it's not that hard i'm sorry i'm sorry i just told developers if implementing a feature is not that hard guys you can do this yeah you can you can do this it's it's been a year

and you knew it was coming for another year. Facebook have just started rolling out their dog mode. Isn't that wild? Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I get it. Maybe you have other priorities.

I mean, quite honestly, the New York Times, just as a side note, their iPad app has had a bug where when you tap one of the, it has three tabs. It is a three tab interface it's got the front page this new version of its app that they released six months ago there's a front page version of it there's a personalized thing which i find completely useless but you can personalize stories and then there's sections of the newspaper which used to be at the top level in a like a or like in a hamburger menu and now now it's in a tab. So they made a bad decision

there. But the best part is the first time you tap on it, it's blank. And then you tap out, then you tap back in, and now the menu appears. It's been like that for six months. I filed a bug with them and they're like, yep, we're working on it i guess put it put it with dark mode i don't know what a mess and i know being a developer of newspaper apps is a thankless task but i'll just point people to the washington post which is doing it right when it comes to dark mode please be like the washington post and give me dark mode everywhere because it for reading at night like it is the one reason to use dark mode and then these apps don't support it infuriating i wanted to just cheat a little bit and just to point something out just to show that

no poverty's an effect oh yeah oh yeah yeah i i was thinking very hard about about can we can we ding apple for not supporting apple features the Mail app doesn't have a share sheet. And that's wild to me. Like there's no way to share an email message, which is like pretty easy to do. Like just create a PDF. Like it's not hard. But it's just like a really weird omission to me, you know,

to not be able to share share to have like a share sheet on an email you can forward and you can print yep but you can't share it like i would love to see them do something you know like there's anything you can do here you could share it as text you could share it as a pdf ios 13 created the way for you to be able to choose you know you can do here. You could share it as text. You could share it as a PDF. iOS 13 created the way for you to be able to choose. You can tap that thing at the top and you can choose how do I want to share this file. Every other third-party application has a way to share emails to other applications that I have used. However, it creates a link to it, which is a thing that exists. You can create links to to mail messages so you

know it will be great if they did it they don't and i just wanted to mention that all right i'm going to uh say something about one of my favorite apps which is twitterific from the icon factory which i like a lot but um they don't properly support contextual menus. There's a very nice contextual menu system in iOS. And Twitterific, you don't use it. So let me describe to you what happens. If you tap and hold, and by the way, currently you can't like two finger click on a trackpad.

That doesn't work. But if you tap and hold on a tweet, you get a contextual menu, an iOS contextual menu. It'll let me airdrop the tweet. It will let me share the tweet. It will let me open the tweet in a different app. It'll let me run shortcuts. All of those things are there. but on the tweet itself in addition to the reply and retweet and all and and favorite commands there's a an ellipsis icon there's a more icon do you think that that brings up the same

contextual menu because it does not it brings up a different menu of items that you also might want to do like muting people or sharing there's literally a share tab within that tab uh a muffle uh managing lists uh show discussion and they're not they're not connected tapping share brings up the other thing it i i love the app icon factory is great i don't understand how there hasn't been a context menu unification here because i really like those features um having them all in one place is very useful having to get having to tap and hold and remember tap and hold means you have to wait for the timeout for that context menu to show in order to run a shortcut based on a tweet i don't understand why this is happening anyway more more apps should be more consistent with

context menus and i i understand that uh things change over time but um at some point having two contextual menus in different places is not it's got to stop I would like multi window support in the Twitter app, the official Twitter app so then I could get my timeline

on one side and I could have my mentions or whatever on the other side and then that would also allow me to hide the trending trends as well because i i really don't like seeing those uh in in the window on the side so yeah i would like that that would be nice i would like multi-window support is really not very highly supported in a lot of places. I could list that all day. But the applications that I actually want, Twitter is one of them.

And I would like to see it there. I'll just say it's not even a full pick at this point. Google Sheets and Google Docs. I want those to have multi-window as well. Yeah, you know, multi-window, I think, maybe doesn't have as many practical use cases as we thought it would when we were first thinking about it um there aren't really a lot of applications that i would use in multi-window they're the three that i would like to the most

and they're also three that don't support it yeah i have on the on my mac i frequently have a google sheet open twice to different tabs, which is actually amazing. That's a thing that you can't even do, I don't think, on apps. But you can do it in a web browser where I've got one document with different tabs and I've opened a different tab in a different window. I would love to do that on my iPad. It's actually a Google advantage. I'm going to just, I pick,

I'm picking a whole bunch of video apps here, but including my, from my cable provider, Xfinity, which blocks AirPlay support. And I am of the opinion that if there's, if you're a video app and I can watch video on my screen i really should be able to watch it on my apple tv yeah like if you don't have an apple tv app okay i

hate it that they don't support airplay and i'm sure there's some sort of well our license technically says or there's a strategy of like well we don't want to be on that box but like if you're going to offer an ipad for a video app and like it, and you're going out to an Apple TV, like presumably there should be, this should be a secure connection, right? There should be some level of trust in what Apple is doing. Like I should be able to put that on a screen and I'm not, you know, turning off mirroring is a similar thing, by the way, a lot of these apps also turn off mirroring. I'm not sure I believe that it's actually legally required. I think maybe it's more strategic, but like,

you know, if you play video, like it should just go to airplay. You shouldn't, I don't like the idea that you could, you can even opt to disable airplay. Kind of on, whilst we're talking about video apps,

picture in picture for YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there, there's so many, I almost put that on the list is picture in picture in general yeah needs to be more widely supported but youtube is the real offender i was going to

ding safari for this too i feel like safari should be more aggressive in because like i have a bookmarklet that forces things into picture in picture but like i think safari should just be more aggressive in offering picture in picture it will for youtube it will well it will in full screen right then you can put it in picture in picture i believe so yeah yeah let's see where do i want to go here i'm going to go to rather than mention another an app we've already beaten up, I'm going to mention Microsoft Office, and I'm sure it's coming. Microsoft Office just supported multi-window support, so they're very slow. Yeah, Apple, in their press releases

for the trackpad stuff, referenced mouse pointer support. Yeah, so that's what I'm picking here. They say it's coming this fall. Yeah. Yeah, so they just what I'm picking here is they say it's coming this fall. Yeah. Yeah, so they just did window, multi-window.

They're now going to do mouse pointer support, but they haven't yet, so I'm going to put it on the list. After you've edited text on the iPad with a trackpad, and when you go to a text editor that doesn't support it, it makes me want to cry. It's so bad and and also i think about like the crosshairs and stuff in excel like there's so many things that will be much better in microsoft office with proper support for pointer but it's not there yet so that was we had lists of five that was what we wanted to talk about yep usually in our drafts, we do reference things that we didn't pick. So I will very quickly reference three more that I didn't pick, but they're not the official list. This is kind of a draft, but I guess, you know, whatever.

We draft everything these days. Instagram, an actual iPad app. Yeah. That'd be nice. Not to go too far here, but I wonder if there's a way for apple to basically say if you're going to be on our platforms you have to be on the ipad yeah because i i feel i feel pretty strongly about this like there are some apps that are iphone only and i don't understand it i don't understand it it's frustrating and i i think i mean the ipad's doing okay now but like if ever

apple was going to use its platform leverage to say, no, you need to be on. I guess Instagram's leverage there is, do you want us to not be on the iPhone? But Apple would say, do you want to not be on the iPhone, Instagram? Do you really want to do that? Or can you, oh, poor Instagram had to make an iPad app.

Come on. It's embarrassing. They have like a pretty good web app that i use on my ipad so just make an ipad version you've already built the layout right and like over time i've added all the features like you can do stories in the web app you can do messages in the web app make an ipad app um every single banking app should get dark mode and push notifications for transactions. I know some of the cool apps have them, but most traditional banking apps do not have these. And I would like that. And I also, in the same way, I want every video app to support the TV app.

Yeah, yeah. Because I want universal search. I want to be able to download videos. And I want to be able to get picture and picture support and if things in the tv app then that would work but uh they don't and i i understand for the tv apps maybe even more like why netflix don't support the tv app right like i get i actually get that one because it's like they don't gain anything but i'm still saying i would like it but i wouldn't necessarily put that one in my official list because that there's a lot to that one i think it maybe isn't for the

other stuff and for me i mean i had i was going to beat up on google apps too because you know they also don't have um proper pointer support they also don't have proper keyboard support they have keyboard support but like basic things like if you hold down the command key to see what those keyboard shortcuts are it's not there um and it could be better uh the big one that i wanted to mention you already mentioned slack so i sort of steered away from this but i it frustrates me greatly slack is actually removing things like support for shortcuts which they used to have some of, and now they have none of. I want shortcuts support for Slack. I want to be able to have a shortcut generate a Slack message and post it. And they seem to not want to do that. it it they're going the wrong direction there it's really frustrating yeah it feels like you know i get it like when slack this is the thing with

slack right when they came on the scene they were the cool little indie we're gonna make everything better they're an enterprise company now which is where they should be but it means they now act like an enterprise company right the mac app is electron right like they get there they do different things they care about different things you know like it's like one of my favorite things about slack is like so much that their brand is focused around emoji but they're always really late at implementing your emoji you know what you're gonna do and that is a list of things that we would love to see come to apps that if we were you know if apple were going to be doing this thing which john gruber has proposed this is the type of stuff that jason and mike would like to see fixed yeah maybe we've just

proven why they don't do this well but i would say i've i think this is why type of stuff that Jason and Mike would like to see fixed. Maybe we've just proven why they don't do this. Well, but I would say I've, I think this is why they should. Cause like all of this stuff, like, I don't think that we are being for a lot of this stuff. I don't think that we're being unfair.

Some of this stuff is one, one year old. Yes. And, and my gut feeling is that if Apple were going to bring down the hammer about things that they had decided were key platform features that need to be supported in all apps that one year is probably not enough but two years probably is so it's like okay you you need dark mode by fall of 2021 but you need you need to have dark mode in your app by fall of 2021 no exceptions right like that seems reasonable to me yeah like I kind of I give a pass for at the moment for like google and

microsoft for not supporting the trackpad because that kind of came out of nowhere right like if you know we knew it was coming but it did kind of come out of nowhere right like three months earlier than people expected and it was just immediately there right but stuff like it takes time yeah but stuff like dark mode picture in picture uh the files support stuff like multi-window yeah they should be supported by now and again i'm open and i'm sure this is going to happen i'm open to any developer coming and saying well you you got to understand the reason we don't support this is x and like that's fine like if there's an extenuating circumstance that we don't know about, I get it.

But beyond a certain point, it's just intransigence. Right. But beyond a certain point, it's not, well, there's a bug. And Apple, first off, if Apple were in charge, there would be that conversation of like, well, we can't support this because of X. And Apple would be like, all right, well, you're good for now. Or maybe they'd be jerks and have to go to the press. But you know, the idea is, is that after a while, you're not doing it because of Apple, you're using Apple as an excuse. Um, and while I'm open to somebody from Dropbox coming to me and saying, you don't

understand how bad this is. Um, and I, I would listen to that cause maybe it's true. But my perception is that it's also being used as an excuse. So anyway, sorry, developers. I think most of the developers who tuned into a program like this are not the people who would fall into this camp, right? Because they're excited about new Apple platform technologies. It's just some of these companies, like, yeah. Apple platform technologies. It's just some of these companies, like, yeah.

Anyway, that's in the end, I do think that Apple should, as an iPad user, I would love Apple to have leaned on some app developers harder about supporting platform features. Because in some of these cases, honestly, with Safari, as good as it is on the iPad now,

sometimes I wonder if these apps should even exist because the web pages are are as good like if you're not google docs i struggle with that which is like doesn't work as well well neither of them work right now right now like the google docs web version works worse in some ways than even the google docs app right but in some ways i would argue it's better than the google docs app so right like i i don't know it's it's frustrating so anyway yeah we drafted some things that's for those who who are not used to drafts as list banking sometimes we just make lists and uh there's no winner it's uh we're all winners we're all losers yeah because these are these are the features in this case we are all losers so i're all losers. Because these are the features. In this case, we are all losers. So I hope that was

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Go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM right now for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the code UPGRADE at checkout to get a huge 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their support of this show and RelayFM. It's time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions to finish out this week's episode. The first comes from Dylan. Dylan says, do you think that there is a maximum speed for computers doing everyday tasks or can they just keep getting faster? Is there a limit? Have

we reached it? I don't entirely know what Dylan is getting at because is it that, is it a physical limitation? Can computers become physically infinitely fast, or is that not possible? Or is it more generally, like, can computers eclipse our needs? The way I read this question is, are current computers so fast that they're already too fast for the most of the tasks that a typical person would do? Like, you don't run into speed barriers anymore responsiveness barriers anymore yeah i have two answers one is i do think that they will keep finding ways to make computers faster if you look at the history this is a really great john syracuse a question by the way but if you look at the history of processors that we are going to run into more and more challenges making smaller and more efficient. But every time we've thought, well, they can't get any smaller, we found a way to get them smaller. So I think that's going to still happen.

But you also see the methods that are used for building computers change. We have multi-core processors now, right? So it's not just a single, in the old days it was a processor, but now we have multiple processor cores all operating independently, which allows the computer to be faster because it's doing more work with every tick of the clock. So that is going to continue. And they've added the sort of GPUs and how they work. You look at what Apple's been doing with things like Neural Engine, where they built custom hardware for certain kinds of work. So I think that the drive

to continually have faster and also more power efficient and smaller technology, that will continue. And I think we've shown our resourcefulness in continuing that. In terms of for regular people for everyday use,

I feel like computers were fast enough for regular people for everyday use years ago now, like many years ago now. And while there are particular tasks like editing 4K video or something that require a lot of power. It's been a long time since there was a computer for what regular people use a computer for that couldn't do that job. Like, I really, I really think it's been a long time. And our operating systems get richer and more complicated. And those require higher amounts of RAM and faster processors and all of that. But not to get all philosophical for a moment, but like I could write my articles just as easily on a PowerBook 160 running right now as I can today on my, I like, I don't need the power of my iMac

pro to write an article. Like I don't to edit a big podcast or edit a video, maybe, but, um, but not, not for the task. So if all you're using, like most people are is the web and calendar and watching YouTube videos and sending emails. Computers have been overkill for that for a very long time. kill for that for a very long time i think a good example of this is like the power of my iphone and what i can actually do with it right like those two things are quite different and those chips are so much more powerful than i then i can really do in a lot of instances of a phone right well the ipad we've talked about for a while, the 2018 iPad Pro that came out, it's like, have any of us really pushed that to the limits and said this iPad is not fast enough? It's running macOS now, that chip.

So, you know, I think we can all argue that that is a more taxing operating system and it's seeming to do a pretty good job of that at the moment from everything we've heard about the developer kit. So we've got a bunch of questions like this next one from exiled and we're just going to answer this one and it will be a catch-all for all of these questions that we've been getting for a while so i have a macbook pro which is a 13 inch late 2013 nearing the end of its loyal service and with a failing battery i was awaiting the keyboard transition to upgrade but now i'm tempted by arm do i get a 10th gel intel macbook pro now or wait for apple silicon

well this is an easier answer because it's a failing battery right yes and i actually answered exiled when this question came in and what said was, I'd pay for the battery replacement because you're going to extend the life, even if it's six months, and then you're going to be through to the other side. And if you want to wait for those like new, rumored new ARM laptops coming out next year, maybe you could even get to that point, but you certainly could get to that first ARM set of MacBooks that are coming out by the end of the year. So I'd say in this

particular case, if you could hold on and the failing battery is the thing that's killing it, can you hold on or can you replace the battery, which is in many cases, not a particularly expensive or hard replacement to make, maybe let it ride. And I think I would say that for everybody at this point is if you absolutely, like I just bought my daughter a MacBook Air like two weeks ago. So because she had a 12-inch MacBook and it was causing her all sorts of trouble and she's going to go back to school eventually. And I wanted to get her set up before then. I wanted to run migration assistant and all that.

I didn't want to walk her through that on the phone or something, right? Like I wanted to do all that for her so that when she goes, she can take this new computer with her. And I wasn't going to wait around. I wasn't interested in waiting around. So like, if you need it now, get it now.

And it's going to last you for years, and that's fine. But if you're listening to this show, you care about this stuff. If you can defer and delay your Mac purchases until you can see how this ARM thing is going to work out, and whether you want to jump then, I would do it. This is a great time to delay if you can afford to delay. But as with all computer purchases, if you need it now, just buy it now because every computer goes out of date. Every computer has a compatibility issue a few years in the future and you can't live your life always waiting for the right time to upgrade because there will always be another upgrade.

There will always be a next model that you missed out on and felt sad about. And there's nothing you can do to change that. So defer if you can. And if you can't, don't. Yes. My answer would be mostly the same. I guess maybe said slightly differently like i think right now is a time where buying a mac does carry with it more potential change than ever right because we're standing on a precipice right yeah this is

this is a an epochal change it's like we're going from one era to another so there will never be a clearer more visible in advance dividing line than we're standing at right now but at the same vein like if you were buying a mac two years ago you could you know from the the idea of what it's going to be like on the inside at least you could make some pretty decent guesses at that but at the moment we're at like a fork in the road and we don't really know what is what it's going to be like. We can make guesses, but the potential for how different this could be is more wild, as we spoke about at the beginning of the episode. So I would kind of say, like, if you can delay at all, do that, right?

If you have to replace the computer, you have no choice than do it but if you can do like what we what jason recommended if you're able to just repair that machine for and like get it to run for a little bit longer try and do that because if you care about computers which we're guessing you do there could be some really cool computers in like three months four months that you might otherwise be frustrated that you missed so yep if you have the ability to wait now you should wait right agreed winter charm and the relay of her members discord asked do you think that apple will offer multiple chip options for their arm max like how you how you could choose an i5, i7, or i9 option with some of the current models.

I, in a particular model, I'm going to say no. But there will be different models for different products. They might, but my gut feeling is that the 16-inch MacBook Pro or whatever will have a chip in it. And there won't be one of these get a slightly faster chip for because that's that's kind of an effect of Intel offering different varieties, but Apple would have to design different varieties. And while Apple is a very well versed chip maker now, you don't see that the iPad, the iPhone, right? And I don't think that will be the case for the Mac either I don't think they're

going to create variants on a chip inside a model just for kicks of the upgrades that will be available which will probably be not many options I don't think this will be one of them yeah it just it strikes me as unlikely that Apple is going to make because remember if there's a build to order model that's got a higher you you know, more cores or faster processor, like, so now Apple has to make this high-end variant and it's just for people who build-to-order? Like, I mean, maybe there's a really good chip in the 16-inch MacBook Pro

and it's only, you know, a good chip in the 13-inch and the 13-inch can be upgraded. But even then, I kind of don't see it. I think the most likely scenario And it's only, you know, a good chip in the 13-inch and the 13-inch can be upgraded. But even then, I kind of don't see it. I think the most likely scenario is that there are going to be some variants of these processors for, like, the MacBook Pro or maybe, like, an iMac Pro versus, like, an iMac or a MacBook Air. Like, that there will be, like, a processor variant. Maybe. Like, it may also be really similar across all of them.

But if there are variants, I think they're going to be small. And I think every model itself is not going to have an option for a different processor. I think you're going to get what you're going to get, like with the iPad and the iPhone. Our next question comes from TK, who asks, do you have a preferred TV show tracking app or system? I have tried different things. I found that I had a reminders list, by the way, of TV shows I should watch that I just found the other day. And I was like, oh, I haven't looked at this in six months, right?

It's like, great. I still need to watch The Americans. Great. But I did use just watch for a while but i i decided or not just watch just watch is the is where you find what streaming service the thing is on and i highly recommend that now i used to use tv time for a while and tv time was okay but the problem is it is not designed for how i watch tv like i really do just want to kind of have a list i don't want to sit there and go,

yep, I watched that episode. Yay. I don't want to do that. I kind of want to just keep tracking. So theoretically a note or reminder list would be the right way to do it. But those have failed me too. So I don't really have a system right now

other than I do add things to my list on Netflix and my favorites on Hulu and up next on Apple TV+. I do that so that they're visible as a thing that keeps getting put in my face of, you might want to watch this, but that's about it right now. There was similarly an app called TV Forecast, which John Voorhees wrote a really great review of on Mac Stories. It's made by, I believe, Matt Comey is the developer of this. And it's a really beautiful application.

But similarly, I think it's wanting to do a type of kind of tracking that I don't want to do, which is that like, I watched this episode, I've watched this episode. Like, I don't watch TV like that. I'm not a lifelogger of TV shows I've seen, right? Like, I don't care about that. Well, more than anything,

I don't really watch a lot of weekly episodic programming. Like, we are binge watchers. So I really all, me and Idina have a shared Apple Note that just has a bunch of content in it right like you make a really excellent point which is i think my biggest problem with these apps is is that they are granular on per episode and that's not what i need to track no it's not what i need to track if i'm watching a show that releases weekly i know it releases weekly i'm aware that it's currently in season and i will watch it when it comes out not Not concerned about that. And if I'm in the middle of a binge or a slow binge,

the place that I'm watching it knows what episode I'm at. And I'm aware that I'm watching it. Yeah, I don't forget. I don't need to know that. What I need to know is if I watched a season of something and there's another season coming, but it's not there yet. Okay, watch this season. At the season level and at the show level,

you should watch this show. I don't need that episode by episode part of it and and i think all of those tv trackers are like that that's excellent i hadn't thought of that but i think that's exactly what my problem is is that i'm not interested in um in tracking specific episodes i need to track here's a show i haven't seen or i've only watched the first four seasons of this show um that's what i need to track and so for us an apple note works perfectly because it also doesn't remove the stuff so if there's a show there's a season later on if we're like looking for a show but oh i wonder if there's a new season of this now. And then we check. We're very streaming service orientated with our viewing. And so it's rare.

The last show that we watched week to week was Watchmen. And I cannot, well, except for the Apple TV Plus stuff, I guess. So we did that as well. But before those, I genuinely couldn't think of a time where i'd last done that and if we weren't covering the apple tv plus content on this show i would have waited until they were done and and binged them like i only watched the apple tv plus content weekly because it was useful for me to watch it weekly for work otherwise i would have waited like the same as like we haven't watched mandalorian yet um it's on our list it's

coming we're going to be watching it soon but i wasn't going to start watching it until it was all out on disney plus in the uk which took a while right right eight weeks eight weeks and finally today ivan asks i'm trying to decide between getting an iphone 11 or 11 pro right now do you have any updated thoughts on these devices, having lived with them for 10 months? For me, I like small phones, and so the 11 Pro is my preference. I think the 11 is really nice.

I like it. It's an 11 that I've got the beta on. I like it. It's really nice. But I prefer the size of the 11 Pro, which is why I have that one. Federico and Stephen were talking about this in a group thread that I'm in a couple of days ago, and I completely agree with their point that the iPhone 11 series, I have a Pro Max, but especially the Pro, it is an incredibly good phone in every stretch of the imagination.

Like, usually I would say to, like, to say, like, to Ivan, well, wait, we're so close to the next one. If you, for whatever reason, want to get this phone now, like, and you can get a good deal on it, you should do it. Because there's going to, look,

the 12 is going to have a lot of really great features, but it's also going to be expensive. If you can get a good deal on an iPhone 11 or 11 Pro, and it wouldn't bother you to be a year or two behind these phones are fantastic. The cameras are incredible. Like they are very, very, very good phones. Like I have liked my 11 pro max more than I have liked other phones in this, uh, design, uh, style. Like it really, for me, excels on every level. There isn't a part of it where I don't like it. It's really a very, very excellent phone. So if you want one and you have good reasons for wanting to get one when there's, you know, we're so close to the next one, even though we'll actually, we for once don't really know how close we are to the next one,

but presumably like maybe three or four months away, then I would say to go for it. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode of the show, you can send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use the question mark AskUpgrade sign in the RelayFM members' Discord. They will be put into a sheet

for us to pick from for a future episode. If you want to get access to that RelayFM members Discord and support this show, you can go to getupgradeplus.com where you can become a RelayFM member and support Upgrade directly and you will get extra content and no ads. And if you are an Upgrade Plus subscriber,

as always, there's more content after the theme song. And I want to make a little note here, Jason, if I may, for Upgrade Plus members. So I had somebody say to me that they wanted to hear more of the theme song because we have our special, obviously amazing Summer of Fun theme. theme i have been like not leaving a lot of the song because i've been worried that people would forget and like turn off the show if they're upgrade plus members and not listen to everything that's after so i'm gonna say now in the show don't forget it's there and i'm gonna give you more of the song now right so like from now there will be more song but don't forget there is still show after the rest of the theme song if you're an upgrade plus member okay so i just wanted to mention that so there you go get upgrade plus.com if you want that

thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of upgrade you can find jason's work online at sixcolors.com and he's at jay snell on twitter do you know what i saw today jason we're two weeks away from the next earnings call it's going to be on july 30th oh man i gotta put that on my calendar yep so there you go that's the personalized service charts charts charts charts charts so that will be our august 3rd episode we'll talk about what i'm sure is going to be a fascinating earnings call it's going to be a barn burner whoa because honestly could not predict it like there is going to be some stuff up, some stuff down. It's going to be an interesting one. I'm sure about that. You can find me online.

I'm iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. If you want to find show notes for this week's episode, I have a bunch of links and information about stuff we've spoken about. You can find them in your podcast app of choice. So go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 306. Thanks to Pingdom, KiwiCo and DoorDash for their support of this episode. And thank you for listening. And we'll be back next time.

Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye.