Upgrade - 333: New Year, Same Old Prediction

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

2021 has arrived, so it's time for Jason to predict what he thinks Apple will do this year. But it's also time for Myke to look back on his 2020 predictions and judge how well those came out. Also, DC joins Marvel in amplifying streaming-service programming plans.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 333 today's show is brought to you by squarespace and text expander from smile happy new year my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hi jason snell hello mike harley it's good to be here in a new year good to be here good to start my year because as we all know i start my week my work week with upgrade me too on monday morning what do you do for the rest of monday you work on upgrade i work on upgrade that's the first thing I do on a Monday. And then I do other things. And then, like, Workday 1B begins. And that's now.

That's right now. Well, and I start my work week, which means now I have started my work year. And hello to all the listeners out there who are starting their listening year with us. This is the official opening. I don't know what I'm saying. Of the Upgrade listening year. This is why we have hashtag Snell Talk questions so we can avoid what the hat just happened there and this week's comes from jared jared wants to know jason for non-embargoed articles so articles that do not

require being published at a certain time do you post as soon as you're ready as soon as something's finished or do you schedule all of your articles for specific times? A very inside baseball question, Jared. Thank you. It varies. I would say generally I post them as soon as they're ready. The exceptions would be if it's something that I think needs another set of eyes, in which case I'll ask maybe Dan to look at it before I post it for a longer piece. Or if it's outside of what I consider good posting time.

So if I finish it and it's sort of like, this doesn't even happen as much. Generally, I just post it. Sometimes I'll say, well, you know, I wrote this and it's late in the day and there's no reason to post it now that it's evening and nobody's paying attention anywhere to the east of me and I'll schedule it for the morning. But generally I just think, well, why don't I just post it now? And then it shows up in everybody's feeds in the morning, you know, when they get up in the morning anyway. It used to be at IDG, we targeted a lot of stuff for the peak traffic time, which was I think 11 a.m. Pacific to Eastern, which is when every day when traffic peaked. And I don't know why that that was the time, but I guess it was the time when we had the most people around the world that were reading. And anyway, it was like, let's catch the most traffic there.

I'm not really playing that game at Six Colors and I never really have. So I generally just auto post stuff. The other thing would be if there were like already a couple of things that had just gone up on the site, I might push it back an hour or two or even to the next day, figuring I don't need to do two posts in one day.

I can do this next post the next day or something like don't need to do two posts in one day i can i can do this next post the next day or something like that but it's pretty rare generally when it goes up it's not that i've i've written it right then necessarily but i finished it right then and then i just press post right that's generally how i do it i need that instant gratification for podcasts i pretty much with very rare exceptions just post them as soon as they're done right so like as soon as i'm edited it goes up i think the only podcast that i may be it's slightly different is maybe cortex because the editing is different where like i edit and then i pass out of a degree and he edits and we just choose the day that we're

going to publish it on, which is not normal, but it's because it's a very different way of doing things. And then I kind of try and publish them somewhere between 12 and 3 my time because it kind of hits a lot of time zones. Yeah, and for me, I have a bunch of podcasts that are uh have a very specific release day and time and those obviously those get i'm not you know working up to the moment and then posting them live those all get scheduled in advance so robot robot or not is scheduled in advance and total party kill and incomparable game show and all that's scheduled in advance

but incomparable unless i unless i work on it well in advance which is which sometimes happens where i get somebody else to edit it for me or i edit it in advance but if i'm doing if it's like saturday or sunday and i'm just editing the that week's episode and posting it i just post it when when i'm done there's no there's no deadline day to hit there but we just did come out of a period in the holiday period where a lot of us were doing things in advance in order to clear out some time in our schedules to not be working on podcasts. And that's another case where I delight in going into the Incomparable CMS and seeing all the stuff that's been queued up in advance just because it's kind of fun. It's like,

look at all those episodes that are all ready to go but um but generally especially for articles but generally it's sort of like well i did it now here it is there's no holding bin or anything like that tony did remind me in the chat room that i've always done this with analog as well we publish analogs on sundays but our edit a gym always does them way before but i just always publish a show on sundays so that's just one that i'll just do but i don't say i'm not i don't i think i spoke about this before like you just mentioned with the incorporal cms you have in six color cms we have a timed posting mechanism so you can say like hey post at this time i never do it i never i never i never use it i like to do it myself or let's just press i button. I use that for all of the 20 Max for 2020 and double because there were two versions of them

for member and non-member. And so I did use that feature. And there's always a little bit of like, is this really going to work? Because the way it's worded is you set the status to published, but it's in the future. And you're like,

is this really going to publish it or just publish it in the future? And it publishes it in the future. It works. It's a perfectly good thing. I did it 40 times it works fine um but i did use that feature and that was that was kind of fun again it was fun to to be like the previous week like yeah it's early on in the process it was sort of like i got three episodes loaded up i could walk away it was great thank you so much to jared for that great question if you would like to send in a question to help us start the show,

you can just send a tweet with the hashtag Snell talk or use question mark Snell talk in the relay FM members discord, and you can help us open an episode of the show. You mentioned 20 max of 2020. I just wanted to follow up that it is now done 20 max of 2020. It was Jason's wonderful series, which has taken like 22, 23 weeks to complete,

because I think you took a couple of weeks off over holidays, right? So you have... Yeah, I had two weeks to give, so we broke between 11 and 10, and between 6 and 5, yeah. A list of 20 notable Macintosh computers. There'll be a link in the show notes to the podcast version

of it, which you can also... And there's also articles and videos and that kind of stuff that are linked from that page as well if you haven't checked it out it's very worth checking out it's a great series and congratulations for having completed it jason you got there you did it it's nice to be done and now it now begins the process of like what do i do with all that time? How about nothing for a while? Like, just relax. Well, not a big project, but, you know, I get some time back that I kind of lost once we got into the teeth of it. And it became basically every week it got a little bit more intense until the last four or five weeks. It was most of what I did during the week was just getting the next week done. So I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pick up another project and announce it this week or something like that.

That's not going to happen. But I do have this time back that I have to decide how to spend. And that's part of being an independent kind of worker is you have to figure out where to spend your time. And it's one of the reasons I did all those charts at the beginning of last year is I just decided I wanted a little bit of structure. And so I said, I'm going to do a little chart post every Friday. And I did that up until the, uh, 20 max project kind of launched. And then I, I didn't do it anymore because I was busy.

So I I'm, that's my next thing. I'm going to probably write a final, like what was on the cutting room floor kind of piece to wrap it up this week. Yeah. Because I feel like I've got a bunch of other kind of loose ends that I can, I can tie up. And there's one other followup.

Somebody made a very interesting point on Twitter about the contents of my list that I'm not going to, I'm not going to relay here other than to say that I think that there's probably a piece to be written about that in specific that might be separate. But the podcast project is, is finished. Although, as I that might be separate. But the podcast project is finished. Although, as I say at the end of the podcast project, the lesson we've all learned, which is keep podcasts you listen to, keep their feeds in your podcast player, because sometimes they come back. And if I do another project like this, again, I'll just stick it in that same feed.

So you can keep it there, kicking around. And I did do a lot of interviews i'm not sure those interviews are releasable but i'll consider that too there might be bonuses and stuff down the road so but it's a fun project i hope people enjoy it in whatever form they enjoyed it video or audio or or written word i want to thank everybody who sent us in great messages about the upgrade is last week i just wanted to mention in case you hadn't checked it out, Upgradies.com has been updated with all of the winners. I could imagine a lot of people wouldn't have gone to the website because you don't want to get spoiled.

But if you want to see the Hall of Fame and every single winner of all of the Upgradies awards, you can go to Upgradies.com. And thank you to Zach Knox for the work that Zach did and helped him put that together. So I have some headlines for you in Upstream. Upstream is where we take a look at what's going on in the world of streaming media and how it intersects with technology companies today.

Warner Brothers, Jason, have announced that they are planning six new DC Universe movies a year starting in 2022. I think Warner Brothers got the memo. Four of these movies are planned to be in theaters two will be exclusive to hbo max they are also working on tv spinoffs of uh their properties for hbo max uh from the movies it's a little different so one of the things that i find fascinating here is where marvel has succeeded where dc has succeeded because the dc superhero stuff has actually been quite successful on television on especially you know on commercial television in the u.s on the the the cw network primarily which is a joint venture of

cbs and warner brothers so it makes sense that warner brothers would have their characters there and they had arrow which is now off the air, but they had Arrow, which ran for like seven years or something. And The Flash. And they have a whole bunch of other Black Lightning and Stargirl. And there's a whole bunch of DC heroes that have been very successful. There's a Superman show coming. There's Supergirl.

Like, there's lots and lots of DC TV shows. Is Gotham one of those? Gotham was on Fox actually, but yes. And they did Pennyworth, which was about the early days of Alfred the Butler when he worked in the secret service and military in the UK. And that was a Starz series. So they've had a bunch of TV projects. Some of them directly connected, the ones produced by Greg Berlanti and airing on the CW, and a bunch of other ones, kind of, some of them directly connected, the ones produced by Greg

Berlanti and airing on the CW, and a bunch of other ones that are sort of around. So that's a way where they've been very successful, and Marvel's kind of not. Like, Marvel's tried a bunch of stuff, and they had their whole TV thing, which they've now folded, where they were producing stuff for Netflix and also for cable and stuff like that. What's interesting is then that Marvel has, what we're about to see this month is going to be when it starts. We're going to see the WandaVision series, which is the first TV series to be done by Marvel Studios.

So that's the movie people did not do the previous series, but are doing the forthcoming series on Disney+. That's all from the same group, Kevin Feige's group, that does all the Marvel movies that everybody loves, not the separate TV group. So that's an interesting challenge from Marvel that I'd say is similar to the Star Wars challenge, which is can they successfully kind of add this Disney Plus streaming series product line?

Because while there have been Marvel shows before, they were not generally that successful. And those people aren't making shows for them anymore. It's now back in the hands of the money people, the people who generated all those expensive and popular movies. DC's challenge is very different, where they've got the successful TV shows. So this announcement is more focused on movies, even though two two of them are going to be direct to streaming movies, which is kind of an interesting idea. And then the way they framed it is they're going to do TV spinoffs, like you said,

from the movies that they're generating. So like they're viewing this six movies a year thing as, which is a lot, a lot of movies as, as, as film releases, you know, that will also spin off series. And I have some questions.

One of my questions is, are these two non-theatrical HBO Max Direct DC movies, are they movies? Are they pilots? Are like tv specials like yeah well that's what i'm saying is i mean who's gonna be in them but but is it gonna be like we want because they've suggested it's gonna be like well let's look at every movie we make we're gonna look at the the ancillary characters and decide if there's a tv show to be made about them which is a weird decision to make but i get what they're i get what they're saying there. But I do wonder if these two HBO Max movies that they're talking about, are they really movies? Is it more like a pilot for a series? Do they get to the point where they're making them and then realize that they've got a cut that's four hours long and that they'd

be better off releasing it as a two-part, three-part, four-part series on HBO Max rather than as a movie. I think there's some stuff to watch here about exactly what the right thing is, what people want to see. Because I'm curious. Honestly, I'm really curious. Do they get the most bang out of their buck to make an HBO Max original movie that's two hours long and say, this month, this new movie is out. It features this DC Comics character. Yay. Or would they be better off spending that same amount of money and doing a six-hour miniseries featuring that character and say, for the next six weeks,

this new series on HBO Max about this character. And I don't know. I don't know whether people feel overwhelmed by TV series, streaming TV series, and are like, just give me two hours and let me walk away. Maybe they do. So I'm fascinated because, again, Marvel and DC, essentially in the same business, have had very different fortunes with different kinds of content. And it's one of those rare cases where if you're just kind of interested in the creative and business aspects of the entertainment industry, it's really interesting to compare and contrast what their strategies are.

And there are a lot of unanswered questions about how people are going to want to subscribe to services and watch original content in the future. So I'm fascinated. Ultimately, obviously, everybody at Warner wants the DC stuff to be as successful as the Marvel stuff because it hasn't been, at least in the film, in the net amount of money that they make, Marvel has made a lot and DC has not. Especially critically as well. Not even just the money. Because some of the stuff they've done has done really well. But critically, most of their movies have actually not done well since they've been trying to turn it into a thing.

Right. Really, the original Wonder Woman. And then you could argue that there have been a couple others that have also been well received. Yeah, I've actually heard some great things about the harley quinn movie monty ashley recommended it on the incomparables year in review show which we just put out which is really funny and you should listen to it is that the birds of prey one yeah yeah that's it that's it the birds of prey and i've seen it on some 10 best lists for movie critics too for for 2020 so um they they have some but it's not been like the marvel stuff where it's just like set

them up and knock them down every single one is profitable and and generally well thought of and um so yeah anyway they're they're they have a new plan yeah one one quirk is that uh warner brothers are not going to have one timeline like marvel does so right they may create different shows and movies in different timelines from each other right so they've got like they've got a movie in production with robert pattinson as the batman and a movie in production that will have as a as a supporting character ben affleck as batman yeah so uh but but that's interesting except marvel's next set of movies is all about embracing the multiverse so marvel's basically doing the same thing which is yeah yeah it's a lot easier if we can have parallel universes and we can tell different stories without having them

all linked apparently so it's like yeah i don't actually i don't want to spoil it but in case people don't know right like for media blackout and all that but yes and also marvel have that what if series right which is entirely just speculative that's an animated series it's entirely speculative too but you know i think the key is like even though marvel are starting to experiment in that space now um they have up until this point you know everything's been interconnected right and the way they're doing it is they're they're actually doing movies and tv series that sort of like push into this multiverse concept yeah um and really you could argue that the time travel in uh avengers endgame is what broke the seal on that for marvel and that's still

acknowledging even that they're connected right if you do the multiverse thing but that's that doesn't seem to be what one is doing it seems like it's not maybe they will at some point acknowledge some of that if it suits them but more they're like with joker they're just feeling free to tell stories and i gotta say i prefer that approach um there is a there's a great deal of benefit to doing what Marvel did and rolling everything together, but I think creatively you shouldn't not make a movie because it doesn't line up with your other movies. There's advantage in lining up all your movies and connecting them together, and Marvel has shown that. There's a lot of advantage in that.

It doesn't mean it's the only way. I wouldn't shy away from making that super weird Batman movie just because you can't figure out how it connects to the rest of the universe. Because if it's a great movie, you should make it. And I think that was the argument that they made about Joker, was that this is a movie that we want to make and it's going to be great. And I haven't seen it, so I don't know. But it was not connected to anything, and that was fine.

Yeah, I would suggest that maybe Disney should look into that approach for Star Wars different different timelines it's a galaxy well I think some of the Star Wars stuff that's coming up seems to not be set in the same time as the Mandalorian

but this has been the argument for a long time I think when people look at Star Wars is you have a whole galaxy and apparently thousands of years of history. So not everything needs to take place in the same 15 years with the same set of interrelated characters. Yeah.

That's kind of more what I mean, right? It's just like you have this infinite span, but everybody bumps into each other. They're apparently developing, apologies for the Star Wars nerdery, I'm not the person to be doing this each other they're apparently developing apologies for the star wars nerdery i'm not the person to be doing this but they're apparently developing a uh high republic series which is like basically the like a thousand years before the star wars movies back when the it was still a galaxy with lots of good and bad people in it but the center think think

star trek actually it was more like a center force that was mostly positive that was the the republic and then stories in that world and star wars has the freedom to do that it would be nice to see them explore that as well the you know tell some different stories not everything needs to be the same 20 people who are all interrelated in every single thing amazon has bought the podcast network and production company Wondery. The deal is suggested to total $300 million. Wondery will technically now be a part of Amazon Music, which there is a podcast offering for Amazon Music, kind of reminiscent of how Google started when Google Podcasts was originally part of Google Play Music,

or Spotify, right? That's what Spotify's doing. Silly me, that's a better example. This is different to Audible's podcast offering because why not, right? Yeah, sure. They have different offerings. Amazon has said that Wondery shows will be available through, quote, a variety of providers, but they hope this acquisition will, quote, accelerate the growth and evolution of podcasts

by bringing creators, hosts, and immersive experiences to even more listeners across the globe. I wanted to include that because it's like the most ridiculous quote. It's like it doesn't, this acquisition doesn't do that. You're not bringing Wondery shows to more people. Now it's a part of Amazon. Like it already had all the people, right? Wondery shows were the top of all the charts. We have access to Amazon's little known and little used podcasts.

And maybe they mean like Amazon Echoes. I don't know. There's corporate, there's synergy. Yeah, I guess. But you could listen to all these shows through various Echo skills anyway. No, you don't understand, Mike. This is providing some synergy where we're getting the leveraged innovation of Amazon is combined with the immersive expansiveness of Wondery into a leveraged expansiveness. This was going to happen.

Wondery has been rumored to be shopping itself around for a while. The founder is leaving. Hernan Lopez is leaving, which is intriguing. It's not typically what you see in situations like this, but that was reported by, I think, the Wall Street Journal. There is a whole separate story of Lopez being incriminated

in some FIFA allegations of, is it bribery or match-fixing or something? Which is like a whole other thing which is going on on the side, which is a really weird story, which Wondery could probably make an interesting show about at some point because that's the kind of shows they make.

Wondery is intriguing because they've been selling the rights to their properties to companies to make TV shows about them. So I know Apple's bought a couple. So there is a hashtag synergy in this because Amazon could take the rights to all the popular shows and, as you say, put them on Prime Video. Yeah, you could argue that maybe

this is a $300, cheap $300 investment in... 300 million. Oh, sorry. I would buy it for $300. $300 is available. Oh, man. It's a cheap 300 million dollar investment in uh development for amazon prime video except this is the except part except technically it's

part of amazon music and i have one of those thoughts which is are they going to get i think jen salky is the executive who's in charge of Prime Video. If I were in her shoes, I would say I want to be connected to what they're developing, right? Because yes, you would start to think that a lot of this stuff would be essentially developing shows for Amazon Prime Video, but I don't know. I don't know how Amazon's structured. Maybe they don't view it that way. And they're like, no, it's totally independent and we'll see who wants our shows prime video uh i don't know it's fascinating but you know i i this is a it's a big price but wandering are very they are genuinely very successful so you know if they launch a show it goes to number one like any

show that they launch goes to number one um it's a lot of shows about murder uh which i'm not super into yeah i was gonna say it's there's a there's the show where a cop murders people there's a show where a cop gets murdered there's a show where a cop investigates a doctor who murders people there's a show about a cop who investigates a doctor who gets murdered there's a show about a doctor who investigates a cop okay okay okay my theory is actually that they may have struggled through the pandemic there was a lot of data that suggested uh from the industry places that i was looking at that showed that um listenership of these types of shows went down which makes sense this is all very dark and dreary plus they these are the

most mainstream shows and more mainstream type offerings we're actually seeing uh reductions in listenership due to uh commute differences and stuff i would like to thank technology podcast audiences for not changing their habits you're the best and that's why we love you the best it was kind of funny so like i subscribed to one industry thing and it would show charts right of all the different categories that they were tracking and technology just continued if anything it went up it's like you know technology podcast listeners love their podcasts right that and other types of shows are more like i will listen to this because sports saw the biggest drop by the way because there were no sports so So that was

rough. But anyway, it's an interesting deal. Someone was going to pick them up, and I guess it was just highest bidder. Like the rumor was Apple was looking at them. Spotify surely were as well, but it ended up being Amazon. According to the Wall Street Journal, Roku is looking to buy all of

Quibi's content. Yay! Why not, right? the funny thing about this deal is if it if it does go through they'll get the rights which is different so like they will just own it it's not licensing but it makes sense because there is no more quibi so right they'll have all this content there might be some ip in there i think i saw a quote from someone suggesting that like this stuff might be more interesting if it's free i'm like yeah okay maybe people will check it out i don't know we can watch the golden arm thing i my thought about it was always that there's a bunch of content out there that was professionally produced that a lot of people didn't see because it was on quibi

yeah and therefore surely it has some value right? It's not going to just vanish forever. Surely it has some value and somebody will pay enough. I mean, somebody's got to buy it. Presumably they've got creditors and stuff. Like somebody's going to buy it. So if it's Roku, then so be it. But that stuff will get out there

and we'll all get to see that, you know, the horror show about the different states of like the first whatever 10 states u.s states but not the rest star which is uh disney plus's hulu etc is launching on february the 23rd in the uk i got an email about it while i was writing upstream today um they explicitly mentioned parental controls in this email, which I thought was really funny because it's stuff like Family Guy, 24,

all that kind of stuff. So it's not just stuff that Fox made. It's also stuff that was on Hulu as well. So I'm intrigued to see what the full content offering will be, but it's coming on February 23rd in the UK. I don't know about elsewhere, but this is just what I received in my inbox today.

Yeah, no, it's good. You're going to get a chance to see. There's a lot of stuff that is not widely available because it's in this separate stream. There are originals. Stuff that came from Fox. Yeah, oh yeah. That I otherwise wouldn't have gotten.

So I'm excited to checking out what's available. Yeah, report back on that to Upstream. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move for Squarespace because they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project. It's a new year. I'm sure everybody is bubbling with ideas

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build your entire website. And then when you want to launch it to the world, their plans start at just $12 a month. So go and check it out today and use the offer code upgrade at checkout and you will get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show. That is squarespace.com slash upgrade and the code upgrade for 10% of your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So it is a new year and you do a thing like many people do and you make predictions you write macworld columns every year where i just saw you publish these you had your 2021 predictions but also you published

an article which i really appreciate that you do this where you grade yourself for your predictions it's true and let me let me give you a little peek behind the curtain there which is when you write i write uh 40 mac world columns a year so that's 40 unique takes on what's going on in the apple world for a thousand words ish almost every week i skip one week a month and i've been doing this now mike guess what i've been doing this for almost six years yep that mac world column is coming up six years um in a couple months so when you get an idea for something you can repeat every year and it takes three columns to do it all you you do it you grab hold of that because that's three column ideas i don't

have to have and so it's it's the iphone and ipad predictions the mac predictions and then uh grading my previous year predictions which is only fair it's kind of fun to see what i got right and what i got wrong um and my predictions are mixed in with wish casting i'm not i'm you know and knowing what the rumors say, it's not, you know, necessarily the fairest kind of set of predictions because it's a combination of, you know, what I would expect as an observer, what we know from the rumor mill, and also what I kind of like, what I want to see.

And it's all kind of swirled in there together. And again, you know, it's nice and calm, gentlemanly. There's no random point scoring assigned. But I wanted to go through- It's very much in the spirit of upgrade. Because I think it's fun to look back on where we thought we were going to be. And it was very fun to me to read through.

I actually ended up going through and reading the old prediction articles instead of just reading your grading because I wanted to make sure there weren't any real clunkers that you didn't... Make sure that I didn't steer away from the ones that were really bad. Yeah, sure. That's smart. I linked to them all. Readers can always check up on me.

In fact, you can keep clicking back and you'll eventually get to the beginning of time when I did my first prediction about the universe. So in the Mac column, new laptop keyboards or more Macs to the beginning of time when I did my first prediction about the universe. So in the Mac column, new laptop keyboards or more Macs was something that you predicted at the beginning of 2020, and you were definitely right there. Yeah, although I expressed some skepticism. I was despairing about the MacBook Air. I thought Apple cared so little about the MacBook Air that it might not even bother

updating the keyboard on that one. Because a year ago, there was a real question about whether Apple felt it had fixed the problem with the butterfly keyboard and that it might reserve the Magic Keyboard for the Pro models, which turned out to be not true. Which I guess now in hindsight, they didn't think it fixed it. It was a temporary fix while they immediately replaced all of the keyboards in all the models. So the MacBook Air, well, I mean, I really missed on the MacBook Air because I was despairing

that the MacBook Air would get much of Apple's attention. And instead, not only did it get the keyboard, but it got updated twice in 2020. Two significant updates in 2020. I think it got more than that. I think there might've been two versions of the fixed keyboard

one i think they did another but like yeah you were like oh the macbook air is dead and then they did they not only changed the keyboard over and basically created a new version of the product with the retina screen yeah they then made it one of the best macs ever made at the end of the year so i i just i figured that since in in 2018 they did the retina macbook air i figured that they would think well it's good enough now we can sort of leave it here for a little while until the arm transition maybe um but they didn't they updated it with that new keyboard right away what am i thinking of then didn't they make a new version of the product it's was that in 2018 am i conflating with something the product itself? Was that in 2018?

Am I conflating it with something else? The Retina version was in 2018, and then they speed bumped that in 19, and then they did another one in 20. Yes, which had the new keyboard and other stuff. And then they did the M1. So there was a lot more than you would think from the Air. So I missed on that. I mentioned it as a strong possibility

that the Air would get the new keyboard, but you can see it in my article. I just sort of despair about it. I'm like, I don't know. I think this is too much wish casting, too much wishful thinking that they would clear that keyboard out. I just really felt like Apple was going to continue inflicting that keyboard on us for more time. Because keep in mind, that was where they had announced a laptop with a good keyboard and all other laptops still had the bad keyboard. And we were all sort of saying, well, why did you do that? Why did you just do the one?

But early on in 2020, they swept away the other ones. One prediction that you made, which looking back, I'm so surprised that you made it. looking back like i'm so surprised that you made it you were right but i don't think many people were agree would have agreed with you at the beginning of 2020 that there would not be a 14 inch macbook pro in 2020 like there was a 16 inch in 2019 i was really one i'm surprised that apple didn't do this still and i i am surprised that you made that prediction that was bold yeah i don't even know what i was thinking then honestly i yeah i don't even know what i was thinking then honestly i don't i don't know what i was thinking because all of the stars aligned to suggest right that that was going to happen right the 16 inch had been updated they hadn't touched

the 13 it seemed like it was obvious that they were going to do it but they didn't i feel like this is um this it's a combination of things here one is a like it's like a version of my argument about apple pricing where you know you you take a take the price you want it to be and then increase it and then round it up and that's the actual apple price i feel like a little bit like that like if you expect apple to do everything you're going to be disappointed because they aren't going to do everything and the fact that they they did the 16 but didn't change the 13 i thought maybe sent a little bit of a message and then also my rationale there was also the big laptop getting bigger makes more sense than the small laptop getting bigger um and we may yet see that for i think i may have predicted it the 14 inch coming now that

we've got the the macbook air where it is the 14 inch pro could be coming but part of my rationale there was that if you look at the ipad pro they didn't you know they they they they did different things for the different models based on their size and they made you know they reduced the bezels on the big one i don't know so so i put all that in the blender and i just thought they're going to disappoint us about a 14 inch macbook pro and i was right so some of it is just you know you get you you get a feeling and you get a little lucky there's always there's always going to be a product that everybody anticipates that Apple doesn't actually ship.

Right. And I felt like the, that 14 inch MacBook pro was prime for being the disappointment. And it turned out it was, I, I did get that one. Well, you were disappointed in the inverse with your prediction of a new iMac

design. Yeah. Well, this is like, like the arm transition, something that I have predicted multiple years in a row and it hasn't happened yet. And the lesson there is just keep on predicting it. And there was a quite robust new iMac.

But there was not a new iMac design. But not a new design. And the new iMac design, like you and I talked about a new iMac design like in 19. I mean, I was right here with you, Jason. This is like the thing that i would also continue to predict every year forever because it seems so obvious because it's that design has been there so long yeah and it feels like it's so obvious that they would do it and you know we may yet get that new imac design but not in 2020 that didn't happen uh more stable mac os focused on improving existing features well i think this was the again i think

everyone would agree with you but i think this was the biggest at least in this uh column miss right because if there was one thing mac os was not this year it was just a hey we're gonna fix him existing so like issues i'm gonna split the difference here and say i actually stand by my opinion that uh that i mentioned in my review of big sir which is catalina was the bad cop big sir is the good cop yep big sir broke a lot less than catalina did yeah big Sur has some changes in it. It had some issues, but like I hear people talking about going to Big Sur. People were talking about not upgrading to Catalina for a very long time.

So in that way, I would say, and I also think this summer's beta period was a lot less traumatic than the beta period was in 19. I think the 20 beta period was better that said even though i think technically it was less weird they had this whole other layer on top of it which this incredibly ambitious redesign of the operating system and i certainly didn't see that coming yeah i mean no nobody did right like no one was oh yeah they're gonna completely re-upholded the design uh and and that's gonna be that anyway um you did reference catalyst a bit uh you suggested there would be

improvements to catalyst which is definitely a case that That was a tough one. But you said that there'd be no improvements to Apple's Catalyst apps. And I just wonder what you think about that. Because I think there were some, and they did brand new ones. That's the big one to me, is not that there were dramatic improvements. They did fix the data input on the Home app and stuff. But the messages being the best example and maps like they they they got catalyst better enough that the new catalyst apps they did are i would say mac class in a way that the previous catalyst apps weren't yeah i again i will reference this we've had

people i've had people try and tell me uh all of the things that was bad about messages on big sir i think after i mentioned this on last week's episode, I still stand by, we both spoke about it, but I still stand by the points that we made, which is I don't think you could tell most of the time. What we did not say last week is that messages on Big Sur is flawless. But, and I stand by this, it is vastly superior to what we had on catalina yes that old

messages app that didn't support all these features and was super buggy and bad like do not do not try to sell me that messages on catalina was some refined app that was part of the golden age of the mac and now it's been thrown in the bin and we get this lousy version no the old version of messages was bad and they didn't fix it for years for a long time it wasn't just i cannot tell you how many times i typed a message to the wrong person because i clicked on a person began to type and it just changed to another tab. Like, so bad. And although messages on Big Sur is not

perfect by any stretch of the imagination, is it better than what we had on Catalina? Yeah. Yeah. It is. By a lot. And obviously you made the prediction that you would be making forever and finally you got it. The arm transition would begin. Yeah, that's right. You keep it... If something's inevitable and you keep predicting it uh the arm transition yeah that's right you keep it if

if something's inevitable and you keep predicting it eventually you'll be right but but in your predictions article you reference a lot a low-end laptop yeah which never exists which didn't exist but again well we were talking about this low-end laptop until like a week before they announced it okay so i i'm gonna push back a little bit because low-end laptop and not specifying i think meant i was open to the 12-inch macbook but it was possible it was the macbook air it turns out they also did the macbook pro and a mac mini so okay but like we were talking about the return we i think it was a pick in the draft for that event was that they would bring back the MacBook. Sure. Like it was definitely something we thought was going to be the case.

But part of the prediction game is being vague enough that you can get a lot of possibilities and accrue them to you. And I think the idea there was that ARM processors are really good in laptops, especially if you can't ramp them up in terms of the processor power, you can start on the low end. ramp them up in terms of the processor power you can start on the low end and so i would argue that the the macbook air choice the m1 macbook air qualifies because it's apple's low-end laptop however they also did a macbook pro so yeah yeah and i i personally still think it's possible that something could occupy the macbook space again i i don't i don't think i do too it's gone forever i do too there are a lot of people who are very quick to to say that apple's never going to do never going to bring back the 12-inch macbook i would i i think there's still a possibility like why not why not do apple is so obsessed with thin and light laptops and although the macbook air is beloved um we know that you can make a thinner, lighter laptop because we've seen the 12-inch MacBook. And imagine an M1 12-inch MacBook, for Pete's sake.

That would be great. And they already have the design, more or less. They've got to just fix the keyboard. So, I don't know. I think it's still possible. It may not happen, but I think it's still possible. So, your iPhone, iPad picks. You said that the iPhones would not be exciting and there would be no redesign and i just wonder what you think about that because

redesign means many things so do you feel like what what they did is more than you were expecting from yes absolutely i thought that this would be a uh i thought 2020 would be a year where they would just let it ride and push the pace of of change on the iPhone was so great where they put in the X and then they experimented with the XR. And then they were doing all this stuff. And I thought they would bypass this year in terms of making it a visual refresh because they were making so many models. The rumors were already out at that point that they would be making multiple models. So I,

I didn't think that they could do that and do a complete refresh at the same time and totally missed it because they absolutely did. And I'm glad they did, but yeah, I got that one completely wrong. So while you did accurately predict that there would be an iphone se with new internals in the case of the eight you thought that that meant there would be no small iphone new small iphone alas they did five phones in one year go figure that and you did think they would

phones in one year and four of them have a completely new well recycled from the five but completely new design on the exterior like in a pandemic which i didn't know about when i wrote that it's just i mean if you did that would have been really mean that would be a heck of a prediction it is a i think a testament to just how impressive apple's iphone machinery is. Yeah. That they did five new iPhones, did a refreshed visual design, and did it in the circumstances that we were in in 2020.

Yeah, obviously I've been, like all of us, reflecting on the year a lot. I've been doing a lot of stuff that looks back on the year. I think we will in history, like further down the line, look back at 2020

as one of Apple's best years in history because take the pandemic away they had an amazing year product wise right the iphones they did five of them i think they're really great they've definitely made a lot of people feel happy stuff in the middle is like an s year or whatever but then everything we saw about the m1 max right and how that's potentially going to change the future of computing again because of an S year or whatever. But then everything we saw about the M1 Max, right, and how that's potentially going to change the future of computing again because of the capabilities there. But then when you add the pandemic in and they managed to do all of it,

it's kind of astounding, really, what they managed to pull off. The iPhone line you predicted would be the 12 to 12 Max, the 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max. Yeah. Yeah, so I thought that they would take on the cheaper side they would they would make a big a big phone and a small phone yeah like where the small phone is the same size like right like just like the top of the line i thought they would just do pro you know pro and pro max and 12 and 12 max yeah and that's not what happened yeah so there was no 12 max that's

the product that's missing right which is a bigger iphone 12 which is the same size as the iphone 12 pro max shows you there's more room for more iphones in the future too because i think that they could make a lower cost two camera you know kind of like the iphone 11 um bigger model um and have that in their product line too and they just don't yeah because i mean i do it is weird that like if you want a bigger phone you have to get the most expensive phone and that doesn't necessarily track it doesn't have to be that one um and you predicted that the phones would start at 649 which they kind of do kind of i mean i i got that i didn't know that the Mini would be what

it was, but I did figure there'd be some aggressiveness in price. It's in the ballpark. On the iPad, you predicted a smart keyboard with more traditional keys and cursor support, so bravo to you, I guess.

Let me tell you, that was a real wish-casting kind of choice. It's like, I really want this to happen, but it totally happened. It felt obvious to me and you, right, as Bridge keyboard users. Yes. But the rumor that came out about this product, so the information had a report about it, that came out like two or three weeks before the Magic Keyboard for iPad came out. So there was only a rumor of this product for a very short period of time yep and but you you called it earlier than everyone because

it was something that we both desperately wanted to exist i'll i'll take the win on this i think um i think so they added the accessibility cursor support in 2019, right? So that's out there. And we're thinking, oh, 2020, fall 2020, we'll get a cursor maybe. And that's the part that I didn't predict correctly because it happened in the spring. They did it midstream as part of the iOS 13 development cycle. Blah. So I missed that one a little bit,

but I'm going to take the win that we got the product that was kind of my wishcasting product. It actually came true. We did not get an SD card slot on an iPad Pro, though. No, we didn't get that. On iOS and iPadOS,

you suggested slowdown for stability, upgrades to shortcuts, improvements to Safari. I just mailed that one in, didn't I? I mean, aren't there always? But the things that they did do were not on the face of it huge. Yeah, no. Right. I think that's true.

I think that's true. And I think after the tumultuous summer of 19 that the iOS development in the summer of 20 was a little bit calmer too. But I didn't have a lot of big predictions to make there. I find that predicting iOS or really OS features in general very hard because the truth is, yeah, we've left the era where there are obvious gaping holes in the feature set so it ends up being a menu of a thousand different things that they could do and they pick 40 or 20 or whatever they pick and they literally how do you predict that because that's entirely based on the whims of the people at apple to decide what they think would make a great feature or dovetails with some hardware. So I find it very hard to predict some of the specific stuff where they're like, oh, this time we're going to do, finally, we're going to do multi-user FaceTime, right? When they did that. And I was like, okay, you could have done that literally at any point in the last eight years, but I guess it's the year now.

Like, very hard to predict that kind of stuff. Yeah. But I would say you did pretty well, Jason. You brought yourself there, I think. I think I did okay. It was better than I thought. That smart keyboard with real keys and stuff. That one was a dream come true.

But yeah, it's okay. And again, finally, the ARM transition. You pick it long enough, eventually it'll be true. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by TextExpander from our great friends over at Smile. Get ahead of your productivity for the new year with the power of TextExpander. TextExpander removes the repetition out of work so you can focus on what matters most to you. You can say goodbye to repetitive text entry, to spelling and message

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first year. Go to textexpander.com slash podcast to learn more about TextExpander today. Go there now, you won't regret it. Our thanks to to text expander from smile for their support of this show and relay fm so you also made a selection of predictions for 2021 and i've broke down and pulled out a couple of those from your articles and we'll start with the mac and you're doubling down on new imac here it comes again why not i, it's a new year. Yeah, new year, new, same old prediction. If not now, then when, I guess. There are rumors to suggest this actually might

happen this time, but I just will reference everything that I've previously said on this subject over the entire run of Upgrade, which is the iMac design has not appreciably changed in a very long time. We're coming up on a decade.

And really, if you think about it, it's since 2007, but then it got a little bit thinner a few years later. But really, it is done looking face-on right at the screen. Very little has changed in all of this time. And then they released a whole new product based on it that except for the color also looks exactly the same yeah i'm like pro exactly so i feel like if you look at like the the bezels are a good example like think about the macbook air and like the macbook air had those huge bezels and like modern computers we have done a lot to shrink

the display technology allows us to shrink the bezels to make a smaller, either a bigger screen in the same space or a smaller space outside the screen. And so the whole device just contracts a little bit. That's what a modern computer looks like. The iMac has this enormous bezel and then the enormous chin below it. I like the size of an Apple watch. They're massive. Exactly. Every TV that I own has a tiny bezel now.

So it seems clear to me that Apple needs to refresh the iMac. It is literally based on design decisions made in the early 2010s. So it's got, if not now, then when? And the rumors about a new design of a new M1 or at least Apple Silicon iMac make me see this scenario, which is they're going to get rid of the smaller, the 21.5 inch iMac, and they're going to replace it with something that's got a larger display, but also with the shrunken end bezels. Maybe they're going to replace it with something that's got a larger display but also with the shrunken in bezels maybe they're going to do the other things that they could do in that design

like upgrade the camera could we maybe see a face id kind of thing at that face id i would love and they should do because you're never going to get touch id on an imac it's too weird so i hope that they do face id they really should but they cannot be let off if they do not upgrade the cameras in all of their new designs now like no there's no way out of this now you barely got away with it with the laptops their only excuse with the other ones is that it's literally the same design but if you're going to design a new imac that's going to take you through the 2020s i think it's got to have that sensor stack from ios on it right with that does face id it's got it's got to have that why would you not do that a much better

forward-facing camera and sensors so you can do face id you've got the your whole apple silicon technology there you roll in a mac os update that supports face id like it makes so much sense to do that um and then you know there are lots of rumors about display technology improving it'll be interesting to see how they approach cooling since they're going to have apple silicon and so therefore their cooling needs are probably less than uh than they were under intel and what does that mean um and then i guess the other prediction there is that although i i think the easiest bet is that it's going to be familiar in some other ways, it's still going to be on a foot and sit on a desk, that I would hope that they would consider some other approaches, including the famous Microsoft Surface Studio kind of thing where you might have a- That's supposing there's a touchscreen.

Not necessarily, because it could be Apple Pen pencil and no touch that's actually a possibility oh yeah they would allow apple pencil support but not a conventional touch and they would pitch it as being this thing that is really about like for artists and all of that whether that's in a different iMac or they don't bother to do that or whether there's maybe maybe it's going to be like the pro display XDR and there's like the standard stand and then there's like the special stand that does pivoting and things like that i don't know it makes sense i have a hard time i mean i think officially my prediction is that they're not going to do that and they're just going to do it you know they'll change things about the imac but they'll still be sitting on a on a foot on a desk uh because although i think i would because i would really

love for them to do something more radical apple uh generally doesn't do more radical it's not they're they're they apple has a profound conservatism in their product design especially on the mac you also predict that the imac pro is no more i think we've been talking about this for a while but i think it's a good one to just put the stake in the ground for that was a one and done yeah i mean they could what we said was it's a marketing decision they could they could say that there's an imac pro or a pro model of the imac they could do that yeah but in the end they the the distinction of the imac pro was it had xeon processors it was going to be the replacement for the mac pro which is no longer going to be replaced and that they'd be better off just waiting and doing high-end iMacs with more power and making

those available, and you can just call them iMacs. You don't need to call them iMac Pro. If they wanted to, they could take the lower-level iMac and call it iMac and then bring out a big iMac and call it iMac Pro, and then they wouldn't have to use the size of the display to differentiate them. And if they wanted to do that, they could. But again, that's a marketing decision. I don't think it changes the computer at all. And I don't think there's going to be a third completely discrete iMac with completely different internals that's the iMac Pro.

I just think that that time has passed. Do they brand a high-end iMac as an iMac Pro? I think not, but they could if they wanted to, but it won't be a substantially different computer. I don't think that's going to happen. It's basically, the way to tell it is, are Apple making an iMac that's supposed to be the fastest computer that they make? Because that's what the iMac Pro was supposed to be, and that's not going to be the case, because the Mac Pro exists. Yeah, exactly right. On the MacBook Pro, Apple Silicon in both, not going to be the case because the pro exists yeah exactly right on the macbook pro apple silicon

in both which seems obvious but now now you're making the 14 inch prediction yeah i am why i don't know it's uh apple silicon and it seems like it's time i got over my disappointment of last year where they're like they're not going to give it to you yet and it's like okay now they're going to give it to you like this seems like I'm torn on this one. I think that the rumors are so strong that I think we have to go with it. Um, but my guess is that they're going to try very hard to not make the laptop actually much larger. And it's going to be like with the 16 there, really the goal here is to put a new screen in that'll be slightly larger. So there'll be able to call it a 14 instead of a 13 but that in reality it's going

to be um you know the the biggest benefit that it's going to have is that it will differentiate itself from the 13 so we won't have two separate 13 inch macbook pros because that's dumb um you know two port and four port so on that level you know they're differentiating between the four the the high end 13 and the low end 13 by making that high end 13 a 14 um now we have a little bit clearer differentiation between product a product b and product c um and i i that makes sense and you do it when you go to apple silicon makes power wise there might not be that much difference between the Air and this. Well, I feel like there has to be. I feel like one of the great questions of 21 that we're all going to be pondering this year is, what's the next phase for Apple Silicon's rollout?

Because I could argue that the new low-end iMac uses an M1, right? That's enough. An M1 iMac is fine. A M1 four-port, you know, 14-inch MacBook Pro, you could do it. But like, I think I have a question of like, is there an interim step where there's a variant of the chip that's faster than the m1 we've seen now or does apple hold off on releasing every high-end mac model until the fall when they do an m2 and the m2 is the more high test uh processor for the high-end systems and if i had to guess i think i made this prediction if i had to guess uh i would say i'm gonna bet on us being disappointed again which is any max in the first half of the year that you see are going to be using that same m1 that we've already seen

and that if you want the higher end faster apple silicon max that everybody's sort of like well if this isn't fast enough for you just wait i think they're going to make us wait until the fall and then there'll be M2 Macs and the M2 Macs will be faster than the M1 Macs. And I don't think they're going to take the M2 Macs or the M2s and stuff them in the MacBook Air, right? I don't think that's going to happen. I think the MacBook Air is just going to have the M1 for a little while. Could be wrong, but you know, that's part of predicting. So that's my gut feeling, is that if you get something in the early part of the year, it's just, I mean just, the M1 is amazing,

but it's just going to be an M1. And then they're saving themselves for that next chip that's got more power that they can stick further up in the product line. You also predicted incremental mac os updates again this year i feel like this year you're probably going to be yeah i feel like please i'll get it please what else are they going to do um and a new display i did it yeah i i okay display sorry this isn't the accidental tech, which is a podcast largely about Apple's display strategy. But I will say this. I was at the event where Apple said

to Nealey from The Verge that I was there. I was like two feet away from him when this happened, I think. They're like, we're out of the display business, right they said it and they because they had you know other third-party displays everywhere and then they did the pro display xdr so well that's an interesting i look at our our little apple nerd market and ponder apple's overall marketing strategy, which is like iPhone cases, right? Why does Apple make iPhone cases? Anybody can make an iPhone case. The answer is because Apples are more expensive and they throw off profit. And a lot of people just buy the Apple case when they buy the Apple stuff, because it's from Apple and it's in the Apple store online or in person. And so they just buy it and it's more money for Apple.

Like all of these accessories that Apple makes for its products, they make them not because there isn't a robust accessory market, but because some people will pay the premium price to get the Apple product for convenience or for the brand or whatever the reason is. That's why Apple makes these products. I have a hard time looking at the monitor market, which is not well-served right now for external monitors, for things like that Mac mini or for the new laptops that they put out. It's very difficult to find anything that's really very good. It's a very weird state where Apple's sort

of missing. The monitor market is not really well aligned with Apple. And Apple has had these great displays on the iMac, and they just have not made a standalone display. So I roll those things together. I consider that there are also rumors out there about a new mini Mac Pro coming down the road in a year or two. And the reaction people have to the M1 Macs and not being able to hook them up to a really great monitor. And Apple working on some new monitor technology to put in some of their Macs. That is not something we've seen before.

And I just roll this all together and i think i feel like maybe it's it's all like why would they not do it now we said this before and they didn't do it but it feels like you're gonna you're gonna create an apple monitor it's gonna work with all of your products it's gonna be to your standards you're gonna you're gonna charge a premium for it. So it's going to be a very profitable product. And you can sell one to like everybody who buys a Mac mini and a lot of people who buy laptops and like, I don't know. I just, I feel like it's worth making the prediction because there are so many reasons that Apple should do it. If I were at Apple, I'd say, let's do it. Like if I were at

Apple, I would point at, um, at this market and say, you know, do you understand, especially if we're strategizing to make another Mac pro model at some point here, do you understand how much pro you know, let's estimate how many of those are going to buy the Apple display along with it. And what's our profit on each one. like we're giving away money to lg here uh don't do it and they're not gonna buy the xdr like they're they're not gonna buy the xdr not everybody is crazy enough to buy the five thousand dollar monitor um so i don't like i know too many people that own that monitor now yeah and it doesn't make sense i like i get it it's beautiful i get it but if i it's a five six thousand dollar monitor no think that i understand why people don't like the lg monitors like i have the lg ergo one i was talking about

recently i love it it's great i don't know i don't know what i'm not seeing i well so they could be better and that like i've got a 4k ultra fine here and you know the usb and thunderbolt ports on the back just go out sometimes and you have to unplug the monitor and plug it back in i mean it's just it's not great but it's one of those things where there's no like it's been years now and it's not like everybody who's really into apple products has focused on a monitor and said yeah yeah, this is the one to get. There's like one. It also is telling, right, that it's not like everybody else in the monitor market went, ooh, all these Mac people want a good monitor.

We'll make one and we'll make some money by selling it to them. That also kind of hasn't happened, right? So this seems like a good place for Apple to be in there and basically say, this is largely like the LG monitor, but we did some Apple stuff and it's $600 more and sell a bunch of them and make a lot of money. So that's, you know, that's,

that's my prediction. It's, it's definitely mixed in with a little bit of wishcasting, but I am a believer that Tim Cook's Apple does not in the end want to leave all that money on the table. I mean, I have assumed like all of us that they will do it uh it seems obvious they just haven't they just haven't iphone and ipad on the iphone you predict they will go to the 13 number this is something we've spoken about before 13 is unlucky in some cultures um but maybe they're just going to do it they did ios 13 so there was no problem there uh same design with new colors possibly a smaller notch uh the new camera sensor

stabilization to appear in a smaller phone and touch id coming back yeah this is just you know it's a synthesis of some of the rumors we've seen and what I think seems realistic. I'm once again saying they're not going to change the shape of it. I think they changed the shape of it. So they're going to vary it. There'll be new colors. They'll do that. The smaller notch, there are some rumors about that.

That is, I think, one of the places where there is a real hardware benefit to be gained. We've largely had that same true depth sensor stack since the 10. And this might be a place where like, where what's the next generation one. That's just way smaller. And that makes that notch almost invisible. There's some rumors to that effect. I think that makes sense. Right.

I have to think that Apple knows the notch isn't great. Like we've all gotten used to it, but like they don't want it there. That's it's like a little imperfection used to it, but like they don't want it there. It's like a little imperfection in their beautiful thing. Like they don't want it there. So they're not every year going to make it a little bit smaller,

but I would not be surprised if there is a true depth two that is dramatically smaller, maybe not non-existent, but close to it that allows them to reclaim that kind of most of the perfect display from the notch part. And then I think I'm just betting on the idea now that the Pro Max is going to get some

features that we don't see elsewhere, and then they will slowly trickle down. So like the sensor stabilization is a good example of that, that, you know, it'll be in the Pro Max and the next year it'll be in the Pro, something like that. it'll be in the pro something like that i think that's not unreasonable and i do think that um they will have the time to get that touch id sensor in at least at least some models if not all models the one as a supplement to face id for people who are wearing masks yes this is the question do you think there will be a a touch id sensor in the ipad or do you think they're going to go to an under screen thing? In the iPad? So it's the one that's

in, I mean on the iPhone, right? So on the iPhone the touch ID sensor. Oh, do I think it's going to be like the iPad thing? Yeah, or on the screen. My bet is that it'll be in the button because the button is already technology apple has designed

and it frees them up to not have to be limited in what they do on their display and under their display in order to do a sensor because i think that there's probably i this is just a guess but yeah but if they've already got the button you can use the button and then you don't have this mandatory because like think back to like uh like 3d touch right there are things you have to do to engineer on the display in order to do this mandatory feature well if you don't have to do that that frees you up to not have that technology attached to your display in that area so that's just i mean they invented the button right they did the button they got the button you said the under screen one i agree with what you're saying completely my only pitch for the under screen one like if they can get it to work and get to work in a way they're happy with the story for why it's there is easier to tell which is like look how amazing this is right

which is i know other companies have been doing it but whatever this is apple do be like oh we we brought touch id back because we worked out this incredible new technology right like it's not a button like you've seen in other places look at this it's under the screen you know sure you just you just put your thumb on the screen and you're ready to go right and it would be great if they could do that but i understand i understand completely what you're saying it was if it was the only authentication method i think i might agree with you but i think they're going to soft pedal this as and if you're in a situation where face id doesn't work like when you're wearing a mask just touch the button yeah and like do it like that where it's like it's really a secondary authentication method it's a fallback it's for when you're in the grocery store wearing

a mask and uh and and there's like, well, what about mask wearing? Do you really build an iPhone for mask wearing when we've already sort of had the pandemic? And hopefully it will be done by then. And I would say there are lots of places where mask wearing is common. I think there will be more of them now after this era. But it was already an issue in Asia where there were people wearing masks. And I would also say all the other people who didn't like face id because there are um you know they've got i don't know what other other things obscuring their face but they can reach out with their finger like there are reasons to do a secondary authentication so i think they'll do it but because it's secondary i think that they won't need to make a big deal out of it and say look at this shiny whizzy new way

we did touch id under the screen. That's my guess. For the iPad, better performance than the 2020 iPad and display improvements. Yeah, I mean, the rumors are out there that they're going to do some new display tech on the iPad. And the iPad, you know, Apple's got OLED in all of their iPhones, but OLED on an iPad has proven has proven i think to be very expensive and difficult and there are rumors that they're trying some new very you know these these new led technologies that make for better contrast without it being like full-on oled um and that

seems like a direction for the ipad right for the ip Pro, like improved display is a pro feature that makes sense. And better performance, sure. I fully expect that it's easy to make predictions like this, but they didn't do it last time. So this time I'm going to say essentially the M1, the iPad version of the M1,

which will be the A14X in an iPad Pro, and it'll do M1 basically performance. And think about that. That'll be pretty amazing iOS and iPadOS the new home screen stuff so widgets on the home screen app library they'll figure it out they'll do

an iPad version of that at least an iPad take on it it'll probably be different from the iPhone but something that's more expansive than what they did this year that there will be some work to be done on the cross-platformness of ios apps yeah i right i think i think that that's one of the things that they're pushing forward there is they want to really build up this ipad to mac flow and so more that they can do there

it's possible we had a question in in the uh in the chat room about ipad pro price increase i think we mentioned this on a previous show i didn't predict it in my column which although i probably should have is like yes i do i think the existence of the ipad air with a lot of those pro features probably means that the ipad pro is going to be more expensive i just remembered one thing that i just wanted to just say for the record's sake i think that the iphone will get a higher higher refresh rate display i think that would be one get a higher refresh rate display. I think that would be one of the things that it gets. I thought about making that prediction. I don't think I did. I do think that it's very possible, especially on the Pro models. ProMotion on the Pro? Sure.

And also that there will likely be a smaller year-over-year for user features for ios i think that that that seems like a a pretty pretty solid pick as well yeah i just they've got a lot going on right now yeah and they rolled out a bunch of stuff and and maybe this is also wish casting but i feel like this would be a really good year for apple to spend its its development cycles fixing bugs, tightening integration, improving the technologies that it's trying to push along, whether it's Catalyst or SwiftUI, getting whatever they need to do for new Apple Silicon Macs, which ends up being software features that get pulled out of what we think of as the traditional software cycle because they're coupled to hardware instead of being coupled to the annual release. But it's still's still work right it's still work for them to do

that stuff and there's going to be a lot of that they're going to be a lot of new apple silicon max so i feel like across their platforms this would be a really good year to like focus in on some of the details and get everything kind of like moving along and not like i just don't think they need a bombshell release i feel like they've had a a couple of really dramatic years and it would be good for them to calm it down a little bit i do think that the main feature of ios 15 will be more user customization features yeah i think that that's a good pick. And I think that that can be simple, right? Like in what is required of developers and of Apple, in theory, I mean, to do stuff like that.

I've been meaning to write a column about this, and maybe I will at some point, depends on what ideas I have for my Macworld columns. The idea that, well, I did write a version of this, actually, for Macworld last year, which is there are ways for Apple to do it, user customization that are not giving people as much control as they want, which is a very Apple thing to do, where they could do things like have themes where, you know, new themes that are available that let you choose your color theme and they offer like five different

themes and they basically tell all developers if you want to support this make five different icons these are the themes these are the colors go right so it's not like free form you can have any color and you can have it's more like no apple has prescribed the ways you can personalize your phone choose your personalization among these five options which is again not actually personalization but uh i wouldn't put it past them to be regimented like that rather than having it be completely freeform but i think you're right they're going to take the lesson from the what what spurred development of uh or adoption of ios 14 so uh you made your predictions uh ming chi kuo has made. This is an article that came out.

Yeah, but he's not basing it on nonsense. He's basing it on his actual sources in the supply chain. Super quick article, really, like the things that actually came out. But I think they are worth mentioning. So AirTags still on track for 2021. I say on track. On deck is probably a better phrase because the track of that product

is gosh knows what. Yeah, if you've been predicting AirTags for a few years, you might get it right eventually. Apple's first, quote, AR device. Completely unspecified, but saying they'll have one. Now, what I wanted to...

This is something that came up when we did our year in review for Connected, which was that MainShiQuo had a report in january and one of the things that quote report it was that apple would make a charging mat which everyone thought was air power but ended up being mag safe right i wanted to mention that as a way of like apple's first ar device could be something but not glasses yeah so i have i have a theory okay which is that this is an ar developer kit for wwdc everybody knows apple's gonna do an AR product. Everybody knows it.

But one way, because you're like, how are they going to do an AR device? And do they really want to sell a consumer device that's kind of clunky and not ready to go? Or do they really have an AR glasses ready to go? Maybe they do. But I do think that because he's so unspecific here, that one possibility is that registered Apple developers can sign up to spend I don't know what amount of money to get a developer kit for AR that is very much like their developer kit for

Apple Silicon, which is it's not the final tech that will be used in the product, but it will let you start developing AR experiences for when Apple does. And they might even say, you know, it's a great way to do AR development for the iPhone, but really everybody knows what it is, which is there is an AR product coming, but this isn't it. And that would be a big step for Apple in the sense that it would be acknowledging that it's doing an AR product, but I feel like they have basically already done that since Tim Cook talks up AR and says it's an area of intense interest, et cetera, et cetera. And that might be a way for them to dip their toe

in the water here a little bit. But who knows? Maybe it's just a cardboard frame for your iPhone. Oh, that would be so sad. I completely agree with you that I think they've got to start. I mean, and they've started, like, there was stuff from WWDC even this year, right, of, like, that map thing where you could, you know. Apple's got to start, I think.

I don't think that their first entry into AR should be something you strap to your face, right? And we've been seeing them do more and more, but I think they've got to still do little things first before going that heavy. I like the idea personally that they'll have some device that you'll use at home that's different. More like a VR

headset than an AR headset, honestly. Like an Oculus Quest. Because I just think it's a big jump from there being nothing to me supposed to wear an iphone on my face all the time right it's a lot so um so i got an oculus quest i think i mentioned that in the upgrade ease quest 2 yep and it has an ar mode which is black and white but it's it's brilliant it's brilliant especially as somebody who used the psvr which doesn't have that and it's not good

um you double you can there's a feature you turn, you double tap on the side and you can see, or if you leave the AR area, it toggles into this mode. It's using cameras on the device to show you what's around you. And Apple has the technology to build that product, right? Apple could build that product today that is based on the iPhone. It's got iPhone cameras. It's got all the sensors that are needed, many, if not most of which are already in the iPhone. So Apple making an AR headset like the Oculus Quest that's based on all their iPhone tech and runs iPhone apps so that you can do VR games, but also you can put it in an AR mode where you're seeing the world through the iPhone camera,

which is pretty good, and an overlay on top of it, which is not technically, I guess, is that AR if it's a VR headset that's piping in reality and then overlaying it i i would say it's arguable i'm sure there's a name for it uh that in vr and ar circles but it's like ar inside vr but it's called an r okay mediated reality mixed reality mixed reality okay so it's mixed reality where it's it's taking reality and mixing it with v VR and then putting it in front of you. So Microsoft's HoloLens was technically a mixed reality headset. All right. So you're not seeing the world with an overlay.

You're seeing a VR view of the world with an overlay. Yeah. Apple could do that, right? Apple could have done that years ago. Is that a product Apple wants to do? I don't know, but I look at the Oculus Quest and I think maybe they could do that. Like they could if they wanted to, if they thought the software was there, if they thought

the tech was good, they could absolutely make a product like that because they've got all the pieces. And that would be weird. I mean, you wouldn't want to wear that around like the world, but you could wear it in your house and sometimes be in VR mode and sometimes be in vr mode and sometimes be in ar mode um that could also be the developer kit right like you could argue whether if you didn't want that to be a consumer product you could you could be you know it's like well the developer kits just for in the house but we'll do we'll do a a lightweight one eventually because

most people do not want to strap an iphone you know headset thing to their face which is what these vr headsets are so i think i think it's really interesting because i didn't think there'd be any ar stuff in 2021 this feels the ar still feels like something that i can't believe apple is actually going to do but i think they're going to do it so maybe it is this year. That would be interesting. That'd be fun. Yeah, we're going to talk about this a lot, probably over the next couple of years.

But like, this is like, you know, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. They've got to tiptoe into this because the potential risk on humanity for us having computers in front of our eyes all the time, I think is really, really high. I get quite nervous about that thought. So if they're going to do this and they want it to work,

I think it's got to be very slow. Very slow. A listener in the chat says that XR is also a term that is thrown around for this mixed reality. It's the most extra, but it's good. That's, uh,

yeah, I'm fascinated by it. Again, my first, my first moment with that on the quest two, I was like, Oh, this is great.

Cause it's like that moment where you're like, it was almost an Apple like moment. I have to say where, where you step outside of where you're supposed to be. And suddenly you see the world while you're wearing your vr headset and i was like oh like this is so good right so you're not going to trip over the dog when you're on your way to get the thing that you need to get and then step back into the into the play area like it's super smart so if you did that at a high quality i I think that would be really good. So anyway. Quo also thinks new AirPods.

I mean, that seems fair, right? Like some updates to the AirPods line. Yes. Never bet again. I see. This is what I need to do next year to get a fourth column out of this. Wearables, man. Is add in predictions for the other stuff because I just didn't predict any of these things.

You have no Apple Watch predictions? No. No wearables? No, I just have not bothered with that, but I might need to roll them in because, again, nobody ever went broke betting on more AirPods from Apple. It's just such a successful category for them

that they will... I don't know what it'll be. I don't care what it'll be. They't i don't care what it will be they will do more of them because it's a it's a hit for them airpods are a hit for them in all of their forms so whether it's new brand new fourth product in the line or it's just updates to the individual ones they're going to keep pushing on airpods bank it and then something we've spoken about in this episode and Quo has mentioned a bunch of times, more Apple Silicon Macs, obviously, first devices with mini LED. That almost seems obviously at this point. Yeah, I think so. It's just a matter of when and the details, right? It's always what the details are. And that's the, if I had a number one thing that I'm looking forward to in 2021 from

Apple, it's what the Apple Silicon Mac rollout strategy is for everything that we've already said on this episode. When do the chips change? Do the chips change soon or do they not? And we just get more M1 Macs, which will feel to some people like a disappointment, which is wrong because the M1 Macs are amazing. And if you could get an M1 Mac and an iMac, wrong because the M1 Macs are amazing. And if you could get an M1 Mac and an iMac, you'd be very, very happy. I think I would buy one. So yeah. When do the chips change? When do the different models roll out and what models don't we see? And how do the models change? All that's wrapped up in the Macs in 2021, but it's this air of mystery that we've not had with the Mac before, where it's pretty much just like, what iteration will happen on existing models? And it's a little more...

And we also knew the Intel roadmap and stuff like that. Now, it's all this mystery of what Apple will do. So it's going to be fun. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by the Upgradians, who are Upgrade Plus members. Us! Well, and us, I guess. If you no longer want to hear ads

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thank you so much if you sign up let's finish off today's episode with some hashtag ask upgrade questions jd asks do you have boot camp installed on your intel max uh yes i do i have i don't think i've ever done it i have windows 10 installed on my imac right and the idea there is there have been some games it's been a while since i booted into it honestly but there are some games that i have played that are windows only and so i have booted into boot camp for them it's essentially a game thing and i don't use it very often but like i played life is strange in there at one point for the incomparable and like every now and then there's a game that somebody recommends to me and it sounds pretty good but it's only on windows or it's windows

and a console i don't have and and uh i'm not i'm not gonna to miss doing it. If I do go to Apple Silicon on the desktop here at some point, and it's not compatible, I'm not going to miss it too much, but I do have it, and occasionally we'll go there. Josh asks, do you think Apple will take cues from the iPad and iPhone line with the Mac and keep older M1 Macs around when they eventually update them to the M2? So, like, for example, you can still buy, say, the iPhone 11? Can you still buy the 11? There are old iPhones that you can still buy, right? Yes.

Could you imagine that Apple will keep then say like the current macbook air around when it updates to a different macbook air so the processor here here's what i will say i don't think apple is going to make two macbook airs probably well probably we don't know this is part of the great mystery i do think what happen, to answer the first part of this, I think, which is I do think Apple's going to roll out M2 that's not going to go to the M1 low-end systems, right? So you're going to end up with Macs with M2 and Macs with M1. I don't think everything's going to get the M2. I think like the MacBook Air that got the M1 is going to sit there for a while. And then eventually it'll get an update.

And will it get an update to the M2 or we'll get up an update to like an M1X or something like that. But I think Apple is going to be able to like target their different chips and sort of bring them along as the, as the product line advances, but that they're going to target different parts of the product line with different versions of the chips, especially at the beginning here, rather than having, here's the M2 and there's eight variations of it that go in these eight systems. It'll be more like, here's the m2 and there's eight variations of it that go in these eight systems it'll be more like here's the m2 and these macs have the m2 and these other macs still have the m1 and we're done would they make an m1 an m2 let's say or whatever macbook air and still sell the m1 macbook air i want to say no but my only hesitation is it's possible that that would be a way that

they could make a more expensive and less expensive version of the Air and differentiate them or some other product to whatever you want to put in there. I'm just using the Air as an example. I think it's possible because you're going to start i would say with intel apple sells different models with different chips and different speeds and now it's supplying its own chips so is it possible that the base macbook air stays on the m1 but there is a a higher end configuration that uses a faster processor. And we look at it and say, oh, basically they're still selling the old one. And now there's also a new one, but it starts at $1299. Or the new one is $1099, but the old one is $899. I think those are all possible. I do think that they may experiment with that, especially when they're trying to push the prices down and create more differentiation.

Because they don't have Intel with a supplier where they can get a whole bunch of different variations of Intel processors and use those to vary their product line. They've got to vary it themselves if they choose to vary their product line. And that would be one way they could do it. So I think they might experiment with that. And it might be one way they could do it. So I think they might experiment with that, and it might be confusing. And we might end up having to say like, well, there are two MacBook Airs now. There's the 2020 M1 MacBook Air, which is now $899, but there's also the 2021 M2 MacBook Air, but that's the high-end configuration. It's messy, but in the end, if Apple just says, like, there are two MacBook Airs, low-end, high-end, they don't need to specify. The nerds will know, but they don't necessarily. There's the M1 version, and then

for more money, there's a more expensive, faster M2 version. Take your pick. They could do that. So I don't know. I don't know. They got lots of options here it's what what they want to do and that's what i'm looking forward to in 2021 ryan asks when using a trackpad do you use natural or unnatural scrolling oh man this again i feel like this is a question from like five years ago yeah we gotta ask these things every now and then we We got to open the words back up. Well, just so as a recap, at some point, Apple changed the direction of scrolling in Mac OS and they made the new version natural,

which is hilarious. The name makes sense. It makes sense. It does, but it's also hilarious because they in that moment redefined how all scrolling on the Mac had worked from time immemorial to be unnatural weren't willing to change you were unnatural yeah that's that's the funny thing

right and it and what the difference is is a metaphor because it's are you touching the item on the screen and moving it downward when you scroll your fingers downward or are you moving the interface of the screen when you move your fingers downward which means the content flows upward the answer is i use natural scrolling i i changed immediately uh it may i use a trackpad so it really makes sense for the trackpad because it's the same gesture as an ios which is why they changed it and there's a hilarious bug in web views in i in ios and ipad os that i find on the magic keyboard often where i'll open a web view inside an app and i'll start to scroll and it does the scrolling backward oh and it makes

me laugh every time um but it's there like oh it's unnatural scrolling is happening now and it does the scrolling backward. And it makes me laugh every time. But it's there. I'm like, oh, it's unnatural scrolling is happening now and it makes me ill. So no, I embraced natural scrolling immediately and have never looked back. Sorry to John Syracuse. I don't know how anyone could use the old version of scrolling now.

It just, it seems so logical to me with the iOS devices devices i mean they do work in that natural way because it makes sense then you would just get used to it being one way having two different ways to scroll now is weird to me well the idea was that you were scrolling this is why they changed it but the idea was you're scrolling the interface you're scrolling the scroll bar and you move the scroll bar up by moving like again it made sense in the context but it doesn't make sense when apple changes all interfaces to be basically direct interaction think of moving the piece of paper that is your web page or your

google doc or whatever once you do that which you have to do for something like an iPhone, once you start thinking of it that way, you flipped it around. And that's the predominant interface approach today. So you got to do it. But I feel for all the unnatural scrollers out there. I really do. By the way, we didn't mention this in follow-up.

We, I don't think we heard from a pinky, a pinky unlocker, but we heard from, we heard from people with various unusual fingers. Maybe there was one pinky unlocker. I think we got at least one pinky unlocker. But they had a reason for why they use their pinky to unlock Face ID. Oh no, this, this, I want to, I want to, oh yeah. Let me give you the details here. Cause now I remember, but we heard from one pinky unlocker.

Somebody uses their pinky finger to unlock their Touch ID on their Mac. And the reason given was if I'm robbed or compelled by bad people to unlock my Mac, nobody expects the pinky. And so I'll try it with the other fingers and it won't work. And then they can't compel me to to log in it'll lock they'll lock up and go to a password that was that was the excuse given by the pinky unlocker i didn't have the energy to give my response to this but now i'm gonna give it here on the show if that's the situation you found yourself in you have more problems than oh yeah if the computer can be unlocked or not. I know.

I know. But we did hear from some, some index, some ring finger unlockers and a thumb unlocker. And you know, I, this is the diversity of the human experience. Thank you all for, for doing that.

But, but one pinky unlocker. And I'm not sure I believe that person, but anyway, just some followup, some quick pinky unlocking follow-up while we're talking about final question before we wrap up today's show barry asks on the heels of your conversations of rss apps during the upgradies what rss services do you use to drive these apps and why

so i resisted for a very long time but i recently bought a feed bin subscription um i don't want a web interface all these things are basically like web interfaces for rss which i don't want i use newswire um i also primarily just use it on my ipad so i don't really need syncing although every now and then if i open it on my mac i was disappointed because you know it doesn't sync and i've added some subscriptions on my iPad and they don't come to the Mac. What I really want is for them to just add an iCloud sync for my subscriptions for NetNewsWire and that would solve the problem. The reason I signed up

for this service at all, the reason I signed up for Feedbin was I wanted to use their email gateway because I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters and I don't want to really read them in my email client in the morning. I want to read them with all my other articles in the RSS feed and they do that. And so that's that I'm using. That's a good feature. So all of those newsletters that I subscribe to now pop in as feeds in NetNewsWire. Thanks to Feedbin. Yeah, I've been meaning to do that. I use Feedbin too because when I wanted a service, I asked all my friends what they used, and they all told me they used Feedbin, so I signed up for Feedbin.

Yep. Pretty much everyone I asked used it, and so that was what I went with because I was using something called I Know Reader before. And what I don't like about I Know Reader is after a certain period of time, they just mark an article as read on your behalf. And I did not like that. So I went with Feedbin instead. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or you can use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord. I would like to thank Smile

and Squarespace for the support of this episode and also for our members, you can sign up at GetUpgradePlus.com. Thank you so much for your support if you do that. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to SixColors.com and he is at Jason now, J S N E double L Jason hosts many shows at the incomparable and here on relay FM as well.

As do I, you can find many shows. If you go to relay.fm slash shows, not just stuff that me and Jason produce, but we have many fine programs here at relay FM that you may enjoy a new one to add to your queue in 2021. I am at I Mike, I-M-Y-K-E, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.