Upgrade - 335: Repudiation of a Decade

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

If reports are to be believed, 2021 is shaping up to be a year where the Mac takes two steps forward--but only after taking one step back. We analyze the rumors of new MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros. A new Apple display? The death of the Touch Bar? Magsafe returns to the Mac? Is it 2015 again or are we just dreaming?

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 335 and today's show is brought to you by hover and devon think my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley how are you today i'm doing okay how are you i'm very well my friend it's a holiday here in america you know it's a holiday but my boss doesn't give me those holidays often neither does yours because we got to do upgrade we have to why wouldn't we yeah i have a hashtag snarl talk question from you that comes from Stitch. He says, you often mention, Jason, that upgrades signifies the start of your week. Do you have anything specific to signify the end of your week? Oh, man.

I used to, and I don't anymore. That's my answer. I used to end my week Friday afternoon doing a podcast called TV Talk Machine with my friend Tim Goodman, who was the chief TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter. However, Tim has retired as a TV critic, which makes it impossible to do a show talking about the shows Tim has seen because he's not watching TV anymore. And so we had to park that show. And it's sad because that was a fun show to do. And that was my Friday afternoon. The upgrade and TV Talk Machine were my bookends of my week, but now I don't. Now it's just Friday afternoon. And like last Friday afternoon, I wrote a big article and I did a bunch of other stuff and I shipped out a bunch of things that had been sitting in my office for months. I shipped them all out and took them to the post office and

all of that and it got to be about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and I had that moment where I thought I'm done. Done for the week. I'm calling it. But it was not as ceremonious as it used to be. There isn't something on the calendar anymore that signifies. Exactly. That's the important thing is you got to have that.

Well, the TV talk machine also, we would have it on the calendar at like one o'clock. But really one o'clock on Friday was when I would email Tim and say, when do you want to do it? And sometimes we would do it at one. Sometimes it would be three.

Sometimes it would be four. Sometimes it would be perfectly timed. Well, I found the email more reliable to reach him than texting. Look, I love Tim, but he is not a super technical person. He's got his own way of using technology. When he was a TV critic, at least, email was the best way to reach him because he was always on his laptop writing his articles and stuff. him because he was always on his laptop writing his articles and stuff um and i also used uh one of these uh web services cast to record our podcast because i could not rely on him i felt to like actually record his audio and and send it to me in some way so i was like let's let's not

even bother we're just going to use the website to do it uh so you know and that's you you work you know you've worked with a bunch of, you've worked with a bunch of people, you've collaborated with a bunch of people, you come to know their particular quirks and then you, you, you fit, you fit into that particular quirk. So, so yes, we would get to Friday afternoon and it'd be like, what do you think? One. And he'd be like, how about two or how about three or whatever? And sometimes it would be like four or five, and it would be much later in the afternoon. But I knew that once we had recorded and I had posted TVTM that the weekend was here.

That was a good feeling. If you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or use question mark SnowTalk in the Real AFM members Discord. Please send in any of those. It would be wonderful. I have some follow-up

for you, Jason. A couple of things. Apple has extended the free trial of Apple TV Plus until July 2021. So this is the original free trial. It's continuing to be extended. So now at this point, it's going all the way up until july

interesting right well i guess they gotta i'm fascinated by the continued extensions here like well no no we need to do it a little bit more but we've talked about it in upstream a lot the covid where we are now entering i feel like the period where a lot of tv is um that was made pre-covid is out and the stuff that's being made during covid is only starting to ramp up and so the you know all their schedules got thrown out of whack and we all know that they wanted to have everything, a really strong fall, in order to get people to convert to paid. And then their stuff got delayed. And so here we are where they want to extend. They're going to do this again, right?

They're going to give people more free stuff and then say, no, no, now, really now. And it helps them build up a catalog, too. No, no, now, really now. And it helps them build up a catalog too. I think one of the things about having Apple TV Plus have been out for a while is you start to build up that catalog. You start to have, you know, they're going to have two seasons of For All Mankind

and The Morning Show and they have two seasons of Dickinson. And then you can say, well, look, here's the value is not only do you get the new stuff that's just rolling out, but you get all these movies that we did. And when you get these TV shows that we did, and that makes it, you know, they're spending this time, not only just giving this away for free, but they're also building up a catalog to make it a more interesting service. And that's important because there's still not a lot of a breakthrough, I think,

with stuff that we know because it's on Apple TV+, but that the general public doesn't know exists. And I say this because I was watching Jeopardy last week. Jeopardy, Mike, is a game show. I know what Jeopardy is. Do you have a different word for that? Is it a quiz show? You call talk shows chat shows, so I don't know what you call game shows. Are they game shows?

They're game shows unless they're quiz shows, then they're quiz shows. I would say that it's more of a quiz show than a game show. It is a quiz show. Yeah. Anyway, they had a category that was television. Television titles, I think, is what it was. And it was Jason Sudeikis stars as a football coach who goes to england to coach a soccer team and you cut as you do in jeopardy to the three contestants and they're all staring into space

nobody knew it was ted lasso and i thought there you go these people don't know anything about apple tv plus and that is that right there i was like that is apple's challenge is apple's got to get above the noise because i feel like ted lasso is one of those shows that's got great word of mouth everybody's talking about it and yet those three jeopardy contestants at least never heard of it no idea i feel like that ted lasso is maybe the only show that's really broken out. But yes, it's still not. It's not enough yet. Ted Lasso season two is officially in production now as well. This is another announcement. I think they recorded that Jeopardy episode. It's the first batch after Alex Trebek died.

So it's probably November that they recorded those. So I feel like the Ted Lasso conversation continues to build and spread. But again, adding to the catalog and doing a second season, they'll do second season promotion when it comes out and tell everybody to go back and binge the first season, which is what the new promo for For All Mankind Season 2 came out. And at the end of it, it doesn't just say February. It says binge the first season now. I'm like, oh, yeah, you should. Yeah, that's the right way to promote a season two of a show on Apple TV Plus, because maybe you've never even heard of it. All right.

We have a bunch of reports to talk about today that have come from various sites. And the first one comes from The Information with a secondary report from Bloomberg about Apple apparently planning on adding a paid podcast subscription service to its current roster of services. The thinking behind this is that the space is heating up now, and Apple sees this as an option for them as well,

along with companies like Spotify, Sirius, Amazon, and many more. And the thinking is that if they want to get into this, they have to get into this now before too many shows go platform-exclusive to platforms that aren't Apple podcasts, and then the overall usage of Apple's platform is diminished. You know, like a lot of people say, and they're right, that Spotify is growing in, you know, and kind of like fighting down Apple's overall market share of the podcast industry. So far, it has kind of been proven that really Spotify is adding to the pie.

But unless Apple does something, is the thinking, and I can understand it to a point, Spotify is going to start eating in to Apple's share. If they care about that, they should do something with it. The current plan is apparently for them to purchase original content

and create spin-offs of their own with some of this content tying in with the stuff that they produce for tv plus and they're talking with production companies now honestly we've reported and spoken about reports on this many times like all of these things in the past but it kind of feels like the wagons are circling a little bit more around this than than it has been before yeah the i think circling the wagons is meant to be like assuming a defensive posture but they're whatever it is whatever metaphor you want yeah it kind of

is assuming it yeah i guess so i was thinking more like they're kind of cranking up their machine or whatever but whatever metaphor you want they are this is a thing that has been rumored for a long time and i don't like it but it seems like this is just the way the game is played right now like there are so many different exclusive things now exclusive audio former podcasts podcasts put behind a paywall kind of stuff like that and apple's got its services business right um so the the rumor is that they would add this probably as another five dollar a month kind of service but also just roll it into apple one and and at some point i think that's an interesting bit of analysis is does apple really want people to pay for it so much as or does apple just want

to sweeten the bundle right like the that the five dollar a month they don't really expect anybody to pay it for five dollars a month they really just expect to make the apple one bundle look better um and there's a lot of fascinating kind of buying psychology behind that one um i don't know it's uh i don't like the idea of walling off podcasts, but I also get that Spotify is playing hardball here and that Apple's position as a controlling force, a commanding force in podcasts is a little bit under siege. So I get why they would want to do something. The sleeping giant, as apple have very frequently referred yeah i feel like apple could like make it available not as a service but just an exclusive to the podcast app if they wanted to which they've done already or tried to do already with apple news today yeah exactly just to just to create more weight to like why why not why listen

to everything in spotify some stuff you need to be but we're going to end up in a fractured we're already there a fractured system where you've got podcasts that you can listen to anywhere and then you've got some that you can only listen to here or there or whatever and that's kind of unfortunate but i'm not surprised if apple we've been hearing this for a long time that apple was going down this direction wasn't there a uh uh there was a pick on connected one of one of the annual picks was about this and and i think it was steven and he got it right because of the news podcast that apple is doing but this would be a whole other level if they do

things that are like behind a uh a service wall a paywall that would be that'd be a new a new step for apple yeah i think the service itself i imagine will be more like tv plus than news plus i don't think there's going to be like support your favorite current show by paying us and we'll pay them i think it's going to be very much like, hey, look at all this content we have from people that you may know, from producers that you may know. Don't you want this? Give us money. I think that it's going to be more

of option B than option A. You know, you see, I think I see a lot of people comparing it to one or the other or saying like, oh, this is going to be like News Plus. I don't think it's going to be like that. I really don't. I don't think Apple's going to get into the business of collecting up membership

money on behalf of other producers uh and honestly i think that that they would have an even harder time getting companies to agree to that than they do with news plus um yeah because it's you know at this point it's it's almost trivial for producers to create their own membership programs like like the one i know we have i don't exactly can't really offer anything yeah that's that's one of the parts about this report that i thought was interesting is the idea that they're trying to do like extensions which you know you could do but you make a good point which is um what's what cut are you getting and would you be better off just doing it yourself as a podcast creator because i remember like uh

hello from the magic tavern when they went on earwolf one of the things that they did is for the premium earwolf subscription is they built they did a spin-off that was not the yes core magic tavern but they did their spinoff there was some stuff for this on luminary too there was some spinoffs of popular shows on luminary yeah so so that's a strategy but again it's sort of like it i think it only probably works if you are so high profile that apple is going to guarantee you money um that right that it's not going to be like well you'll get you know a percentage based on how many people listen to your thing and all that and much more like we're trying to build something here and so we're going

to pay you more than than you're going to earn for us in order to build off our service and and maybe apple will do that but i think that's the only way you're going to get most uh anybody who's got a following big enough to have it be a motivator to listen on apple podcasts is you're going to have to if you're apple you're going to have to write them a check and and and admit that uh maker of podcast x that is very popular doing spinoff or bonus version or something for you. Also, you've got to find somebody who doesn't have that strategy already, which I think most very popular podcasts probably already have a Patreon or membership of some kind. But you've got to come in there if you're Apple in that scenario and say, we're going to pay you 50 grand, 100 grand, 250,000, whatever it is, we're going to pay you just a check to do this for us because we need to build our service on

the back of people like you. And all that value accumulates to us. And we know that. So here's some money to help us do that. And it has to be more than what they just make doing it themselves. So, I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what they do. And I'm not entirely convinced that it will do anything. Well, this is an interesting thing. I read a report that analysts are starting to question Spotify's move here because there is no indication right now

that they're seeing any growth in subscriptions because of the podcasts that they've brought in. Right. They're doing a great job of increasing podcast listening on their platforms and there may be some benefits from that including something that we talked about when they started this which is the more time people on spotify are listening to podcasts which are free more or less than uh music which they have to pay rights to uh you know

rights fees then that's that's sort of good for spotify but i think i think that's the risk right is that spotify is making this big move that Apple's going to have to answer for in order to get control of this little subset of an industry called podcasting that has no value to them. Right. And that we didn't even mention like another story that is related to this is the public radio consortium that bought pocket casts a couple of years ago, they put that up for sale. And, and, and I looked at that story and I, I thought this,

this feels to me a little bit similar. I don't know the details of that at all, other than, but it just gives me this vibe that maybe there was a brief idea that podcast infrastructure was a gold rush. And maybe it's not. Maybe everybody who rushed there is now like why are we doing this like this is not which is not to say that podcasters aren't making money but like is spotify really benefiting by all the money that they put into podcasting is that really going to lift them or are they now a major player in a space that doesn't help them because

you could being a major player is great it's great but if all it is is pride and like nickels and dimes but you spent a lot of money and you're spending a lot of effort and potentially diluting your brand and diverting your audience from, I always thought that there was an issue with Spotify that you were going to get people hooked on podcasts and they were going to realize they didn't need to pay for Spotify anymore. So I don't know. I don't know. It's, it'll be interesting to see what happens here. But, um, I think those analysts comments are, are fascinating. Like what if Spotify has done a good job here and has, has, and then looks at the results and says

oh it didn't really do anything like important or it's like people are just still i mean they might be signing up they're signing up for the free accounts it's like it's not moving the needle and they spent 800 million dollars on it exactly and it's like okay you may have done a decent job bringing making some money here or whatever but it isn't worth the close to a billion dollars you've spent on this. We've conquered Greenland, everybody. Yeah. Well, great. What can we do in Greenland?

Not much. It's like, okay, why did we do it then? Well, because we could. Like, that's the question, right? And maybe they've got a good answer and maybe they're happy with it. I don't know. But I do wonder.

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busy busy busy boy busy boy last week all right let's talk about just like 50 000 feet thing here there's there's i think one more report that we're not going to talk about today we might talk about it next time. But it seemed like, I don't know what happened, but Mark had a bunch of things and just released them all at once. It's really interesting. It was weird, too, because it was Friday, right? So it was almost like the Friday afternoon news drop,

which is weird because you try to hide things on Fridays. And they were all separate articles as well. Is it going on vacation? I don't know. Interesting. I'd love to know why. So the first one we're going to talk about is a report on the new MacBook Pros. So I'll go through this.

We can stop and talk about all of the features as they go. We're looking at 14 and 16-inch models going to be available in the MacBookbook pro line um this makes sense i think we'd expected that right like you you spoke about it in your predictions that it was the year for the 14 inch right uh next generation versions of apple silicon chips with quote more cores and enhanced graphics now yeah the thing i need to mention is coming mid-year right so this is suggesting that june this year we'll see something so let's talk about this then um are we looking at an enhanced m1 or are we talking like whatever the next class of chip

is what do you think it could be either one right like this could be an m2 or it could be an m1x but the fact that it's only six months out makes me think it's more likely to be for lack of a better word the m1x that it's an m1 with more cores and it's more you know it's the m1 pro essentially that that the but it's up to you know, it's the M1 Pro, essentially. But it's up to them. They can number these however they want, right? They could number every single one in sequence, or they could say, like, each chip generation, like, on the A series is a number,

and then the variants have letters at the end of them. My guess is that six months in, you know, they're not going to be doing something that's based on the next chip generation. They're going to be based on this chip generation. So I would say maybe M1X is the thing. And having it be mid-year WWDC, essentially, that would make sense, right? You can't put just the same M1 in a MacBook Pro.

That's why it's only in the MacBook Air and the low-end MacBook Pro now. So what do you do to make those other systems more high-end and the answer is yeah it is a is a better chip right so they would have to do that yeah um so having it in these models the macbook pro models make sense to me here's the thing that i will just float as a possibility uh what if it's like m1 m2 m3 and then like next year's is m1x m2x M3, and then like next year's is M1X, M2X, M3X, and they have different chips at different levels of the product line

and they're called different things, you know? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they, so many of the things we talk about here end up coming back to what's Apple's marketing decision. Yeah. Because they got a strategy technically that they're executing.

This is our iMac Pro argument, right? Will there be an iMac Pro? And I think we all kind of settled on the idea that, well, there could be, but it's really just up to Apple if they want to call it. None of us seems to really believe that there's going to be an iMac Pro that's totally different from the iMac that keeps kicking around. That seems unlikely, but that isn't stopping them from calling something iMac Pro. And they chose to call this chip the M1. They could call, they could give it a name. They could call it like M1 Eagle, or they could call it M1 Ultra, M1 Pro, like the MacBook Pro has the M1 Pro, or they could just stick with what they're doing and call it the M1X, like they did with iPad chips, and maybe they'll do that.

Who knows? Or they'll just call it the M1 and say, this is a new version of the M1. This mini-core is M1. It's their choice, but it doesn't change fundamentally what they're doing here, which is probably taking the same chip as the M1, but a variant that's got more cores and enhanced graphics, as Mark Gurman said, a variant on the M1. of dedicated GPUs. Do you think that that is something we would see in a MacBook Pro, or do you think they're all just going to be system-on-a-chip integrated GPUs

and they'll be powerful enough? My feeling is that that'll be on the chip for now. And it'll probably be enough, right? With the power that they're looking at exactly and that they'll they'll add gpu cores and um i think apple probably wants to get somewhere you look at the the mac pro and and think apple probably wants to get somewhere where it can use external gpus but does it have to get there in 2021? I don't think, you know, mid-year 2021 with a MacBook Pro, does it really need that? Can it have enough graphic superpowers with its own

GPU that it doesn't need to do that? My guess is that it'll keep it simple for this first generation of chips. So we said coming mid-year, this feels like a very, very sweet WWDC announcement, right? Like, here's your new MacBook Pros. That's a perfect audience for it. Like, that feels just about right. Like, here they are. They're available now, right?

Like, I can see, I could have really imagined this. You know, the MacBook Pro is for many people their computer but for developers it's like the computer I could really imagine that, right? It feels like it fits in quite nicely Higher contrast displays so we have to wait and see exactly what that looks like but better display technology in some

form or fashion uh allowing for better color reproduction reproduction and apparently they these macbook pros will look similar with minor design changes so you'd expect uh the 14 inch will look most like the 16 inch rather than the the 13-inch now, right? So like the 14 will change the most. It will start to look like the newer generation. But that overall doesn't seem like, from Mark Gurman's report, that they're going to look that different. I will add that

Ming-Chi Kuo also had a report about these, which detailed just a couple of things extra. One of the things that Kuo says is that they will get a flat edged design which makes logical sense right that's the apple 2020 2021 design language right yeah that'll look more like a uh two-ply uh ipad pro kind of thing right that's a way to put it but yes yeah yeah yeah i i'm that's why i'm in marketing right that's why i'm not in marketing it's a way to put it, but yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm in marketing, right?

That's why I'm not in marketing. It's a marketing decision. They can call it what they want. We know what it looks like. Yeah. This is interesting because Gurman's sort of saying, meh, it'll look more or less the same. And Ming-Chi Kuo's saying, well, no,

it's going to be a little bit flat-edged. This may be just the opinion of people who've seen it and that they're actually describing the same thing it's the parable of the blind man and the elephant right like they're they're actually the same but coming at it from different directions but it does seem contradictory on the surface just it's more or less like the old design and bing qi kuo saying no it's really not so the way though i've i mean because you know like macbook pros have flat sides and my imagination for what is being described here um is that they will they will be flat on the bottom

because the macbook pro kind of has that taper out and it's a bit chunkier at the bottom right i imagine them kind of basically making it uh all flat box kind of design yeah well well yeah the the idea that it isn't going to have the sides that are like the sort of sort of sweepy curved but are instead more like a flat edge and then and then a very quick kind of like right angle to another flat be nice if they made them even thinner to make that happen that would be fun just for you know why not if they made them even thinner to make that happen. That would be fun. Just for, you know, why not? If they were thinner, lighter. I would love thinner and lighter. There's nothing about that in any of these reports,

but I'm just always laptops thinner and lighter as long as they keep the power. Of course. Okay, MagSafe is apparently coming back. Again, because it already came back, but it's coming back again. Well, yeah. This is more like coming back though so mark

german is saying that magsafe on the new macbook pros is going to be more like the old version of the magsafe design almost like a pill shaped kind of connector little pill shaped not what we seen for iphones which i think is confusing i don't know you know, again, it's just how they market it. They're like, we use MagSafe technology in a bunch of different ways in a bunch of different places. On the Mac, MagSafe is like this. And on the iPhone, MagSafe is like this. And I think they could get away with it. It is interesting, though.

One of the things that most frustrates me about a person who talks about Apple products in an audio medium for a living is having to qualify everything i know and this would be just another qualification magsafe for macbook pro magsafe for iphone right like which one the old no no the old magsafe no not that one the second generation magsafe no no not that one the right angle connector connector, not the... Yeah, yeah, I know. For us, it's going to be extra confusing if it happens. Isn't this fascinating, though, the idea that this is an undo, right? This is an undo of a design decision that Apple made mid last decade where they said, we're going to introduce USB-C and we're just going to drop magsafe and we're just going to focus on usbc charging and it sounds like according to german they're they're tossing that they're going to i wonder if they'll also allow usbc charging i'm convinced they will

because it would be madness to not have that as an option well and and like docking you know docking to a monitor and stuff like that you know to be able to charge that way rather than having a second thing it would be really annoying to both have to uh plug in a usbc cable and a magsafe when technically there's no reason that you would need to do that right right um yeah i i mean apple's really annoyed people before but i think you're probably right that why would you backtrack offering a little MagSafe thing, a little MagSafe pill? And also, of course, yes, if you plug into the Thunderbolt port, it's going to charge and it's fine like that. That would be the best way to do it. to do it so i think it's great news because i i like magsafe and i miss it and having just bought a new macbook air and you know i didn't use my old macbook air that much anymore but like it was still a magsafe macbook air and then the new one i'm like i'm gonna put this down oh i need to plug it in now here is the plug right uh yeah it's not as good it's just not as good i know this

is like news from 2017 for most people but it's still yeah magsafe still good this one puzzles me though a little bit because i can't really imagine that the technology has advanced and will provide me with any different functionality right like it's going to be a little connected as a magnet and it connects to my laptop and charges it and so the story of it coming back is going to be really weird like at best i can imagine they were like once we brought magsafe to the iphone we were like wow we should bring it to like it's you know what i mean like i i'm i'm really kind of struggling to wrap my head around like why like why did you get rid of it now why is it here again again here i am not the marketing professional but i would imagine looking at apple's history that what they'll do is

a classic apple move where they do something to right a wrong caused by apple and sort of say aren't we heroes look what we did so the idea that they'll come out and say and you know we're bringing mag safe back because people love it like let's not mention that you know we also killed it but we brought it back aren't you happy aren't you grateful that we brought it back yay it's like we made a keyboard that's good yay and everybody's like but you made the bad keyboard too it's like but the keyboard is good now you hooray so i think i think it'll be like that all right well let's try your newfound market and prowess on this next one apple is apparently testing the removal of the touch bar people like people like the function keys we brought them back

yay it's got a complete keyboard you know this is not just our magic keyboard but it's doing something that the macbook pro hasn't done for a while now which is we've added an extra row of function keys because people love function keys yay hooray this is yeah the touch bar this is this is well that am fascinated to know what happened behind the scenes where at some point somebody in mac product design was like getting rid of magsafe was a mistake putting the touch bar on was a mistake i want them i want them dead i want them gone um we need to backtrack our laptops and you know people say this stuff outside of Apple all the time, but to hear it from inside Apple would be fascinating because it is essentially Apple saying, you know what?

Our, our laptops were better in 2015 than they are today that we went backward and now we're going to go back to the future whatever it is right and that it's although although mike unless the magic keyboard is also an example of that where they're like remember that keyboard that people liked we're bringing it back and the macbook air is that which is oh yeah we made these other MacBooks that people didn't buy, but the MacBook Air. So we're bringing it back. We're going to do a new version of that, too.

So you could argue that Apple has already been spending the last couple of years trying to undo all their bad decisions from mid-decade on their laptops. But this would be a pretty major repudiation of every attempt that they made like the touch bar is like literally the only innovative mac thing that they did in between i don't know when between sometime early and what i want to say is between the introduction of the second generation macbook air and the m1 perhaps the most innovative i mean they did the trash can which didn't work out the trash can mac pro and they did the touch bar and if they did the trash can which didn't work out the trash can mac pro and they did the touch bar and if they take the touch bar away they already killed the trash

can mac pro but if they take the touch bar away it is kind of a repudiation of a decade of of uh or or maybe it just puts a little cherry on top of a decade where not a lot of stuff happened on the mac that the stuff that they did try didn't even work very well and they had to dump it. I mean, combining this with another thing from Ming-Chi Kuo that more ports are coming to the laptops, I have no idea what's going on here.

Is there an SD card in there too? Is there an HDMI? I don't know. I don't know. So when we talked about Apple Silicon unlocking a future for the Mac, maybe i don't know i don't know i mean this is so when we talked about apple silicon unlocking a future for the mac i'm not sure what i expected is that the future would actually be undoing everything that's happened in the last six years the future is the past that's what we've learned

here yeah everything goes around rainbow logo it's gonna be be in beige it's going to be let's just go all the way back people all the way back i don't know what to make of this look let me just say sounds like an incredible product and everyone's going to lose their collective mind when when if they announce all this stuff but they didn't even mention whether there's face id which i would hope that if they redesign these products they would put the the sensors on to do face id too right but the laptops have that's not in here right and i think that that i think apple will consider that acceptable for the laptop line for quite a while it's probably it's probably fine but i still had that when i was docked when i'm my laptop well yeah i mean it's fine because you

put it in clamshell mode and it can't see you anyway, right, for Face ID. So it's fine. We'll save that for the iMac. Maybe they'll do it there. But I don't know. This is, you're right, from a product introduction standpoint, it will be very interesting to see how Apple addresses or chooses just not to address the fact that it's undone a bunch of the things that it had done in the past. This is the you know swallowing its pride kind of thing but my guess is that based on their previous behavior they'll just tout it as a great new thing and when you ask them about it um on the record if they say

anything it'll it'll just be sort of like but this is it's one louder isn't it like but this is new but this is good like well yeah but what about the touch bar it's like well we think that uh we think people will use this like i my guess is that they won't even talk about it i could imagine a we listened to our customers for the touch bar yeah that's a that's a good one that they that they do a lot which is we listened and although we think that the touch bar was innovative, you know, the fact is that it wasn't being as used as much as we'd hoped and that people really liked the physical keys. They could lean into that and say, it turns out that adding a touch surface on that plane didn't actually work. Or they could just say, we, you know, people wanted this, so we're going to give them what they want. This is,

I mean, look, we have more, but this is the beginning of what seems to be a very clearly interesting and exciting year for the Mac. If they do this stuff, and let's just say, when it comes

to things like this, Mark Gurman has a very, very good track record with hardware. I think that's pretty fair to say. They just do all the things that's in Mark Gurman's article here. That is an unpredictable computer from a year ago 18 months ago right like tell me a long-time user of the mac what are all the things that are wrong with the current crop of macbook pros and what do you want them to do and then you go through and list all the things and then then apple says here you go then and that doesn't seem right it's like oh okay uh we're gonna get bigger screens uh better chips

better displays uh magsafe more ports uh and a removal of the touch bar well so i a couple weeks ago i wrote a mac world piece where i said Apple, it was keyed off of this Twitter comment that somebody made where the only Intel Mac that was in 20 Macs for 2020 was the first generation or the second generation MacBook Air. And I said, I didn't realize that, which is funny. And there were some other ones that were kind of on my list. And there were some other ones that were kind of on my list. But the piece in Macworld that I wrote was basically that Apple sort of had a Mac stasis for most of the 2010s. It was just sort of on a combination, I would say, of mid-decade sort of not focusing on the Mac. And also, I think a perception that they got it right with the Mac in that flurry of creative activity that they did between, you know, 98 and 2010, that they kind of got it right. And now the Mac is shaped up and they obviously were moving on to worrying about the iPhone and the iPad and the Apple Watch and like the Mac is doing great because they did spend, they threw so much at the wall in that period of 12 years

in terms of the Mac and completely transformed it. So that's great. But that was a long time ago now. That was more than a decade ago. And the 2010s didn't really have a lot that was successful. And so while I'm excited about the idea that in 2021, they might be undoing some of the things that they tried to make the Mac different that weren't successful.

I, I have to ask, does Apple think that the MacBook pro is perfect? Like, do they think that the, do they really think that other than chip speed and some spec updates and maybe some thinness and lightness that the thing that they designed that the retina macbook pro of 2014 or whatever was perfect and that there's nothing more to be done with a laptop that a

laptop that's sort of silvery metallic with a regular keyboard with a magic keyboard with function keys and a big trackpad and a non-touch uh screen and some ports on it is literally all a laptop should ever be or could ever be um because i'm not sure i believe that i'm not i think maybe they designed the perfect laptop for a decade, but that was a decade ago. What's next? And you see the PC laptop makers struggling, trying all sorts of different things. Some of them are successful, maybe. Some of them are not. Apple doesn't do that in public. Apple does that behind the scenes. And perhaps they've tried a whole bunch of different things and none of them are good. But I am increasingly skeptical that the solution in the long run to making a great MacBook Pro is to have it, you know, be a blast from the past.

It's a step. Getting rid of the bad stuff and not holding on to it when you decided it doesn't work. Sorry, people who like the Touch Bar. But, like, I feel like in general it it was it was a cul-de-sac for them so i like the touch bar in theory and i like what i use of it but it is a failure because nothing's changed on it since it yeah came about that's i think that's exactly right which is even if you like the touch bar what what I would say is Apple clearly doesn't like the Touch Bar because Apple has made almost no attempt to make it better. And it's been years now, and it's not any better.

And there were so many clear things that if they had iterated and the next version of macOS added a whole bunch of Touch Bar stuff and all that, sure, but they never did it, which suggests to me that whoever championed the Touch Bar, nobody else inside Apple believed it and went along with it. So don't get me wrong. Undoing failures or eliminating MagSafe or bad product decisions like conceiving of a Touch Bar and shipping it and then realizing that you got it wrong or not putting effort into making it a success, whatever that story is. That's all good, but I still am left... If we look at the MacBook Pro line at the end of this year, or maybe in a couple of years, and it looks the same, more or less, as the MacBook Pro from mid last decade, and the message is really like oh we're sorry it turns out the macbook pro of 2015 was the best macbook pro so we're going back to that that's okay it's pragmatic but i would say it's also disappointing because i feel like

apple should be pushing right what a laptop is a little bit more than they are. Because I don't, I mean, I can see the argument that maybe the laptop has a perfect shape and maybe they found it and that they defined it and that's what it is. But that sounds a lot like an end of history argument to me. It sounds a lot like, well, now that the Soviet Union has fallen and the Cold War is over, there will never be anything more that will happen and everything will stay the same forever, which is what people legitimately said in the 90s. They were completely wrong. History, it never ends, right?

As Dr. Manhattan said in Watchmen, it never ends, right? You always, if you get complacent and you say, oh, well, we solved it, we're done. say, oh, well, we solved it. We're done. Like, I don't think that inside Apple people are complacent about it. But I do wonder if Apple has just decided that there's never going to be anything better than the MacBook Pro in the shape that we know it and that it should just stay that way forever. And I think that's a mistake. I think they will regret that eventually if they aren't trying to push it. So great, you know, great first step, but reverting to previous version is hard to, it's hard to cheer at that as like a great victory because it's not moving anything ahead. It's just fixing problems and fixing problems is probably step one of moving ahead.

But what's step two? This feels more like it needs to be a reversion to a new baseline. And then they push forward. And then forward. Yeah. I hope so. I hope so. They're like, we got, like I said about the touch bar being a cul-de-sac.

It's like, okay, we're backing out of here. Yeah. And then we can get on the freeway. Then we can go. I hope so. And I hope that's the case. I hope that's the case. There's no rumors about that sort of thing now. One great way to explain the disappearance of the touch bar

would be to add a touchscreen. You know, I thought that, but I was imagining that we don't need a touch bar if all of those actions are now on the screen, right? And it's, but my thought was that I'm sure, I'm sure if it did, Gurman would have known that. Yep. I'm convinced. And Quo too, honestly.

I think they would both know. One of them would have reported that and they didn't. But I still don't think that that means, I am very much in the camp of there will be a touchscreen on a Mac. I think it's going to happen. I think it could happen this year. But I think it will be over in the next couple of years. And I will not accept that just because they haven't done it

means they will not do it. I think a lot of people go like, ha-ha, see, there's no touchscreens on these laptops. I don't think that that means anything. It just means there's no touchscreens on these laptops. I don't think that means anything. It just means there's no touchscreens on these laptops. I did want to just circle back to the fact that

the MacBook Air being the only Mac and the modern Mac for 2020. I think if you were doing 30 for 2030, the iMac Pro would be in it. I think it's too soon to it, but the iMac Pro feels like a very good candidate for what was 20 Macs for 2020.

I mean, I wrote a thing on Six Colors about what was on the cutting room floor. And yeah, there are definitely... Part of the challenge is you want to tell the story of the sweep of history. And the truth is, a lot of the recent stuff, everybody knows that story because it just,

it just happened. Yeah. And you don't know, and you don't know how it ended. Like the, I, I would argue the iMac pro story still hasn't been told because it's still being sold. We need, yeah. So this is exactly it. It needs more time.

And when it goes away and we find out what replaces it, which is just fast iMacs that run it, Apple Silicon, then you can be like oh i know what that article is right that article is is all about that moment where they thought they were going to kill the mac pro and just have an imac yeah and that they realized they had to change but they shipped the imac pro anyway and like there's a whole story there and there are other stories like that with some other models i think the mac 12 inch macbook is probably a great story but is that story over maybe maybe not i think the thing about the iMac pro is that it's also an excellent computer which makes the story even more fun to tell right sure sure because where the macbook air was like not great in a lot

of ways although sorry 12 inch macbook you know like the story would have been very different a lot of the pieces that i wrote were about macs that weren't weren't great sure but i mean sometimes sometimes they're good sometimes they're bad but yeah there's a there's a super cool story in the fact that it is this weird mac pro which is from an alternate timeline but they released it anyway the iMac pro so they released it anyway they released it anyway and it was really good and there was only ever one of them yeah oh i i think i think there's truth to that that yeah uh it's not just. And there was only ever one of them. Yeah. Oh, I think there's truth to that. It's not just that the 2010s was a wasteland, but it's also that we know what the 2010s is in a way. We saw those stories, so I'm not really unearthing them.

And also, we don't know how it all ends yet, right? You do need time. I had a bunch of people write me during the course of that series who said, what about this current Mac? And what about this current Mac? And I said to a lot of them, there's a reason that like the, that like sports hall of fames have a waiting period. Like, I think you need some perspective about some of these things and exactly where they fit. And the iMac pro is a great example of a product that undoubtedly there is a story to tell there but we still don't quite know the end of it and i want to i want to see that so that that's part of it too you're right that needs a bit of time isn't there really because it's like it's the idea of like what is

the best mac of all time well you can make arguments that it's always the most recent one but exactly maybe except for some people the macbook pro but we'll see about that all right this episode is also brought to you by devin think the flagship product from devin technologies devin think is the most professional document and information management application for the mac it is the one place for storing all of your documents snippets or bookmarks and working with them the integrated ai assists you with filing and searching while the extensive search language of advanced boolean operators can help you find exactly what you're looking for devon think features a flexible sync system that supports many cloud services or lets you synchronize over the local network too

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for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So Mark Gurman has also published a report about the future of Apple's desktop Macs too. First up, new iMac. Slimmer bezels, no more chin. Overall, the design will be similar to the Pro Display XDR

with a flat back, no more like bulge like the iMacs have had. And it will, quote quote be one of the biggest visual updates to any apple product this year one of i like that like what a hedge that is right well it might not be the only and it might not be the biggest but it's among the biggest that will well i mean there's something else coming which is a little bit weird and wonderful, but I reckon this is probably going to be the biggest redesign of anything that they have in the next year. Yeah, I would say, depending on how you count the 2007, I think, iMac, or 2012 when they

did the one that was thinner at the edges but bulged in the back is the last time the iMac got an update at all. I have a 2007 iMac that looks exactly like my iMac Pro except for the color of the silver and the fact that it's got flat sides instead of the little curved sides. Yeah. It really, I mean, the iMac has looked, since they went from plastic to aluminum, iMac has looked, since they went from plastic to aluminum, it hasn't really changed. So this is big. And you and I have been begging for this for several years now, because it feels like shrinking the bezels and getting rid of the chin and all of that is obvious. Like, do that.

Why would you not do that? But it sounds like maybe it's finally going to happen. why would you not do that but um sounds like maybe it's finally going to happen having an iMac that looks like it's just a computer monitor like that's the dream that's been the dream for years and it's been close right like it's just this looks like it's just a monitor but haha there's a computer in there like it feels like we may get to that now that's what this is going to be like it's not going to have space for a big apple logo on the bottom because they don't need that space anymore and they'll squeeze it all into what is ostensibly just a monitor yeah that is that's been the dream

since they went with the g5 imac to the flat pane on a little foot is it's just a, the computer is gone. The computer has vanished. So it's just that, you know, again, in the last decade, things have moved along and Apple has pulled the bezels in on almost every other product that they've made.

And the iMac has remained as it is. And I, for a product that's as popular as the iMac. And, you know, when we, we did that episode where I talked to the product popular as the iMac. And when we did that episode where I talked to the product manager for the iMac,

she said, it's a hugely important product. We lose sight of it because laptops are more popular, but iMac is a huge business for Apple. And I think that you probably got to lay it to down to Apple being distracted with other stuff and deciding that the Mac was fine. Like I said, in our last segment, like we got it, it's fine. We'll just leave it there because it feels like the iMac should have been redesigned a few years ago and they just didn't get to it. So hooray. Cause yeah, this is a long time coming and they just didn't get to it so hooray because yeah this is a long

time coming and i think it is really deserved and again i'll throw out there that this is where much better webcam uh face id would be great on the imac because you don't have a keyboard attached with a touch id sensor on it this would be a good use for something like that um obviously there's going to be a replacement for the larger one and the smaller one there have been some rumors that the smaller one will come first which wouldn't surprise me if they did that um although german's report here is about next year they're going to do it to to to both of them and so there's a question of would they release them both at the same time or not. Because he says next generation chips, you know, the rumors that were going around was

that it might be the smaller one might just be an M1 and in the spring and then that the other one would have a next generation chip and be later on. And I that German's report doesn't say that. I'm a little surprised by that. I would think that they would want to roll something out this spring but maybe not maybe they've decided that that the imac also needs to wait and they'll do it uh in a bunch i am very intrigued about this i'm very intrigued about timing um i don't think mark gave timing for this it's just like this year yeah the next generation chips is the thing that makes me think are they going to

have a new variation on the m1 sooner than mid-year and maybe they are i i would be a little surprised by that but maybe maybe so and it will be interesting i think to see what the sizes are because it doesn't say about the sizes like will they say 21 and 27 or will it go to like 23 and 30 or something which we've seen rumors suggesting um and you know we spoke about wanting to have face id and stuff that's not in here but it doesn't mean it's not happening right um at the very least there has to be a better webcam in all of these products, honestly. Apple will get eviscerated if they don't do that. But as exciting as all that is, it's not the most exciting thing

that was in this article. A pair of new Mac Pros. A pair. A pair of Mac Pros. New. In quotes. One of these Mac Pros is going to be a direct update

to the current Mac Pro. Same design, and get this, potentially still using an Intel processor. Yeah, I'm not sure this is what I would call new. I think this is Gurman saying they may just update. They may do an Intel update on the Mac Pro that currently exists, which I kind of understand why. It allows them to keep selling this Mac Pro that has the Intel stuff and that has expansion cards

and all the things we know to the people who have a bunch of them and they're institutional or they're high-end clients and they've got lots of cards and lots of very specific needs and they aren't going to go off of intel anytime soon um so it kind of makes sense to keep it kicking around to do an update on it would be surprising to me but they could do it i guess if intel has better processors they could put them in there are there new xeons i don't even know but uh they could do that or they could just keep it kicking around sort of as it is. And that would be another

way to go. Just keep it kicking around. I think it's interesting that he says potentially still using an Intel processor, which also makes me wonder, are they planning to update the Mac Pro with Apple Silicon in the long run, but in the short run, they may do another, you know, Intel update or not. This is this is unclear to me about whether the full-size Mac Pro is sticking around for the long run or not. If it's going to get an Intel update or just kick around with Intel for a while until it gets an Apple Silicon update, it's still a little mysterious to me. I think this is very intriguing. I could imagine it being a case, as you say, of just making the current customers of the Mac Pro feel a bit more comfortable too.

Like, don't worry, we're keeping this one around. And this will be the very last product that will update if they do ever actually update this one. But they'll leave it for the full two-year that they said they would, that it was a two-year transition. They'll leave that one for the longest. And this is the update that they always would have done to this mac pro of like all right we have some new stuff to put in here so we're gonna do that um but like you know making it pretty clear i reckon if they do this at the same time that they do this

other one that this is probably going to be the last one but if you still need it this is available to you um yeah but it's like just a update this is why the trash can mac pro stayed on the price list so long it may be why the imac pro stays on the price list for a while right they could do that and it really is like we don't want you to buy this but you because they they're going to have people who don't want to go to apple silicon because there's a very specific reason why they can't or they won't because they want to stay stay back and they want to be you know all their computers are the same and in two years we'll buy apple silicon but not yet like i get it i get that they would do that. And Mac Pro is a very particular kind of high-end user

that just wants it the way they want it. That's fine. I get it. Mm-hmm. Now, the next one is a half-sized Mac Pro. So it's similar design, half the size, apparently being called reminiscent of the G4 Cube. Still made of aluminium.

This is, I guess... It's the mini tower. Yeah, I guess this is the Mac Pro you would make if you were making all of the internals yourself, I suppose suppose i don't really know what this computer means so mini towers back in back in the day mini towers the whole idea there was that not everybody needs to have a giant space full of cards and that you could slim it down

and create a smaller model that's cheaper that has some expansion in it, but is not, you know, not the huge one. Like that was a common product for a very long time on the Mac. This idea is very popular in PCs. My next PC that I'm building is a smaller form factor that I can put on my desk. I don't have to put under my desk. Exactly. You don't need, a lot of people don't need, you know, a whole big stack of cards, but they want want a card.

They want their video card in there or whatever they need, or they want more internal storage, but they don't need the whole giant thing. Apple has resisted this product for a very long time. There hasn't been a product like this available for a long time. Would you count the trash can Mac Pro? No, because it wasn't expandable. Ah, well, there's nothing to suggest that this is expandable either. Well, but it's a Mac Pro, so I would think that maybe it is to a certain degree, but

maybe not, in which case, I don't know what this is. Then it is a G4 Cube. The thing I was going to say is there is nothing that suggests that this is a Mac Pro right now. M2 Cube. Well, except that he says that it's a Mac Pro. His report says it's a Mac Pro. So they're thinking of it as a Mac Pro. That's what Mark Gurman has said, yes.

Yeah. So if we're going to take him on, I feel like that there is weight in this being described as a Mac Pro and not as a different system. Yeah. Yeah. A half height Mac Pro and not. And that may be how it's pitched internally is that even though it's a mini tower, you know, we don't think this is a mainstream system and it's going to be very expensive, but it'll be cheaper than the Mac Pro. And it's for all those people. We know all of us who are like, well, I i'd love a pro system but the mac pro is is

a bridge too far do you do you think do you imagine they would they would have a product and call it the mac pro mini like what is this yeah unless the the new mac pro becomes the mac pro max oh my god can Apple break the curse of small Macs I don't know I don't know is there is there room for this product is there an audience for this product I don't know

the G4 Cube beautiful failed trash can Mac Pro beautiful failed yeah Mac Mini successful product but like what makes this different than a mac mini was the g4 cube considered a professional grade product power mac g4 cube yes right so we'll say that that is the this is essentially a pro mac the mac pro was a pro Mac this would be a Pro Mac and they have third time's a charm

but they used to do these products all the time I think it's an interesting idea it's pitched that it's a Mac Pro it is the thing that all the I don't know I'm fascinated by this because

they've resisted this idea for so long, but then again, they seem to be undoing a lot of the assumptions that they made over the last decade. I wonder about this too. A pair of new Mac pros report in general, like, is this a Mac pro?

Cause he says it is, is the old Mac pro going to be replaced by this eventually, but not yet. In which case is this the new Mac Pro? Or, I don't know. Is the old Mac Pro going to be replaced with an Apple Silicon version of its current form? It's all out there, right?

We don't know. That's the question. As an old school Mac user, I like this idea. And I know that there are a bunch of people who are super into the Mac and they use it and they're power users. And they have all migrated from what they used to use, which was Power Macs, to iMacs because iMacs are pretty powerful. And the Mac Pro became so expensive and so high-end that it was ridiculous for most use. I look at this product and I think, that's the kind of product I would buy. That's the kind of product where it's like, I want the power, but I'm not going to buy the Mac Pro because it's overkill.

It's too much. But this one, it's overkill. It's too much. But this one, it's intriguing. Also intriguing because I could open it up and put more storage in it, possibly. I would be able to buy, presumably, a really nice monitor, and then if I wanted to replace the computer, I could just use that same monitor again. If only, Mike,

if only Apple made a monitor that was more affordable than the Pro Display XDR, this product would be perfect for it. Focused on consumer use to be sold alongside the new iMac and new iMac Pro. Can I just say I predicted this? In my predictions column, I predicted this and you were like, oh, I don't know, Jason. Then again, he says they're beginning to work on it so it may not actually happen in 2021 but I think it's interesting that Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple is finally working on making a consumer level

monitor which I don't know why it doesn't already exist I've ranted about here before so I won't rant about it again other than to say you've got these laptops that can drive big beautiful screens you've got the mac mini that can drive a big beautiful screen you've got the mac pro but not everybody who wants the mac pro once is doing needs a pro display xdr why is there not another option and it sounds like finally once again backtracking on something that was decided a few years ago about Apple and the Mac, which was they weren't going to make monitors anymore. And then they made the Pro Display XDR, but just that one.

They seem to have finally said, yeah, okay. Alright. We'll make you a nice monitor. And my guess is that it will be like a really nice iMac, except it'll just be a monitor. Yeah, it's like... That'll be it. The iMac's gonna look like the

Pro Display, which is just a monitor. So the monitor's just gonna look like the new iMac. Basically, the monitor will be a new iMac with no computer in it. They're not gonna make different panels. It's gonna be the same panel. I would imagine. It'll just be thinner, I guess. Yeah. And maybe they'll do two models for the two

panels that are in the two different sizes of iMac. Yes, so we'll do two sizes. I will tell you right now. Great. I'll buy it. Small Mac Pro. Very exciting to me. Me too.

As the replacement for my iMac Pro. I have been assuming all along that what I would end up with is just an iMac. Me too. I have been assuming all along that what I would end up with is just an iMac. Me too. But I see this report and I think, oh, maybe a desktop Apple Silicon Pro Mac with a nice Apple monitor is where I'll end up. I don't know. I feel like in the sphere of podcasters and writers and listeners to Mac podcasts and all that, if this is what we think it might be, which again, there's a wish casting there,

it probably will disappoint us in some way, such as the way of the world. But this seems like what a huge cross section of our audience has been asking for for a decade. So I hope so. All I hope is there isn't a long time between the new iMacs and this. Well, that's the thing, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think the truth is I'm going to buy an awesome iMac, and then six months later this will come out, and I'll be like, oh, I've got to sell this iMac.

Because I don't even want to think about the fact that I bought the 13-inch MacBook Pro because of that 14-inch MacBook Pro. Oh, right, yeah. That's already enough. That's why I'm happy that I bought my 999 MacBook Air. It's like, I got it. I got it.

It's fine. I'm confident the resale value of this MacBook Pro, though, I think I'll only have to pay a few hundred dollars to get the new one really like indifference but yeah it will hurt if these new iMacs

come out and they're really incredible as you'd imagine and look really good and then it's like do I get one of these and hope that the little Mac Pro isn't what I want it to be like you know like that's gonna oh that's gonna that's gonna be a few months of conversation oh jason i'm so excited about the mac who would have yeah it it's really funny that these reports that are kind of about like apple

going back to basics with some uh decisions that they are undoing ends up being exciting. And, and maybe some new products that are reminiscent of back in the, back in the day kind of products. I think what it says is if these German reports are true and Mark German's track record is very good. What it says is whoever has their hand at the, on the wheel of where the Mac is going. And again,

this has probably been for a while and we're only now kind of seeing that it's coming to fruition. But like, clearly this wasn't just a, oh yes, we're going to pay attention to the Mac. Clearly this was, whoever has their hand on the wheel is like, put it in reverse, like we said, and get on the road.

Like realizing that they needed to back up, undo some mistakes, and then peel out and floor it. Go to new places. It's very exciting. The thing for me is, though, is it's not necessarily so much the detail of the changes. It's that there's so many things happening.

That's what excites me more like we can talk about the detail and forever right but i don't remember a time when i've been able to like let me fill up an entire episode of upgrade we've announced potential announcement for new mac hardware that's like yeah that we're talking about excited and that we're excited about and not just like oh man are they really not going to put the keyboard in this one i think that's a side effect of the whole thing of you know what i was saying about the kind of malaise of the mid-decade uh mac right where it was just like everything was just kind of like well you know yep whatever there was

excitement elsewhere in apple and i'm not saying they were lazy. I'm saying their focus was somewhere else. And I really believe they thought the Mac was going to be just sort of like kept going as it was. And then at some point they said, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to put

effort into the Mac like we put it into the iPad. And this is that happening. This is another step there. The M1 Macs were a good step. The Mac Pro was a good step. This is another step in what I would say is the right direction, even if it is sort of a step back and then a pivot and then a step forward.

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including the text adventures that we do with C2P Grey every year, extra monthly shows like backstage and fusion access to the relay fm members discord and so much more just go to getupgradeplus.com to sign up we love making the additional content for upgrade plus subscribers we get to share some interesting stories talk about what's going on behind the scenes of the show and we get deep into some nerdy topics. Like, for example, in today's Upgrade Plus segment, you will get to hear how Jason was able to watch 3D movies at home

with hardware he already owns. And here's my tease, which is the Microsoft Surface Go on my desk says that it's got three hours to go. What? What could it mean? Go to getupgradeplus.com right now. You can sign up to become a member, support the show, and you can find out exactly what that is all about. Thank you so much.

If you check it out, we really appreciate it. what that is all about. Thank you so much. If you check it out, we really appreciate it. Let's finish off today's episode with some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Jerry asks,

how many of your podcasts are video calls versus audio calls when you're recording them? None. What about TPK? Well, so the footnote is if there's a video version,'s a video call otherwise it's not

so total party kill where we play dungeons and dragons on the internet for your amusement that's a video call because you see our faces and you see the map and we have to see the map to see where our characters are and stuff like that and move around and stuff but i realized that it was confusing i mean a lot of people just listen to the audio version most people i think listen to the audio version and it's fine it's theater of the mind we try not to do it but i find i realized showing us and the map would be kind of a fun video version so we do that on video that's it everything else we do like like upgrade there's no video. And I think,

and Mike has talked about this before, he'll back me up here. I think it's super important that you don't do video because not only is it distracting, but you end up communicating things visually and the listeners can't see you. So you communicate things visually and they're lost on the listenership so i think the quality of the conversation goes down because you're no longer having a audio conversation that is all that the podcast listener gets you're having this video conversation that the podcast listeners are missing so none other than the tpk where we also do a video version none of the podcasts i do have video exactly uh tim asks would you use a waterproof home pod mini shower edition um no no i i have a bluetooth speaker that i use in the shower and it's fine. Um, I,

I guess, you know, I don't think I need voice control in the shower or anything like that. Uh, my little, little suction cup thing works fine. And, uh,

yeah, I just, I don't, I don't think I would. Uh, it's possible, but I, I,

I think that's an unnecessary thing. Also, it's going to be battery operated and I'm going to have to charge it and stuff like that because I don't have, you know, I'm not going to, there's nothing to plug in in the shower. That would be very dangerous. So I'd say no.

Yeah, my phone's waterproof and the speakers are loud enough that works just fine for me. Honestly, my iPhone, I pop it, well, I'm not, it's not in a case, you know, the one that I'm using right now. Like you can just take it in the shower. In fact, when my Bluetooth speaker starts beeping every 30 seconds to tell me that it's

running out of battery, which I hate so much, I just turn it off and bring my phone in the shower and put it down. So it's reflecting against the wall and it's fine. Ian asks, what are your favorite mouse alternatives when working i'm a video editor and love my mx master 3 but really need an alternative like a trackball or a stylus since i started noticing some wrist forearm strain over the past week or so do you have it's all made great one it's all you i use a magic trackpad and that's it get a magic trackpad um and this is my it's my favorite thing that I love.

Put it on the other side of your desk. And you can use one hand for zooming and panning and then the other hand for your mouse or whatever you're using for more fine motor control. So you're using both hands. That will help reduce the amount of strain you're putting on one arm. If you're looking for other mouse-like products, you said you like the MX Master 3 from Logitech. Logitech also make a trackball mouse called the MX Master

Ergo, which you might like. It's got a lot of the features that the MX Master 3 has. Not all, but there's enough, and it's nice. It has some tilting that you can do with it too. It's nice. It has some tilting that you can do with it too. And do not sleep on getting a Wacom tablet. I use a Wacom Intuos Pro. It takes a while to get used to this because it's a completely different way of doing things. But I have found without a shadow of a doubt, the thing that makes my life so much easier is using a Wacom tablet because it's much more comfortable. You're

holding a pen in your hand, which you're really used to doing. I really, really, really recommend looking into getting one of these. I find it to be a much nicer experience. Make sure that you select the screen area as full and tablet area as full. And this basically means that when you're on the top left of the track of the, uh, the, the, the tablet, you're on the top left of the Mac screen, bottom, right. You're on the bottom, right at the Mac screen. And you move your arm and it moves like the cursor exactly where you want it to be. They do this thing where they try and scale it by default. Don't do that. But trust me, Wacom is the way to go because you can especially,

I mean, it's especially good for me because I'm left-handed with using a pen and right-handed if using a mouse. So great. But otherwise, just get a trackpad, put it on the other side. Really good. I use the medium Wacom Intuos Pro.

Really, really thoroughly recommend. Take some practice, but I've gotten a few people on this train with me over the years. C.J. Pagret got me on this train and I have convinced others. And I typically have only ever heard good things from people. It really, really can help a lot because it's a completely different arm movement as well than the mouse because you kind of move your entire arm which you don't really do with the mouse or over trackpad you tend to just move your wrist and your forearm a lot more really thoroughly recommended john says i held out a year for the m1s like the apple silicon max but they cannot just support

two external displays, which is a huge disappointment for me and something I really want to be able to do. Do I grab the last Intel MacBook Air or hold out longer for Macs that can handle this? I am invested in a dock of monitors and need it to run logic occasionally. I'd say keep holding out because we just talked about new MacBook Pros.

I bet they can do it. I bet money that they will support more monitors. Yeah. I wouldn't buy an Intel Mac now. I would keep waiting. You may be only going to wait six more months. I'm in complete agreement with Jason. I bet those new MacBook Pros can do it.

I would say if you're really desperate, what I would do is I would, if you're desperate, I would buy a, I would buy an M1. And, uh, I think there's some ways you can bridge with a USB adapter to display port and support to external monitors. Um, it's probably going to be hinky, but you could probably do it. do it um and then because it's an apple silicon mac it'll probably hold its value pretty decently and you would just sell that and buy it but if you can just wait i just wait just wait because uh we have on good authority friend of the show mark german that um mid-year there'll be macbook pros and those i would um i can't believe that they'll have the limitations of the current models so i would wait if you can uh sarah in the discord has put a link to a workaround which i'll put in the show notes in case you want to try it out for yourself there are ways to do it you could also like get a mac mini and hook it up an m1 mac mini um but the same deal where you'd end up selling it and getting if you are desperate that would be the

the way to go steve asks do you frequently use message effects in uh messages on ios and how do you feel about this feature i don't um i did have somebody do you i i had somebody say happy new year to me in text the other day, and we laughed because then it kicked off all the fireworks. It was very exciting. I use tap backs a lot. I don't use the message effects so much, but I use tap backs all the time. And I think I'm on record as saying that I wish there were more tap backs

or that I could tap back with any emoji. But I do use tap backs all the time. So I would love there to be an emoji option for tap back. You could just press it and select whatever. Like you can get emoji reactions in Discord and Slack or whatever. Similarly to the tap backs, there should be more. They should have added more message effects. They only ever added one more, I think, which is called Celebration.

I really like them. I use the lasers one. I use the spinning word tornado thing all the time i do want to just say one thing in case people don't know i saw this on twitter a while ago and it's amazing that it messages on the mac there's a keyboard shortcut for the tap backs yeah command t and then you just do one two three four or five um really great like i i'm so happy to find that because doing the right click and selecting it kind of sucks on the Mac. Oh, Jason just sent me a message with lasers.

And now that I am using macOS Big Sur on my iMac Pro, which I upgraded to. You can see it. I can now see it happening. Messages was one of the reasons that I upgraded my iMac Pro. So I really wanted to get the full experience. If you would like to send in a question

to help us close out an episode of Upgrade, if you've got something that you think we can help you with, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you can become a member and support the show at GetUpgradePlus.com. Thank you if you do.

Thank you so much to our sponsors, which are Devon Technologies and Hover of this week's episode. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to SixColors.com and he is at Jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can find this show and many more

over at Relay.fm. I'm sure that there is another program for you if you don't listen to... I bet you can find another one. You go to Relay. you don't listen to I bet you can find another one you go to relay.fm.com I bet you can find something else in there that you're going to enjoy thanks so much for listening to episode 335 of Upgrade and we'll be back

next time, until then say goodbye Jason Snell goodbye Mike Hurley