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Episode Date: March 8, 2021

This week we ponder the future of WWDC, say goodbye to the iMac Pro, investigate a new iPad stand, and wonder about the misplaced priorities of the Paramount+ roll-out.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 342 today's show is brought to you by fitbod hover and uni pizza ovens my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i'm good i going to see if I can get it right this time. Jason, I have a hashtag Snell talk question for you from Marlies who asks, are you a short shower person or a long shower person? Well, unfortunately, Marlies has not given us more information about what defines short and long. Yeah, sometimes I get a question like this and I think to myself, Yeah, sometimes I get a question like this, and I think to myself, I will put this in there because I know Jason will bring that up.

Because I thought it too. It's like, there is no definition of short or long. No. But sometimes I like to just give you these questions and see how you define them or where you go with them, you know? Okay, well, I mean, I'm sure that if I'm really running late i can hurry up my shower and i'm sure that if my back is sore and i need to like stand under the hot water i can i can stretch it out but in general this is the answer i'm going to give in general i my uh shower entire shower process from beginning to end and that starts with turning on the water and it ends with me leaving to go to the rest of the house because i'm done and dry and clothed and everything it's 15 minutes so okay i seem sure i don't know. Is that short? That feels short.

Because I would say like 15 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes in the shower is long. But if you're including like everything in that 15 minutes, I don't think it's very long. Yeah. I mean, my standard shower, there's not a lot to it you you wash you wash yourself you you wash your body you wash your hair i shave i shave in the shower little tip there shower shaver shape in the shower uh because it's why why because it's warm in there that's why why why would i shave out of the shower that's not no going to happen. And then I get out. I wash my face and then I'm done.

And I towel off and that's it. That's what's great about dithering is the 15 minute long podcast. It's perfect for that. I will get through a dithering when I do my shower. Yep. It's definitely a good shower podcast. Thank you to Molly for sending in that question. do my shower. Yep. It's definitely a good shower podcast. Yeah. Thank you to Marlies for sending in that question.

If you would like to send in a question for us to answer, to open an episode of Upgrade, just send in a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or use question mark SnellTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. I have a bit of an upstream slash follow-up for you, Jason. Yes. Last night, Ted Lasso picked up a trio of awards at the critics choice

awards uh hannah waddingham won best supporting actress in economy in a comedy uh jason sudeikis won for best actor in this economy this economy in this economy you did this comedy you knew what i did uh i hate that you picked that up i thought i I was going to get by. And Ted Lasso, the show, won Best Comedy. So my question here, I don't know the answers to this, but it did just pop into my head. Is Ted Lasso the winningest show for Apple? Like, has this won the most awards now? I think so, right?

It's won five total awards. I don't know what kind of minor awards the the critics choice morning show got last year right well i mean it depends on it depends on what where you draw the draw the line and all of that but it's certainly the most or almost among the most for apple i i think i think it's hard to say anything but that it's apple's highest profile uh tv show at this point i think irrespective though it has picked up the highest profile award with the golden globe like i think right the best actor in a comedy golden globe is better than anything that they've won i think you know the most they got was well i mean jennifer anderson won a golden globe last year though right so i

think i forgot i think they're kind of i think they're kind of tied for that. But if you add in these kind of other awards, I don't know if Ted Lasso is better. But certainly it's up there. Yeah, I mean, awards season isn't done yet. I think Ted Lasso currently is the crown jewel, even though money and profile would maybe suggest otherwise up until this point. But I think the Ted Lasso marketing machine for season two,

I expect should be astronomic. I hope they figure out the deal with merch by then. The deal between Sony and Apple and everybody else. The Richmond jersey, big time. Yeah, they're going to have a full set of Richmond kit.

Get your Richmond jersey, get your Richmond scarf. All of that stuff. I see a lot of notes in our document here about paramount plus oh yeah paramount plus well it came out they changed a week ago they changed from cbs all access to paramount plus they've been loading um they've been loading content so let me me back up. So we've been talking about CBS All Access for a while. That's where all the Star Trek shows are. CBS and Viacom were separate companies. Viacom owns the Paramount Movie Studio and a bunch of cable channels, Comedy Central and things like that. They were originally owned together, or at least at one point in their history, they were owned together. They were separated because it was felt like the broadcast network was too old and not interesting and didn't have enough value and that the cable stuff was going to have great value if it wasn't saddled down with CBS. That didn't happen. In fact, the reverse happened. CBS turned out to be much more valuable.

But because they're owned by the same people, they shoved them back together and various executives left at various points. But in the end, they shoved them back together. And what they wanted was one streaming service and CBS All Access was already up and running. So the idea was they would roll all the content from Viacom into CBS All Access and rename it. And they decided to call it Paramount Plus, which I think is fine. I mean, other than the fact that everything is a plus, call it Paramount Plus, which I think is fine. I mean, other than the fact that everything is a plus, I think Paramount as a name for it is perfectly fine. And they have been rolling content into it for a while. I saw that the daily show, the regular old daily show started showing up in CBS All Access a few weeks ago. The switchover is

a soft kind of switchover. They've been loading it with content and it the service is essentially cbs all access they the cbs all access app just updated to become the paramount plus app right so it's built on the cbs stuff and the cbs all access software wasn't great like the the apple tv app and the ios app they weren't great. They were okay. They were lesser and they were missing features. Paramount Plus app, I feel like, I mean, I think it's really bad. It's worse. I think they've taken a step back, I suspect, because there were a bunch of, they had a launch date and they had to make those features work and they had to reskin it and they had to do all of the reorganization stuff to get it up and running on the launch date. And I understand how that kind of thing happens and how they probably knew they were going to be picking up the pieces for a while.

But in terms of not making a good first impression, the navigation kind of doesn't work very well. They do have a little set of brand tiles that are like the Disney brand tiles, right? Where it's like CBS comedy central, you know, whatever their, their most important kind of properties are, but the navigation there isn't great.

The stuff that's a level below them. Like if you click on CBS and go in, what you get is sort of featured shows and then A to Z. That's it. Those are your choices. Shows A to Z and featured shows. CBS All Access was already missing a bunch of things. It doesn't have a watch list. There's a watch list on the website, but the apps, you can't just say, I want to watch this movie later. Can you put it on my list so that I can come back and find it easily later? It doesn't have anything like that. It doesn't have the concept of following a particular TV show.

If you watch a particular TV show, it is smart enough to know that when the new episode of that show comes out, if you're at the end, you know, it will say, oh, the next episode is out. And it'll put that in this for you kind of section. But it won't let you mark a particular show and say, follow this show. Instead, it sort of like just does it in the context of you were watching episode three. Would you like to continue as a little tile, which is not great. And the ones that really got me, so like the Daily Show with Trevor Noah or the Stephen Colbert, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, these are our daily talk shows, daily comedy shows and talk shows. And I'm struck by the fact that I was watching a Colbert from last week, and it keeps telling me, you still got the last three quarters of the Colbert from Wednesday last week. And it's like, yeah, but why aren't you showing me like it's Monday now.

So it would be the Friday Colbert. The next one. Right. Like if it's Tuesday, they should be like, here's last night's Colbert. Here's last night's daily show. And it doesn't do it. Instead, it's like, you still got that last 10 minutes of Wednesday. And like, I don don't that's not so it it's not really getting that concept for the stuff

that's that's uh that's daily um which is which is frustrating and then uh the new show 60 minutes cbs new show 60 minutes i've actually kind of gotten into watching it on cbs all access and the reason for that is it's a magazine show once week, they do like three stories. And on CPS All Access, they make the show comes onto the service. And this is still true with Paramount+. The show comes onto the service after it's aired on the West Coast. And the idea there is that they're kind of trying to protect their affiliates, right? So you can, otherwise, if it was on the service after it aired on the East Coast, it airs at 7 p.m. So at like 5 p.m. Pacific, I could watch it. And they're like, oh, no, we want you to watch it at 7 on your local channel.

So they hold it. But one of the things I noticed is the segments they didn't hold. The segments got posted right after it aired on the East Coast. And I didn't always get to it, but I was often like, oh, it's seven o'clock and I'm sitting down to watch TV on Sunday night. What's on 60 Minutes? And I realized I could look at the segments that were, instead of waiting for it to air, I could just look at the segments and pick the segments i cared about and not watch the others well on paramount plus not only are the 60 minute segments gone which i i keep feeling like it's digital like should you not i really like the idea that like you can just watch what the latest stories are and pick the stories you like yeah and it's extra perplexing because they've launched a new thing called um i believe 60

minutes plus of course which is it's an interesting idea the idea is they're going to do more stories more 60 minute style stories and they're going to roll them out digitally so they're all segments essentially they don't do a 60 as far as i can tell there's no 60 minutes plus show that's an hour long it's just you know they drop a segment that's 17 minutes long. So they're doing it for that, but they're not doing it for the actual segments anymore. Those have disappeared. But this isn't even, and that's too bad. Like, why would you remove that feature?

But the thing that really gets me about it is 60 minutes, they, you can browse the episodes, but it doesn't have any season data in so far as I can tell. So last night I wanted to look at 60 minutes. There are no segments there. So I'm like, all right, well, I'll just go to the,

the episode when the episode drops. And, uh, I look at the most recent episode in their list and it's from like three years ago. And it turns out that they have put in uh that the list is sorted by episode number most recent at the top but episode number when you collapse all of the seasons that they have on the service means that they're like basically it's stuff from years ago and then

you scroll back and eventually you'll find it and it's literally like there are four episode 24s. There's 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018. So you scroll back and it's like 24, 24, 24, 24, 23, 23, 23, 23,

22, 22. It's so confusing. It's just terrible. This is an issue I've had with a tv app with a few shows where like it messes up the series the seasons and just puts all the episode numbers together and like it's absolutely perplexing thing i have this issue with the office for me i bought the whole office collection from itunes and like the first three or four seasons they just put them all in a line and irrespective of the season oh yeah that's yeah well so you know how bad that is to do that you can't do that it's not in order and again it's a it's a bug i'm sure

they'll fix it but it it just everywhere i turned in that paramount plus app where they're trying to make a good impression um they did not make a good impression. And knowing the old CBS app, I was struck by the regressions. And I wonder what of that is technical. Like, well, there are things that we had to do in order to get it up on running as Paramount Plus that broke some stuff and we'll fix it. Like, I can understand that.

But I do wonder how much of that is executives kind of monkeying with the premise that they had before um like well why are there 60 minute segments take those out um but like to have it just they got a lot of work to do this is what i'm saying plus it doesn't even go back to the fact that they have issues with uh i think their descriptive video stuff frequently breaks and their captions are sometimes like not synced properly. And like there's just they got a lot of technical issues there. So they spent a lot of money on that Super Bowl ad and all the other marketing that they're doing.

And I don't they should. Right. But what happened to their app development? That's my question. What happened there? Because it's not it's not good. That's my question. What happened there? Because it's not good. It's really bad. I guess

it's a shame that I'm not surprised. I feel like this happens more often than not, that service launches and its app is bad. I feel like this is just a thing for me with the Apple TV.

My long bugbear of Now TV which is the Sky digital platform they updated their app completely and it's just worse in a bunch of ways just inexplicable things that I don't even understand if I search for John Oliver nothing if I search for Last Week Tonight it will find John Oliver even though the show is called Last Week Tonight for John Oliver, nothing. If I search for last week tonight, it will find John Oliver. Even though the show is called Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,

it says it in text on the screen. It's like, I don't understand how you got out. Like, just all of the UI is terrible and none of it. It's not that it doesn't meet Apple's conventions, but it doesn't mean it's bad. It's just, it is just bad. Like, it's just bad to use on the Apple TV, which tells me it would be bad to use everywhere because the problems with this application's UI, I think would be prevalent everywhere. It's just nothing's

categorized in a way that makes any sense. There is absolutely no, Hey, do you want to resume this? Like none of that. It's just so, so terrible. So I understand, I can sympath sympathize i just don't get it like the amount of money that these companies make i just don't understand how they're not able to channel that into development of the the only thing that they have which is their application i wonder how much of it is that the executives who are making the decisions are well-versed, whether they came from this as a background or not, they're well-versed in marketing, right? In image, in marketing, how's our rollout gonna work? Where are we gonna put our ads? What's the, a mountain of entertainment.

They spent months getting all of their stars to record bits on green screens for them to put together for this whole ad campaign, right? It was not a halfway maneuver. It was not something that they slapped together at the last minute. There was a huge strategy over months to launch Paramount Plus.

And yet I wonder if they think in terms of getting the marketing locked down and that there's just a technical disconnect where they're like well you know and the nerds will do it or oh and we'll and we'll update the app and they don't clearly they don't provide a level of feedback and supervision and detail over what the customer experience looks like but But this is the thing that baffles me. And I think is a mistake when you're a company like CBS Viacom and you do something like this, which is clearly you missed a step because you think that the marketing is what's important. And the marketing is important, but the marketing has a result if you do a good job, which is people

check out your service. The product, and here's another thing that I don't think they get, the product is not just the shows and the movies and the catalog. The product is the interface. You are a software

company, and if your software is bad and is a barrier to getting people to watch your content, that's an existential problem for your company, right? And I think they don't take it seriously. I think they think, yeah, it's good enough, or, you know, the boffins are working on that. How about that? I UK'd it for you. That's what they're saying at Sky. The boffins are working on that. The nerds are working on it whatever it's fine i i can get can i get a show can i play uh can i play that show okay then it's good that's enough and that's not like

honestly nobody's gonna choose netflix or disney plus or paramount plus based on the software i think that's true however their view of it and their frustration with it and the value over time and wanting to keep them as a subscriber i think the software is a big part of it and like you don't get if you can't get to your stuff if i buy paramount plus because i want to see The Daily Show and The Late Show and I'm a cord cutter. And I have to go hunt for them every day because they're not in the right place. Your service failed. So I'm not saying it's the most important part. But I'm saying it's an integral part of your product. And it is fascinating that they get the marketing right let's say and they get

the catalog right because i think the paramount plus catalog is pretty good in terms of they got a bunch of movies they got a bunch of originals they got a bunch of the content from their cable networks that they're rolling in like i think that they're doing fine with that and we can debate the specifics of it but like i would say it clears the bar of that they are making a legitimate attempt to launch this thing and have it be good. And then their app is like an afterthought. It's not the end of the world. You can find stuff. You can go to the website, whatever.

But it's just a huge mistake for them to ignore it like they are. And I'm sure there are people there who know it and know exactly, I'm sure the people working on it know exactly all the reasons why it's broken. The problem is that organizationally, they should have the support to not, over the last few months as this has all been going on, they should have had the support to hire more people, to spend more money, to do whatever they needed to do to get that thing ready so that on day one, it wasn't just, is the logo there, but we want it to be really good so that the people who come through the doors on day one have a good experience with our service. And they missed it. They blew it. It's like to bring it back, like to bring Apple

into this conversation, you know, we make fun of it. But Apple talk about customer satisfaction a lot. And one of the reasons Apple's customer satisfaction scores as high as they are, it's because their products, by and large, are very nice to use because the software is well made and it interacts in a way that you expect and things don't break and it's not confusing and it's like intuitive to use. And so, you know, whilst it isn't necessarily the reason somebody bought the product in the first place, like when they were first coming to it, like maybe they were coming to it for a feature or they were coming to it because of a deal or because they wanted the status of having an iPhone or whatever, like if that's whatever the mindset is they stick around and they're happy because the experience is good and so you know like if somebody is getting to the point where they're like oh man i have 10 streaming services now and i need to get rid of one of them they may be more

likely to get rid of one of the ones that may be more likely to get rid of one of the ones that just frustrates them more often than not. And then maybe they try and find the content elsewhere on the back of a truck or something. Yeah. It's not easy, right? Like Netflix has its UI issues. Hulu used to have an atrocious UI,

although it's much better now. Like it's not easy. Netflix is good though. Like it's not easy netflix is good though like it's not yeah well this is the but right i mean like everybody can commit crimes in these apps and like and they do but there are i would say there are sort of like some fundamental features in a streaming app that are not like they're not surprises right they're not surprises sure there's i can talk about like do you support 4k hdr that's a streaming service thing hbo max only started supporting it with wonder woman cbs all access started supporting it there is there is some 4k

stuff on there the stand i think is 4k hdr that so they're starting to do that um there's but like you have movies people want to watch but they don't want to watch them right now. You got to have a wishlist interface where you can put it up in the queue. And that shouldn't be, well, the workaround is that you start playing it and you play the first minute and then you pause it and then it shows up in what you're watching. No, I don't want to do that. I want to say, add to my wishlist and then come back to it later. Having the ability to subscribe to a show or say, I always want the latest of this show. Having properly displaying series and then seasons within them and episodes within them, understanding how you want to watch that show, whether it's the kind of show that you start from

the beginning or whether it's the kind of show where you always want the latest episode. These are not surprises. In fact, some of these things are things that we podcasters also have to grapple with, which is like, what's the best way to get my content out there? It's not as if the content on something like Paramount Plus is different from every other streaming service. Literally, it's movies and TV shows with seasons. And you could say, and also some of their stuff is timely content, or you're going to want the most recent one because it's news or comedy, topical comedy or something like that.

This is not hard. I know that the implementation details are hard, but it's not a mystery, right? It's not a surprise that there are TV shows and movies. And so we can quibble over some of the choices and some of the experiments Netflix does and all of that. But anytime I see a streaming service that doesn't get these fundamentals right, one, my reaction is, what are you doing? What are you doing? But my second reaction is, somebody in charge of that company doesn't think this is important.

And they're wrong. And I'm sure the things they think are important are things like, I said, like a good ad campaign and a nice new animation that comes up when we are originals animation. You know, it's the Netflix thing or there's a new one for Paramount Plus, like all the Star Trek shows from CBS All Access now have a now have a new Paramount Plus originals. Like somebody workshop that somebody art directed that and somebody was like, oh, yeah, we got to do that. I want to prove that. And then for that. And somebody was like, oh, yeah, we got to do that. I want to prove that. And then for the app, they're like, whatever. I understand why it happens, but it's just a colossal error.

And it's not a mystery. It's obvious. Everybody has to do it. So it always just blows my mind when I see enormous companies with lots of money, where it's kind of the future of the business to do this. And then they just half-ass this. It's, I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, good luck to Paramount+. I just want to watch my Stephen Colbert in my 60 minutes now. Thank you. Goodbye. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Ooni Pizza Ovens.

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Jason, did you see the 12 South Hover Bar Duo pop up last week? I did. I did. I actually sent a note to my contact at 12 south saying uh can I get a review unit of that because I and I actually dropped the uh the the card that I do sometimes which which is funny because it's basically like I've written a lot about iPad stands and we've spoken a lot about them on this show too I know and I've seen the results because that one company that we talked about, they sold a lot of iPad stands. They emailed me and they're like, would you like to try any of our other products? And my answer was basically like, I really was just interested in the iPad stand. But they noticed. So I think we're thought leaders in the world of iPad stands now, clearly, you and I. So it's a new product from 12South.

12South have made lots of great Apple-related products over the years. They also made a candle once, which Stephen has, which smells like a Mac. So it is a weighted stand. Well, it is an articulated arm, and it has both a weighted stand and a clamp so you actually get two options right so you can either have it on a desk or you can have it clamped to the side of a desk or maybe to they show a kitchen cabinet a lot you know maybe you've got like a kitchen ipad and you want to hover it over there um the stand itself has a little divot for the apple pencil which has a little magnet in it which is quite clever and the arm is really adjustable. So I have one. It arrived today. It's really good. It's really very good. Again, I only have a day's worth of experience, but I genuinely feel like with that day's worth

of experience and if something terrible happens, I could very easily recommend this as the stand to buy. It is the most adjustable and flexible of any of these products i've tried uh it's really easy to get the ipad in there it has the like the clear look style and i guess the viazon style actually of like you know spring-loaded um kind of gripper right um so it can actually hold all sorts of devices and it's also future-proofed because looks really like it can get some good height too because that's been one of the challenges i know that you had especially is that is that sort of lower stands don't get high enough for you to like look at them straight

on and this one looks like it's got a lot of adjustability in terms of the height yeah it gets easily to eye height when on a desk for me, which is exactly what I'm looking for. Has quite a lot of wobble when you tap the screen, but it's in a different place to other things. So in other products, I've noticed kind of the wobble being like the entire thing itself. You know, like if you tap it enough, you could maybe knock it over. What I've noticed here is if you tap the screen enough,

basically the iPad gets a bit of a wobble. It's almost like, I mean, you would have experienced this, I'm sure, with VESA arms. You know, if you shake the desk enough, the computer that's attached to the arm is going to get a bit of wobble in it. And it's like that.

Is this a deal breaker? No, because every single one of these products has its own foible, just based on what you're doing with it. Unless this thing was like completely solid and super heavy, right? Like it's just, there's always going to be something. But what I do feel about the 12 South Stand that I haven't felt with some other products is I can actually freely tap the iPad and not be in my head about knocking it over.

So I found it really strange that they didn't talk about the weight of the weight on the product page. I was concerned about that when I saw it. It's like, that doesn't, it just says weighted. It doesn't have a weight. And so I was like, Ooh, is it maybe not that heavy? Right. And so like I could end up being in a situation where this thing can't really hold itself, but that's not the case. Um, it's definitely heavy enough to suspend it what i have noticed is they show some ways that you can hold this thing where you can kind of like bring it down to the table like a drafting table which is quite clever but what i will say is on the way down to that you do lose balance of your ipad so you kind of have to really right because

as you're bringing it down, you're disrupting the center of gravity. And if you're not holding it well enough, which I wasn't the first time, the iPad will take a dive, right? Like it's trying to go like lurch forward. So you have to be aware of it, you know, like these things that you have to remember gravity.

But I would say if you are a person who wants to stand for your iPad or has a stand and you're maybe looking for something better better I think this might be the best one that I've come across so far it's got a lot of flexibility it's clearly been thought through like the one thing that I can't attest to right now and this is a thing which is important over time is how does it hold up right like we've I think we've both had these situations where we're using a stand and it's great, and all of a sudden it just starts to droop. This one, they do include hex tools, so you can tighten the things on it,

which is great. That's good. So kind of like how our boom arms are on our microphones. They have all these parts so you can just tighten them up because they will loosen over time if you move them enough. So that's all great too. I think this is a good product. It's clearly well made.

It's clearly well thought out. I really like the stand that has the pencil magnet thing in it. I think that's really clever. As like just like, oh, this is a well thought out thing right because they put it in there especially putting the magnet in it's like ah okay it's smart because you can't really do anything with your apple pencil you can't clip the apple pencil and the ipad into one of these things right like it doesn't work so if you are an apple pencil user you have to take it and put it somewhere right and so i i like very much that they thought that

through and added a space for it so it's very nicely made product if you are looking for some looking for something like this in your life uh i think that this could be could be the one i mean look it's worth i really think it's worth knowing that these, all of these products work best with an external mouse and keyboard. That's where they work best. Because just because of science and physics and gravity, right? Like this, really, if you're going to do this, you shouldn't be tap, tap, tap, tapping on it a lot. It's just not for that. But to be honest,

if you're not using it with a mouse and keyboard, you probably don't need this product anyway. Right? Like, I don't really think that this is the type of thing that you would get

if you were using your finger on the iPad all the time, because it doesn't make sense to put your iPad in this fixed stand uh if that's what you're doing so it's cool I like it I recommend it um so if people are on the fence about this one uh I would say go for it if you think that this is a product a product for you um I don't what was the what's the price of it uh $79.99 more than you think that 12,000 pricing tends to be like Apple the price of it uh 79 more than you think that 12 south's pricing tends to be like apple pricing it's always a little more than you you think but they do make

really good stuff that's that's always been my take on the 12 south products is they they sweat the details and they use high quality materials and then somebody looks at it and says why would i buy that and not this thing i could buy on amazon for half off and the answer is generally you know you they're using high quality materials. That's why. It's heavier or it's more rugged or whatever it is. That's been their hallmark. They really do aspire to sort of like Apple levels

of sweating the details and more often than not succeed at that. I would say it feels like an $80 stand. It feels like a product. It's got some heft to it it seems to be well made an adjustable like a properly adjustable ipad stand is something that i've been looking for and have not found something like the ones that we you and i have talked about before are um they're good but it is sort of like some of them are slightly adjustable some of them are not really adjustable at all at best it's usually up down

that's it and and right and i've been thinking like i want occasionally what i might want to do is push my imac away and work on my desk on an ipad with a keyboard and the mouse um and for that i need something more adjustable than the little stands that we that i would put like on my on my bar top to write while standing like i need something a little more adjustable than that just like my iMac is adjustable so yeah i'm looking forward to checking this out one way or another i had a thought a couple of days ago which was WWDC because usually around this time a year

the fratting begins did you see that the Fairmont hotel closed yes I had this thought and then you sent me a text saying that the Fairmont has filed for bankruptcy which is the Fairmont is where we would stay over the last few years yeah that was like the hotel that people a text saying that the Fairmont has filed for bankruptcy, which is the Fairmont is where we would stay over the last few years. Yeah, that was like the hotel

that people stayed at and that people hung out in the lobby at WWDC and they closed and moved the guests that were in it to other hotels and said, we don't know what we're going to do. We're hoping that we can find somebody, some hotel chain to buy it, which they will. It's like a really nice hotel

in a good location. It's a nice big location right around the corner from the convention center the only thing is but that says it all doesn't it a few hotel chains around there there might not be that many it probably end up becoming a bit of a boutique hotel or something i would expect but anyway so when you sent me this combined with the fact that i'd had that thought in my mind i thought i'd just start digging on dates because usually around this time of year if you're traveling especially if you're traveling internationally you're starting to freak out about hotel rooms and flights right right because in march you are three months away and three months for an international trip can get a bit pricey right like if you're doing it with that kind of time window. So I started looking it up.

And over the last few years, Apple has typically announced WWDC's dates in the second or third week of March. So last year was on the 13th, and it was very similar the year before and the year before that. Last year was on the 13th, and it was very similar the year before and the year before that. So all that is to say, maybe next week or the end of this week, if they follow typical dates, we'll find out when WWDC is going to be and maybe a little bit about it. So obviously, I'm not expecting an in-person event. We're obviously expecting a digital event,

which is also why nobody is anxious because no one's thinking about flights, right? Also why the Fairmont is... It's why the Fairmont is closing too. But it was kind of something that hit me of like, oh yeah, I'm not thinking about the fact that it's March in WWDC because I don't need to think about it until June.

I don't need to really put a lot of thought or effort into WWDC until around that time. But I would expect that we're probably going to get within the next week just like, hey, WWDC is coming. It's this date and maybe a little bit about what they want to do. You know, so, hey, it's going to be like last year and we're going to expand it a little bit or whatever. This is what we learned. I also thought that, you know, there's rumours circling of a March event coming. And, you know, Apple tend to give about a week's notice,

so they'll probably want to spread all that out a little bit anyway. Because if there is going to be an event in March, in either of the last two tuesdays which is most likely right over the 23rd or the 30th probably um that's those invites are going to have to go out of a week's notice so could end up with a bit of a back-to-back here but yeah it was just a thought that i had which was funny considering maybe the last five or six years of my life that March has rolled around and I wasn't keeping my eye on hotel reservation prices. Yeah, I think there's a conversation to be had

about whether WWDC will ever return in physical form. I don't know, but clearly this year it doesn't make any sense at all i actually currently would put my chips in on no because i don't think they would do it in person in 2022 because i still don't think that's enough time uh i think from a legal perspective to feel completely comfortable about having an event that you are asking people to travel to and there is still possibility that it's going to be difficult for some international travel in some way or another even then because you know I think a lot of places like even the places that are doing well on vaccinations aren't expecting to have their entire populations vaccinated or have the ability to vaccinate their entire populations until like late summer

at the earliest right so maybe we're looking at to like september october before an entire population could be vaccinated again but that is provided that the populations will vaccinate themselves right yeah and so you could still end up in a situation where people that are smart Again, but that is provided that the populations will vaccinate themselves, right? Yeah. And so you could still end up in a situation where people that are smart and get the vaccines will be okay, but there may still be lots of people that won't be, right? And so what does that do? Do you want to be having in-person events? So I still think that 2022 won't happen and i think

three years doing it this way i don't know if it'd be that's just my i just don't know if they would do it at that point i really don't yeah so for this year you know i i imagine it's going to be a replay of last year with maybe some lessons learned but that basically they're going to do some you know big live stream videos and then they're going to have a whole bunch of uh rollouts of of sessions that and it'll look a lot like last year yeah i would hope that they do more right because they've had an entire year to plan, right? Like, WWDC 2020, they planned that thing in, like, three months, right? Yeah.

Yeah, well, and I think that there's got to be lessons learned about, like, what worked and what didn't work. interactive stuff where you could sign up for a session where they would actually like do a zoom call or a you know whatever they use cisco webex uh call where they have like office hours for people um and what i heard is that people didn't use those times that everybody's like oh man with all the developers all over the world they're going to get flooded and you're not going to be able to talk to anybody and my understanding is that they those sessions didn't fill up i think because everybody assumed that they would um right and i wonder if they've thought about about some of that stuff like well how could we do that better and are there better ways for us to present because they certainly this this session you know this year has been planned from the start as being uh entirely virtual and

also planned with the knowledge of what worked and what didn't work last year. That said, I think what they did last year worked so well that I'm not entirely sure how much different it'll really feel, maybe in some of the details, but my guess is that it'll be pretty similar, at least from the outside appearance, because they, they kind of did it fine last year. I loved it. I love covering it. I have,

I've been covering WWDC since the nineties, seriously, the nineties. Oh, and last year was the best I've ever done at covering WWDC. And the reason is that I got to sit at my desk and go through the sessions. And again, you miss out on all of the social aspects and things like that. But also you miss out on the crowds and waiting in line to go into a session and having them

say it's at capacity and all those things. I was able to just sit down in my living room and watch sessions and take notes and write articles. And it was great. And I imagine that for other people who cover it and for other people who also attend, uh, it was great in that way.

So you lose the, you lose the social part. And I don't know what's going to happen there. Cause I do feel like a community like ours. I love that, that even though it wasn't macworld expo anymore right like that went away but the wwdc had become like the place where the apple community met and i think there's value in that and i hope that doesn't go away but that value is mostly to us and

not apple which is why i think that you're not necessarily wrong in saying it's unlikely that they'll ever do this again. I don't know. I wouldn't put it past them, but as an event of understanding what Apple is doing and getting the info straight from the people who work on this stuff at Apple, last year was the best because in previous years, you would miss sessions and maybe you'd go back a few weeks later and they put the videos up and you could watch it then but like and they've gotten better over the years but like last year i was able to get to see every session i wanted to see

for the first time it was amazing i know that i need to plan better and we'll plan better because last year I planned horrifically and paid for it. So I know what I need to do to have a better week this year, like moving my other shows. I didn't do any. I did my entire stock of shows for the week and that was a terrible idea, especially because we ended up in a situation where we were able to interview some people from Apple. So I also want to prepare for hopeful situations like that as well. So I need to leave space in my schedule, which I did not do.

And it was bad. So I'm definitely going to plan it out better this week. It being at home did not mean that I had all the time still is what I ended up learning. That was a mistake that I made. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by FitBod, the fitness app that provides a personalized exercise plan, a fitness plan that actually fits you.

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but we are definitely saying goodbye to another, and that is the iMac Pro. The product page for the iMac Pro was updated a couple of days ago to say while supplies last, and Apple has since confirmed to MacRumors that the iMac Pro is no longer being produced, recommending people look into getting one of the 27-inch iMacs as a replacement product, or that would be the product they would recommend

if people wanted to buy it. As long as you don't care about the fan. Yeah, yeah. When I say replacement, I don't mean like get this instead of your iMac Pro, but like if you were looking at that product, that might be the one to get. And honestly, in all honesty, this is something that we've said for a while

too, right? You would have to look at both. If you were buying a high-end iMac over the last year, you need to look at both of these products because the 27-inch iMac is better in some ways than the iMac Pro. And, you know... The span of iMac Pro performance is covered by high-end iMacs and the Mac Pro, right?

It is. It is. So you don't need an iMac Pro with a three-year-old processor in it. You've got your Mac Pro and you've got your high-end imax both of which will provide that level if you're buying a mac at all right now in this category which you probably shouldn't because of apple silicon coming down the pipe but um but yeah it's true like the lack of updates to the imac pro like they got rid of the 8-core iMac Pro because they already had sort of put it to shame. And then they had another generation of new iMacs

came out that were even faster and added even more cores at the high end. So yeah, those high-end iMacs are incredibly powerful. The last probably Intel iMacs are incredibly powerful. So it makes sense, right didn't they didn't need this product i mean this product didn't need to exist anyway they already made it and i love it don't get me wrong i love it i have one my computer is an imac pro yep i love it but um it it is it was meant to be the replacement for the mac pro because the Mac Pro was never coming back. And then they changed their mind and they changed direction. And then it became this very weird tweener of a product where it's got the Xeons in it and it's got the great cooling in it, which is great.

But now we've got a Mac Pro for that and the iMacs are pretty fast. So why do we have this thing in the middle? And while it's a great product, it is a product that fell through a hole from another timeline, essentially. A timeline where Apple gave up on the Mac Pro, and that the best they were going to do for people who really needed high-end workflows was a fancy iMac. As we said before, you wrote in your article too, I don't remember the last time we spoke about the iMac Pro, but it is the parallel timeline computer. It really is.

It only was supposed to exist when the Mac Pro didn't exist. They did the Mac Pro roundtable where they said the Mac Pro was going to come back and there had already been rumors that they were going to do an iMac as a high-end thing. And then they came out and they said, okay, we're going to change and do the Mac Pro was going to come back. And there had already been rumors that they were going to do an iMac as a high-end thing. And then they came out and they said, okay, we're going to change into the Mac Pro. And then like two months later, the iMac Pro got announced.

Well, they mentioned it at that roundtable. They said they had this product. And then two months later, they showed it off. They said, we are working on an iMac for pro users. And they shipped it in December. So yeah, so this is the case where like this product was ready to go or almost ready to go. And they shipped it in December. So yeah, this is the case where this product was ready to go, or almost ready to go, and they changed direction. But they also knew that the Mac Pro wasn't going to ship for ages. So they went ahead and released the iMac Pro, and it was a

good choice for a lot of people. But they weren't going down that path anymore. And so over the years, it became kind of readily apparent that they weren't going down that path anymore. And so over the years, it became kind of readily apparent that they weren't going to update it. And they also readily apparent that they kept not updating the iMac. And what are they waiting for? What are they waiting for?

I think they're waiting for Apple Silicon, although I don't want to say for sure because what if there's an Apple Silicon iMac that comes out and it looks just like the old iMacs again? You're like, oh boy. Don't say that. Don't say that, Jason. You can't put that kind of thing out in the world.

Oh. But the iMacs advanced to the point, while this thing didn't get updated, that it was irrelevant. And like we said last year at some point, I remember us having a conversation where basically we said they can call a high-end iMac an iMac Pro if they want, and they can make it in space gray if they want to. But especially with Apple Silicon involved, the defining factor of the iMac Pro kind of goes out

the window, right? Because it was that it was using the Xeon processors that were otherwise only in the Mac Pro, and it had the super cooling system. And Apple Silicon changes the game in terms of what the chips are. And presumably, it changes how Apple approaches cooling to a certain extent because they run cool. And also, I can't imagine that Apple is going to build an imac for the 2020s that has a big bulgy space in it for a spinning hard drive and that was part of the that's where they were able to build the cooling system in the imac pro as they threw out the spinning hard drive so like redesign the imac and use apple silicon at that point like you can call something an imac pro if you really want to but or just call it a high-end iMac.

It doesn't really matter what you call it. The reason for the iMac Pro existing has vanished, right? They're not making more Intel processors. They're making a Mac Pro. They're not going to need probably the kind of cooling that it has, and they're going to change the design anyway so like why would it if it sticks around it's only because somebody gets a kick out of having a pro uh variant of the imac and not because of any you know any other real connection to the existing imac pro so it's a one-shot one-shot deal it's it's the rare one-shot apple product it appeared and then it just appeared again and unless they reuse the name i guess what i think this feels kind of

unprecedented as a one like a one-shot product that was actually good i feel like especially from listening to 20 max the g4 cube was a one-shot product bad it was a bad computer this is like this was a they released it they never updated, and then killed it, and there will not be another one like this. But it was an excellent machine. It was really good. That's kind of the funny thing. Genuinely, I'm surprised. We don't know, right?

As we said before, one of the new Macs could be considered a professional mac iMac right like it could be but I think I think it's really the iMac pro will be looked upon as a relic of its time that this type of machine in this type of configuration Apple just doesn't need it anymore and I think what that would suggest is you would hope the next iMacs are going to smoke it. Right? Well, right. I mean, Apple Silicon changes everything. Apple Silicon changes everything.

It changes the equation of this. And even if they weren't redesigning the iMac, which, come on, they need to do that, you wouldn't need the cooling on this thing and the thing that differentiated was the class of processor which again it's not intel anymore so that's all gone like it's all it's all gone and they have to redefine and this is what i think i'm hoping we'll see this year is what does the imMac look like for the next decade? What is the new iMac running Apple's own processors? What is that product like? And I hope we start to get an idea of that because, you know, we did that interview on

Upgrade about the iMac a couple of years ago with a product manager, and she was talking about how, you know know it's a huge business for apple i think uh no it was oh colleen novelli colleen novelli yeah uh and and colleen had some details about just how big a business it is for apple like it's a it's a huge business even just you know subset of a subset but like the mac business is big and the imac business is big even though laptops are primarily what apple sells apple sells a lot of imax it does matter it it is a very important product and they need to take it in some new directions because it's essentially the same as from basically 2007 it's essentially the same

since they uh it's not that different from the first g5 imac but then when they went metal instead of plastic in 2007 it's changed a little on the back and the shape of it and all that but even that's been for almost a decade now so it's been a long time what what is next and and so i feel like they're just walking away from the imac like they're going to keep some other imax intel imax around but the imac pro is already three years out of date like there's no reason to keep it around but the other imacs are also going to start to fade away because there will be the new thing and i'm excited to see what that new thing is and what a new take on the iMac is. And, you know, my hope is that it will be quite a lot different. But we don't know. We just don't know. Well, do you think there is anything to glean about the timing of doing this?

Like, why have they done this now? My guess is that sales are slow because really you should be buying another thing. It's possible that they couldn't get a part or something like that. It's possible that they just want to use wherever these are being made at a low volume for making something else. Small Mac Pro. They don't have unlimited space. How many of these can they be selling at this point? I know we said that about the trash can Mac Pro too,

but really, how many of these can they be selling? It's a three-year-old computer on a chip platform that Apple is abandoning. If you really want a Xeon at this point on a Mac anyway, you should probably just buy a mac pro and if you want a fast imac you should just buy an intel imac and not an imac pro so what it's got to be sales volume and wanting to do something else and like what it's got to go

away eventually and it's not like you're going to replace it with something i know apple likes to do that thing where it's like well now, now we announced this new thing. The old ones fade away, right? This one isn't getting replaced like that. So you just have to put a stake in the ground and say, no. And they didn't announce it, right? They just put it up on their website while supplies last. And then somebody asked, this means that it's gone, right?

And they're like, yeah, that's what I mean. Just, it's not, there was no press release that they're putting the iMac Pro on ice, like for the G4 Cube. But it's, yeah, to everything, there is a season. And this was its time. Does this make it more notable? Like if you were looking at, again,

I know I make this joke a lot but 30 max for 2030 would the iMac pro become even more likely to be on that list because it i mean we already you know i think we already spoke about the fact that like its birth was enough right like yeah it need why it existed how good it was the weird things that it, like the strange cooling system that it has and the innovation make it notable enough. But the fact that it goes away and potentially is the one and only iMac Pro, I guess that whole package makes it even more notable, right? entry kind of thing for apple's weird two-step with the trash can mac pro the imac pro and then the new mac pro there's a story there and so the question would be if i was constructing a list in five or ten years which mac would i hang the story off of? Would I hang it off of the iMac Pro or would I hang it off the trash can Mac Pro? Given my affection for the iMac Pro, I might choose the iMac Pro to tell that story because it's a good computer that also represents the road not taken.

And I think that that is a juicier story than, hey, trash can Mac Pro. Let's talk about all the reasons that it was a mistake right like it's almost better to tell that story in the context of the iMac pro than the other way around because in the end I kind of want to tell the story it's not always possible sometimes you tell the story of a of a Mac that's sort of like that this was a failure but I do like I do sort of view it as an honor to even be mentioned in the list even if you're honored for being a flop and so if i could choose which one to honor between the iMac pro and the trash can mac pro i would absolutely choose the iMac pro to tell that but

i i do think that with a little bit of hindsight um that's the that's one of the key stories of the 2010s for Apple, is what happened with the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro. I wonder if either of us will be using ours in a year. Oh. You know, the biggest problem I have

with an iMac is it's so huge that, you know, even with all the power, I could use it as a server yeah but I got to put a 27 inch screen somewhere well I'm just more what I'm saying is and I think you've already answered it in the way you answered that question oh yeah if we'll replace it with something else oh I can't envision that I'll still be using it in a year no yeah I think there's no way I think there's no way no my challenge is just going to be that i'm going to need to sell it to someone who's going to get a really nice fast imac that runs on intel and that'll be fine but that that's that's going to be i've already jumped to that

point right which is i'm going to need to sell it because i'm not going to keep it around and use it as a server or something i'm either going to sell it or i'm going to say see if um if lauren's still working at home some of the times like you want an imac on that desk instead of your laptop because we i can put it there but but yeah i can't see like already it's it's slower than most of the things i do on the macbook air so i think the issues are i'm going to need a screen and i'm going to need a a fast mac and what does that mean like is there an apple display and an external you know and another device i can use or is there a new imac that i like and is there a small imac but it's very strong the rumors are that there's going to be a bigger imac coming, and so do I want to wait for that? But yeah, I can't envision that this iMac is going to make it to 2022 on my desk.

I just don't see. If I had a big display, a big external display, I might already be moved to the MacBook Air. Fan of the show, Ming-Chi Kuo, has been doing a lot of reporting recently, a string of reports over the past couple of weeks. This time, a little bit more information about Apple's AR, Mixed Reality, VR stuff,

some in the near and some in the very distant future. I wanted to talk about it because there's some stuff in here that's just bananas wild. But there's a couple of things which are more clarifying over some of the reports that we've had in recent weeks, like that one from the information. So Quo talks about Apple having three phases for their strategy. Helmet by 2022, glasses by 2025, contact lens by 2030 to 2040. I love that range.

It's 10 years from now or 20 years from now. Okay. That's the cloud with a question mark, and then magic happens. The helmet product will be the only one of these products in the strategy to provide a VR experience as well as AR. Calming a helmet is so weird. It's going to look like a Quest 2. It's going to be a headset. It's going to be

a big headset, not glasses. I'd call it a headset, not a helmet. Headset makes more sense. I'm not really sure. To be honest, helmet could be a translation thing, honestly. I don't believe these reports are written in English. So, you know, it makes sense

with this one being the outlier, because if it's something that's covering your eyes and it's not see-through, which it won't be, they may as well provide a VR experience here as well. And who knows, for Apple, this might not be a thing which gets superseded by glasses.

This might be something that, if it works for know is for Apple, this might not be a thing which gets superseded by glasses or like, you know, this might be something that if it works for them, they also continue making products in these realms as well. I think we're all thinking about like, oh, this is the first step to AR glasses, which is obviously where they want to go. But they may also want to continue making a mixed reality headset for home use if it turns out to be something that is popular. Prototypes of this product currently weigh around 200 to 300 grams, but Apple is targeting a final weight of 100 to 200 grams. To give some context,

the Oculus Quest is 500 grams. The AirPods Max are 380 grams. Say a 150 gram headset seems incredibly ambitious. I find that very peculiar color me skeptical yeah because i mean i would genuinely expect it to have been in the range that the quest is so if their prototypes current prototypes are in the two to three hundred gram like if they ship a product that way awesome because that will be much more comfortable it'd be way more comfortable sure if they can do that that's uh that's a winner so you remember the real shocking thing in the information's report is that this product could cost three thousand dollars minchi quo is saying it'd be aimed at a thousand now if that's the case i mean we're talking about

something different now right because three thousand was like okay nobody developer kit that's a hololens kind of enterprise only sort of thing but a thousand dollars sounds like a consumer product right exactly and i mean look a thousand dollars is expensive it's expensive for sure but our phones cost that right so like you are at least in prosumer, at the very least, where $3,000 is like, well, the only people that should buy this are people that have a very specific actual need for it, like they're making these types of applications

for future users. Quo talks about this being a portable product, not a mobile product, or a mobile product. I expect what he's saying here is that, look, the processing power, everything's going to be done on device we've heard that said by everybody

they're doing all of the processing on device but it's not meant for outside use I also expect it probably doesn't have a great battery life like maybe you get a couple of hours on it, especially if it's that light I don't think it has a big battery in it and so maybe it will be something that

most of the time you'd maybe want to have plugged in during use but you could get a couple of hours on it maybe i don't know i don't know i don't know i keep putting it in the context of the quest where you know you can play for an hour hour and a half yep and then you got to charge it and that's what it is and you're not going to wear it outside and exactly and and that kind of fits into the idea of portable and not mobile, right? It's like you can move around while wearing it, but you wouldn't leave the house with it. I mean, let alone the fact that you won't be able to see out of it.

I know that they'll do the camera thing, but it's not going to be as good as glasses. I know a friend of the show, Steve Trouton-Smith, was talking about if this product is to be a 2022 product, timelines. Would there be a WWDC announcement for this where they give people time to develop for it? Or would they do an iPhone or Apple Watch style announcement? I think we both probably fall down at the second camp right

they would do a specific event for this product and say it's coming out in however many months right because there's nothing that they're replacing i i'm gonna go the other way if i had to pick one i would say that i think there's such a developer story here that they would make a wwdc announcement that they're doing this some details, ask developers to write apps for it, and then say that they'll give more details and ship it by the end of the year or early next year or something like that. But I feel like this product, because it's essentially a new product class and they're going to need developer support and it doesn't replace anything. So there's no Osborne effect here. I think that you just announced that you just

announced that you're doing it everybody knows they're doing it already you you tell your developer story and then you still do an event to give the details of it and that's and you do that when you're ready to ship so i i think that's more likely if they're really going to ship this between now and the middle of next year then this year's wwdc actually makes the most sense to talk about it this year yeah all right if it's coming out second half 21 or first half 22 by the time next wDC comes, it'll already be out, right? Sure. I mean, yes. If that's the timeline, then yes. It's a bold prediction. The alternative is that they could do an event in the fall, but I still think it's going to be do an event or have it be in an event and then ship it

a while later. Yeah. No, I agree with that. I mean, I think this is probably a i reckon second half of 2022 product and at some point in 2022 that i would expect the way that i look at it is they have an event for this and they show it off if it's second half of 2022 then they show it at wwc 2022 because again i i think there's going to be a developer story here and i think they're going to want to get developers on board but if they if they want to ship it in april of 22 then yes it's possible that they won't be willing to talk about it until fall of 21 and they'll do an apple watch style thing where they pre they pre-announce it yeah sure and and say this is going to be big and we'll check back with you

in six months so it depends on timing i guess is really the really the issue there it depends on timing because if it's ready to talk if they're ready to talk about it wwc i think they will want to if if but that's if they're shipping it second half of this year if they're shipping it next year they'll probably talk about it this fall and then ship it next year. But I do think this is a product that's going to have months after it's announced before it ships because of the complexity and the fact that they, first off, they can do it because they're not replacing anything. And because they're going to really want to start talking about the developer side of the story. Even if this is a by the end of 2021 which is what quo is referencing right um with no real feeling to it personally i just i i would i think i would just be really surprised to see this at wwdc this year but uh i know we were just talking about it but over the next three

months who knows what leaks are gonna you know like and and then i might change my mind on this completely right if we start seeing like hey look at this stuff we found in an early build that fell off the back of a truck by a bar you know like but it just i would just be surprised um for them to show it off because to show it off they're they're probably gonna show hard work it would just be surprised for them to show it off, because to show it off, they're probably going to show hard work. It would just surprise me. It would surprise me. I'm not saying that I don't go along with what you're saying,

but for some reason, in my mind, I just not even considered that it would be shown off in June. We even spoke about in June. But I guess it could. I don't know i don't know there's a lot there's a lot going on here yeah but yeah the glasses product um is where like the real mobility comes in that's like the see-through experience right this is what we're all waiting for this is a couple of years away at least um and then of course the contact lens i mean i don't know like i could say this and then by 2050 you're going to plant a chip in your brain i really don't feel like for me

this contact lens thing this just feels like quo um being an analyst right just either that or there's some you know there there's a slide that apple has an internal thing that says uh you know ergonomic progression yeah uh headset glasses you know contacts or wearable or something like that right that where they're like well this is going to evolve over time and in the next decade we'll probably have contact lenses but it doesn't i mean it doesn't mean anything. It's completely meaningless. Even if they are investigating it now, anything, which they should. They should be like, are there better ways to do this?

Can we have contact lenses that do this and all that? But they're talking about it's going to be 9 to 19 years from now. That's not a... It's just not... Don't worry about it. One last thing on the helmet product. There's been a lot of talk when we've been talking about this about a developer kit

and like a $3,000 price tag and who is this for, etc. I think at $1,000 they would get a lot of developers. Because there are a lot of games available for the oculus quest i can't imagine facebook sell an astronomical amount of those things no i think you're i think you're right the idea that they could make a story involving um you know 3d apis for and and they've already got some of this stuff but like to make 3d games and and 3d vr games that out of your um out of your ios games and having apple

arcade uh they want everything that's on the apple arcade uh service to support this and like putting a lot of money into getting content for these uh for this thing like i could see it i can see it like and if you were a somewhat independent developer who made oculus quest games provided would you want to bring those to apple's platform yes please right like provided that you can it's like you know you've potentially doubled your market share right like like the market share but your market reach you know it's not a it's not a huge category but if you are writing software in that category it's a it's uh it would be a lot of new people right it would presumably be an influx of some new users even if it's not a huge success at first,

because Apple really is viewing it as a stepping stone to where they want to go. And then as a developer, yeah, you would also be interested in it for being able to explore where you're going to go. If you believe that there's a good chance that the glasses project product is going to be a huge hit for Apple, which it might be.

You never know. Yeah, and again, like, the Glasses product would be different types of experiences. Like, the types of games wouldn't be the same, right, because you're seeing through. So, you know, there's a lot of interesting avenues, even for a product like this. And if they are able to hit that lower price tag i mean i'm much more interested yeah it becomes more sense as a

product if it's a product that people plausibly might buy even though it's expensive because it's from apple and it'll do interesting things and the price is such a barrier that nobody's going to buy it that's a that's a difference and yeah a third of the price a such a barrier that nobody's going to buy it. That's a difference. And yeah, a third of the price, $1,000 instead of $3,000. I mean, the Oculus Quest is a lot cheaper than that, let's be clear. But an Apple VR product, VR slash AR product at $1,000 is going to get at least some uptake and also be a sign of where Apple's going in the future, which people take very seriously. This episode is brought to you by Hover, one of RelayFM's longest running sponsors.

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set that up. But big ideas, like if I'm working on a big project, I will go to Hover and type in the words that I'm thinking out, maybe the types of names that I'm looking at. And look, if I can't get the domains for them, I go back to the drawing board. But what I love about Hover is it's so easy for me to be able to find all of the domain options. So sometimes you think, oh, can I get the dot com? But they might give me another domain option that actually fits better. So like, for example, Upgradeys.vote. I didn't even know it was a dot vote. It was awesome to get it. So really love it. I know you're going to love it, too. It's so easy to use. Simple, clean, easy to navigate.

It's another reason to appreciate Hover. Buy your domain and start using it today. Go to hover.com slash upgrade and get a 10% discount on all new purchases. That is hover.com slash upgrade. Make your name for yourself with Hover. Should we do some hashtag ask upgrade questions, Jason Snell? Sure.

You don't usually ask though. Let's ask the lasers. What do the lasers think? Lasers, is it time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions jason snell sure you don't usually ask though where let's ask the lasers what do the lasers think lasers is it time for some hashtag girls got great questions i wondered if you were gonna anthropomorphize the the lasers that you did i guess they're cartoon lasers now i don't know there we go the lasers have feelings uh we've entered into a horrible horrible like no i don't like this I don't like the potential ramifications of the lasers having feelings, but this is where we've entered. Ramon asks, sometimes you make reference to Apple people listening to your shows.

Is it exciting to you that people from the company that you both enjoy so much listen to your work? Yeah. I want to say so like there's there's aspects to this right there's first i don't i don't write or or record podcasts for people at apple no right like that's not that's not the point nor do i expect that i mean if we did the content would be really different yeah i suppose so um and and well you know and i also you can get uh outside yourself a little bit and be like i'm gonna write my open letter to tim cook and please do this thing right and think that like i'm really going to change some minds at high levels at apple using using this bully pulpit and that's like no you don't do that um but the truth is that um occasionally i feel like

what i write or what i say it doesn't change things but is used as an example by somebody who's already sort of fighting for whatever thing it is that i am an advocate for and so we're kind of used as as examples of like see they said that these guys are talking about this obviously this is if you know like like i said this is important right help help convince somebody that this is what uh that we should do um what i find delightful really is the random people working on great stuff at apple who will come up at wwdc or who will send an email or or message me in some other way um about doing about liking the stuff that we do that that delights me because that's the oh i work on safari i work on I work on WebKit. I work on the magic keyboard, right?

And I listen to Upgrade or I read Six Colors or whatever. Those delight me. Because, again, the fact is we mostly speak to a nerdy audience. And those people also work at Apple too. And so that, I just find that fun that they're making stuff because I'm making stuff that they like, but they're obviously making stuff that I like

and use every day. And I don't know, I find that really delightful. So there's the one level, which is like, you know, I'm not saying that this happened, but something like it happened, which is like Phil Schiller listened to what you said and he was very disappointed in you. You can get those things. It's like, oh boy, what does this mean now?

And those are, they are what they are, right? The PR people are always paying attention and that's always been the case. It's still the case. That's just the name of the game. But there is this other level that is super delightful and it's the people who are working on apple and they're working on stuff and they're making stuff and they uh they care about this stuff too just like we do right and that that is the stuff that really delights me honestly is running into somebody at outside the talk show

on the street in san jose and them say, I work on WebKit, I work on Safari, and I love Upgrade or something like that. That's great because it's like, I am starstruck by that and blown away that they listen to what we say or read what we write. One of my favorite interactions like that

was WWDC many years ago and I bumped into somebody after a live recording. And they were like, I work on a thing that you're really going to like, but I can't tell you what it is. And then a couple of years later, this thing came out, and they messaged me and said it was that.

And I was like, you were right! I love that feature. So that kind of stuff's really fun. And there is a, I echo everything you said. There's something really nice about it. And it's heartwarming to me in a way because, you know, it means something to me from having been around, been cared about this stuff for so long.

But I do also understand that, like you're saying, sometimes we know that things that we say can have an impact, and I take that responsibility seriously. So I continue to put the work in. And it's walking that line between taking that responsibility seriously without taking yourself too seriously. Because I've definitely run into people who are like,

well, you know, I'm going to write about this and that's going to go to the higher ups. They're going to consider my opinion very seriously. It's like, no, they're not. Come on. Maybe they will, probably not. Don't write it because, they're not. Come on. Maybe they will. Probably not. Don't write it because of that.

No. Be an advocate for the user. Be an advocate for the people who buy these products. Call them out. But it's probably not going to go like, you're probably not in Phil Schiller's RSS reader. No, no. And don't do that.

But I will also say, I love that there are people working on Apple stuff who care about this enough that they're listening to this stuff because I think that's a good sign. Because the alternative is the people who are building products at Apple, they don't care about it.

It's just a job. They get paid. They don't, you know, they're not listening to podcasts about don't, you know, they, they, they're not listening to podcasts about what they, you know, what they work on.

They're not, they don't care about other stuff that Apple is doing. They're just there. And I'm sure there are people like that, but like, I think it's a good sign that, that we've run into lots of people who work at Apple, who really care about this stuff like we do.

Um, because that's important. Like you need those people who care about the product, working on the product. Yeah, maybe this makes me sound old. It definitely makes me feel old. But I know that I hear from and see people that are younger than me, like some cases like 10 years younger than me, who work on this stuff at Apple now.

And I'm just really pleased that they have a similar care like i did when i was 10 years younger about these exact things right like about apps and the way that the hardware looks and works and they get excited the same way i do because it it makes me feel like the company that I love and have built a lot of my life around continues to remain with the same kind of focus as to what I was

originally interested in because the people working there now have a very similar set of sensibilities to me even though they're younger. Cool. Stitch asks Elect asks electron app web app or abandon a service altogether for one with a native mac app i think this is in response to my frustration having recently started using hay more seriously and they have an abysmal Mac app. It is literally a web

app. It's just a web page. It's just a web page with an icon. But it's just really bad. It's just really disappointing. So I think this is the question. Do you have a particular feeling? Personally, I don't have any real upset about Electron apps.

It doesn't bother me. I have no set policy here because it really is just about what the quality of the product is and what exactly the service is so like i have um our show notes are in gmail or in google docs so that's a browser my web uh or my uh my mail client is mail plane which is literally wrapping wrapping Gmail in a Mac application wrapper. Although they add a whole bunch of stuff like keyboard shortcuts and nice stuff to make it more than just in a web page. Plus it's in Mailplane, which means that if I quit Safari, my mail doesn't go away,

which is a big, that's one of the reasons I hate working in web browsers, is that it's not a one-to-one. It's like all your web is in one app. It's like, well, I don't really like that. I want it to be in different apps. And yeah, you can do site-specific browsers and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. But I also use Slack.

And I think Slack as an app on the Mac is fine. I mean, yeah, it's probably using more power and memory than it should, but I'm not going to not use Slack because of that. Because in the end, if it does what I want and I like using it, then I'm going to use it. So it really varies. Like all things being equal,

I want something when I'm on the Mac that feels like a Mac app, but that hasn't stopped me from using Google Docs and Google Sheets a lot, even though that's just a fake app that's inside a web page. So it really, you know, it really depends. I would like it if all the stuff that I use have a really good Mac app. I would like that.

And obviously a good iPad and iPhone app. But I don't have a, there's no litmus test there and like i try to imagine like well what if slack re-implemented uh itself on the mac and built a native app but it missed a bunch of features of slack everywhere else and it felt a little bit weird yeah but it felt more mac-like and the answer is i don't want that i don't want that i somebody sent me an app that they were building that used the slack api and basically was like a native version of Slack on the Mac. And I did not like how it looked. It felt weird and wrong. And of course, doesn't match Slack anywhere else. I'm like, you know, it's, I don't want something like that. So it, it, it, it varies. It's not a single continuum of, you know,

what is your app built with? It is so much about how do I use it? What's the continuum of you know what is your app built with it is so much about how do i use it what's the quality of your app but a bad web page inside a wrapper i mean is not you know there's that moment where you're like well why why are you doing this like either write an app that is good yeah or don't have an app about this way i'd stumbled across something else today the feature it is not important but this is something that blew my mind the ios app which is a i think mostly native ios app at least way more native than the mac app is native to the mac has features that the web app doesn't have and i don't know how that's possible because surely this stuff is always easier to implement on the web

than it is in an app but they prioritized ios app development in some way i i don't i don't know but yeah to me just very strange i i've been thinking a lot about mail plane when i heard you talking about hey on the mac because i think i mean mail is not from Google. It is from a third-party developer, but I think it's great because it gives me everything I want from the Gmail web interface and adds a sort of layer of Mac-ness on top of it. I'm like, I think that's a valid way to approach it. And I think if Hay wanted to do that and really sort of say, look, the Hay Mac app is an interface on our web interface with Mac stuff that we've sprinkled on top. I wouldn't have a problem with that. I think though you need to be clear. Like, what are you doing here? Are you trying to pretend that you're an app, but when

you click, you realize, oh no, it's all a lie. That's not good. Don't do that. Like, don't lie about it. Be what you need to be but just don't deceive your users about what you are doing and last question today comes tyler tyler notes that um in the most recent beta of ios 14.5 uh the the apple logo for ipads when you boot up is now in uh is in uh horizontal orientation landscape orientation and asks the question that with something like this do you think it's possible that apple may change the placement of the front-facing cameras like maybe they will consider the next ipad pro to truly be a landscape first device. So I first, I finally saw the orientation of the Apple logo in horizontal yesterday

when I restarted my iPad, which I had a moment. I touched the screen. I touched the Apple. I was like, oh, look at you. Single tear. I touched the screen. I touched the Apple. I was like, oh, look at you.

Single tear. And then it started up, and it had the time and the swipe to unlock in landscape, which was great. And the desktop image was 90 degree rotated. Hey, look, you can't always get what you want. It's not all the way there is what i'm saying yeah um but i don't know like i don't know i don't know what what's best ergonomically for them where i think personally i think maybe it's best ergonomically to have the camera be on the wide side because you're less likely to put your finger over it. And yes, that means it's front and center when you're holding it horizontally. But even if you're holding it vertically, are your thumbs over it?

It's less likely, right? Just because there's more space. And you're probably not holding it high up. You're probably holding it toward the bottom, not in the middle. So, I mean, if I were at Apple, I would do some ergonomic tests and like, how do people hold their iPads? Because you can unlock from either orientation. So it's really just about where are you less likely to cover it with your fingers? So I would do it.

And maybe where it is now is the answer. I'm skeptical. I would think maybe you could move it and it would be better, but that's what I would do. Because that's what the goal of this should be is just where can I put these cameras so that people don't cover them when they're holding their iPad? can I put these cameras so that people don't cover them when they're holding their iPad? Yeah, I just want it on the landscape because it would just be better for me. Like if I'm having a FaceTime call

or a Zoom call on my iPad, everything's in landscape and it's just, it would just suit better for the way that I would look on the camera and stuff if it was done that way. Nevertheless, if you would like to send in a question for us to answer on an episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade

or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you get access to if you support this show by going to GetUpgradePlus.com. You sign up, you become a RelayFM member, you get all the wonderful benefits that a RelayFM member gets, like access to our Discord and bonus content. But you also, by going to getupgradeplus.com, you get Upgrade Plus,

which features ad-free episodes with bonus content every single week. If you have signed up, thank you so much. We're very thankful for your support. If you haven't, go check it out. I'd also like to thank our sponsors of this week's episode. That's Ooni, Fitbod, and Hover. If you want to find Jason online,

you can go to sixcolors.com or theincomparable.com. He is at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Before we go, let me tell you about another show here on RelayFM, Clockwise. Hosts Dan Morin and Micah Sargent invite two guests

every week from a diverse pool of tech professionals and cover four tech topics in 30 minutes. Go to Relay.fm slash Clockwise or search Clockwise wherever you get your podcasts Jason Snow was a founding member of Clockwise That's right, I'm the host emeritus and co-creator of Clockwise and it's a great

show, I'm so glad they're still doing it. Host emeritus for co-creator of clockwise and it's a great show i'm so glad they're still uh they're still doing it which host emeritus for clockwise 30 minutes people whenever one of the two hosts is on vacation jason is there i'm first up that's what you get keep watching the clock uh i i co-hosted many episodes of clockwise with you and failed on saying that phrase every every time time so much what you say and this is a podcast oh god it was so bad clockwise as a guest is a fun experience but a really stressful one especially live clockwise is that they were always worse because you had limited time you didn't't want to give the host too much editing work. Right.

But it's easy on another level because you get a question and you take turns. And also you know how long it's going to take you. Yeah, if you haven't listened, it's short, four topics, different voices. It's a great little almost bite-sized podcast. It's good. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of, I was going to say Clockwise, but this is Upgrade. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Keep watching the clock, Mike. Oh, God, no. Bye, everybody.