Upgrade - 347: The Hubris of the HomePod

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

This week we ponder Apple's moves both outdoors (additions to the Find My network) and in (possible new smart home products). Apple's also launching new original podcasts tied to Apple TV+ projects, and we discuss why some of Apple's product launches this year may have been delayed.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 347 and today's show is brought to you by fitbod express vpn and technology untangled my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hur How are you? I'm doing okay. It's good to be here. It's good to be awake and upright on a Monday morning to do Upgrade as we, as is our tradition. Do you remember why we decided to do Upgrade on Monday? Did it just happen or did we actually choose this to start our week with Upgrade? to start our week with upgrades? I can't say I remember exactly.

I can make a few guesses. One, I can imagine it was a day in my week where I wasn't already recording anything. I don't remember ever having recorded something on a Monday. So it worked for me pretty nicely. I also do believe that there was an idea, or at least this is maybe why we stuck with it, is that we get to go first a lot of the time yeah you know every now and then some news breaks in the middle of the

week and other shows other tech shows get to do it uh but it's actually more likely that we get the first crack at most of the stories uh because it seems like most stuff tends to occur later in the week or right at the beginning of the week so we we tend to get to uh to talk first which i always really enjoy yeah well happy monday i guess that's some uh hashtag mic talk hashtag snow talk question for you comes from ryan and ryan wants to know how much tea do you drink in a day Jason? I don't really want to measure it but I would say it is between one and three cups of tea, mugs of tea

we have a device that I like to call the tea robot, it's a Breville tea maker that you put in the water and you put the tea in a basket and you press the button and it does everything else. It boils it, drops the basket in, steeps it, pulls the basket back out and beeps. So you only have to do one thing. I mean, you load it up and

press the button and walk away and you don't have to like be sure that you come back in time to put the tea in and take the tea back out. It's like multi-steps. You need to hover around your teapot if you're making tea. And this thing is great because you don't have to do that. You press the button. It's great. I love it. I bought another one. I did the John Syracusan method. I bought a second one so that if it is ever discontinued, I have a backup of it because I love it. And usually that makes a certain amount of tea. And now that we've been doing COVID, my wife and I split all that tea. It used to be she would go to work and have some tea and then leave. Anyway, that's 1,200 milliliters, I think. So 600 milliliters of tea is probably what I would drink out of that pot. In COVID time, with Lauren being here all day, we often make a second pot. So I would say somewhere between 600

and 1200 milliliters of tea. Yes. More than a liter of tea. Yeah. Sometimes, some days, hard days. Yes. I am a machine operated entirely on caffeine that's how that works and then i switch to diamond do so it never ends folks it never ends until the evening so yeah i have some follow-up um which is kind of the longest it feels like the longest term follow-up of all time now, which is talking about Fine Mind. Oh, I was going to say complaints about episode one. Why are you on Mondays? Okay.

Fine Mind. Actually, I've been completely thrown off. If you'd like to send in a hashtag Snell Talk question, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk. Use question mark Snell Talk in the Relay FM members Discord. Now we get to talk about Fine Mind. Oh, you didn't close the Snell Talk. The entire episode would have been Snell snell talk we would have the entire episode would have been unless i would have remained up there for the whole episode the

whole episode would have been snell talk oh we dodged a bullet there we're gonna close the practice follow up if you make a segment it's show like ours you have to start and end the segments otherwise how's anybody gonna know where we are yeah so apple put out a press release talking about the first products that are going to be integrated into the find my app so you may remember they announced this at wwdc so it's taken nearly a full year for this to be rolled out which i think over the last few years that has become more common that they will announce a feature at wwdc but it takes about 10 or 11 months for it to actually start making its way into the world. There are three products that Apple have highlighted that will be integrated with Find My,

which basically means you'll be able to register them in the Find My app, which used to be... Was it called Find My iPhone before was the name of the app? But then over time, you ended up putting people into it when it swallowed up the Friends app. There was Find My Friends and Find My iPhone. Yeah. And then they merged them together into one app called Find My. And then it's all sorts of devices and stuff now.

And it's a pretty good app, actually. I like it. I think it's a great feature of the iPhone. And it will be even better as more products and potentially air tags if they ever exist get released but so the idea being that you could register a find my enabled product with the application and then it would be able to take advantage of you know every single iphone in the world as a way to to locate itself if you lose it so you know it's pinging bluetooth uh off every device that walks by it that kind of thing it's quite clever we've spoken about it before it's uh apple's got more

information about it on the website if you want to find out more if you don't understand how it works but anyway devices i want to i like to think of it as devices in the find or devices in the air tags genre yes well there's one there is no are no AirTags, but there are devices in the AirTags, you know, sphere, genre, the general area of AirTags where AirTags would be if they were to exist. One of the products

is a tracker product from a company called Chipolo. And it is a... Oh, man. You're making me hungry. It is a little tag product. Oh, I want the black beans with that... Oh, man, you're making me hungry. It is a little tag product. Oh, I want the black beans with that. Oh, yeah. Chipotle joke.

There, insert Chipotle joke. Some Belkin earbuds and some electric bikes from a company called VanMoof. And I have to stop you there just to say, Mike, what sound do you hear if a dog howl gets stuffed in the back of a van? Move them in a van.

No, it's VanMoof. I don't think it would say it in that order. VanMoof. These devices, so those three products, they're actually compatible with iOS 14.3 and later. I know that I thought

this and so did others when apple announced these products like oh ios 14.5 is dropping any day now no fight the find my stuff has been around for a long time but there's been no products for it we we actually got some feedback from somebody a while ago who said i found this this screen and settings is this proof of air tags and the answer was well no this is proof of apple's thing about how that they were going to turn on third parties for find my but there were no products to use it yeah and for whatever reason they've shown them off now because two of the products uh so the the belkin earbuds and the tripolo tracker they're not available to buy

they won't be available for months um the van move bikes have been on sale for a while and they're getting the feature so like they were on pre-order and now they're like months and months back ordered i don't really know why they needed to announce this uh last week like it doesn't i don't really understand the thinking behind it when it's so limited and barely any of the products are available. It's a mystery, isn't it? It is a bit of a mystery. We're going to talk about this later on, but

I think there were a bunch of balls in the air and some of them just started to fall at the moment, is kind of how it feels. And this is just one of them that yeah the fall one of the falling balls yes yeah like that sounds about that's a great metaphor for air tags too is like it's a you know it's out there it's will it ever hit the ground will it evaporate before it hits the ground it's out there they're juggling a bunch of stuff we did we lose a ball the air tags not come down where did the air tags go like i can imagine they maybe like made these arrangements with these three companies right and it's like oh we're gonna talk about it on such and such day but then they haven't released

air tags yet but they've already committed to these other companies and there's no harm in putting it out there so we're just gonna put it out there. It's very strange. I'll give you the alternate view of this, which is, imagine, this is going to be hard. This is like trying to erase people's memory for years, so it's not possible. But imagine there were no rumors about AirTags. Okay. Yep.

Apple announces a new API that lets other devices attach to the Find My Network, which you use to find your Apple devices. And they announce it as part of iOS 14. It rolls out in 14.3. They make a press release for April where they say, yay, the first products that incorporate this are being released. And here it is. And we all go okay and that's it like that is that is the other way to view this is that it has potentially nothing to do with air tags like potentially the existence or non-existence of air tags the great existential question of our time is not necessarily relevant at all to this it may be a thing that's happening on a separate track i mean conspiracy theories are great and it may be that they're doing this because they're about to release air tags or they just killed air tags and we can't tell but you could look at it from the bigger picture of like yeah they said they were going to do third-party support here it is there's only a

couple of companies it's not that interesting but it's there and i guess it's like if that if the air tags never existed we'd still be saying like oh what it's weird that they I guess it's like, if the AirTags never existed, we'd still be saying like, oh, well, it's weird that they've done it now when these products aren't available, but then we would just blame it on those companies and move on, right? Like, the Apple would set this date,

these companies just didn't have their products ready in time, and that's the end of that. Yeah, yeah. So it's also, yes, entirely possible that Apple is doing this to prime the pump and that they've got an air tags announcement coming and they want you know they're happy to get this out there to show that it's not a a monopolistic move but um i don't know i don't know at some point uh you've got to wonder what whether whether air tags is officially like not going to exist because they've done something like this.

I do think it's worth asking that question. No, I think it will. I just think this is to try and stop them from getting sued again. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a perfectly valid interpretation is that after Tile basically said, how dare you lock us out, Apple decided they were going to open it up so that third parties could join under apple's terms right using apple system which tile doesn't like and then when apple comes out with its tracker it's not going to be a monopoly play it's going to be entering into a market that already contains other products so look how magnanimous we are and i could imagine it would

actually help sell air tags like if you buy products that have the integration built into them you then understand more why you might want these little tags or things that don't have them like i'm sure some some tech forward backpack company like a peak design or whatever is going to integrate this into a bag right which would be friggin awesome by the way and i recommend some company tries to do that because i think it'd be pretty cool but then eventually you know you're, you're going to be like, oh, I've got it in a couple of my products. I like this.

I want to get some more of these things. But I do also think you should say, right, like Tile, as soon as the rumors started, Tile filed an antitrust lawsuit. So Apple's like, you know what? We've got enough of these going on right now. We don't need another one. Yeah. And again, would they build this entire feature just because one company threatens a lawsuit?

I'm not sure. I think it's maybe a little more likely. This is pure speculation on my part, that they had always talked about doing a third-party integration. And it was not necessarily highly prioritized. And the tile thing happens, and they're like, why don't we bump that up? I'm sure it helped. Get that up there. why don't we bump that up?

I'm sure. Get that, get that up there. Whoever was making the argument to do this got, you know, they got some additional ammunition in that meeting. Yeah. So we'll bump that one up a little bit, increase the priority there.

Um, yeah, it's a, it's a funny story that this product just continues being out there as a rumor that like, Oh no, they're going to do it. Yeah.

They're sure they're going to do it and they never do it. So I don't know how excited I am about AirTags. It's more like a feeling of relief if they ever get announced that it'll be out in the world and we won't have to talk about it anymore. Like, the story will have been resolved in some way or other. But yeah, as you point out, what's really interesting here is using, and we've talked about it a lot for people who don't know, like Apple has built this very interesting infrastructure where every Apple product in existence essentially is logging Bluetooth LE IDs as they go by. And there's a way for them to, when it's a privacy-controlled system, it was something that's very similar to what they use for their tracking thing for COVID. And the idea is, if you lose your device and it's not on the internet, it's still emitting a little Bluetooth chirp. And if you mark it as lost, devices can say, oh, I saw that on such a date at this location.

And nobody knows whose device it is. It's just a bunch of randomized numbers, but they can be matched because you know what all your device's random numbers were. Your Apple ID knows that. It's a complex system. But the idea is that even if you're not, it's not like a lot of the Find My stuff that's with Apple devices where it only works if they're on the internet, basically. This is much more complex. It's the new Find My infrastructure. where your keys with an AirTag thing got dropped, it's going to see it and say, oh, there it is. That's where it is because it's going to be able to log that data

and show it to you. And it's a system that's built based on everybody's privacy, but it does sort of turn every Apple device into a finding mechanism for this thing. And then they're working on ultra-wideband with the U1 chip where you're going to get even finer

kind of detailed control over it. So this is this is going to be this is a very good, cool set of technologies that has nothing other than Apple devices using it right now. I mean, I would assume that there's going to be an ultra wide band something in the next AirPods cases, for example, or maybe even the next AirPods. AirPods cases, for example, or maybe even the next AirPods. I think Apple's going to put this in all of their products because they want this to just sort of be Apple products are universally findable. But the idea that it could be, as you said, in a backpack or in sort of any accessory that you can think of that you might lose, I think that's pretty great. But the devil is in the details. So I guess we'll see how this plays out in terms of who adopts this stuff. This episode is brought to you by FitBob, the fitness app that provides a personalized

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try out FitBod for free and get that 25% off your FitBod membership. Our thanks to FitBod for their support of this show and Rel fm so uh there was some bloomberg articles that published this morning which i love when that happens i especially love it when i see these articles before i've done all the prep for the show so that makes me happy because i saw these before i sat down to start looking at what we were going to talk about today um they're on they're both on the shorter, but they've got some interesting stuff to them. So the first one comes from Mark Gurman and it's focusing on Apple's home products.

So I'll read a quote. The company is working on a product that will combine an Apple TV set-top box of a HomePod speaker and include a camera for video conferencing through a connected TV and other smart home functions, according to people familiar with the matter.

Yes, please. Yes, please. This is exactly what I want. It is a Apple TV soundbar thing. Yeah, yeah, it sounds good to me. I really like this idea. I mean, it's not a soundbar. Well, I guess it is. Home it could be right it's it's a it's

an apple tv and home pod together so you would expect that yeah its purpose is to provide you of a home cinema experience you're right you're right yeah this is the this is the apple tv home sound bar uh with a camera right i wrote a piece about this i've been on this for a long time like uh i i wrote a piece about this at mac world where i suggested that they should make like an apple tv that literally is just like an apple tv with a camera that you clip on the top of your tv and then you've got facetime and you've got all these other things that you can just do in your living room and all that this is a little bit even more than that because you're right it is kind of a soundbar you put it under your tv or over your TV and it's Apple TV, uh, sound and a video conference all in one, uh, very interesting.

And also interesting from the, uh, the broader perspective of, um, what's going on is Apple trying things in the home space, right? Like we've been reading the tea leaves. I got inappropriately excited about a Thread radio and a HomePod mini. But again, it's the idea like, are they actually waking up and trying stuff, a new wave of stuff in the home? And this is certainly,

you know, this is really interesting. And I've seen some people say, you know, it feels like a Facebook portal. And I was like, I don't know. I mean, this, you are right. This does sound like, it's an Apple TV soundbar with FaceTime in it too. Like with the ability to do video or zoom or whatever. Right. And if they put some intelligent sort of like camera tracking in it, where they've got a wide camera that can zoom in on, on faces and stuff, or who's

talking. Um, so, so that, you know you know you can that the video that it's sending out looks good and not like the picture of a of a living room with a person sitting in one chair which is a little less good uh i don't know really interesting idea and i think as i've as i've beaten the drum about repeatedly i think apple tv as soundbar works spectacularly well because then you've got great sound and all your video sources all in one attached to your TV. I just think that that's a product they could sell and that people would like. I want to come back to what you were saying about the camera, and we'll do that by talking about what else is in this rumor from Mark. was in this rumor from Mark. Additionally, Apple are also still considering a new high-end HomePod device

that uses a touchscreen and includes a camera. Apple has explored connecting the iPad to the speaker with a robotic arm that can... They say iPad. That's a quote, actually. I really didn't like the way this was written in the article. They talk about the fact of just taking a HomePod and iPad and putting them together as if that's what apple was going to do it's not what they're going to do and like so i don't like the way it's written but that's the

way it's written right apple has explored connecting the ipad to the speaker with a robotic arm that can move to follow a user around a room similar to amazon's latest echo show so the new echo show by the way looks. I think we're both Echo Show users. We are. The industrial design of it's really cool. It looks like the iMac G4 in some ways. It's like a base, and it's got a little arm, and there's a screen on it. And it's really clever that if you use the Echo Show for calls,

it physically follows you around if you're walking around a space. And I've thought to myself, like, that looks really cool. But the problem with a device, that specific device for me, is I can't use all of the video chat services that I would want to use, namely FaceTime. So if I wanted a product like this, which I think I kind of do, I need Apple to make it. So I would be really into this HomePod. And I'll tell you something right

home pod as a name this product makes way more sense for it than this than like expensive music speaker yeah this feels like a product which is centered around things that occur in the home right also one of the most baffling things about the home pod up to now is that it had no interface right like apple just decided to make it a faceless speaker with a little glowy thing on the top and apple has ipad os it has ios it has TV OS, it has watch OS, right? It's got a lot of screen-based operating systems with apps and with a visual interface, right? And so when Mark's story says with a touchscreen, but then says an iPad, it's, you know, Apple's not going to sell a screen with an iPad holder that you snap an iPad into. That would be bananas. Who would do that? But I think the idea

that Apple would sell a HomePod like thing with a screen on it and the screen could move around and follow you or whatever, but also that it would have the ability to display information. Think about apple's widgets think about tv os apps one of the things i hate about the amazon echo show and i've talked about it here is um i hate that it uses fire tv os but won't let me install fire tv apps so like if i want to watch a particular video service on the screen in my kitchen while i'm

cooking um i can't because apple or apple amazon has just decided yeah we're not gonna support that on the echo show even though it's supported on the fire tv platform on which the show is based so i think about something like this and i think you know apple could just put tv os on this thing or a modified version of tv os or yeah i suppose a modified version of tvOS. Or yeah, I suppose a modified version of iPadOS. But I think that's probably the wrong thing to do. I think having this be an iPad is a little bit weird. But whatever it is, you want to have something that will show you helpful things and listen to Siri and play videos and do FaceTime and all of those things. listen to Siri and play videos and do FaceTime and all of those things. And I,

you know, it's this, this article is just like, I had a moment of, of, am I being pranked here? Because this is all stuff that we've been throwing out as ideas of how Apple could take its existing technology and build interesting smart home products

for years. We've been doing that. And, um, and, and there's been sort of nothing. And this story makes it sound like they're actually at least trying this stuff out and considering it as products, and I think that's great. they merged the HomePod's operating system into the tvOS area rather than in iOS so when HomePod first launched

it was updated as part of iOS and that was where all the HomePod stuff lived but then they changed it they changed it to be updated with the TV so that could have been the beginning of something like this what would it take to have a HomePod device that ran some software that was closer to tv os than ios and i actually think that would make a lot of sense i mean tv os is is very like touchscreen right like you know it's it's it's

super you could super easily imagine uh all of the buttons and everything you tap just being available for you to touch rather than to use a remote for right like it's it's not a complex ui right like you could use it quite easily in that way tv yeah tv os feels very much like it could be adapted for a touch screen very easily and then throw in like i said widgets is an interesting example too where those widgets exist on all these other platforms and it would be very easy to see, to imagine sort of widgets appearing on that device as well, which, you know, widgets are kind of like, they're kind most valuable thing is its display of kind of ambient information and stuff. And Amazon does a very bad job of that. They do.

There's a menu you can do to customize things. And even if you turn most things off, it still will tell you, try saying this to Alexa and see what she says. And I don't ever want to see those. It doesn't matter. They're going to show them to me anyway, along with random pictures that I've selected from my photo library and random sports scores. And it's just kind of this mishmash. And I think to myself, well, first off, Amazon should do a better job here. And second, could Apple do a better job of that? And Google may a better job i don't know i haven't used any of the google home devices but like ambient information out of widgets and apps and other sources is like this is not stuff that apple's platforms don't already do like it's all the

pieces are there to make something that would be really compelling and so like just to put it into context we both like our echo shows but we agree i agree with you on everything that you're saying, which shows just how low the bar is. You do not have to do a lot to make a product in this category, in this form factor, that is liked by people. Right? I mean, ultimately, one of the reasons I'm sure that we both like it is that the Echo Smart Assistant is quite reliable. I find it to be for me anyway for

the things that i wanted to do it's the most reliable so you do have to get that part right but the idea of like what makes it good to have a screen the amount of information that we get from this product at the moment it's not a lot you know and i'm happy with it like it shows me the weather most of the time if i have timers running i can see those like it's not difficult stuff and and also the touch screen and its sensitivity is garbage like it's so bad it's real bad it's real bad i like the product because for what i want it for it does all of that stuff. And I do wish that I could take advantage of everything that it did, but I'm just not as deep into the Amazon ecosystem as it would like me to

be. Yeah. It's also, you mentioned the touchscreen. I think that's a good point is these devices, in my opinion, don't have a touch first experience. They have a voice first experience. The touch is there and it's nice to have it. And you can, you know, mine's on the back of the bar. And so if I'm in the kitchen, I'm reaching over the counter and then, you know, it's not a great touch based location of it at all. Right. And yet TVOS is driven by the Siri remote. Right. So theoretically. So it's supposedly a voice driven thing already. And then you could also potentially use touch on it.

And I think, yeah, I think it's not ideal. The bar is super low. Even for Amazon's devices, it just, again, drives me up with a wall that they have all this capability on their Fire OS platform and the Echo Show has none of it.

Like, none of it. Why there's a Hulu app on it but not a netflix app is beyond me i have no idea why it's all the same platform so there are issues here but you're right the touchscreen isn't very good the home screen experience isn't very good um alexa's skill thing sorry uh the amazon echo skill platform is hard to understand hard to set up doesn't work i mean once it's connected it works fine but to get to that point is oh boy not a great experience so i feel like it seems like there's multiple different types of skills and you're not really sure which is which but the fact that it is open means you can get lots of cool stuff uh or stuff that's

interesting you know like there's some there's some you know like i've said it before like our grocery delivery service has an echo skill so we can just add things to our shopping order from the echo that is very good like i i it's one of my very favorite features. That's our number one, our number one use. Well, our number one use is timers. Our number two use is shopping list because we use any list and there's an any list skill that syncs with the Amazon shopping list. And that's what we use. When you connect a skill, you're like, oh, this is really good. It's just they're hard to find.

A lot of them don't exist. And I'll also point out, well, why do you even use one? I got mine for like 30 bucks. That's the other thing is I have an Echo Show 8. And I traded in my original Echo Show. They were having a special. I had trade-in credit. And so for something like, I think it was like 20 bucks, I got original Echo Show. They were having a special. I had trade-in credit. And so for something like, I think it was like 20 bucks, I got an Echo Show 8. And I know the list price is

like 80 bucks or something, and you can get refurb ones for 60, but that's the other part of it is. Also, it's a cheap little kitchen appliance. It doesn't have to give me the world because it's not that expensive. It's not that complicated but it does the job and also i will say the speakers sound okay the speakers sound fine you can play music on them they're not going to sound as good as a home pod but they sound pretty good so like they're they're and and i feel bad that i haven't tried out the google stuff but i just haven't and i'm i would bet that google probably does a better job than Amazon does at this. It's just my guess. From what I've seen, the user interface is much more visually appealing.

It couldn't be worse. Having used the Echo Show from the beginning, Amazon's level of detail that they put into their visual interfaces is poor. It's better than it used to be. And now that I can play Apple Music on it, I can see the album art and it shows me the information. And that's nice. But there's opportunity in this area. And Apple has...

This is my frustration with a lot of Apple stuff lately, is they have all the pieces to build this stuff. It's not going to take a lot of reinvention. They have so many of the pieces already. And then they just, and the bar, the barrier to entry, let's say in these categories is super low because the products that are in there aren't that good. And then, and yet with the HomePod, you see them come into the smart speaker area and they just whiffed it because they made very bad product decisions that made the product super overpriced and not appealing. And so when I see these reports from people like Mark Gurman, I think, well, on the one hand, that's super encouraging that they're actually considering doing what they totally should do. My worry is that they're going to be coming in against $100 product or the larger Echo Show,

the new Echo Show is, I don't know, $250. My worry is that they're going to come in with something and it's going to be $500. Whereas if it was $300 or $250 competing against that 10-inch Echo Show, maybe they would have something I think for me what I'm excited about with this report is if Apple are going to

continue making both of these products this indicates that they are now making the exact products I want in those two areas if I'm going to buy an Apple TV again, I want it to be a high-end feeling product, right? That's the only point of having an Apple TV now.

Like for the HomePod, I do think that they need to be aggressive on price and features, as you're saying. But for the Apple TV, give me a really good home cinema experience, put a camera on it. Cause otherwise like I will just use the app that's built into my TV to get the content, right? Like I can get them all it's built into the television, or I can buy something for $20. That's just plugged straight into the HDMI port, right? Like if you're going to continue making an Apple TV product,

I do think that they should make a high-end product and this sounds like it. And that one excites me a lot, especially now that I haven't bought a soundbar, now I won't, right? I have a white now. And the right way to judge Apple is to judge it against the high-end products in the market, right?

Like this is, Apple's not going to make an echo show 5 for 80 bucks or an echo show 8 right they're not going to do that if they make one it will be that echo show 10 style that's 250 there's they're not going to go down below that and and the soundbar similarly and the this this i do like the idea of you know because one of the things that i like about the Echo products especially is I like having these sort of like ambient home computers, right? It's a great type of thing. It's a thing where you can ask it for things. Otherwise, it will give you basic information. And I genuinely think that not only could Apple do a better job with that, it's also more tied into everything else in my life.

It has all this data about me that Amazon does not have, like calendars and stuff, right? Because we're in the ecosystem. Yeah, if I could put Scriptable on there and use my widget that I built to show my air quality and my weather station and stuff, I mean, that would be so great. And it would sync via iCloud, so I'd probably be able to use the exact same widget you know there's so many benefits to being in the ecosystem and then adding in the cameras so i can have facetime calls and stuff and follows me like i love all of that like it sounds great like i'm into it you know so the development of both of these products uh apparently still in the early stages which i understand when i was reading this though i kind of felt like we've been asking for basically apple to have uh the round table for their smart home devices like they did for the

mac and i it feels like they've done that because if they do release these products, this is a huge recommitment to the home, right? And also, they've gone ahead and done the things that we want them to do. They should still invite some journalist to come and sit on that home set that they used. Just to, you know, sit around a table there and be like, this is our home. Good morning. This is Tim. We've recommitted to this home. We love this home.

Look what's in it. We'll see if anything comes of this, right? They got to execute. They got to make these products and have them make sense. And if the HomePod taught us nothing else, they need to have it be a product at a suitable level where people will want to buy it, right? It's not, they need to make them good because the HomePod, I would say it was good. It just cost way too much. And it was the wrong. And if you would argue in some will, oh, but for what you get,

it didn't cost way too much. It's like, okay, but it costs way too much to be bought by people. That's the, that's the issue here, right? So a lot of this is calibrating what level of product you're trying to go. If you want to make a home speaker with screen that does video conferencing that you could put in a kitchen or on the dining room table or wherever you put it,

what does that product feature set look like? What does the price look like? Do you make it $400 or $300 or $200? Those are the key questions. And this suggests maybe they're asking those questions, and that's great. But they could make the wrong decisions, and we could end up with a product that is messed up in some way that is a flop. So I'm excited, but guarded. I think that the HomePod also cost too much for the product category that people expected it was going to be. I don't think Apple were really making Echo competitor. They wanted to make this really amazing speaker which had siri in it i would say

i think you're right i think that though that's the hubris of the home pod exactly it was about it was the stupid decision you don't need an amazon echo you don't need that garbage we're gonna here comes apple we're gonna make you a brilliant audiophile speaker that's what we're gonna do and you're gonna buy it and the answer was no we're not gonna buy it because they you know even before that and i think the home board was that like apple basically kind of turned its nose up at having a device that needed to have it they were just like oh we just use siri like what's the problem like all of your devices because that was when you know when when the echo was starting to become popular was when apple did all of that stuff about you know know, like the device prioritization

and all that kind of stuff, right? And I think it was kind of just like, oh, we're going to make this amazing product that you're going to love, but we don't need to compete with the Echo because you could just use it in your phone or your watch or your iPad. And it isn't really what people were looking for

in a device. So I think that they really seem to approach it from the wrong angle. And if it does come to pass, this new HomePod idea definitely sounds much more like the product it should have been, even if it ends up being way more expensive than the competitors, which obviously will be at least some. even if it ends up be slotting right back into that overpriced price point again it will at least i think do a better job of what people want it to do than the original home pod did yep this episode is brought to you by technology untangled i love finding new podcasts to listen to i love especially love finding podcasts where i can go back and

listen to their back catalogs and really catch up really binge them I've definitely this one have been one of my things of like 2020 and 2021 is podcast back catalog binging let me tell you about something you can go and check out right now it is technology untangled it's hosted by Michael Bird it is a show that deciphers technology's rapid evolutions with one simple question in mind what is going to shape our future and what's going to end up in the bargain bin along with the floppy disk? I listened to a recent episode about supercomputers and what we're using them for today. I really enjoyed this episode because as I pressed play, I was kind of thinking, I don't really know what a supercomputer does, nor do I know why we would need them in 2021 because computers are so powerful? This episode answered these two

questions perfectly for me, because one of the things that's really making supercomputers more powerful now is AI, which obviously makes sense. And I also was kind of keen to understand what exactly makes a supercomputer super, and they go into exactly what it is. I'm not going to spoil it. You should listen to yourself. And there's also some very modern day examples of how supercomputers have been used to identify possible treatments for coronavirus, which is also super interesting. Past guests on the show include people from large companies like Google, Aston Martin, Red Bull Racing, The New York Times, Nokia, and many more to help tell these stories. And some other episodes that you might enjoy talking about 5G, kind of why it's good,

who it's for, and what it could mean for you. And then looking at like the future of jobs and artificial intelligence, energy innovation, missions to Mars, and spoilt for choice, tons of great ideas in Technology Untangled. You can find it anywhere that you listen to podcasts and we'll include a link in the show notes. Our thanks to Technology Untangled for their support of this show and RelayFM. Debbie Wu was reporting for Bloomberg as well. This is a short article, but is useful, I think, that Apple still plans on releasing their new iPad Pro this month, but they are struggling with the production of the mini LED screen. So they're getting low yields. Yeah, maybe this explains something about these

event you know planned events that keep sliding backward and product releases like i like that the reports seem to be very firm that there is going to be a new ipad pro this month like i like that i like hearing that that they're going to do it but it does sound like it's going to be limited supply for a while that they're and this gives some detail of that that the the screen is slowing them down and then there may be you know the broader issues too that there there is a uh a supply constraint in other parts worldwide that is uh that is limiting apple's tablet and laptop plans like that you put that all together um and that might explain a lot about what we've been hearing well because this is it right there was some reporting of this in uh the tail end of last week

and which kind of makes sense right there is a global uh shortage right now of chips, like any kind of chip. There are a lot of the companies that make them. I've got these huge back orders. There's parts issues, all kinds of stuff, right? Every industry is suffering if you put a chip in something, which is basically everyone. And it's like a million different reasons for it. And it's just kind of like perfect storm kind of scenario. And so the assumption by some including myself last week as this started coming out more reports that started coming out is maybe one of the reasons we haven't seen an apple event is because they're having shortages with the chips and now there's another thing to suggest though maybe also they can't make the screen for the new

right right because this is a new screen technology, and it may be that the production of it, once you crank it up to volumes that they need, is difficult, and they're going to have to figure out how to make it in volume, and they haven't, right? And that's one of those things where,

can we make them? Yes. Do they work? Yes. Do they look good? Yes. All right, let's put it in production. Oh, now what do we have to learn, right? And I would bet that happens a lot yes do they work yes do they look good yes alright let's put it in production oh

now what do we have to learn right and I would bet that happens a lot with new technologies that once you put it in production that you have issues and so I'm not entirely surprised that this is happening no it explains I guess this is any time that a product appears to be supply

constrained or is supply constrained at launch it's that they haven't gotten efficient at making it yet. At making them, at volume, yeah. At scale. And so, but this time they seem to be having a particular struggle, which would make sense as a new screen technology. So all of

this suggests that if they do ship or launch iPad Pros this month, which this report is still saying, April, there's not a lot of April left. We're nearly halfway through. That the 12.9 model could still ship later as well as being supply constrained. Because the rumors have said

that there will be multiple iPads. They're going to refresh the iPad Pro line, but the mini LED technology will only be in the 12.9 inch iPad. So they may launch new iPads and if there's anything else, and then also, but say like,

hey, you can buy them now, but the 12.9 shipping later, or you can buy the 12.9 in a couple of weeks time. So, you know, this is one of those things where we're in a, it kind of, I don't want to say it's like, it's an unprecedented feeling,

but it's a feeling that I don't remember in a long time of, they're feeling like there should be an event but also that feeling of it should have been a month ago you know like we usually have this feeling of like oh is there going to be an event but this time it feels like there really should have been one already right because you're looking at stuff like ios 14.5 and apple's doing and Tim Cook's doing more interviews about app tracking transparency, but this is only going to be enforced once 14.5 ships. So it feels

like the machine is running, but nothing's coming out. We're doing all this stuff which would seem to indicate that iOS 14.5 is coming, but we're also it hasn't, and we're not telling you when. And it really feels like that 14.5 is in lockstep with some hardware, right?

Which is something that they do. When they have new hardware, they have a new operating system version. And sometimes there's some secret things that aren't in the betas, but it comes out in the release. And we said this for a while, that it seems like 14.5 is being held for products. And now it feels like more and more stuff is being added into iOS 14.5 because they're just waiting.

And it's just, well, we were talking about it last week, like this snowball effect, like things just keep getting added. And we're kind of in this limbo. And it really feels like there should have been some products released by now but they haven't been this is what i thought would happen last year with the pandemic right yes we didn't get it last year but it feels like we're getting it now which is it's a little sluggish because of the pandemic in some probably so right but uh it's just funny that it's taken this long for there to be that effect but this is it as i say like when i talk about perfect storm

that is one of one of the reasons right like there was there was lots of reasons i'm sure that the ever given to probably something to do with it right like you know there's just all these weird things that have occurred in the last few months it's just led to there being the shortage of chips but then apple's also got this this yield issue um and if you're not familiar yield just means like of all of the screens that they produce too many of them are bad like they're just yeah they fail so you end up with this scenario where um the uh you you're like i'm counting on a thousand that i make i can and i don't know what the numbers are 990 of them 940 of them yields are different right but like and you'd be surprised some things just

have badly bad yields and you're like wait wait a second, you throw away 100? You throw away 100 out of 1,000? 1 in 10 you throw know what the levels are, but regardless, there is undoubtedly a target yield percentage that they're not hitting here. Yeah. And it's like, you know, it's like we can't come into full scale production on this until we can slim that down because we're just never going to be able to produce this at a price which makes any sense. Right. And, you know And things get weird from there. So who knows? I mean, I feel like every week I'm waiting for something, whether it's an event or press releases of products. Yeah, I really thought we might get something last week,

especially since I was traveling last week. It would have been very inconvenient for us to do a draft. You would have had me right where you want me. But now I'm starting to feel like there's just going to be an announcement on tomorrow or next Tuesday or something where they're just going to say, hey, new iPads, here they are, goodbye. And we'll just deal with it that way. Jason, I have some upstream headlines for you.

Oh, good, good. It's good. You pulled a little switcheroo on me and you moved upstream to a different place. But it's fine here. We can do it here. It's fine. Well, the reason was I accidentally read part of, like, I accidentally jumped to a different topic earlier on the show. Oh, yeah.

A little behind the scenes, people. Yeah. Mike just jumped way down in our show document. And I was like, are we talking about that now? Okay. Yeah. I brought up our ad copy. I read the ad. I came back to the document and I was just, are we talking about that now? Okay, yeah. I brought up our ad copy. I read the ad.

I came back to the document and I was just in the wrong place and I didn't realize until it was too late and then just figured I'll just roll with it. So now we're going to talk about some Apple TV Plus news. Upstream. Upstream. Apple last week debuted The Line,

a six-part narrative nonfiction podcast series and four-part documentary on Apple TV+. The podcast is available now. The TV show will be available in the fall. This is from Apple's PR. These Apple original series are independently reported and offer a unique perspective on previously untold aspects of the story of the U.S. Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher,

who was charged with committing war crimes before ultimately being acquitted on all but one count for posing in a photo of a corpse. Both series will examine the complicated realities involved with fighting a decades-long war, strapping back the layers of surrounding Gallagher's alleged crimes.

What Jason is doing there is the joke that the two of us often make about, like, murder podcasts. Yeah. This sounds like one, doesn't it? Yeah. Like true crime. Alleged crime.

Terrible things have happened. But yeah. I like this idea. We're not making light of this situation, but like Apple's like, huh, you don't talk about crimes. We're going to go to war crimes, you know, so just keep one upping everybody else. This definitely sounds like the kind of podcasts that people seem to enjoy on the whole so i'm not surprised that apple are doing it i love the way you phrase that

it's like it's great that you like crime podcasts it's great enjoy them it's just not for me like i enjoyed the first series uh season of cereal yeah um but that's kind of as far as it goes for me and and i think a lot of it is i was just caught up in the hype along with everybody else uh the ending of siri was one of the most disappointing things that right that i've ever consumed with with such uh further um the podcast is being made by a company called jigsaw productions they're actually producing both sides of this is my understanding from Apple's PR thing. Look, this is just interesting to me because this is a full original thing. And it's available everywhere, right?

Like it's not completely locked down. You know, this is not a compendium to something else. This is not a companion, I should say. This is not something obvious, like let's do news right this is we are making a popular focused right like in in its kind of storytelling podcast and uh we're calling it an apple original and then because we have investment in this idea we're also going to do a tv show but they're not companions it's not like a companion it's telling the same story but with completely different people yeah so so it's interesting my only thing about this that i want to mention is although it is an interesting standalone thing

it's not quite you could interpret this as an experiment in, can we use a podcast to build hype for our documentary? Right? Like, you listen to the podcast. Now find out about it in this documentary. Or alternately, you enjoyed this documentary. There's also a podcast, right? And there's some sort of podcast and Apple tv plus programming synergy going on here um but you're right you could also just consume the podcast in isolation and never deal with the tv

show and be fine which is not what it would be like for the safe for all mankind podcast right if apple was dipping its toe in before that's like its whole foot is in the water now. But it's not all in. But there's more of it in the premium original podcast space. Well, it's different to what they're doing with Jon Stewart. So Jon Stewart's Apple TV Plus show has a name now. It's called

The Problem with Jon Stewart, which is a fantastic name. Because it's got that dual meaning, right? What is wrong with john stewart and also every episode uh is looking at a specific issue or every season is looking at specific issues so it's the problem that they're going to be talking about with john stewart it debuts this fall it will also have a companion podcast right which goes along with what they're doing in the show um it's a multi-season thing we spoke

about it before i'm really intrigued well and that's an example too where apple apple made this deal with john stewart and undoubtedly i mean it's possible that john stewart's production company said we're gonna you know we want to do a podcast too but it would not surprise me if apple said we want a podcast too we want we want you to do not just the show but we want you to build a podcast around the content in the show you know use other correspondence or whatever but like we want them we want it together we want this as a package deal and and that i think that's smart i think as somebody who does some podcasts about tv shows i think podcasts about tv shows connected to tv shows are great because if you're a fan if you're somebody who's really into it

you want you want more stuff you want extras and honestly you know video extras can be okay but but uh a conversation with more depth about the show and how it was made or what you're trying to say um it's i love those for shows that I really love. And I don't, you know, not every show I watch, do I listen to the companion podcast of, but the ones that I really have enjoyed either because I love the show or because the podcast has executed show well, that it really illuminates the show. Um, there's so many examples of that out there. So like, you know, the good place podcast and the Chernobyl podcast and and, you know, so, and Apple's doing the For All Mankind podcast, and then there are all the independent ones, like the stuff that I do. Like, I love it. So I think if you're making a TV show,

you really ought to have a podcast component. I think there's, because you have the access, you're the ones making it. You can make it, if you're, if you're formulating your content, knowing there's a podcast and a TV show, I feel like that's the ideal thing because you can actually plan. Like his staff can plan up front for what's in the show and then what goes on the podcast. And maybe use the same people who built the show to talk on the podcast. And that's the best you can do. And let's just say that, frankly, for the types of shows that these tend to be they are not expensive to produce right now i'm sure apple is paying way more money than they need to be paying for these things because

sure and and if you're john stewart and his production company you know you're you're probably going to hire podcast producers to build it right so it's it's still going to be relatively cheap compared to the tv show but you know it is know, it is more people on your staff, right, to do this. It's not like a few thousand dollars or something, right? It costs more than that. But you're right. Compared to a TV budget, it's nothing. Yeah.

Or like compared to any other type of companion thing you would do. Like if you were going to do a YouTube thing, this is going to be cheaper than that. Yeah, like. Yeah, exactly. Actually, not to bring it back to 60 Minutes as a person with gray hair, I get to talk about 60 Minutes now. It's very exciting. But that's an example where Paramount Plus,

we're in upstream, we can do this. It's legal. Paramount Plus launched with 60 Minutes Plus. And the idea there is that they're going to make extra segments of 60 minutes and just put them on paramount plus it's not even a show it seems it's just segments and you know as talked about on upgrade the app is bad it's hard to find them i feel really bad for the correspondence because it's like i even kind of am interested in it and you can't find it it's

really terrible. And first off, I thought you should put them in 60 Minutes. Like literally in Paramount Plus, they should be in with the 60 Minutes stuff. You should be able to see it, right? Because that's better. But I have now started to think maybe they should have just done a podcast. Maybe instead of doing, and I know for Paramount Plus, they got funding to do something that was an exclusive for that. But I'm thinking, would this have worked better as a companion podcast about the stories that you're writing?

Because, you know, in journalism, one of the challenges of television journalism is that you've got to have interesting visuals. And what I learned in journalism school and before when i was working on my uh college newspaper in my high school newspaper but but especially in in grad school where i did tv for a year is there's like a continuum of the amount of quality like reporting that your medium allows you to do without boring people and it starts with writing and it goes to radio and then it moves to video. And when you're in video, if it doesn't have an interesting image, you just can't, you can't use it for very long. Even on a documentary, it's very, very, very hard to do that. And so I look at something like 60 minutes and I think, well, of course you should have a

podcast because you are doing all this reporting and talking to all these people and you're throwing most of it away because it's a tv show and you've got 11 minutes and it's got to have interesting visuals so i do i do think everybody should have a podcast now too also paramount plus is very confusing and according to a report from the information apple is changing their stance a little bit as they want to be bringing more than their previous target of 12 feature films a year to Apple TV+, as a way to bring more subscribers.

So they spoke about this earlier, I think it was after Greyhound, that they wanted to increase to 10 to 12 feature films because they thought it would be good for them. And now they're like, we need five blades. They just want to keep adding more. And to help them with this, they hired Jesse Henderson. Henderson was previously

the executive VP of feature films for HBO Max at Warner Media. And they've hired Henderson to help them track down more feature films. Something that I thought was interesting here is that I was wondering

if there's a secondary thing, which is that Apple may find these feature films as a way to secure stars to the platform because in the last week they have announced that they've ordered two new series one with Justin Timberlake and one with Tom Holland who have both been in movies

on Apple TV+. And so I just found that was interesting of like two new series get ordered with two stars that have already been in movies so I just found that was interesting of like two new series get ordered with two stars that have already been in movies. So I figured maybe it's like it could be like a jewel thing. Like we get a movie and then if people like the experience, maybe we could sign them up for a TV show or see what other things they're working on. Right. And try and create these more of these kind of like symbiotic relationships with big names. symbiotic relationships with uh big names well and it so the movie i wanted to i don't know how you feel about this but i one of the things that i find curious is the movie push by all of the

streaming services because i don't subscribe to streaming services for their movies like if that makes any sense or at least for their original movies I don't do the thing where it's like, oh, what's this week's Netflix original movie? I want to watch a Netflix original movie. What's this week's right? Oh, I'm excited. I just don't like there will be movies that will be on a streaming service that there are reviews of. And I'll be like, oh, I want to watch that. Palm Springs came on Hulu. And I'm like, oh, that sounds interesting. I'll watch that. But we know now that all of the streaming services are working very hard to do not just take things out of theatrical and put them on quickly on streaming or day and date in the case of this year with HBO Max,

but they're also buying movies at film festivals and things and putting them on. And there's kind of a little bit of an arms race. And on one level, that's great because a lot of those movies didn't have much of a theatrical audience anymore. The kind of mid-budget and indie movies. Like, there's room for more movies on streaming services. And I'm glad that that's true.

That said, I am more of a TV guy than a movie guy. Me too. I don't, like I said, I don't, uh, like I said, I don't anticipate whatever the latest, uh, original is. And yet these streaming services do be, do seem to be rushing headlong into getting as many movies on their platforms as possible.

I like your theory that it's a little bit about relationships and about proving yourself. Because the other thing that I find interesting is what if it's a, what if it's not a TV show, but it's not a movie? And like the Chris Evans thing that was on Apple TV+, right? That was a miniseries. And I wonder about that sometimes if like stage one is we buy your movie. And then as you said, stage two is

now we're going to put you in, maybe it's a series maybe it's a mini-series maybe it's another movie but like i think it's really interesting because there's a whole machine out there of like i want to make a movie i'm going to make a movie independent movies we're going to get funding we're going to go to this film festival and that's great and that's the kind of stuff that gets bought and put on streaming services um what doesn't happen is i want to make a six-hour mini miniseries and then I hope somebody buys it, right?

It's like, that doesn't happen. So I do wonder if there's like an ecosystem building here where these companies get into, buy these movies, get into a relationship with the stars or other talent that they want, treat them really nicely and then go to them and their agents and say you know if you've got a long-form project that you're interested in bring it over right like and just sort of recruit them that way it's fascinating to me but whatever they end up doing whatever their reasons it's clear they're just continuing to get more and more serious more movies more movies and maybe maybe i'm wrong maybe we will get to the point where you flip on your streaming services and

it's like going to the movies on a Friday night where it's like, oh, there were like five premieres. There's one on HBO Max. There's one on Netflix. There's one on Apple TV Plus. There's one on Hulu. There's one on Prime Video. What do you want to see? We can watch a movie on a Friday night. I can see the appeal of that even though i i don't do that so much and it has been fun when like when greyhound went on apple tv plus i was like oh tom hanks interesting let's watch that and i like that movie that was an enjoyable movie so i can see it um i don't watch a lot of these direct-to-streaming movies

um but i can see the appeal of it so i don't't know. I don't know. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. A few decades ago, super easy to be a private person. The internet has changed all of that. Think about everything that you look for, everything you tweet, everything you say. All of this data can be collected up. It can be aggregated. It can be sold to third parties. Having your life exposed for others to see was once something that only celebrities

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Dr. Burrell asks, this is a fun one, Dr. Burrell, because we get people's names, right? And their Twitter name was like Dr. Something Burrell. And I figured I couldn't just use their first name, I felt like, because they said they're a doctor. So, you know, you've got to put the respect on it. So Dr. Barrow says, I guess if you want me to ever say doctor, just change your Twitter name or your name in Discord to doctor,

and I will clearly say it is what we can all learn from this. So if you ever want to send in a question. We'll also accept other titles. Yeah, Captain Commodore, all those kinds of things. So if you have one of those names in your Twitter handle or your Twitter display name or your Discord name, I will clearly read it. So this is something we've all learned. Dr. Burrell says, in the hypothetical of a larger iMac, we were talking about that a

couple of weeks ago, say 32 inches or so, would your preference be a higher resolution display or to keep it at 5K but at a higher refresh rate? I have complicated feelings about this. Good. So if we take a 27 inch iMac and just scale it up to 32 inches, but it's still just a 5K display, that means that the resolution is getting worse, right? The dots are going to get bigger. We're literally just stretching a 27-inch interface up to 32. I don't think I support that. I don't think I want bigger pixels on a screen that's larger. I think if you're going to make the screen larger, I'd like the resolution to be higher, higher than 5K. If this hypothetical had been, if you have a 32-inch iMac and it's the same resolution as the current 5K iMac, And it's the same resolution as the current 5K iMac.

Would you prefer upping that resolution even more or going to a higher refresh rate? I'd say refresh rate because my retina display doesn't need to be higher resolution than it is. But I'm not really interested in taking the contents of my screen and spreading it out over a larger space and having everything be bigger. I guess I could turn it down into sort of like smaller and more space mode, and maybe that would look okay. But I feel like I'm pretty happy with the resolution of this monitor as it is, and I would have to see a 32-inch monitor at 5K and see if I really liked that. But I'd prefer not. i'd prefer apple to sort of keep it the way it is and just make it more pixels obviously i would love to live in the world that

you have proposed to get both but if i had to choose i think i would choose a higher refresh rate and my reason for this is uh i'm using a monitor right now at home which i ostensibly bought for my gaming pc or my streaming pc but i also plug my macbook pro into it uh it is not retina um it's not fight it's not a 5k monitor i don't remember the exact resolution of it and i'm fine with it but i'll just say like i i have a monitor that's a 5k monitor and then this one isn't uh i don't remember the exact resolution of it off the top of my head but it's not and i'm i can live with that it doesn't bother me too much to be honest but when i switch from using my mac to my pc um i really noticed the difference of the PC taking advantage of the higher

refresh rate of some of the display and it feels so smooth, so smooth and so I it's actually, honestly I have noticed the refresh rate difference on this more than I even noticed a promotion on the iPad

like the mouse cursor moving across the screen just feels so nice like and it makes the machine feel faster in a way it's very interesting i'm gonna defer to you on this because i the challenge here is that i don't ever look at my mac screen and say, oh, I wish it was smoother scrolling or I wish the cursor moved more smoothly. And although I appreciate ProMotion on my iPad a lot, I'm going to defer to you here that maybe higher refresh rate is the way to go if it is that pleasurable an experience to have it be like that.

So I'm going to leave it. I mean, the problem with this hypothetical is I have not seen or spent any amount of time in front of a 32 inch 5k display or in front of a high refresh rate PC. And so I can't, I'm just trying to imagine. And, you know, I suspect if I sat down in front of one or those two options for 15 minutes, I could probably give you a definitive answer. And it's very hard to do so without doing that. So the monitor that I have, it is 2560 by 1440. So I don't know, it's like nearly 4K or whatever, I don't know, but it's 144 Hz refresh rate, and the difference really is

quite astounding when I move from OS to OS on that monitor, so it's cool. Eric asks, the new Apple Arcade games that you spoke about last week, like 3s Plus and Flip Flop for Solitaire Plus, aren't on the Apple TV or the Mac. Do you think this signals a shift in Apple Arcade, or have those games not been ported yet so i think this was actually a part that i didn't think about to talk about last time when we were talking about the fact that this did seem like a shift i think that the the the idea that these have to exist on the mac and apple tv that is arcade originals if it's not an arcade original they're not going to make you do this yeah i i

saw a note on twitter this morning where somebody was like well wait a second i thought the whole appeal of apple arcade was that they were exclusives it's like well no cares how is that an appeal to anybody like except apple that's that's exactly it so so yes if your appeal is oh i get games nobody else gets on this platform. Like, I guess that was part of a larger thing, which was you pay money and you get games, right? And what Apple's doing here is repositioning Apple Arcade to be three things. It's Apple Arcade Originals over here. Those are the exclusives. And again, the exclusives have always had an asterisk, which is it's exclusive to mobile platforms.

And so that's over there but then there's the new stuff that is the uh the you know free it's on the app store but now you can get it for free with apple arcade these plus things and the idea of like the retro stuff that's being revived um and there are three different streams for game content on apple arcade i think it's interesting to point out that stuff doesn't show up on the mac or on apple tv in some of the other categories because that could be a shift in apple strategy it could be just the reality that they couldn't get it up and running with those things and i don't know that you know are they willing to pay to bring it over but not willing

to pay to have it be built for other platforms. Some games just wouldn't work, right? Like if you're building an arcade original, you're building that in mind of like, okay, this is going to be working on every platform. And so that's how you build the game with that in mind. If you've built the game for the iPhone, they're not all going to work on the Apple TV or the Mac. The experience just isn't going to be good enough in some instances, I feel.

Yeah, also, I'm checking right now, but my guess is that... So you can get 3s on the Mac if you're using an Apple Silicon Mac. Right? Okay, yep. So you could argue that the aha aha but it's not on the mac it's like well it would not surprise me if they're all on the mac via apple silicon yeah but you

might have to use that weird what is it touch assist thing you might but i think that the idea being you know the fact that these games have all been on everything previously, that was part of the old system, which is now arcade originals. And then the other two, which was like the timeless classics, and there was one other category I don't remember the name of. I don't think we can expect the same. I'm looking here, too, and I think that maybe this person's point was that those categories aren't showing up yet on the Mac App Store Arcade. I think it's just a matter for that.

I think it's just a matter of time before they update that because that's the beauty of this going forward with. sure this will be a condition of it is if it runs on the mac using uh using the ios apps run on apple silicon feature then you know that box is checked right you check that box because we want these available on the mac too and that's an easy one right because you don't have to do any extra work really or probably very much to make it functional i think they will do that apple tv is a it's a great question. And philosophically, I think they would like them on all the platforms. But that doesn't necessarily mean that technically it's possible. And so is this a change in policy?

I don't know. I feel like the originals are all going to probably have to be across the platforms. But I don't know for sure. Now, this question from Simon. This is basically, I like this idea of us outside of the draft getting some predictions on record here. Okay.

Simon's question is, do you think the iPadOS 14.5 will include external monitor support, but it's just not in the betas, like how the trackpad wasn't in the betas of 13.4? The rumored iPad Pro with Thunderbolt could launch alongside it.

So this idea of enhanced external display support, do we think that it is A, going to be happening with the next iPad Pro, and B, that it is in iPadOS 14.5? Well, it hasn't been rumored by anyone. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they couldn't do it because it's a software feature. And again, their trackpad thing basically came out of nowhere

for it being available at the time that it was. We thought maybe sometime this year we would do it, but it was like, boom, it's available now. Nobody expected that. So I have, there's no way for me to judge because first off, I want it to happen. Second, there's a precedent last year that they did this. So, but it's also not been rumored or anything.

So do I think it's going to happen? I would, honestly, I would say it's 50-50. So if you want me to flip a coin think it's going to happen i would honestly i i would say it's 50 50 so if you want me to flip a coin i want it to happen i would also if somebody else was very excited and enthusiastic and saying it's going to happen i'd be happy to take the alternate right because i think that it is uh i think it's a toss-up i think this this is not a part of iPadOS 14.5. I think this is an iOS 15 feature. Could be. Could be.

If I was going to put my cards down, that's where I'm putting them down. I think the reason that there's room for skepticism is that you and I have spent a long time over the years talking about windowing and all of that on iPadOS. And the cursor, you know, the little pointer thing is it's so delightful. They did such a good job. It's so well considered.

That said, it wasn't as huge a leap, especially since they'd already done the assistive touch version of it. It wasn't that huge a leap from what had come before. It was kind of a progression. split view all of that and and essentially expose you know to to show all the windows we've got all that stuff when you start to think about what happens when you plug an ipad into a big monitor and how you put those apps on there and i think especially when you think take your favorite app and then run it full screen on a 27 inch monitor. Like, oh no, no, no, that's no good. That's, that's, it's, it doesn't work. It doesn't scale. It's meant to be at most on a, on a large iPad pro screen, right? Which is much smaller.

So what do you do? And then it all starts to unravel, right? Okay. Are those windows are those windows the size of various ios device um screen sizes that you can resize sort of like you do on apple silicon where you can you can resize certain apps in certain ways is that what it looks like do you want windows do you want something that's sort of like tiling how does that work and the reason that i would take an enthusiastic person's yes bet and say no

maybe i'm not 50 50 um is because it's a big it's a big leap i feel like there's a revisiting of multitasking on the iPad that's required for this to work. That's my thinking. I think iOS 15 needs to bring about some larger scale changes. Could they do it in 14.5? I think they could. I think they could even do it part way and then do more in 15. But yeah, I think you're right. I think in the end you've convinced me, Mike, if I had to bet money, I would bet on no. I think there's a possibility they'll do it. But if I had to bet money, I would bet on no. And the answer would be, or the reason would be

what I just said, which is I think it's more complicated than the cursor thing was because it has huge ramifications for how the iPad handles windowing. And maybe that's a full OS version with developer support that is required. And I do think that some rethinking of iPadOS is in the wings. I would like to think that it will be 15, but I don't know.

You know, just thinking about things we were talking about, like widgets, you know,'t know. You know, just thinking about things, we're talking about like widgets, you know, widgets on the home screen, that kind of stuff. And also the conversation around multitasking on the iPad has been going on for years. And at a certain point, Apple does address this stuff if people keep talking about it.

And as an iPad fan and a longtime iPadOS user, I know that there could be a lot of refinements to the way the multitasking system works. So I'm expecting, I know that there could be a lot of refinements to the way the multitasking system works. So I'm expecting that Apple know that too. And so, yeah. I expect that it's coming and I don't think they

can do true external monitor support until they've also addressed some of the other parts in the way that windowing stuff works and multitasking works. And a total overhaul

in a mid-year OS update seems like it's asking a lot. There's no way that they're adding a brand new multitasking system to iPadOS 14.5. There's just no way, in my opinion. Two months before WWDC?

Why would you do that? Like, there would surely be a lot of developer work needed to make sure that everyone's supporting this properly. Like, I can't imagine this being something where it just works. Because it was the same with the trackpad. The trackpad needed developer work, right? And they released that in March, and people did it. They got it working in time.

But the idea of requiring all this work in April, May, I just don't see why you would do it this way around. Especially when the 2020 iPad Pro, the actual iPad Pro, kind of didn't really have anything going for it.

Like, it had LiDAR. Right? Where the 2021 iPad Pro will at least have this new screen technology which will make it more desirable to people and if they put thunderbolt in it that will also be a thing that people will enjoy right like there are features i think that this hardware will have that the 2020 ipad did not have anything really compelling to it. So I don't, you know, and I think it really helped them

to have activity in the product line over the year because they brought in the Magic Trackpad, which is an expensive accessory. So yeah, I don't know. But if I was going to say, I say not 14.5, but I do think it's coming. All right. if i was gonna say i say not 14.5 but i do think it's coming all right yeah i think if they make ipad pros that are very capable of driving external displays i mean the existing ones are too

right like this is a feature that we've all we all looked at this last year or the year before and said well this is obviously coming once they get cursor support in the system you got a pointer you got a keyboard you're there right to drive? To drive an external display. You're there. You just need to figure out how to build that. And it, you know, they could have said, well, we can't get that part in 14, but we're going to keep working on it and we're going to drop it along with these new pieces of hardware. That's the scenario where there's something to release in the next couple of weeks that does it. But but yeah it's such a huge overhaul that it feels like the more likely

scenario is that they announce it in June let developers test their stuff on it right get your iPad out plug it into a monitor see how your apps look and go from there if you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode just send out a tweet with the hashtag

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I want to tell you about another show here on Relay FM, it's called Roboism. It's by Alex Cox and Kathy Campbell. This is recently rebooted as well with Kathy joining Alex. So it's a super great time to jump on. They explore how artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital assistance affect our culture every day. Explore the humanity behind the bots that are quickly

becoming part of our everyday life at relay.fm slash roboism or search for roboism wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com or theincorporable.com and he is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E.

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say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, everybody.