Upgrade - 350: The Time for Color is Now

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Apple's Colleen Novielli and Navpreet Kaloty visit the show to discuss the new 24-inch iMac in depth. Then Jason and Myke discuss the positioning of the new iPad Pro, and what it means that Apple has given it an M1 processor and added other hardware features previously available only on the Mac.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 350 today's show is brought to you by pingdom doordash and bombas my name is mike hurley and i am joined by my partner in crime jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley Roman numerals, this is episode CCCL? Excellent. Trivia. Hello, Romans. I have a hashtag Snell talk question from Von Walther, who asks, Does embargoed

information ever cause complications with your drafts on Upgrade, and how would this be handled in the draft? This is an interesting question. Generally, we don't get embargoed on announcements before they're made, right? Even though stuff leaks, Apple doesn't want to let members of the media know what is happening beforehand. They prefer the drop to be the event. And you've seen it before.

happening beforehand. They prefer the drop to be the event. And you've seen it before. What ends up happening is then after the event, there are embargoed conversations that happen. You get product in advance sometimes. You can't talk about it until a certain time. And I've had that. Whenever you see me posting a very long story about a product that was announced recently that isn't out yet at 6 a.m pacific or something that's an embargo i wrote that over the previous four days or whatever and or in the case of my piece about the 16 inch macbook pro to think back to that we did uh we did the briefing in new york i did the interview in new york i edited the interview and sent it to you then i wrote a whole story set it up for the embargo and then the episode edited the interview and sent it to you. Then I wrote a whole story, set it up for

the embargo, and then the episode and the story dropped on the embargo time. So it doesn't generally happen with the draft. However, this is the footnote that I think is interesting. Occasionally, someone, whether it's us or people in our circle, hears something, and it's one of those things where you're like, oh, this isn't widely known, but I think I know what this means, right? It's one of those things. It's like, it's sort of not rumored or it's been rumored and you get kind of a confirmation from someone. And I'm being vague here, but also this is a really vague process where somebody will hear something and it sort of spreads around sort of very quietly of like, yeah, they are doing that or no, they're not doing that.

And that has happened a couple of times in regard to the draft. And I don't know about how you approach this, Mike, but I feel like how I approach it and I think how we approach it. And honestly, I think also how your co-hosts on Connected approach it is if I know something is going to happen or think strongly that something is going to happen, I'm not going to predict it. Like, I'm not going to play that game because it's cheating, basically. And it's like the whole idea is to guess about things that you don't know. And I think, and I can't remember the details, but I think at least once you and I have crossed something out on our draft list because we both knew it was going to happen. And so we didn't put it on the list.

We can get really good inclinations of something, you know, or maybe awesome and then it's fair game. But if we feel like something's pretty pretty dead set and it's something that other people don't know we wouldn't include it and if there was ever a situation which i can't ever imagine happening honestly where we were explicitly told some information before you know then we were given an embargo we would not put it in the draft right right we wouldn't pretend that we didn't know and try to predict it as if we were genius predictors. We would not talk about it. And that can happen.

Now, I had some inklings and some strong suspicions about the podcast announcement, right? And I picked that. But we put that on our list. We decided that that was still like, you know, it could happen. It could not happen. We really didn't know. Also, it was incredibly rumored in the media that something was going to happen and honestly we had even with our inklings had no

idea what they that they were going to do actually what they did do so but like if you if you imagine that somebody came to federico and said uh the this framework is going to be updated on on the event for that and he would be like yes i picked this for this obscure framework this thing that nobody expects at all that's incredibly precise is going to happen and then it happened i mean that would actually be really bad because everybody would be like who told him that right why did that leak through that so it's just not fun that way and and so uh that's the answer is we would handle it by not talking about it or not picking it but here's what i'll suggest yeah don't now look into everything we don't pick as a possibility that's confirmation that it's gonna happen that's a game

that's too hard because we also miss really obvious things because we're dumb and we didn't put them on our list because we lacked our imagination when we were building the draft list that also happens so no this is not a canary in the coal mine of uh you know oh they didn't mention ar therefore ar is confirmed that is or is it how it works it isn't but is it isn't it isn't but oh you're denying it i don't know that makes me suspicious it's not it's like every time we need to move the episode like so just as a heads up because it will happen we're recording on saturday live this week It will come out on Monday. There's absolutely zero reason to it.

We just have a scheduling issue. Every time now we make any change to the show's time, people think something's happening. Oh, I wonder why it's on Saturday. Do they have a special thing that they're doing? In fact, this is the reverse of the usual, right? Which is that we're actually just doing it out in the open, and people are like, oh, I'm suspicious now.

No, this is the reverse. It's when we don't do it on a Monday that you should be suspicious. But even then, sometimes It's when we don't do it on a Monday that you should be suspicious. But even then, sometimes it's because we can't do it on Monday and we just do it on Tuesday. That happens. So yeah, anyway.

If you'd like to send in a hashtag Snell Talk question to help us open an episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk or use question mark Snell Talk in the RelayFM members Discord. It is episode 350 today, which is, of course, very special. And we do have something very exciting.

So a little bit later on in the episode, we have an interview about the iMac with a couple of people at Apple. And we're going to... But there's still so much to cover from last week. You do have one follow-up. And then I have some rapid fire follow-up one week later from last week's event. All right. Yeah, a quick one.

I wanted to get in the show because we got a couple of people who are complaining because last week we were complaining about how the Apple TV 4K still comes in two storage tiers, 32 and 64, right? And you pay $20 extra to get the 64 instead of the 32. And, you know, we scoffed at that and Mike was like, why would you do that? 32. And, you know, we scoffed at that and Mike was like, why would you do that? And we heard from the people who buy the 64 configuration of the Apple TV 4K, who said some games on Apple TV are enormous and they will quickly fill the 32. So the 64 is better if you want to keep the games around. Now I would say ideally with cloud, you know, iCloud and all of that, you shouldn't have to keep a whole bunch of things installed, but I get it. Like I get that you shouldn't have to keep a whole bunch of things installed but i get it like i get that you might want it but the larger point is we're not trying to make fun of or complain or say people who buy the bigger configuration are dumb that's kind that's not what we're saying

what we're saying is apple is the problem here because managing storage on an apple tv and buying based on storage levels is kind of ridiculous. There should be one Apple TV 4K configuration, and it should have enough storage to fulfill the needs of users. A $20 upsell on a product that is already way more expensive than any other product in its category is quite frankly ridiculous. Given the price of the Apple TV, they shouldn't be nickel and diming users on storage in fact they should probably even 64 which i could say should be the base 64 is probably what 128 i mean go ahead 64 gigabytes like what has 64 gigabytes today right

like yeah i have like mini sd cards bigger than that it's just like what's the profit per apple tv 4k already that you're going to eat into it a little bit by having a little more storage? So whatever you choose as the storage, I think Apple should choose one level. It should be enough for everyone. And they should only sell that one. So my issue is really with the fact that Apple insists that this is still a thing. Not that users would see a reason why it's a thing and opt to spend the extra $20. I just don't think Apple should give them the option.

Apple should just price it at one price and give it enough storage to be appropriate instead of having to force people to pay an extra $20 on their already very expensive compared to all the competition product. So our beef is with Apple and not with you is what I'm saying. product so that's our beef is with apple and not with you is what i'm saying i have some incredible real-time follow-up from uh chance miller of nine to five mac who says that if you are recording upgrade from somewhere not your home people email nine to five mac to say jason's recording upgrade from a different place he must he's on a secret assignment this week what could it mean interesting i would like to apologize to everybody that owns a tip line because our yeah recording schedule seems to affect you yeah that's that is very funny i i'm not sure if my location has ever had any meaning in terms of recording an episode

right the only ones only ones where it has meaning are ones where we're revealing something i think i i don't know if i've ever like gone somewhere for an embargo you think sometimes when you've recorded in new yeah but even when you're recording somewhere like new york or whatever uh it's been known in the episode hey people people like to read the tea leaves i guess guess. That is Kremlinology gone amok. It's just, you know, I move around sometimes. It's like, hey, here's a tip. Jason was in a slightly echoey

room on Upgrade. What does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. Unless it does. It doesn't! But unless it does, it doesn't. So we are one week later from last week's Apple event, and there's a bunch of little things, little tidbits, I think, worth mentioning.

Friend of the show, David Smith, underscore David Smith of Widget Smith. I think we should just call him Widget Smith David Smith now, because, you know, we used to call him underscore David Smith because that's how everybody knows him. But more people in the world know him as Widget Smith David Smith now than underscore. But nevertheless, so if you remember at the end of the keynote, Apple posted a little kind of Easter egg joke of Ted Lasso's secret shortbread recipe, and it kind of cut it off, right? You could only see just a very slick sliver of the recipe, they cut it off. Underscore doing what Underscore does,

he was able to work out what the line the line actually would have said and then googled it found a shortbread recipe which was half of a recipe from a new york times recipe i think and went ahead and baked some shortbread and wrote a great article about it on his blog which i just want to include so if you want to make the shortbread you can make it too and then he got of course linked from all sorts of other places and what i find really funny about this is i just want to include so if you want to make the shortbread you can make it too and then he got of course linked from all sorts of other places and what i find really funny about this is this is not the official ted lasso recipe no this is the recipe that was googled by a an apple event person who had to be told to implement this joke and had to find what that line is

and Googled for shortbread recipes and the New York Times cooking recipe came up and they copied and pasted it. So it's like, let's not get too excited here. I don't think, you know, Mr. Ted Lasso or his representatives were at the keyboard filling out the thing for the joke at the end of the event. It was just a joke.

But, you know, you can make, if you've got a lot of butter, you can make shortbread. I'm going to include a link in the show notes to a YouTube video. One of my favorite YouTubers, Andrew Ray, who has a channel called Binging with Babish, which if you've spent enough time on YouTube, you've come across one of his videos before. He, this is his thing, remaking things from TV shows and movies. And he made some of his own as well and included a recipe for it in his video so it's another option for you if you want to try and create some shortbread of your own so it's been reported that the new siri remote for

apple tv lacks any motion control functions and because of its lack of buttons some games relied on motion controls you're playing some apple Arcade games with the Siri remote because it only had a couple of buttons on it. It needed motion controls as well. Now, with the new Siri remote, if you have an Apple TV with the new Siri remote, if you launch a game that has this incompatibility, the Apple TV gives you the following error. To play this game on your Apple TV, you need to connect the Apple TV remote or a compatible PlayStation, Xbox, or MFI controller. This is very funny to me. I think this is not surprising at all because Apple clearly changed their strategy for gaming

on the Apple TV to have it be entirely focused on pairing actual console controllers with it. I'm pleased they've done this. Or an MFI console controller. I'm pleased they've done this. And so they're like, we don't need to put that in there that was they had a vision of that original siri remote being used as a gaming controller they thought they were making the next nintendo wii that's what they thought they did they did and they weren't so so for a few years now it's been very

clear that it's like now you just get a controller And if you want to play a game that requires a controller. I think one of the great things is there's a bunch of options. You can buy them from companies that make them through the made for iPhone program. Or, you know, so many homes will have some kind of PlayStation Xbox controller in their home. You know, it's very likely. in their home. And in fact, because they're compatible with the previous generation, now if you've got that PS4 or Xbox One gathering dust,

you've got those controllers too. And those work on the Apple TV too. You don't even need the latest generation. So yeah, I think it's a smart move on their part. Plus you can always buy a for uh you know apple an mfi controller right for apple platforms and use that if you want to so obviously when they were removing hardware they're decontenting this uh remote when they when they built the new version of it that was one of the things they're like we don't need to do that anymore it's not let's not pretend it's a game controller it's not uh it appears that the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro will require a new Magic Keyboard. So currently on Apple's website, you cannot buy the larger iPad's Magic Keyboard.

You can buy the one for the 11-inch in black. You just can't buy the one in white. But for the 12.9-inch, you can't buy either the black or white one. The only one that is available on the website at all is that new one, which isn't going to be available until this month shipping in may it is expected that the 0.5 millimeter size difference will make the new ipad incompatible with uh the older magic keyboard models yeah i'm a little skeptical about this so i have I have some breaking news here.

I'm going to break some news. Breaking, breaking news. Oh, wow, here we go. I bought an orange folio case for the 12.9. This is breaking news. Because they... Yeah. It's the first time you said about it, so...

Exclusive. I can exclude... Wait, hold on. I can exclusively reveal that its compatibility is listed as the what fifth fourth and third generation ipad pro 12.9 so it means that i have in my hands a product that has been validated by apple to work with uh the new ipad pro which is slightly very very slightly thicker so i've been using that instead of previously i had a blue folio case for my 12.9 inch ipad pro um and what i can report is it doesn't really feel any

different maybe there's a little bit more give in the in the little sort of uh edge area but it doesn't feel like it and i tried to line them up and it doesn't look like it it's not like my 12.9 inch ipad pro is is uh like a kid wearing their dad's shirt or something right like woo it's i'm in a big shirt it isn't like that it's just another one of these so my point is the these specifications are so fine half a millimeter right that one i am super surprised and kind of bummed out that apple is doing this because this is a very expensive accessory and if you're really into the ipad pro and you bought it last year and now you want to upgrade your ipad pro maybe you had a 2018 now you want to go to the 2021 apple is sort of saying you need to buy another expensive accessory because that one's not compatible. I don't like that. Second, I am skeptical about exactly what this means. Nobody's gotten their

hands on this, so we don't know. It may be that it doesn't close as easily or it's a little uncomfortable. Given that this one this new case is going to be compatible with the old models i'm going to guess that it will actually work but it's not up to apple standards like maybe it works but it doesn't close right or something like that we have to kind of like open it up and pop it on. Depress the keys a little bit in a way that is not great. Or doesn't close fully and put strain on the spine, basically. I don't know what the details of this are going to be, but I'm skeptical that it doesn't work. I think it probably does work, but not well enough for Apple to endorse that people

use it. But certainly the moment these ship, the internet will be full of stories and photos and videos of how it actually looks and we'll find out. But I want to express a little skepticism. I think that people hopefully will be able to get by with their existing keyboard if they bought it and not have to buy a new one. I think it's a real bummer if they have to buy a new one. And I hope that maybe that will form, given how expensive they are, maybe there's an opportunity there for people to buy the new one and then sell their old one to people who are sticking with the older iPad models. And you might be able to get a magic keyboard for iPad on the cheap from somebody who is upgrading. And that's the bright side of this is, I was thinking about it this week, the Magic Keyboard for iPad is so good. Like, it is so good.

It is such a great piece of hardware. I love it. And it's also very expensive. it's also very expensive. So the silver lining here might be that these will be available used and people who aren't willing to spend the money full price on them will be able to get them on the 12.9 for a little bit cheaper. But I just wanted to express my skepticism that it won't work versus is not approved by Apple because it doesn't meet their exacting standards which might

mean it'll you can make it work it's fine we'll see i my kind of feeling on this is even if you know this is okay it's unfortunate but this is just the way it's going to be sometimes it kind of isn't yeah you know like what is the way around it right like what they wouldn't put the new display technology in there because then people might need to buy a new Magic Keyboard? I guess my only question would be, we hear all these stories about, oh, Apple can't change, Apple can't add Touch ID, Apple designs these products so far in advance. And so I think about them introducing the Magic Keyboard last year, and I thought, if the difference is this small, half a millimeter, and they knew that they were working on a new display tech that was probably going to make the screen a little bit, or the iPad a little bit thicker, could they not have built in that give? Because it's in the little flappy part, right? Could they have not built a little more give in there?

I don't know if I buy that as well. I think the answer would be, well, no, because they designed that a year before when they didn't know. But anyway, it's unfortunate because it's so expensive and because they just introduced it a year ago. But I know things march on. There's going to be a scream when there's an Apple Watch that's introduced that doesn't use the existing bands, right? Like, boy, boy. There's going to be a scream when there's an Apple Watch that's introduced that doesn't

use the existing bands, right? Like, boy, boy, it's going to happen. And time marches on. This just seems weird because it seems like this is not a dramatic enough difference for it to matter. And it's an expensive product. But we'll see. Let's see how it goes.

It may be that it really is sort of like Apple doesn't approve this for use, but you can actually use it. Yeah, that's, I expect it is that. And like, maybe it's just not completely graceful, but it will work. Yeah. The iPad tech specs page now lists the RAM in each model. So there's eight gigabytes of RAM in the 128, 256 or 512 gigabyte version

and 16 gigabytes in the one or two terabyte version. While it is not news that the iPad has RAM, neither is it news that you can find out. This is the first time that Apple have told anyone on or off the record how much RAM are in these devices. No, we only know because people run software on them that allows us to detect them. And that was the big story with the 2018 ipad pro is that the one terabyte configuration the most expensive terabyte or storage configuration of ipad pro had eight gigs of ram where the rest of them had six four i don't even remember now but it was one of those things where people discovered it and they're like

oh look there's more ram in this one um and i think this is a side effect tell me what you think i think it's a side effect of it being the m1 is that apple's just sort of like unifying the whole idea of uh the ipad has specs like the mac has specs and this is it's a big step forward but it's also sort of like you know the ipad has specs like the mac has specs that's how it goes my feeling on this is something okay we're going to talk a lot about the ipad and our future hopes for the ipad in today's episode later on i think something will happen at wwdc and it will run differently on the 8 or the 16 and so they've just put it on the text box page so you'll just know what

capability you have because my i understand what you're saying about it leading on but if they were printing it because it's leading on from the mac it's not configurable you can't right put 16 gigabytes of ram in the 256 gigabyte storage model right so but you can you can choose which one is it you know i don't know you could choose which one um and that may have value. I don't disagree that it may be part of a larger story that they want the specs available because they're going to do something that has... I kind of doubt that they're going to do something this year that has RAM requirements, but they might down the line. Um, but I do think that it's possible too, that this is to get back to the Apple TV for a moment, that this is also just another way of driving people toward the more profitable, more expensive models is to say, you're not just getting more storage, you're getting more Ram. And why, why would we not tell you that? Because it makes you right. Like potentially there will be people who are going to buy five 12 and then they look at the one terabyte and they're like oh and it's twice the ram yeah okay that's a better deal than i thought then um i wonder if it's just marketing too i mean i would probably do that right like if i was in the market for one of these i'd be like well now i'm gonna get that one because yeah yeah if i'm oh yeah no doubt i will say it that if i buy one of these I'm going to buy the 1TB model because I'm going to want the 16GB of RAM hands down

the AirTag embargo is up I'll put a link in the show notes to a review roundup actually I'm more interested in them having watched some review videos than I was beforehand the integration of it looks really cool we're going to have them on the way we will talk about AirTags a little bit next week and also iOS 14.5 is out now uh i'll put a link in the show notes to federico vatici's review and overview uh 14.5 which is in depth as you could imagine yeah no it's great it's it's a good reminder i would actually say for those of us who've been following the 14.5 story for months now because it's been in beta a very long time, that Federico's story, even if you're like, ah, I know all of this, it's a, not only does he

dive deep and uncover things you might not expect, but also you've forgotten a bunch of stuff that's in there because especially if you've been living with a beta, like some, one of your friends says, oh, there's this software update. And you're like, yeah, what's in that? Because I've been living with mask unlock for a couple of months now. but for everybody else in the world mask unlock with an apple watch and an iphone is coming out today so um worth reading about it and telling your friends about it too actually this is the kind of update where i think people should actually tell their friends um you know you you want to get if they've got an apple watch you want to get, if they've got an Apple watch, you want to get this because it's going to enable mask unlock. And that's super convenient.

I haven't been running it. So it's all new. It's all new to me. Enjoy. Yeah, I am. I will. Although the mask unlock thing,

I won't cause I don't, I don't wear an Apple watch. I don't wear an Apple watch. You don't wear an Apple watch, right? So it won't be a thing for me. But there's other stuff in there that I'm interested in checking out.

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show and all of RelayFM. Sucks. All right, we are very excited now to play your interview that we conducted a couple of days ago with Colleen Novielli of Mac Product Marketing and Navpreet Kaloti, who's the Engineering Program Manager of Mac Architecture. We got to talk to them about the iMac, and you will have remembered them as well from the presentation. So let's get started with the interview. So Colleen, welcome back. Thank you. Great to be back. Since then, we went to the iMac G4, it was white, the G5, the first Intel iMac, and then we went to the aluminum enclosure that we've had since then. So that's a long way of saying what brought color back?

What was the impetus to bring color back to the iMac? The time for color is now. Colors are such an incredibly important part of the design of the new iMac for a few reasons. First, there is a full spectrum of color, right? Then this is designed to bring just such a deep sense of personalization to the iMac. Just an example, since the announcement, I've asked many different groups of people which color they want. And I've received an even range of answers really across the spectrum. And this really represents what the product is all about. The product is about giving the choice of the full color spectrum so that everyone can choose the one that's right for them. And for some people, it's because it's their favorite color

or it's their kid's favorite color of the moment, the one that matches their typical home design the best. But it's not just that the iMac is beautiful and they love the color, love the experience. The product actually represents them, right? They've picked the blue one. And so it's deeply personal again. And then we have all these gorgeous color matched accessories. And so the whole thing is just this deeply color matched experience. And then second, colors now, they're really designed to bring a sense of brightness, optimism

and joy into people's lives. I think we can all agree that's something that everyone needs at the moment and they're designed so when you walk into a space you see it and it just makes you feel happy and that definitely happened for me the first time I walked in and saw the full color spectrum of the iMac together it just wowed me it just gave me this feeling of pure joy it really just makes you smile and And so we wanted to bring color back. Colors now, it's better in color. Is it an accident that the six colors that aren't silver are the six colors of the apple rainbow? Did you notice? I did notice about that. It is definitely maybe a coincidence that those colors happen to be the

same, but they do represent a full color spectrum, right? You have every color from your green and your yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue. And so there's really a color in there for every part of the spectrum and for everyone. Our friend Stephen Hackett, who is a bit of an iMac historian, pointed out that this is the first yellow iMac ever. There was never a lemon iMac back in the day. So for people who want to be trailblazers, the yellow iMac is there. That is true. And many may pick it just because it is that first fresh new one. And I want to be different and have that first yellow. The yellow is awesome. My first ever iMac was the first Intel iMac. So it was

like the white plastic polycarbonate. So I have very nostalgic feelings for white on the front of an iMac. And that is one of the things that's on all of the new iMacs is like a white bezel running around the outside. Can you share what the thinking was for choosing white? Yeah, absolutely. So the border around the new iMac, it's a light gray. So it isn't the apple white that you're maybe used to the bright white. And so it is a little bit more subtle of light gray. But there are a few reasons for this design. First, the colors on the front of iMac now are meant to be softer. They're meant to be calm and neutral colors. And this is meant to bring the user a sense of calm and neutral as they're using the product all day, because it is where you sit in front of the product. And the borders themselves,

they're meant to really complement typical home design for one and kind of just blend into the background. So the focus is just all about the display. And if you think about the UI, if you're using particularly in light mode, you will have more white coming through in a lot of the UI elements. And so really the borders really kind of blend with the UI. I can tell you from using the iMac, and I'm sitting in front of one right now, the gray, light gray borders are awesome. The lack of this kind of stark contrast,

I would say provides a more seamless viewing experience for the user. And it's something that you really have to experience for yourself, but it's great. I mean, obviously we've only seen images so far, but there is a freshness to these iMacs, which really excites me. Like I have never seen computers that look like this before. I think it's amazing. I'm blown away by it. It is absolutely true. And I will say that when I use one of these new iMacs for the first time, it does feel like such a fresh experience.

It feels like a brand new product that you're using. It feels modern. It feels clean. The colors are obviously awesome, but it does feel like it's this new, modern color splash, awesome product that you have sitting in front of you. And it feels exciting to use. And we have spent a lot of time talking about colors and I'm going to continue it here for a minute because it is, you know, it's an iMac.

And honestly, it's just taken me back to the early days. Like this is part of it is, it's a device that's meant to be in your workspace and it's meant to be in your living space and it's meant to be seen and not just fade into the background. But one thing I wanted to ask you about is you can't just say, let's make colored iMacs. And I did the math here. So you had to make color matched items to go with the iMac. As far as I can tell, you have to have 11 different power cords or power items because you've got some variation on the low end and the rest of the line in terms of ethernet. 18 different keyboards because you have a certain number of keyboards

that are available on the low end and then the ones that are available on the rest of the line, as well as seven different trackpads and seven different mice. So you've got a huge amount of inventory control there. How did those conversations go? Which is like, yeah, we want to do seven different iMacs. And that means we're going to have to have like 30, keep track of 30 different sets of all of these peripherals in order to make this work. First of all, I am fascinated and so happy that you did the math there. I think that that is awesome. And our operations team is also going to find that very entertaining. We certainly have a fantastic operations team here at Apple. And I think that that's well known. But when we are making a new product, when we're thinking about a new product at Apple,

we are always focusing on what's best for the customer first. And what's best for this product line is to have seven colors. And what's best is to provide the accessories that match and provide the choice for customers to be able to upgrade to Ethernet if they need to and upgrade the keyboard, you know, if they need to. And so that's what drives the decision. It's always customer first. And fortunately, we have wonderful teams like our operation teams at Apple who work really, really hard to allow us to make those customer centric first decisions. So the final total, I think I came up with is 43. Somebody can check my math there. But there are a lot of Apple watch bands is all I'm saying. So it's not like Apple hasn't done

this before. If you've seen how many Apple watch bands there are, there are a lot. That's true, too I'm saying. So it's not like Apple hasn't done this before. Have you seen how many Apple watch bands there are? There are a lot. That's true too. See, it's the iMac's turn. I noticed that these new keyboards that you're rolling out with Touch ID on them, which is very exciting. We were talking before this podcast and you mentioned that they'll work on any M1 based Mac. Obviously, these are shipping with the iMac right now.

So why are they not available separately for that Mac mini user out there who's desperate for Touch ID? Is it just a matter of time and that you got to start somewhere and you're starting with the iMac? Well, I can't comment on anything about the future. But the iMac is paired with exclusively with these amazing new keyboards. You have three variations of the keyboard, two with Touch ID, and they are meant to go with the iMac. They're made for the iMac, they're color matched, and so you can purchase them exclusively with the iMac. If you, to your point, so happen to purchase an iMac and you have another M1 Mac in your household and you wanted to use the Touch ID keyboard with that other M1 Mac,

it would in fact work. The Touch ID functionality would work with that. It would not work with other Intel based Mac systems, or it would work as a fully functioning keyboard, but not the touch ID sensor. Right. It was mentioned during the keynote, and I thought this was super exciting. And I think it shows in just how radically different this machine looks, that this was the first Mac built around the M1 as a starting point. Did it feel different to develop this Mac compared to Macs that have come in the past? I assume it was really exciting. I wondered if you could talk to that a little bit.

So the iMac is redesigned from the ground up around M1. And when I think about it, M1 actually impacts every aspect of the design. You know, the system on chip architecture combines the CPU, GPU, and memory in all in one component, which really allows us to, you know, shrink the size of the main logic board. And you couple that with M1's power efficiency, and the thermal needs can be met with a smaller fan and a smaller thermal module. needs can be met with a smaller fan and a smaller thermal module. So now all of this volume reduction now allows us to package other components such as speakers and power connector and USB-Cs

more efficiently underneath the display. And this is key because this gives us a very high packaging efficiency when it comes to component placement, which resulted in this radical new form factor. And of course, you know, M1 brings other great things like its ISP and neural engine improving the image quality even further. And it's a secure enclave that enabled the Touch ID keyboard. So literally every aspect. I can imagine it just felt really exciting. Like there was so much potential when thinking about how all this stuff would come together when you really kind of got a blank slate with this machine. I feel like in a way that we haven't seen in a while because this stuff

doesn't happen very often. Yeah, absolutely. I have a nerdy port question, which is interesting choice made. So the M1 Mac mini introduced last fall has the USB-A connectors for those extra USB 3 ports. And on the more expensive iMac models, there are two additional, in addition to the Thunderbolt, there are two additional USB ports, but they're USB-C connectors instead. So a different choice for the iMac than for the Mac Mini. Can you tell me a little bit about why the Mac Mini has the need for the old port style and the iMac doesn't necessarily? I think the USB-Cs were really the right choice for the design of the new iMac.

There are a lot of benefits that you get with USB-C. One of the big benefits is power on these USB-3 ports. You know, depending on how many devices you have plugged in with USB-C ports, we're able to deliver more power compared to the USB-As. So your peripherals like phone or iPad charge faster. So obviously we've all had to change so much about the way we work in the last 12 months. Was there any specific thinking around how this machine would be designed or made with COVID in mind and the way that people are working differently and

they're schooling differently? Clearly, the microphone and camera array is a great benefit there. But were these kinds of considerations put into the design of the machine, considering how these types of products might be used differently in the future now? With iMac, the camera mics and speakers have always been an incredibly important part of the experience. And so within every generation, we've been focused on advancing

each of those features for users. We are so excited that for this new generation of iMac, M1 has helped to bring even more capability to that advanced hardware that we've put in. So for example, with the camera, the 1080p hardware that doubles the resolution and gives better performance in low light is made even better by the improvements we get from the ISP and M1. And so all three of the features are just phenomenal on this new product.

Of course, right now with the way that people are living in their shared spaces in their homes, working from home in more ways than ever before, it's been more important than ever to have these features and have them be as good as they can possibly be so that people are looking their best and sounding their best all day long. And so we think the timing of having these features with the way that people are living and working is just going to be terrific for all three of those features. Colleen, I was thinking of our conversation a couple years ago when you were rolling these out on stage. It was so great to see you on the video. But one of the things that you said two years ago that really stuck with me is this idea

that iMacs aren't just devices that you find on somebody's desk in their house or in an office space. A lot of iMacs are used in public places. They are checking you in at the front desk. You get a nice hotel and it's got a couple of iMacs there, and it's actually sending a message. It's not just a functional tool, although it is that, but it's also sending a message and setting a tone. And I was thinking about that because I was looking at the colors and thinking, well, you know, here we are setting the tone. What thought process went into designing these iMacs knowing that they are also sort of public objects and that they're going to pick the color that matches the color scheme

in the lobby or whatever it is? Because I think that that's something that as a regular user who's just buying one for their house, they don't think of those sorts of things. But that has to be part of the consideration when you're designing these. Yeah. And that's such an exciting part of this product for me. To your point, we did talk about the fact that the backs of iMacs are seen all over the place. And if you think about where you're seeing iMacs out in the world, you see them when you walk into a retail store at a point of sale. You see them in hotel lobbies you use to check people in. You see them in libraries and classrooms. And a lot of times

you do see iMac from the back first. And so we talked earlier about the front of iMac and the softer colors and things. Well, the back of iMac is where we really celebrate the color. We just really went for it with the color in the back and the bold saturated shades just really, really pop. And a reason for that is because we want this to be that bold, bright, just joyful pop of color in all of these spaces. You walk into a hotel lobby now to walk to the front desk and that hotel has chosen purple because it coordinates with the accents of the hotel. And it just feels happy and bright in that room. Or a retail store. Now that I've been thinking about these colors out in the world, I've walked into so many

retail stores and seen IMAX at the checkout point. And I've thought to myself, wow, the orange would really look awesome in this retail space. And I think the people that have those retail spaces are going to think the same thing. They're going to think, I want this big, bold pop of color here. And it's just going to bring a sense of joy and brightness and optimism to my customers. And that's going to be a great thing to see where they turn up. I stayed in this boutique hotel in San Diego. And it has like a pineapple motif.

And everything is yellow. And I thought, well, I know what I'm going to get. There we go. They could be the pioneers of the yellow. Literally everything. I love the idea, Colleen, of you walking around and being like, this is going to be better for you. This will be better for you.

I do have other hobbies, but, you know, a lot of my time is dedicated to iMac. I am really excited about the magnetic power connector because it just, it feels like one of those things where it isn't something I would have ever imagined really for the iMac but now I see it I'm like oh that that's really cool could we talk about that a little bit like what's going on with this like you know because obviously it's not just power going through that cable as well yeah as you said the magnetic connector is actually like really, really cool. It's a connector that's jam-packed with engineering. It not only transfers power, but also transfers

Ethernet data. One of the other cool things is the connector is actually self-aligning. So the user doesn't have to think too much about, you know, how they're plugging that in. It just automatically just connects just the right way. And our connector engineering team custom designed power and signal pins, which always perfectly self align and come in contact with the correct pins on the system. So there's a lot of engineering that went in there. A lot of people worked really hard on that. There were also unique innovations made to maximize energy efficiency when transferring over 140 watts of power on that connector. Was that a unique problem to solve? Well, there are definitely connector

designs that can transfer more power than that. But I think the challenge here was how do you come up with a low profile design that also doesn't create any localized heat problems in the system? So there were innovations made on the power dissipation within that connector. And Mac users will remember MagSafe as being a technology using magnets to make it easier for the cable to break away so that you don't lose your laptop. And so they see a magnet on the iMac, and I've already heard from a few people who said, well, wait a second, isn't that going to just pull my iMac cable right off when I'm in the middle of the job? But my understanding is that you've calculated the force required to pull this thing off and calibrated it so it should be comparable to the plastic plug that's in there now just via friction?

Absolutely. Yeah, there was a lot of fine tuning that went into not only sort of the far field force of like, okay, I'm close enough now. Now the magnets should just pull the connector in as well as like detached force. So yeah, a lot of validation, experimentation and fine tuning of the design there. I have a couple of ergonomic questions that I want to ask, but since we're on the question of the power connector, it's two meters

long. Why two meters? Was that sort of a sweet spot that'll get you from most desks down to the floor? Is that the idea here? I dangled some yarn over the back of my desk from my iMac and it doesn't land on the floor if I've got it in standing configuration. It just misses, but it's very close. So what was the consideration about getting to two meters? Yeah, so our product design validation team performed, you know, a combination of in-person posture studies and looked at data from various desk setups for comparison. You know, the study is actually aligned with a lot of the ergonomic findings from the research literature. You know, in these studies actually aligned with a lot of the ergonomic findings from the research literature. You know, in these studies, we looked at a lot of different inputs like the height of people and sit and stand desk heights and all the things that you mentioned.

Ultimately, the recommendations from these studies is what, you know, informed the height of the stand as well as, you know, the length of the cables and other aspects of the design. Obviously, the main thing about an iMac is its display. That is what you are being treated to. And this one is 24 inches. The previous iMac was 21 inches. And I remember you saying on stage, Colleen, obviously the bezel shrank in, but the new iMac is also a little bit bigger.

So I was intrigued. What was it about 24 inches that was exciting enough to that you also want to make this iMac a little bit bigger than the one from before? Like there's clearly some kind of sweet spot that was found here. So we are incredibly excited. We've been able to fit a 24-inch display

in a size of the iMac overall size that's just a little bit bigger than the previous 21.5-inch iMac. So from a height perspective, it's just 0.4 inches taller. And from a width perspective, it's 0.7 inches longer. Basically the same design, just a little bit bigger. By shrinking the borders by 50%, we were able to fit this 24-inch display that has 20% more screen real estate in a design that's close

to the size of the 21.5-inch iMac. And so we have a lot of customers, obviously, that use the 21.5-inch iMac, and that size has been great for them. This is going to be even bigger. I think that they're going to be thrilled with the size of the 24 inches. Personally, having used the size now for a while with this new iMac, I think it's a great size for, you know, day-to-day use. I have also used the 27-inch iMac quite a bit. I think that this is 24 inches is actually a pretty great size for, you know, sitting and doing everyday tasks, having multiple things open at once. And so I think many people are going to be very, very happy with the 24-inch screen size. A big part of this design is also the compact nature

and how it's 30% smaller footprint, 50% less volume, and it's designed to really fit in many more spaces. And so with this design that is still, you know, a reasonable size for fitting into a lot more spaces for people, you know, on a kitchen counter or in a living room on a table, we were able to fit a significant 24 inch display. We think that that's a great, awesome balance between the two things that were important for this new product. Obviously, the display itself is a very important thing, the panel. So could we talk a little bit about what people can expect from visibility and brightness and viewing angles and that kind of stuff? How good does this display look? Absolutely. You can expect everything you would expect from the display from the iMac,

and it's always been all about the display. And so in addition to the 24 inches, we have now a four and a half K retina display. And so retina resolution means you're going to get sharp, vivid text and images. Everything's just going to look absolutely beautiful. P3 wide color and over a billion colors. So everything is going to be very colorful and it's also going to be bright. 500 nits of brightness is quite a bit higher than the industry average for brightness. And so 500 nits is going to give you, again, big, beautiful, bright images combined with that P3 wide color. In addition, we now have True Tone. And so we know that our customers love True Tone on our other devices, phones, iPads, some of our Macs. And so True Tone comes to the 24-inch iMac, and that will be able to make sure that you have the most comfortable viewing experience in any lighting condition. One other thing that also adds to that is the anti-reflective coating that we have on iMac. It's industry leading and it has very low reflectivity to make sure that your reading

experience is going to be comfortable all day long. Our friend Stephen Hackett, again, he pointed out something about the iMac that I thought was interesting. Talking about the bezels, we talked about the screen. There is the chin beneath it, which contains, it seems, essentially the whole computer is back there in that very small space and the speakers and the fans but something that he pointed out is that the chin has been sort of part of the industrial design language of the iMac ever since it went to a back to a sort of a

single screen all in one and you're using it with the lighter color for the front, it feels like it's part of the iMac. Not to say that one day it might not vanish, but like that silhouette is still recognizably an iMac like we've seen for the last 15 years, right? I think this goes back to the conversation we had at the beginning about color and how color is such an important part of this and it brings so much joy and happiness and fun to using it into your space. The chin is where the color is on the front, right? Don't take my color away. You just gave it to me.

Right? I don't want just one on the back. I want to see it all day as I'm using it. And from a design perspective, fitting all of the components under the chin allowed us to have that depth of 11.5 millimeters in the thinness that we have now. And that combined with the reductions in volume and the footprint that we talked about before is what's going to allow this to fit into so many more places. And so all of these things are complementary to the design. And so, you know, it's not one thing or the other, but these designs have beautiful, awesome, colorful chins. And all of the components

of the logic board and the thermals fit nicely in there. And it's now compact. And now you can put the beautiful thing anywhere and it'll brighten up your room and your life, hopefully. One thing that isn't on that chin anymore is an Apple logo. Any reasoning behind getting it out of the way? Just let the color shine through? Just let the color shine through. One cool detail about the back is that now that we have made the enclosure so light, you know, with all of the amazing things that M1 has enabled, we were able to now lower the hinge point of the stand from a physics perspective. And so now instead of having to hold the display in the middle, in the back can now hold it at a lower hinge point. And so that on the back leaves room for a beautiful polished glass Apple logo on the

back. And so I think of that as just absolutely beautiful placement for it. And that's where the logo is now. And everybody sees the iMac from the back first, right? And so many people see it from the back. It's gorgeous. I see what you're doing. I get it now.

To wrap this up, and thank you so much for the time, I wondered if we could zoom back a little bit. And again, we know the future is a mystery to everybody. But talking about this Apple Silicon transition, which is in process, it seems to me from the outside looking in that people working on the Apple Silicon products at Apple have had a really fun opportunity to revisit what their products that they're working on can be and can do. And that you and I have talked, Colleen, about the iMac for a few years now. And the 21.5-inch iMac during that time has sort of not had much going on. And in the background, a brand new smaller iMac

that's bigger than the old one has emerged. So like, how does it feel to have this opportunity that's coming along with Apple Silicon to really revisit these products and instead of just pushing them forward in a more incremental way, get to say the game has changed with M1. Let's make a completely new iMac or whatever other

Mac product you're working on at the time. M1 has been magical for Apple in so many ways. We have so many talented teams across the company that work on these programs. And to your point, having our own Apple Silicon, having M1 has given a lot of the teams the ability to reimagine, right? And to brainstorm and to think about the different features and components they work on in completely different ways. And when you give these talented teams

that leeway to kind of think different, right? And that's been our motto for a very long time. They come up with some incredible innovative solutions and you end up with products that look and feel and are different. And I think when that happens in any industry and any things seem a bit strange for a minute, wait, this feels different, this feels new.

Maybe there's some distance there because it's not what I'm used to. Well, that's when great change happens, right? That's when products break through and people start to use them in different ways and they start to actually change the world in different ways. And I do think that that M1 and this iMac is just the beginning of that. I think this iMac is a perfect example of that. If you see every module has innovated to bring together a design that's built around M1. So you look at the

speakers, you look at the thermal integration, you look at the microphones, all of the modules have seen innovations to make this design work. And that's just echoing what Colleen has said. We all know that you can't completely reinvent every product every time, right? So you get through these cycles where you've built a platform for it, and then you do iteration. And I just would imagine that this was a great opportunity to throw all that away and say, this is that really once every few years. It doesn't happen that often, chance to rethink everything and paint with a whole new, oh, I'm going to bring it around to colors again, a whole new palette of colors. Oh, I knew you were going to do that. That was perfect. Painting,

oh, yes. Paint with all the colors jason colleen navpreet thank you so much for taking the time to spend with us today i know that our listeners are going to love to hear these stories thank you yeah thank you awesome it's been so so great to spend the time with you guys again thank you for having us thank you all right like that was great so nice to have colleen back and i was happy to talk to navpreet too as we said uh we like getting to hear from people at Apple, especially new voices as well, and giving them a chance to speak to our audience, and people really love it. Third time's the charm for Colleen?

She'll have to come back again. But we've got a lot more to talk about. I want to dive into the iPad Pro a little bit more, since we've spent some time on iMac now. But we should probably... I'm leaning in here, Mike. We should probably hear from another sponsor first. Beautiful. This episode is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds. If you have a website,

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SolarWinds for their support of this show and RelayFM. Alright, so let's talk about the potential of the iPad Pro. So you wrote a great article with just a fantastic headline, which is the iPad Pro is a killer wrote a great article with just a fantastic headline, which is, The iPad Pro is a killer machine, but its software is killing me.

Very good. That was a good morning in the Snell household when you came up with that headline, I think. Well, Mike, I have to give you a little secret behind-the-scenes journalism thing, which is, we writers suggest headlines, but the editors don't have to accept them, and I didn't write that headline. So whoever wrote that headline, congratulations to you. They did a great job because it's a fantastic headline.

They're all about the, you know, optimizing for the clicks over there. They know what they're doing. And so, yeah, I didn't write. My headline was way more boring. I try to provide a headline to my editor, but sometimes I'm like, I'm glad I'm not. Because, you know, I have fulfilled the role a lot of having and it's six colors i have to do this of whatever i read is the headline is the headline and it's it's awfully nice it's kind of a treat when i'm i write an article and i'm like i have no idea what this headline is and i'll just write something bad

and say to roman my editor i'll say roman please come up with a better headline and then i walk away and it's like good luck and roman or one of the other people over there came up with that good headline so nice nice headline very uh very pointed very pointed i didn't write it so we've been saying for years as ever as everybody else that the ipad hardware has been outpacing its software. Both the operating system and the apps available to it. It's so powerful, right? Especially with Apple Silicon, again, compared to Intel machines before, iPads could bench better than Macs and other PCs, right? Right. In 2018, that was the famous

claim, was the iPad Pro introduced in 2018 was faster than 90-some percent of all PC laptops sold. But now, with the inclusion of the M1 chip and the XDR display and Thunderbolt and all that stuff, I think that this is only accelerated. If not in that there's more power, because if anything now, I guess the Mac and the iPad, they're equally powerful. It is the kind of marketing of it as well has ramped up in a way that is, I think, quite significant. They're literally saying, well, first off, let's just point out how funny it is that the iPad Pro, the small iMac, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air are all essentially the same computer. And the Mac Mini as well.

Different shapes, different operating systems. They just, some of them have fans, some of them don't, and it just depends how big that fan is. This is probably the only real difference in how powerful. But those five computers are all essentially, essentially more or less the same computer. Yeah. And have, you know, the ports are a little different and stuff like that. But it's so much that Apple's just saying

these all have the same stuff, more or less. And I guess the only difference between the iPad and the Macs is I don't think that the iPad has the 7 GPU core option. Right? Like all the Macs seem to have that, right? There's like the binned option. But with the iPad, it's just the same the whole way through. Which is an interesting thing to think about, but I guess that's the only real difference. So when you think about it, and I know we talked about this a little bit right after the event, but having had a little more time to think about it,

it's a fascinating marketing decision to choose to call the iPad Pro the M1 because it works both ways, right? It brings to the iPad Pro this halo of all the great things said about the M1 and how powerful it is. And that is useful. And saying it's got the power of all of these other computers that Apple makes, that it's not a lesser being. It actually is an M1 computer, just like that MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air and the iMac and the Mac mini. They're all

M1 computers. And I can see it's a very strong marketing case why you would do that. However, it does go the other way, right? Which is it does make you look at the one device that runs a different operating system and see all the things that it can't do that all those other devices can. And I love my iPad Pro and I use it all the time. And, you know, I think that having it have more power and more features is great, but the closer you draw parallels between the Mac and the iPad,

the more you have to acknowledge all the places where iPadOS is behind and all the things it doesn't do. Like having the ability to connect to the pro display xdr but all it can really do is show sort of an export view or a mirrored view because there's no screen proper you know multi-window uh screen support and that's just one example but like uh and the one that is my personal hobby horse which which is Apple's Pro apps. Yeah. Apple's been making Pro iPads for more than five years now and coming up six almost. And the Pro apps are nowhere to be found still.

Like it just, it, and again, I'm not saying that the iPad Pro is bad. It's not. It's great. It does a lot of stuff. It does way more than people give it credit for. And I have been trying to push that and a bunch of other people too, who use it a lot, try to push that to the limits. We do also know firsthand, those of us who spend a lot of time on the iPad Pro, all of the edges of what it's capable of doing. All of those points where you can't push past

the envelope, right? You're stuck in the envelope. So I think those all come back. I just got very strong late 2018 vibes from the whole thing because once again, we're left with an indisputably amazing piece of hardware. And then you look at the operating system that it's running and you say,

oh, hmm. Quick correction. The iMac and the MacBook Air are the only ones that have this have a GPU option the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini is on the 8th but anyway to go back to your point I feel that feeling stronger now than I did for the 2018 iPad Pro because the 2018 iPad Pro had so many selling points to it as a system right that i don't think that it needed the software to to get that big leap to make it a compelling thing all in all because it had the new design it had the second generation apple pencil um all of that stuff was like really cool stuff going on

i agree it had it was a bigger leap and it had a lot more going for it than that. But at the same time, I think a lot of us looked at that 2018 iPad Pro and said, great, it's got a USB-C port, still can't attach a thumb drive to it and read the contents. And that's completely true. And it's got all this power, but Apple's Pro apps are missing, which is still the case now, two and a half years later. All of that stuff is true, but my feeling on it now, it really is hinging on two things for me,

which is the M1 and the XDR display. The Thunderbolt thing is like, all right, I want to see more there, but really, USB-C, Thunderbolt, for me, not massive amounts of differences, unless the software is there to take advantage of it, but whatever. But, like, that's a fun extra. So, the display, going back to what you were saying a minute ago, like,

the amount of technology and power in that display kind of feels like it could only really be taken advantage of by people doing video and photo work on the ipad right like it's going to be really great for watching movies but i don't know if that's a reason to do it like i think you you go for and then also again it's the marketing terms right they only have one product that that uh in i guess they they call xdr on the phones right but it's nowhere near as

advanced right like the xdr display on this is really jumping up against, if not in some areas, excelling against Apple's $6,000 Pro display, which is meant for professional users to get their work done. And I kind of feel like, really, it's for video and photo editing. Apple make one of the leading video editing apps in the industry, and they don't have a version for this device.

And maybe this is all prep for that, right? Maybe this is the... But they don't have it today. You should never buy hardware based on promises of future things. And Apple has made no promises of future things. No. So I agree with you. I would go so far as to say,

unless you're somebody who really actually needs uh an xdr kind of display for what what your work is if you have an existing 2018 or 2020 ipad pro i don't know i have a hard time seeing why you'd update unless you have very specific apps that really tax out the processor a lot like you know and i can think of some examples where i have those and having more ram on the higher configurations i can also see but like it's really esoteric like they took that huge leap to 2018 and now we've got these other you know it's not that the tech hasn't advanced it's just that what are the use cases and this amazing you know headroom that they've built, that they pushed forward yet again with the M1 iPad Pro, what's it for? And that's the challenge is we have to kind of seek ways to apply this functionality and this power.

Because it would be a stronger product if we didn't have to search for them. It would be a stronger product if we're like, oh boy, we've all been hungry for more power on the iPad. But we haven't been. And the M1 thing, it's marketing, right? Ultimately, like that's, it is an A14X. Purely a marketing decision. Exactly. It is, yeah.

The M1 is the A14X is the M1. It is the, I know that there is no A14X, but it is the successor to the A12X. It is the more cores version of the no a14x but it is the successor to the a12x it is the more cores version of the a14 with some other stuff in there it was designed clearly now designed for the mac and the ipad yeah and they could have called this the a14x if they didn't want to draw comparisons to the mac they chose not to do that so it's a marketing decision the only thing that an m1 enables that an a-series chip couldn't is a different kind of story that can be told about this device, right? That's the

marketing line. And I just don't see right now that there is any kind of story that can be told because this iPod Pro has an M1 chip in it, other than this iPod Pro has an M1 chip in it. And that's not a long running thing, right? You can do the interviews and we've got some quotes. I'm going to read it in a minute from interviews where the executives have been coming out and talking about it. And they can say, look how amazing it is. We put the Mac chip in this thing.

It's like, oh, that's so cool. But at a certain point, there has to be an answer for why. And let me read some of these quotes, actually. So there's an interview that Greg Joswiak and John Ternus had done two interviews, one with TechCrunch and one with The Independent. So I've got a couple of quotes.

First from Jos. We create more headroom for performance that developers will figure out how to use. It's one of the reasons you put the M1 in there. It's from Ternus. Contrary to some people's beliefs, we're never thinking about what we should not do on an iPad

because we don't want to encroach on the Mac or vice versa. Our focus is what is the best way, what is the best iPad we can make, and what are the best Macs we can make. And then a second one from Ternus. We don't think about, well, we're going to limit what this device can do because we don't want to step on the toes of the other

or anything like that. And they also talk a lot about, you know, these devices aren't converging, but I don't really think that's the question. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, first off, Ternus's answers are completely diversions, right? Oh, yeah.

He's saying, we don't want to hold the iPad back. That's not what we're saying, because this chip was going to be in there regardless, right? The issues are, it's the M1, you called it the M1, it draws parallels, it makes us think, what can the iPad do with this chip? What can the Mac do with this chip? And when they aren't the same answers, why is that? And does that illuminate something about what the iPad perhaps should be more capable of? And then JAWS's answer, I think, is, and I love JAWS, but marketing is his job. We create more headroom to performance. The developers will figure out how to use. Well, yes,

of course, this is the story of the computer industry you make the chips faster you make the computers more capable and developers will find ways to use all that power waste it use it useably you know for important things it depends right we our computers spend lots of time doing dumb stuff because it looks cool or or or it's inefficient but it doesn't matter because the computer is powerful the problem is of course more headroom but also when you think about that as a marketing point he's really saying well we just make the computer faster and then i don't know um hopefully people will find value in that and that's the problem right is that is that a faster computer only has value when there's

something you can do with it when you can something you can do with it, when you can, something you can do with the speed. And if you're a, uh, if you're a platform owner and you've got some tools that you could bring to the party to tell that story, maybe you should do that. And instead it feels, I mean,

it's kind of a, an empty, I'm not, I'm trying, I'm not trying to be mean here to Jaws. Cause I personally like like jaws a lot and he's just doing his job here but this is kind of a bankrupt statement it's really just like i don't know it's faster everybody will figure it out and uh yes to that it's not untrue but at the

same time i gotta raise an eyebrow here because uh you know you're missing like the other part of that which is that or you could use it to do something. And Apple's very good at doing that sometimes. But here he doesn't have anything he can point to. Like he's kind of been hung out to dry here. He's selling a product that is, if we're optimistic about WWDC, is missing features that it's not going to get for most people until the fall. And so how do you do it? It's just a lot of like blue skies, open road.

Who knows? We can't wait to see what you did do with this thing. And, you know, again, full credit to Jaws for giving it a go. But it's a really empty statement. Well, this is all reading between the lines. This is what we do. What are you going to do? well this is all reading between the lines this is what we do what are you going to do i think that they're moving away a little bit from this hard line no these devices are separate

and i'm not saying because i don't think they're going to put mac os on an ipad right i don't think that that's the move but i do think they are getting them closer together. In these interviews, they go out of their way to say, look, we're not merging the Mac and the iPad. We're not doing that. They've been saying that all along. It's a very consistent thing. It hasn't stopped them from doing Mac Catalyst, right? It hasn't stopped them from adding a whole bunch of sort of menuing features to the iPad and a flow from the iPad to the Mac. It hasn't stopped any of that. And it hasn't stopped them from taking the chip that they made for the Mac and putting it inside to the iPad and a flow from the iPad to the Mac. It hasn't stopped any of that.

And it hasn't stopped them from taking the chip that they made for the Mac and putting it inside of the iPad, right? Exactly. Or if you want to look at it the other way, taking the chip that they had been building for the iPad and make it the basis for all of their Macs, right? Either way, so they still tell this story about we're not bringing them together. And it's true as far as it goes, but you have to understand they're defining it're not bringing them together. And it's true as far as it goes. But you have to understand they're defining it in a very specific way. And they have to reserve the right to change their mind at any time when they have a product to announce. But they changed all the underpinnings in OS X, now macOS, to be aligned with the underpinnings of iOS and iPadOS for for these very reasons for things like catalyst like the imac and the or the mac and the ipad are already becoming intertwined even as they tell this story

so when they make those statements i think all right like you're being consistent the question is what more will you do while remaining consistent to that statement? There's a lot more they could do, right? There's a lot more of bringing these platforms together that they can do without merging those platforms. Because I don't believe that the iPad is going to turn into a Mac, right? But there are lots of other things that Apple could do. Apple could make it easier to run Mac software on iPads for Mac developers to bring them over to the iPad. They could put a Mac app on the iPad Pro that runs a virtual Mac in certain contexts. Those are extreme examples, but they could do them if they felt that there was value. I don't think that Mac OS apps running on the iPad is an extreme example. I think

running a Mac OS virtual machine on the iPad that Apple makes is an extreme example. I think running a Mac OS virtual machine on the iPad that Apple makes is an extreme example. I'd say that those are the two most extreme examples only in the sense that they would require, okay, rebooting your iPad into Mac OS is the most extreme example, right? And I don't think that's going to happen. That's the biggest. So then it's like the system doesn't even think it's not a mac right right so then you back off from that and you've got the mac app that runs on your ipad that when you tap on it it opens into mac mode and you back off one step from that i think and you get to some method that's like reverse catalyst that is basically like okay could we now get mac apps like what i keep thinking is

how how do we at apple get final cut running on this thing right like is there a way to do it and i don't know i know that uh there are a lot of developers out there like that is how would they even do that and that seems like what they wouldn't do that and they're moving to all these new things. You don't want to have everything bring AppKit over. And it's like, yeah, I get it. But there's also the blue sky of the future and how we want app development to work. And then there's the present of how do we jam more value into an iPad?

How do we do that? We've got this maxed up right over there. Can we get it here? How do we do that? And it's an option i i say it's extreme because the less extreme option is to just do nothing and wait for catalyst and swift ui and whatever else to just kind of bake and for people to eventually realize that they need to do this but if they want to force it they have to get a little more. And I only entertain these thoughts because we've gotten to the point now

where they've literally just stuck the Mac chip with Mac branding with the big letter M inside an iPad with 16 gigs of Ram. And it's like, okay, I have to wonder what, where do you go from this next? And the ideal here is that Apple has behind the scenes been working on a purely ipad os native uh you know ui kit or swift ui or swift or what you know like all modern technologies that are good and blessed by apple version of final cut pro and like there

it is boom there it is we solved it hooray that that's the ideal i just keep thinking to myself they haven't done that yet. Maybe there are reasons. Maybe there's more here. I honestly don't know. I'm fascinated by the choices that they have had to make. While still saying we're not merging these two things, right, which I think they believe is true, there are lots of other choices they can make beneath that that are still true to that, but not quite what you might assume, I think. can make beneath that that are still true to that but not quite what you might assume i think i'm not saying that i need apple to tell me i can run mac os apps on my ipad for me to be happy at wwc

but that's the level at which i am willing to dream now because of the m1 like there is a whole level of stuff up to that point that i want to see like i want to see more power uh on the ipad i want to see ipad os taken to new. I want to see them redo multitasking. I want to see them redo multitasking in such a way that I could plug my iPad into a screen, turn the iPad screen off, and then use apps in a new way. There's a lot of things that we've been asking for for years that they can still do that makes the iPad more powerful. That are not making a Mac, right? Exactly.

Things they can do that are not make it a mac for sure but now from my perspective they have reopened the door for us to ask the question of ipad mac coming together i think that's exactly right and coming together again they will say they're not coming together it It's like, well, no, but again, they're, there are, they've already done a lot of things to bring them closer together without merging them or, you know, and so what are those, what are those ways? I think something that, that, um, kind of set me off actually last week a little bit is, um, I, Apple has this philosophy where there's like, you know, our customers choose the right tool for the right job. And there's this iPad pro and it's the right tool for the right job. And the Mac is

the right tool for the right job. And again, this is Apple marketing. And so they are, they are choosing what they say. But if, if you think about it like choosing the tool right tool for the right job there are contexts where like the customer doesn't actually want to have an ipad and a macbook sitting next to them you know sitting next to each other so that they can do some tasks over here where it's better and some tasks where it's here better. Like I get that. I get that there are those cases where as somebody who uses a Mac and an iPad, like you want to use one for one, one for the other, and they're both good in their own ways. And design wise, like we want them to be true to themselves. At the same time, I also think to myself, yes, but wouldn't your customer be happier if they didn't have to buy and carry around and charge and use and switch between two different devices to do their job and could instead use one device to do their job?

Multi-tools are a nice thing, right? But yeah, this is it. I'm not advocating for like, well, we should just smash these all together and an iPad should be a Mac. That's not what I'm saying. altogether an iPad should be a Mac. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying, let's not pretend that if you're in a workflow where you've got a Mac over here and an iPad right next to it, and you're going back and forth between them, because you like the iPad and you like the Mac, let's not pretend that that itself is limiting. Because you've got two separate devices, and you keep needing to switch modes. It has advantages, but let's not pretend

that it's not limiting. And I know people always say, well, you know, this is Apple's philosophy is if you like the iPad and the Mac, great, buy both. It's like, yeah, that's true. They'll make more money that way, I suppose. But you do also want to have the products have value. And when you're having a thousand plus dollar, like way over a thousand, depending on configuration device like the iPad pro, you know, you are trading off its price with what you're going to get out of it. I don't know. It's just, it's all messy. And the right way forward, I think is, um, is for Apple to do things like step up and do final cut on the iPad, right? Like that's that, that makes this, uh,

a very different conversation and do better support for external screens and all that. And perhaps we will see that all announced at WWDC. However, perhaps we won't. And that's the other part that's kind of hanging over my head here is just, oh, I have a long dream list of iPad stuff, but, you you know generally what we get is a couple of items off the dream list and i think the problem with ipad os being behind mac os in so many areas at this point after it's been out there for 11 years is because they're only checking off a couple, sometimes every two years. And that pace is just not ever going to make the iPad measure up, despite the hardware being great. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by DoorDash.

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order with doordash subject to change terms apply a thanks to doordash for their support of this show and relay fm let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions so asks, you've had some time to sit with it. Which is your favorite iMac color and which is your least favorite iMac color? Okay, let's keep in mind we haven't seen them in person. My favorite

iMac color is orange. My least favorite iMac color is not a color. Silver. Bingo. Exactly the same. I feel exactly the same. I like the purple one too. Purple one looks nice.

The yellow one, actually, I kind of look, it's, you know, it's not gold, but it's goldish and it's kind of nice too. I like the yellow,

but I would never own the yellow. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, it's not for me. i would i if i had to buy one it would be the orange or the blue or the purple yeah yeah and then not silver silver is great there are a lot just as a tangent here there are there were several really stupid um op-ed kind of pieces on on various websites last week where people are like by boring people this color ipads are ugly apples lost the plot and it's like dude the silver or iMac dude the silver iMac is for you like that's the whole

point is they made one that's boring so that people who don't want color in their lives and would like to be boring can buy the boring iMac. That's why it's there. I also really enjoy the fact that there's that picture that Apple put out that's of Tim Cook standing in front of all of them. And it's got the hello in the background with the rainbow. And then there's like, once you notice it, you can't unsee it. It's sort of like all the colors are there with Tim. And then at the very end of the table is the silver one. And there's no silver.

I did a little fake version of it where there's an exclamation point in in gray because it's like also that one is there so yeah it's my it's my least favorite and if i had to pick something else that was my least favorite i don't know i mean i imagine that in person they're going to look really different and that that some of the my gut feeling is that some of the pastel-ish treatments in the front are going to be less impressive than the backs. But I wouldn't want to go, other than the obvious, not a color of silver with another least favorite until I've seen them all in person,

which I hope to do sometime. Andrew asks, now that we have colors on the new iMac, do you think we will see bright colors on any other Apple computers, redesigned Apple computers? So I wanted to share a thought that I had with you, Jason. Yes, please.

I think it's going to be like the iPhone approach. I think that the iMac, the MacBook Air, maybe even the Mac Mini will get big bright colors. And then the Pro versions, like an iMac Pro, Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, will get more regular models with like a color. Yeah, I think you're right. That will make me sad. It will make me sad too, because I want to buy a pro model that actually has color.

But I think this is right. I would be confident in predicting that we're going to see a bunch of different colors of MacBook Air. Or, you know, if they replace the MacBook Air with a successor product that product but their consumer laptop that's going to come in colors now like it's going to come in colors it's going to be probably six colors and then not a color just like just like we have in the iMac that I think that's going to happen now um but yeah on the pro product side and that goes for the macbook pro models as well as you know iMac if they do a if a high-end version of the iMac is branded as iMac pro which it might be it might not be um and it's gonna be yeah my my guess since apple really seems to feel like pro means

dark it's gonna be like midnight blue or you know midnight green or whatever those you know midnight brown all I want is for them not to just have one color right because it's not like the iPhone they have a new iPhone every year they're not going to have a new design for the iMac every year I would expect

so like you know if you're going to do it do like silver black gold blue green right i think for for pro models it'll be like silver it'll be silver or space gray and then like dark color dark blue dark green and it'll be super muted and just want some options i just want options yeah i want colors and i want options even Even if not, give me the bright colors. Give me some choices. Yeah, but I think they will. I think colors

are in and Apple will do colors, even for the pro products. I think they will do color options, but I'm with you. I think they'll probably be less bright and fun. I would like to be wrong, but Apple releasing a bright, colorful, fun Pro Mac

hasn't happened since the blue and white G3, and look how that went. They immediately made it gray when they made the G4 version, and people complained about it. So I think that I would love to see it, but I think that's most likely. But I would book it that if you want a bright blue MacBook Air or something, and I do, blue MacBook Air or orange MacBook Air, I think it's going to happen. I think it's really going to happen, maybe even later this year, if not next year, whenever they revise that MacBook Air.

It wouldn't totally shock me if they just announced that the MacBook Air comes in colors now with the existing MacBook Air. Wouldn't shock me. And Brian asks, if I keep an AirTag in my car, when my wife drives the car, will it notify her every single time that the AirTag is tracking her? So I've seen a lot of people ask these questions because it is a little bit complicated from the sense of like, there's that all the privacy features, right? Where if I put an AirTag in Jason's pocket after an amount of time,

it would start beeping and telling him there was an AirTag, right? And he'd be able to scan it and realize that I've planted an AirTag on him. But if you are in a family, right? Like if you have like a family plan, like an iCloud family plan type thing, you can share AirTags, single AirTags, with members

of your family, and then you're able to turn off the thing. And of course there are still privacy concerns with that, but I guess they're trying to find some

kind of level with it, I don't know. But this, I guess for a lot of use cases, would make sense. Where like if there's the family car with the one set of family car keys and you put an AirTag on it, really it needs, for that product to then be useful to people,

it needs to be shareable amongst everybody. Yeah, I think as these roll out, we're going to get all sorts of like, well, what about this and what about that? And what we're going to find is that Apple has probably thought of most of the scenarios. Presumably AirTags, they had lots of meetings where they came up with lots of scenarios

and figured out how they were going to address all of these things. Because this feels like a very carefully considered product rollout with lots of the details, right? And in fact, perhaps this is why it was rumored for so long, is perhaps they needed to have somebody had a conversation with them internally about all the issues with, you know, stocking and things like that. And they're like, Oh, yeah, yeah, we need to change that. And that they this is a very carefully designed system that people may find some holes too. And I would not be surprised if that happens. And my guess is that Apple will be listening and potentially might address some of those

holes if somebody comes up with something that they hadn't anticipated. I would also say the... Well, and I read a story somewhere that said that on the backend, there are actually some assumptions that they're making that they could modify on the backend about the behavior of stuff that's attached to the Find my network which is also kind of interesting also they're going to be a lot of people with hypotheticals that don't make sense when you think about them i'm not saying brian did that here but this is an example where if you have bluetooth in your car your your phone logs when you turn off the car where the car is and so unless you're worried about like creating a very cheap low jack system or something

where it's you know the spider tracker is attached to the bumper of the car and so you can find it even if it's stolen which i guess that's a thing you could do um it's just it's a i'm not sure this is a super common use case but um we're all gonna have to wade through those they're gonna be use cases where people like well what about this and going to think, that doesn't make any sense. And there are others where it will be a good suggestion, a good hypothetical. So I'm looking forward to these getting in people's hands so that we can really

kind of break down all the details because it seems like there are lots of details here. Right down to the fact that an Android phone with NFC can tag them and get information about them even though they're not on the Findfc can tag them and get information about them even though they're not on the find my network they can still get information about uh any air tag that you find so it's not just you know you're stalking somebody with an android phone so they can't see your air

tag like that's not gonna that's not gonna happen they've already thought of that if you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade, or you can use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which if you want to get access to and support this show and get longer episodes of Upgrade every single week that also have no ads in them, go to GetUpgradePlus.com. In today's Upgrade Plus segment, we're going to talk about For All Mankind Season 2, because I need to talk to Jason about it, because I just finished it last night. So go to getupgradeplus.com, and you can sign up there. Thank you so much to everybody that has.

And while we're giving our thank yous, I want to extend our thanks once more to Colleen Ovielle and Navpreet Kaloti, who joined us from Apple on this episode to talk about the iMac. I'm really, really pleased we got to have that conversation, and we got to share it with our Upgradians. I'll give another big thank you to the Upgradians for listening every week, especially because this is a monumental episode, episode 350.

I will also thank you, Jason, for being here every single week. Thank you. Yes. CCCM, Mike. No, that's wrong. That was a thousand. CCCL to you as well. Happy CCCL. Cool. Cool episode, Jason. Cool, cool, that's wrong. That was a thousand. C-C-C-L to you as well. Happy C-C-C-L. Cool episode, Jason. Cool, cool, cool, cool.

Cool episode. Also, thanks to DoorDash, Pingdom, and Bombas for their support of this show. Let me tell you very quickly about another show here at RelayFM that you should check out. It's called Parallel. It's hosted by journalist and accessibility expert Shelley Brisbane.

Parallel is a tech podcast of accessibility sprinkles that you can listen to by going to relay.fm slash parallel or search for parallel wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back next week with episode 351 of Upgrade. If you want to find Jason in the meantime, go to sixcolors.com and he is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. Say goodbye, Jason snell goodbye mike early