Upgrade - 374: Abnormal Within an Abnormal Group
Episode Date: October 4, 2021The iPhone 13 and iPad mini are out and MacBook Pros may be on the way shortly, so it's time for us to answer your questions! It's an extended #askupgrade covering new hardware, how to use the iPad mi...ni, and the value of ProMotion.
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from relay fm this is upgrade episode 374 today's show is brought to you by fitbod
squarespace and texexpander my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason
hi mike how are you i'm good so today is uh October 4th, and I wrote down 10-4.
And so 10-4, good buddy.
10-4, good buddy.
Breaker, breaker.
Breaker.
I have a hashtag Snell Talk question for you, Big Eagle.
And it comes from Ryan.
Ryan wants to know, do you use any developer-provided alternate icons in apps?
I was thinking about this i have uh a few a handful
i think i'm using the orange icon in carrot weather i'm using i if there's a an alternate
icon that is the six apple colors because of my personal brand,
I will choose it.
So my PCALC icon is like that.
I think I have Apollo installed, the Reddit client,
although I almost never use it.
And I think I'm using the six colors icon there.
And I am using the purple background, I think, Slack icon,
mostly because it's so hard to tell the difference between Slack
and photos.
Or Office or
any of the Google products
or just anything.
For me it's mostly photos
but yes, it's really annoying
so I'm using the purple background
Slack icon.
I don't know if they have that option
on the Mac. They don't know if they have that option uh on the mac they
don't but you could always just download one you could just yeah you could do that yourself you
could hijack a different icon the white icon on uh on my mac i do this quite a lot um if a developer
offers it i will always look and if there's something that i prefer i'll change it this
isn't always the case like for example todoist they own they offer lots of different colors but I prefer their standard
which is red with white but some of the ones that I use I use carrot one they have like a neon kind
of one I don't remember the name but it looks like the logo is made out of neon craft they have a lot
of good options and I use a nice one with a bit of a texture on it. I also use the six color one for Peacock.
I use the dark icon for Overcast.
I also use the purple one for Slack.
I use the dark version,
like the blacked out version of Fantastical.
Narwhal, I also use the dark version.
If I use an app,
I tend to use all my apps in dark mode,
but if there's like a dark
mode version of an icon i'll always change to it because that's kind of my mental model for the
application um and parcel as well have a has a bunch of them you know the one that i don't like
the dark icon of is overcast no i really like i really like the orange and i don't i don't like
the you know negative space one do you mean like the overall dark mode itself?
Or just the other one?
I also, do I use overcast in dark mode?
I think I don't, but the icon is,
I like that orange icon too much
to do the alternate icon.
Yeah, you see, for me, the application is all black,
like dark gray and blue.
So for the icon to be orange would mess up my brain.
Fair enough.
That's just for me.
Because the icon matches the colors of the application.
I like it when I can also do that.
I'm never going to turn down an orange icon,
I guess is what I'm saying.
That makes sense.
I really love this feature in general.
I think all developers should offer options.
Why not?
Like, just go for it.
It's a fun little thing to do.
And it's also an easy thing
to sell as an extra for people to i think this podcast is on the record as saying one
colors are fun and two having fun on your device it's fun is good it's good
colors of fun fun is good fun is underrated we should good. Colors of fun. Fun is good.
Fun is underrated.
We should,
yeah,
people should,
people having fun
is a good thing
and colors are fun.
So,
of course,
you should have
alternate icons
because people should
customize their devices
and have it be fun.
Yeah,
always a fun.
Always a fun.
So,
let's do some follow-up
Jason's now.
Oh,
by the way,
if you'd like to send in
a question for Snell Talk,
hashtag Snell Talk or question mark Snell Talk
in the RelayFM members Discord.
Thank you to Ryan for that great question.
I just wanted to say the St. Jude campaign is now over.
The donation page is going to stop accepting donations tomorrow
as we record this.
This is because we have our final corporate matches
still left to be added in.
I am not going to spoil the total amount that has been raised.
I do know what it is,
but I'm not going to spoil it before it's actually been added,
and it hasn't at the time of recording.
But the campaign has exceeded all possible expectations
that we ever could have had.
Like right now, it's over $680,000
as I'm talking right now
without those final corporate matches added in.
So I just want to thank all of our listeners
for helping support such an incredible cause
and we really, really appreciate it.
Yeah.
I have some follow-up from Christopher.
So if you remember the last couple of weeks
when we've been talking about some stuff with photos, you've been mentioning the lookup visual lookup feature which you know
the thing that can't detect cats uh but can detect plants every cat is a tailless cat yep
and i kept saying i'm not seeing this i'm not seeing this christopher wrote in to say it's
u.s only right now yeah you apparently have to have your device set to U.S. English and then it will show up.
Some of this stuff is so strangely arbitrary.
It's like, oh no, we can only recognize dogs in America.
English dogs?
No way.
Forget it.
It's not there.
Freedom dogs only.
That's right.
We don't understand anything.
No, this is not true because I can recognize pictures that I took when I was traveling
outside of the U.S. But I can only recognize them in the u.s that makes it even
more annoying right like you can recognize things in the united kingdom but i can and i did buildings
that's the thing is i've got various pictures of buildings in london where it's like i know
what that building is and yet you can't do that you are in l London. So what's that about? I don't know.
I don't know.
It's a mystery.
This is something I saw on Mac Rumors today
when I was preparing for the show.
As I was, as I do on a Monday morning,
I kind of go through my RSS,
make sure I'm caught up on all the news and stuff
that I want to bring to the episode.
I saw a headline that created great nostalgia for
me for last year and his iphone 13 model still include earpods in the box in france yeah oh this
is this is uh i admire mac rumors in industry for um writing a story about what was already true
about the next but it's a new iphone and it's still there still a new story is written that we talked about the canary in the coal mine for earpods now that's right if they if
they stop writing about french earpods then we'll know something is up and of course it's the classic
box within a box maneuver where they literally ship the iphone 13 box inside another box that
also has uh earpods in it yeah so they don't change the box that
everybody else gets they just the shipping box or something they just put like a white it's a
generic white box it's so great it's really just apple being like hey france here you go whatever
this came up i think because last year when they removed the uh power adapter right and
this was like a whole conversation of like, local laws can still make Apple,
force Apple to do things.
And in France is one of them.
The law being that you have to have a hands-free kit,
which is just like a hilarious notion.
But now I think anyway,
but you still have to have a hands-free kit
as if nobody could use a speakerphone.
So without getting too
deep down into people having opinions about the east the ec the european commission um potentially
saying that that usbc has to be a standard and there's lots of arguments about that that have
been going on kind of in the the sphere of apple conversation the last few weeks. I will say that this is a great bit of,
of,
of information for the side that points out that having big bureaucracies make
decisions based on technology that moves fat,
like vastly faster than they do is dumb.
And it's because the hands-free kit specifically,
this is something from an era
like pre-smartphone essentially, where there was all sorts of talk about how if you hold your
phone up to your face a lot, you may be getting dangerous amounts of radiation. And it's unclear
whether that's real or not, but they passed this rule in an era that was prehistoric in terms of how we would think of it now, but that regulation just
never died. And so we're left with the box in the box in France. So it is, I think, an argument
about, say what you will about governmental organizations regulating the technology
industry. And I think it's a complex conversation and I
think there are pros and cons. And John Gruber and I talked about it on the talk show last week
for a little while. And because I'm more bullish on the long-term life of the USB-C connector than
I think a lot of people are, because I think, as I've mentioned here before, if you think about the USB-A connector, that has been with us for 25 years now.
And it was a bad connector.
And it was bad, right?
It was way worse than USB-C.
So I feel like USB-C, although there'll be different labels and they'll be incompatible and all that, but that actual plug will probably be with us for the rest of our lives, honestly.
Once it's in, it'll probably be impossible to get it out.
the rest of our lives, honestly. Once it's in, it'll probably be impossible to get it out.
But these regulations, my point is, this is a great example of regulating something because of a controversy and a conversation that happened when we were carrying around big, thick Nokia
phones with weird chargers and weird headphones that weren't proprietary connectors
and you had to buy adapters for those.
And somebody in France made this a rule
and now we are left with an iPhone 13
coming inside a white box with headphones inside of it.
And that's, it's kind of dumb.
I think that this hands-free thing
was created for driving safety,
but I don't really think that hands-free kits are what people tend to use these days anyway, right?
Like, so many cars have all the stuff connected to them for speakerphone, or people just use whatever they use.
Mike, at least according to the Bible of iPhones in boxes in France, macance mac rumors.com this is in order to protect children
under 14 years of age from potential electromagnetic radiation oh yeah so go go to the source go to the
experts this is what happened last time joe rossignol is on it i love joe is a friend of the
show joe actually uh that that that jo Joe has to write this story every year.
But it's to protect children from cell phone radiation by holding their phones to their faces,
which quite honestly, is there a child who holds their iPhone up to their head ever?
Maybe in France.
There do things different in France.
I don't know.
I fell into the same trap where I tried to apply logic to this rule and then got caught out.
I think Rossignol is a French name too.
So I guess that's why Joe has to write this article.
It's going to be my assumption.
Joe, I believe, is Canadian.
I think he's in Toronto.
But, you know, it's basically Europe at that point from an American perspective.
So I'm sure they stuck him on it.
It's like Canada.
That's overseas. So the Americans. Yeah, you on it. It's like Canada. That's overseas.
So the Americans.
Yeah.
You're on the beat.
You're on the France beat.
Ross and Yole doesn't sound,
sounds kind of French,
isn't it?
You're on the box at a box beat,
Joe,
go do it.
And we thank him for his service.
The box.
And I,
and thanks to the Mac rumors,
foreign members who always send a picture to Joe of the box in a box.
Another part of this story that delights me.
Just stacks.
Mike fell for his own trick
once again. You were trapped inside
the box.
The Apple Watch Series 7
was announced today that pre-orders begin
this Friday and they're
shipping from the 15th of October.
Very excited. I want one. this Friday and they're shipping from the 15th of October. Very
excited. I want one.
You're planning on pre-ordering one?
Yes. My only
hesitation is that I'll get it.
My problem with pre-ordering anything these
days, honestly,
because I was thinking about this with
iPhone too,
is you can get up early in the morning
if you're in the US or if you're in
Pacific, and you can press the button at that time. And they may give you a date that is the
ship date and say, it'll be at your house that date. But what I found is if I wait for the
release date and go to the website and say, can I pick it up at my local Apple store? They say,
sure, go ahead. Just come on in and pick one up. You can order it now and pick it up in two hours.
So I'm less enthusiastic about the pre-order because I know that the secret has been unlocked for me,
which is if you live near an Apple store, and I live very near an Apple store, they have stock on day one.
And you can go to Apple's website that day and say,
I would like this. And they say, what time would you like to pick it up? And that's pretty good.
That's pretty nice. So we'll see. We'll see. I'm going to give it a try, I think.
And if I'm unhappy with what I see, perhaps I'll change my mind. I don't know. The beauty of it is
if your order is way back ordered, like beyond a few days
where your order's not going to go into process,
you can cancel that order
if they have them in stock on day one
and just get them that way.
Yeah, I'm planning on pre-ordering,
but I'm not around to either collect
or accept a delivery on the 15th.
So all I don't know, and I'll find out,
is if I can arrange for a collection for a future date.
So like maybe on Sunday or Monday or something to go pick it up.
We'll see.
That will be my plan.
If I can't do that, then I'll just wait, I guess.
So let's do some upstream news.
This is where we take a look at some of the news in streaming media,
mostly if we focus on Apple.
But before
we go upstream, why don't we go downstream? Jason, would you like to tell the Upgradians
about a brand new podcast that has debuted here on RelayFM? Yeah, it's called Downstream. It's a
little play on upstream and also a play on download, which I used to do. It is a podcast
with me and Julia Alexander. If people remember the episode where Mike
disappeared in the middle of it, and we talked about, we did like a mega upstream with Julia,
who is an analyst at Parananalytics. Her entire job is thinking about the streaming wars and the
changes in entertainment and the business of entertainment, the stuff that we talk about
here on Upstream. That's her job. She thinks about that all the time. And we had a great time with her as a guest. And so then we recorded a test show and that was good.
And so we're going to launch officially on Wednesday. We'll record and release episode
one of Downstream. Episode zero is out now sort of to prime the pump and let people subscribe.
And it's got our test show in it from August tacked on to the end of it. And then every other
week we will be talking about these issues.
And that's what the whole podcast is,
is talking about the, you know,
the future of streaming media
and how it's going to change
how we consume entertainment in our homes
and, you know, and movie theaters
and, you know, everything else that's involved
with the shift from linear TV
and movie theaters to
streaming and maybe movie theaters. But we'll talk about all that stuff. And so I'm looking
forward to it. Upstream is fun, but we don't get to it every week. And it's a little more
focused on Apple. I used to talk with Tim Goodman about this stuff every week on the TV Talk Machine
podcast, but Tim retired from that part of the business.
And so I'm sort of
filling that TV Talk Machine-shaped
hole in my life with Downstream.
Yeah, I'm really excited about it. I'm
so pleased that we're
able to welcome Julia to the RelayFM
family. She's absolutely amazing.
Yeah, she's super sharp. So smart. And
very, very happy that we were able to make this happen.
I have loved her coverage of this stuff for years now great twitter follow yep yep and uh so to be able to talk about it with
her uh every fortnight is uh it's gonna be great um and for those who listen live uh we record we're
gonna record it probably during connected so we'll be broadcasting it live but it'll be yet another
wednesday podcast on relay fm where we love a good wed live but it'll be yet another wednesday podcast
on relay fm where we love a good wednesday all the podcasts come out on wednesdays
yeah you know i'm really i'm genuinely really excited about it it's obviously a topic that
i have interest in too because it's something that we bring to this show um but it's gonna
be going in much in much more depth and talking about things that we just wouldn't get to.
So if you like Upstream, like if you enjoy this segment of the show, don't worry, it's not going away.
But there will be even more conversation about this type of stuff in more depth and spanning out across the industry at large at Downstream.
So you can go to relay.fm slash Downstream and you can check it out.
So to talk about some headlines of our own here,
The Athletic is reporting that Apple is NFL's favorite
for their out-of-market package.
This is the Sunday ticket thing we were talking about, right?
NFL Sunday ticket, right.
We've mentioned this before.
This was the case, I think Gruber asked me about this
on the talk show last week. He asked me point blank. He was like, do you think Apple is going to get NFL Sunday tickets? NFL Sunday ticket is basically all the football games not being aired in your area. So, uh, your local station will broadcast a game. And if you've got a, you know, you've got a couple of different network affiliates, you'll get maybe three games on a Sunday. All the rest of the games that are being played on a Sunday are not available for you to see.
If you're a fan of a team that is not one of your local teams,
you can't see that stuff.
So it's been a very successful product, I would say,
for DirecTV for the last 20 years, I think.
Literally, when I moved into our house here,
which was a long time ago,
I got Satellite TV specifically to get NFL
Sunday ticket. And so it was a way for them to sell people on the idea of not doing cable and
instead doing satellite so they could get this exclusive thing. So I think it's driven a huge
amount of sales. And as a result, it's sort of become the kind of thing you pay for. We've
talked about it here before. It's the kind of thing that if you're a TV provider, you bid for knowing you're going
to lose money on it because you've got some other goal. And that's like with DirecTV,
it was driving subscriptions. Like we overpay for this, but it gets people to be DirecTV customers.
And then we've got them for years and years and years paying monthly for our service. So what would Apple do with it? I don't know. But like, I think it's interesting that if Apple wants to goose subscriptions to Apple TV Plus, and make it a requirement for Sunday ticket, they're going to get a lot more people signing up for Apple TV Plus, right? So that would be big picture strategy. And you know, Apple and Amazon, I would say also, who I think is a severe, serious competitor for this product, those are big tech companies that are playing a different game. Netflix is playing the game of subscriber acquisition. Disney Plus is a tiny part of their overall business.
And I think that makes them maybe more likely to overpay for it because the point is really
just to drive more people into the rest of what they do.
So it's an interesting idea.
It would definitely...
I actually think it's great for consumers because...
Well, it's great for most consumers.
I would say people in rural areas that have slow broadband, it's going to be terrible for them because they're going to have to stream and streaming is slow.
Although if you've got satellite, ironically, they probably need to keep their satellite dishes because they'll need their satellite broadband in order to get the games. But for a lot of people in urban areas, this is
great because they can't, or it's too difficult to put up a satellite dish essentially. And instead,
they'll just have it on an app on their TV. So that would be pretty cool. So anyway, Apple,
as you and I have talked about here before, I think the big story is, I think Apple is really interested in doing live sports as a way to drive people into its services, because live sports is one of those things that is
not going away and is a way to get people focused on, you know, you, you, if you're a fan of that
sport or a fan of that team, you know, you could cut the cord, but you're going to lose access to
that. So this is a, it's a powerful, it's been the cord, but you're going to lose access to that. So it's been
a powerful way for cable companies to keep people on cable. It's turning into a powerful way for
streaming services to get people to sign up for their streaming services. So let's keep an eye on
it, whether it's this one or something else. The Athletic Source, I also wonder if that is a little bit of the NFL, you know, kind of talking up Apple to
stoke the fires of more bids from other tech companies who covet this package. But it'll be
interesting to watch just from that standpoint, that this is something that has been driving
satellite acquisition for the last 20 years. And it's possible that Apple or some other tech company will turn that on its head. I think it makes sense to have an appointment viewing, which is not just set on your own
schedule, you know, like it's actually like you've got to come and sit down and use Apple TV during
that period of time. And they can, you know, use that as an opportunity to further, you know,
share what they've got going on at apple tv like i saw
similarly i saw a headline recently that reed hastings has said that you know netflix consider
trying to get formula one rights which makes a lot of sense for them because part of formula
one's resurgence especially in north america right now is because of the netflix documentary
so it would make a lot of sense for them to like, you know, they have that market now.
It's really interesting though,
because Netflix generally has been a company
that I've poo-pooed their interest in live
because it goes against everything else Netflix does.
So including the way their technology is built, right?
Because streaming events live is not the same
as loading things on a CDN in various parts of the world
so that people can stream them at once.
It's like, it's gotta be right now
and the demand will be at 100% during the event.
People aren't tuning in later.
They're tuning in right now
and you've gotta fulfill them all.
Not that Netflix can't do it.
It's just not been a strategy for them.
So I think it's interesting that they mentioned
at least an interest in that.
Because I do think that if you're running
any sort of streaming service,
you should be looking at whether live sports rights make sense for you just as a way if nothing else just as a way to acquire and keep subscribers
so apple have secured the rights to a movie directed by john watts starring brad pitt and
george clooney as part of this, the movie will get a, quote,
robust theatrical release first
before it comes to Apple TV+.
Apparently an eight-figure sum
was left off the table
to get this to happen.
Like Apple were willing to pay
millions more to just have it
on Apple TV+,
but no, they're also going to be helping
with a theatrical release. I was wondering
about this, about the, this is an interesting thing to me, especially in the case of this,
like if you're an Apple TV Plus subscriber and you know it's coming to the service quickly, right?
Because you assume it's probably a shorter window and then it doesn't go to pay, right? It comes
straight to Apple TV Plus. I wonder if like what's going to
happen to this kind of thinking in the future right like it's it's so difficult to tell right
now i'm sure you and julia will talk about this stuff a lot over the next couple of months but
like just this idea of like shortening windows and stuff like that like how many how much of a
business is there going to be in the cinema no i know like this weekend has been interesting
venom's done really well in the u.s uh james bond's done really well everywhere outside of the u.s also in the u.s but
really good in the uk and stuff like that so but it's so tricky to tell the the cinema business
still yeah it's i think there's this is just the big question is how our movie audience is going
to become coming back how is that different and let's going to be coming back. How is that different?
And let's not forget that on top of that is just the idea that we were already experiencing a
transition. So all these companies are balancing the money that they really want to get out of
the theater, which is this really nice revenue stream. They don't want to delete because they
already are getting kind of like the post theater money, and they get the theater money. So even though your
streaming service is a high priority for you, and you do want to maximize that, and that's the future
of your business, you also don't want to turn off the tap that's flowing all that money from the
theater. And but at the same time, you know, people are more interested in streaming consumers are,
you know, people are more interested in streaming, consumers are, you know, COVID has to have at least knocked off enthusiasm in theaters by some. It's all, I'm fascinated by where this is going.
And COVID is just like another factor in this transition. Cause I think a lot of these movies,
I think the truth is a lot of these movies aren't going to do that well in theaters because they are not. Some of them are like big name, big budget. But I think we may be headed for a place where the only movies that really make sense in theaters at a large scale are the big blockbusters and that everything else that was previously sort of like struggling to find an audience.
struggling to find an audience, the answer is those are going to be on streaming primarily,
and they will find an audience there. And that was already starting to happen before COVID. So we'll just have to see how it comes back and how it changes. I think the easy answer is that that
window between theater and streaming is going to shrink dramatically. And that a lot of stuff that
previously might've shown up as a rental on iTunes and Amazon and stuff like that will
instead go straight to a streaming service because that's the kind of money that they're willing to
forego in order to bolster their streaming services. But we'll see. So this is another
movie of A-list actors, right, coming to Apple TV+. And when I was looking, I was doing a bit
of digging around today, following some links for some articles and stuff, and just grabbed a selection of the movies that Apple has coming to the service.
I just wanted to read this list real quick,
because I think it's kind of astounding.
So they have Emancipation, starring Will Smith,
Killers of the Flower Moon, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro,
Spirited, with Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, and Octavia Spencer,
Raymond and Ray, starring Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke.
Bride with Scarlett Johansson.
Ghosted with Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson.
Kitbag with Joaquin Phoenix.
Snowblind of Jake Gyllenhaal.
And Sharper with Julianne Moore.
Let's go to the Apple Film Festival, huh?
They're all in on those movies.
We can all thank Tom Hanks for this.
Steve Jobs Theater, a little film festival there.
I guess so.
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So I want to go through some rumors with you, Jason.
Some info coming in from our friends at MacRumors and 9to5Mac, as we do.
According to Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has abandoned a plan to release an OLED iPad Air in 2022.
This was something that apparently they were considering
over concerns around quality of the panel and the costs.
Also, it has been reported that the iPad Pro, the 11-inch iPad Pro,
is going to get mini-LED in 2022.
Kuo suggests that another reason Apple have cancelled the OLED plan for the iPad Air
would be as it could have been detrimental to sales of the iPad Pro, which was when I first
saw the OLED rumor, I was very confused because it was like, hang on a second, which is best,
mini LED or OLED, right? And like, how would they argue or make the case for certain screens being having
different technology and better, like OLED is better in some ways, mini LED is better in some
ways. And I feel like it would have been really confusing. So if anything, I'm actually pretty
happy that they're going to continue on the mini LED train for a while. That OLED iPad Air, I think
would have been pretty odd, right i i mean i don't know
that's a large oled screen right i mean it would have been great like but it would have been weird
in the lineup i think would be the would maybe be a bit of a problem interesting for a mid-range
product right to have that to have the oled on the mid-range product it sounds like this was
like their idea of what they were going to try to do, and it didn't work.
And that they decided, let's not do this, which makes sense to me,
because I feel like, does the iPad Air really need that kind of a screen?
Like, don't you want to keep it differentiated from the iPad Pro?
I don't know.
It makes me wonder if there's a bigger story here, that they were down the path of investigating OLED for the iPad Pro? I don't know. It makes me wonder if there's a bigger story here,
that they were down the path of investigating OLED for the iPad, and they ended up with mini-LED,
and the OLED stuff kept kicking around. And they're like, well, maybe we could put it in the
air. And then they finally just said, no, let's forget it. Let's kill it. I wonder if that's
really the story of what happened here. I think that makes a lot of sense, right? That like before they landed a mini LED for the iPad Pro,
they were looking at OLED first.
Because like my understanding of this stuff,
maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong,
is that technically OLED tends to be a better panel
because you can actually get true blacks,
which you don't get with mini LED.
It's better, much better,
but you can still get like that blooming and stuff,
which I know was a thing that people were talking about a lot
when the mini LED iPad came around.
But like there's kind of like, I don't know,
pros and cons to each system.
It would have just been very strange, I think,
to have different ones going on.
I'm very excited about the 11- inch iPad Pro getting the mini LED screen
because I think I'm kind of done with the big iPad, like the big, big iPad Pro.
I don't imagine that being a product that I'm interested in anymore, but I still like the idea
of an 11 inch iPad Pro for work stuff and traveling and stuff like that. the 12.9 i think is bigger than i want now
and i have been very jealous of everybody including you with that mini led screen and
the one that i see at home because my wife has one and it looks so good you know federico will
always send us these pictures like he did when he did his original review he was doing this with
the ipad mini as well where he takes pictures of the screens with the lights off and you see the differences of the color black, you know, and I'm like, oh man. It's a good example of how
to get across, even if you're not on a high dynamic range screen, that there's a big difference that
you end up with these really black blacks versus these very kind of gray, muddy. Yeah. It's,
these very kind of gray, muddy.
Yeah, I love it in the big iPad, which I've got,
which is great, and it looks great.
It's really incredible technology.
And so I have the feeling like Apple's really saying at this point,
and we know that they're working on micro LED, right?
Isn't that right? I think so. I believe so.
So it seems like Apple feels like,
at least right now, improving your localized backlighting in order to get dynamic range boost
is a technology that they are happier with than OLED. And that isn't just about OLED performance.
It's also about OLED pricing on larger displays displays because obviously they've got OLED in phones and watches. So I think it's just it's really interesting to see a get a little bit of a glimpse into Apple's kind of priority priority and prioritization of display technologies and how they want to integrate them into their products.
Because mini LED is apparently also coming
to the next thing I'm going to talk about,
which is the MacBook Pro.
Mark Gurman has said that the MacBook Pro
is still going to arrive within the next month
is what he is expecting.
So in his Power On newsletter,
it's Power On Time of Mark. So the M1X Power
MacBook Pro is expected to arrive this month with other M1X products still expected possibly
this year with the Mac Mini being the most likely candidate. Just as a refresher, there
will be two versions of the M1X,
as being reported by Mark Gurman. Both feature 10 cores, 8 high performance, 2 efficiency,
and the difference being one has a 16-core GPU, the other has a 32-core GPU.
Mark says that Apple is still working on a higher performance chip for a Mac Pro as well.
I still want to see this product. I remain very excited about this MacBook Pro and I'm very pleased to hear
that it's still going to be a thing very soon,
maybe within the next couple of weeks.
Yeah, it's, I think, imminent, right?
And the only question is,
how are they going to release this?
How are they going to do it?
Can't wait to see the M1X.
I did a story a while ago. kindly in the six colors slack for members they kindly relinked to the story that
basically was my chip i'll find it we'll put a link in the show notes it was my chip prognostications
based on trends current processor trends And it would be about that,
which is, you know, you're looking at a chip that is going to be scoring in multi-core way,
way, way faster than the fastest MacBook Pro today, right? The fastest MacBook Pro today,
the 16-inch, you know, it's got a Geekbench number in the 7,s maybe and I would imagine that this thing
will be in the 12000s so
you know we're talking
50%
faster
75% faster
like it will be
my prediction is the M1X
will be a lot faster than
what we've got in those Intel
high end systems so very exciting
yeah i'm pretty pumped the thing is for me though all of this sounds great i'm really into it oh
man i love the thought of a new display sounds awesome but i want apple to also you know who
doesn't release their own display because i use my macbook pro mostly in docked mode right
clam clamshell mode i plug my macbook pro into an lg display and the experience is not that great
like every day when i plug it in i have to do some dance of plugging and unplugging the monitor to
get it to actually turn on properly so i would love Apple to release their own display again,
which I know is heavily rumored that they're working on, but I want them to do that at the
same time as these new MacBook Pros so I can get a better experience out of using my MacBook Pro
the way that I want to use it. And it would also be super cool if they made it mini LED as well.
So I would also get the full experience uh that i would otherwise uh be getting when my macbook
would be open even when it's closed wouldn't that be nice we're all waiting for it but i i've reached
the point with the external display where it's like i don't want to predict it anymore because
it's like it makes so much sense and yet they won't do it so laptops would be a great time
to introduce it wouldn't it or when they do the mac mini but
either or but like please just any time would be good just tomorrow would be good because i would
still want it we'll take it any day laptop that's right has somebody created is is apple selling a
lower cost standalone display.com don't register that domain people but you can it could be any
day is today the day probably not but maybe someday so now that we know
when the watch is shipping because that could have been held for some kind of event right saying like
oh remember the apple watch is coming at this point the only other things left as well as the
macbook pro i guess it's like airpods 3 and a date for mac os monterey so i don't know that
the i'm kind of like starting to lose faith on like a standalone event now.
I feel like the products are slimming down, but I still want it.
I want an event.
These laptops feel so cool.
I want them to roll out the red carpet for them, but we'll find out.
We will.
There were some updates to iWork last week.
Oh, we're there.
I saw the headlines go by and saw it had happened
and then was kind of like, I don't care about this.
But then you wrote an article and you told me some of the stuff that's in especially Keynote, which is actually kind of cool, right?
Yeah, I think the Keynote stuff, for me, the Keynote stuff is the best stuff.
And I think Apple knows that it's the best stuff. And I think Apple knows that it's the best stuff. So they allow you now in Keynote
to create an object in the slide that is a live video view of you through a camera or of a screen
capture of an iOS device. So you would get to a page in the presentation and then your camera
would turn on. Is that how it works? Yeah, exactly. And it's an object on the slide. So you can do a move transition. You can have it appear when you build a slide. It can be layered over or under other objects in the slide.
and then you go to the next slide and it's just you.
And this is great for like a video presentation to like a Zoom or whatever kind of thing, right?
The idea that Keynote can let you build that.
Also, you can record your Keynote
so you could use this to record a slideshow
that integrates your video into it.
I just think it's really smart.
And then on top of that, device capture.
So if you are demoing, for example,
something you need to do on your iPhone or iPad,
you can actually bring up a slide
that has a live view of an iPhone that you then have your iPhone there and you tap around
and everybody sees it in the slide. And then when you tap away, that slide goes away and the capture
goes away. So that's actually quite cool. I don't know what I would use it for, but I'm happy that
I know that it exists now because then I could, right?
And a lot of these things,
I mean, it's kind of funny really
because you know what this stuff
sounds really great for?
Remote learning,
which is definitely still happening,
but it's happening less.
It, of course, kind of reminds me of SharePlay, right?
Like these things are super great
when all of school is remote
and it feels like at least in
a lot of parts of the world uh that's not so much of a going concern whether it should or shouldn't
be it just isn't happening uh but these things are cool for whenever it might be needed again i guess
yeah i mean i i'm not sure camera is seems to me to be very much a remote presentation feature yeah screen capture
is more i mean this is another one of these things where apple's like all right well everybody's
doing screen capture everybody's doing you know shared screen presentations now because of covid
what could we what could we do and so now we're getting them a year later and are they you know
what's the validity of them now i think there's people are
going to be doing remote presentations forever because it's a way that we can that's true so
that's very true yeah i was thinking of the learning thing but yeah presentations with
with remote working this is kind of perfect for this uh which is you know this always existed but
now is existing on different levels a lot more frequently. Like I'll just say, like when I say
like I don't care about this, it's just like I don't really think about the new features for
these products. And I use all three of them like a lot. I use numbers, pages and keynote. I use them
for all kinds of stuff, like pretty much every day. But I consider myself a very basic user of
them. Keynote is probably the one I use
the least because I don't do a lot of presentations, but I do use pages and numbers a lot.
So I like the way they look and I find them very simple and their simplicity is why I don't
necessarily seek out features from them. You know what I mean? I don't really pay attention to the
release notes because I just want to do what I know how to do with them and keep it at that.
But it's cool that they've added them. This is going to be great for
people who need them. And I'm sure these keynote features, I'll find something to do with them at
some point in the future. I think about, like I give presentations from time to time to, you know,
user groups and those used to be in person, but now they're mostly online. And this is great because i i had actually stopped giving slides because i felt like my slides didn't
didn't say that much and i should just do video presentation now i think about this and i think oh
now it would be easy for me to integrate my video when i want and put slides in when i want and even mix and match. And I like that idea. So I think it's a very cool idea.
The numbers update, by the way, is pivot tables,
which is a feature that's been in Excel for a million years.
I don't know what they are, but I know people really like them.
Yeah, it's like a summary view of a large data set that's in there
and you have some abilities to filter it.
And it's like if you're processing a large amount of data in
numbers
which are people I guess people
are I always hear from people who are like yes I use
I work and like okay great
like I don't and pages also
has some new features I don't use pages
either I use numbers for like just
keeping track of some stuff but the
main reason that I use numbers is
because I find it so easy
to create graphs right otherwise i use google sheets like i tend to use google sheets the most
but i can't really ever get google sheets to work the way i want to with creating graphs
but numbers like graphs and charts are so easy to make so that's what i use numbers for for that
kind of stuff and i know you use numbers yeah I use numbers for, for that kind of stuff.
And I know you use numbers.
Yeah, I use numbers for charting.
I never really think about using it
for like giant spreadsheets.
But I know, you know,
because I have Microsoft Office,
so I just use Excel.
I'm comfortable in Excel,
but I get that people don't.
I think I use Google Sheets for big stuff
because all my big stuff
tends to need to be shared with someone.
I also use google sheets a
lot but the fact is that apple made this office suite that's essentially you know if not free
essentially free and um so people use it and it's great that apple is continuing to update it like
i love that they keep making an effort with these products and i love keynote and i rely on numbers
for my charts so i am also also appreciative that Apple is updating them.
This episode is brought to you by TextExpander from our friends at Smile. Talk about apps and
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Now, around this time of year,
kind of like the full-time, new device time,
that kind of stuff,
we do tend to get a lot more ask upgrade questions
than we would at other times of the year.
Oh yeah, thank you.
There's a lot of lasers, a backlog of lasers.
And I realized today when I was going through the document
that we had a huge backlog and some of these questions
would otherwise not have gotten answered
because they may have gotten out of date in a few weeks' time.
So today we're going to be doing an extended Ask Upgrade segment.
Two, maybe three full segments of Ask Upgrade that we would normally do.
So strap in.
First question comes from Eshu who asks,
I'm curious to know, now that both of you have used the iPhone 13 Pro
as well as iPad Pro and iPad Mini,
is 120 hertz promotion more important or noticeable on the iPad or the iPhone.
And I'm intrigued for you because you seem kind of down on ProMotion on the iPhone.
I'm not down.
I see.
Actually, why are you pitting us against each other again so soon?
I'm not down on it.
I just don't think it's as important to me as other things that I like about the cheaper iPhone 13.
And so I don't'm, you know,
I don't think it's a must have feature. I remember you being a hater, a big hater of promotion and
saying that it was useless and you don't understand. You're thinking of Stephen Hackett?
I, so which, now that I've used all of these things, is it more noticeable and important
on iPad or iPhone? I say iPad for two reasons. One of which is I feel it's more noticeable on iPad. I just do because there's more
dots moving around at 120. And it's also more important because of the Apple Pencil, because
it allows the refresh rate to really crank up and the Apple Pencil to seem more real. And of course,
the iPhone doesn't support the Apple Pencil so um that's what i have to say but
again it's a nice feature on the phone too it's nice right mike it's nice it's very i think it's
more noticeable on the iphone than the ipad to a significant degree i've been wondering about this
i've been thinking a lot about this because i have some friends contact me too and they're like
some agree with you and some agree with me about where it's more noticeable.
And I'm wondering like if it's a eyesight difference.
I don't think so
because I noticed it on the iPad, right?
And I do know that it's there.
Right, but I barely know it's on the iPad.
And it's not like I don't notice it.
I don't think it's an eyesight difference.
I think it is literally,
and I said this last week,
but I'm going to say it again.
I think it's literally how you use your iphone difference but i notice it everywhere on my
iphone in ways i don't notice it on my ipad like opening a folder of apps like opening the lock
screen feels like different i don't know what i don't know i i wish someone could tell us why
people see it differently but like for example like my wife, Adina, she doesn't even notice at all.
So here's the thing. I notice it.
I just don't think that there is enough reason,
especially somebody coming from the mini where I have no option.
I'm going to have to get a bigger, heavier phone in order to get the increased refresh rate.
I notice the increased refresh rate i noticed the increased refresh rate it is not remotely important enough to me to spend more money and get a bigger phone
for it it's nice i i keep saying it's nice and nice doesn't mean i don't notice it nice means
i just don't i'm not saying it's that important you don't notice it i'm saying like i think that
there is like a spectrum between people like i know know people that don't see it. And then I like really see it on the iPhone and you see it,
but don't see it as like,
don't care.
It's like a different equation.
But for me,
it's like,
Oh,
my iPhone's incredible now.
And it's so strange.
I will say like with issues question,
I do.
I definitely noticed that the iPad mini doesn't have it,
when compared to my iPad.
But with my iPad Pro,
I feel like I don't see it as prominently as I do on my iPhone.
I don't know how this can be answered,
but I think that there is just a...
People are different, I guess.
And they see things differently,
and they prioritize things differently for themselves.
So, Eshu, we have no real answer for your question
because we cannot give any kind of agreement.
And I also feel like...
No, the answer is clearly that it's more important on the iPad
because of the Apple Pencil.
And it's... No.
No, because it doesn't...
It's not 120 hertz on the Apple Pencil anyway.
no because because it doesn't it's not 120 hertz on the apple pencil anyway and devices that um don't do promotions to have high uh latency uh for the screen they use they use the 120 hertz to
um be able to keep a closer track on and and even fake it on the head of the pencil so it looks like
your pencil sketch is moving exactly with your motions it's like head of the pencil so it looks like your pencil sketch
is moving exactly with your motions.
It's like one of the tricks that they do,
even though they're not registering
at that refresh rate.
Anyway, it's fine.
See, thanks, Eshu.
See what you did?
I picked the question.
I knew it was going to do this.
CJ asks,
this was a theory I shared privately
with some friends too,
and I want to see what you think
about this do you think that the color names of midnight and starlight could have come from the
rumored astrophotography mode for the iphone 13 that didn't materialize this year no you just
think it was going to be this way anyway yes space they have space gray i mean this this was why i
didn't this was why i didn't publicly
share this because it's like well there is a precedent for like space and color being a thing
for apple but it is interesting that the year they just they introduced these two new names
was a year that they were expected to have some new astrophotography mode which i don't really
know why that is an important feature to add to the camera anyway. Like, I still was talking to MKBHD,
his review, I think,
for the iPhone 13 Pro.
Like, he referenced, you know,
the iPhone still doesn't have
an astrophotography mode,
but I can still see the stars
when I use night mode.
And it made me wonder, like,
why do you need
an astrophotography mode anyway?
Like, I don't know if I get it.
You're a space guy.
I don't know.
I mean, it would just be a different way of tuning the dark,
the night mode in order to focus on the stuff that's in the sky
and make sure that it comes out better and longer.
I mean, it would just be a tuned mode just for that.
I don't know why you would need that. Yeah, I don't know why this needs to be a mode. Because Google has it mode just for that. I don't know why you would need that.
Yeah, I don't know why this needs to be a mod.
Because Google has it may be the answer.
I don't know.
I don't know if Samsung have it, but I know Google do, right?
So I don't know if this is a thing that's in a lot of phones,
but I don't particularly feel like I need it in my iPhone.
Maybe I just don't care about space enough.
Maybe.
Steven asked, Jason, why did you upgrade to the iPhone 13 mini?
We ended up
covering this in in uh upgrade plus last week which uh it's because we forgot but the short
version of it is that i one i want to support the iphone mini and i know that it's not going to make
any difference for next year but like all the rumors are that it's going away so i want to
spend money on it because i want to have uh i want it to be a away. So I want to spend money on it because I want to have,
uh, I want it to be a sale. And I also want to spend money on it because I know that there probably won't be one next year, which means that I want the latest and greatest mini
in order for it to fit, uh, in my hand and be useful. Even if I have to soldier on without
an iPhone 14 something next year, because they aren't going to make one this size.
And so I kind of just want to have as much runway for the iPhone 13 mini as possible.
That's basically the reason for it.
If if Stephen's searching for a reason to upgrade over the iPhone 12 mini, you know, again, year to year upgrades are pretty small.
So there's not a great reason to do that.
Battery?
The battery life is going to be better. Sure. And then, you know, the camera's a little bit
better and all that. All that is true. But, you know, my thinking is much more about the fact
that there's not going to be one next year. And so I want this. Now, if you want, if you've got a,
honestly, if you really love the Mini and you've got a 12 Mini, your strategy could be wait till next year, see what they announce.
And if you are confirmed that you really just want to stick with the Mini, maybe they'll cut the price on the iPhone 13 Mini and you can buy it next year for a reduced price.
But that's sort of my thinking.
I love the Mini size and I want to have one that is a mind to have and to hold.
For richer and poorer.
For larger and larger and larger phones, I can avoid those and just stick with my little buddy.
I actually have a related question, which I think could be interesting because we're talking about like maybe it going away,
which comes from John.
And John asks,
do you think there will be a third gen iPhone SE
and what form factor do you think it will have?
Well, yeah, I think that there will be.
And I think that it'll be the iPhone 13 mini form factor
in two years.
I think that's what it'll be.
This is why I wanted to ask this
because I know you've mentioned that
and I wanted to see if that stays the same for you so you think that the size kind
of the physical size of the iphone 13 mini the mini sized phone could be the future of the se phone
because right now it's the iphone 8 right it's basically the iPhone SE? Yeah.
And so you think it could become the iPhone mini in the future?
I realize that this is wish casting,
but that's my hope is that the mini will ride again
in some form, sometime, somewhere.
And that's my best guess.
If they did do that, would you go to the SE, do you think?
Let's see what my mood is.
Probably not.
I'm probably resigned to the fact that if Apple makes a dramatically better phone,
which a two years from now model will be dramatically better, undoubtedly,
that at some point I'm just going to have to give up.
But I'm going to prolong it as long as I can.
And we'll see we'll see it's possible that they've led me off the beaten track and now i'm stuck with these small phones because i like
them so much or it's possible that i'll i'll look over to the other side of the fence and realize
the grass is greener and refreshed more quickly and jump over there but i'm not there this year yeah i'm not convinced that se means
small phone because i'm not either but sometimes but it can be maybe like because they moved to
the eight when they brought out like the eight size and they know they were coming out with the
mini right so there was always going to be a small phone in the lineup because the previous se was
the small phone right then the se got bigger when they introduced a mini phone so if the mini is
going to go away maybe the se becomes the small phone again right which would lend to this
discussion this potential because maybe it's like we always want to have a small phone but we'll
just decide where it lands and how much we charge for it.
So maybe the next SE, as you say, could be in that mini form factor.
So at least that option is there for people that don't care about anything other than size.
Yeah, I think the question is what's Apple's long-term kind of marketing project
in terms of the old phones?
Because Apple, do you need an SE at all when you've got old phones?
And the answer is no, unless there's something about an older phone model
that you want to take off the price list that makes it special
and not serving the need of an old phone.
And that's the one shot that the mini size has, is that they look at their
line of iPhone 15s and they say, well, we can't really keep, or the 16s, we can't really keep
the 13 mini around anymore. And we've got other phones that are cheap, but if we get rid of this
one, we're losing that category entirely. Maybe
we need to keep it around, but we got to upgrade the guts of it. So we'll call it the SE. That
would be the thought process, right? Because I think that's really what the iPhone SE truly is,
is a model type that they want to keep around for whatever reason, because otherwise it's not
available anymore. But they can't keep the old model around any longer. So they have to
upgrade it. So they give it this not a name iPhone SE in order to do a revised version of it that
they can keep in the price list. And that might be, I'm not convinced that it's size. I'm also
not convinced that it's price. It may really just be a placeholder for a device we want to keep selling,
but we can't sell that one anymore.
You know,
when we were talking to,
when you were talking about that,
I was thinking about like,
you know,
maybe one of the things they decided they wanted to keep around was a phone
that has touch ID on it.
Right.
For people.
Right.
And it just made me think over the last few days,
I've been noticing that I've been leaving my thumb on the lock button
of my iPhone
to unlock it
because I've been getting used to the iPad.
Yeah. So I've been
unlocking my phone with the button
and leaving my thumb on the button
even though the phone's now
unlocked because there's something in my brain that's
telling me that that's how I unlock my phone.
Because that's how I unlock my iPad. My brain's silly.
Very moldable. Talking about the
iPad Mini, this question comes from Carl. How do your use cases for the iPad
Mini differ from those of your iPhone? If both were available to you
in a given situation, what would make you pick up one
over the other?
This is a secondary sub-question that I'll ask of you is,
are you still actually using the iPad mini?
I am.
Okay.
And it has already survived longer than the last iPad mini when I tried to integrate it.
Okay.
Because I got an iPad mini last time
and I was like, I'm going to get it out of the box.
After I'd done the review, I was like,
I hear all these people on podcasts I listen to talking about using the iPad mini as a reader.
I'm going to get out of the box. I lasted no time at all. And I'm like, this sucks. And it was gone.
And that has not happened this time. I'm forcing myself to do it because I write about and talk
about this stuff, right? So I'm forcing myself to use it in part to have that experience.
That's one of the great benefits of getting a review unit, especially beyond the review,
is that I also get to then spend some extended time with it afterward and keep using it and
have that personal experience.
So yes, in fact, this morning I decided I was going to read my stuff that I read in the morning in bed while I'm drinking tea and having breakfast with the mini instead of my big iPad.
And so it was mini in vertical orientation.
And NetNewsWire, instead of having the little sidebar, the sidebar was closed so that I could have a good reading area.
And I was just sort of swiping through the items because you can also do that.
And so it was a little bit different.
And the other day I was outside.
It was a nice, really warm day.
And I took a drink out to our hammock in the backyard.
And I sat in the hammock with the iPad mini.
Wow.
And I read.
And it's delightful.
And so my answer for Carl would be, because I prefer the iPad in general, I would choose the iPad over the iPhone if both are available to me every time.
Mostly because if both are available to me, I'm at home.
And why not use the nice big screen, even of the mini compared to the, especially the iPhone mini.
But even the iPad, even the Pro Max, the screen is not nearly as big as the iPad mini.
So if I'm in a scenario where I'm at home and I have an iPad available to me, I'm going to choose the iPad over the iPhone.
That's just me.
We're not massively different here, really.
Oh, I had a baseball game on in Picture in Picture while I was reading in the hammock,
by the way. You could do that on an iPhone, but you don't. Don't do that.
It's much nicer with the iPad. I mean, this is like the thing for me, more than anything, I think is iPadOS, because I have flexibility with my app experiences that I don't have on my iPhone. So like, whilst, you know, split screen multitasking
and slide over is a much more cramped experience on the mini, it's possible on the mini, right?
Which is, I can't do any of these things on my iPhone. So if like I'm looking at my,
like I'm looking at some email or whatever, and I want to bring up my calendar,
I can just do that, right? I can just bring up my calendar and now I have them both on screen
together. If I'm using my iPhone, I'm going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards
from app to app. And so like, I just have more available to me, even if it's tiny,
it's still there. i can still see it
it's better for video like if i'm watching video in general like has louder speakers it has a bigger
screen right like i just i know the quality of the screen isn't as good right like i get that but
that's not really what if i'm watching a video on a small device i'm not looking for the best quality right like i bigger is better rather than like black levels i think it's not you know sorry
martin scorsese i guess i don't know uh screens as well martin scorsese doesn't want you watching
his movies on your phone either that's true and to be honest i don't i would prefer not to watch
a martin scorsese movie on my phone right like you
know like marty i agree but sometimes what am i gonna do anyway uh the also what what are we gonna
do the screen provides a better reading experience in general right more information on the page
and you benefit from applications being laid out differently on iPad than on a phone.
So the information density is very different.
The way that things are laid out is very different.
So I just think for basically pretty much anything similar to you
that I would want to do when I'm at home,
the iPad mini is a better option than my phone.
Give me something and it's better, right?
It's better for messaging. It's better's better right like it's better for messaging
it's better for social media you know it's it's better for video like it's just it's for me it's
just always a better experience and i've always felt that way about the ipad but the ipad mini
specifically benefits from its portability and ease of use over any of the other ipad models
because it's so easy to hold and get like just
to take advantage of so it's fantastic yeah i agree oh man jason i love my ipad mini so much
i love it so much i really i really love my iphone my ipad mini that is my favorite product
that apple's released this year so if i think think about us as, as not normal people,
which is probably how I should think about us. Always weird people. We're even abnormal within
an abnormal group. Yeah. Right. So my point is no reasonable person. Sorry. I'm one of you.
If you feel offended by this, I'm also insulting myself, I guess. No reasonable person is going
to say, well, what I do is I have my iPad Pro for certain tasks and my iPad mini for certain tasks
and my laptop for certain tasks and my desktop computer, right? You're a regular person. It's
going to have to choose. So me having the different size iPads to choose from is not a common, I would
say, use case. But I will say this, if you're one of those people, and I've noticed some people popping out of the woodwork who, who I I've identified as like,
ah, you're this person, like Stephen Hackett is this person. If you're one of these people
who's like, I want to use the iPad and I like the iPad, but I don't like it that much. Right?
Like if I want to do all this other stuff that the iPad can do, I'm over here editing podcasts on it.
But some people are just like, eh, I'll use my Mac for that.
I don't want to do that for the iPad.
I like the iPad, but I don't use it.
And I think I actually have a theory, and this comes from observing my mother, where she had Netflix for a while and she kept talking about how she wasn't using it enough.
And so then she canceled it.
Netflix for a while and she kept talking about how she wasn't using it enough. And so then she canceled it. And it's a little bit like the New Yorker issue where people cancel the New Yorker,
not because they don't like what they read in it, but because they don't read all of it and the
issues pile up. And so then they cancel it because they don't like the burden. It's like a burden of,
I'm sure there's a business school term for it, that somebody wrote a book and made a billion
dollars selling their book about it. But it's the burden of unused portions of your subscription offering or your device or whatever it is.
It's the burden of unused portions.
And I've noticed that a lot of people feel that way about the iPad.
That a lot of people are like, yeah, I like the iPad, but I like it for like this really simple stuff.
And I know you can edit podcasts with it.
And I know that you can do shortcuts and I know you can do spreadsheets.
And, but I, all I really want to do is like read on it and they, and it like makes the
iPad feel worse because they're not using it to its fullest.
I would argue that that's irrational, but I also understand humans
are irrational. So what I find with the iPad mini is it almost gives those people license
to like an iPad without it having to be a computer replacement, right? It gives them a little bit
more freedom to be like, this is a great little reading device and I'm never going to do all
those productivity things that Federico writes about on the iPad pro with this thing, even
though you could, I'm not going to.
And it's okay because it's just a little iPad mini and I use it for reading.
And isn't it nice?
And I think that's great because yes, to all of that, like if you're not somebody who is
like super sold on the iPad lifestyle, but does has tried an iPad and it's like, yeah, I like it like it. It's nice, but I'm never going to use it for all the things that it can be used
for. So what good is it to me? Here's your answer, which is I think for most people,
having an iPad mini that you could just use in the morning or wherever your wind down time is to read a book or look at your RSS feeds or check that newspaper app or scroll
through, doom scroll through Twitter if you want to, whatever, it can do all of those
things and is super light and nice and easy to hold and pleasant to look at.
And that folio case is really great on it.
And I like, I can't say a bad thing about it it will also it will do everything
that the pro ipad users want it to do it actually does all those things too but you don't have to
worry about it like don't feel bad about it just uh read your books and read your newspapers and
and be happy and that like that's why i think it really hits the sweet spot for all these people
who maybe feel like they're not proper ipad users in a way and that they're wasting the iPad's potential.
I feel like the iPad mini maybe just takes the burden off a little bit.
Anyway, that's my theory.
I love it.
I love that whole line.
This is the best content consumption iPad.
Yeah.
And feel no guilt about it, right?
Feel no guilt.
You could do stuff if you want. You can answer your should feel no guilt about it, right? Feel no guilt. You could do stuff if
you want. You can answer your emails. You can have it. I would actually say that one of my
issues with it, and actually one of the reasons why I think focus mode is such a good idea on
the iPad mini is the reason I use a Kindle is because I don't get push notifications.
I can't switch over to Twitter. All I have to do is read. The one problem with the iPad mini is the iPad is so capable that you can do all this other stuff with it. And I would actually recommend that
if you use one of these things, resist temptation when possible. Turn off notifications. Go into a
focus mode if you need to. Don't install all the apps that you normally do. And make it a simpler
device because it can be as complex as you want
it to be. It can be as complex as an iPad Pro or your phone. It doesn't have to be. And I think
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Should we do more hashtag ask upgrade questions?
There you go.
I just wanted to give you the opportunity
to get some more lasers in there.
We got a second set of lasers now.
It's just how it has to be.
Yeah.
Snape asked,
how long did it take for downstream to go from idea to reality?
Okay.
Well,
the story starts when we did the Christmas Carol episode of upgrade.
I guess.
When Federico,
as the ghost of,
of the future,
which at some point we're going to need to go back and score all of the
things he predicted.
He suggested that, that upstream would become its own podcast.
And I have to say, that planted a seed with me.
I'm like, will it? Might it?
And at the time, it didn't make sense.
I was resistant of it, to be fair.
I didn't want to do that.
I like Upstream as part of this show
and you'd floated it with me a couple of times and we'd spoken about it a few times because
people had always mentioned it or asked for it or suggested it or whatever and i was very much
that i wanted to keep it as part of upgrade right and and it did make sense so a couple of things
happened one is that i stopped doing tv Talk Machine because Tim Goodman retired from TV criticism.
Got a development deal to write in scripts.
Maybe he'll make a TV show someday if they buy his scripts.
We'll see.
But that meant that I wasn't talking about it weekly with Tim.
And we talk about it some.
But I felt like there was potential for something else and to fill that hole, the TV talk machine sized hole in my heart.
So I just kind of like left it out there.
And then Julia.
So a couple of things happened.
A couple of people changed jobs who are people that I've been watching for a while and thinking about talking, you know, TV on and streaming on podcasts with. And one of them was Julia who
left. She went from Vox to IGN and then she went to Parrot Analytics. And I had that thought of
like, oh, she's kind of a free agent analyst now, doesn have a podcast we had that we had that guest slot where
you were going to be gone and did i consider that kind of a test of whether we could do a podcast
about that together yes i did i absolutely thought um this would be a great episode of upgrade and we
would see if it was uh if it worked out maybe we would explore further and i thought it went really
well so then we recorded a zero episode and got some podcast art and here we are um but it was, if it worked out, maybe we would explore further. And I thought it went really well. So then we recorded a zero episode and got some podcast art.
And here we are.
But it was, I was keeping my eye on it, but I was also not going to strike.
And then you and I talked about it too, because I mean, it is kind of a bummer.
Like you're like, you know, you would like, first off, you would like to be involved,
but the challenge is you are a very busy person.
Yes.
I mean, I'm a busy person too, but I really do feel like I have held
this slot open since TVTM ended last year, where I have room for another podcast project. And I did
the 20 max project last year. So it's really that slot and more so, you know, was filled. But this
year I've been thinking like, I have room for this particular project if it ever works out.
And so you and I talked about it and you know
i'm still hoping that you can be involved with downstream in some way whether it's replacing me
sometimes or guesting or whatever i i would like to keep you involved but being having you involved
in like every episode is not practical for you and it doesn't really make sense you you you
you when you had the like
you were like confident on the idea you brought it to me and we spoke about it and it hurt me
because i want to do it yeah this is a show that like it's a thing that i really care about
especially talking to a new person who i really respect and obviously jason too i love jason
i'm not a new person.
Not a new person.
I was going to say an old person I respect,
but I don't mean that either.
I do respect you.
Straighten up, Sonny.
But I made a promise to myself that I wasn't going to start new shows.
I already do too many.
I didn't also want to be the devil on your shoulder
being like, another podcast, Mike, another podcast. And didn't also want to be the devil on your shoulder being like another podcast mike another podcast and i didn't want to i didn't want to be that but i'm leaving the door
open because um i i would love for you to be involved as the show goes on even if it is just
sort of guesting or guest hosting um or stuff like that will you because i do know you are
enthusiastic about this but to make another commitment for another show um was not
something you should do and julia is great like i've been i've been watching her uh writing and
tweeting and stuff for years now and i've thought that it's all really great stuff and in and uh
and i'm hoping we'll have some other guests and stuff on as the show goes too because there's
there's a few people out there who i keep thinking are like just so smart about this stuff and i want
to um this is a show that i want to listen to. Right. And so like TV talk machine, which literally I
revived because I wanted it back. And it was like, Tim, uh, they're not having you do a podcast at
the Hollywood reporter. Could we bring the TV talk machine back? And he's like, yeah, sure.
If you do all the work and just, I'll just talk. And I said, I can make that happen. So we did it for a few years and it was great.
So yeah, that's the story.
It depends on how you want to frame it.
But I would say it wasn't really real until I was scheduling that guest episode with Mike
out.
And I thought, actually, this would be a really great subject.
And if it goes well, maybe that's a podcast. And it did go well. And it is a podcast. And hopefully it will
go on from here. A fanatical asks, thoughts on the new iPad mini as a replacement for paper
planners or journals, or even as a companion to a paper product? This is the thing that I sent to
you. And I said, said mike i want us to
cover this one i don't know if it was already in our show doc or not but i i thought i want to hear
what mike says about this this is a mike question i i was very excited to because i find this
fascinating right like where does something like an ipad mini does it fit in does it replace does
it augment is it not is it out of bounds and not the right thing at all i i and i don't know because i don't
i don't care about this stuff and i know you do so i want to know what you think i could see this
being an option for people i i think people that specifically use an ipad and apple pencil
for a note-taking device could find the ipad mini to be a good thing. However, I do, I am maybe a little worried or concerned,
some people that they see this product and they see its size and they're like,
this is a notebook, right? But the dimensions of the iPad mini, I actually find are quite
constraining for note-taking. So I like A5, right? This is your typical notebook size, that kind of size,
the A5-ish size, because paper standards are a whole other thing. But the A5-ish size is
approximately 148 by 210 millimeters, right? That's your dimensions. The iPad Mini's screen is 116 by 176 millimeters.
So while that might not seem like a ton,
it's a pretty big difference.
So you're looking at like,
say the width I find is the hardest part.
So you're looking at the iPad Mini being 11.6 centimeters
to an A5 notebook being 14.8 centimeters.
So I found it for myself to be a little cramped for handwriting and portrait,
which is how I would typically want to take notes on the device anyway.
So I don't know, for me, this would not be something that I would use
as a replacement for a paper journal or a planner.
It could be very good
for just general note-taking-y stuff,
you know, like fire up an app
like Notability.
I'm on a meeting or a call
and I could take notes on it.
And I do this on my other iPads.
So, you know, I found it to be cramped,
but your mileage may vary there.
But in general,
I am a person who makes
a paper journal product.
It's called the Theme System.
In case you're unaware of this, it's available at cortexmerch.com.
It's a product that me and CGP Grey created together based around a system and a product.
So the idea of yearly themes, turning that into something that you live your life by
and creating a journal product that can help you enforce this idea.
I have never wanted to journal on an iPad anyway.
I think that there is something important
in sitting down with pen and paper
and writing out my thoughts that way.
The tactility of it feels important to me.
It's like a daily ritual kind of thing.
And using an iPad,
using any kind of digital device,
even typing,
it just doesn't feel the same.
And I expect this is a similar feeling to people,
say, for example, who prefer to read paper books
to digital books, right?
That like, there's just a thing about reading on the book,
which is better than reading on the screen for people.
Yeah, because it's beyond the information.
It's, you know, the tactility of it and there's all sorts of other reasons for people. Because it's beyond the information. It's the tactility of it and there's all sorts of
other reasons for it.
I almost entirely
read on e-books now, but I get it.
I get why people feel that way.
Honestly, I get that way. I get that
tactility
for things that
matter, if that makes any
sense. The books that I buy are like
I buy them because they're big
or because they're beautiful and color printed
and you wanna leaf through them.
Like I don't buy paperbacks and stuff
because there's no specialness about that,
that it's just words on a page.
And at that point,
it might as well be words on a screen for me.
And I feel like if you're going to go to the trouble of doing something like journaling, it isn't just about the words on the page, right?
It's about more than that, and that tips it over into wanting something more and different.
Also, there's utility that I would throw in here, which is there's different kinds of utility, obviously. But I was thinking about like if you're taking notes in a class and you really prefer and you remember better taking notes longhand.
The utility of using the iPad is that it's going to scan what you write and make it searchable.
And you can keep all those things searchable and available to you on all your devices and syncable, right?
There's lots of utility in doing that.
So if your ultimate goal is to have this stuff come out of your pen, but also be findable
and reachable as you're going through your course or future courses and your whole area
of study, there's a utility to using an iPad.
area of study, there's a utility to using an iPad. If what you're doing is journaling and the process of it is part of the utility and you're not really needing to go back and do a full text search
of your journaling, then it falls on the other side of it.
It's like, that's why I don't have a paper to-do list because I want my tasks to be available to me everywhere
like I don't have a paper calendar I want my calendar appointments to be available to me
everywhere and different people do these things in different ways like for example there are some
some meetings that I'm on I'll just use a pad in front of me and just write some stuff down
but if it's a big meeting where I know I'm going to need that information later,
I'll get my iPad and Apple Pencil. Because now it's in notes or it's in notability or whatever,
and it's searchable and backed up and just available to me on my iPhone later on if I
need to refer back to it or whatever. I think that there's a mode switching that's important. And Kate in the chat room made a good point that I want to mention again too,
which is, okay, I don't do this. So I'm giving you advice about a thing I don't do, but
I would strongly advise that if you do use an Apple Pencil and an iPad to take notes, that you just let it take notes as ink.
Don't try to convert it to text or anything like that, because what you want to do is emulate
putting it down on paper. And what happens in the background is the stuff that is in ink
is searchable. And you skip the step where it makes mistakes and turns what you wrote into the wrong word and then you have to fix it.
You don't want to ever break your thought process by doing that.
And the beauty about searchability and the way Apple does searchability of handwritten text, and I know I've mentioned this before, but I'll throw it in there again.
All of these OCR engines, what they do is they come up with a list of words it might be and a percentage of confidence.
And when you're writing and they don't have to convert it, if they have to convert it, they have to pick one, right? And it might be
the wrong one. If they don't have to convert it, they index all the words it might be. And when
you do a search, you will find it. And so it's actually much better than you'd think to search for handwritten text in a note than it is, than the accuracy you get when you have it converting your handwritten text to text, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, because it's not making, it doesn't have to commit to one set of words.
Yeah, exactly.
Because you're not reading it.
It's just in the search index.
And so the search index lies.
It's just in the search index.
And so the search index lies.
The search index has got, well, this could be bear, or it could be boar, or it could be here, or it could be fear, or it could be near.
Let's put them all in there.
And then when you search for grizzly bear, it will say, well, I've got this one.
It's grizzly.
And then one of the things it could be is bear.
So it's a search result.
You can also make
yourself laugh if you've ever searched a bunch of handwritten stuff you search for a word and you
find that some stuff that's totally not that word that's because it was confused but uh anyway it's
it's good in that way and so i think that this stuff is is pretty pretty searchable and i think
it's pretty brilliant and even me even Mike, who is not a fan of pens
and paper, if I were in college today, I think this is how I would take notes is Apple Pencil.
Oh yeah.
Written out because I think that it's better for kind of brain focus and remembering things and
thinking about things and then having it all accessible later
where I'm not having to rifle through a notebook somewhere.
Love it. Great idea.
All right. Next question comes from Shah, who asks,
do you think Apple will ever release an Apple Watch Pro?
I mean, it's a marketing question in some ways,
because they already make high-end Apple Watches.
And they used to be called Edition.
I don't think they're called that anymore.
I think really the question here is,
is Apple ever going to make a mainstream set of Apple Watches
that are differentiated on core hardware features,
where they've got two different kinds,
and the core hardware, the naked robotic core hardware features are different, that there's
one that does more.
And if you had asked me this question in the early days of the iPhone, I would have said
no.
And obviously it did end up happening many years later.
So never say never.
But in the short run, I don't think that this is how they're going to differentiate.
Now, they may call something a pro, although I don't think they will, but they may. But it feels to me much more likely that
what Apple is going to do is focus on iterating on that core part. And then how they market Apple
watches is going to be about the wrapper that goes around it and simpler models that are cheaper, that are older or that are like an SE kind of thing,
again, rather than it being, you know, here are our two brand new watches and this one
has more cores or something.
Like, I just, I feel like the Apple Watch is much more of a widget where they'll just
keep making a new widget every year and wrapping a bunch of interesting things around it. And like we've talked about here, the idea of a super
ruggedized version, but the naked robotic core at the center of it is going to just be that.
And if they make a super fancy one, I feel like materials is the place where they iterate. They
make nicer materials and give you nicer material options rather than it being, you know, a slightly
upgraded widget.
But the iPhone got to the point where it made sense for them to iterate like this.
So it could happen on the watch,
but I don't see it anytime soon.
Jake asks,
did you have to do anything, Jason,
to make the top of the Safari 15 window
match the color-changing nav bar on sixcolors.com?
Oh, yes. changing nav bar on six colors.com oh yes um yes a very nice uh six color subscriber who is a web
developer named dan ryan um sent me a javascript that does this so originally when the first safari
15 betas came out i i put in a randomizer. So every time you loaded the page, the color at
the top would be at the top, like in your browser Chrome would be one of the six colors.
Because if you don't know, if you sit on sixcolors.com on any page long enough and
stare at the nav bar, it cycles through all the colors. It starts with green, but it keeps going.
So Dan Ryan wrote a JavaScript that basically looks at the navbar color
and matches it as the header color that's in the browser Chrome.
However, there are some issues with this that Dan addressed.
So all thanks to Dan for doing this for free, just for fun, because he thought it was fun.
thanks to Dan for doing this for free, just for fun, because he thought it was fun. It doesn't rotate when the browser or when the menu bar for Six Colors is not available. Because if you can
imagine reading a long article and you're down on the page and your top of your Safari window keeps
pulsating in different colors, very disturbing. So if the pulsation of the menu bar is off your screen, it stops. And then if it
comes back in, it snaps back to whatever color the nav bar on sixcolors.com is. And then in dark
mode, it snaps to nearby colors. It's not quite the same behavior. And that's mostly because a
lot of these six colors colors conflict with the browser chrome in dark mode and so it
looks weird so it doesn't look i think it's best um experienced in light mode yeah because i'm
looking at it right now and it seems like i mean i don't know if this is the intended it changes
only but it doesn't have all the hues yeah that's that's because the rotating through all the hues
in dark mode it basically uh safari is like, not going to use that color. And so it starts not colored, and then it suddenly appears colored, and the colors come and go in weird ways. So the dark mode behavior is totally different. But in light mode, it will actually match if the website nav bar is visible.
website nav bar is visible um and it will stop if the website nav nav bar is not visible there i've described an easter egg to you but it's an easter egg within an easter egg it's coloring the
scroll bar for me too is that expected it's it's whatever safari picks up when you set the theme
color of a page yeah and again you can turn this feature off but uh if it's on uh and you're experiencing the
rainbow might of the six colors nav bar you will also experience it in other places I upgraded to Safari 15 today on my Mac.
I like most of it.
We know what I'll say is I like some parts of it a lot,
and I'm not that bothered about the other parts.
So I really like tab groups.
It's a feature I've enjoyed, and I want them on my Mac now.
So now I have them, and I've created a new one today,
which is really good, which is like the four tabs I need when I'm recording a show, so I now have a recording tab group,
and that's really great.
That keeps things nice and consistent for me.
Nice, good idea.
The one thing I've noticed, I don't know how to...
I've tried to change this.
If people can give me the exact steps I need to do this, great,
but it seems like now when I open Windows,
when I click a link somewhere
saying messages, it always opens a new window
in Safari. It's not opening
things in new tabs. It doesn't seem to
and there's a setting which you would
think would fix this, but it doesn't seem
to, which is open pages in tabs
instead of windows. And if you say
I click it to always, and it says
yes, always create tabs,
and then I click a link and it opens a new window.
Huh.
And I'm not really sure why it's doing that.
That might be an unintended functionality.
Yeah, it might be a bug.
And I think I can understand why it might be freaking out,
because it's like, which tab group do you want this window,
this tab to appear in, right?
I think that might be why it's like
right right but it could it could i don't know i mean it could also just be like whatever tab group is currently open that's what i would want to do and then i can move it around as i need
right so like i don't know if i've got something weird going on here i'll keep my eye on that
um the other thing that i would like to be able to do, I wanted to do this on my iPad.
I really want to do it on my Mac now,
is to be able to pin tabs within a tab group.
Because you can pin tabs in the standard non-tab group tabs, right?
Yes, on Mac.
On the Mac.
I would like to be able to pin tabs within a tab group.
So I love pin tabs.
I use them on the less ui and
they stay fixed and i'm glad they're still there i am very frustrated that they never made their
way to the ipad and i am frustrated that they don't exist on in uh in the tab groups so i'm
with you there i i feel like apple has decided that pin tabs are not a thing and that they remain
where they were uh stuck on that one group in on the Mac but the fact that they did not migrate to
pin tabs or to uh to tab groups bums me out because I like them too I like them a lot and
would like to see them in different contexts and for those who don't know this is the you do you
take a a tab and you drag it all the way to the left on the Mac and it
becomes, well, now it used to be a tab and now it's a little box. Um, and it's sort of like a
permanent tab that is always there for the site that you drag over there. And if you go to that
tab and navigate within that site, it actually stays within the little pin tab. And if you exit
that site, it opens a new tab with wherever you're going. And I have three of those and I use it all the time.
When you describe it like that, that's also kind of tab groups, right? Where it's like,
you can go wherever you want on that page, you go on another device and you're also there too.
Like, you know, it's like it syncs the progress, but I still want to do pin tabs.
It's like it syncs the progress, but I still want to do pin tabs.
They're literally tabs.
I don't understand why Apple can't sync them, have a little identity that says, this is a pinned tab, and then also display them, at least on the iPad.
But they don't.
They never did, and they still haven't.
I upgraded my iMac to Monterey.
Okay. I mean, the Monterey. Okay.
I mean, the Monterey beta, but it's going to be final.
Obviously, I'm still on Big Sur, but Safari 15 is now available on Big Sur.
And so I've been using it all summer, but now it's in my face at my main Mac all the time.
And John Gruber and I thoroughly demolished Safari 15 tabs on the talk
show last week. I hate them. I really like tab groups, but I hate the design of the tabs. And I,
and most of all, like we can all get fussy about design and say, why do the like, but the tabs
were also use a usability issue where it was, it used to be much clearer which tab was the current tab and where you were.
You could at a glance determine where you were.
And now it's not.
And that's what they have to fix.
They can solve it however they want.
They don't have to necessarily revert it to the way it was.
revert it to the way it was, but they gotta do better than it currently exists. Cause it's very,
very difficult to detect, uh, which tab is the active tab. And the fact that often it's the least readable tab, that's the active tab. That's just backward. So that frustrates me.
Uh, it still frustrates me. And as I said to John last week, it feels very much like they
stopped everything when all the criticism came in. They fixed up the iPhone as much as they could.
And then they seem to just give up on making any more changes to the iPad and the Mac.
And I don't understand it. I don't understand what motivated them. It feels very much like
they were motivated by something
that they then gave up on,
but they kept all the changes that they made anyway.
And I don't see any benefit to what they did here.
I think it makes tab groups worse.
And tab groups are good, so it should make them better.
Anyway, I don't like them.
I just want to just state for the record, I'm fine with it. I don't like them. I just want to just like, just state for the record,
I'm fine with it.
Like, I don't like it,
but I'm not really mad about it.
Like, I know a lot of people are really mad.
All of my friends are really mad about it.
And I just like, I'm like what,
I'm kind of like, whatever about it.
Like, I'm not like,
oh, everyone's being silly for for being so upset don't feel that
right like because i agree with what you're saying i agree with what everybody's saying
but just me i'm kind of just like this is fine like i can deal with this i mean you know i can
we can deal with a lot of things but i look at it and i think if i'm somebody who write and talks
about what apple does um i need to i need to be honest when i think that apple has blown it and I think if I'm somebody who write and talks about what Apple does um I need to I need
to be honest when I think that Apple has blown it and I agree I'm not saying anything you're saying
or anyone else is saying is wrong right like this is like yeah I feel like you've thought that I'm
saying I'm getting worked up worked up about it because you know it's annoying but doesn't rise
to a past a certain level with you I guess I think that's exactly it like if i i agree with what you're saying but this is just it's just not something that i'm that fussed about
i don't know why but like you know i okay i get upset about lots of things like everybody else
but it's fair this is one of those ones that hasn't gotten me too much and i couldn't uh get
as enthusiastic about uh promotion on the iphone as everybody has different things that
they get worked up about positively and negatively and this is like for me i think one of the things
that is really like that i'm willing to accept is i love the tab groups feature so much i'm willing
to make a like to excuse a lot of features in safari right like i'm just like fine whatever
like yeah and for me i mean am i am i using safari well yeah
i am am i gonna run to chrome or something like that i'm not it's not gonna happen but i i do
think it's literally my job to call it out and say they should do better so i'm you know that's
i i i would love to see them tidy up a little bit like maybe you have you have enough other people
working in this business who care about it more than you that you're not the last line of safari defense.
I don't feel like I need to make a stand for something that I find mildly distasteful because everybody else is really upset about it and doing the job.
Yeah, exactly.
That happens to me all the time, Mike.
I got to say, that happens to me all the time.
And I know you and I talk about it.
It's like there are issues that come up, some people step forward and they're like,
this shall be my issue.
And I am going to,
and,
and you sit there and go,
Oh,
I don't disagree,
but I don't want this to be my issue.
And you just let it go.
You can't,
you can't get that way about it.
You gotta,
you gotta pick your spots.
And so if I'm writing a Mac OS review,
which I totally am, I have it on my mind because I'm going to rip them a new one. As a critic of operating systems, I agree with you, but not my fight.
Gonna let somebody else.
You all fight that one out.
Good luck.
I'm with you, but way back here.
Not literally with you.
Not right on the front.
I don't need to be on the front line of this one.
I feel you, but I'm not with you.
Yeah, and this is like a thing in general, right?
Like people write in and they're like,
I can't believe you're not talking about this on the show.
And it's like,
it's because I,
a lot,
I was like,
I just don't have something to say about it,
you know?
Well,
and honestly the other,
this is super meta now,
but honestly,
part of it is I don't want to do a topic,
Part of it is I don't want to do a topic an injustice by talking about it when I know that it matters, but I don't really care about it, if that makes sense.
Interesting. I get that. and dive into it because we feel we have to and we don't care about it that much.
Like, what is that?
Like, why do we waste our time?
Why do we waste the listener's time with something?
And so that's how I read a lot of those emails, which is like, I can't believe you didn't talk about this.
It's like, well, we can't talk about everything.
Why is nobody talking about this, Jason?
And I don't know.
I can't believe it.
I can't believe you didn't mention,
which is my least favorite thing that I ever hear
about anything I do on the internet.
I can't believe you didn't mention
this thing that matters to me.
And like, well, it didn't matter to me.
Sorry, it didn't.
So I think there's that too,
which is you got to pick your spots
and pick things that you care about
and maybe you can add to the conversation about.
So thank you for listening to me rant
about Safari 15 tabs.
Tab groups are nice.
I agree.
You know what though?
Upgradians, if you do have a thing that you want to hear us talk about and we haven't
spoken about it.
There's one place for it.
You can send in a tweet with the hashtag askupgrade or use question mark askupgrade in the RelayFM
members discord.
This section does actually do a lot for this for us
because there will sometimes be a thing which i know is a thing that people will bother about
and i bring it into ask upgrade because we can talk about it for two minutes and move on like
we don't need to make it like a big thing so this is a great segment for that exact thing
thank you for listening to this week's episode of upgrade and thank thank you to Fitbod, Smile and Squarespace for their support
of the show. If you would like ad-free
longer episodes of Upgrade every single
week, just go to getupgradeplus.com
and you can sign up. Thank you to everybody that
supports the show by doing so.
If you want to find Jason online, you can go to
sixcolors.com and if you're on Safari 15,
you can have yourself a little disco. Stare
into the colors.
If that's something that you're into
you can go to at jsnl on twitter
jsnll
I am at imyke
and don't forget to check out downstream at relay.fm
slash downstream
and we'll be back next time
until then say goodbye Jason Snell
goodbye Mike Early