Upgrade - 374: Abnormal Within an Abnormal Group

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

The 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.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 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.
Starting point is 00:00:34 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,
Starting point is 00:01:10 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.
Starting point is 00:01:33 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
Starting point is 00:01:59 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,
Starting point is 00:02:35 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
Starting point is 00:03:00 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.
Starting point is 00:03:21 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.
Starting point is 00:03:35 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
Starting point is 00:04:01 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.
Starting point is 00:04:10 So, of course, you should have alternate icons because people should customize their devices and have it be fun. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:04:18 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
Starting point is 00:04:24 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
Starting point is 00:04:42 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
Starting point is 00:05:05 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
Starting point is 00:05:23 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.
Starting point is 00:05:54 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
Starting point is 00:06:14 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,
Starting point is 00:06:38 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
Starting point is 00:07:22 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,
Starting point is 00:07:53 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,
Starting point is 00:08:28 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
Starting point is 00:08:57 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.
Starting point is 00:09:50 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.
Starting point is 00:10:30 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.
Starting point is 00:10:59 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.
Starting point is 00:11:39 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.
Starting point is 00:12:02 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,
Starting point is 00:12:11 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,
Starting point is 00:12:19 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
Starting point is 00:12:37 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.
Starting point is 00:12:53 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
Starting point is 00:13:15 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
Starting point is 00:14:00 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.
Starting point is 00:14:21 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,
Starting point is 00:14:43 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
Starting point is 00:15:16 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,
Starting point is 00:15:51 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
Starting point is 00:16:12 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
Starting point is 00:16:35 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
Starting point is 00:17:05 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,
Starting point is 00:17:47 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,
Starting point is 00:18:29 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
Starting point is 00:18:56 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.
Starting point is 00:20:18 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
Starting point is 00:21:11 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
Starting point is 00:21:56 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.
Starting point is 00:22:46 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.
Starting point is 00:23:05 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
Starting point is 00:23:19 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+.
Starting point is 00:23:50 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
Starting point is 00:24:06 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
Starting point is 00:24:43 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
Starting point is 00:25:29 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
Starting point is 00:26:34 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.
Starting point is 00:27:13 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.
Starting point is 00:27:33 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. This episode is brought to you by FitBud, the fitness app that provides
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Starting point is 00:28:45 that's right for you to take the steps that you want towards becoming a better version of yourself doesn't matter whether you're working out at home or indoors or outdoors or have access to gym equipment they have options for all of this they have body weight only stuff they have some stuff with equipment if you want it it's all really easy you can just choose the types of things that you have access to even if there's certain things that maybe you want to focus on more, like certain types of exercises, you can go in and tell FitBod, like, focus more on these kinds of things. I really like that. So if there's like maybe a new thing that I'm into more, you know, like, say it's different types of weight stuff or maybe resistance band stuff or whatever,
Starting point is 00:29:20 I can tell FitBod, focus on these things or show me more exercises of these things. It really is there to help you with any exercise routine that you want and need. FitBud is available on iOS and Android, and you can get started right now by going to fitbud.me slash upgrade, and you'll also get 25% off your membership. That's fitbud.me slash upgrade to try it out for free and get 25% of your FitBod membership. Our thanks to FitBod for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. 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.
Starting point is 00:29:59 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,
Starting point is 00:30:39 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
Starting point is 00:31:22 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
Starting point is 00:31:55 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.
Starting point is 00:32:24 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.
Starting point is 00:32:42 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
Starting point is 00:33:31 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?
Starting point is 00:34:02 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.
Starting point is 00:34:53 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,
Starting point is 00:35:29 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,
Starting point is 00:35:59 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,
Starting point is 00:36:37 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
Starting point is 00:36:59 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
Starting point is 00:37:39 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
Starting point is 00:38:21 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
Starting point is 00:39:01 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.
Starting point is 00:39:19 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.
Starting point is 00:40:22 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.
Starting point is 00:40:39 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,
Starting point is 00:41:08 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
Starting point is 00:41:22 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
Starting point is 00:42:02 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
Starting point is 00:42:43 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,
Starting point is 00:43:17 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.
Starting point is 00:44:03 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
Starting point is 00:44:19 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.
Starting point is 00:44:47 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.
Starting point is 00:44:58 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.
Starting point is 00:45:28 This episode is brought to you by TextExpander from our friends at Smile. Talk about apps and services that we love. I love TextExpander. I use it so much every day. I just set up some new snippets this morning, like for my office address, because I realized I'm typing this out too much. I need to create a text expander snippet for it. And that's the whole thing. If you type the same stuff over and over and over again, whether it's customer support answers, sales emails, or edits you might be making to documents frequently,
Starting point is 00:45:55 if you're typing things repetitively or you're using copy and paste, that can be a pain. And that's where text expander comes in. Because with text expander, you and your team can keep your messages consistent save time be more productive and be accurate every single time because the way that we work changes so rapidly and you can make work happen wherever you are by saying more in less time and with less effort using text expander the team stuff is also really great so like we have a bunch of snippets that we use here at relay fm whether it's like advertising copy that we might need in certain places or sales emails that we'll send out to
Starting point is 00:46:29 people or the way that we might just have some kind of communication with an external company. Being able to have like a bank of tax expander snippets that we can use for that stuff, make sure that we're doing two things, which is we're all saying the same kinds of things when we're talking to people because there's a few of us that use these snippets. But we're also taking advantage of the best writers in our organization who have the best things to say, or they say things in the best way, and they can share that with everybody else. That is super important, and it's like a really helpful feature. As a listener of this show, you can get 20% off your first year. Just go to textexpander.com slash podcast to learn more about TextExpander today.
Starting point is 00:47:07 That's textexpander.com slash podcast. A thanks to TextExpander from Smile for their support of this show and RelayFM. 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.
Starting point is 00:47:24 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.
Starting point is 00:47:49 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.
Starting point is 00:48:13 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
Starting point is 00:48:51 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.
Starting point is 00:49:30 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,
Starting point is 00:49:43 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.
Starting point is 00:50:19 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.
Starting point is 00:50:52 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,
Starting point is 00:51:05 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.
Starting point is 00:51:26 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.
Starting point is 00:51:48 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.
Starting point is 00:52:15 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
Starting point is 00:52:25 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,
Starting point is 00:53:06 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,
Starting point is 00:53:19 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.
Starting point is 00:53:40 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.
Starting point is 00:53:57 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,
Starting point is 00:54:30 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?
Starting point is 00:55:07 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.
Starting point is 00:55:50 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
Starting point is 00:56:19 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?
Starting point is 00:56:49 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,
Starting point is 00:57:13 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
Starting point is 00:57:59 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
Starting point is 00:58:42 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
Starting point is 00:59:22 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,
Starting point is 01:00:05 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.
Starting point is 01:00:16 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.
Starting point is 01:00:32 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
Starting point is 01:00:52 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.
Starting point is 01:01:16 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
Starting point is 01:01:41 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.
Starting point is 01:02:26 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.
Starting point is 01:02:41 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,
Starting point is 01:03:37 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,
Starting point is 01:04:24 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
Starting point is 01:05:11 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?
Starting point is 01:05:44 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,
Starting point is 01:06:25 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
Starting point is 01:07:13 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,
Starting point is 01:07:49 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.
Starting point is 01:08:27 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
Starting point is 01:09:09 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
Starting point is 01:09:53 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.
Starting point is 01:10:33 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
Starting point is 01:10:45 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
Starting point is 01:11:30 maybe it's better if it's not. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to build your online presence and run your business. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace has got you covered. They give you free unlimited hosting, top of the line security, dependable resources, 24-7 customer support. They give you the ability to register a domain name, use SEO and email marketing. It really is a full package. Squarespace combined cutting edge design and world-class engineering to make it easier than ever to establish your home online and make your ideas a reality. Whether you want to showcase your artwork with an incredible portfolio,
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Starting point is 01:13:11 for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. 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.
Starting point is 01:13:23 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,
Starting point is 01:13:37 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.
Starting point is 01:13:59 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.
Starting point is 01:14:30 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.
Starting point is 01:15:00 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.
Starting point is 01:15:49 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
Starting point is 01:16:18 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
Starting point is 01:16:57 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.
Starting point is 01:17:19 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
Starting point is 01:17:55 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.
Starting point is 01:18:34 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
Starting point is 01:19:09 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
Starting point is 01:19:59 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
Starting point is 01:20:42 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
Starting point is 01:21:10 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
Starting point is 01:21:24 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
Starting point is 01:21:52 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.
Starting point is 01:22:06 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.
Starting point is 01:22:27 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
Starting point is 01:22:43 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.
Starting point is 01:23:04 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
Starting point is 01:24:00 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,
Starting point is 01:24:48 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.
Starting point is 01:25:47 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.
Starting point is 01:26:38 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.
Starting point is 01:26:59 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
Starting point is 01:27:27 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?
Starting point is 01:27:57 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,
Starting point is 01:28:19 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
Starting point is 01:28:49 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
Starting point is 01:29:36 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
Starting point is 01:29:59 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
Starting point is 01:30:50 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
Starting point is 01:31:40 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
Starting point is 01:32:51 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,
Starting point is 01:33:30 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
Starting point is 01:33:45 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
Starting point is 01:34:02 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,
Starting point is 01:34:21 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?
Starting point is 01:34:57 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
Starting point is 01:35:27 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.
Starting point is 01:36:09 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.
Starting point is 01:36:39 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
Starting point is 01:37:22 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.
Starting point is 01:37:59 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.
Starting point is 01:38:33 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.
Starting point is 01:38:54 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
Starting point is 01:39:22 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
Starting point is 01:40:06 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.
Starting point is 01:40:47 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,
Starting point is 01:41:10 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.
Starting point is 01:41:19 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.
Starting point is 01:41:54 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,
Starting point is 01:42:10 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,
Starting point is 01:42:18 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.
Starting point is 01:42:59 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
Starting point is 01:43:11 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
Starting point is 01:43:24 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
Starting point is 01:43:41 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
Starting point is 01:44:10 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
Starting point is 01:44:25 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

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