Upgrade - 376: The 2021 October Event Draft

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Surprise! Jason and Myke predict what will happen at next week's Apple media event. What ports will be on the much-rumored MacBook Pro? Will it appear in familiar colors, or will Apple branch out and offer something new? Will we see updates to the Mac mini, new AirPods, or--dare we dream--an affordable external display? It's all to play for.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 376 and yes you guessed it we're back and we're drafting for the 2021 oct Apple event. This episode is brought to you by TextExpander from Smile and Instabug. My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by my co-host and my combatant, Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. I got a text from you the other morning where you said, I guess we're drafting. That's how I found out that there was an Apple event that was announced.

So here we are next Monday. So we're also drafting a day earlier than we usually draft because Apple's doing their event a day earlier than they normally would. There's going to be an Apple event. So I have a hashtag Snell talk question for you about this. So the press invitation and that kind of stuff, the artwork, is all around this theme of unleashed, is what Apple's saying. What do you think about that? I think that this one's maybe got a little bit more to it than usual. First, I'd say it sounds a little too much like a Samsung event for my taste. Because it's an un?

Yeah, because they do un, right? Unpacked. Unpacked. And there's the hyperspace kind of thing. I think it's going to be that it's pro speed. It's going to be, you know, if my calculations are correct, you know, this will be the fastest Mac laptops ever. Hey, Jason, probably the fastest Mac ever.

It could be the fastest Mac ever. My calculations suggest that there are going to be some high, this is how we have to skew this, some high-end Mac Pro configurations might be faster than it. But that's about it uh and the other the other obvious one is the rumors of doing magnetic charging that unleashed where you've got the you know that you don't have the usbc leash anymore because you've got a magnet thing that pops off if it gets stressed and stuff that's uh i think maybe the other meaning there maybe interesting i'm i was kind of just thinking along the lines of let's show you what we can really do right is intel the leash in this scenario yes or just like in general right that they they've kind of for whatever reason they've been holding back on the mac for a while, and now they're not anymore, which I think is clear. I think

that's been clear over the last year or so, you know. The iMac, I think, is an example of this, and so they're unleashed again. So that Snow Talk was from me, by the way. Oh, good. Thank you, listener Mike. No problem. If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question to help

us open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snow Talk, use question mark Snow Talk in the RelayFM members Discord, or have direct access to our show document like I do, which is why I can type whatever I want in here. It works. So follow up,

we do actually have one bit of follow up before we get to the draft. We said we'd be reviewing Apple Watches on Monday. That's not going to happen now. Probably not. Because obviously, where we usually move the show, we will be recording and releasing on Monday after the Apple event. Yes.

We don't need to move our episode for once, which I'm very thankful for. Thanks, Apple, for doing that for us. So we'll probably, I'm expecting, talk about Apple Watches the week after, because I doubt that they'll, like, you know, because obviously there's going to be hardware, there's going to be something, right? It's unlikely that that will come out or be available for us to talk about directly the week after. So at least now we'll have a little bit more time on our Apple Watches, which would be nice. Yeah.

we'll have a little bit more time with our Apple Watches, which would be nice. Yeah. So let's do the rules of the draft so that we have nine-ish rounds with 18 kind of overall picks. They're splitting because it's this year or this time. Sort of 10 this time? Yes, so we're splitting the draft into two main categories.

And we're doing this one a little bit differently in a few ways one is one of the categories is just macbook pro picks and usually we would do like mac pics or something like that but we're kind of putting all our chips on the table here and making a bold prediction that the majority of this event will be focused around the MacBook Pro. And because there's so many rumors and so much that could be added to this MacBook Pro, that we had so many potential picks that we would choose from that were just focused on that. It's its own category.

Yeah. And there will be five rounds of picks for the MacBook Pro. We then have a bunch of other stuff, you know, like other Macs, other products, all kinds. And we just lumped all those together into other. We're going to do four rounds there. And because we've been so focused on color in the show recently, Jason had the great idea of the mini draft that the colors are.

We're going to be drafting a selection of colors. We're going to choose three colors each from the list that we have already uh selected and whoever gets the most colors that will be put into i'm assuming the macbook pro yes um will win the one point there's one point just one point at risk but uh but three picks each and we're just a little side bet about what colors the macbook pro might be yep so continuing with the standard rules whenever the previous draft gets to go first and that's jason snell uh our items are chosen from a predetermined list of choices as we've mentioned we have agreed uh and also that they must be verifiable on screen and

not ridiculously obvious for us to be able to score the picks. For an item to count, it must be clearly announced on stage or on a slide during the presentation, verifiable during the keynote itself. Anything that comes out after does not count. Stephen Hackett will adjudicate in case of a scoring stalemate between the two of us, but we prefer to score ourselves. No partial points awarded.

The points are awarded on the episode of final and finalized during the scoring segment. In the case of a tie, there is a tiebreaker question and the loser gets pick of the tiebreaker. Yep. So the overall under on that. Results so far this year.

I won the first draft of the year in April. Jason won WWDC in September. So the expectation is here. I have the opportunity to score a tie for the year, probably. I just want to point out a little statistical note. According to Upgrade.cards, which I guess is the unofficial official website of the Upgrade draft, all three of our drafts this year were ties settled by the tiebreaker which is bananas like this is one of those things where i believe zach's correct

but me and jason had to really question each other like is that actually how it went um i trust zach better than my own memory so and what that is setting up is if we play our cards right this one will be a tie settled by a tiebreaker. You'll win the tiebreaker and we will have tied the entire year. Which will be, I mean, honestly, I want that the most. That's what I want. Those scorecards at upgrade.cards, that's where you can play along, put together by a wonderful friend of the show, Zach Knox. There will be a link in the show notes as there always is the interactive scorecard

for you to play along at home on Monday. So tiebreaker, we do event duration. It's a nice and easy one to select from. You're going to pick the time and I'm going to pick over under on that. That's right. I'm going to do right down the middle this time. Okay.

60 minutes. Is that the thing that you had the problem with? Yeah. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. No, what was the... 21, 22, 22, 21, 22. Yeah. I was kind of vamping there

because there was something that I just remembered that I wanted to do before the show began but forgot, which was to look at the length of some of the previous events recently because I know that the last one ran long but I'm not going to compare it to something like that so all right let me take a look so my premise here with picking 60 minutes is that this is going to be a more focused event and they've done some of those in the past where it's really more like an hour event instead of an hour and a half or a two hour event. And that this will be quick and out.

And what I really want to do is make you have to make a decision between this is a longer than 60 event or a shorter than 60 event. Cause I feel like both are, both are possible. That's why I picked 60. I figured if I picked more than 60 and than 60 event, because I feel like both are possible. That's why I picked 60. If I picked more than 60 and left 60 uncovered, I think 60 minutes is the most likely duration. And one of the beauties of picking the over-under or setting the over-under is that you get the number you set. So I get 60, which I think is the highest probability. So that's my thought.

60 which i think is the highest probability so that's my thought i don't want i mean to people who are like i should have gone 65 like david in the in the discord my rationale there is that i feel like it's going to be 60 and that if i pick 61 or 65 or 68 mike will just pick the under and i'll lose so i'm gonna make it harder for mike this sucks yep every time this is one of those decisions where every time i feel like oh my gut says this i go to say it and then my gut disagrees with me on the other hand yep i'm gonna say i don't know what i'm gonna say all right let me talk through my thought process here okay i'm just gonna speak aloud so my expectation realistically is that the majority of this event will be macbook pro could potentially be the only could be serious announcement and they might have a couple of other little bits and bobs could be the chip that powers the macbook pro and that could be literally it

or they could there could be other things right there could be Pro, and that could be literally it. Or there could be other things, right? There could be a Mac Mini. There could be an iMac. There could be AirPods. You know, who knows what else could be in there? A review of, like, a look over of Monterey? Yeah, an extended preview of a new show. Who knows?

Oh, this is rough. And also, I'll say, unofficial official historian zach has now pointed out that their april event was was 61 minutes long and their november event was 49 minutes long yeah this is why i'm struggling yeah that's this is why i said it where i did is that i don't know whether it's going to be a hour plus or hour minus but i feel like it's uh in the ballpark and it doesn't help that like wwdc and the september event were really long this year like and i know they have more to do but i i've this feels to me more like a spring you know like that april or november event are better analogs which

is why i set it at 60 and not at 90 i if i was choosing i would have set it at like somewhere between 55 and 65 would have been the number that i would have said it like somewhere between 55 and 65 would have been the number that i would have gone for like you have i'm going to say over okay and i what i think is it's going to be as you say basically on an hour and i'm just gonna assume that they won't be 59 right yeah i think this i think it's more likely that this is a 57 or a 63. Yeah, this is the problem. I literally think that the probability curve peaks at 60 and then slides down both of the other sides. I'll tell you why I went there with just over.

if apple have done a lot of what we are going to pick and suggest that they may have done i think they're going to be pretty proud of it and they will want to kind of really show it off and so i think that they might go a bit long on it yeah i i get that and yet no last november was 49 minutes but april was 61. What was last November? What did they have? Last November was the M1 Max, right? Yeah, but that was just like, these are the chips. There was nothing else to show on them. And this one for new design, potentially new screen technology,

different ports, all that kind of stuff. Why don't we find out what we think about what's going to happen? Let's do it. Let's do it. But first, I want to thank our first sponsor of this episode, and that is TextExpander from our friends at Smile. Hey, do you ever type the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, whether it's customer support emails, sending out some information for sales, maybe you're doing document edits, maybe it's an address, you type these things repetitively,

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I want the M in mini to not be capital because then it's correct if I'm writing out what to look right. And it will do it for me. Same as like iPhone. You know, if I just type it, it will capitalize the P in iPhone for me. These are just little things that you can do with TextExpander as well as the big stuff too. 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. That's textexpander.com slash podcast. Our thanks to TextExpander from Smile for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, so we are in the MacBook Pro picks. Jason, what is your first round pick? Oh, it's just gotten so

much harder now yep starting is the problem i'm gonna start off with a what's probably an easy one which is the much rumored uh upgrade of the smaller macbook pro model to 14 inches inches. It's a step we thought that they would take from late 2019 when they upgraded the 15 to a 16, and yet it hasn't happened yet. I think as it got caught up in the whole Apple Silicon transition, but doing what they did with the 16 where they shrink the bezels a lot and make it look a lot more modern and get more screen space in there. It also differentiates it from that weird 13-inch model that they've still got kicking around that's got the M1 in it. So I'll kick us off with that one. Just an easy one, probably, the 14-inch MacBook Pro. Yeah, because I think, I'm with you on this, I think you've got kind of

two options really today because you can't have huge bezels on a modern looking laptop like if you're going to redesign the laptop which seems like they're going to you got to get the bezels down as much as you can and so they have two choices right you keep it 13 and make the laptop smaller or you make the screen bigger and you call it a 14 inch laptop and i think the best option is to make the screen bigger and you call it a 14-inch laptop. And I think the best option is to make the bezel smaller and we'll call it a 14-inch, right? Because if you make the laptop smaller, then now you've got a whole other set of things that you have to deal with, right?

Like now the battery needs to be smaller and what do you do about the speakers and all that kind of stuff. So I'm with you on this. This was actually going to be my second pick, was that they would go to 14. This is what I also want as a customer. I want a 14-inch

laptop. Sure, that'll be nice to have more space on the smaller laptop. Make a big difference. So my first pick is the magnetic charging port is added back to the MacBook Pro line. I mean, I don't know if they will call this magsafe i don't know if they would if they're going to do that but it's going to be some kind of charger that will charge the laptop magnetically i'm just not sure and i also don't know what it

will look like i'm really kind of like very intrigued to see what they're going to do with this. The reason I say I'm not sure, I mean MagSafe would be the obvious thing, but they don't call the Apple Watch charger a MagSafe charger. That's magnetic. And they don't call the magnetic plug on the iMac MagSafe.

Exactly. And I wonder if maybe it's a namespace pollution thing, because now, even if they bring this back, MagSafe for the iPhone, that's the brand, right? That's like an important thing. The magnetic, you know, the charger on the MacBook Pro, but getting magnetic is nice, but that's not a brand, you know? And I do not think that you will be able to charge your laptop via an iPhone's MagSafe connector. So I don't really know what they will call it. I mean, they may just call it, like, it's just the charger

and the charger has a magnetic connection. You know, I don't know how much of a branding it would even get anyway. I do wonder about the MagSafe branding and if they would bring it back because of that pollution, the fact that it's now an iPhone brand. And yes, the iPhone stole it from the Mac. The Mac had it first. But you know what?

The iPhone's got it now. So they do this. iPhone's taken that one. That belongs to iPhone. Yeah. So MagSafe. MagSafe. That won't be confusing at all.

It's a magnet. How do they work? Yeah, I hope this happens. I'm very excited about this. I have one of those things that you stick in a USB-C slot that lets you use a magnetic attached cord because I like that technology a lot and I miss it. And so if they build it back in, that's going to be great. I'm looking forward to it. I hope it happens.

But I wonder what they'll call it. I really do. We may have a pick later on, which is relating to this. But I just want to talk about it now just in case we don't get to it. Just I want to know your personal preference. Would you still want to be able to charge via USB-C? Would you want the option? Yes.

Yeah, me too. Because I would imagine there would be a speed thing. But also I would just want it because I do have a lot of USB-C cables all over the place now. My other argument is it's not just a speed thing. It's a docking thing. If you're docking your laptop

attached to like a hub that charges, the last thing you want to have to do is go back to two plugs instead of one because this thing won't charge over the usbc ports that's that i hadn't thought of that but that for me now is the exact reason why they must keep this as a option well right the only the only other solution would be if this uh plug is is a usbc plug a magnetic usbc and the other end of it is a USB-C plug so that you could potentially plug it into a dock.

I wouldn't want that. Because that just feels like a mess. And then the magnet pops off and you lost your whole dock, which is bad. Which is bad, right? We've got bigger issues. And also then asking their business customers to now replace every single

cable yeah it seems like too much so that's why i think that at least one of those will uh will be uh chargeable in fact you have convinced me oh wow i'm just gonna go jump right ahead and pick it i'm gonna pick can also charge from usbc great because i have a hard time seeing Apple say, hey, guess what? More cords. And so I'm going to say that you will not have to. In fact, could you imagine a scenario where they make you buy a magnetic charge plug

separately from the regular USB-C? Oh, I could totally see Apple doing that, where just a USB-C cord comes in the box, but you can buy a magnetic charger as an add-on. Oh. But I'm not picking that. I'm just picking that one of those, at least one of those USB-C ports on it will also be charged, can also charge.

Actually, let's, I mean, for pure rules lawyering, you know, at least one USBb c port will let you charge well i would and then if that that also means if there's no magnetic charging i get that point so all right all right if that's the way you want to do it uh at least one usb c port will let you charge that is the the vaguest of vague picks you've created for yourself there but it's fine um i can imagine having the magsafe and then also the usbc thing yeah being a kind of example of what apple will tell the story of this um of this laptop of like it is new and cool but for our professional customers we believe in flexibility yeah so we'll let you charge how you want. I can imagine that being

part of the story of this laptop in general. I think it will be very interesting to see. My second pick? Touch Bar is gone. Touch Bar is gone. That was going to be my pick. But you tricked me.

Yes, RIP the touch bar they've done nothing the touch bar has been gone it's been gone for years but they just couldn't get rid of it Apple did not I've never seen in my memory I cannot think of

something like this that they've done before where they introduced a hardware feature and then just pretended that it didn't happen. Right. Like, hey, look, we did this thing. We're never going to talk about it again and we're never going to add anything to it. I think that's the most damning thing about it is that Apple shipped it and never improved it. I think that's the most damning thing about it, is that Apple shipped it and never improved it. I know

there were some very, very minor things that were done to it. But what I would say is either Apple believed that it was perfect as is and never needed to be better, which it very clearly wasn't, because the OS could have really embraced the touch bar and, you know, built an API for apps to, to work globally in the touch

bar and stuff like which all these third parties like better touch tool and all that, like tried to hack their way into it. Either Apple thought it was perfect or Apple knew almost immediately that it was a loser and they didn't put any more effort into it and and in fact my personal theory is that the hardware people were really excited about it and the software people thought it was dumb and so the software never got better because the software people weren't going to optimize for the touch bar and so it just it just sat there I also wonder if like it was created and it was a good idea, but nobody really used it for long enough.

Yeah, I wonder if that's the real story, is that they thought people would use it and they didn't. And so they put it off on their list of things to replace. It is telling that it has remained in the lineup for so long, even through part of the transition, because there's one Apple Silicon laptop with a touch bar i guess though until you do a chassis redesign yeah you can't get rid of it or like you have to redesign the chassis just for that and that seems wasteful maybe hard to hard to uh get rid of it so i hope they get rid of it. And I'm sorry to people who like the touch bar,

but I think it was a bad idea. I like it. I don't like it enough. Like I like it when it works. The problem is it doesn't always work for me. And sometimes I hit it accidentally in a way that I never hit buttons accidentally. That's the damning part of it for me.

When I'm using my laptop, I kind of like it. I like it. I like the volume. It's like, it's just easier for me to grab it. I like it for emoji and stuff like that. But the problem is I also found out that I rest some of my fingers in that area and hit the buttons that I don't mean to hit. And this never happens to me on any other laptop. And so it's, it takes away as much as it gives, I think. And so it just never really caught on

and I don't think that I'm alone in that. I think it's the wrong place for a device like that, looking, you know, to have to look down, not only look down on your keyboard, but then look to the top of it and then reach over there. The way to solve this and the way to do do it properly is to put a touch screen on a laptop because you don't accidentally touch the screen and then you have all of that stuff available to you you know windows laptops learned this a long time ago and it's great you know i think a lot of long-time mac

people just assume it will be bad it's good i like having the option to touch the screen if i want to and i hope one day apple does this i don't think they're doing it now i hope that they do one day yeah what is your third pick oh boy um let's go with the display and i'm gonna say the display will be a mini led display and marketed for some sort of enhanced dynamic range wow the marketed part is a lot well i mean marketed for they're they will they will talk if if it's a mini led display like the one on the ipad they will talk about it's one of its features being extended to dynamic range of some part i'm not saying it's going to be called the xdr or something but i'm going to say uh that some combination because they may not say mini led did they say mini led about the ipad pro but they talked about its extended dynamic range i believe

so i think we're going to do that again basically i see why you're picking this it's on the opportunity to talk about what the technology is they did did say it was mini LED for the iPad Pro because I remember being surprised about it. I think they'll do it again. I think they'll do some form of that where we're essentially going to get a version of the iPad Pro conversation again. Man, that'd be so good.

Oh my God. If they put a mini LED display on this laptop, oh my God, Jason, it's going to be incredible. Yeah. The thing, like, again, maybe this might come up later, if they do this and don't create an external display with mini-LED in it, that would be so sad. Oh, I'm going to use this computer in clamshell mode

for ergonomics and now I don't get to see the nice screen. This is me being sad about my potential. Is that a new character that's sad, Mike? This character is me when I get the laptop. That would make me sad to know I have this incredible screen and don't get to use it. Okay, so yes, I'm on board with this and would love it. It was pretty high up on my list too.

I'm now going to focus back on one of the original rumors for this machine um and my third pick will be the hdmi port will be added to the macbook at least one macbook pro that was going to be my next one so well done i i was thinking about this draft in the context of uh listening to atp last week. And they were talking about like, literally it was the, let's talk about every single thing that's rumored for this.

Cause it is the way they described it. I think accurately is that every dream of every Mac user has been placed on this update. It's like literally what if they solved all the problems? And I started to think, you know, maybe they will, but probably they'll disappoint us in some choice or other. Oh, for sure.

And I started to think about how do I rank all of the things that have been rumored? And I think HDMI is a really good choice because it eliminates the need, the most common need, I think, for a dongle of any laptop. Which is everybody's got an HDMI plug. Every device has an HDMI plug. This is, for me, much more important than putting an SD card slot on the laptop. Yeah, I just think the rationale of connecting a laptop to an external display and not having to have it be some weird adapter or anything, but literally just it is the plug that is on every device. It makes the most sense of all of the rumors

of different slots on this thing. I mean, this has been heavily rumored. There were those apparent schematics that came out and said that it had it. But nevertheless, like, this is, if I was going to, if you were going to say, hey, Mike, what are they going to put on this thing? Like, what port are they going to add? This is what I would go for first, because as

you say, right, these things are used in presentations all the time. People need to connect to projectors. HTMI is the easy way to do that. So, it makes a lot of sense. It is a very universal connector. And I think a lot of people would get a lot of use out of it.

So HDMI port. Yeah, I think that's a good choice. Fourth round? Okay. I am going to go with a better webcam. Damn it. That's what I wanted.

Okay. Yep. How is it better well i'll say it's got to be to 1080 or better i believe the webcam on these is 720 still yep the imac 24 has a 1080 webcam like like my imac pro but it has the better image signal processing and all of that. But if they have to say it's a better webcam because of the ISP and that's it, then we've all lost. Yes, we all lost. Because that is a fallback. In fact, I think it's kind of weak that they said that the webcam in the 24-inch iMac was 1080, but it was the best webcam ever on the Mac. And literally, it's the same webcam as the iMac Pro, but with a better

image signal processor to make it look better, which is sort of cheating. So I think that's the baseline, is that this laptop have that webcam, essentially a 1080. I'd love for this to be more than that. I'll be disappointed if it's not more than that. But I feel like baseline, it's got to be better. It's got to be 1080 or better. Yeah. Yeah? Look, I remain skeptical.

I want them to do it. It kind of really, for me, it depends on when did they make the decision. Yeah, I think 1080 is not asking too much, and that's why I have more confidence in this choice. What I'd like to say is that it's a 4K webcam with a widescreen lens and center stage. Yeah, that's what it should be.

Yes. That is what it should be. Yes. And if they build this amazing Pro system screen lens and center stage yeah that's what it should be yes that is what it should be yes and and if if they build this amazing pro system that has all this incredible power and ports and all those things honestly even if it's a just a 1080 webcam that i've picked it's it's weak like they need to put a much better webcam in their laptops and in all their computers, all their Macs. The Mac webcam world is very sad right now.

And I really do think that where they need to go is a fancy new bit of webcam tech that is higher resolution and wider screen and has center stage as part of it. But, you know, I'll take the scraps of better than the old 720 while we're talking about webcams i would like to just have a brief sidebar to talk about something that really frustrates me about apple's webcams so the webcam built into my imac when I use it in the studio it flickers because of my overhead lighting. And this could be fixed if Apple would let me change the

camera from, I don't know the exact terminology to use, 60Hz to 50Hz with its polling rate. So I have to have a Logitech webcam on the top of my iMac because of this. Because Logitech allowed me in software to change it from 60 hertz to 50 hertz with the anti-flicker. Apple does not allow for anybody to make this change. I have an app which can do it for any other webcam as well as using logitech saying but the app that i bought doesn't allow me to do anything and it doesn't seem like they have the ability to change it and this is just like one of those things where it's like hey in america we

don't have this problem you know and and because your power and stuff is different here whatever so it's just a frustration for me apple just let me do something or let developers make this change because I cannot use the good cameras that you put on your machines, even if you put them on there, because people just have to watch this laser light show going on whenever I'm on Zoom.

So I have to put a Logitech camera up there. Yeah, well, that's a little bit of a sidebar but you're right that's one of those places where apple's lack of giving people options is biting you and that's another thing they should do is if they're going to put a webcam up there they need to be able to let you set options for the webcam anyway so my fourth pick, thicker than the laptop. At least one laptop is thicker than the one it replaces. That's what I'm going to go with. Okay.

So I'm really zooming in on the 14 here would be my expectation. With the thinking that the mini-LED screen, if they put that on there, it's going to be a similar thing to the iPad that got the mini-LED screen in it. For whatever reason, either the screen physically got larger or they put more battery in it or something. Ooh, you know what?

I've just thought about it. I was going to say, do you think apple's gonna stand on stage and say our laptop is thicker that was a bad thing for us to put in the list so i'm gonna undo that let's pretend that never happened and i'm gonna say i wasn't gonna say anything no i was actually gonna bring it up but the discord brought it up and i thought we shouldn't have had that in our list we should not have had that in our list i mean if they showed dimensions they want those dimensions are are if they say it's this wide by this thick or whatever

look how thin it is and then we say wait a second isn't the old one thinner than that you would get that point it is something that they might disclose but they're not going to shout that it's thicker they would disclose a thickness that would be thicker yeah i don't even think they would give dimensions on stage, though. Okay. If there is a stage. I'll go with something a little bit trickier, then, because I've given myself that out.

Promotion display. Okay. This is one of those that's really interesting, because I'm not sure this has been rumored. People have suggested it. Well. But people will suggest anything so I am kind of trying to pull one out

of the hat here but if my thinking is if they've gone to all this effort and they've created this new mini LED screen higher refresh rates are the future could you not

just do it now? Is that what I'm going for? Yes. Alright. Alright. Because the Mac already supports higher refresh rates than Apple's screens. So if you have a higher refresh rate monitor, which I do, the Mac will support it.

So it's already there. All Apple have to do is make a screen that can support it themselves. They already do that with their mini LED technology. They've done the work. Yeah. And they don't even make the screens right there. Somebody's got a screen and those screens exist. And then, yeah, the mini LED, there's an argument to be made that if you're going to upgrade

the display, do it, right? Like, do it now. Do it now is the time to really upgrade this display. And it's also one of those things, if they're using the same screen manufacturer, you know, it's like, wouldn't it be harder to just not do it the way you do it everywhere else? You know, like, your chip supports it because it's the same underlying chip technology you know like go for it let's just put let's make a higher i don't know if you 120 they might not go all the way to 120 i don't know if apple have decided that promotion means something but nevertheless i'm gonna go with promotion display because i think they'll call it that i can't let this last round

pass without going back to the many many rumored new ports on these things that are going to solve all our problems by bringing back or adding all ports that are beloved by fans of ports everywhere i can't let it go without picking the sd card slot being added to at least one model, 16 inch, I'm looking at you, but maybe it's both. It seems counterintuitive and yet I just can see them saying, we got a lot of feedback from our pro customers that they want support for an SD card slot. So here it is. And also, I don't think the SD card slot is antithetical to Apple. I think that Apple understands that people use it. My, my, my iMac pro has an SD card slot on it. I think they could bring it back to the laptops.

And I think honestly, it's probably one of those things that pros have been yelling at Apple for, for a while now. So I'm going to just put it out there. What kind of slot is it is, you know know i don't know what sort of sd card format speed whatever i'm just gonna say it's an sd card slot okay i don't know what to do now i have some boring pics i have some not so boring pics you could embrace the excitement of what the chip's going to be called well this is one of my i was not confident enough i still think m1x is the best name for it and i actually have a theory about the chip where people are like no it'll be like pro and pro max i'm like

that i don't know if it's got like a 10 core version and a 20 core version you could start calling it like the m1x10 the m1x20 which sounds super cool to me so m1x and m1 double x oh m1 double x uh so one of my potential picks is choosing it is or it isn't called m1x but i i don't know if i want to wade into that for the draft i've had that at the top of my list and i look at it and i'm like, no, I can't choose. Can I ask you now what would you say? Yes, it is. I would say yes, it is,

but my confidence isn't high enough to have picked it. If I was going to make a pick, my pick would be no, it will not be called M1X. You want to add a line to the draft that's just a straight up will it or won't it we could do that i don't think we can add any more bonus rounds into this draft

all right it's a little gentleman's how about this it's just a little gentleman's wager on the side for nothing other than just let's see who was right i say it is you say it isn't yeah i like that i like that. It's on the side bet. Let's just keep adding to this. All right, so... Shall I tell you what I'm weighing up? Yeah, I can't pick any more in this category, actually, so you're not giving anything away to me. The three more that I have are

Apple calls its webcam its, quote, best ever. I laugh when you put that in the document. Higher resolution retina display. But I don't know how much I want to keep betting on this display. And they would have to talk about it, although they would if it was a higher resolution. They would talk about it. And if they disclose the resolution and it is higher, that would get you that point anyway. The other one is PowerBrick has an Ethernet jack.

Oh, man. Can you imagine? It's on the iMac. It's right there. It would be weird to me if they didn't do it, even if it was just on the 16, because you've already done it now. In that idealized world where you just have a laptop on a desk

and there's only one cable coming out of it to include the Ethernet, so when you plug in, it's almost like a little mini dock. And we know that they are happy with that concept because they do it with the imac but just because they can do it doesn't necessarily mean they will but it goes back to what we were talking about when they put it on the imac which is like would you really do this just for the imac like the imac already has some ports on it and I know it's like a thickness thing or whatever, like blah blah blah, I get it. But laptops also have a thickness issue. And it means you've

got to have a dongle. And if all you're doing is connecting to Ethernet when you're at a desk with your power cord, you don't need the dongle because your power cord is the dongle. Right? I could totally see the argument for it. Whether they do it this time or not, I don't know and that's why I didn't pick it. But I think that it is entirely plausible that they would do that so for me the webcam one

maybe seems the most likely but it's also the most boring i i would say you you should probably specify that as like the best ever on a mac yeah that's what i that yeah yeah these are all these are all plausible choices of i would say say, kind of equal plausibility. You know, I would say the problem with the webcam pick is if all it is is the same webcam that's in the iMac and it has the ISP, it's not the best ever. Exactly. It would just be as good. They would have had to have changed the ISP again, right?

If it's a 1080p, and I don't think they would have necessarily done that. I'm going to go with the PowerBrick has an Ethernet jack. Okay. And I'm going to be sad when Apple 100% calls this webcam its best ever. But that's boring. That's a boring pick. And I don't want to just have a boring pick for the sake of it. I think that that's a big risk because it really

requires it to be even better than 1080p and i don't know if i try honestly it makes total sense that it would be i have been let down by apple in terms of its webcams for so long now forever basically that i just don't have a lot of confidence. Because I could imagine them just as easily saying, and we put the same fantastic webcam, which is the best we've ever made from our iMac into this MacBook Pro. And that wouldn't be it for me, right? That's not the point. But I could imagine them saying that

and making it sound as good as it is. Because I do not think they're going to go above 1080. I would love it if they did, but I do not think they will. And I don't think as much as we'd love it i mean we don't we're finished with our pics now so it's not going to come up i don't think this is going to get center stage even though it should i just think i it's too this is they wouldn't have done it i think apple's game on on the mac in terms of webcams has been terrible for a very very very long time and it's really frustrating especially since we have now seen what they do on their other devices now one of these in terms of webcams has been terrible for a very, very, very long time. And it's really frustrating,

especially since we have now seen what they do on their other devices. Now, one of these days, it's entirely possible that they're going to have that moment of revelation and maybe the pandemic did it. And maybe in these MacBook Pro systems, we'll see it. Or maybe because of the lead times and all of that, it wasn't ready here. I want to be open to the possibility because I think it really is inevitable that Apple is going to put on some Macs a wide angle, high resolution camera that does center stage. I do think it's going to happen. I think that if it is not going to happen on these systems, it'll probably happen on the big iMac because iMac is actually the best place for it. And I think the only reason it's not on the 24 is that the 24 inch iMac predated center stage when they were designing it, even though it came

out at the same time, it predated center stage. So I feel like center stage on the Mac kind of has to happen, but they have let me down so many times that to pick it in advance and say, this is the day where Apple's story about webcams changes forever, that's hard to do. They've let me down too many times. This is one of those areas where they are way behind the cutting edge, and it's very sad. And the iPad is in front of it.

The iPad mini is in front of the cutting edge on this one. Come on. Okay. Well, there are those MacBook Pro picks, 10 of them. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Instabug. Building mobile apps presents challenges. It can be bugs, crashes, performance issues. They can be a nightmare for developers.

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draft of the colors are here we go so the colors are decrees that a draft be created in their honor so we've been talking a lot recently on the show about apple's somewhat perplexing choices of colors for their machines and also in a hope that they have a pro computer they're redesigning it will they add at least some color to this line who can know we have a selection of colors that we've picked in advance that range from color options and names of stuff that already exists picked in advance that range from color options and names of stuff that already exists in apple's uh lineup from past and present along with some general colors you know blue orange green yellow red purple that kind of thing now you know and we'll

be able to decide if they call it like tahoe blue it counts or something it's blue okay and that's why we've gone with that because when it gets to colors it gets more complicated the way we're going to do this is a reminder we get three picks each and whoever gets the most gets the point one point on offer and if we if we tie then uh we either both get it or don't get it and it doesn't matter doesn't matter oh maybe this should be... No, okay. I was going to say, maybe we should have a tiebreaker, which is the name of the chip. No. But it's not a color.

A chip is not a color. That doesn't even make any sense. No, it doesn't. All right. We'll just polish this off pretty quick. I pick silver. I think boring. Boring.

Bet on boring, I say. Space gray. Yeah, bet on boring. We're betting on boring. I knew that was bet on boring we're betting on boring i knew that was gonna happen i knew it i knew it oh man oh now it gets hard i am going to go with i'm gonna go with starlight i'm gonna go what if they do Starlight? What if they make it Starlight? That's what I'm going to go with. Fun, because I want Midnight. Oh! I actually think Midnight is the most likely of their current color options to come to a Pro laptop.

Because it's dark, because Apple believes that it's Pro, but it's got a little color to it. I am going to choose a non-matte black so we have on our board matte black and non-matte black so is this space black is it just black i don't know but i'm just gonna i'm gonna put it out there because again i i have a hard time picking actual colors i am tripling down. Graphite. Graphite.

That's a great choice because they might call a really dark gray graphite. Basically, I'm assuming there will be a dark colored laptop and it's going to be one of those three names. That's what I'm going for. My next option, by the way, if you would have picked graphite, midnight, or space gray, was going to be matte black. Yeah, I thought that that's where we were gonna go is i pick non-matte black and you pick matte black but yeah but i don't think it's that likely for that but that

is what i would have gone with and if it were going to pick a color it would be some kind of blue is what i've gone with yeah agreed that's the colors so this. So this is the thing. The colors are as draft. Oh, you think to yourself, that's a bunch of boring colors. They're barely even colors. Well, you can blame Apple for that, I guess. We'll find out. That's right. Alright, so let's move into our other

picks round. Final four picks. Everything's on the table. If there is a product, a piece of software, something to do with a service, it's all in here. It's all to play for. New AirPods. It's going to happen.

All right, let me know what I pick. New AirPods feature a design inspired by AirPods Pro. This seems very obvious that they, well, they have to, at some point, ship a new pair of AirPods. You would expect if they've got it available to do, they will want to do it before the holiday season.

If they're going to ship any kind of AirPods, it's going to be the standard, right? The regular AirPod. I think they're going to do it, and if they're going to do it, it will have a new design. I definitely think they're going to do it. Why not? Now is a great time. It's been rumored for a long time. They are great sellers. I'm sure they're gonna do it it's it's why not now is a great time it's been rumored for

a long time they are great sellers i'm sure they're great sellers at the holidays um the design inspired i guess my question would be you know again gentleman's agreement sort of thing will if they don't say it's inspired by the airpods pro we'll i think probably know it when we see it if they look like the airpods pro or if they don't it should be very clear this this won't be a a thing that i think will take any litigation like yeah and if it does then we'll see if steven thinks they're inspired by the airpods pro i mean what i think the main thing here is is the stems will be smaller yeah all the all the rumors indicate that they i mean honestly it makes sense right right? They designed the AirPods and then they designed the AirPods Pro and that's the new AirPods design.

And I imagine that there is some economy of scale, if nothing else, from sort of like piggybacking on that design and using some of the same parts or some of the same methods in order to create regular AirPods too. So it doesn't surprise me at all. And in fact, it's kind of your standard Apple trickle-down kind of thing, right? Where they introduce something up at the high end and then later it kind of comes down to other models. It sort of feels like that too. Tim Cook likes to kind of reuse things down over time. So I think it's a pretty good choice. Anything goes. Ready for mine? Yeah, I'm super ready.

Mention of a new version of an Apple Pro app. Okay. So what I mean by this is there will be something maybe enabled by the software, or it may be enabled by the hardware, the new hardware, maybe not. Maybe it's something that is just something they're rolling in as part of the story. But I feel like for a MacBook Pro event, they're going to talk about, we have a new version of Final Cut that does this thing, or we have a new version of Logic that does this thing.

And that's all I'm saying here, is that they will mention that there's going to be an update to or a new version of or there's this feature that we're adding to logic or final cut or whatever that is part of the story of this that's it that's that's kind of all i'm saying we'll see but they just have to mention it that there's's some new awesome thing in a new version of one of their pro apps. So if they said such and such will be updated to support this new feature. Yes. That's enough. Yeah, I think basically what I'm looking for is they're going to mention a pro app in the context of some new thing that the pro app will now be able to do. Okay.

So that as part of rolling out this pro software, they're going to call out the pro apps, a pro app at least, and say, it does this now. But that's what we're looking for. It has to be mention a pro app that they already make and that is going to get some kind of support for something. For something. is going to get some kind of support for something. For something. And yeah, probably related to the hardware, although they could fake it and it could be like,

oh, it's got this amazing other thing that it does. Like if they say Logic now supports spatial audio, which is something that they said would happen eventually. But if they say in their event, they go to the trouble of mentioning that Logic has gotten this new feature, that counts. I just, I'm saying I want to see a pro app call out about something new in a pro app cool that's cool that makes sense i'm gonna go over a bit of stagecraft and we're all gonna get to say hello to our friend john turnus as he will introduce a product during the event ah john

turnus they've been going to turn us a lot right like you're a good friend since especially since the apple silicon transition um i was thinking about this like who would do it and i was like immediately i thought oh jaws i was like not no like if i think about this jaws does the iphone like the iphone pro i think pretty much to my memory all of the macs have been introduced the m1 max or the apple silicon max have been introduced. The M1 Max or the Aposilica Max have been introduced by John Ternus. They go into that mid-level that he seems to occupy, I should say, in Steve Jobs' theater.

That middle level is all silver and that's where John Ternus lives. At the bottom of the elevator. Jaws lives up at the top of the elevator. Jaws lives outside. Oh, Jaws lives outside. Right? Poor guy.

Right? Because first time he found a way to sneak into the visitor center. That's where he was when he introduced the 12 Pro. And then for the 13 Pro, they kicked him out, and he was just hanging around outside. That's true. At night, no less. Yeah, at night. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. You've got to get out.

That's what I'm going with. All right. I am going to pick, I'm going to go for it, Apple Silicon, faster, Apple Silicon Mac Mini introduced. This is my next one too. Oh, good. I don't know how confident

I am in it. Yeah, I don't know either. But I was more confident in it than the other things that we had on our list, so I picked it. I think this is one of those, just like it was a year ago, you throw in the Mac Mini with the other announcements. Because, right, we were surprised when we got two laptops and a Mac Mini last time. And I feel like that Mac Mini is just laying out there and they want to replace it. They could do it later, but there's like still an Intel Mac mini in their product line. Like they want it out. They want to get it out. So this would be a way to do it

is they've got this new chip and boom, it's also in the Mac mini. Yeah. So that's why I talked myself into it. Question for you, not for the draft, but question, new design? Question for you, not for the draft, if I had to choose, I would choose not a new design. I would choose it to look exactly like the existing Intel Mac mini. That's got the space gray and that's it. And I know that's like, I'm betting on disappointment. So you could imagine like,

Hey, we've got this new chip. It's called M one pro and double X. And we're also going to bring it to the mac mini right like is that kind of what you expect they would do yeah yeah that's what i'm thinking and not like there here's a totally new redesigned mac mini that is unlike anything you've seen before and it's more like a mac pro and whatever they may yet do that but that's not what i'm thinking for this i'm thinking that they're going to do a you know m1x Mac mini variant that is more powerful and has more ports on the

back than the, than the M one Mac mini. And, uh, they're doing that because they get to clear another Intel Mac off their, off their list. All right. The best I can do with the draft here is win this draft in time for the

year. That's the best I can get out of it. Right. You're going for glory. Is that what's happening? No. I am deciding I'm going to put out into the world what I want the world to give back to me. Alright. External display

introduced. This is what I want. I want them to introduce a really nice mini LED affordable display for both the Mac mini and... And these laptops. The laptops.

That's what I want them to do. Perfect time to do it. Yeah. My... I want this too. Yeah. my i want this too yeah my concern about it is that they're not going to do this until they do a new big iMac i'm not sure that's logical but that's just my feeling of like if they're going to do a new big iMac that's fancy and has fancy display technology um that they might want to

have that display debut on the iMac and not on an external display yeah but the right time to introduce an external display is for MacBook Pro users that is the right time to do it Mac Pro I guess but like MacBook Pro users it's the perfect time for them I mean they could even not make it really amazing but just have like we have a new baseline display and it's basically the same as the iMac they could I would want more out of it but at least it would be you know properly integrated and stuff yeah maybe they put a 4k webcam in that oh boy dare to dream now you're now you're being unreasonable we have put this pic in uh Jasonason amended i think it makes sense affordable external

display we know we know what we mean here which is it's not a rev of the pro display xdr it's a new display yeah well what does that leave me with here there's lots of options i mean there's a universe of options here jason put a lot of potential comedy bits in to this. I did. I did. And I'm thinking of those. Yeah, I'm going to choose a comedy bit, because why not? John Stewart comedy bit. That's my choice. I don't know what. Might not be very long. But John Stewart comedy bit. He's got a new show on Apple TV+. It's live on air now. Maybe there's a comedy bit. Mac OS Monterey shipping in October.

I, okay. Mac OS Monterey shipping in October. I think there's a good chance of this happening. Okay, let's talk timelines. Yeah. They're going to announce products on the 18th. It's going to be new MacBook Pros. They're going to ship presumably with macOS Monterey.

They're not going to ship that. They have to ship with Monterey. I don't think that's an option. In fact, something that we haven't talked about, but they released a new beta of Monterey that has some changes to Safari in it. And it seems like they're still making changes to Safari. It feels really weird that they're making changes this late,

but I'm reminded of those iPhone Pro models that I got that were running iOS 15 and then wanted to update to iOS 15. This is a trick Apple does now, is they put earlier builds that are basically beta builds on as the final, and then they push an update. Yes. So you get it when it ships. So they're

probably loaded with a a build like beta 10 beta 9 and then we'll update to the final even though it'll claim to be the final it won't be um so the scenario here is they announced it on the 18th it probably ships on the 29th but i think that it also might ship on the 5th and i think that's the 50 50 about when monterey will ship is that monterey will probably ship on like the 27th or the 3rd but i think i think it's more more likely that it ships in october by the end of the month probably like the 27th so here's why i've gone with this is because i agree i don't think you're going to be like my feeling is do the event on the 18th. Products go on sale.

You know, like they were pre-ordered on the end of the week and then ship in the next week. So ship in the next week. I just think it's also possible they'll ship the week after that. I understand. But like, so yes, you could say you could pre-order them on Friday and they ship on the 5th of November. Well, then why not do the event on the 25th of October?

I don't know. There's no reason to have two weeks before the products start to ship when the event dates are completely devoid of any requirement to move anybody anywhere anymore. I don't know. And then you could have actually done it on Tuesday

the 26th because they're only doing it on the 19th because Google has the Pixel event on the 19th. They said they're only doing it on the 19th because Google has the Pixel event on the 19th. They said they're only doing it on the 18th. There's no reason. Why would they? Oh, we picked a Monday for once just for funsies. No, they want to be able to put stuff on pre-order on Friday because it's shipping the week after.

This is my thinking. And they would have ideally wanted to do it on the 19th, but they don't want to compete against Google. I think that's all perfectly reasonable. I just think there's also a chance that it'll be one week later than that. Sure. But for all of this to happen,

macOS Monterey has to ship at some point. And so I think there's enough time for them to say it comes out by the end of the month or in October or next week or whatever. Sure. I think that's a reasonable choice. And I know,

I understand that Monterey is buggy. I think that's a reasonable choice. And I know, I understand that Monterrey is buggy. I get that. But sometimes they release buggy operating systems. It just happens because they have other things going on. So that's the draft. That's the draft. I'm pretty excited for Monday. I am too.

Because I feel like there's a lot of, like, I don't really know what they're going to do. You know, like, we got a lot of things that we think they're going to do, but I don't feel particularly convinced about anything, you know? So I'm excited about it. Like, I have, as is obvious from how we structured this, a pretty high confidence that MacBook Pro is what we're going to see. But the details, right? We've had a lot of details leak to the point where it seems like they can't all be true.

But if they are, it's going to be unbelievable to be unbelievable right like imagine if they do all this and even if they do most of it and not all of it it's still kind of pretty amazing right plus i am very excited about that new apple silicon chip because we have only seen the one right we've only seen the m1 so what's apple story with the next step in the evolution of Apple Silicon on Mac? I'm very excited to see that too. Can't wait to see those benchmarks, man. Yeah, can't wait to see that Jon Stewart comedy bit. Yeah.

Is that going to be on his show at any point? I haven't seen the second episode yet, so I don't know. Maybe it's funny. I don't know. Probably not. If you would like to get the scorecard, you can go to upgrade.cards.

You can find the link in the show notes too. So you can score along with us on Monday. We will be going live as soon as we can after the event has ended. So once you watch the event, you can come over to relay.fm slash live and tune in. Or you can also hang out as well in the chat in the members discord

which you can get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up and even when we do bonus episodes like this one you'd still get bonus content so Upgrade Plus subscribers, they're going to get even more, be one of them and if you are thank you so much, also thanks to Instabug

and Smile for their support of this show of course Jason will be publishing as much as he possibly can over at sixcolors.com. Sure. And also at jsnl on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And we'll be back on Monday reviewing Apple's Unleashed event for October 2021. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.