Upgrade - 402: Very Important Developers

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Baseball season is here and Jason has a detailed critique of Apple's first Friday Night Baseball broadcasts. But it's not all home runs and calls to the bullpen, as Myke goes home to Dongletown and we ponder just what might be announced at WWDC 2022.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 402 today's show is brought to you by electric capital one and trade my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hi jason hi mike happy monday yeah happy happy Monday. Happy new week. Spring break is over here. Spring break, over. Back to school. Over. Got two months of school left before the last of my children graduates and exits the local school system.

Kind of hard to believe, but we're getting there. And of course, that's WWDC week, because it always is. It literally always, all graduations must occur during the developer conference. It's a rule. I have a hashtag snow talk question for you from Brance, who wants to know, Jason, what is your favorite ride

at Disneyland? When was the last time you went to Disney? We went on a couple days before New Year's in like God, how old were the kids then? I want to say something like

2010? Right. So it's been a while. It's been a while. And the funny thing is that Lauren's parents live 15 minutes away right but uh the challenge is usually when we're down there is at the peak times sure holidays and things it's the worst time to go to disneyland uh but one of these days we'll we'll make an effort of going down there at some random time and uh maybe i'll get uh david sparks to do you know david sparks just uses it as his office he just goes to star wars and uh

there's nobody better to toy you around disneyland than the boxes we've had that privilege twice i'm gonna have to have uh have david do that because i still haven't seen any of the star wars stuff obviously because it's been 10 years and I haven't been there. My favorite ride at Disneyland, knowing now that it's been a while since I've been there, is I'm going to say Big Thunder Mountain Railway just because I'm not a big roller coaster person. But in terms of roller coasters, I really do prefer the big bank side to side action to the up and down and and you know and i i'm not a fan of the upside down at all but i am a fan of the uh and the big drops do not please me at all i find them really unpleasant but um that one's got a really good mixture of sort of like all the the big banking turn things that are very exciting space mountain is also great um

added benefit being of course it is the what if we uh did the roller coaster while we turned out the lights that's pretty it's pretty good that's a great that's a great that's a great ride i um and and you know we'll see i may actually take medication before i go the next time because sometimes a motion control ride can make me feel queasy. Star Tours, I have had good Star Tours experiences and bad Star Tours experiences. I mean, nothing like really sick, but like ending up not having as much fun as you might like. And so I'm a little worried about that for the other motion control stuff that they've got. They seem to lean quite heavily on that in the more

modern rides so I would recommend it for you especially for the Star Wars stuff. I'm just going to have to take my anti-vertigo medication before I go to Disneyland and then it'll be okay.

So yeah, anyway would i've been saying for 20 years whatever big thunder is my favorite because uh it's uh it's fun you're on a like runaway gold rush thing and it's classic it's just feels good yeah it's a great ride i've ridden that a couple of times and i think the difference between something like that to the more modern rides that they do really i think a lot of the more modern rides they they lean on surprise and so once you've done it once it's not the same like the first time i did rise of the resistance which is the newer star wars ride it absolutely blew my mind the second time i was like that was really good but it just wasn't the same right because you

don't have that that uh moment i i have enjoyed like the indiana jones ride is great that's a family favorite of the hurley family it is it is it is really good um it same thing right also the last time we went they had a lot of technical problems so we we were on that ride for quite a while because at several points it uh stopped oh dear and it was fine because we weren't on so long that we were miserable and there's lots to see but it did we did have the thing it actually stopped you know there's that place where you see indiana jones dangling yeah above you well he was there a long time like man he was really got that that upper body strength that's all indeed yeah he's holding on uh tight so anyway uh but disneyland

is fun and i uh wish uh lauren took the kids a few more times so the kids have been a lot more than i have in the during their lifetime but i would like to go back there at some point. It's just a matter of, you know, it's a funny thing of having the family right there. You don't ever make a point of going to Disneyland. And as a result, you never go to Disneyland. And we just have to, you know, basically we need to say we're going to take some time off midweek sometime

and just fly down and go to Disneyland. And the good news is our hotel is covered because you know we have a place to stay but we just have to have to make that effort maybe uh maybe this summer i mean summer is always busy at disneyland but maybe we'll do it who knows if you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of upgrade just send in a tweet with the hashtag snell talk or use question marks. No talk in the relay FM members discord. And, uh, and just a shout out to Casey lists, uh,

no questions about my favorite anything at Walt Disney world, because I've never been to Orlando. Jason. I have returned to the warm, loving embrace of dongle town. Dongle town is eternal. I'm back in dongle town yes uh this is after talking about my frustrations maybe or like just some of my experience with the

studio display and the logitech unifying receiver for their mouse so m ellis wrote in to say they had a better experience with their logitech mouse after plugging the unifying receiver directly into the studio display with the use of a USB-C to A dongle. I think they were having similar issues to me when using a dock, that it was unresponsive, like it was basically felt like, I think the easiest way to describe it is kind of like it was skipping frames in a way, like I would move the mouse and it would only move, say, three quarters of the way that I would expect it to move so some kind of interference so i i think on steven's recommendation i ordered these little like just a very small usbc to usb a adapter i found them on amazon just like they were highly rated by like a lot of this stuff on amazon from a company i have

never heard of called nonda right you get these little weird things on amazon i have it's funny i have those if not from that company because it's a programmatically generated random company name but i have uh looking at what you bought i have those i absolutely bought the two pack of the usbc to usba little tiny things that you stick in and it's i mean is it a dongle if it doesn't dangle it just it's like an inline adapter kind of thing it's still a dongle it's still a dongle because it's just not a dangling dongle it's not a dangle dongle it's a regular dongle okay uh so i now have because it's coming a two pack right i only wanted it for unifying receiver but then i

had a second one i thought hang on a minute i then looked at my cow digit dock and at that point I had just one thing attached to it which was my keyboard cable because the cable that I have for my keyboard is USB A to C because there can be weird stuff of USB C to C cables and and the way they work with keyboards it's like a whole thing I won't bother getting into but it can be unreliable so then i was like oh let me plug that directly into and then i realized i no longer need my cal digit thunderbolt dock and the thing that has changed is the new macbook pro has basically all of the ports on it that i would ever need except usb a right so that's been the difference yeah so now i am back to dongle life but with no more dock and i just have uh my thunderbolt cable right going from the macbook pro straight into the display

and then i'm using two of the usbc ports with these little dongles in them for the two usba things going into it and i'm really happy because now my desk is even more uh empty than it was before so it's great you know what has usb8 ports on it mike the mac studio the mac studio yeah but i don't need a mac studio i don't need that i know plus it's impossible for me to get one even if i wanted one i do have usb8 going into the mac studio here too so it's all under the desk so all those cables are under the desk, my keyboard and my stream deck and all that, they're plugged in under the desk. I have a USB. What I have to consider on my end is that I have a little USB-A hub under the desk. And I'm not sure I need it because the computer's under there now, right? Unless I need more ports, and I'm not sure I do, I'm going to have to revisit that

because I might actually not even need that hub anymore. But that's good. It's a good solution. The dock adds complexity that you don't actually need, especially considering that the keyboard and mouse are, to be used in front of the display, right? So plugging them into the display makes sense. Yeah, and so I'm just really, because then it's just that one cable now and it goes straight into the display

and I just don't need, you know, like I did, you know, previously I go for the occasional time I need an SD card or the occasional time that I need this or that, I then have the Thunderbolt dock. But I don't need that now with the new MacBook Pro because it has those ports in it. And, look, I, of course, thought, like, the Mac Studio, I could probably plug everything that I need into that. But I don't want one for that desk.

It's a very expensive dock. Yes. And I don't need one. I'm still not sure it's the right machine to replace my iMac. I just haven't, I haven't really put any thought into it yet. I'm going to wait a little longer and see what later on in the year provides for me anyway.

And we will talk about that later on in the show because there is, I do also imagine this world where I actually just use two laptops, but we'll talk about that at another point. Wow. Because I just think a MacBook Air, a colorful MacBook Air could just be really nice, but we could talk about it later on but yeah but i'll wrap this up by saying i'm back to the angle life and seriously logitech what is wrong with you make a usb receiver like your mouse the mx master mouse that i use it has a usb-c port for charging so you know usb-c

exists and it's better than what you had before why do you only make a usb a receiver and here let me say that if you're thinking logitech you got to think like apple right you put the usb a adapter in the box and then you sell a usbc receiver i'll buy on your website for a premium price. Go for it. And people will buy it. Come on. Many people sent me a link. Including me. Many, many people sent me this.

And it was right. I wanted to see it, so I'm happy people sent it to me. At Chaos T on Twitter, ripped apart a magic keyboard with the Touch ID button in it, and now has on their desk a very small board with just the us so the the touch id power button basically removing the requirement to have the keyboard anywhere right right i've done a decent job of explaining that. Maybe you could do a better job of that. Yeah. It's a, so Chaos T took the,

he followed the iFixit instructions to disassemble the magic keyboard with Touch ID and stripped it down to what appears to be a circuit board and one connector that goes to the Touch ID sensor and it's plugged in via lightning and it works and i look at this and i think one

i'm kind of tempted to do this, except I would just destroy this keyboard. And like, but because I have, I like you, I have the, it's the Mike Hurley method. I have a, an entire keyboard Velcroed under my desk so that I can have the touch ID

button. And two, I think to myself, somebody, if this, if there is a standard set of instructions about how to do this, the next step is that somebody also needs to sell a little 3d printed plastic shell for it so you could have a little touch id thing on your desk and then third i'll say apple just sell a touch id yeah box just do it there's no way that whole

board that's connected to the Touch ID is what's needed for the Touch ID. That's for the whole keyboard. The majority of what's inside of the keyboard is battery. So Jason, I'm here to tell you today I purchased all of the requisite parts to do this.

Oh. So I will be following up on this maybe next week or the week after depending on when everything comes in because i needed a couple of extra things from i fix it uh like they have this thing called the eye opener which is a very clever product which basically you heat up and it will help you um remove the adhesive because there's a lot of adhesive uh in at least the the i fix it guide is for a previous version of the Magic Keyboard. I don't know if that's changed.

Like this one, the iFixit guide that is linked is the prior version. So they may have made some changes, but Chaos T said to someone who asked, just follow this guide and it's everything that you need. So my plan is multiple stages. One is to extract it and make sure it works and then i'm going to try and source something to put it in and then just have it sitting on my desk so yeah i thought this could be a fun little project i might stream it i might

actually stream the process but it depends when everything comes in uh the keyboard is on the way but now i will wait for the ifixit parts to to ship. Yeah, I just feel like what I would want out of it was something that was more like the, because Chaos T has a whole back plate that the lightning goes into, and that's nice, but it also has the board like right there on top. I don't like that. I don't like that. I want a little rectangle yeah i want a little rectangle with that one button on it and that's that's it so i had this will be

a process but i have begun that process because this seems like a fun project to try and make work sure what you can't do is like just take a chainsaw and cut off the button that won't work you have to disconnect you have to do some some serious surgery and disconnect all of the other keys, leaving you only with the Touch ID. I think it would be fun. It's a cool idea. Yeah, it's a cool idea. I'm very happy with my Touch ID button under the desk. It's fun.

the desk it it um it's fun i had uh i was using the one password beta and they they have support for uh ssh keys in one password which seemed great except then suddenly i had to authenticate every time i was connecting to my server whereas i just had those like i had those keys it's it's fine i had to like comment those keys out and anyway anyway, I undid that. But in the run of the mill, kind of like I need you to authenticate to be able to just put my finger right under my desk and it gets done is pretty great. And it's kind of like a little magic trick. However, when I look at the underside of my desk, when I'm doing something else down there, I just laugh because there's a whole keyboard. And if I do overshoot a little bit, then a couple extra letters get typed, which is silly. It's silly.

So, yeah, I don't know what I'll do with this, but I want to give it a go. This seemed like a fun enough project to at least try. Yeah. Yeah, you should definitely try it. And like I said, whatever you end up doing for an enclosure, I think that'll be interesting too because it would be nice once it's once you know what it is as a functional little tiny thing would be to figure out how could you mount that in a way that is is uh is nice this episode of upgrade is brought to you by trade when you become a trade coffee customer you can enjoy knowing that you have the freshest

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for $30 off our thanks to trade for their support of this show and RelayFM. WWDC has been announced June 6th to 9th. I guess I pre-announced it when I said that it was happening the week that my son

is graduating from high school, but yes. Everybody else needed that context, right? I said that it was happening the week that my son is graduating from high school but yes everybody else needed that context right once again it is the last week of school for for my children and it is also WWDC kind of expected first full week of June as is tradition it is in essence a fully online affair but Apple are going to be well I mean not really I mean kind of sure there is going to be a well, I mean, not really. I mean, kind of, sure. There is going to be a small, I think, very small event for developers at Apple Park to watch the keynote in State of the Union. I was listening to you guys talk about this on Connected last week, and I thought it was interesting because you were kind of approaching it with the, like it was a small event, and

are you going to apply to be there and all of that? And I thought to myself, I think that's the wrong way to look at this. This is a PR opportunity opportunity is what this is. Apple is going to do a PR opportunity where they're going to showcase off certain developers and students, right. And like, have it be, you know, again, cause it's going to be such a small group that it is really not, I don't think they're going to even calculate in like the people who are going to get invited that are vips uh like very important or vits very important developers will be invited because they want to you know politically they want to they want to show their appreciation for those developers but i think in the end this the way i read it is it's basically um spectacle and you know apple will use it to show like look at our

great students that we've got and look at our great developers in a way but it's it's really irrelevant to the event i think it's just a little sort of side show i do wonder i've seen some people say media as well i'm unclear on that we're going to talk about mark german's report in a bit but but mark specifically says media as if it's a thing uh i expect it is in apple's plan to invite at least some media for the same reason some developers will be i think as you say outrightly invited just for the meetings that some people at apple would like to have with them afterwards and it's just a great way to bring them in. I expect at least some media will be invited so there can be some in-person conversations and briefings that happen afterwards

would be my expectation. That's possible. My reluctance is that I wonder if it's going to end up being, like I said, a PR event where media will be invited, but what they're's going to end up being like i said a pr event where media will be invited but what they're really going to be invited there to do is like hear from the students or hear from the the apple handpicked developers well sure that's still like uh right there's a there's a there's a pr opportunity that they're looking to go for so they'll bring at least some media in i would yeah it's just it's interesting because because i that's something that i'm watching is are they going to be inviting media to cover wwdc keynote um and provide access to maybe some of the people who work at apple for briefings and things like that or are they

going to invite media there to feed them stories about the you know developers because the inspirational developers that are there, right? Because that's different, right? If you're covering, are you covering the event, or are you, or sorry, let me rephrase that. Are you covering WWDC keynote and State of the Union, or are you there to cover people in Apple Park watching the keynote in the State of the Union? I think that would be one of my questions, if media is invited at all. It's different if they're fishing for little public interest stories about inspirational stories about this great developer or something like that.

That's a different kind of PR technique than saying, we're inviting some members of the media to watch the event either in Apple Park campus, or maybe they send the media to watch the event either in Apple Park campus or maybe they send the media to the Steve Jobs Theater. I don't know. It's an interesting wrinkle, my guess at this point. My gut feeling is that it's kind of more a, I don't want to call it a stunt, but kind of a PR stunt, right? It's more for show to say we're slowly opening up and we're going to have a watch party, but it's still going to be online. That said, it's not that far off from the thing that I've been saying all along, which is that of the union presentation or maybe not, but something that some live aspect, but it doesn't kick off an event. Uh, that's in the real world. It just kicks off the week of videos.

Yeah. I imagine that too. The weeks of week of videos and online labs. Yeah, and it lets them have people there to talk to and to do briefings and to do all of that stuff. It lets them have that, but it's not the let's get thousands of developers kind of thing ever again. We're going to dig into this more in a minute, but there is a possibility of hardware at WWDC, which could be a reason to bring some media in if they maybe want to do some kind of limited hands-on, work wwc which could be a reason to bring some media in if they maybe want to do some kind of limited hands-on which would also allow them to start the potential drive run of an iphone event

a headset event later on in the year as well right because because we figure at some point they're going to have some very important hardware yes that's vih just adding all the very importance this time it's a very important podcast. VIP. See? They're going to do that, right? They're going to do. If it's all humanly possible, they're going to do an in-person event because they're going to have hardware that they really want the press to get their hands on. I guess we don't know what will happen with COVID levels. I would imagine it's going to be one of those things where everybody is going to have to be vaccinated and probably pass a test in order to do but they could do that and they will still be able to put on that event so i i think they're going to want i think you you make a good point that in some ways this

is a little bit of a test case a little bit of a dry run could be right so to to dig into this a little bit more uh well i guess we're in the room around up uh sheriff mark german is reporting original plans for this wwdc were to be the unveiling of the apple headset but that's likely been pushed though ios 16 understandably is full of references to it currently is what mark has been told but that's like like, of course, I mean, it's only internal. And the expectation is that this headset will be released during the iOS 16 cycle. And we also expect the headset to be very intertwined with the phone. So all of this stuff makes perfect sense and is all pointing towards what we would expect. The challenge that they have is the gap between um giving developers information about the product and

the release of the product yeah and it's and they do everything on an os cycle based on september and so it's it's tough for them to like i think announcing the existence of the headset at WWDC with a reality-based OS kind of component to it is the ideal situation. And Mark Gurman saying that's what they were shooting for, but they probably won't make it. make it so the fallback to me the fallback is they could do it at any time during the summer or they could really do it at the same event as the iphone unveiling i think i think do it at the iphone and it doesn't ship for a few months so what you say is you've got the whole world watching the whole world watches you say ios 16 is here and uh what there's also this other thing in developers it's based on what you've been working on all summer with ios and given that it's an open iOS 16 is here. And what? There's also this other thing in developers. It's based on what you've been working on all summer with iOS.

And given that it's an open secret, it also allows Apple, and I know we've talked about this before, but like the existence of all of its existing AR and VR stuff allows Apple to just matter of factly state, iOS 16 has all of this new stuff for virtual reality and augmented reality. And even potentially a way to test it using existing off-the-shelf hardware from other companies and just say, yeah, this is a thing we're doing. And not say a word about the fact that there's going to be hardware on the other end of it. It's just like, no, you can try this stuff out. And everybody knows why. They don't have to say why. Everybody knows why. And it frees them to make that actual announcement later and still give a few months buffer before the software has to be ready.

So, yeah, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if they did basically acknowledge here we are working on a product or even do a sneak peek with very high level stuff and say it's in the os you can and uh and we'll provide more details you know later but um that's not what i would pick as the most likely scenario i think the scenario where they announce it in september is the is the most likely and and and and you know soft pedal it in in June and be like, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of ER and AR stuff in here. Strongly implied, but not stated outright, which they can do. Because, again, they're not fooling anybody, right?

They're just not ready to talk about it yet. But they could talk about all the juicy APIsis that are in the new os's without actually announcing the product and and i think that's the best way to do it they could go a long way right they could go a long way to we've got this new ar stuff and never need to talk about reality os or whatever they're going to call it right exactly because every single year they spend a significant portion of wwdc talking about the updates. Like it's a thing. Yeah. And so they can just say, hey, we've got all this new stuff.

You know, it can be like, you remember one of the classics I always think of is size classes on iPad or what was iOS for iPad, you know? Like, oh, apps should be able to adapt their size. And then everyone would say, well, obviously they are trying to have multitasking on the iPad. It's like one of the classic ones where it's like they will telegraph something to you a year in advance or months in advance

because they've got this thing coming down the line. iOS 16 is also set to include updates to notifications and new health tracking features, says Mark Gurman. i don't really know what this means honestly like i don't know what the iphone will be doing for health tracking mark does say watch i was nine is also expected to get new health focus features um i can believe that but i don't know what that means with no new sensors um hazy hazy and again this is notifications updates like okay i

mean i hoped so because focus right needs more effort put on it who among us would not say that trying to make notifications better in ios would not be admirable but i'm really genuinely really happy about this because i was like oh they put this new system in it will be the old apple way it's be two years before they touch it again. Right. But my hope will be that they deal with this stuff, the notifications, focus mode, time sensitive, summaries, all good stuff, but needs more.

And so I'm pleased that they're going to keep doing that. iPadOS 16 is expected to have yet another redesign of multitasking. So that's really all he says, is it's another redesign of multitasking so that's all i mean that's really all he says is it's another redesign of multitasking i think and i know federico had lots of feelings about this we're gonna talk about unconnected i'm sure so what i'll say i'll just throw this in here before you know what you think before you uh get to connected um i enjoy listening to connected i listen to connected um live when i run and then i also listen like when i get i get

home and it's always very funny because you start talking about me while i'm taking a shower and i can't even text you to to to dispute your claims about me it's very scary you know it's it's very fun to shout out i i enjoy that podcast a lot so anyway um what i would say is it's a it's a it's a report from mark german so he's getting this sort of like described to him and not in any detail. It's just like there's multitasking stuff in there. And my immediate thought is this is external display support and potentially support for a larger screened iPad. And after what they did last year, I have a hard time believing that they will truly redesign multitasking because the new system that they put in place last year, and Federico's pointed this out, it's a new way of doing what has already been possible. It wasn't adding features to multitasking.

It was changing the way you did those features. It made it clearer in some ways. It made it more obscure and complicated in others, but the basics of it is a bit more simple. Right. But I always read the iPadOS 15 updates as being laying the foundation for more complex multitasking. That what they were really doing was building a new system of multitasking interface because they knew multitasking was going to get more complicated down the road and they they needed to start from a different metaphor if they were going to do that they needed to start putting some visual buttons in right because now you're going to get maybe four corners and all that kind of stuff right because they've got the little sf uh symbol elements for tiling and stuff like that like and on the little dots at the top of a window.

And they've got the multi-window concept in their little dock and all of that. Like they have been moving in this direction. So when I read the Mark Gurman report, my, and I am wishcasting a little bit, but my take on that is that what this probably means is that they're now going, using this new sort of system that they set out in iPadOS 15.

This is when they push it forward and say, okay, you can do more now. You can do a grid or tiles or you can put different apps in different places on the screen. And we're going to open up the external display thing so that it's actually usable because it's not just that it's dumb that you can attach an iPad to a studio display and it shows pillar boxed and upscaled what's on the screen of the iPad. But even if the iPad were able to use the full 5K to display something that's not on the screen with the existing multitasking, it would be really dumb because you're very limited. You basically would have split view, and that's all you would have. For a larger display, you need to be able to tile more apps and have more control over where your apps go. Even if it's not full-on Mac Windows, you would still need more control than you

currently have. So you can't just do external display support without adding better, more flexible multitasking support. So I choose to read this rumor as being that we're finally going to get some form of advanced multi-window multitasking in some form and probably external display support too, especially now that Apple is actually selling its own semi-reasonably priced external display. It could, if you want to roll your eyes at this, you could say they're just going to redesign the same thing for the ninth time. And it's like, how many times are they going to try to do this before realizing they're not going to make multitasking happen uh but i

choose to believe that this is actually part of the plan that started with ios 15 and is going or ipad os 15 and and that they're going to advance now that they've redefined it now they're going to advance it that's what i choose to believe okay I'm definitely in a fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice kind of situation when it comes to iPad multitasking. Oh, I get it. I get it. And I've been there too, but I'm reminded of some of our drafts where we've done that and been like, yeah, I'm not going to pick the Apple external display. That's not going to happen. I've picked it too many times and then it happens, right? Sometimes Apple fools you so many times that you really just have to give up, but then sometimes they come through with the thing that you've been waiting for just way later than you thought. They wait until the moment you give up and then give it to you.

Well, the release of the studio display I do think is almost a necessary thing for external display support on the iPad. I feel like it was almost a requirement that Apple have a reasonable iPad external display that they could use because I could never really envision them saying, hey, we did iPad external display support and here's this LG monitor, right? Like I couldn't, or here's the pro display XDR. I couldn't see that, but I can see it now. But yeah, I think everybody, now that I've gotten your hopes up, don't get your hopes now. But yeah, I think everybody, now that I've gotten your hopes up, don't get your hopes up, right? Like, I think everybody needs to keep, be level-headed about this because this might be it, but it hasn't been so far. So, you know, the pessimists are always, they're either right or they're, or it exceeded their expectations. That's the advantage of being

a pessimist, I guess. So everybody pick their poison, but I'm choosing to be optimistic about this. I feel like they're in exactly the right place to finally do this. Yeah, I will say I'm going along and I agree with what you just said about the, you couldn't imagine them saying, hey, we've got this new display support,

get an XDR, right? However, they did do that for the Mac for a long time. Yeah. Right? Even like the Mac Mini, which it needed a display, and they had no problem then saying, get this one, you know, or some other display. But what I'm saying, I just wanted to make that point.

However, I do agree with what you're saying about it would have been kind of weird to add display support to another device, but yet not have a display to give you. Not a good story, right? Apple likes their stories. Yeah, it doesn't tie up. Where the other products, they're legacy, really. You know what I mean? All this stuff has been around before, and at least with every other, well, at least with all the laptops, it's like you can if you want to, but you don't need to. The Mac Pro was like, well, what else are you going to attach your million-dollar computer to?

You know what I mean? The Mac Mini was the outlier. And for the Mac Mini being the quote-unquote cheaper Mac, you could say get this ultra-fine, right? The stories were, whilst a little disjointed, you could make them. And with the iPad, it would be a bit weird. Like, hey, this beautiful display you have on your iPad Pro, hook it up to a less great, you know what I mean?

We'll hook it up to a worse display, but it's bigger. And there are some rumors about a larger iPad. And I feel like this fits that too. When hasn't there been though? Are there actually rumors? Are there rumors? Or are they just just people thinking? Just wishes?

Yeah. I thought that there was a report from someone, and I don't know if it was Mark Gurman or Ming-Chi Kuo, who said that Apple is considering, at least considering, a larger iPad. Yeah, but that comes in and out. Anyway, it is not a question of can they do it. It is a question of do they want to do it. And that's the most frustrating kind of thing for um guessing what apple is going to do is um i can we can all

look at the existing hardware and even the existing software and interfaces and where they are and gauge like oh this isn't going to happen they're not ready um it's different when they're all of it is poised right like it's right on the edge of being possible and then it just becomes does Apple want to do this? do they have the will to do this? and that part is very hard to tell

because it's like where is their head right now? and I think if there's anything that you could get from listening to Federico talk about the iPad unconnected the last few months it's that the iPad is in a bit of a precarious situation where we're not really sure what Apple thinks of the iPad. It goes back to that report card where David Sparks pointed out that he had to basically give up trying to make the iPad be a thing that Apple clearly doesn't think it is. And I think that this is the question is just because the iPad

has been moving in this direction for a while doesn't mean Apple's going to take it the rest of the way. Apple might say, we're fine. We're not going to do that anymore and change its mind. And as much as we applaud the fact that five years ago, Apple got a bunch of people around the table and said, we've changed our mind about the Mac and they'll never admit they changed their mind. It's like, no, no, no. we're always committed, but we're extra committed now. They can change their mind the other way too and say, yeah, we've worked a lot on, you know, keyboard and mouse support for iPadOS and multitasking and all that, but we're not going to push it further.

We've chosen not to do that. And I would be sad about that but uh they might do it now move on to hardware i want to read what i think is a really weird uh paragraph from this came from mark german's power on newsletter which is great but this isn't this is this is weird to me and it goes back to when we talk about like what are the sources right sources, right? This is a quote from Mark Cummins. I'm told there are two new Macs coming around the middle of the year or early in the second half. One of those is likely to be the new MacBook Air.

Other models in the works include an updated Mac Mini and 24-inch iMac, as well as a low-end MacBook Pro to replace the aging 13-inch model. And let's not forget that the new Mac Pro and iMac Pro models are in development. Okay. Now, what that tells you is Mark has a source that tells him one thing, but cannot tell him the other one. And I find that fascinating. Yeah, two Mac models, MacBook Air, and something else.

MacBook Air and every other possible Mac it could be. And then here's a list including things that i've said will be you know pretty far out but i'm gonna include them here too i look at that and think one it's fascinating because yes his sources have only been able to provide him with one product that seems likely although he feels like the two models are likely he can't name the second model which is fascinating and then when he lists all of them I think that's partially like pick from this list partially to make it seem you know like less of a ripoff that he doesn't name the second one and partially as defensive writing because

everybody's gonna come back and say oh but what about this and what about this and what about this so he literally listed them all and said yes I'm aware about all the macs that i've said in my own reporting are coming out don't ask me i don't know i've listed them all as possibilities where the conventional wisdom would tell you the mac pro would be the most likely to be shown off at all right like that's what we would say if we were just going to guess i was going to make a guess like oh which mac do you think could be shown at wwc well i'll give you mac pro for two reasons one it's literally when they always do it and it makes the most sense because it's the audience that cares the most even if they're not in the room they're just the audience that cares the most two they've already said it's coming right which they Which they never do. They never do that. And so that seems the most likely to me that it gets,

because as well, I'll give you reason three. The Mac Pro is maybe the only product they have in their lineup where they could tell you about it six months in advance and it doesn't make an ounce of difference. Exactly. Yeah, I think it's also unclear, like, what is the introduction of two new Mac models be? Because I think personally they could tease the Mac pro and not introduce it.

Right. Like they could tease it, but it's like, and it's coming later. Right. As they've done for Mac pros in the past, it's coming later this year. And,

and here's a little tease about what it's going to be like, and we'll give you more information later. And then we spend six months wondering, parsing all the limited information they've given us wondering what it's actually going to be like until they are ready to unveil it so it's entirely possible they'll do that and unveil two new mac models and you know in the moment my my gut feeling is since the macbook air is rumored to be an m2 that maybe they will replace that 13-inch MacBook Pro with whatever the new one of that is because it allows them to tell a complete laptop story by sweeping out those two original M1

laptops and replacing them. Then they'll have the MacBook Pros and they'll have those two laptops. And we've speculated here, maybe they're not MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Maybe they're MacBook and MacBook Air. And the MacBook Air is the version that is emphasizing thinness and lightness. And then that 13-inch MacBook Pro becomes a MacBook. It doesn't have the touch bar. It's something that is more affordable than a MacBook Pro, but beefier and more capable than a MacBook Air. And it lives in the middle and maybe even has things like an, I don't know, but that would be like an M2 as well.

That's my gut feeling of the most straightforward thing. However, some of the reports I've seen are wild, right? Like the idea that they might turn over the iMac and the Mac mini to the M2 soon like and this is the question is if M2 is shipping in volume this summer they could turn over all the M1 Macs especially if they're not redesigning them and there's questions about if they're going to redesign the Mac mini, but they're, they're certainly not going to redesign the 24 inch iMac. So they could just say new colors M2 and make an announcement about that at any point. So that's, that's we, and we haven't seen that second turn of the wheel of the, the new M series cycle. So we don't know. But if I had to guess,

it would be those two laptops, I think. My guess is it's the Mac Pro. And they talk about the fact this is the last M1 machine and saying we are introducing the first M2 machine today. And it's the MacBook Air. And it's the MacBook Air.

And I actually think that the update to the MacBook Pro is a footnote at the end of the macbook air announcement like that they say we are also today bringing this new m2 chip to the macbook pro which we are now calling the macbook and like because it's not in my opinion whatever they do to it worthy of that much time i i think i don't know i think they will because i think they're going to remove the touch bar right and they're going to simplify that computer. But like that could be done in a minute. No, but imagine, well, yes, but imagine just spitballing here, knowing how Apple's rollouts

work. I think what you do is you say, and we're introducing, you know, John Ternus is there. What color is his shirt? He's like, ah, the M2. And here are the things we've changed to take it even further than those M1 chips that blew you away two years ago. And we're putting it, now let me tell you, or now let JAWS tell you, or whoever, about the new computer, right? And you cut to the person who's going to tell you about the new computer. They say, well, here we are. It's the new MacBook. And people are like, okay. And it turns out, oh, well, I see what they're doing. They're taking the 13-inch MacBook Pro. They've redefined it. They're calling the new MacBook.

That's not that exciting. And they're like, aha, but wait, there's also a new MacBook Air and colors. And oh, my God, I can see the universe. It's all in color. It's amazing. That's how they would do it, right? They'd start with a boring one and say, oh, look, we made this product that made no sense. Makes sense.

Isn't that nice? But wait. And then they blow your mind with whatever the new MacBook Air is. That would be how they would do it. If I were marketing inside Apple, that's how I would do it. And so you mentioned that first thing,

but it's really a setup for the second thing. Lots of ways they could do it. Okay, I can see that. But I just don't even know if there's a time for it. But I do think- I don't know. The there's a time for it. But I do think... I don't know. The MacBook Air at least seems like the most... Of everything else other than the Mac Pro,

it seems a lot to me personally. Everything else, the MacBook Air seems like the most likely because, I mean, that was originally what rumored to be September of last year. But we were going to get that MacBook Air. But I remain very excited about that macbook air well i think there's a strong argument to be made that that it doesn't make sense that any of this hardware get announced at the developer conference other than the mac pro

yeah since the macbook pro is already out there but your point is i think the relevant one which is i think they've been trying to introduce the macbook air for a while now if the reports are true and they they have been frustrated and it the MacBook Air for a while now, if the reports are true. And they have been frustrated and it's gotten pushed back from their internal timelines. And it's one of those things that, you know, you say, well, why now? And the answer is because we have it now. And it's like, is it relevant to WWDC? No, but we...

But they don't have enough for a whole other event, right? They don't want to do an event just for that when they've got WWDC on the horizon. And the MacBook Air is incredibly popular, right? Like, so just get it. The moment that you can sell it, start selling it. So yeah, well, I'm excited. We're two months away. This episode is brought to you by Electric.

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and RelayFM. Take me out to the ball game, Jason Snell. Yes, yes. One day, I will. We've done it before. We've been to a minor league game in Memphis. I would like to go to a major league game with you. I have been to a major league game.

I saw the Mets play someone once. I don't remember who. But I did it. I went out to, what is the name of their field? City Field, probably. Yeah, I went out to City Field. They had great food there. It was a really good day.

It was very hot, but it was a good day. I went out in August one year with some friends. Well, get out here, and I'll take you to the Giants game. I would love to go to the giants game roll out the baseballs and have some uh have some baseball park food and i can tell you how baseball works well why don't you tell me how baseball works on apple tv plus okay yes here we are apple is now a baseball broadcaster it happened on Friday. Two games, because that's the idea here. They're going to, Friday Night Baseball, it's two games.

They broadcast not just nationally, but internationally. There are people tweeting about it in like the UK. And it's Saturday baseball for Australia. And it's in Japan and Korea as well. And several other markets. It's kind of all over the place uh which is cool um it's obviously produced by major league baseball and the mlb network which is the you know baseball owned cable channel and they are producing these shows right apple didn't go out

and hire announcers and hire uh camera people and hire producers, right? This deal included Apple, you know, as either part of what Apple's paying here is paying for the services for MLB Network to produce the show for them. It's branded as Apple, but it's produced by MLB Network. And we also got the answer in some of the coverage to the fact that these these announcing teams and they have three announcers in the booth and a field announcer and it sounds like they're going to be the announcing teams that apple uses for the whole year we'll see but it looks like they're going to try to keep the teams together these crews and have them go to different parks and comment on different games but that would be good i think because it would allow them to work together and build up a rapport because he got you got the sense from this that it was the first time

that they that they had worked together um and so yeah the truth is a lot of what we saw on friday night was very conventional uh things you would see on sports tv and i know there were the comments i saw on twitter from people who i think maybe don't usually watch, uh, today's sports broadcasts and therefore don't know what the current, like what it's like. Um, you know, it had a, it had a, they were so conventional in terms of the broadcast that, yeah. So the pregame show had a sponsor and had commercials. Um, the actual game also had commercials and. And yeah, there were Apple TV Plus ads, which I expected, but also a lot of super just whatever ads were sold by MLB Network, essentially. There was a Subway ad at one point, NFT ads. There was an ad for CDW featuring

Microsoft Surface that made me laugh. That was hilarious. Apple TV Plus featuring Microsoft Surface. There was a Hey Siri ad during the broadcast, but Apple does those ads. Sorry, Ahoy Telephone. Apple does Ahoy Telephone ads during regular sports broadcasts. That's not an Apple specific thing. So what was different, at least in week one, and keeping in mind, this is week one, all the type was in San Francisco. San Francisco font, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it was design, Apple's design style. It was all using variants of San Francisco. For those who care about little sports graphics stuff, which I do, the score bug I thought was pretty good. They have three dots for the outs

and then fill them in as the outs are gotten. Some people like two dots for the outs. It's dumb. There are three outs in an inning. You should show three of the object. Don't at me. And I wish, what I think was missing from it

is I wish it displayed the pitcher and not just the pitch count because they show how many pitches, but they didn't say who's pitching, which I think is just a nice thing that some broadcasts add that I think would be nice. What was interesting is they don't have hitter information up there because they put the hitter information in the lower right corner. And although that took some getting used to, I think that there were some advantages to it. There was always kind of hitter and situational information in the lower right. I thought the type was maybe a little too light.

It was a little too hard to notice that it was there. They used a bunch of advanced statistics, which was fun. But they were also a little bit silly. Like they would put up, this player has a 42.44% chance of driving in a run which like guys just say 42 percent like it's the the the decimal percentages don't make it seem more scientific they make it seem um silly so i i think they could i think they could simplify that a little bit um and i also think that down in the little hitter area, another thing that's missing is as the game progresses,

what has that hitter done today? And I know they sometimes would put up a graphic and then take it back down, but it's like, I actually really like the sports broadcast that when the hitter's batting, it says this guy was two for four with two runs batted in, or that he got a hit in the third inning or hit a home run in the fourth inning. I would really like some kind of constant information about the batter and not just their kind of advanced stats and percentages.

So that's a critique that I have. I think there's some work that they could do there. I appreciate what they're trying. It's a different kind of feel, but I would like a little more situational stuff. If we're talking about stuff that's on the screen the whole time, I would like status of the batter and what the batter had done either in the game or what his stats are for the season. Big thing is though, like I mentioned, it's a full-on national broadcast team. It feels like Apple is paying to make this feel special, even though it's just a couple of

regular season games plucked off the schedule on a friday night they put the three people in the booth that is a very kind of playoff sunday night baseball on espn kind of like we spared no expense three people in the booth and a sideline reporter um so it feels special and there were way more cameras in use than a normal game i think because as you know mike there's usually a home and away broadcast separately for a game. But of course, Apple has the exclusive. And that means there's more crew and more cameras. And I think that that's what they're doing.

I think they are actually using the local crew for the home and away crews, putting them together and shooting with more cameras. And it felt more special and they also boasted in their press release that they're gonna try to bring like their super high resolution camera which lets them zoom in really clearly and their super uh speed camera that lets them do um super slow-mo uh and they're gonna bring that to to select games as well so they're trying to make it feel special in a lot of ways. Even

though it's an MLB network production, it's an MLB network production where Apple has put extra money in and said, no, no, no, make it special. Don't make it a cut rate broadcast. Make it feel like an event, like it's better than what you're going to see on your local broadcast in terms of the quality. And I will say, speaking of the quality, the quality of the video was very good. A lot of people commented about how good it looked and it really did look good. I don't know how much of that is Apple saying, yes, quality is our watchword and how much of that is how bad the signal path is from the local cable channel that's broadcasting it to your cable or satellite provider to you, where it's getting compressed and recompressed and down-resed,

and who knows what else is happening by the time it reaches you. Whereas this is just straight up coming from Apple's CDN, Apple's stream partners, wherever they are. And as a result, it felt really good. It looked good. it was it was uh it looked good it was high resolution i don't know if it was 4k it might have just been 1080 but like on one level it didn't matter it looked good because the bit rate and and a lack of recompression um i just thought it looked great and i think most people did so those are the those are the positives about it i do want to say on the, because you mentioned the ads, my belief is that internationally there were no ads, right?

No, internationally there was just a card that said be right back, basically. Yeah. And they didn't see the ads, which I think is because MLB Network only sold those. their existing ad deals and rolled it in. And those deals are for the US or maybe for North America or US and Canada, maybe. And so they just rolled those in. And that is one of my complaints, actually. One of my big complaints is where I thought that this wasn't very good, it was because it felt like it was something taken from MLB Network stock and brought over. And it's possible that this deal came together late enough that there was only so much that Apple could ask them to change up front, to customize for them. Because this is like a white label version of a baseball game. So they have to customize it.

And Apple's like, okay, San Francisco. In fact, I would love to know the story sometime my guess is that somebody at apple designed the graphics and then handed them to mlb it's either that or somebody at mlb was told here's the san francisco font family um make this look like an apple thing but either way um somebody tried to make like what is the most apple-like version of uh baseball graphics that we could do and they have rounded rectangles and it's all i feel like apple made those i i i feel like that's got to have come from them i don't know because i don't know if there's anybody at apple who is aware of you know who's a designer who is qualified for that but yes i think at the

very least it was a collaboration right it was a collaboration of some sort between somebody at mlb network and apple in terms of the graphics and they look pretty good but but yeah all my disappointments are about stuff that feels like it was just brought over without a whole lot of thinking from mlb network the ads are number one here's my question for you about this ads thing because i'm i'm intrigued and kind of a bit surprised by it. Currently, Friday Night Baseball is free. Eventually, it won't be. It's going to be part of Apple TV+.

That is, yes. Eventually. We don't know when. We don't know if this whole season. They've only, they released the schedule for the first half of the season and said,

these will all be free. We don't know whether the rest of the season will be free or if that's the moment when they'll lower the paywall back. We just don't know. Because they could just say, this is a great loss leader for us

to get people on Apple TV's platforms. And so we're going to... And it blunts some of the criticism of like, what do you mean I need another streaming service? If you can say, no, no, no, it's free's free it's free you don't have to pay for another streaming service so will they go the whole year or will they drop it but at some point they will drop it they've said at some point they will drop it and you will need to pay to see friday night baseball and then are they going to keep putting ads in the broadcast? Because that doesn't feel right to me.

Right, right. I mean, there's another argument to be made about whether ultimately Apple might even offer something like you can watch them for free with ads, but subscribers get it without the ads or something like that. I feel like if they're going to do that, though, they want to be in charge of the advertising, right? Yeah, so this is one of those things that I don't know what Apple's philosophy is,

and it may be that it's written into the contract, they're like, OK, MLB. Yes, you're going to you're going to sell the ads and you're going to put the ads in. And it's it's fine. It announcers have that time to go to the bathroom. And like, there's so many things. And what do you do if you have to fill all that time? It would be a very different kind of broadcast. Doesn't mean you can't do it. I know Facebook definitely tried it when Facebook had some exclusive games the last few years. You can do a different kind of thing. Maybe that's who your sideline reporter does their human interest story about a player is in the inning breaks. Or they interview somebody who's on the bench or something like that. Like, there are ways to do it.

This broadcast, at least week one, does not attempt any of those. And those are the things that I really could complain about is it's far, for my money, far too conventional, a baseball broadcast. Like, it's reassuring in one way. It's just like, oh, I've seen this before. But honestly, Friday Night Baseball, I feel like what Apple wants to happen is for people to feel like it's not what they've seen before and that it's a cut above. And in some ways it is. They are stacked announcer groups, right? Four announcers, essentially. Three in the booth and a sideline reporter, all those cameras. It looks great. They got all the custom graphics and then they roll an ad for subway. Right. And it's like,

okay, what are you doing here? Um, the, the coming on the air for the pregame show and, you know, studio pregame shows are not my thing. I think they're all kind of bad. Um, the, their pregame studio show was bad. Like i didn't think the host interaction seemed kind of forced they were yelling it's all pretty much stock for a pre-game show i just hate those but it was also sponsored by a betting company and i thought well that's kind of crappy um and it was in the content so it's like sponsored by the betting company okay that's great and then they rolled the ads and that was kind of crappy and then the actual game had a sponsor it was presented by uh some q i think which is like a health thing i don't know it wasn't eddie q but uh but it was it was something like that and i thought

um i don't know i'm not one of these people who's like oh i don't want ads keep the ads away from me like i get it my issue isn't the ads my issue is just like you know what my question and we spend so much time thinking and talking about this company right they are incredibly particular the idea of them giving control to mlb at all is is not surprised it's surprising in a way but i understand it right that like they they want to at least have people that know how to make this content make it oh yeah but the idea that they would allow for ads for companies that they're not having any approval over or whatever to be inserted into something that's going on their streaming service it just goes against what i would have imagined and that and that's why i say i think it's expediency unless it was like a deal

breaker in their contract with mlb but it feels to me like expediency. It feels to me like Apple probably had a bunch of things that they wanted to ask for. And MLB Network was like, guys, we got to do this in three weeks. We can't. We can't. What we need to watch over the life of this season is what did they adjust? Because like, yeah, to me, if I were the, again, I'm not, but if I were the Apple executive who is in charge of the MLB relationship, I would be unhappy that the first thing that went on my live stream was bed MGM presents the pregame show for Apple Monday, Friday night baseball, like, and like, I know I'll say for the people who, who don't know, who haven't watched American sports broadcast recently, betting stuff is everywhere.

The legalization of betting in some parts of the United States has led to a land grab for betting stuff. But the pregame show was sponsored by a casino. It had a whole segment where there was an expert telling you the odds of various things happening. And again, it used to be they would couch that stuff and they would just talk about what the possibilities were. And now they just say, here's the betting line.

So they've just all the mask has come off of some of this stuff that was always kind of betting related. But we pretended it was more just, I wonder what will happen instead of place your bets, everybody. And again, as an Apple executive, I would look at that and be like, you know, that makes me uncomfortable. I know that that works because there's so much money in the betting thing. But this is a brand building thing for us. I am frankly a little surprised. Not that there are ad breaks in the game because I think that it is part of the rhythm of the game.

I was surprised that it wasn't just an Apple TV ad for Slow Horses or something like that. Now, that ad was in there, but it was preceded by like three or four other ads that were just off of whatever MLB Network seems to have sold. And I don't know, if I could zero in on something that I think Apple could do a better job with, it's that stuff. It's like, use the inter-inning breaks for something other than running commercials because it differentiates your broadcast. And if it's pre-rolled videos or it's Apple TV promos or whatever, if it's something that's not just a bunch of cable ads,

because the cable ads really did not make it feel special. It did show off the image quality because the quality of the cable ads that they rolled in were terrible and the quality of the game was really high. So it showed us that, but like that would be something I would try to push and say, we need to be less regular here. And like, honestly, Apple, like whatever money you're getting kicked back to you by MLB rolling you into the BetMGM sponsorship of your show, just don't do it.

Just don't do it. It's muddying up your thing. And in the long run, if this is for your paid service, I just think it's unfortunate if you would junk this up when you're trying to stand out. So I wouldn't do that. By the way, they did have a crash. The stream died for about a minute. But I think that what we've learned in covering streaming is everybody who does their first live stream doesn't properly gauge what the demand will be at the peak, and they have a crash. It only lasted a minute, and then it was fine as far as I could tell the rest of the time. So, you know, they'll learn and they'll get better.

But I was not shocked that there was a moment where everything went down because that happens literally to everybody who tries it. Any like soccer or football or whatever has happened, everybody gets that moment where they're like, oh, we didn't realize that. Yeah, there's a lot of people watching live. Thought the announcers were good. Like I i said they haven't worked together before so they need time but i think they're gonna get it it sounds like they're going to be the crews for

the season a lot of people are complaining are they people like are they people that you know there are not people there are people who are in the game and around the game as broadcasters in some form but are not like this is not like um amazon hiring al michaels to do thursday night football this is sort of up-and-coming people they didn't like bring in some legend and everyone's they didn't bring in they didn't bring in the heroes they're they're the the announcers are not the headliners here right which i think might might be a part of this although i think part of it too is it's mlb network doing the hiring and um they're hiring people to do work for them including apple stuff like that's like like the lead announcer on the first game um she is she does tv work for the orioles but she also now is going to be the lead announcer for one of these games and she's going to do some studio work for mlb network so there's like they're her employer for that including this this stuff but i thought um

one of the criticisms that that um that she handled really well is about local announcers because uh mel melanie i forget her last name um she tweeted on friday and she said i i'm so happy that i'm going to be doing these friday night baseball games and working for mlb network and i told my mom and dad who are mets fans that i was doing the game tonight and their response was i'm sad that the usual guys aren't going to do it okay fair enough and and this is right? Like people love their local announcers. I'm a Giants fan. Over the weekend, you know, the season started, turn on the TV, Mike Kruko, Dwayne Kuyper,

their voices, so reassuring. Like it's, oh, now it's, it's not just the team. It's not just the logos. It's the announcers. People have a bond with our local announcers. And by doing an exclusive national and international broadcast that that there are no local tv broadcasters for that game you are boxing out the fans who like to hear their local people and so her tweet melanie's tweet was really good because she was like yeah even my parents are going to miss, um, Ron and, oh,

I forget who the other announcers anyway, they're going to, they're going to miss them. It's like, because of course they are. So, uh, I think that's a good criticism. I, I would, I know they're not going to do this, but part of me wants to say, you know, another way you could silence the criticism MLBs app lets you overlay the local radio call on the video. If you want to do that, it's kind of amazing, right? You can be like watching the local TV, but if you prefer the radio announcers, you can flip it over to the radio announcers and listen to them instead. And I thought, you know, I know you want your announcers to be at the fore, but one way you could blunt some of the criticism and say, look, if you're a fanatical Mets fan, you can turn on the Mets radio at least and hear somebody who's rooting for the Mets instead of trying to provide this national perspective, which is just sort of how these games, national, international, right?

These games are meant to broaden the appeal of baseball and reach people who are not just the fans of the two teams playing. And that means they need to tell stories you've already heard before and have more banter among the people in the booth. And people were complaining about it. Like, I agree that modern baseball broadcasts on things like ESPN have tended to become a podcast that is happening with a baseball game going on in the background. And there's definitely a level of that that's too

much. We're like, they don't even care what's happening. They're just having a conversation. They're bringing in guests to interview and stuff like that. At least they didn't do that on the Apple broadcast. You can go too far down that path, but they're not, if you're a Mets fan and you're watching that Mets Nationals game, they're not making it for you, right? They're not making it for you. They're making it for a broader audience. And you just, it's just like, if you watched, if your team was on Sunday Night Baseball or a Fox game of the week, or back in the day, the NBC game of the week,

like it wasn't your announcers and they weren't talking to you. They're talking to the broader audience. And that's just one of the truths of something like this is it's going to be like that. But I do, to take it back, whether they do the audio overlay or not, which I think would be fun and like kind of easy and just you're saying, look, if you really hate it, you can flip to your local audio. It would be a fun technological solution. And that's my other complaint, other than it all seems very generic.

And I know that this happened quickly, but that I think Apple needs to prod their producers to do better and make it more unique. And I think that the ad clutter is part of that. The other part of it is the technical side, which is, well, first off, you couldn't pause it on Apple TV, which is also true of Apple's live stream events, by the way, which is a little bit strange. Apple's live stream events, by the way, which is a little bit strange. But for a baseball game, say you get home and the game's been on for an hour, you want to start at the beginning of the game if you're a fan, and then go through the commercials and catch up eventually. You can't do that now. That seems like a mistake. They need to work on that technology. And then there's also nothing interactive going on. I talked about the graphics that are burned into the screen, but like this is a

digital broadcast. Everybody watching it is watching it on a computer device of some kind, right? I think they really need to look into ways to push that too. If I want to see different overlays, maybe I should be able to do that. If I want like the live stats overlay at the bottom, or if I want the crazy betting stuff, whatever, it would be fun if I had some options to do stuff like that. And currently it's a really vanilla live stream. So I hope that Apple pushes on the tech side.

I accept the fact that this deal has probably only been finalized for a few weeks and that they had to take a bunch of stuff off the shelf and and make their choices about what they were going to do but um in the long run i think whoever at apple is in charge of this and whoever at mlb network is in charge of producing it need to work together um and it depends on how much Apple as the client can demand changes and what's in the contract. But I think it was a good broadcast and I think it will improve. And it looks like they spent a lot of money on it. Look great. Lots of cameras.

Good announcers who are going to get better, even though they're not your favorite local announcers. But that's the one that I would put up there is it doesn't feel different enough. It feels disconcertingly like a generic MLB network broadcast at points. And I think that that's where Apple needs to push and say, okay, now that we've gotten to this point next week, we're going to do this to make it better. And, and, and some of that's on Apple, right? Apple's going to have to do some work on the live stream and see if you can start from the beginning in the TV app.

And if they want to do overlays, they've got to build that stuff in too. They've got to have a data stream for that. The MLB app has it, but Apple's TV app doesn't have it. So there's a lot for it to get better. But in the end, it wasn't a disaster. It was a professionally produced broadcast that looked good, but in the end, it wasn't a disaster. It was a professionally produced broadcast

that looked good, had lots of cameras, lots of announcers. There was a lot positive to be said, but I think it also, I hope very much that it is a starting point for them and not the end point for the whole season because that would be unfortunate. This episode is brought to you by Capital One.

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Capital One, what's in your wallet? Our thanks to Capital One for their support of this show and RelayFM. That's some hashtag ask upgrade questions to finish out today's episode. The first comes from Ryan. In the next five years, which do you think Apple is more likely to do to the Magic Mouse? A, a new industrial design

a la the new Apple remote. B, leave it exactly as it is right now. Or C, discontinue it altogether. More likely to do. And I'm going to go with B, leave it as it is. Only because I think that, how long has it already been out? It's been out forever. I think it's an inertia thing.

It's like, is there a new problem that they can solve i mean yeah undoing the charger on the bottom would be a great thing but like is there anybody inside apple i don't know i've met people who work on the input devices team uh they care about this stuff but i wonder if there is really a really will at apple to do a new hardware design for a mouse like it, I think the trackpad is favored by people at Apple. I think that they feel they need to offer a mouse, but are they really going to do it? Like if I had to pick most likely, I think status quo is most likely. I would love to see them redo it. I guess I don't care. I don't use a mouse. I literally don't care about this product,

but, um, I know that it is, uh, the butt of many jokes because of where you have to charge it. And it's a lightning port. And are they eventually going to move off the lightning port? But, you know, I don't know if I had to choose. And especially if I had to put money on it, I would go with inertia. I would go with B. Just nothing will change and it will be sold forever. What about you so i think a new industrial redesign is the least likely and then i'm trying to work out do i think leave it as is or just discontinue it now i think you gotta offer a mouse though i think they gotta offer people a mouse who want a mouse because people use mice i think they do because they buy a mouse but they

bundle it with they bundle it with with their computers see that's the trick if they didn't include a mouse or a trackpad or keyboard with their computers i think they could just kill it but they do they do include it but they could just say we give you a trackpad they could that's what we get i don't think i mean they could i i i think that they feel like they have to offer the mouse as an option, but, you know, yeah, they could. They could be like, no, mice are old school. We are all about the trackpad now.

Because they really are all about the trackpad, right? Yes. They really are. And I will just say, if you have a Mac and have never used a trackpad, do yourself a favor, especially if you're using the Magic Mouse. Now, look, i don't care about the charging right whatever and i'm sure that the the track the magic mouse is good because it has some of the gesture support built in but that magic mouse is an absolute travesty of ergonomics

it is terrible uh i i don't understand how people use it in long term, because it is just not a comfortable thing to hold in your hand. You want something that can be more molded. I think that, you know, my pick of it is the previously mentioned Logitech MX Master 3. That's my favorite mouse. I have a bunch of them. I use them. I've been using it for years. But yeah, I think maybe if I had to put money on it like you, I would say they're just going to leave it. But I would also say it's very close to me. My gut says that they would just get rid of it. But I do think you can't bet against inertia sometimes.

Yeah. We're up in the sky today. We're in the conceptual land. We have another question from Tony. Tony wants, what is the next mistake on the level of killing the Mac Pro that you could see Apple making with the Apple

Silicon processor transition? Now, I'll give a bit more context in case this didn't make complete sense. So if you remember, towards the end of the Intel era, they just, I think, it was like the five-year anniversary of this. We'll just talk about it in Connected. This is when Apple had kind of made their decision

that they were going to be getting rid of the Mac Pro replacing it with the iMac Pro right then realized people were very unhappy in general at the moment and then so at the same time said hey we're making this iMac Pro which was very clearly the replacement but also we're going to make a new Mac Pro and like this was like a clearly a decision that they had made

that set a course of action that when they reverted that transition like that so that that course of action we got to where we are now so it's like a pretty pivotal point so can you imagine do you have any kind of thought on what a huge mistake or a mistake that they could make during the apple silicon era that could cause this kind of going off the rails yeah my i mean it's hard to imagine something as far off the rails as what they were right especially considering they'd already done it right like? Like, it's going to be in recent memory. Because I could make a ridiculous thing that they won't do, but if they did it, it would be on this level, right?

And so that would be something like, they decide that their new laptops are going to have a second screen where the keyboard was, and it's going to be a touchscreen. Right, yeah. And it will be a keyboard, but it can be other stuff too, and it's going to be a touch screen right it will be a keyboard but it can be other stuff too and it's going to be like this great foldable design and there are no physical keys on it and that would be on the level of what they did not with the killing of the mac pro but

with the butterfly keyboard right but i could actually argue as well that the macbook was as bad because it set this chain of events for the laptop line which people rallied against yeah although i like the macbook and the keyboard is was understandable on the macbook but the problem was that then apple was like great we'll put it everywhere which by the way that's a little bit of an echo of the center stage camera on the studio display right where apple takes a part designed for a particular purpose and fall so in love with their clever engineering that they put it everywhere, including maybe places it shouldn't have gone. Very similar little harmony there. But I'm not

going to say that the camera on the studio display is the answer to this question either, because it has nothing to do with the processor transition. Here's my answer. Never, ever, ever making an iMac bigger than the 24-inch iMac. Missing that market, I think would be a huge mistake. I think it would be a mistake on the same level as the Mac Pro, which is here is a user base that wants this product, that has spent a decade liking this product. And no, we will not make an iMac at 27 inches or greater. We just won't. Get the 24 or too bad. Buy an external display and another computer and do that instead. And I think that would be a mistake.

I think they would be turning their back on a big part of their last decade of Mac sales. I believe they're not going to do that and they're just biding their time. Um, I, I believe they're not going to do that and they're just biding their time. But, um, I would say that that would be the, um, something happening to one of their products, uh, in defiance of user desires, that would be a, a big mistake for them. And I don't, I agree. That's a really great one. It's better than anything I was going to come up with. The, the, the thing that I was wondering with this question is like, what if a mistake that they make is what

is the new Mac Pro? Like, what if they just completely whiff on it again? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, no, that's a good one is what if they make a new Mac Pro? Again, they say that now they're listening. They've got their people in-house. They're listening to pro customers. It's hard to look at the Mac Studio and not think, well, they must have an exact idea of who the Mac Pro is for because the Mac Studio fulfills so many of the needs. So it's like, what is that and how do they execute on it? And you're right in terms of the processor transition.

What is their vision for not only what a Mac Pro is, but what they can do with a mac pro given their processor architecture and it's possible that the compromises that they may have to make because of their processor architecture will be looked at by the potential buyers of the mac pro and they'll be like yeah no like no you i get why you did it this way this is not giving us what they want uh what we want sorry i'm being them this way. This is not giving us what they want, what we want. Sorry, I'm being them in this scenario. This is not giving us what we want.

We need this. I know that why you can't do it because of Apple Silicon, but we need it. And you didn't give it to us. And they end up sort of saying, we got to stick with Intel for the time being because you didn't do it. Like, I would like to think that they won't do it. Like I, I, I would like to think that they won't do that, but the truth is there are going to be some compromises in the Mac pro where I think people are going to say, Oh, why did they do it this way? And the answer is going to be, well, Apple Silicon, this is how they built their whole architecture. And they might try to get there eventually, but like, I, are they going to

undercut the whole direction of Apple Silicon for one computer that's used by a tiny fraction of their audience. And so that is, you know, and that's actually why I mentioned the iMac is because I think that there's just a much larger audience for a larger iMac and it will offend more users, more Mac customers than the Mac Pro. But, you know know they could botch the mac pro i wouldn't even say botch i think i think the mac pro being un unpleasantly received by that audience if it happens it will be a function of the limitations and the philosophy of of the apple silicon processors themselves, right? That it will emerge from the choices Apple has made on the iPhone and the iPad,

and now on the Mac, building this processor system with all this stuff that's integrated. And you look at the Mac Pro and you're like, well, you got to unravel a bunch of that, right? Like you got to, your advantages elsewhere like are disadvantages now because you've got, we've got to use your GPUs and you know, what is the, what is the memory story and all of that? I think that's where they, they risk angering the Mac pro audience, but my money's on the 27 inch. Darren wants to know, Jason, if you were making the 20 max list today, I don't know. Or let's say're in 22 Macs for 2022, right? You've never done 20 Macs, right?

Let's just imagine you've never done that list. You're doing it today. Would any of the Apple Silicon Macs make the list? I would have to. So, you know, the whole purpose of 20 Macs for 2020 was sort of tell stories about different eras in the Mac. So I would have to pick an Apple Silicon Mac so I could tell the story of Apple Silicon, which we've all just lived through.

But, you know, keeping an eye toward history, that would be the thing that I would do. Which one I would pick? I don't know. I don't know. I would probably pick the MacBook Pro because it would allow me to tell the whole story about the butterfly keyboard and the ports complaints.

Yeah. It would let me talk about Apple Silicon, but also talk about it in the sense of not just the M1, but the M1 Pro and the M1 Max and the questions about whether Apple was going to be able to execute with its processors at a high enough level that it would please professional customers. So that's probably what I would choose is one of those MacBook pros, because there's a lot of stories to tell about what happened with laptops in the late 2010s, as well as the Apple Silicon transition. That would be a pretty meaty topic

so i think that would be the one that would maybe best encompass it and it's got you know it's got the notch it's got the the mini led backlight like there's some interesting things that are new technologically yeah it doesn't have the touch bar so it lets me tell the touch bar story like there that would be like a three-parter about that. There's so much embedded in that one computer that would be worth telling. So yeah, I would probably choose that one. Not my list, but that's what I would have gone with too. Like if I was choosing, it would be out of the iMac because of the way it looks and the MacBook Pro.

Because I feel like the first ones, they're not as interesting, except for the fact that they are the first ones they're not as interesting except for the fact that they are historic but they're not as interesting but I think if it was my list I would settle where you had to where the MacBook Pro is the most advanced

right even going back to your review a Mac Pro in my backpack like that alone makes it exciting enough to talk about. Right. So I think that there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot to say there. And I wouldn't be surprised if you were doing that list today, you would pick that, right? Like it just feels like a good one to pick. I think that would be, yeah, I think that would be it. And Jonah asks, why aren't you talking about Severance?

Well, Severance on Apple TV Plus is a TV show that I started watching late and didn't finish until last night. So that's why we haven't been talking about Severance. And I have watched it in the last week. But we are going to talk about Severance on Upgrade Plus. This is what they call vertical integration. Go to getupgradeplus.com. And if you sign up, not only will you get longer ad-free versions

of every single episode of Upgrade, you will also get to hear us talk about severance. We're going to talk about that in today's Upgrade Plus segment. Thank you to everybody that has signed up. If you haven't, you really should. There's a lot of great stuff on Upgrade Plus. And you also get access to our Discord and tons of other members only stuff including uh i would give a little plug here for backstage this is a show that me and steven do every single month

it's in the relay fm crossover feed um previously backstage was like a hey do you want to start a podcast of your own we'll tell you how to do it backstage now is very much like what is going on at relay fm what are we thinking about um what are we talking about what are me and steven trying to do with our podcasting company and so if that kind of stuff interests you i recommend checking out backstage which you get for being a relay fm member no matter what you support and if you support upgrade we have upgrade plus you get access to it get upgrade plus.com thanks to capital one and electric and trade for their support of this week's episode of course thank

you for listening if you want to find jason online you can go to sixcolors.com he is at jay snell on twitter g s n e double l apple results are coming up is that two weeks two weeks two weeks can't wait you know i love it can't wait. You know I love it. Can't wait. I know it's your favorite thing. Favorite thing! Thursday the 28th is the Apple results. So May 2nd get ready for some chart talk

right here. Chart time. Chart time with Jason and Mike. Everybody's favorite show. Mike's favorite show. I am at iMike. I am YKE and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye of everybody's favorite show. Mike's favorite show. I am at iMike. I am Y-K-E. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Goodbye, Jason Snell.