Upgrade - 511: You’re Nice to Hold

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 511 for may 7th 2024 today's show is brought to you by squarespace tailscale vitally and factor my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how are you i'm very Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hi, Mike Hurley. How are you? I'm very well. Jason, I have a Snell Talk question for you. It comes from me, which is, where are you right now, Jason Snell? Mike Hurley, I am reporting to you live from a hotel room in New York City. New York. New York City. Hey, it's podcasting here.

Hey, forget about it. Forget about it. We'll talk about why you're there in a little bit, because I also had a fun experience today too for the iPad event, which we're going to be talking about. But I'm happy that you were able to make it, and we're still here to record a show,

as we always do, even though you're in New Yorkork and i'm here in london yeah if you would like to send in a snow talk question to open a future episode of the show you can just go to upgradefeedback.com leave a question for us for a future episode before we get started today jason i want want to remind the Upgradians that we have merchandise available. Limited edition upgrade tees in a variety of designs, but this is the last time you're going to hear us talk about it.

It's just six days left, so if you want to get yourself one of our fantastic new upgrade logo tees in either the pro colors or the colors are colors, these are really great t-shirts. I'm very happy with it. Whatever color you choose is the color of the arrow and the upgrade logo.

Or you want to get our awesome gradient summer of fun t-shirt or a Dongletown tee. You've got to go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com. These are available for just a few more days. This is the last time you hear us talk about it. So please go check it out support your favorite show and uh wear it on your body good yeah good use of your torso wear the wear the show on your body what are you doing in real life if you're not doing that makes sense upgrade your

wardrobe.com.com so before we get into talking about all of the products that were announced, we should do as we do and score the draft, which I will remind people was a draft that we made at the end of March for these iPads. I'm proud of us, Mike. Because we thought it was going to be, you know, oh, press releases any day now. We don't want to waste a draft. Little did we know there was going to be more of an event than Apple's done in a very long time. Since October. Considering that it was

multiple locations, this is a thing that they have not done for a super long time. That's true. I'm proud of us. I'm more proud of you. Although I'll say last week I looked at this and I thought you were going to destroy me.

And in the end, I did better than I expected. Yes. But you are once again continuing your amazing streak. Thank you. I've got to get more boring and more competitive to win. Well, I don't know. We score it at 7-6. So I don't know if there was really much difference.

I will just say, I'll run through these real quick. We're a little fuzzier on our scoring than usual, but this is a score that we can agree on quite easily. I would say the challenge here is we did this so long ago, and one of the things that I got right was not mentioned in the video, but was part of the announcement. And this was so long ago now that i'm like i don't know we didn't we didn't record by the time we recorded it wasn't right after i'm but we don't even need to argue about it so it doesn't matter

but i should not have been allowed to pick this yeah but i picked it and i got it right so it's fine it's a thing that there's some stuff that maybe we wouldn't have picked the way that we did if we thought there was a video because there's stuff that just doesn't get shown in videos so we've been a little bit all fuzzy so uh we'll run through uh your picks and my picks so we have for jason new apple pencil introduced got that correct larger trackpad on the magic keyboard correct the base model ipad receives an update so the entire draft hinges on this one but you and i and steven hackett all agree that although the lower the base model ipad got a price change it did not technically receive an update and therefore it is wrong an ipad pro case is often in a color that isn't essentially

gray white or black. Correct. Denim is the color of the day, everybody. I can't, I genuinely can't believe you got this. Denim, smart portfolio. Denim. I'm genuinely very surprised that you got this. It's just barely not black or white or gray, but it is. It's denim.

It's sort of blue. Winner, winner. An iPad Pro has a new OS feature to take advantage of a new accessory yeah it does there's the whole little uh squeeze menu thing yeah there's a bunch of stuff going on in the apple and the barrel roll thing we got stuff to talk about yeah the magic keyboard comes color match to the ipad pro models i was i last week i was like oh man i don't know about this but it's absolutely true the aluminum of the Magic Keyboard comes in the same two boring colors

that the iPad Pro comes in. Which is weird because like the white one of them is called white but it's only white on the plastic part. The aluminium I mean we'll talk about it later but they're not what I expected but yeah totally. Magic Keyboard only works for 2024

iPad Pro models. Correct. We'll talk more about that later. The new Apple Pencil has an eraser. Indeed. Still a one-sided pencil. So that's six points for you. You did get the tiebreaker.

I did. I had both iPad Pro models have an OLED display. Which they do. Yep. The iPad Pro front camera is on the horizontal edge, which it is. Yep. The iPad Air comes in the current iPad Pro sizes. Correct.

The iPad Pro starts at a higher price. Oh boy, does it. Actually, I want to back up. Yeah. iPad Air comes in current iPad Pro sizes. Again, an ungentlemanly participant could claim that since it is now a 13-inch iPad Air, it is not the same size

as the 12.9-inch iPad Pro of the last generation. However, it is literally the same size. So, I'm not going to play that. And also, what's current? You know what I mean? Yeah, I know. The iPad Pro starts at a higher price which

it does the new magic keyboard has a function row which it does yay the ipad air front camera is on the horizontal edge it is the new apple pencil charges magnetically yeah it does and the ipad pro gets magsafe for charging yeah so look i. So, look, I know we made seven, six. I'm proud of us. Out of eight each. It's pretty great, I think. I think we did a really good job. And don't forget, this was before that Mark Gurman report as well.

That's true. Good work to us. Yeah, good job, but slightly better job to you than to me. But both of us did good work there. Yes, it does. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or managing a growing brand,

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A thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So you are in New York today. New York City. Yep. Which is interesting because you don't live very far from Apple Park. I don't live here. No, it's that thing. It's that thing that happens sometimes where I'm summoned to New York.

This all started when we interviewed Colleen Navielli, think where um where they're like oh jason we got some briefings in cupertino but you have to go to new york because that's where colleen is and that's where you're going to interview her but it also happens sometimes it happened i was just here in october for the macbook pro launch and i'm back so they do they do press events they did them this year in or this for this event in new york and in london where members of the press were invited to come and watch a video together what a communal experience and then afterward of course have lots of conversations with people at apple all of which are on back on background no quotes uh but for background information about the product so

that's what happened yeah so i was with friend of the show federico patici and we were at the london uh event it was inside the atrium of apple battersea which is beautiful absolutely stunning building that i've gotten to spend a little time in before but this is the most time that i've spent there especially in the atrium area and it was a really interesting experience so uh greg jones we act came out before to introduce the video Jarz was very excited about the fact that so many people were there they had media it was hundreds of people were there from all over Europe and Asia

they said that there were 30 countries represented from the media and I saw people from YouTubers that I recognize all the way to newspapers and journalists and other content creators and everybody in between. It was very interesting. And I've got to say, Apple, please do this all the time, please. Just for me, you know, I would love this. They used to do this.

I remember this used to be a thing that Apple did a long time ago, that they would have events for European media at the Regent Street Apple Store. They would close it and they would turn it into like a press event. I'm just saying from the bottom of my heart, please let it happen. Oh, and then also at the end, John Ternus came onto the stage to talk about the products a little bit and then take us to the hands-on area. So we also got to spend time with, you know, basically it was like a hands-on area so we also got spent time with you know basically the house it was like a hands-on area that i've seen at apple park you know they had the whole thing uh it was really awesome yeah so i'm very happy that we got to do that today i do there is a thing for me which is intriguing that this event was earlier and my expectation is it was earlier

to make the london event make more sense because it seemed like a bigger production than the event in New York. And I don't know why they did it. I don't know. It's an interesting idea. I guess experimenting with trying to appeal to the European audience as well as the North American audience by having it be timed so that they could do events in both London and New York and cover a large portion of their primary market. I think that's, you know, they're trying stuff. I think one of the things that's been interesting about modern Apple marketing and PR is that they're experimenting with different concepts for it. So here, instead of just having it.

for it. So here, instead of just having it. So in October, what happened is we all got briefings under embargo because the event was at 5 p.m. Eastern, right? Or 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. It was late, right? Whatever it was. And by the time the video was rolled, I was on an airplane going home. But we got it all under embargo. And so we wrote our stories or whatever first looks we had. And those were all posted at embargo time. Well, this time, we all just showed up at 9.30 and were seated at 10 to watch the video, and then everything happened post-announcement. And it's just a different take on it. Yeah. So, see, I thought, oh, I know what this is all about.

Like, when the invitation came through for me, which is, oh launching vision pro but they didn't do that like and when once tim started with it i was like oh here we go like that's how they started the presentation and that seemed like the logical thing to me like if you were going to launch a vision pro you'd want to have people see it maybe have demos so you'd set up like an event for europe and and maybe other countries and it turned out like basically all of asia to come over uh but yeah that didn't happen i don't know if that was maybe the plan when they set this whole thing up but it doesn't seem like there is potentially a an issue of availability of the vision pro so i don't know i don't know why they did it but i really hope they do more of it because it was for me like

fantastic uh and also everybody that i spoke to apple seemed really excited to be there i mean i think people just love that building because it really is awesome but yeah it was lovely yeah it's a it's a showcase for them it was really fun to to do an ipad event federico the six-story building that they own in tribeca is also very impressive i will say it's just not quite a public space yes it's a it's like a private event space but it's very impressive yep so let's start by talking about the ipad air i think because there's just less to say here and then we can talk about the ipad pro in a little bit um we now have what we thought we were going to get 11 and thankfully they are now calling these devices 13 inch 13 inch ipad air we tried to make this happen last time and people pushed back at us

and said you can't do that and so you know now apple has blessed us to do it so we can call it the 13 inch ipad air anymore i mean it's it's literally the same size as i said during our draft it's literally the size and shape of the ipad pro as we knew it before today yeah that's literally what these things are in fact you could you could mix and match with one exception you could mix and match features from previous ipad pros and make these products but they're calling them 11 and 13 hallelujah it has a landscape camera there's your exception. Yes. It moved the camera on the iPad Air to the landscape side.

Yeah. And with, as we'll talk about the Apple Pencil later, but with support for the new Apple Pencil Pro. They did something that I was pontificating on Connected last week, which was a way to handle this situation is to split the camera and the face id sensors apart and put the magnet in the middle and it seems like that's essentially what they did like if you look at the the device now you can see you have the camera and then you can see you have the sensors but they are further apart from each other because

the camera is not no face id like it's it's they don't then it's not the same thing and so yeah they don't have to be next to each other and it turns out they aren't which is which is great but it does come with some uh pitfalls of the pencil uh it has an m2 in it this ipad air i guess that was the expectation right that it would it would go m2 um they didn't go very hard with the colors there is a color when they said purple federico turned to me and said where is it when he was showing the four of them so i have a similar story uh i was in a room with two ipad airs one was in blue and one was in purple and the apple person gestured to them and said this is purple and blue and i worked real hard not to laugh out loud in a and and embarrass this person in front of all of

the media who were with us because if you would ask me what colors they were i would have said gray and gray yeah but they're blue and purple and and blue and purple are colors i can see mike i can see those colors they weren't i didn't see them where are they yeah they're they're the the they are not the vibrant remember again the higher the price the less colorful the product that's the apple rule talking about price they actually do start at the same price, $599, but with more storage. Great price. 128 gigabytes of storage, which is great. I mean, and I will say this.

So I have an M1 iPad Air, which I got during WWDC 2022 because I was stuck in a hotel. So I got an iPad to be delivered to me so I could have something to do I wanted to try out stage manager do you remember when stage manager was just on yeah on suns I don't know if the anyway but it was just I couldn't use it that and once I was like let me get this to try it out yep and I got the 64 gigabyte because it was like I don't think I'm going to need this um yesterday we now use that iPad air as as like an ipad to watch tv on when we eat dinner or something and yesterday that ipad was upset at me telling me it was full but like there at this point there's nothing i can delete from the ipad like i can't i have the

apps that i need like the streaming video apps but then just like my thumbnails for my photos are too big uh the attachment to my messages they're too big and the system is taking up like 25 gigabytes just for system stuff and it's just becoming like i'm getting i'm at the point yesterday where i was just removing like the mail app and the notes from this ipad just so it would stop telling me that there was an issue. I'm happy with this 128 gigabytes. I think that this is like a needed thing now. We're going to move past 64.

64 is way too small. And you can go 256 and 512 and 1 gig, right? Yes. Is that right? They added more storage tiers. You're right. So the iPad Air goes to 128, 256,

512, and a terabyte. Yep. Which is cool to have. Yeah, that's good. And $799 is the starting price for the 13-inch model, which I'll just say again is essentially, with a couple of exceptions, is essentially the old iPad Pro for $799,

which is pretty good. Pretty good. And Apple was clear. So again, it's one of those things where I can't really quote anybody. It's all in background, but I'll just say this. Apple is clear. The whole point of the iPad Air is to get iPad Pro features and technology into a product that's more affordable so that it can reach more people. That is the stated, not quoting directly, but I heard it multiple times. That is the stated purpose of the iPad Air is take iPad Pro technology and bring it down to a more affordable price point. So this is that whole Tim Cook thing. Like you start off with those things and they're the expensive product, but then they bring them down to the lower end product. So they didn't bring everything down. They didn't bring Face ID down, but they brought a lot of things down and plus moved the camera to the horizontal.

to the horizontal. But if you're a fan of the iPad Pro and maybe we're hoping for something that you didn't get today, but you want a new iPad Pro because yours is a little old, maybe it's a pre-M1 or something like that. The 799 13-inch iPad Air is basically that. It's basically last year's or two years ago iPad Pro with a couple differences. The screen isn't as good and the camera's in a better place and there's no face ID. It's not everything, right? It's not everything but it's a lot of the things for $799.

Pretty good. It supports the Magic Keyboard too, if you want to use that. It does. It does. The original Magic Keyboard, the 2020 Magic Keyboard. Yeah, and I don't think it supports the smart keyboard folio so i think if you want as on the website it says like on these tech specs it's got like the compared to previous ones it says it supports the uh smart keyboard where the previous uh ipad pro for example says it supports the smart keyboard where the previous iPad Pro, for example, says it supports the keyboard and the keyboard folio.

I don't know. I don't know about that. That seems a bit strange. Oh, and also it doesn't do promotion. There are things that it doesn't do. It's actually interesting if you think about it. The features that Apple... Okay, stated goal, bring iPad Pro technology down

in a more affordable price point so it reaches more people. Actuality, Face ID can't do it. ProMotion can't do it. And how much of that is trying to retain some Pro features for the Pro and how much of that is it's really expensive. My understanding is like Face ID, that sensor, it's really expensive. And so it's really easy to just say like face id that sensor is really expensive and so it's really easy to just say we're not going to do it touch id is lovely we're just going to leave that off but for whatever reason there are some pieces that aren't there but still still it's a very impressive pair of ipads for 599 and 70 799 starting prices those are pretty good

i think it's just the 12 I think it's just the 12. Maybe it's just the 12.9 that doesn't support the smart keyboard. You mean the 13? I meant the 13. Yeah, thank you. We're getting used to it. But on Apple's website,

it might be one of those things where before it doesn't fit might be one of those things where like before it could be a quirk it doesn't like fit perfectly but maybe works but they're saying that it's a magic keyboard is what you need now for those uh i don't know i'll just say there's no more ninth gen ipad that's kind of like publicly available we can get it in spots right i wouldn't be surprised if it shows up in the education store it's in the education store because there are a lot of education customers that need it. So I feel like this is actually kind of like the M1 MacBook Air where it's not entirely gone. But in terms of the message Apple is sending to consumers and the general consumer market, forget about it.

Forget about it. It's gone. And I wanted to mention, I've seen a lot of people talking about this already. I'm seeing think pieces springing up all over the web. The iPad Air is heavier than the iPad Pro. This is just a thing that people find funny. Yes. I understand it.

It doesn't fit the same conventions as the laptops. I just think it's been a while now where air just means regular and then pros means the other thing and but the ipad has something called ipad so what else are you going to call it exactly i think that's well and the macbook air i mean i air means kind of what most people will want i think and i know that that's a function of going all the way back to the original macbook air and that people like the name it's not something you'd want to call it that but if you if you view apple's product line and you see ipad air ipad pro macbook air macbook pro 11 13 13 15 like it kind of makes sense in that context of i get why this tag means this part of the product line. Yeah, and if you compare,

like, you know, contrast that with, or layer that with what Tim said at the start, that the MacBook Air is the 13 and the 15 above the best-selling products in the product class. As you say, I think it's just people know that they like the MacBook Air, and if they want to get an iPad,

it is helpful for them to see the same name because it indicates maybe what product they're actually looking for so i do think that there is a value to it and air just means what it means it doesn't necessarily mean right right and and i will say speaking while we're talking about names, just to say this again, I know I've said it a few times here, the 13-inch iPad Air is literally the same size as the 12.9-inch iPad Pro of the previous generation. Generations, literally the same size. Apple's policy about naming iPad sizes has changed, to be simpler. It's the thing we asked about a long time ago, but just to be again it's not subtly larger in some way it's not it's just that they're gonna they're gonna simplify the names because the new 13-inch ipad pro is a different size a little bit and it doesn't

like forget about it again i would say as well on the uh on the comparison, like compare iPads, it says for the iPad Air 13-inch, measured diagonally as a rectangle, the 13-inch iPad Air is 12.9 inches. Actual viewable area is less, which is a hilarious sentence. The 13-inch iPad Air is 12.9 inches. That is very funny to see written down, but I'm thankful that they did it. We are rounding up. Don't sue us. I'm thankful that they did it because it may... It's clear this way. You may as well just call it that.

It just makes sense. They do rounding up and rounding down the displays all the time. Yes, they do. I'm very happy to see this, actually. It makes things nice and simple. Nice and simple, indeed. And the iPad line, I guess, has now become a little bit clearer. We have the iPad Mini, we have the iPad, and then we have iPad Air and iPad Pro.

At 11 and 13. Both in two sizes. And a variety of colors. A variety of hues is maybe a better way to put this. Did you, I mean, in my hands on time, I was basically exclusively playing around with the iPad Pro. Did you look at the iPad Air very much? Well, sure, but it's just an iPad Pro from yesterday. I have one here.

I have my 11.9 inch M1 iPad Air with me right now. And it's the same. I mean, basically, it's basically the same. Yeah. In terms of the physical shape and size and all that feels just the same. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Tailscale. Tailscale is a programmable networking software

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Do you want to start with the M4? Do you want to start talking about the iPads? Where do you want to go with this? Oh, let's start with the M4. Okay. So it was kind of funny to me because i was thinking back to last week's episode where we talked ourselves into it and i and yeah and i feel like for good reason in the end uh yeah i mean like literally i think we got it i think we parsed out based on this bizarre assertion from mark

german at the last minute i definitely have heard from people inside apple who are like oh we held that one so close to the vest for so long and then mark german blows it right before the event but um it is okay i think we were right like they made it clear. They even called it out in the presentation that this is a new three nanometer process. Yes. And so if you think about it, what this is, and again, this didn't happen three months ago or six months ago. This happened probably a year or two ago. Apple and TSMC, who makes their chips for them, were talking about the processes for their new 3 nanometer nodes. And there's the one that was going to come sooner but wasn't going to stick around and the one that they were going to move to.

And the M4 is very clearly the chip that was designed for the one they're going to move to. And so I think Apple and TSMC, and this is just me reading between the lines a little bit but like i think it's very clear that this was the strategy is m3 is going to be based on this process and then we're going to cut over to m4 on the new process and there are lots of benefits to that and that's the one that tsmc is going to be using going forward and so here we are where you see an ipad air with an m2 it feels like the m3 and and that whole generation are just not going to stick around too long because they are on this kind of more fraught and more expensive uh original first generation three nanometer process whereas uh this m4 is on the on the new generation which goes to the thing that i

think we speculated about last week which is maybe this is why mark german reported that everything is going to move to the m4 it's like they want to get everything off of the m3 so they're going to jump to the m4 and here here is the start of it i'll also say it is my understanding that and you can see it in the in the uh some of the video details too but like the work there are specific work in the m4 that enables the display yeah on the ipad pro yeah that tandem oled display has and they they did i think they did call it out in the video like there's a there's a new display controller on the m4 yeah there is it is capable of doing of driving that ipad pro display and the m3 was not like bottom line the m3 was not so this is this is what we're left with is

is they this is all part of the plan. The M4 enables this processor. In fact, I would go so far as to say the M4 is the thing that, like if Apple was relying on a third-party chip supplier like Intel, this kind of product, you know, maybe can't happen or would have a huge amount of run-up time because they would have to beg Intel

to build special custom things in so they could build a particular kind of product. And so, yeah, I think that's the story. Is the M4, why now? And the answer is because this product can't exist without it. Yeah, I started to,

I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot and I've been mentioning it every now and then. And I feel like this product is another example of it. I think Apple does not have a pattern when it comes to Apple Silicon. There has not been one. They keep doing things that seem strange, like, or like out of like, but every time we think we understand it, they do something else, right? So it's like, oh, we will launch the M1 first, and then it's going to go to pro chips. And then later on,

we'll launch the pro chip version of a chip first, and then we'll put the regular one in some other products. And then we'll go this way, then we'll go that way, or on the M4, it's going to be in an iPad first. It just feels like they are using and deploying the technology when and where they need it. As needed. Rather than just waiting to fit some kind of pattern for each generation. Do I think, as Gurman german has reported do i think that apple's ultimate goal is to do m chips on a yearly cycle i do i do think that that's the ultimate goal but it doesn't always work that way right and this is an example where i think we can intuit that apple wanted to get off of the first generation three nanometer process at tm smc

like it gave them first three nanometer chips shipping in bulk and they got to boast about that and they got to do that for the m3 but like it wasn't going to be the process the tsmc was building on going forward and they knew that and they they certainly knew that in advance and so you take the opportunity to go to M4 now and you build in the display controller that will enable this iPad Pro and maybe other products too. Who knows, right? There may be things in that chip that we don't even know about yet, right? Because there's no product attached to it. It's only the one product.

We don't understand the speed of it, really. Well, yeah. I mean, it's hard to say. So some other things about this. The CPU is a little bit different from the M3. Apple doesn't want to talk about the M3 compared to the M4. And part of that is because they really want to focus on the difference between the M2 and the M4 because that's where the iPad Pro goes. And the argument is, you can't really compare an M3 and a MacBook Air and an M4 and an iPad Pro

because they're different enclosures and they've got different cooling and they've got different thermal dynamics and there's all these things that are different about them. And that's true. That all said, also, if you run a synthetic benchmark

on an M2 in an iPad and in a MacBook Air, you get the same score, more or less. So I think some of it is them not wanting to make those comparisons. And part of it is that I understand they have their reasons for doing it. And fair enough. But my understanding is that the CPU cores are a little bit different. They're not necessarily like a super next generation cpu core but they are a little bit different um and the gpu cores they they're boasting about are the m again my understanding is basically what we got in m3 they talk about oh well look at all these things that it can't do

and it's so much better at gpu than the old ipad pro what they're talking about is all that stuff that we talked about for the m3 where they're able to do a bunch of rendering stuff and a bunch of, of, of memory management on the chip level. And it was all part of that, like what's new in the M3, but of course the iPad pro didn't have an M3. So they pick up all of that stuff too.

And then the display controller is a great example again. And they also, I think they made some modifications to the neural engine too, which AI, everybody cares about AI, but like there's some advanced, you know, changes to the neural engine as well. And just, I'm kind of emptying my notebook here, but another note that I wanted to throw out there

is the M4 neural engine thing like apple just to put this in perspective apple has been work has been shipping shipping not working on shipping neural engines in their chips for seven years which is a point of pride with them when people say, oh, Apple's behind on AI. They're like, seven years. And what the chip team does is look at what the papers are about machine learning, AI research, and try to skate where the puck is going. But, you know, obviously there's two or three years of lag time there because they have to do chip design processes and all of that. two or three years of lag time there because they have to do chip design processes and all of that. So,

you know, my understanding is that like, uh, there's some more support for like, uh, quantized machine learning models, basically smaller models that use less memory, like eight bit models instead of 16 bit models.

They saw that coming a few years ago. And so there's better support for that in the neural engine this time around. Um, you know, they, the 2017 when they started shipping neural engine is actually when the first transformer model paper happened. And so that was the case where they looked at that and they were shipping their first neural engine. They're like, oh, geez, transformer models.

That's interesting. And so started, you know, planning that. So I think the people inside of the neural engine team at Apple are very focused on sort of like where the cutting edge of machine learning and AI research is going. But they've also been shipping neural engines for seven years, and every one of them is better and faster and more impressive. And that continues, and they're proud of that. And it's one of the things that makes it, I think, I mean, it bugs me, and I'm sure infuriates them when people say that Apple's not paying attention to AI or just started paying attention six months ago. Also, oh, another little mention about the cores. One of the things I think that's happening on the CPU core side is

that there's some stuff that they're doing to enable certain machine learning tasks that are small that would not benefit speed wise from throwing them off into the neural engine or the GPU. There are, you know, how one of the, one of the tricks you can do on a, on a computer core is have like a specialized command of specialized area that will just do a thing. It's like, like how they've got the, um, they've got the, the pro res encododers on there. It's just built in. It's like, well, ProRes video encoding, it's just kind of baked into the chip. Well, I think they have some of those in the CPUs as well. And the idea there is that you don't have to throw those out to the neural engine or the GPU, and some smaller machine learning tasks will now run better on the M4. So, you know, it's the M4. I mean, honestly,

these chips now are a big stew of a bunch of different features, right? There's what's the CPU, what's the GPU, what's the neural engine, what else is going on? What custom blocks are there? What's the, you know, memory and how's that structured? And so the answer, as far as I can see on day one here, at least, is that the M4 is more than the m3 but you know in some areas it's not much more and in other areas it is much more and it's just but it's different and what we've learned uh about how tsmc and their different fabs and their different processes work is like you couldn't just copy and paste the m3 onto an m4 So they did have to do a new chip design. And just as with the M2 to the M3 or the M1 to the M2,

parts of it are more changed than other parts of it. And that's just how it is. This part of the presentation was presented by an actual friend of the show, Tim Millay, we've heard on the show a few times. I know, friend of the show. I was very excited to see Tim Millay. And

they were talking, and Tim was talking a lot about the neural engine and how they're known as NPUs now. And that Apple, he says they have the most powerful one because they've been doing it for a long time. It's like a neural processing unit on another system, on a chip is what I'm taking that away from. Like if you build a specific thing for machine

learning and well because this is the thing right like you're saying about you know apples and because it was called machine learning up until 18 we've been here for years i think was the line in the video and and they're look there's some pride going on here they feel wounded by the oh apple's missed it on ai they're way behind And certainly on the chip side, they're like, no, we've been shipping machine learning stuff for seven years. I mean, again, you see the benefit of Apple designing its own chips here because the reason that the neural engine exists is because there were some basic things that Apple needed to do, like the Photos app, right? app, right? Like the photos app needed to process or the camera app in order to do, um, you know, photometric stuff, the camera app needed some machine learning capability. And they're like, okay, we can start to build that in. And, and so they started to, you know, they had a, they had an iPhone need and, uh, and then face ID at the same time was the thing where they needed to do

facial recognition. And that was a thing that really needed an ML model. And they had the ability to say, okay, let's build in some custom Silicon in our chip that will support that. And that started them down the road to there. So, you know, they were driven by product and not by hype and they have been building on this.

And like, are there areas where they're behind some of their competitors? Possibly. But you know, the neural engine's been shipping for seven years there's no doubt that they've been paying attention on that side and i think it's an advantage for them i think it's a dedicated advantage that they're only now you know some of it is really like we said last week it's marketing it's changing how they refer to it they always refer to it as machine learning and now they're like okay fine ai fine there it is ai they were touting the power efficiency of this uh m4 chip from previous ipads and also against the rest of the pc industry and then in light pc laptops yeah i

mean we will talk about obviously what they've done around the the physical dimensions of this device but clear like i was wondering like oh are they going to talk about increased battery life here but i think where they were actually driving to is oh we can make this new ipad pro so thin because it's now so much more power efficient yeah they they are still solving for 10 hour battery life yeah right like they have not changed that target at all but what they are able to do is make the processor more efficient and also look at how the design fits into it they put a couple of layers of graphite and they put copper on the apple logo

oh my god the apple logo is a heat sink now incredible yeah incredible yeah and that that way they can run uh faster longer because the reason you do that is you want to radiate out heat uh and man because there's no fan in this thing you want to be want to radiate out heat because there's no fan in this thing. You want to be able to radiate out heat and continue to run it at higher performance for longer. And so they end up with their comparison being they can offer the same performance as the M2 using half the power and they can offer the same performance as a thin and light PC laptop

using a quarter of the power. So, I mean mean those are apple favorable numbers of course but i think it shows you that they continue to have a great deal of pride in the energy characteristics of their chips that the goal is not just speed it's it's speed per watt basically like they want they want to be able to be energy efficient as well which they definitely are so in this ipad lineup in the ipad pro lineup where the m4 is featured there is a little chip binning going on again so if you get the 256 or 512 versions of the ipad pro you will get a nine core cpu which features three performance cores instead of four, and the six efficiency cores. You also just get eight gigabytes of RAM in that, which Apple lists,

which is wild. And you will get the full four and six if you get the one or two terabyte models, and you'll also get 16 gigabytes of RAM. Now, my assumption here here because this isn't the first time that apple has had a different amount of ram in a one terabyte ipad pro they've done this before and when pushed they've answered that they have different amounts for uh running being able to run the usb controllers and to be able to access the storage and da da da da and it enabled things like uh apps like procreate could have more layers on the one terabyte version because it had more RAM. My expectation here is that they are doing this for AI related stuff down the line,

that they are talking about RAM in the iPad, which is a thing that they have never done before. And I find that kind of interesting. I don't know if you have a different perspective on it at all. Well, it's um essentially they're differentiating between the low and the high end for a lot of things and it allows them to put the the higher capacity stuff in the more expensive ones the the nano texture display option on the ipad pro is also only available on the top two models. Yeah, same thing.

And the idea there is, you know, if you're a professional user of the iPad Pro at the high end, you want more RAM, you want more storage, you want one nanotexture, it's all there for you, but we're not going to make that available at the base price because it's too much to put in the base price and they want the base price to look good. So it scales. And so bin binning you know having having one uh efficiency or is it no one performance core

down um so be it also please note the m3 was what four and four and the m4 is four and six they're now six efficiency cores. What would that tell you? Like the increase in efficiency cores. What would that be for? Well, Apple really is proud of their efficiency cores and says that they're not bad cores. They're really, really, really good cores. And it allows them to turn them on and off

and only go to the performance when they need to. And it's all part of the fine tuning of battery efficiency and performance on these systems. So, you know, we'll presumably see that in max at some point down the road and we'll see what they do there. But, um, I, yeah, I do think it's interesting that they, they continue to differentiate without differentiating. It's they're differentiating based on essentially storage, but it's not just that, right. It's RAM and storage. Um, but you can't, you can't mix and match. You either get the low Ram, low storage configuration, or you get the

high Ram, high storage configuration. And those are your, those are your choices, but you know, I get it because the Ram is expensive and, um, and also on the iPad, a little bit unclear. Like, I think I'm, I'm sure there are lots of things that will work better with more memory but um you know it memory management on the ipad is intended to be kind of opaque yeah you're not really supposed to think about it which is why it's weird it's weird for me to see it i just think it is a weird thing to see now that they're that they're doing like oh we're going to tell you what's in there. Peculiar, but interesting, like most of these things are, right?

I always want to know when there's something new. Should we talk about the iPad Pro itself now? Yeah, sure, sure. I mean, we've obliquely touched on it, but we should, yeah, the product that the chip is inside of. Yeah, let's do it. So the 11 and 13, they are both significantly thinner and lighter than the models is inside of. Yeah, let's do it. So the 11 and 13, they are both significantly thinner

and lighter than the models that they replaced. The 13-inch iPad Pro is the thinnest Apple product ever. They even showed it off next to the iPod Nano, which was an incredible thing. However, I believe if I'm correct,

the previous one was also thinner than the iPod Nano, but they wanted to just show it off. But it's thinner than the iPadod nano but they wanted to just show it off but it's thinner than the ipad pro that it replaces and honestly it's incredible like the the way these devices feel is bananas like they i don't really think realistically that they can get thinner than this because you've got maybe a couple of millimeters at most that you could go thinner before you can't plug in a USB anymore.

Actually, in one of the demos that we got to see, the Pro App demo, they had a Thunderbolt cable plugged into the iPad Pro, and the Thunderbolt housing and the thunderbolt kate like the thunderbolt uh um you get like like housing around the usb connector i don't know of a better word to call it the plastic part basically it was thicker than the ipad pro so like you know we are going to the absolute thinness level here but in the hand these products are wild they're wild yeah it's really very impressive well i mean they dropped the the the larger ipad pro dropped a quarter of a pound in weight yeah and that is

i mean let's be serious here that is changing displays i think primarily i think that that uh the old um mini led backlight, I think it was thick and heavy. And once it was out and they went to OLED, they were able to make the whole product thinner and lighter. And so they did. And so, yeah, the 13-inch is actually thinner than the 11-inch, which is wild. And they're both really light. Very light. and they're both really light.

Very light. And I mean, yeah, as somebody who holds an iPad Pro in his hand every day, it is pretty impressive what they did because I thought, how could it really get smaller? And I know there were all those rumors out there that they were going to get thinner and lighter. And I mean, they did it. They totally did it.

I share your feeling that i'm not sure how much more they can shave off because there's still glass and there's still the display technology but um this is a big step they may never be able to make it this much smaller again and like holding the the 13 was like oh because i've been i've been waiting for these uh i wanted an OLED iPad Pro i've wanted one for for a little bit now and i was set on the 11 in my mind like that's what i want size wise that's perfect for me but holding the 13 is like oh boy you're actually you're nice to hold i will be going 11 but i was it was very tempting to think about the 13 inch ipad pro because now really it's just because i don't want that size screen it's just screen size like from a the way

the way this thing feels to hold is kind of incredible uh both of them but the 13 especially because it's the most surprising uh like when you hold it in your hand and it just doesn't really feel like as much of anything i have thought about switching from the 13 to the 11 or 12.9 to the 11 um and i'm not sure i really want to give up the screen size um as as nice as would be to have a a lighter ipad um but i will say this and we'll get to the smart keyboard in a little bit, but typing on the smart keyboard on the 13 is better than on the 11. It's just that the keyboard on the 11 feels cramped to me in a way that the 13 doesn't. But the 11 is just so small. It's so nice. And you put it in that smart keyboard and you close it up and it's like a little tiny laptop

that Apple doesn't make. But there it is. They actually do make it. It's an iPad with a keyboard. OLED's so nice, they gave you twice. The Tandem OLED that is part of the Ultra Retina XDR display.

It is two OLED panels that they put on top of each other to make sure they can hit the brightness levels that they wanted, which is... Right, because OLED has brightness issues. Yep, that's it. 1,000 nits of brightness for 1,600 nits at peak HDR. Yeah, it's impressive.

And ProMotion, of course. And I would say a little more color about the display controller um and how it's worked here what's not happening is it's not drawing you know the the chip isn't like processing and drawing every pixel twice that's not really what's happening but the the thing that the display controller has to do is deal with calibration so the way oled calibration works not every OLED emitter emits the same. There's some variance in brightness. And the calibration process creates a map of how you adjust each pixel so that they display consistently. So that if you've got a big span of red, it all looks consistently red and not blotchy, which might happen if you have some of those reds are brighter and some of those reds are darker, right?

Yeah. So that's where you need a new display controller because this thing has to take those adjustments on every single pixel of the dual OLED display at 120 frames a second because it's ProMotion. And that is happening in the background in real time, and it just happens. But that's the kind of thing that it is my understanding. Previous chips could not do that. They were not possible. And that is one of the ways that um this ipad demanded that it be on an m4 sometimes like obviously on this show inherent in doing this show there is an element of like we are fans and we love apple products right that's why sure we are in this position that's why we care right and when i see something like this i'm like this is why like that they're like well we want to put oled

in which is better but it won't be bright enough and that's not good enough so we have to create a new technology yeah and put a new thing that we put on a chip that we designed i just so that we can do this i was like oh you guys you know it's like you you just keep doing it i just it's incredible i find it so if you remember back when they did the 5k retina and they did the whole thing about like the t-con and the whole idea of like how they had to build a custom thing in order to get the video to work at 5k retina but that was like at this high high level and i mean it's incredibly inefficient like this is the this is the beauty of controlling your own silicon and not having it be like on an intel system or or um where you have

to kind of hack into it at a high level because you can't have access to the low level the you want to talk legacy nodes the t-con stuff you know you're talking about um chips that are running they're like 100 nanometer nodes and it's wildly inefficient when if you built it into the chip you know you could be on a three nanometer chip to do that work at the level where you can do it all kind of like properly and the math is correct is exactly correct and you can do all of that adjustment so it and the math is correct, is exactly correct. And you can do all of that adjustment. So it's like,

that's a contrast, right? Where it was like before they could do stuff that was innovative, but they kind of had to hack it and it was going to use more power and it was going to be less efficient. And now today's Apple with Apple Silicon, they do a lot of like call up Johnny and his boys and we're going to put this in.

And it's a team effort, right? It's obviously, it's not just like there are iPad display people who call Johnny Sruji and say, I need, or Tim Malay and are like, can I have this thing?

Um, it's a, it's a collaborative effort, but this is the result is that Apple gets to have a vision for where they want to push a product. And instead of, and look, there are,

there are lots of pros and cons of, of a lot of things that Apple does. But I think I would say this is why Apple does stuff that the rest of the industry doesn't do from time to time, is that a lot of the computer industry is taking parts off a shelf. And sometimes they work with the chip maker to build in a little custom thing. Apple used to do that the first macbook air processor was a collaboration with intel because apple needed some things that intel uh wasn't offering and so they worked together on it and it was kind of not a very good chip but it got better over time but if you design your own chips and build your own hardware guess what you can build things into the chips that enable a hardware and you can't do that

if you're just taking parts off of a shelf now the the downside is if apple doesn't prioritize your feature like having multiple external displays um you're just out of luck right like because that's that was an intel feature and and apple didn't prioritize it but it does get you things like this where apple just says, we need this, and so we're going to build it. And so they build it in. And now the M4, I don't know if any other product in the M4 that ends up using the M4 will need this display controller. We'll see. But it's here. Since it's a display controller, it does make me wonder if the display capabilities of M4 Max will also be superior

because they souped up the display controller in the base m4 maybe but at least today the reason is so the ipad pro could exist with an oled display like this so this display on the one terabyte and two terabyte models for a100 upgrade, you can get a nanotexture. Now, this was surprising to me. Like we'd heard about the matte, like a potential matte display, but that they called it nanotexture because nanotexture is what is on some of the studio displays

and the pro display. And Apple has previously described it as they like etch into the glass and you're not supposed to touch those. Don't touch it. So it's like this is wipe it with a special cloth so so i was told that this nanotexture display is created by chemically altering the glass oh interesting that's what i was told that's how

they get this this look on the and they built it specifically for the ipad is my understanding as well so that it will survive fingerprints and survive apple pencil right two things that a just a mac display don't need to deal with yeah but then an ipad display does and probably two things that will destroy a mac display. Yeah, did you, I don't know if you looked at it, but I looked at one. Yeah. And, you know,

all those beautiful, the beautiful contrast ratio and all the dark blacks of OLED are gone, are ruined, I would say, by the nanotexture. Like nanotexture does that thing where everything is a little bit more foggy, but it means that you can work in very bright light and there's no reflection on the glass. And that's the way Apple pitches it.

Apple says, this is why it's on the high-end systems. I was told, I think very clearly, this is an option for pros who are out in the field. But I think even Apple would say, most people should not get this. It really is for like if you know if you absolutely need a nanotexture iPad, but most people are probably not going to want it. Under regular lighting, it looked fine to me. But you move it a little bit and something looks weird. Like it just like all of a sudden it's like it's like light. It's like surreal.

Like light is hitting it, but not bouncing, but you can see that light is hitting it. So like the colors change. It glows a little. Right. It's very peculiar, but yes,

I would say that. Diffuse. Do not get this unless you know you need this. If you don't already know you need this, don't do this. But it's cool. If you're an artist or a director of photography or a film editor or something who's using

an iPad out in the fields in bad lighting situations where you've got huge glare issues and all that, you should buy this. Everybody else, you should not buy this because it will make the OLED not as good and it's not necessary.

It's just not, especially for a mobile device where probably in most cases, unless you're in extreme environments, you could just move a little bit and not have the glare anymore. Yeah, I would say this was better than I expected. It looks better to me than any paper-like or any of these things that i've seen like just visually

what it did to the display was less of an impact than any screen add addition that i've seen before yeah but it it didn't make me feel like i needed it right i was just like oh okay but i want to get the best out of oled and so for that i I will get the regular one. I agree. So let's talk about the accessories. So we have the Apple Pencil Pro. So these are the things that it can do. There is now a squeeze gesture that has a haptic, which will allow you to, in certain apps, invoke some kind of menu. Like in the Notes app or wherever Pencil Kit kit is used it brings up a little wheel of tools that you can select from right including a multi-step undo which is pretty awesome yep you tap the undo button and then you can sort of like circle around and go back back back back back a

bunch of steps which is just a really smart thing i like that a lot and then it can be customized that that wheel can be uh or or that squeeze gesture can invoke sort of anything if an app wants to override it uh barrel roll which is a feature enabled by a new gyroscope so you can this this enables this is another thing that can enable a bunch of things depending on the app so like for example when you're if you're highlighting or previewing something you you can twist the pencil and you can watch the kind of angle of your brush change. But there were demos from Procreate

where they were using this feature in their new app, Procreate Dreams, to add movement to an animation. An animation, yeah. So super cool. But this was a thing that I was trying to to think about now the the current apple pencil it had something a tilt it could it could recognize tilt but i guess it could not recognize you you like twirling the pencil in your hand yeah exactly this you can put

it down and then spin the pencil as you go and and it will rotate the brush or whatever. Yeah, I saw a demo where there was a twirl effect that was going on. You could put down and twirl, and it would distort that part of the image. Very cool. So we'll see how people use it. It's interesting. I think the one that I immediately thought of is calligraphers,

like calligraphy pens that have this. They're not square. They're not round they're long and there's a hole with calligraphy like you use the long part and the short part depending on detail and you could do that now with an apple pencil pro that that will work yep um did you feel the haptic yes it's incredible it's good it's very much like the haptic trackpads that you think are moving but aren't moving it's absolutely you think you're squeezing it but you're not or airpods yeah you think you're squeezing it um and you're not squeezing it but it feels like you're squeezing it like it's moving but gesture area is about a third of the apple pencil which i thought was cool like so you don't have to you

don't have to hold it in a specific area exactly right um the the haptic you feel it when you squeeze like an airpod so if you do the squeeze gesture it like you feel it like as if you've squeezed it and it's clicked yeah but also your max force on the yes pencil but the haptic engine or the haptic can be used by applications to suggest that an action has been done. So...

Yeah, this is just like on the Mac, on the trackpad, right? It's this idea so that if you're dragging out and you hit a snap boundary, it can go... Yep.

And sort of like you feel like you've reached the snap and then you can move beyond it. You can optionally give it that sort of feedback if you're an app. And it also features hover and double tap

like the previous Apple Pencil. Right. They didn't get rid of double tap. It's still there. I still think it, unless they fixed it, I still think it activates when I don't want it and when I do want it, it doesn't.

But we'll see. And the hover is there. I don't know why double tap exists now that the squeeze thing exists. There must be some things that said people... Some apps are going to have different stuff going on, right? And so they might be better. And some apps already have done double tap as a feature and people will use it.

And so they don't want to invalidate that. And it probably wasn't worth moving it out since that's an accelerometer feature. So where does this leave the Apple Pencil now? The answer is it's complicated, but maybe less complicated than it was. So the way I think you should look at it is for every iPad, there are two Apple Pencils. There's a cheaper one and a better one that's more expensive. So for the iPad Pro and iPad Air 2024, today's iPads, they will work with the Pencil Pro

or the USB-C Pencil. And if you're wondering why, the answer is, as a part of designing the camera to be on the horizontal side, they had to redesign the magnetic attach and charge of the Apple Pencil. They could do it. Again, this is one of those things where people are like, oh, they're not going to be able to do it.

They could do it. They're perfectly capable of doing it, but it broke compatibility with the Apple Pencil 2 that we all know. So this new one has a different magnetic charge compatibility shape, essentially. The pencil itself looks exactly the same, but it's different. So the new iPads work with it. No other iPad works with it. Okay, that's the Pencil Pro. If you're on, or you can use that USB-C pencil that they came out with last year,

and that one is the one that charges via USB-C, and it doesn't have the barrel roll and haptic and all that. It's fewer features, but it'll be cheaper and it doesn't magnetically charge. I know that you might hear Apple Pencil Pro and think it's more expensive, but no, it's $129, the same as the Apple Pencil version 2. Version 2, right. Yes, so it's the same price as the one that it is technically replacing for these new iPads. Right. Older iPads might use the Apple Pencil 2.

And some iPads use the Apple Pencil USB. Or like, I think all iPads can use the Apple Pencil USB-C. Any USB-C iPad supports the Apple Pencil with USB-C. So that's the new kind of default. Right. the Apple Pencil with USB-C. So that's the new kind of default. Right, but the 10th generation iPad uses the Pencil 2. The 10th generation iPad uses the... It currently sells on Apple's website

that you would use either Apple Pencil with USB-C or Apple Pencil 1st generation for the 10th generation iPad. Oh, or 1st... That's what it says on their website right now. I don't know why. So anyway, like I said, clearly what is going to happen

is that Apple Pencil 2 and Apple Pencil 1 are going to go away and there's going to be Apple Pencil, which is USB-C, and Apple Pencil Pro, which is magnetic attach, magnetic charge, extra features. And those will be the two.

But they still got to clear out some iPads to make that happen. And I would expect that the Apple Pencil 2 would still draw on these iPads. You just can't charge it when the battery dies. That's what I think would happen. I don't know.

Or whether they lock them out entirely. Because you can't pair them. You can't pair them. You can't pair them. Yeah, good point. You can't pair them. that's what i think would happen i don't know or whether they lock them out entirely because you can't compare them compare you can't pair them yeah no point you can't pair them so get get a new pencil everybody yeah it's time for a new pencil but what i am genuinely happy about though is that in doing this they added a ton of new features and didn't charge you any more money so yes it sucks is that you might have to also buy a new apple pencil along with a new ipad if you buy one. But I like that they didn't just say like, oh, this one doesn't work anymore, so we have a new one.

The Apple Pencil story, though, is it has become easier. It's still too complicated. And the Apple Pencil with USB-C, you can see why they did it. You can see now that it's all going through. You can see now that in a year, as things come off the price list or are updated, like once they update the iPad mini and the base iPad, I feel like the pencil story will be clear. Yeah.

But it's not right now. Not right now. There is a new Magic Keyboard. It has a, I would say, refined design. Not new, different, but not like it is dramatically different it's it is yes it's less dramatic than i thought it is not replacing the cantilever with a laptop design but it the cantilever is is shorter. And so it feels more laptop-y without it actually

anchoring. It still covers the whole back of the iPad. It's still, you know, it's bottom and top when you close it

is the rubberized gray or white material. But a couple of things here. One is, and it's still the, you know, the little three dots on the back

to attach it and magnetic attach on the back. That's all the same. It's the back to attach it and magnetic attach on the back. That's all the same. It's only compatible with this model. There are some physics reasons why that's the case because I think actually one of the, because the new iPad Pros are smaller

or thinner and lighter, it gives them a little bit more room to push it back a little further, which is what they did. There's also some changes like the thing that used to be a round thing with a USB on it. That hinge is now kind of oval. It's kind of pill-shaped. So it's a little bit different, but very familiar to the Magic Keyboard that was unveiled in 2020. The trackpad is bigger. There's a function row. Hooray, it's the function row. They got it in

there. And the big difference is the keyboard surface is aluminum. The keyboard surface is color matched to the iPad. So when it's open, if you're using the space gray, or sorry, space black, it's space black now, Mike, it's not space gray. If you're using the space gray uh or sorry space black it's space black now mike it's not space gray if you're using the space black one the keyboard is space black the trackpad is space black but if you close it it's still that rubberized gray material it's just the inside that is color match they also have around the keyboard tray a very slight like rim of rubber too i guess so that yeah the keyboard uh will touch the screen less which would be nice yeah and then the white one it's white rubberized white on the outside and then the inside is color matched to the to the silver

metallic so it when you're using it it feels very laptop like but when you close using it, it feels very laptop-like, but when you close it, it looks very iPad-like. So the cantilever is less pronounced now, I think, because the, I don't know why, I guess maybe the weight difference means they don't need to put so much of a balance in. Yeah, that's it. That's it. It is lighter, and so they can shift that weight, and lighter and thinner, they can shift that weight and lighter and thinner they can shift the way back a little bit they also have changed some of the design a little bit where the the kind of the metal part that sits at the back where you can put the usb c in is more exposed now than on the previous one where it was kind of wrapped in a in a material so and pill shaped yeah and it's got a

little bit of a it kind of just sticks out at the back there which is a is a looked it looked strange to me but yeah it's a redesign i mean like the ipad pro itself yeah it is it is legitimately a redesigned product but if you were to look at it you would say oh i know what that is right it's it's not redesigned in the sense you're like oh my god this is totally unlike the magic keyboard was before, it is recognizably the Magic Keyboard. It is an evolution of it, but it is not a let's throw it away and do something completely different kind of thing. It is. So it's, yeah, it's a less, you know, it's a little further back, but it's still got the part that you can tilt. So you can tilt the screen.

And they added the function row. And oh, oh, and we didn't mention it. It's got a haptic trackpad. So now when you click the trackpad, it vibrates. It doesn't click. And that actually means that if you're, some people are actually sensitive to the fact that they're sitting in a relatively quiet space

going click, click, click every time they click that trackpad. Well, this one just vibrates. So it feels like, click, click every time they click that trackpad. Well, this one just vibrates. So it feels like a click, but it doesn't make that noise anymore. I don't know about you, but I found it really hard to open. Like I closed it up

and I think it, I don't know if it's maybe stronger magnets or it's because the iPad Pro is thinner. I found it, and I was watching other people doing the same. You close it and it's like, it took a little bit of effort to open the iPad with the Magic Keyboard.

I will say for me as well, I have not used the Magic Keyboard on an iPad for a long time. It does add a lot of weight like which you know you have these new incredibly light ipads and then it's like oh man i mean you you know it's it's a laptop the keyboard is lighter too right so the whole package is lighter than it was by a bit but when you combine still you're going from an ipad to a laptop mike honestly when i take my met when i take my smart folio off of my iPad,

just the little wrapper, even that I'm amazed at how much thinner and lighter my iPad Pro feels. My iPad Mini, the other day, I took it out of the case and I was like, oh, where have you been hiding? Yeah, so that's going to happen.

That's why Apple used to make the covers that were magnetically attached on the side and only covered the front. I mean, that's totally wise because they wanted it to be lighter. So yeah, I mean, That's why Apple used to make the covers that were magnetically attached on the side and only covered the front. I mean, that's totally wise because they wanted it to be lighter. So, yeah. I mean, I'd say when you're in laptop mode, judge it as a laptop. And it's going to be thinner and lighter than the old laptop mode. But, yeah, the keyboard weighs.

Even though it's lighter, it's definitely going to weigh it down and it changes what it is. The beauty of the iPad is you can just pull it off the keyboard yep uh this ipad pro only has one camera instead of two it loses they got rid of the ultra wide ultra wide they have a 12 megapixel wide camera and a lidar sensor which is in place of the ultra wide so we've gone back to having the lighter sensor was there before but they took but sensor was there before, but they took out the ultra-wide. Yep. And they have an adaptive true-term flash, which they said make document scanning better,

and the front-facing camera is on the landscape edge as well. I saw, I think, Halide was posting about this, saying that their expectation, which would make sense, is it is for thinness. But also... Also, I mean, expectation which would make sense is it is a um for thinness but yeah so i also i mean i i who knows i mean apple's gonna say what apple's gonna say but um it may also be that apple looked at use usage of the ipad pro cameras and found that the ultra wide was not necessary

um but they did they took it off it's an interesting omission like i mean they must feel they must feel strongly and maybe it is the thinness thing where it's like we can make this a lot thinner if we don't have that second camera and somebody said why do we care about the ultra wide camera anyway it's gone so if you're a big ipad ultra wider um don't buy this it looks it looks weird though right because if you look at both of them, the iPad kind of, the camera on the new iPad Pro compared to the old one,

they're kind of laid out very similarly, but things have moved around. It's like they moved the flash to where the LiDAR used to be. They've moved the LiDAR to where one of the cameras used to be. And then there's a microphone and something else it's

interesting to look at it and be like it looks the same but there's different components in there it's just like it's why i didn't notice it at first it's like oh you know it's got a camera on it i i forget that there are there were multiple cameras on the ipad pro in that configuration anyway yeah yeah honestly me too and that's that i think that says it all yep yep uh higher starting storage again 256 and a higher starting price 999 starting price for the 11 inch 1299 for the 13 inches a 200 price increase yeah yeah this is uh this was our tiebreaker in the draft where i made you pick above or below 950 yeah and you picked below it went way above i thought this is what i thought i thought that the that it would be 999 for the base model this time instead of for the

big model so yeah 1299 1299. So like, so as I was flying out here, I was thinking back to when I was flying back from the Brooklyn event and writing about the 2018 launch of the iPad pro. And so I wrote this piece on six colors about like the future of the iPad pro. And I mentioned again that I think that, you know,

Mac OS is, is Apple's kind of secret weapon at this point and that like they should put mac os on an ipad pro they should put mac os envision os uh as an option I think like the mac is such a a powerful thing and it's sort of like it's no longer the dead end and it's the future it is the present and future of computing and the ipad is no longer the future of computing but something else and I still feel that way. And the reason that I was motivated to say that, and Apple didn't do that today. I'm not surprised. I didn't really expect them to. But the reason I say that is Apple needs to give people a lot of reasons to buy an iPad Pro instead of an iPad Air. That's, to me, that's the thing.

And the $1,000 for an 11, $1,299, $1,300 for a 13, and then if you want a keyboard, it's an extra $300. It adds up real quick, and that's fine if you can get value out of it. And I think that Apple today made some good arguments about some of the things that the iPad Pro is great at. It talked about photography. It talked about design. It talked about illustration a whole lot and some 3D work that you can do in it and a lot of sort of like creative things you can do with an iPad. And, okay, I'll give them those, especially with the Apple Pencil. I'll give them those. My challenge is that strikes me as being a pretty small slice.

And that while they talk about this keyboard right and i'm like oh look at this keyboard and there's a guy on the bar train he's working on numbers it's like okay but the truth is that for like i need more reason to buy an ipad pro over an ipad air and right now what you got is oled face id and processor power but really and and pro motion right but really like is it compelling enough for a large enough slice or is that slice a little too small still because the i mean i'll, one of my reactions when I was watching this thing, and it was, you know, I have fun, it's a wild ride watching Apple videos, and I had fun watching it all. from the M4 and all the things that are in the M4 that enable the iPad. They pivoted from that to iPadOS.

Right? Yep. And I could feel my soul leaving my body because the fact is I still believe that just as it was the case in 2018, Apple is so good at building amazing hardware. That screen, that processor, like, it's amazing. Who could deny it? The power and performance,

the battery life, like all of those things, this product is amazing. And then we get to iPadOS, and it's sort of like, you know, and I'm not a, I'm not an iPad OS hater, but like it is like it cannot compare to the hardware work that Apple's doing right now. And if Apple fancies itself, that it's secret sauces, the fusion of hardware and software working together. The story of the iPad for the last six years, if not longer, is that the software lets down the hardware. Yeah.

And while the software has gotten better, the hardware has gotten a lot better. And I look at this today and I think there are specific applications that, that, um, like not, not apps like use cases applications that are really remarkable and apple knows it and apple is calling all of those out but i keep thinking about how

this doesn't really change the conversation where there's a lot of capabilities in ipad os but we all know that there's a whole lot of things that ipOS just can't do. And so now you've got the power of an M4 processor inside that thing. And like, yeah, you can pay $1,200 for one, and it'll be a beautiful movie player. It'll be really expensive, but it'll be a beautiful movie player. You won't be using most of its features, but it will be a beautiful player because of the OLED screen. But like, I just, and I'm not saying it's iPadOS is an F. I'm saying the hardware is an A. And iPadOS is a, I don't know, C, B, B minus. For some things, it's good. For other things, it's still what it is, which is kind of like, there's a bunch of

stuff it can't do, and it probably will never be able to do. And it still frustrates me. So I had that moment. That was my moment of sort of sourness in this is that after that real high of the hardware and the fact that they're still kicking on this and they've got the tandem OLED and they've got the M4 out of nowhere with all this stuff in it. And they're like, and now let's talk about iPadOS. And I was like, well, I can see how this is going to go. And it's, I mean, mean yeah there's a new version of final cut and logic and and and there are some nice features that'll that will also be on the mac version but i don't know i just it was a real it was a letdown not that i was expecting some kind of amazing ipad os story in fact if they're gonna have that story they should have have it at WWDC next month anyway. But it was just a reminder to me of the contrast.

Not even saying that iPadOS is bad. Just saying that Apple is at the top of its game and maybe the game on the hardware side of these products. And then on the software side, you're like, oh yeah, it's the same old story. It's just kind of, it's okay. It's got some stuff it doesn't do. Some stuff it does do. It's kind of a big okay it's got some stuff it doesn't do some stuff it does do it's kind of a big ipad or a big iphone a little bit still i don't know i don't know what you thought about it but i i just it was a real i i actually put it in my notes i'm like oh the

letdown right here yeah i felt it i mean i understand it right federico turned to me at the end he's like what do you think like what did you think about all that and basically it's like i got exactly what i thought we were gonna get like i share the desire for mac virtualization but i don't really expect we're gonna get it like i i don't expect it and i don't i don't want to go overboard about Mac virtualization because Mac virtualization in many ways is my attempt to find a solution to the problem of the iPad. Because the problem of the iPad is

at one point it seemed like they were going to drive it toward being the replacement for the Mac. And then at some point they sort of like, they struggled with it and they didn't really get it there. And then they seemed to stop trying and decided that the Mac is the future of the Mac. But like they don't have a convert decided that the mac is the future of the mac but

like they don't have a convertible and the ipad pro does some things well and there are other things that it just doesn't do and you know i would be fine if they said we're reinvigorating ipad os in order to do all these things because we don't want it to have the limitations it's got but instead it feels like they're in this position where they're like the mac's over there and it can do anything you want and the ipad's over here and it's never really going to do more than it does right now. And so when I bring up something like virtualizing macOS when you're in a keyboard and trackpad case in order to just sort of use it as a laptop for a while, it is in some ways an act of desperation. But it's also me trying to find a solution that unlocks the power of that hardware because ipad os doesn't do it you know you're saying about the future computing and it seemed like it was going down that track and then they changed course i actually wonder if i don't know

if the ipad changed course i think that the apple that was potentially moving towards getting rid of the mac and replacing with the ipad maybe wanted the ipad to be like just what it is like that it was well i mean they may have decided that down and it felt it felt though like at one point there was like a real project of we're going to push a lot of extra features into ipad os because we want it to be more mac like because in the end the mac is going to kind of fade away and when they realized with apple silicon and i think they decided they were going to not just keep the mac around as a legacy product but they were going to put on an apple silicon they were going to they're going to make the effort to take the underpinnings and and get them connected between mac os and ios and ipad os so they're all running the same base system and

all of that they decide to do that i feel like what probably happened is that the pressure went off ipad os it's like oh you don't have to be more Mac-like now. Yeah. I mean, like for me as a user, this is what I expected. And so I got what I wanted. I would love to see. This is exactly, I think, what we all expected. Other than the M4, which is more than we expected, in fact. But I mean, the M4 is still emblematic of what I expect, which is the iPad's incredibly powerful.

And I'm not going to use any of that. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And this brings back to my point about, like, I'm not actually criticizing when I write these articles and stuff. I'm not actually criticizing the iPad. I'm criticizing the existence of the iPad Pro because I don't think for most use cases it makes any sense because there are a lot of pro use cases out there where pro users might want a convertible, but iPadOS can't do it for them. So you're left with this narrow slice of creative cases where it's Apple Pencil and it's 3D. And even Apple struggles a little bit to be like, what's a creative use that also requires the power of an M4 processor? And as the iPad Air

gets better and is a lot cheaper, I feel like I have to have that question, which is like, okay, I love the iPad. I think the iPad Air is really good. What are the things that justify the existence of the iPad Pro and justify its price? And that's where I just start to struggle a little bit because Apple has built it. They built it, right? They built the amazing machine, but now like, to what end? And sometimes I get frustrated because I feel like there is no what end there. It just... Hey, Jason, maybe AI. AI is going to save the day.

It's going to, AI is going to do, yeah, it's going to be, you're going to need it for all the AI that you're going to be doing. Okay, all right, fine, fair, fair. I do want to talk about real quick an actual real incredible pro use case that I saw today, which was the Final Cut Pro 2 and the Final Cut camera app with multi-view. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

So I got to see a demo of the match like they set up a bunch of cameras and they were doing like uh here's a product walkthrough and uh the the product manager was showing us how it worked and it was really very impressive they had like these four three iphones yes three or four iphones and then they had an ipad the the ipad which was bringing in it was like getting all of the uh files they were like streaming to it and as reference files yeah and you're able to multi-cam like edit like do a very quick edit but you can also change all of the settings of all of the cameras wirelessly and independently of each other so they built yeah they built this camera app um to run on the iphone or the ipad

and the and it will work in standalone mode it's kind of like the black magic camera or one of those apps it's like it's got a lot of advanced features for capturing video but one of the one of the killer features is if you're attached to uh an ipad running final cut you can remote control those cameras so they had one that was mounted i assume this is the case for you too that was mounted like high up the ceiling down yeah on the table so you can't control that iphone from up there but it can control it remotely and then the previews are being streamed live um over uh i think it's an ad hoc wi-fi connection and they're obviously they're lower resolution but they're they're streaming resolution and then you can start shooting and um and you can multi-cam that way and you can

adjust them even on the fly you can change the focus you can do all those things and then at the end when you're done um it will it's a little like those podcast and video apps where they they catch up at the end like when you're done those apps will continue streaming the full quality video to the ipad so that in the end the ipad can walk away with the whole project uh which is also smart right like there so there's a proxy that is the low quality streamed version and then it backfills it with the full quality version uh and and and puts that in the project which is super clever and super smart and i also um one of the people in our group asked about apple ids because they're like

are these do these all have to be on the same apple id and the person said no because you probably don't want to buy four iphones you're probably bringing a bunch of people's iphones and that's fine because you can do an authentication thing where you basically say trust this iphone and you you you say yes and then they they talk to each other and you can do an authentication thing where you basically say, trust this iPhone. And you say yes. And then they talk to each other. And you can have multi-cam that way. It's very clever. Really cool.

Very clever. And this is, I believe, a feature that's not going to be on Final Cut Pro for the Mac. Most of the Logic and Final Cut features that they announced are coming to updates to the Mac versions as well. But I think this particular one is iPad only. I thought that was like, I looked, I was like, oh,

that's really cool. Yeah, it's smart. These iPads are available next Wednesday, which is a very weird day to me. Wednesday. Hmm. So you can order them now,

and they ship on Wednesday. It's like, okay, Wednesday. It's usually these things on Fridays, right? Like just, yeah,

middle of next week, you can get them. Yeah, they just said next week on the slides. Yes, the 15th of May. I was sitting behind a couple of product reviewers who looked at each other and swore and I laughed because it's even worse because this was the thing where like Federico's like, okay, next Friday.

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iPad edition. Choo-choo-choo. Alex wants to know, is the new iPad Pro 13-inch thin and light enough to consider as someone who previously thought it was too heavy for daily use i mean possibly i think yes i mean it depends on like if you thought it was absolutely untenable but i think that this is weight wise fine for daily use but you've got to decide if size is also an issue for you right because it because it's thinner, but the other dimensions are the same, more or less. So if it was just too unwieldy, then probably not.

But if you were right on the edge and you want the bigger screen and you just, I wish it was a little lighter and a little thinner, well, I guess it is now. Stee asks, did you get too touched in the nanotexture screens? How did they handle fingerprints? I remember reading that you need special cleaning cloths touch the nanotexture screens? How did they handle fingerprints? I remember reading that you need special cleaning cloths for the nanotexture display. I'm curious how they handled that for a touch-first device. Did you touch it at all? I touched it.

It feels like an iPad. It just looks different. They wouldn't make it if it couldn't be touched because it's an iPad. It does come with a cloth that they recommend you use to wipe down the fingerprints because I think they don't want you to use some other kind of material that might do something weird.

But it's a different process, we said earlier. Yeah, you probably don't want to use any kind of cleaning solution on this if they've done something chemically to it, I would expect. And also, I didn't notice fingerprints. I'm sure that it's just going to show like any device and I don't know if it's a problem as such.

Like, maybe they should, the fingerprints show more on a glossy display anyway than a matte display. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I used it for 30 seconds. I don't have an opinion about that. Brian wants to know, is there any reason why

the new magic keyboard doesn't support older ipad pros i imagine the dimensions are similar except for thickness thickness and weight and so they're they're just it's it's not gonna work it's not gonna balance right but the reason would be that the bigly big primarily bigly is uh yeah it's a half a pound lighter or i mean a quarter of a pound lighter the big one i like it the physics are totally different just think about it you gotta have enough weight in the in the bottom to prevent it from tipping over and they did not solve for that process with the old ipad they used the new ipad so it's not designed so that's the reason and they don't my understanding is they do not. And the old keyboard will not work on the new one

because they're like, they're not designed for that. And they have broken compatibility in order to design something different. Yeah. And like, is there some way to hack the old one to work with the new?

Maybe. But Apple's saying don't. So... Apple's saying don't. You know, there are times when they've said like oh it will technically still work but they're saying like no this this these it's set the pencil and the keyboard for the new ipads they are like you must use the new stuff they've

changed things around um so you've you've got to bear that in mind for the ipad pro especially and the apple pencil for the ipad air yeah jeff asks the hand rest area on the new magic keyboard is aluminium but what kind of material did they use in the back or outside uh is it the rubbery material of the old magic keyboard ding it is yeah it looks the same feels the same yeah i think i kind of dig the two-tone to be honest i i don't know i mean it's probably fine um my concern is that there's the sort of metal part and then there's the other part that are connected together and i'm a little concerned that that's not going to wear well or that'll come apart or that it'll it'll fray right there at that the connection between them because it's like one thing is like glued to the other one so in the long run we'll see how it survives

but but yeah it's it's um it's a familiar thing if you if you thought your ipad was going to turn into a shiny aluminum laptop when it's closed that is not what happens yeah i mean i ordered a silver ipad pro i ordered one already because it was what i wanted as a product and i ordered a silver iPad Pro. I ordered one already because it was what I wanted as a product. And I ordered a smart cover because I don't need a magic keyboard personally. Need a keyboard.

As I said before, I'm not really using my iPad for stuff where I need a keyboard for it that often or a trackpad. But I don't like the weight that it adds to the overall package and i love how an ipad feels in a smart cover and that's perfect for me but if i i would not have gotten the silver one because i i would not want the mismatching color and i wouldn't want a white keyboard is the problem

right because it's going to get dirtier than the black one yeah yeah now obviously the the aluminium won't get dirty right so it's not going to pick up like grease from your hands as in that way that the old uh smart key magic keyboard there was a white magic keyboard right smart key there was a white magic keyboard too though oh yeah there's a magic keyboard so that's not new the gray and the white are the same. Yeah, but the white would discolor, I guess, a little bit. But on this one, at least on the keyboard itself, the keyboard part, it won't because it's aluminum,

but the outside will still get dirtier than the black one would. Jeff also asks, the new Magic Keyboard has a 14-key function row. What is it about the design of the new keyboard that gives you space to be able to reach that new function key row? Is that difference an improvement or a shortcoming? It's the cantilever doesn't go as far forward probably because the iPad is lighter. And is that a shortcoming?

I mean, right now I would say having a function key row is an improvement, but in terms of the positioning of the iPad, I'm going to have to use it to tell you that, and I will. That's all part of the plan, but does it tip over more? Is it too far away? Is it less comfortable on the lap?

I didn't get to try any of that stuff, so I can't tell you. I found for me that viewing angles, I didn't get to try any of that stuff, so I can't tell you. I found for me that the viewing angles, I don't know, because as you said, I wasn't using it sitting down at a desk or whatever. The function row is a little more tucked underneath the iPad

than I would like, but I don't know who... I don't know how often I would need to use those keys that it would be a problem. But when you've got it kind of like, you know, you've got it tilted a little bit,

you're kind of reaching under the bottom lip of the iPad to hit some of those keys. But I think it's fine. I did like that one of the keys was, you could lock the iPad with the function row. I thought that was cool. Because there's nothing to eject and nothing to turn off, which is what they do. There is nothing to eject.

If only. Imagine. I wanted the Magic Keyboard to have a floppy drive in it. That would have been so cool. I mean, look, it would have been a choice. You know? Like if they would have done it and made it work. Or a CD drive. A little extra rigidity from the

CD that was in the bottom of it kevin says i'm coming from a 2020 ipad i'm assuming ipad pro which i use for note taking document markup video consumption and rss should i upgrade or hold off another cycle oh boy well i mean it really does depend what model this is. Yeah. We're going to say 2020 iPad Pro because that was the one that just got the LiDAR. Yeah. It was exactly the same as the 2018. I'd say I'd hold off and see what iPadOS brings, there's a very specific thing about it that speaks to you um you can you could probably survive a little longer yeah i would say if you are a 2018 ipad pro user of which i know there

are many this is probably a pretty great upgrade for you if you use it a bunch of the final cut and logic features don't work unless you've got an M1 I think primarily because of RAM issues or memory management issues I also wonder if maybe some of the well I mean look there is the other question here which we don't know

is like what potential features could come to iPadOS and iOS this year that may need new hardware like that is a that's a real possibility and so like maybe in a few weeks time yeah a bunch of ipad os ai features where they're like requires m series yeah you're like okay maybe i will update then or maybe even requires m4 m44 or M2 or, yeah, maybe. Maybe. I'm doubtful. I think that requires M4.

I mean, it's possible. It's possible that there could even be, remember there was that one feature, I don't even remember what it was, where you needed the bigger one. You needed to have had the big one that had more RAM in it in order to do something. And maybe it's possible that could happen.

I don't know. Doug asks, there's a long list of great changes for these ipads but what do you think are the most striking updates to the ipad pro uh the keyboard or the pencil after handling them like what what really stuck out to you well one i will ask you actually are you interested in updating your ipad pro yeah yeah i have an m1, so I am interested. But what sticks out to you to make this the one that you would maybe update where you haven't before? OLED.

And that's on the... So if you have an M1, you don't have a mini LED version? I do. I have a mini LED to a point there. I forget. Yes, M1 was the first one to get it. M2 got it again yep oled i can't wait to compare them but like oled i think and um and keyboard partially because

i use a keyboard to do my job and i don't really use a pencil to do much of my job other than and the and the changes the pencil don't particularly interest me i mean maybe depending on the apps the the app that i use with the pencil um i could see it but it's just i'm not again artists are going to feel differently about it but for me the keyboard with the function keys i read a lot of stuff on my ipad using the magic keyboard and so to have a a new magic keyboard with that function row um very interesting so that's that's the one that i am um i think are most striking is the display and uh and the the keyboard but your mileage may vary and again we don't really know maybe there are things that are going to be

enabled again by ipad os uh in the fall that we don't know about yet i don't know for me the physical dimensions are a thing like the the thinness i think is really compelling um the apple pencil i think that it's a really nice upgrade that even if you only use it sometimes you're going to have a great time with it like i cannot express how easy it is to change like tools now by just being able to do the squeeze thing. It feels very natural and very fun to use. And the OLED, as you say, the OLED screen, I mean, I've waited for something, for Apple to put OLED in an iPad

for a while now. We've been talking about it. And I think it looks fantastic. And I look forward to experiencing it in my usual environments with my usual content. Right. If you would like to send in an Ask Upgrade question in a future episode of your own, please go to upgradefeedback.com, and you can do that. But we're not done yet in this episode.

We have some other things that we need to get to. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Warmer, sunnier days are calling. Fuel up for them with Factor's no prep, no mess meals. Meet your wellness goals in time for summer thanks to the menu of chef crafted meals with options like calorie smart, protein plus and keto. Factor's fresh, never frozen meals,

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Apple's Q2 results. I don't know. I mean, you probably had it on your calendar, but I totally forgot that this was happening. I was very surprised to see this hit my RSS feed from Six Colors. But I want to break this down real quick. So revenue, $90.8 billion, down 4% year over year. The Mac, $7.5 billion, up 4%.

iPad at $5.6 billion dollars down 17 percent oh man they need some new ipads they sure do don't they uh the iphone 46 billion dollars down 10 percent wearables 7.9 billion down 10 percent services 23.9 billion up 14 setting another all-time record so reading your coverage on this it seems like the main takeaway for why the iphone had its uh well why we're down is mostly because iphone's down as iphone drives everything uh that essentially there was a pent-up there was pent-up demand due to covid in the year-ago quarter that Tim says pulled basically $5 billion of revenue into that quarter, which is an anomaly. That's their excuse. I will point out that if you take the last two quarters of last year and last two quarters of this year and compare them,

they're still down, right? I think last quarter they they didn't say oh you know we're up but you shouldn't count it because there was covid maybe they did i don't know but like it was up so everybody was happy and then and then this quarter they're like oh no no but but last year was a tough compare put them together and it's still down a little bit but um that's um it's look the iphone's uh in a ball in the right ballpark i think that they said that a lot of a lot of their stuff is a difficult compare in part because of the strength of the dollar and that they they have seen growth in a lot of markets but that don't show up in the balance sheet because the growth is happening and then in a currency that when you translate to the

dollar is uh the dollar has gotten stronger and so it makes it seem weaker than it actually is. It, you know, it's fine. They're the big thing for me is that there were all of these reports from various research groups that Apple's, uh, phone sales in China were in free fall.

And on the call, Tim Cook was like, I don't know. So it was asked about it directly. And he was like, I don't know what to tell you. You just heard our numbers. You know, we were accelerating in urban China

and in mainland China. So, right? Like, I don't know what that means other than he points at the numbers and says, we're doing okay in China. Interesting, interesting conflict there. He did say, I think, that it's like a really tough market, though, which is interesting. Oh, yeah. It's an incredibly brutal competitive market. He did say that, that it's like a really tough market though

which is interesting oh yeah it's incredibly brutal say that which is which i thought was cool to hear like it was like i don't know it seemed interesting to me to hear him say that but it is more competitive there than in other parts of the world it seems like yeah yeah for sure uh wearables don't show vision pro success. I mean, I think we knew that anyway. There's no way they would have. There's no way they would have. We did the math. There's no way.

It's just a thing, right? Like, it's just, you know, it's a thing. With the Mac being the only product line up year over year, which I guess considering today's comments, we can attribute to the success of the MacBook Air M3, which is cool. I think that is, they did that too. And they said today that the the 15 inch is the

best-selling 15 inch and i would like to read a quote here from tim cook okay we believe in the transformative power and promise of ai and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate us in this new era including apple's unique combination of seamless hardware software and services integration groundbreaking apple silicon with our industry-leading neural engines and our unwavering focus on privacy, which underpins everything we create. So the three things to take away from this, Apple Silicon, privacy, and services?

Yeah, yeah. So one, it's what we talked about earlier. Apple's been building AI-focused hardware, AI-focused chips for seven years. So they're in pretty good shape there. Privacy is a signal that they're going to do a lot of stuff on device if they can. See the chips thing. And that's an advantage for them because the more,

it's not just good for users, but it's good for sort of everybody. The more stuff that happens on device is the less stuff that is sent into the cloud, which is expensive for companies to have cloud servers to process that stuff when Apple is rolling out chips to everybody that can just do it right there. Plus it's faster.

So there's that. And then services, I don't know. This may be a hint that they're going to do some integration with third-party AI stuff, right? Where it's like, that's not a thing that you get from Apple necessarily. And it's something that happens up in the cloud. That part's, yeah, interesting.

You know, I wonder if there are potentially some features available to iCloud Plus subscribers or, you know, if things that cost Apple extra money or whatever it's going to be, I don't know. But it wasn't a surprise for me to hear Tim mention services when talking about this. It's also rote. I mean, hardware, software, and services is what they say.

So he may not have, I mean, it I mean, hardware, software, and services is what they say. So he may not have, I mean, it may have been hardware, software, and services. Right? But, you know, they say it all now. So it's in there. And Jason,

it is time to lawyer up. Lawyer up. Lawyer up time. There is something we want to talk about. Order in the court. Order in the court.

Order. The main reason we're doing lawyer up today is something we want to talk about. Order in the court. Order in the court. Order. The main reason we're doing Lawyer Up today is because we have Lawyer Up artwork now, which you can look at in your podcast player, which is truly incredible. So this is a back to the future-like scenario, I think we've got. So in Rumor Roundup,

there are these two guys and they're cowboys. Now they've moved forward a couple of hundred years. Now they're in legal profession. Now they're cowboys now move forward a couple hundred years now they're now they're in legal profession now they're lawyers yeah so we have mike the barrister jason the simple country lawyer simple country lawyer that's right uh taking a bite out of the law but this is the we've mentioned this segment before this is our litigation segment now called lawyer up with its own artwork and we're here today to talk about core technology fee changes oh by the way thank you to siege roland for uh producing this wonderful illustration yes so there is no longer going to be a core technology fee payable if an app has no revenue source so if i guess you have to be able to prove this

yes annually prove that you are not making money so in any form it's not like the riley tested like i'm just a kid who made an app that went viral i don't owe you three million dollars well actually i don't think this is the Riley part. I think, well, maybe. Okay, so... Because it was free and he gave it away when he was a kid. Yeah, now it would.

I think that is sort of it. Because he has a Patreon, right? And so the Patreon would... But yes, back then, as they say, as Apple says, this condition is intended to give students, hobbyists, and other non-commercial developers

an opportunity to create a popular app without paying the CTF. So essentially, what you you could do is if you wanted to have a free app and you're worried that it might blow up or whatever, you could do it. If it does, then you could make a business because you then understand where you are and then you'll give Apple the money, right? But this is, it stops that scenario of if you're just looking to do something for fun and it explodes, no CTF. This is great. This is a great change that I wanted them to make. I still think there are other CTF changes they should make. There are other ones they have made, which we'll talk about, but I'm

pleased they did this one. The second change is, now bear with me here, all right? If you make less than 10 million euros in global revenue a year, you get a three-year on-ramp for the CTF. If you make less than 10 million euros in global revenue a year, you get a three-year on-ramp for the CTF. If you cross the 1 million install threshold for the first time during this three-year period, you will not pay the core technology fee. like if your revenue balances at between 10 and 50 million euros during these three years, you would pay the CTF after the first 1 million installs, as we just mentioned, but you're capped at paying Apple a million euros a year. Complicated, but again, they're still trying to work this out.

And then put these out there and then look over at the EC and say, is this okay? The answer is probably no. Probably not, but they're trying. They're trying again. And then the other news that has occurred is that Apple have confirmed they will make the iPad and iPadOS

DMA compliant later this fall. Later this fall, of course, as was prophesied by us. Of course, it will be later this fall. Later this fall, of course, as was prophesied by us. Of course it will be later this fall. And you know what? It's been a long episode of Upgrade, Mike. The fact is if you stuck with us this long, I know you had to hear some boring legal stuff, but you got

to see the lawyer up art. Indeed. And wasn't that worth it? Wasn't that worth it? I think it was. It was. Thank you for listening to this bumper episode of Upgrade. If you'd like to send us in your feedback, follow-up, or questions, go to upgradefeedback.com. You can check out Jason's

work. I'm sure there's going to be more writing and information over at sixcolors.com about the new iPads, and you can hear his podcast at theincalmable.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to me here on RelayFM, and you can check out my work at cortexbrand.com. If you want to find us online,

Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can watch video clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are at Upgrade Relay. Don't forget, you have just a few days left for Upgrade March. Please go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com, check them out, support the show.

Thank you to our members who support us directly with Upgrade Plus. Thank you to our sponsors this week, Factor, Vitaly, Squarespace, and Tailscale. And most of all, thank you for listening. Till next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Forget about it, I'm walking here.