Upgrade - 513: I Do Not Rock Anything

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 513 today's show is brought to you by delete me uni pizza ovens and wild grain my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. We're halfway to 1024. Just past the 512 mark on our way up to 1024. Off we go. I'm back. I was away last week. Thank you very much to Stephen and Federica for filling in for me. You know how much joy it gave me that you mentioned multiple times that it took both of them to replace me.

So thank you for that present. Two hosts in a trench coat. Yeah, exactly. Well, originally the idea was episode 512. We're going to have me yeah so thank you for that present two hosts in a trench coat yeah exactly um well originally the idea was episode 512 we're gonna have steven fill in for you he could talk to me about my ipad review um and then i discovered over the weekend that one federico had written a very long article about ipad uh failings and two he didn't get one to review in time so i had proceeded under the assumption that, although I thought Federico would be the perfect guest for that episode, because he's got his own stuff and he would be prepping under the same embargo as me and all of that, that there was no point in even trying to get him on podcast. He would be just too busy to do it. But then I discovered over the weekend that that wasn't the case.

And so it was so good to be able to get him on for a little bit in there. I was up real early because he's way out there in Italy. And then Stephen as well. So yeah, it was fun. Yeah, it was a good time. And I liked that you had both. And I think it was good for the show to have Federico on and to do all of that. Before we begin today, I would like to, that yeah before we begin today i would like to uh

before we fully begin today i would like to invite our listeners to look at their podcast app because we have refreshed the artwork for upgrade so we tossed our designer here at relay fm jd davis to take the old upgrade art the existing upgrade art and just give it a fresh coat of paint we did not want to rebrand the show in any way. We're very happy with it, but we wanted to give it more of a new feel. So we have both for upgrade

and for upgrade plus, we now have more consistent branding between the two as well. It's upgrade is in, I guess, silver or space gray and upgrade plus is in space black i guess or midnight or i don't know yeah something like that and the artwork looks more like an actual button which is uh like a power button because that's what the logo is and we've got a nice little glow going on

too so they're both new it's available now for you to look at and uh i don't know it just it's more of a refresh i think we both felt this the upgrade maybe felt like one of the older it was well it was one of the oldest shows on the network so the logo was untouched for 512 episodes correct untouched on absolutely zero had changed and it was maybe time for a refresh uh and so we've done that and i'm really happy right but we also didn't want to change it i mean we talked about it we actually are very happy with the idea of the of the circle with the button and the arrow and the whole thing and so that was the real challenge in working with jd is like jd change it but don't change it and uh so i just think it looks nicer and we had a there's there was a really uh subtle like pattern

on the background it's like a pinstripe and it didn't it didn't really work it didn't really resolve and when it did resolve sometimes it seemed like more like a a weird uh error right so it's like this is but it's just cleaner and better and nice and it makes reference to apple's uh uh various metal non-colors which is uh delights me yeah so it's really good stuff thank you jd for that for the amazing work on this one and i hope that you all enjoy our refreshed uh artwork for as we barrel towards episode 1024 indeed uh we have a snow talk question to fully start officially start this week's episode it comes from daniel who says jason i couldn't help but notice you casually dropping an old man river

reference last week and talking about the ipad pro which was tote that barge lift that bale jason what is your favorite musical okay well it's not showboat and in fact i was just making tote that barge lift that bale. It entered the lexicon. So I wasn't actually intentionally making a reference to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Although, I think technically my official answer for what my favorite musical is, is The King and I. So Rodgers and Hammerstein, but a different one. It was my mother's favorite musical. My mom's favorite movie, maybe.

mother's favorite musical my favorite my mom's favorite movie maybe um and i have seen it in in twice including once with yul brenner when he was sort of returned to the role when i was a kid we went and saw it went down to san francisco to see it um and it's sweet it's very sad at the end the king dies it's very sad spoilers yeah i know well you know spoilers for uh musical from the 50s and uh are there are there some thematic issues with with the king and i yeah yeah there are but uh i i have a great uh fondness for it in terms of like a modern i don't know i mean hamilton's the easy answer i love hamilton it's it's still still doing it for me i still think it's great but but my classic answer is the king and i uh thank you very much for that answer jason i assumed you were gonna say hamilton to be honest uh it's my two i know i did a whole episode on

a corner in the sky queen rose's uh podcast about musicals on the incomparable i did a whole episode with her about uh the king and i so i'll put that in the show that if they want yeah i will find it and put it in the show notes sure i'll find it that if they want. Yeah. I will find it and put it in the show notes. Sure. I'll find it for you. Oh, even better. Thank you so much. Why doesn't everybody find it and also put it in the show notes, if you don't mind? Thank you so much to Daniel for sending in that question. If you would like to send in a Snow Talk question of your own,

what you need to do is go to upgradefeedback.com. Send one in. We have some follow-up. So first comes from scott who says on the last episode jason mentioned that he wished that the keyboard backlight brightness for the magic keyboard is an option in control center well it is it is it turns out the people i was talking to at apple about it didn't even realize that it was there which is funny uh but yes there it is there you can put it there and then you can swipe down from control center i still think the point remains that you should be able to do it from the keyboard i also was told

that apparently if you are using it and it's off and you are in a dark place it comes on i don't know if that's true or not but i was told that i i have not verified that yet i find that kind of amazing if that's true so it may be that I just don't notice. And also it's true that I basically leave it off because I very rarely am using it somewhere where I need the backlighting on. I generally leave keyboard backlighting off. But what I do find valuable is if I'm suddenly, I find myself in a place where I need the keyboard backlighting, I would really like to be able to just use the little, I know I know the argument there as well. If you can't see the keys, how can you use them? And I know where the keys are, but I would like to see the backlighting on a little keyboard thing, but yes, you can put it, you can add it to control center, um, through the settings app. And then you can, uh, I would

also argue probably should just sort of be a secondary control under brightness and not its own little button, but you know, whatever it's there and you can add it to control center yeah and we get uh we have some chat room feedback instantly that says yes it does turn on in the dark so there's that too look at that and i i just want to say numerous podcasts over the last few few weeks have acted as if there isn't backlighting on the magic keyboard on either one which is funny because it's always been there it's it's like i think i said this last week it's like a berenstein bears kind of thing it's like a mandela effect thing where everybody sort of has agreed to pretend that the magic keyboard didn't have backlighting but it's always had backlighting the obviously the

the the smart keyboard thing that was just the fabric can't have it but the magic keyboards have backlighting yeah uh it was quite funny actually about the the uh control center thing i was standing next to federico at the event and it was one of the first things he did was check fucking control center to see if there was a button there i don't i which was kind of funny to me it it is i just i don't know why you don't use a modifier in the for the yeah for the backlight for the lighting brightness controls to have it be the backlighting instead i just i don't know but then again ipad os kind of broken when it comes to global modifier keys so sure sure sure maybe

that's why uh it makes sense to me in a way that it could detect i mean i'm sure that ipads have brightness sensors like the iphone true tone that's how you do true tone so it makes sense that they have the ability to do that it's pretty cool isn't it nice they've got that wired up even though i've never really i i gotta be honest i mostly use the magic keyboard outside in my backyard writing or or any well-lit room in my house during the day when i'm working i'm very rarely working on the ipad at night in the dark right like it just doesn't happen that often i'm not i'm not a a secret black site ipad writer i'm not that so uh but it's good to know that it's there so there you go all right next next

piece of follow-up comes in next follow-up next follow-up comes in from paul who says jason mentions that he prefers to type on the magic keyboard on the 13-inch ipad but he rocked an 11-inch macbook for many years was the the keyboard on the MacBook not similar in size? Okay, first off, I do not rock anything. Only Casey List rocks things. I just use them. I just wear them. I don't rock.

I just want to, I'm just filing as a complaint here. Sorry, Paul, you're the one who has prompted me to do this. But one of those things that I'm against is referring to the utility of anything, utilization of anything as rocking it. And I can tell you from my own personality, I do not rock anything. against is referring to the utility of anything utilization of anything as rocking it and i can tell you from my own personality i do not rock anything literally anything i will say you rock me like a hurricane just so you know okay i know that great here i am like a hurricane um uh i did use an 11 inch macbook air for a long time and it's a full-size keyboard, and all the keys are the right size, is my recollection.

And there are shrunk-down keys on the 11-inch Magic Keyboard. So, okay, I'm just going to say, Jason in the chat room said this is the most old man thing I've heard Jason say. Honestly, using rock to refer to things that you're doing that's what an old man says every time i hear casey do it i'm like casey you're way too old to be saying you rocked a hat don't do it stop it now oh oh man after the show i'm gonna have one of those moments where i have to text casey and say casey you gotta listen to the follow-up on upgrade anyway listen anyway you know he's uh magic key ipad magic keyboard some of the keys are like half width and it's squished and it doesn't feel right so it is my my what i would say is no

uh to me the 11 inch air was the exact width that you could make a computer and still have a regular keyboard and the size of the 11 inch ipad is too for that, but I don't have them with me. So I can't like, I can't verify this, but that's my recollection is that it's just a little bit too small. And there are some half, uh, the one that bothers, I know John Gruber is driven insane by this is the idea that the left bracket key is full width and the right bracket key is half width because it is imbalanced. And, and and he when i saw him in new york he said to me at one point why don't you make them both the same width it's like well because they don't because they you get to the edge it's like writing on it's like john mulaney

thing about writing on a on a big sign and you start like wait with the letters way too big and then you get toward the end and you're like, oh no. The happy birthday. They get to the last key on the keyboard and they're like, oh no, there's no room left. Well, make it smaller and it's fine. It's a little like that. That's funny. I also wanted to just let our listeners know

we have a very small amount of tickets that are still available for our live show in London this coming July to celebrate 10 years of RelayFM. I'm going to be there. Jason's going to be there, along with many other awesome RelayFM hosts. Will Casey be rocking it? Casey may be rocking it, along with us.

He'll be rocking. We'll all be rocking together at an actual place where rock music is sometimes played at the Hackney Empire. So yeah, it's going to be on the 27th of July. There are still some tickets available if you want to come and celebrate and rock it out in style with us in London. Yeah, I'll be rocking a coin and flipping it.

Maybe. Maybe. Probably not. It's time for the details. Woo-hoo! Apple has announced a set of accessibility-focused features coming in iOS 18.

They are continuing their tradition of announcing these ahead of WWDC on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which is really good because it gives these items a time to shine, where they're not going to get potentially overshadowed by other things, and we get to talk about them, and people get to write

about them and stuff like that, which I think is really great. And I wanted to just run through some of these features, because I think there's some really cool stuff in here. The first up is eye tracking for iPad and iPhone, which uses cameras and sensors to track your eyes, and you select things by dwelling

on them for a moment. So it's called dwell control. So this is a super cool feature. It uses the cameras and sensors in the devices to be able to track your eyes. We spoke about this a while ago. And I wondered if Apple could do something like this as a way to somehow control a home pod of a screen. It's like, maybe. But nevertheless, this is a super cool feature. And again, most of these things i think basically all

of them they're somehow machine learning powered yeah i was gonna say this seems to me that it's probably using similar algorithms if not the same algorithms that they're using in the vision pro and a vision pro you know the sensors are right up next to your eyes they've got really clear view and here it's a little bit harder yes but it does feel like this is kind of of a kind and i would also say i'm getting some strong um if you remember the pointer the ipad pointer started in the accessibility settings and and quite rightly right like the accessibility so here's the thing about accessibility accessibility is important because one everybody probably is going to need some accessibility.

If they don't now, they will need it eventually. It's really important to give as many people access in as many different ways to the things that we use to live our lives as possible. And again, I'll just say, if you're fortunate enough to become an old person and use phrases like, I rocked it, you will have motion issues or balance issues or other i mean you will because just getting older you will use it you'll be yeah you'll be rocking the accessibility settings um so it's super important for existing groups but you will become part of those groups at some point in your life as well so you should think about that but also i would say sometimes this is one of those things where apple's got interactions that it's not convinced or ready for the whole world but know that they have direct applications

for people who have for example limited mobility issues and so they put them in it's not what i don't want to say is it's like beta testing it because that's not what it is it's more like we don't think that this feature is maybe something that everybody can use right now, but we know some people who could really use it. And so they should have it. But I look at this and I think to myself, wow. Yeah. That, that HomePod with a screen or even just an iPad in your kitchen, being able to do some basic interaction with that with gestures or eye movement uh without touching it is really interesting for the future and this is all i mean i read shelly brisbane wrote about this

at six colors too they they briefed her about it which is great um it is just i mean for people with mobility issues uh to be able to have this extra level of interaction is uh it's just really cool the idea that you're i mean it's like magic a little bit right which is sort of how i felt about the vision pro and now here it is and other devices where you're just sort of like willing the device to do what you want that's great yeah and like we just had the double tap the apple watch double tap right which was it started as a motion control thing on the Apple Watch and is now available in the shipping product. It's like

a feature that you can assign for different things, which is a great feature on the Apple Watch, but I do use it every day to start my walking workouts. I get to a certain point in my walk to and from the studio, and my Apple Watch hits me like it always does, and so I just don't even need to pull my sleeve down. I just tap my fingers

together and it starts my workout. So these things can be very useful, even if you don't quote unquote need them for any particular reason. And I think this is actually one of the things that I really like about Apple's approach to accessibility is they sometimes just create features that everyone can take advantage of, like dynamic type, for example. Dynamic type is really helpful if you have vision issues, but it's also just good for the general comfort of whatever you would prefer. Like for me, I'm able to take use of a dynamic type to have the text size be smaller on my phone. That's what I like. So I can get more on the screen.

Now, I can only do that because dynamic type exists, which is ostensibly an accessibility feature. Well, and it lets people set. I mean, the broader way to view some of these settings is it lets people set settings for their ability level, for their capability level. settings for their ability level for their capability level so in your case with your eagle vision you can just crank that text down and it's fine and for somebody else they might like my my wife's uh text is up up a notch well i think she's got reading glasses now so she doesn't do that so much but her her text all went up a notch so that she could see it uh more clearly without glasses so i mean it's it's I mean, more stuff should be adaptable. Remember when I did that, I think this is not entirely true anymore, but when I did that Tesla road trip back in the day for spring break where I borrowed that guy's Tesla and friend of the show, by the way, not just that guy, but I won't mention his name.

Anyway, one of the things that, becauseuren again needs reading glasses that we noticed is there were literally no text size settings in the tesla ui i think you can set a large setting now but like how did how that product exist for for five or ten years without like text adjustments like we so we take a lot of things for granted in the apple world but the things like accessibility settings and and dynamic text dynamic type are super important so moving on there is music haptics where the if you're listening to music in the music app it will be able to sync to the haptic motor to provide real-time vibrations so people can feel the song this is particularly helpful for people who have hearing issues i remember there was a girl in my

class uh when i was in primary school and at music, she would put her hand on the speaker of the keyboard so she could more better feel and hear the music. And I was found that fascinating. It's like a nine-year-old. And so they're putting this into the music app. Vocal shortcuts. So this will allow you to set a phrase to trigger a shortcut without needing to use a wake word for your voice assistant so you can just set a phrase and just say that phrase and your phone is also always listening to that phrase like out for that phrase as well as the other things to invoke siri so this is a cool feature this is this is the first time right that i wonder if this is enabled by that um feature where they took it down so you didn't need to say hey anymore you could just

say the name and and summon the beast yeah that you know that this will allow you to do you could for example have a wake word to talk to chat gpt or something right you could you could you could also have a shortcut trigger on ahoy or or ahoy telephone if you like yeah uh that's this could be a game changer right like this is this is one of those uh things that could really be a huge difference that the ability to arbitrarily um set trigger phrases to do things that's wild so i can't wait to see this in in action just be careful with the phrase that you use you know what i mean it's like setting your phone off all the time because you set the phrase good morning yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't recommend that wouldn't do that uh listening for atypical speech so using

machine learning features for better performance to understand those speech issues. So this is for a variety, a wide variety of speech issues that to be able to better understand listeners and they use on-device machine learning models to do that,

whether it's waiting for more time or allowing for somebody to repeat something, that kind of thing, which I think is really cool. This one I immediately sent to my wife. I imagine a lot of people sent this to somebody in their lives. It's called vehicle motion cues. So many people, many people suffer with motion sickness, especially in cars. My wife is one of these people. She looks at her phone while she's in a car for too long or on a train or something it can make her feel unwell so they do this saying i don't fully understand how this works but i'm not a scientist so i would just trust that it does where when you're looking at your phone

there are these moving dots that that will like scroll down the side of the screen and they are synced to sensors in your phone that detect movement which i'm sure are probably the same sensors that they use to detect car crashes which I'm sure are probably the same sensors that they use to detect car crashes, right? Like it's all that kind of stuff coming together. Like Apple, I'm sure have done a lot of work of understanding how vehicles move at this point. And so it helps calibrate your body to understanding

that there is motion when you're looking at a device to alleviate motion sickness. Incredible. Incredible. Incredible. And again, it's like, if this works, I don't think this is something you would necessarily historically consider as a quote-unquote accessibility feature, right? Yeah, all sorts of things are accessibility, right?

The whole point of accessibility is some people have an issue that causes them to have problems with some aspect of using the device, right? Fundamentally, that's what it is. And there's no, like, gatekeeping, or there shouldn't be, about, like, what are the issues? What issues matter? And as a colorblind person, I appreciate that there's an accessibility setting for me, for my little thing, which is I can use the phone, you know, I can mostly use it just fine, but yes, occasionally some device doesn't differentiate via a method other than colors. And there's a game or something where it says quick, Jason, this, this red, light red,

and this gray and this light green differentiate between them. And I'm completely unable to do that. So like there are all, it comes in all shapes and sizes. So really great work and I'm completely unable to do that. It comes in all shapes and sizes. Really great work. I'm happy that they've put this out again. I continue to be incredibly impressed by the amount of stuff that they do every year that is new

for accessibility. There's also enhancements for CarPlay and VisionOS to bring those platforms closer up to par with iOS and everything that it has. But to be able to come up with these five big features, along with, again, like at the bottom of the press release, there's another laundry list of smaller things that they've done too. It's very impressive to me that they're able to continue pushing it in this direction. I think it's very, very cool. Yeah, it's awesome.

And I love that they give us a preview of essentially the next version of the OS before WWDC as a teaser in order to... I mean, I'm sure there was somebody who made the argument a few years ago inside Apple that was like, you know, these are accessibility features. We're only a few weeks away from WWDC. We know what they're going to be. Why would we not take advantage of it to get another news moment and talk about our accessibility story rather than having it be totally swamped by the conference?

And super smart. And I'm glad that person won that argument. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Delete Me. Privacy is important to me. The information about me, my contact information, my personal information is something that I want to stay personal. I want to stay private. It's something that I care about. I choose what I want to divulge online as we all should and I want to be able to choose the things that I want to be private and don't want the world to know about. Do you ever wonder how much of your personal data

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One last time, that is join deleteme dot com slash upgrade20 and the code upgrade20. Thanks to Delete Me for their support of this show and RelayFM. It is time to saddle up for a rumor roundup, Jason Snow. Yee-haw! There's a bunch of stuff today in a variety of little containers.

We're going to start by talking about some AI, iOS 18 related rumors and news that's been going on over the last couple of weeks. This is all from Mark Garman in some form. He's the sheriff. The sheriff is back reporting that

Apple will be using chips of its own making and design for powering their data centers for AI features in iOS 18. Apparently the M2 Ultra will be the first chips used in these data centers. Mark Gurman expects that image and text generation along with

lengthy summaries may need to be performed on these servers with more simple tasks being done on device. He also references how this is kind of Apple's playbook for this kind of stuff, where they have things on their own data centers at first, and then they maybe spread them out a little bit, so they have them on different cloud services.

I think they use Azure and AWS for some iCloud stuff, and he expects that that might be the future. But I was quite surprised to see this, that they will be one, I guess, having their own data centers because we're going to get to some of the other stuff a bit. This whole thing is getting a bit confusing and a bit muddled. They actually asked Tim Cook about it on the analyst call.

And I think it was Tim. It might have been Luca Maestri. And they said the standard thing that Apple does will be done here, which is they'll do processing of things on device and they will have some of their own cloud services and they will use other cloud services. Like it was, I got the sense that it was a pretty straightforward sort of like they use their data centers for some things and then they use partners for other things and it's a mixture that will change over time.

And they, they really pitched it as being kind of their standard procedure here that they that they do some of this i do wonder if you know they realized there was stuff that they weren't happy with doing on somebody else's server or whether there was a secrecy issue um whether they felt like they were better off kind of trying this out on their own and then using other servers for for more volume down the road but it is it's really interesting right that they're trying to use their um their chips as a uh as a way to differentiate i guess or or to power this in a way that they think maybe is better it's i i don't you know we don't know what it is or how it works but it's a really interesting idea that

that they might do it i also wondered if it might be fallback kind of thing where on some of their devices, the power on the device is not strong enough. And so that they might offload that into their cloud. You know what? That makes so much more sense to me, you saying that. The reason I am confused is about, is because of the next kind of two pieces of rumor

that I have for you. So the first part I'll say is Mark Gurman and Julia Love at Bloomberg are reporting that Apple is closing in on a deal with OpenAI to bring chat GPT features to iOS 18. And then also Mark Gurman has reported on some Siri improvements. So Siri will feel

more conversational. They're going to have a thing called proactive intelligence, which will summarize your notifications notifications for you offer things like news synopses and improvements to siri suggestions across the operating system they also have ai photo editing and in this report german says that apple will not have a chat bot of their own is something they are technically not capable of of where they are right now with their own internal stuff and they have executives that aren't thrilled with the idea in general of apple making one of these things which is why the open ai partnership could exist so this is what is puzzling to me of like well what do they need in the cloud then and where is chat gpt or google gemini if that deal happens to where is that coming in where is it not and you mentioning the idea there of like maybe what apple provides cloud services wise is stuff they can do on device

on new devices but can't do on device on old devices and that's what they take care of that's their stuff it's essentially what happens on the apple watch with Series 9 versus Series 8, right? The idea that, or Ultra 2 versus Ultra 1, where it does it on device if it can. And if it can't, it doesn't. And it uses the cloud. And it just falls back to that. That might be the case. I also wonder, the chatbot thing is so interesting, right? Because it's very clear that a lot of people inside Apple are still, have been and are still skeptical about the chatbot thing.

And then other people are like, what are you talking about? everybody in the industry is excited about this we can't sleep on it and so you end up in a situation where they're like well you know we'll do it but we're gonna outsource it but what i wonder is what where does the cutoff because siri needs to have a conversational thing and be able to attach to more data sources and be more right. Like Siri needs some of that. And if you like, I'm worried that what Siri is going to have is something that's more, more rudimentary than we might want to expect. That said, I'm not sure I need Siri to do what chat GPT does, right? I'm not sure I really want Siri to go down too far down that path. I just want Siri to remember my conversation,

understand the context, be more conversational and be more functional and give me the information I want, right? Like, I mean, that's asking a lot, but like GPT, you could, has a chat GPT has this whole other set of things that you can throw at it so this is really interesting i don't know how you architect it so that there's just like a chat bot that eventually gets referenced i mean i i don't know how is there a chat bot is there a chat bot in spotlight or like what siri then right and what separates Siri? Does Siri say, I couldn't find this, so I asked chat GPT? Yeah.

It's very, this is why it's confusing to me, right? It's like, there's obviously lots of things they can do, lots of things they may do, but then there are all these, like, reports, which are quite conflicting.

It's becoming complicated to be able to follow what the story might end up being and so that is intriguing to me it is increasing my intrigue but i'm also getting a little bit nervous sure too because they've kind of i don't really think apple has the opportunity to whiff this. They really need to impress people, I think. Right. I think, though, what we may be seeing is Apple rapidly responding to this. And so things are not as locked and as clear as they might be for a usual cycle. And that goes to who Mark Gurman talks to, where there may be, you know, some people don't know what other people are doing because they're trying a bunch of different stuff.

This also feels like maybe this summer's beta cycle is going to be extra beta, where they are also trying to figure out how to drop all this stuff in. Some of it's sort of not last minute, but more last minute than Apple generally does this. And I also, I would expect that some of this is going to be, they're going to announce big in June. And some of this stuff is going to be, you know, October. And some of it's going to be December. And some of it's going to be March. But that they need to figure out, and they may be figuring out along the way, right? Like, let's change how this is integrated. be figuring out along the way right like how let's change how this is integrated i just to come back to saying more beta than usual um i think a lot of this is going to be like let's put it in there

and see what happens and then tweak it as we go but um i would expect that apple's ai story they're gonna they're gonna make, presumably, presentation about it. But I would think over the next few years, it's going to kind of be all over the place where they're going to be experimenting with things and changing as they go and changing their data sources and changing how their data sources are used. And I'm okay with that. I kind of expect that. What they're not going to do is unveil a finished product. It's going to be a work in progress. But I hope there's a vision for how this all gets split up and i really the the thing that bothers me the most about the there will also be a chatbot window that that has chat gpt in it or gemini or whatever

is that's the thing i don't i'm not convinced that that is the most appley approach to this it feels like uh like they're punting like they're basically like well we can't do that so we're just you want your chat bot here here's your chat bot you can have a chat bot if you want um because what apple's good at is integrating that stuff into the whole like experience and interface and having features and it suggests to me that that apple still philosophically believes that that ai is a tool to be used by features and not an end unto itself and they may be wrong about that right they might be wrong about that and so it's almost like it's almost like a hedge where they're like and there's a chat bot if you want it. And they may learn the lesson that people do want that.

And I think by, so if it's a hedge, I mean, maybe that's a good thing because they will learn. And we've said this about a bunch of stuff that they've done recently. Like, sometimes if you can force Apple to do it, like with the DMA, right? like with the dma right we're gonna know if having alternative app stores and side loading is devastating to apple's business and the security of its users or not we're gonna learn it now because it's happening and i feel like this is a little bit like that where chatbots are they not a thing that people actually want are they not a thing that works within apple's interface maybe we'll find out and that will settle some of those arguments internally right some of those executives that german mentions who are like this is not a thing this is dumb we shouldn't do this like if if their

customers want it and they're using it their arguments uh fail and that would be interesting to see too because i know i want to be able to have a conversation with my phone and have it understand what's going on yes i don't want to talk to a chatbot but it's separated from the device right and that's the thing that gives me chills is is this saying oh and there's a chatbot somewhere is that setting us up for a siri that's not that's still not very good right because the the chatbot thing the number one thing the chatbot teaches us is wow siri is bad this is what i want right i want to have a conversation and so german says siri will feel more conversational it's like okay but like but that's what the chatbot is for so that's what that's what i'm worried is that

this is resetting expectations about what siri's going to do to be like they they slapped on a new coat of paint and it's more conversational but in the end all it's really doing is a very limited number of on-device model summary things and the things we think of as what chat gpt does siri's still not going to be able to do and boy that would be frustrating so i have access to chat gpt 4.0 yeah me too model and i plan around it i found it interesting it was like i think it's i think it's very impressive but i thought to myself i want to i want to see this play out in a different way so we're we're just we're on vacation we're on vacation.

We're at Disneyland. And one morning I said to Idina, I was like, just talk to this thing. Just talk to it. And so she was like, hi, how are you? Having a little conversation. And she's like,

can you give me some recommendations for places to eat, rides to go on? And it was honestly incredible to just sit and watch this conversation unfold. And I was like, this is what Syria needs to be as a bare minimum for me of like you should be able to ask it questions and it give you answers where so much of the time like we just had this where like a couple of days later adina asked syria a question like she's out loud asked the question and it said i found this on the web for you and that was it it's like that is terrible that is so right yeah that's that's that's what they need to address right and yes this is like for all of their oh we bet the company on ai now and we pulled all the

engineers off the car project and killed and all that if siri is still incapable like it's unacceptable it's unacceptable now maybe maybe the gpt is a fallback maybe it's going to get fed information from chat gpt which would be great or gemini or whatever that is fine but in the end i do not want siri to be like well i've reached the end of my knowledge here is a page you can read on your phone, right? Because that's the worst part about it is it's not, well, I found this thing on the internet that says this, what do you think? And then you answer and you continue the conversation. That's a more chatbot kind of experience. But when Siri is just like, yeah, I can't do that.

You're going to need to look at your phone now and look at this webpage that I found that is the webpage you already looked at because it isn't helpful. And like that is that, yeah. So I just, is the webpage you already looked at because it isn't helpful. And like, that is that. Yeah. So I just, I'm with you. I think a lot of this makes sense. And I do fundamentally believe that AI is not always a means to an end and that the winners of using, of leveraging AI technology have to make it friendlier, like put an interface

on it. It's like the command line. It's a, it's powerful powerful but like if you could do more with it and use the ai stuff behind the scenes to leverage it in other ways i think that that's really powerful and an opportunity for apple but like you you can't get the personal assistant wrong i mean you you can't and siri like man can can you imagine if they do this and then Siri's just still bad and then there's also a chatbot,

but Siri is still kind of bad and broken. Or even they're separated from each other too, you know? We can put this on another, phrase it in a different way, which is I think Apple's entire AI effort, no matter what they do, no matter how many new synopses and AI photo editing features they throw into it. If Siri is bad, the rest of it doesn't matter. If Siri is still bad,

if Siri is still terrible and there are chatbots out there that are continuing to get all the hype, it will be perceived and probably will actually be a failure. They got to get that right. and probably will actually be a failure. Like, they gotta get that right. And the Gurman report is scary, because it sort of suggests, like, maybe not. And so we'll see, I guess. But I'm worried about it, too.

Because, you know, Siri was the first one of these kinds of things. Like, this was what it was supposed to be. Yes. Right? Yeah, and it was supposed to evolve, which it never did. Never did. It's better than it used to be, but the world has passed it by.

It's never taken a leap bigger than the initial one. Right. Well, like it came around. It's like, wow, this is amazing because nothing had done that before. And we forgave a lot of it.

And it was great at doing what it could do, but it's never since taken a jump it's like oh it's faster now it can understand you better now but the answers aren't any more rich really so I don't know how they I don't know how they square

that and again Mark Gurman's challenge is that he is just hearing from individual people throughout Apple and they all have a different experience of this. So it may be that these things are connected in ways that we don't understand, but yeah, I just, I, I, I got the same vibes, which is in the end, it starts with Siri. The whole purpose of Siri, Siri's place in the interface is to do what people use chat bot, AI chat bots to do.

That is why it's there. And if, if it can't do that, or if the Siri team turns its nose up at the chat bots, or there's a, you know, an executive somewhere who's just like no no no we can't let the crown jewels of siri be tainted by gpt or something it's like no man like series

busted it it needs uh it needs this technology and like that is so that's my fear it's almost more like an organizational fear within apple is like, okay, Apple's agreed that they're going to work with OpenAI and maybe Google on chatbot stuff. Okay, great. But like, what's that implementation like? And does it feel like it's being kind of held at arm's length and it's not actually improving? Do the people who won the argument to put chatbots in iOS have the clout to say, no, no, really put it in, or are they going to like sneak it in, but people over, and I'm, I don't know that the Siri team feels this way, but just like

theoretically the people behind Siri are like, okay, you can put the chat bot in, but it's not touching our stuff. And our stuff is going to be like this and it's not good enough. Like that's a disaster. So that, and that that's a level where if stuff like that happens, it has to be high level executive, right? This is, this is what Tim Cook gets paid for, right? The stuff like this, this is what, uh, Craig Federighi gets paid for. And, and Eddie Q, like all the senior management team, this is, this is why they get paid the big bucks is at some point you do have to say, uh, these people win the argument.

And I know that you don't like it for reasons, but they have to win the argument. And my fear is that we're going to see some hedging and not winning the argument here. And I'm not saying throw Siri out, but I think it's busted and needs to be a new Siri. And if you've got a new Siri, that's not as good as chat GPT, but can leverage something like chat GPT. Great. Great. So boy,

and, and you know, it's not going to be there in the first developer beta, right? You know, it's not going to be there. Something, something will be there,

but it won't be there. So a lot of this is going to hinge on like, what does Apple say? I, sorry to keep coming back to my classic jason position of pay attention to the storytelling but oh my god we are going to have to pay close attention to the storytelling here because i suspect the storytelling will tell us more about what apple's thinking about ai than maybe the initial betas will so moving on from this uh we have some

iphone news so a couple of things. First, the 16 line, this year's iPhones. Dummy models of the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max have started appearing online. And if these are to be believed, the iPhones are getting a little bit bigger. The 16 Pro will go from 6.1 to 6.3 inches, and the 16 Pro Max will go from 6.7 to 6.9 inches so phones they're getting a little bigger and with this increase ming chi kuo is reporting that the 16 pro max may also benefit from new battery technology to give a bigger battery life boost to the 16 pro max oh nice i like that well

that's you're a you're a a big phone boy you like the are you are you sort of like you know pro max is fine or are you still in the camp of sort of like i will take as much screen as you will throw at me i don't know if i want it to get bigger ah interesting interesting I feel like the Pro Max is at the limit that I want. I don't think I want more phone. I would need more reason for bigger phone than just bigger screen now. Now, if it is like bigger battery, I'm like, great. You know, like other features,

like we were talking about them a couple of weeks ago, like the other features that they might add. And then I'll be like, okay, like, you know, and maybe this, maybe, you remember, we were talking about the fact that the 16 Pro might get the Tetra Prism lens. Maybe they needed to make the phone a little bit bigger to make that work.

I don't know, but I'm not sure I want the phone to get bigger. And again, it's just a small amount, but in your pocket, that's a bigger amount, you know, the way it feels. Yeah, it is. So that was intriguing to me. But maybe I'll only have to worry about it for one year

because a report from Jeff Poo at The Information details some of Apple's plans for the iPhone 17 line in 2026. The biggest piece of news here is that the plus phone is going away so they the fourth phone in the lineup has once again failed it's the curse of the iphone mini so apple is going in a completely new direction and working on something that the information Jeff is calling the iPhone 17 Slim. The Slim model would sit... It's going to be air, Mike. It's going to be air.

iPhone air. It's going to happen. Maybe. Let's go through this first and I'll say why that doesn't necessarily land with me. Alright. So this Slim model would sit between the Pro and Pro Max in screen size. Now, interestingly, Jeff's article references the 15's screen sizes. But then there's these new rumors of the 16 making it bigger.

So let's just say between for now. Okay. It would be significantly thinner than any other iPhone model and would have a higher price tag than the Pro Max. That's why the Air thing I'm not so sure about because it will be the most expensive iPhone. Right. Because it will be super slim,

which could be quite luxurious as an idea. Now, interestingly, this gets weirder to me. The 17, the 17 Slim and the 17 Pro will be made from aluminium, with a design that is quote, more complex. Whatever that means.

And the Pro Max will retain titanium. And that phone will have a narrow dynamic island using a technology called meta lens and this new design in general so that this new design that all of these phones will have will feature rear cameras centered on the device rather than in the core. Whoa. This is a really weird report. Like there's so many weird things in this. It's so strange.

The slim iPhone, middle size wise, more expensive, made from aluminium, which is weird. Like that's weird to me. I'm assuming the 16 Pro will be titanium, but I guess if they do have a new design you could maybe like re-talk about the the materials again but then why does the pro max

retain titanium maybe that phone's gonna be different like i guess it's gonna look different on the front so maybe it will have more than that um i am on board with let's try the fourth phone again though like i i think that that to me is a good idea because i agree they're clearly struggling to land that and i i would say that smaller or bigger but not the nice one neither of those are compelling enough stories i think for for a large amount of people i think significant like a really thin beautiful iphone maybe that would be a usp of its own right but then it's really weird for it not to have the most features but it'd be more expensive it's a it'd be straight it's gonna be a strange lineup like that's for sure if this all comes to pass i like from a marketing standpoint like a marketplace standpoint i like the idea like we tried the small phone we tried the big phone

in the in the low end set why don't we try an ultra ultra premium phone a luxury phone that's above the pros what why don't we go up there? Because I'm sure Apple feels like there are some buyers for whom money is essentially no object and a beautiful iPhone that costs $2,000 but is super luxe and amazing and thin and feels like the future. There are people who will buy that, right? There are people who will buy that, right? There are people who will buy that. Maybe being in that muddy middle as the fourth phone out of four that's kind of different but not really is a loser because the Pro has a clear selling point and the Pro Max has a clear selling point and the base model has a

pretty clear selling point and then the the odd one out that's just differentiated by size seems to have not worked either time so go up scale and shoot for something that's even that's like i mean it feels mike i really get iphone 10 vibes from this as well yes like what if we made the future phone and it was really expensive but we just made it and sold it for a lot of money well but we can do it now beautiful right like beautiful we make we make almost a piece of jewelry and charge you a lot of money for it which is kind of what the iphone 10 felt like at that time iphone 10 was like oh my god this is not like any other phone it costs what but it was so different and felt like the future. And I could see them selling an expensive iPhone model that felt like the future, that was not a Pro or a Pro Max.

It was a different thing. It was a different size, different thinness, different weight, maybe has some other different technology things on it. I mean, they've got all sorts of market research and stuff but just as a person on the outside hearing this idea i can see why this idea might be worth trying because you might find many more available buyers up there i think that's been one of apple's lessons right is that apple has learned to reach people who have smaller budgets for phones with older models and with the se and and they have had success with that but i mean i would assume the promax has taught them that there are some people for whom um the the price doesn't

matter and they just want the best biggest best iphone i think for apple as a business it makes the most sense to have four distinct models. Two of them are very expensive. Like, I just think that it makes sense to them. I mean, they may learn that there is a limit to that or the product might not tick the boxes. But I just, I'm trying to imagine a buyer who does not care so much about the money but really wants a gorgeous amazing talked about phone and this is i mean honestly mike when we talk about apple's phone sales over time it's often this kind of phone that spurs sales around the world yeah not just china but china's

one place where where you could get a great advantage here. But around the world, if there's an appreciably different, new-looking iPhone, and it costs, there are a lot of people who just buy it because they don't care. There are a lot of people, it's like, okay, it's $2,000, whatever.

They don't care. What they want is... And for those of us who are cheapskates, and are like, the fact is, Apple has an audience that contains a lot of people who just want the amazing, coolest, greatest looking Apple product. And so, yeah, I would, if I was at Apple, I would try this for sure. Right. Because this, this may be a, an untapped market.

It's that classic, like whatever your most expensive product is, there are some people in your audience who would have paid even more and are there enough of them for you to make a product for them and something like this sounds like exactly that and i hope we get four distinct names so like the pro max becomes ultra and then this gets his own name and then we have like the iphone 17 that would be nice 17 pro the iphone 17 we'll call it slim and the iphone 17 ultra especially if they're differentiating the pro max with something like titanium and things like that like it really is a different phone yeah it's a different phone i mean it's been that way for a while anyway and it seems like they're going further in that direction and i just think as a someone who is interested in just talking about these things

four distinct iphones that fit four different markets feels more intriguing to me than we're going to take the line, split it in half, kind of replicate the two, and they're going to have different features. Like the Plus got lost. I forget it exists most of the time. And clearly the Mini did not sell what they needed.

Otherwise, it'd still make it. So I think this is a very interesting idea the other way to go would be you have a 17 again keep in mind we're talking about 2025 here 16 months away uh 17 17 pro 17 pro max and 17 ultra and the new phone is the ultra maybe maybe yeah i mean air i just think about the thinness and i sell it that but if it's expensive but and super lux ultra ultra to me feels like it needs to have all of the features right like all of them and it's not going to right so gonna be really intriguing to see if they do this and how they pull it off

and the rest of this like a center camera and stuff like that i mean it's just weird i i don't i don't know i i don't know we know that they work in advance and that often these weird rumors from the summer before like the previous year do end up being right but and sometimes it's the details remember i'll remember iphone math sometimes the details are not quite right yeah i don't think slim is the name i really don't think slim is the name but it's really interesting to think about and i i think i mean look apple spent the last what five six seven years super i mean really 10 years since they did the larger phone for the first time experimenting with the with iphone sales dynamics it's their most important product it's more than

half of their total company revenue um and they've had some success in differentiating the product line but clearly there's this one model that has not they feel like they haven't cracked it so i think they're absolutely going to continue experimenting here and finding what the market wants and if they have the capability to make this, I think that's the most interesting thing about this rumor, honestly, is it sounds like it comes out of a question of like, we could make a phone that's appreciably different next generation phone that's thinner. But it'll have some compromises and where does it fit? And we don't really want and it'll be expensive to make. And then out of that emerges, well, why don't we just make that future phone

and people will buy it because it's awesome, even though it's super expensive. That's an interesting idea. So the experiments continue. And finally, Mark Gurman is reporting that the Mac Studio and Mac Pro will not receive an update until mid-2025. All other Macs should be on the M4 generation by the end of 2024.

Based on some of his previous reports, where he said that there was another chip that had not debuted yet in the M3 line, it sounds like they were originally at some point planning to do an M3 Studio and Pro, and then with the move to the m4 they've just decided not to do that and they're essentially skipping it's fine it seems like it's fine i'll keep waiting i'm gonna keep waiting i am not buying a computer until until the next mac studio becomes available well right i have an m1 max mac studio right and i felt i thought about it like if i was given the opportunity to buy an M3 Max Mac Studio, knowing what I know about the M4,

would I? I wouldn't. Yeah, probably not. Yeah, probably not. I'll probably keep waiting. So it's probably all for the best. Because for me, all I really want it for is just to simplify like and

not be using a laptop not be using a thunderbolt dock anymore i want all my io into one machine and then take additional power what i don't need this computer really to have is more power like i'm using an m1 pro macbook pro i can happily use this for another year and a half and actually i will be happier to do that because i'll get more use out of this computer my m1 max mac mini is great it's great it's fine i can i can foresee a moment where i'm going to want a new one and i'm not really there yet and knowing that the m4 generation has begun this would not be the time that I would look to leap, right? Because I'm like, well, you know, I don't really need that power right now.

And I know the new chip generation is very impressive because we've already started it. So I think, and I think there are a lot of buyers who would be like that, where it's just like, it's just fine. Let's just not even bother putting those products out and we'll wait until hopefully early next year. But for the, and that's the Mac hopefully early next year but um for the and

that's the next year the mac pro and the macbook air not until 2025 uh no the mark said all other macs should be yeah but then then he says the mac except the macbook air he threw the macbook air in there i'm sorry i misread that thank you although i i find that weird and maybe it's a chip volume thing, but like, I don't know, you're shipping an M4 iPad. Wouldn't you want to ship an M4 MacBook Air sooner rather than later? But it may just be a sheer volume thing that they just can't have. They won't have enough because they know how many MacBook Airs sell and they won't have enough for that product. And so they're going to wait until next year. But yeah, I find that a little surprising,

but that's where they are. In my opinion, the Air should be the first Mac to get a new chip of a new generation. But I also get that it's the best-selling one. Well, remind me, is this the basis of the iPhone chip too? Like I forget how this works now. So the M4 isn't, but presumably there will be an iPhone chip that will be on this process, the new TSMC process, which will take volume, right? Presumably there is volume that they are putting on the iphone because they need those

chips and that won't be called an m it will be called an a but uh and it might have you know i assume it'll have the cpu cores and the gpu cores from the m4 i assume that that it will use a lot of the same work as the m4 but they they tend to call it something else because they make it for the phone so it's more power efficient etc etc but like it's going to be the same process presumably and so that factors in too right they got to make a lot of chips for the iphone for this fall a lot of them yeah maybe the iphones and the ipads are enough that you wouldn't want to have the macbook air at the same time like maybe it's a maybe it's too much i don't know yeah i seriously think there's a spreadsheet somewhere because i'm sure look i'm sure they would make the macbook air the first m series mac right if they could

there's got to be a spreadsheet somewhere of tsmc capacity and reserved for the iphone and reserved for this m4 chip that they're putting in lower volume products like the iPad Pro and probably some other low volume Macs as we get to the fall. And they want to do the Pro and Max variants for the MacBook Pro and put them out there. And you start to look at it and you think, you know, we just revved the MacBook Air. It's fine. I literally still have my review units on my desk. I haven't put them in the boxes yet to send them back to Apple. They just came out.

So I can see somebody inside Apple say, you know, it's fine. And the truth is those of us who are super wired into Apple stuff know about the M4 and care about it. But I think Apple probably also knows that the existence of the M4 iPad Air probably not going to hurt MacBook Air sales really. Not that much. It's fine. You know, I saw this one other headline today. I just think it's hilarious from MacRumors. Apple's chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, has visited Taiwan to secure supply of TSMC's upcoming two nanometer chips.

Economic Daily News reports the visit apparently involved a meeting between williams and tsmc's president to discuss custom ai chips and ensure that apple will be able to access the chip makers two nanometer manufacturing process set to begin in 2025 i saw someone i wish i remember who it was now it was even on threads or on master done, has anybody from this team slept in the last five years? Unbelievable. Really unbelievable. It just keeps going. I mean, that's what I've said this before, but like one of the things that I'm impressed by about Apple people, especially on the non-marketing side, on the technical side, is they have to talk when a product launches, they're talking about the past.

They probably have to be reminded of what they did, right? Like when Johnny Sruji appears and he's like, Hey, new chip. Yay. Like that chip is old news. That chip is a work he did three,

four years ago. It's old stuff. They're onto the next one, right? Like we're all like, Whoa, three nanometer process. Hmm.

It's like, no, no. Jeff Williams is talking to tsmc about their two nanometer process they're already thinking about the chip that they're going to use in 25 or 26 like they're they're on to the next one already that was ben mccarthy's joke who said i get the impression no one on apple's chip design team has taken a day off in about five years that was yeah that was the joke and i wholeheartedly endorsed that idea yeah so bring on the and for people who are like

what happens after the nanometer like runs out are there no like there's only two left and then what the answer is don't worry then we recalibrate the scale and we start talking about picometers

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I picked it up over the weekend. I got the 11-inch model. That's good. And I wanted to talk about my experience with this a little bit uh yes please it's going to be different to some of the other conversation about the ipad pro good like i sent you a text uh you and steven a slack message where i said you know what i think i'm ipad discoursed out i i we had a really good episode of mac break weekly last week um in studio me and micah along with leo and then andy remotely and i think we had when we had new ipad pros there and

i think we had a really good discussion i was very happy with the sort of points that i made on that and then i came back home and i was exhausted and uh and i said to you guys i think i discoursed out about the ipad pro i think i'm done I think I have said every word and probably several more than that that I have to say about working on an iPad, etc., etc. And I would like to go back into the bushes like Homer Simpson. So I love hearing you want to take this from another angle. It's beautiful because like i understand where this comes from and i have gone through my own journey you know like i was in the camp of you and federico of really trying to do work on my ipad pro like use it as my laptop. And I did for a long time. But then a combination

of workplace changes. So when I got my studio and Apple Silicon kind of changed it, and then I just moved back to the Mac. Since then, I've mostly focused my iPad usage on watching video, playing games, browsing the web, like communication, you like iMessage and Slack, but not like we're really getting into stuff, not a ton of work really, and reading comics. And I've gotten by great in the past couple of years using an iPad mini, but I have been basically since the beginning

frustrated with the quality of the screen on the iPad mini. And I was really interested in this iPad Pro for my iPad needs, because I think for all of those things, video, gaming, web browsing, like using it as my kind of like home computer, which is just like mostly things for me, not things for work and reading comics, I thought that the iPad Pro would do a great job. The decrease in weight and thickness would maybe make it not so much of a thing going from the mini to the 11-inch.

It is incredibly thin and light. It's very funny to me that it's thinner than my iPad mini. I know this, but also it's funny anyway. It's just a weird thing. I'm still getting used to the screen size. It feels massive to me for an iPad

because I've been so used to now using an iPad mini. The 11-inch iPad Pro feels monstrously large. It's very strange how you're kind of accustomed to that. But the thing that I am happiest about is the screen. This screen is incredible. It's so good. The OLED, like, I watched X-Men 97 on my iPad, right? And, like, it's just a cartoon. Fantastic cartoon. Oh, my God, by the way. Oh, my God. Could not recommend X-Men 97 enough. Incredible. oh my god by the way oh my god could not recommend x-men 97 enough incredible uh but i pressed play and a trailer for the indiana jones movie started up and it was in like dolby vision i couldn't believe it i couldn't believe it it was like my i could not believe how good it looked

i was blown away by it like because it's, you know, the OLED, like I think one of the first scenes is like, they're in like a, it's like a dark street, but there's like a neon sign. Oh my god, it looked incredible. And so, yeah, screen's real good. Like, OLED in general is great. And you mentioned this last time,

and I don't, even hearing you say it, I don't think I was prepared for the idea of like, everything about iPadOS looks better with an OLED screen. Everything. It's not just video. Everything. Yeah, like little panels come up and you're like, whoa, that's very bright. Yeah.

Or just like the color, like the richness of the color feels better. Like just looking at my home screen just is so much nicer. And you're coming from the mini, right? I found it a little more subtle, but I'm coming from the best iPad screen ever made, which was the 12.9 with the mini LED backlighting and the 2,500 different dimming zones. But if you're not

coming from that one, then it's just that much more stark of a difference. Massively different. Massively different. The mini screen is not good. It has the jelly scrolling issue where you kind of sometimes scroll and it looks like two halves of the screen are scrolling at a different refresh rate,

which is really weird. But I'm also, I have ProMotion again on an iPad where it's really noticeable on the iPad. I feel like it works very well on that screen. And I've had iPad Pros before, but it's been a long time for me, right? But yeah, I skipped them. My last iPad Pro was the 2020

iPad Pro. So I didn't get any of those, like the mini LED changes and that kind of stuff. I had forgotten how good Face ID is for an iPad. But it's not better than Touch ID in every scenario for me. So when

I'm using the iPad, I much prefer it for like, you know, authenticating one password or that kind of stuff. But unlocking an iPad Pro isn't as nice in my opinion as unlocking the iPad Mini was

because if you have a keyboard attached, you just tap a key and it unlocks for you. But if you don't have a keyboard attached, you pick it up, wake the screen and then have to swipe it or whatever right right where like with the ipad mini i would unlock it by like i'd wake up the screen by by touching the same button that also would read my fingerprint and unlock the ipad when now i'm more like how i pick it up i tap the screen to wake it and then I'm like oh no I swipe

up it's like it's just it's not as smooth an experience where I remember with having the keyboard you just like tap the space bar and the iPad would unlock because I don't have a magic keyboard and I have no desire to get one like it could not be further away from what I want my iPad to do and like I don't want to add the weight and the bulk for a keyboard that I'm trying not to use really. Because I don't want to make this like a big work device for me. So I am using the Magic Folio, the denim color, because it's the only color.

It has new magnet positions which is nice it's a little more fiddly but you basically have like a much more you have more adjustability in the angles so it can be fiddly to get there but i like it like i like that i can lean it back a little bit more or have it kind of standing up straight a little bit more i think that's it's cool that they added that so i like that they did that and it isn't just all about uh getting the keyboard and that's your only adjustability option like i think that's kind of cool um but yeah that i do really like face id though like having that back again on the ipad it's just nice i kind of forgotten how comfortable that is i have had a couple of times similar to

you where um i'm holding i'm holding it in such a way that I'm covering the sensors. But they deal with that pretty well. Yeah, I found that my usual horizontal holding is upside down from where they put the camera. So I have to retrain myself to hold it the other way, mostly because I prefer to have the back of the folio case hang down and attach and not have it be upside down where if it's not perfectly attached it falls over it's just a different feel and i preferred it but now i just have to train myself out of it because there's nothing worse than opening it up and being like oh i can't do your

face id and i realize oh yeah it's all the way down at the bottom and my shirt is covering it or whatever. I'm like, I gotta flip it back over. Coming from the Mini, I cannot stop noticing how fast and smooth everything is. I expect this is a combination above the M4 and ProMotion, but everything is moving

faster, better. I am getting a sense of this is a very powerful computer like i feel like i have that in my you know it's very i can feel the power in it um also having a pencil attached to the ipad again obviously i did not do that my ipad mini um because one the pencil is really big compared to the mini and two i wouldn't ever really feel myself wanting to use it on that screen because it was so small. But I'm very happy to have the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro back for product design stuff. Many times I borrowed my wife's iPad to sit and draw something out

for a new Cortex brand notepad or something. I would draw it out because I just find that to be a nice experience and I'm happy to have something that's back to be mine again for that and the apple pencil pro is an incredible upgrade um the haptics feeling are fantastic the squeeze gesture to bring up the little palette is brilliant um i'm really intrigued to see more apps like and what they're going to do with the haptic stuff um i and it's nice to have that. Again, I think if you use an Apple Pencil a lot, like if you're an illustrator or an artist, there is, I think, enough in here

that you would want to upgrade for it. I think it is a significantly better experience to be able to access tools right where you are. Also, this is the first time I've had Hover, Apple Pencil Hover. Oh, yeah. That's really cool. access tools like right where you are also this is the first time i've had hover apple pencil hover oh yeah that's really cool um like i i like when i've been using the like for me the majority of my usage um has always been interface stuff right that was i was a big proponent of that it's really nice to have the little indicator where wherever i'm hovering over like if i was

using the trackpad or whatever i like that a lot um so yeah i'm super happy with this ipad i feel very confident in saying if you have a 2018 or 2020 ipad pro this is the update you've been waiting for like you should upgrade to this one like if you use an ipad pro and you have like that first redesign model and you use it regularly i think if you move to this, you will be very happy with the upgrade because I think this is a significant upgrade, especially the screen. I mean, that's what an iPad is, right?

It's the screen. And this screen is bananas good. Like it's so good. Everything looks fantastic on it. And if you watch stuff that is like, you know dolby vision like hdr incredible looking at pictures on this thing incredible videos incredible right because it's all the smart hdr stuff yeah it's this is a fantastic ipad i love it i love it um i don't

think i'm going to use my mini anymore i was wondering wondering, right? Like, will I still use the mini? I was worried about your mini, right? I was like, is he going to be disappointed with the size of this thing? Because the mini is so wonderfully small, but you lose all those features. Because, you know, for me, I was still wondering, like, oh, I still use the mini to read comics because it's so small and nice to hold in bed.

But no, no, no. The OLED is too good good it's too good uh so i yeah i'm pretty sure the mini will be visiting a farm upstate at some point soon uh because this thing is i love it it's like for everything i want to use my ipad for it is better all of those things significantly this is is a really, really good device. And yet the thinness and lightness of it is fantastic. It's wild that they built devices like this. It's a real flex.

And also they don't flex, which is, that's been the thing, right? There's been a lot of bend tests now. No bend gate. And it's holding up. So bravo Apple, I think. This is is a great ipad yeah i wanted to say again about one of the things i've appreciated about the pencil is the haptics are really well done right that we've talked about how i know i mentioned this last week we've talked about how

the pencil is in some ways like the ultimate apple product because it feels like it doesn't have technology in it at all it's actually stuffed full of it and that video showed like flying through the barrel of the pencil and all that but from the outside it it might as It's actually stuffed full of it. And that video showed like flying through the barrel of the pencil and all that. But from the outside, it might as well be a piece of wood. There's nothing there. And the haptics are also tastefully done where, you know, they say the haptics up in the top of the barrel, but you wouldn't know. Like the effect is incredibly solid and strong. And then that squeeze gesture, which I find just so much more natural than the double tap, which is still there, right? You can still do double tap, but the squeeze gesture, I feel like is more purposeful. I feel comfortable making the squeeze gesture in a way that I did not

with the double tap. I can kind of keep it in my hand and squeeze versus the double tap where I have to change my grip. I think it's better. And although anybody can write their, uh, to the API to handle the squeeze gesture, how they want. I, I just want to say again, how impressed I am with the undo that they built the radial undo, because one of the challenges in iOS for ages has been, how do you do undo on a device that doesn't have a keyboard? So you can't do command Z and it's been like like you can shake it or you can make a finger gesture but the undo with the squeeze gesture brings up a ring and you can trace backward and watch your drawing let's say go backward and then trace it back forward how do you do this so you you go you squeeze

on anything that's doing pencil kit, and there'll be an undo item, and you select the undo item. And then it turns into an undo ring, and then you just move your pencil along the ring, and it will step backward or forward. It's basically an undo history like you'd see in Photoshop or something. And you can find the state of undo. Instead of going back, back back back back no forward

forward forward back that one you just you just trace it and you have to like tap and hold on it a little right so you like select it you like just press on it and then you get oh and it's got a little haptic on each notch that's sick that is really good so that that was my that's that's my uh my sleeper pick i'd forgotten like my favorite feature is whoever came up with the the radial pencil undo not only is it super smart i gotta say it should probably be system wide without the pencil i i would much rather be able to do like a a three finger tap or a double tap or a triple tap to bring up a ring that would let me just keep going forever uh wow what a feature yeah that's good stuff it's good that's cool thumbs up to the

to the pencil people i know it doesn't it's like oh it's just the pencil and it's a little nicer and all that and the barrel roll people are going to experiment with the barrel roll to do different things like i keep waiting i imagine ferrite will at some point let you barrel roll to like change because all the audio settings are like knobs to like just change the balance by maybe even hovering over a control and then just turning the pencil right like uh yeah there's it's it's a uh it's not for everybody everybody's got their own use cases but wow for what it is and its audience it was it's really perfectly implemented the whole the hardware and software of the pencil pro yeah i you know my wife is an illustrator and

we've been talking about this and i showed her the new stuff and she was really she thought it was really cool and she watched the event and was really impressed by it. She's a Procreate user and she was really impressed by what they were showing but that's not available yet. They've updated it to support the new pencil but they've not given their big update that's coming and so I think

our plan is when it comes out she's going to try it and we'll probably trade in her old iPad and get her a new one because for her I think the thing that they showed about being able to select layers is massively, massively excellent. Oh, yeah. The layer selection on an item really, really, really would make a huge difference for anyone creating art. The goal is, and I know people don't understand this because when I talk about keyboard shortcuts,

like back with the media controls, before there was a function around the goal is, and I know people don't understand this because when I talk about keyboard shortcuts, like back with the media controls before there was a function around the magic keyboard, people were like, well, just reach up and like, I don't want to reach up my hands on the keyboard. When my hands on the keyboard, I want to keep it on the keyboard. I'm in keyboard mode. The last thing I want to do is break out of keyboard mode, go fiddle around. Like, I just want to hit the key and then go back to what I'm doing. Right. That's what I want. With the pencil, it's the exact same thing, which is if you can build interfaces and gestures and things into the pencil so that there's more you can do while you're working with the pencil that doesn't require you to put down the pencil, it's huge.

And so, yeah, selecting is a great example of that. Undoing is a great example of that. Undoing is a great example of that. Being able to do that squeeze and then pick another item from a palette and go somewhere else is a great way to keep you engaged in holding the pencil instead of having to set it down. Because, I mean, I run into that in Ferrite every now and then where I have to do something like a... And you could go through the interface with it too. But like, I don't know, for me, I end up going, I'm just gonna set the pencil down because I'm tapping through the interface. I don't, unlike you, I don't love tapping through the interface with a pencil. I'd really rather just kind of like get to the thing really quickly and then be back with my job. But when you do that, you've broken concentration. I think when you go into the UI, so to have it all be kind of triggered from the pencil it's just it unlocks i i think more creativity because you're not breaking stride uh you're able to continue your focus your hand is in you know it's on the pencil it's in the right place you're doing the right thing there

so yeah two thumbs up from me nice like i understand the frustration that everybody has i also want ipad os to be better but for me iPadOS is doing a great job at what I want it to do right now and I'm happy with where this tool fits within my

line of products that I use. For all of our conversations about this what I don't want to get lost is there are lots of amazing iPad

use cases and everybody's got their own but I don't have a lot of time for people who are like, yeah, the iPad, it's irrelevant. Like if that's okay, that's fine. But just cause it's irrelevant for you, it doesn't mean it's irrelevant for other people that I think like it, I don't know if it's my most used Apple device because I sit at

my Mac all day, but like everywhere else I'm in the, in, in bed in the morning before I go to bed, uh, sitting on the couch, watching TV, like, uh, cooking in the kitchen. Like that's all iPad. It's all iPad for me. I have found so many places where it fits better in my life than a laptop or a phone. And I'm very happy about it. Not everybody's like that. That's fine. But there are so many great use cases. So it's great to hear you talk about yours. There are lots of reasons to be critical about the way that Apple has acted as a shepherd for iPadOS,

as the developer of iPadOS and not taking it places that it perhaps should go given some of the hardware that they're building. But that doesn't change the fact that it's still a remarkable product in a lot of ways. And in fact, one of the reasons people are motivated to criticize it is because they

like it and they want it to be even better. So anyway, lots of great places where you can use an iPad. I'm glad that I really wasn't sure that you would convert from the iPad mini because the mini is so delightfully small small but there's so many other things about these other ipads that are great yeah exactly i was i wanted to try and yes i mean what it has kind of uh reminded me is first and foremost i love new technology and this has new techno like a lot of new technology in it um And I'm enamored with it, really. This episode is brought to you by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first ever

Bake From Frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, fresh pastas, and artisanal pastries. Every item bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less. No thawing required. jason it's around dinner time for me right now can you make me pretty hungry by talking about wild grain last night mike last night what do we do we were we're like okay what what what's to be? And we had a bunch of, uh, ideas and I said, you know,

let's do, there's an instant pot recipe that I like. That's, um, for miso, what it's, uh, Ethiopian, um,

lentils dish. It's a little spicy. It's really nice. And they usually have it, uh, traditionally in Ethiopia with bread or with injera, which is their bread. And I thought, you know, we've got another wild grain bread in the freezer.

And so I made the misir wat in the Instant Pot. I turned on the oven. I took the loaf of, I think it was like a cheesy sourdough or something out of the freezer. Put it in the, uh the uh uh in the oven uh you know let it let it do its baking thing took it out let it do its cooling thing sliced it up and we had this great lentil dish um and uh fresh bread i just sliced all the bread and put it on a plate. And I just sat there with my bowl, just dipping the bread in and eating the spicy lentil dish. It's like lentils and ginger and garlic and onion. And then it ends up being really smooth because it's pressure cooked

into oblivion. So it's just this very nice stew. And then you just put it on the bread and you eat it. So good. It's so good. But the fresh bread was the thing. I said, I don't want to make this unless I've got the fresh bread.

And even though it came from the freezer, it comes out, you bake it, and you bake it like you made it from dough, but it's actually just in the freezer. And it reaches that point where it is indistinguishable, in my opinion, from completely fresh baked from dough, but it's actually just in the freezer. And it reaches that point where it is indistinguishable in my opinion, from completely fresh baked from dough bread, because I don't know when they're freezing it in the process. I don't know how they do their magic. So anyway, that was amazing. One of our other choices was pasta because they also have frozen pasta. That's

fresh pasta. Like you, uh, not like the, the dried stuff. It's like the super soft, wonderful, fresh pasta. Uh, that was another option for us last night. I was really into the wild grain last night, not knowing that it was a sponsor today. So that's hilarious. Anyway, we had a great dinner. And at the end, Lauren said, did we eat that whole loaf of bread?

And I said, yes, we did proudly because it's never as good as it is when it's fresh. So how do you get fresh bread at home? You know, this was a great way. We didn't have fresh bread in the house, but we did because we had that wild grain in the freezer. Yeah, you successfully did it. You made me hungry.

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Our thanks to Wild Grain for their support of this show and RelayFM. It is time for some Ask Upgrade questions. How did you feel about Steven doing the lasers? Well, I couldn't hear him when he did them but we put him back in later and uh they're fine they're fine it was good that he did them i thought that was fun i was i wondered if there was going to be a laser war of some kind maybe you were going to oh yeah well i mean if i could have heard them myself but they were we had to change it in the edit because it was it was just like he's got there's something about his office setup where he's got the really really aggressive

um noise canceling where you can't hear his bell dinging we have this time you can't hear him going it's just a problem steven has stealth lasers dave asks when you take your iPad off of your Magic Keyboard, do you put it in a case to carry it around? There are times where I'm running around

when I want the iPad, but not the keyboard. What do you do, Jason? I mostly have, at all times, a Smart Folio cover as well as a Magic Keyboard. Okay.

And I use the Magic Keyboard I found a lot of people expect that you keep the ipad and the magic keyboard all the time i don't i don't you tactically deploy it i i do i do you know i love a tactical deployment mike that is my we love it here on the upgrade program we love a tactical deployment okay we do we do we love it i love it when things are deployed tactically okay there's a deployment that happens and you're like you know what that's a tactical if it's not tactical i don't want it no exactly right if it's not just like a big highfalutin kind of like theoretical deployment i want it to be uh tied to a tactic anyway we love a tactical deployment uh and that's what i do so i keep my ipad most of the time in the in the smart folio

most of the time though occasionally with this new one i've been taking it out of the smart folio every now and then and been like but it's now it's within light right but mostly it's in the smart folio if i'm going to be using it in extended time i might take it off but mostly it just stays in the smart folio the keyboard it just hangs around until i need to write something or type something that's of length and then i will put it on but i don't because i want it to be lighter i mean that's the thing when i say that the problem with the macbook is that you can't rip the screen off and go you know use it uh that's why is because most of the time i don't need the keyboard and so i don't want the weight and the beauty of it is it's just the keyboards around and

I will, I'm like, oh, I'm going to write something on the iPad now and I will go find my keyboard and I'll snap it in and then I'll write my thing. But I don't, I don't have it hanging around all the time. I'm in the, in the smart folio cover, which I'll just say again, Apple has decided in their great wisdom to only make, they made one color for the cover. Whereas when the old iPad Pro came out for the longest time, you only could get it in gray. And then maybe I think gray and white.

They finally made like some beautiful colors. I have an orange smart folio for my M1 iPad Pro. That's beautiful. They have denim as the only color option other than gray and white what i'll tell you is whatever you think denim is it ain't that like no this isn't denim it doesn't look like denim it's like a navy blue i wouldn't even call it navy blue it's like it's a it's blue i don't know how to describe it but i wouldn't think of it as denim but yeah it's like a kind of blue well you know jeans come in all sorts of blue jeans come in all sorts of colors including dark colors like this but i think like

i think whatever you think of as like your standard levi's 501 blue jean or whatever which is canonically denim i suppose yeah it's not like that it's not that color at all it's a lot darker i i use i keep obviously i said earlier i don't i don't i don't have a smart keyboard i i do magic keyboard whatever it's called i do kind of wish i could live the no case life for the ipad but like for me the case is very important to the functionality of the ipad like i want my ipad to stand yes like that is very important to me yes and i don't really i don't i don't screw with kickstands i'm not a kickstand guy no kickstands are bad thumbs down to the kickstand so yes i i the case is great and i use it in all sorts of ways to yeah to put it upright to have it be in sort of

typing position there are lots of ways uh that that it works better i just wish that i wish the there were some color options they're not going to give me color options for my ipad i wish there were color options for the the the cases and i'm just disappointed that the denim is the best we managed this time after that because i want that orange again orange is so good or a yellow or a or something brighter would be really nice. And they did. There was like that brief moment where they're like, yeah, you could do a bright cover for an iPad Pro. And then there was the crackdown, right?

The colors came back from vacation. It was like, what are we doing here? And then back in lockdown. I have another similar question in the same vein from Neil, who says, I am a caseless iPad user, as I appreciate the svelte dimensions of a bare device. So I often wonder what the use case is for a relatively bulky keyboard case versus using a good Bluetooth keyboard. Are there many situations where the iPad of a separate keyboard is worse? So a couple of things here. One is bluetooth keyboard is great but where's the ipad is it in a it's got to be like you're using it like flat on a table or something that's

bad ergonomics i realize now i did cut out part of this question which which is important where they said that they were they thought that the studio neat canopy looked interesting right it's like a device to carry a keyboard in and then to use as a stand for whenever you want sure so it's a combo you've got to have a stand and a bluetooth keyboard it's perfectly reasonable i have a i have a stand that i use when my ipad is on my um the bar of my kitchen. I put it in, I clip it in and it, and it puts it up high. And then I use a, I use a Bluetooth keyboard and it's really nice when I'm using it there, but that's a whole setup where I've got a stand and all of that I've used. I mean, that, that old studio neat, um, canopy was really nice as, as a way of traveling with a keyboard separately and

all that. But the beauty of the magic Keyboard is that it is just a laptop. It's all-in-one. The stand is there. And it's the best experience because it's hovering over the keyboard. It's adjustable. It's all-in-one piece. And if you're working on your lap, which I do a lot, I'm doing a lot of that on my lap on the couch

or out in a camp chair under the redwood tree in the summertime. Like that's in a scenario like that, you got to have it all together. You also get the track pad, right? Like the track pad is a big deal for that product. Right. When I'm working these days, when I'm working on the bar, the bar top on sitting on a bar stool, I will also have a trackpad that I bring out. Right. And so it is nice to have

it all in one. Yeah, it is. It is. So there are scenarios where I think it's perfectly reasonable to do this and travel with a keyboard. I just decided, and also you can save money because Bluetooth keyboards are way cheaper than the Magic Keyboard. You can absolutely save money doing it that way. But ideally the Magic Keyboard is like a really good, it's just a good

fit. If you need, if you're willing to spend the money and you want that kind of perfect fit and good portability, it's worth it. But I absolutely use a mechanical keyboard and an iPad when I'm inside at a you know at the bar but that's not right that that's only one use case where that makes sense and car asks given that the m4 chip has a dedicated controller for the oled tandem display in the ipad pro what are the chances that an m4 based macbook pro rumored for this year, and the M4 MacBook Airs for next year could have OLED displays? Related chances for an OLED display to pair with an M4-based Mac desktop later this year or next? Do you think that the, basically, do you think the inclusion of the display controller for the

OLED tandem display could indicate that we could see OLED displays in laptops? Yeah, I think it could mean that the MacBook Pros are getting OLED displays. Not the MacBook Air. Prices don't make sense. In fact, I wonder if they do OLED for the MacBook Pros, if they might actually segment them further. And, you know, they all have that same really nice display now, but I wonder if that low-end M3 14-inch MacBook Pro, I wonder if the $1,500 to $2,000 range just keeps that screen, but they put an OLED in the higher-end screens.

I wonder if that might be the way that they would do it um not the macbook air i thought this question was going to be does this mean that maybe it'll drive the macbook air will drive to external displays with with the lid closed maybe and i think i mean maybe like like a new display controller that's souped up like that it makes me think that maybe there are some mac applications this is a more broad answer. They're probably Mac applications for doing that. Like the M4 is mostly not going in the iPad pro, right? It's mostly going to go in Macs. Macs are going to, they're going to be more Macs out there with it than iPad pros in the long run. So there are probably Mac reasons to have that display controller in there

too. And they're just not talking about it because they don't have a Mac to talk about right now. So I would think that there are going to be some things. I also wonder if like, could it mean that it's got improved functionality for like the virtual display on the Vision Pro? Like, I don't know what all it might enable, but it does sure feel like they wouldn't have upgraded the display controller on the M4 just for the ipad pro it feels like there are probably

other applications for it whatever they might be do you know you might not know this but like the the tandem system is it showing like two copies of the same thing i think it is i think i think it's one is right behind the other and they're showing the same thing and that's how you get the increased brightness. So like essentially if you were to like split it up, right? Like if you were able to like pull them apart and do something with it, you would have essentially two displays. Right. And they're both showing the same image.

But the pathway is different. It's not like you're actually using two displays. I tried to get into this in detail with Apple in New York and there was a point beyond which they were just not willing to go. They're like, we could, you could talk to our display people that we're not going to let you talk to. Um, because I wanted to know more about this, but my understanding is that since it's sending the same signal to both panels, it's not like the device is drawing things twice right it's drawing it once and telling both panels to draw the same thing so it's not right you get it like it's it's it is more like driving one display but yeah if you pull them apart they're basically

mirrored um the thing that they have to do, and they did talk about this, which is fascinating, is every OLED panel has a different characteristic. Like, not every dot on an OLED panel has the same max brightness, which I did not know. They're all a little different. That's just a quirk of OLED. And so they have to be calibrated. quirk of OLED. And so they have to be calibrated. And so they put the screens through calibration and you end up with like a calibration map of this pixel should only go this bright. And this pixel should only go this bright. And the reason you do that is you want them all to be uniform, even though physically they're not uniform. If you don't do that, then continuous red or whatever

ends up looking blotchy because they're all red but they're all not quite the same and so they have to do that and what they told me is they have to do that and they have to do it for two different monitors and they have to have both of those displays do those at you know high resolution at high frame refresh on the fly they have to modify every single pixel that is coming from the computer uh has to be modified based on the calibration and they said that is the kind of thing that you need to do down at the very lowest level which is why they have the display controller doing the job so that part is really interesting that they're not the panels aren't the same and even the individual're not the panels aren't the same and

even the individual pixels on the panels aren't the same so they have to do a lot of massaging there but what they don't have to do is sort of like try to draw the same thing twice they draw it once and it gets sent to both panels so in that in that way they are identical and they're right behind each other and and that's to get more brightness in there quinn uh at snazzy labs did a really good YouTube video that I think we might have referenced last week, but he talked about tandem OLED and how it's not one of those things

that Apple makes up and says, oh, it's the mega ultra display XDR Pro, those kinds of words. It's not that. It's existing technology that has been talked about for quite a while and Apple decided to actually implement in this way, which is interesting. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show, for Ask Upgrade, for Snow Talk, whatever it is, you can also send in your follow-up at upgradefeedback.com.

You can check out Jason's writing over at sixcolors.com and hear his shows on theincomparable.com and here on RelayFM. You can listen to my shows here on RelayFM too and check out my work at cortexbrand.com. We're online. Jason is at jsnail, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. You can watch video clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, but we are at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus and get longer ad-free versions of each and every episode. Go to getupgradeplus.com to find out more. Thank you to Wild Grain, Ooni, and Delete Me for their support of this show.

But most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.