Upgrade - 54: Put a Pen on It

Episode Date: September 14, 2015

Live from Portland, Myke, Jason, and special guest Stephen Hackett go deep with more thought about the Apple event, the iPad pro, Myke's dream computing environment, possibilities for Apple's product releases for the rest of 2015, what we pre-ordered from Apple, the prospects for the new Apple TV as a game platform, Apple's limited storage offerings for iCloud backup, and more.

live from Portland and from relay FM this is episode 54 of upgrade today's show is brought to you by our friends over at lynda.com, stamps.com, Fracture, and FanDuel. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined in person to my left by Mr. Jason Snell. I am leftmost. Hello. Hello. And we have Stephen Hackett's back again. I was told this was clockwise. Is this not clockwise? It's a totally different show. Thank you so much for filling in for me. I enjoyed listening to the episode very much. Good. It was a lot of fun to do it.

You were on a plane. I think I just got off my first flight. I was in Canada at the time. And I saw the little notification that you were going live, and it made me very happy, and I listened to it back later on. And as I watched the Apple event when I arrived in Portland, just sat for a few hours, watched the video. So yeah, I feel like I'm kind of caught up, but we're having a good time here in XOXO.

Yeah. Yeah, this is like a, it's like half upgrade, half connected. It's weird. Yeah. Mixing it all up. I thought we'd just talk about some of the Apple stuff. I've got some thoughts that I want to share that obviously I haven't been able to share yet. So I'm excited to do those.

Mike was right and continues to be right. So we're going to go through that a bit today i think and maybe talk about xoxo a little bit but first i want to start off with a little story jason uh about what happens if you have it over if you have a very very light computer would you like to tell the world what happens if you own an 11 inch macbook air? So I'm driving to the airport to come up here on Thursday, and I'm listening to the Accidental Tech podcast, a podcast about technology you may be familiar with. And at one point, Marco says, you know, I'd rather have an 11-inch MacBook Air than an iPad Pro.

And I suddenly go, and had this moment of like, I don't think I brought my laptop with me. I think it's still charging for the flight at home. And I rip open my bag and stick my hand in the little spot where the laptop goes. There's nothing there. And where were you at this point?

Oakland. I was halfway to the Oakland airport. I was at the junction of the 880 and 980 freeways in traffic. So I had about two minutes to sit in traffic before I would turn around to decide if I wanted to go to Portland without my laptop. When I have a couple podcasts, I need to edit. And I don't have those files with me without the laptop, or whether I just want to turn around. And I decided that although there were interesting things to see here, the real

big meat of the conference didn't start until Friday. And spending another day at home when I've got a lot of work to do is, you know, I could, I could do that. And so I turned around and I went home because there's no way I could go back home and, and, uh, and get the laptop and then come back and get,

and make my flight. That wasn't, I left myself time, but I didn't leave myself enough time to go to the airport and back twice, which John Syracuse told me is how he lives his life. You got, you gotta be able to just expect to, to turn around at the airport

and go back home again, do a lap. You need a packing list, my friend. You know, I've never done this before, and honestly the reason I did it, I did it out of sequence because I was concerned that I wasn't going to have the files and I was going to forget. So it was actually in a place that it isn't normally, specifically because I was trying to be sure I

didn't forget it. It seemed to have worked really well. I'm going to go back to my old system now. You already got a fail-safe system going on there, Jason. I'm going to go back to my old system. I'm on a winning streak now because the next day I flew to Portland and I had

all my stuff with me. Excellent. Jason, was it you years ago when the MacBook Air first came out talking about losing it in a stack of magazines? That was not me. It was someone. That was an article. Was it David Pogue who recycled his MacBook Air? Yeah, that's what it was. It was David Pogue or maybe

it was Steven Levy. It was a guy I think of as a New York guy and they got the Sun in New York Times and they recycled it and they recycled the MacBook Air with it. Which is, that's an awkward call to Apple PR. It is recyclable aluminum, but... It's true. Non-BVC.

Yeah, I'm sure that they... Yeah, that was a great call to Apple PR. I lost... I think I may have put it in with the Sunday Times. So, yeah. Not good. Yeah. So, I got here a day late.

A dollar short. With your lovely little Mac. I got it. It's here. I actually didn't need to bring it as badly because I did a lot of that podcast editing work on Thursday night when I had nothing else to do. We're at that time of year, the great time of year, where we have an abundance of news.

It's even more so because last week obviously Apple announced everything. All the things. 100% of everything. All the great things, except for the Mac. Yeah, we'll get to that. I want to talk a little bit about the event and further just put a point on why I think I was right about the iPads.

Oh, yes. Tell me more. So, obviously, the whole thing being I said that I believed that they would put iPads. Oh, yes. Tell me more. So obviously, the whole thing being I said that I believed that they would put iPads in the iPhone event. So they could promote the iPad with the world watching, right? That was my original thought. And after watching the event, I think that they the Apple really made a point of this because they put the iPhones at the end this time, they were making people wait. That's my theory. Sure. Is that they wanted people to see the iPad, they wanted them to see the Apple TV,

so they put the iPhones right at the end of the event. I think they always do that. Last year, the watch event was first. Because of the watch. I think usually the iPhone goes last because it's the big thing, but they wanted the watch to be bigger. I actually think

considering the way that Apple works now over the last couple of years, and they are a Q4 company. Oh yeah, so seasonal. I think having just one event, you set up the entire lineup of products for the holiday season, and just let it go.

I think it's a smart move. For me, it works. I like it. You just do it all in one go. Everybody knows what's there. You say, we've got things coming out in September, October, November, and then you just let it run. I can see that.

The second event is never going to be as effective as the first event. No. And just from a logistic, I know we can talk about Apple's so big and they've got so much money, but the fact is it's a distraction. When I talk to Apple PR people and other people who work at Apple about it, it's like, these events are insane. They kind of tore up.

It must be all-consuming for these people. My understanding is the seats in the venue and everything were installed by Apple. They took that venue in San Francisco for a couple of weeks and built the set, set essentially for their presentation. You know, yes,

they could do a second smaller presentation in something like town hall on campus, but you know, they still have to plan it and invite people and do all of that stuff. And you know, and that there is a cost to that and it is a distraction. And you know, so I can see from that perspective why

apple would maybe want to also apple can apple can call journalists for briefings and can do press releases and can do video releases and things apple can release a product without an event if it wants to so it's not like it has to have an event if there are new macs to drop they don't need an event for that they can do that and still get publicity for it. Right. Talking about going into this venue and spending all this time and money, Campus 2 has a huge underground auditorium planned. And so you can't help but think that a lot of that has to do with this amount of work where they have a space that they control completely and it's exactly the way they want it.

Right. They'll just invite everybody there. Yeah's well and they can they can they can have it they can run practices on it yeah and no one knows like you know you know there's always that game of like websites trying to figure out where apple is booked in san francisco and which i love this year because they actually showed that uh document that went through the san francisco city government that showed a star or square will be placed here. It's like, that's an Apple logo. So I think once Campus 2 is up and running,

some of that headache would go away. It's going to make a longer trip for you, though. Yeah, that's fine. I understand they have plenty of parking down there. Yeah. It's just one of those things you were Apple over the years. Their events have gotten bigger and sort of more involved. You know, of course, they don't do the thing. I love when you watch the old keynotes where like an iMac comes out on a moving podium and like it like spins around.

Yeah, they used to do that where someone would, there would always be like a podium by the side of the stage and they'd go and just take the little cloth off. But now like Tim seems to, his way is to come from side of the stage with the product over his head well it used to be heavier you can't hold an iMac g3 above your head you'd be crushed to death yeah but that's that's tim's thing i quite like it he kind of just like saunters across the stage like with the thing of his head and smiling because he knows that all the all the news photographers are taking the pictures and those are the pictures that'll be with all the stories about it. He understands that stuff. Like saying about that, he's going to be on whose show is it?

Stephen Colbert. Colbert. That's crazy, right? Well, I mean, Stephen Colbert was in an Apple event, in the Apple Watch event. Trade-off. Trade-off. Right?

So, no, I think that's one of the things, not to get too deep down in TV stuff. You can listen to my TV Talk Machine podcast for more about that. Plug. Colbert is doing some interesting things in terms of, I mean, he's obviously, he likes tech stuff. He likes Apple stuff. But he's trying to get an interesting mix of guests on his show. He doesn't want it to just be like movie actors.

Yeah. And so he's had politicians on and he had elon musk on yep uh and he's gonna have tim cook on and i think that's all good so um it'll be interesting to see that and how apple plays the ceo of apple on a late night talk show thing this is one of those things like i'm not gonna be able to watch that easily this is a frustrating thing that i always find right because you'll be like geo-blocked from watching it's like you know that then now i have to like wait for the youtube stuff and then i can maybe try and find it but it, because you'll be like geo-blocked from watching. It's like, you know, then I have to like wait for the YouTube stuff and then I can maybe try and find it.

But it's just one of those examples. It's like, just let me watch it. Yeah. Here's five pounds I will give you. Just let me watch this one episode. I don't understand why shows that don't sell. I mean, some late night shows from America air in Britain. Yeah.

I don't think Colbert does. Yeah. So if you don't, then there should be a worldwide something or other. Just let me give you some money. Yeah. Like, I don't know. Just here's some money. Yeah. I don't think Colbert does. Yeah. So if you don't, then there should be a worldwide something or other. Just let me give you some money. Yeah. Like, I don't know.

Just here's some money. Yeah. Show me the ads. Whatever. For the American products you can't buy. Can we go back to the iPad Pro a little bit?

Yeah, yeah. Because I haven't had any way to talk about this yet. This is essentially our second upgrade in less than a week because we did the episode on Wednesday. You and I, Stephen, pointing at than a week because we did the episode on Wednesday.

You and I, Steven, pointing at Steven. It's good podcasting. Nobody can see it. And now we're doing one recording on Sunday. So this is more like

if ever there was a week to do this, this is it. We've had a little more time to think about it now. Mike's just been podcasting by himself in his hotel room. It's very sad.

He's like talking to the hotel clerk like, what do you think about the Apple Pencil? He's holding the hair dryer and talking into it like it's a microphone. What do you like to be known for? So I like the look of the iPad Pro. I think it's an interesting product. I'm still trying to understand a little bit about why it exists.

I think Apple did a really good job of bringing the companies that they needed on stage. Because I think, remember, me and you were talking about why, what was it when we were saying Adobe should be there? I think it was at the last event. Oh, yeah, where they did the metal stuff. And they did game demos and they didn't bring up Adobe. And so Adobe were there.

They did a great demo. I mean, there was some questionable stuff about some of the content in it, but the applications themselves looked very good. Yeah, speaking of creative professionals working on the iPad was, everything was right about it except the detail. Yeah. The example they gave was really awful. Yeah, that was just ridiculous.

One of those complete oversights where it's like, this seems like a great idea, but they just absolutely screwed it up. I thought it was fitting in the sense that, just as a brief tangent on what we're talking about,

is they have this plug-in that makes, they made a woman, a model, smile more. And that plays into all those sort of like, women often are told,

like even walking down the street, you should smile, honey, and things like that. And it's really offensive to a lot of women that this is reinforcing that. But I also looked at that and thought, well, this is Photoshop, right? I mean, Photoshop is all about unrealistic images

of everybody. That's what Photoshop is. But if we get beside the details of it, it was like an old school Mac kind of thing. It was a creative professional, like we're going to do a mock-up layout, and we're going to edit these images, and it's all happening on the iPad. And that was an intentional and I think smart thing to be like, hey, remember Adobe and Microsoft, these giants of office and creative work on your computer?

Here they are on the iPad Pro. So one of the things that I liked with what they were doing with the apps is it seemed like the guy was editing an image in one app with the split screen on the iPad and he was able to just make it appear in the other app. Like it was using some sort of shared file architecture. Maybe it's iCloud, maybe it's something else.

But I just liked that these two apps were talking to each other whilst next to each other like that. as i see and stuff like that looked really great like the when microsoft was showing off i think it was excel and powerpoint and they were like taking a table and you move it into the other one and it really felt like a a great way to use these kind of split screen applications although it did point out that um the uh the drag and drop doesn't exist in iOS 9. Right. Developers have to, if you're using two Adobe apps or two Microsoft apps,

you are using things that they have built. It's not like the Microsoft demo a couple years ago where you can bring things and it's context-aware and content-aware where you can pick an image up and move it over. You still have to jump through iOS's janky file sharing stuff to do it. So what Microsoft did, they didn't even do file sharing. What Microsoft did was say, look, you can make a chart in Excel and put it in

Word, and they did copy and paste. Which works, but again, it's like, why did you do copy and paste and not drag and drop? The answer is, we don't have drag and drop in iOS. We just have split screen now. I feel like that's next time. I think,

I think you're right. I think this is, a lot of my feelings about the multitasking features in iOS 9 are, you know, it's a first go and that presumably

they will keep going with it. I kind of wish they had started down this road two years ago. I mean, the understanding is they've been trying

to do this for a long time. Yeah. Because it seems like, you know, for the last couple of years this has kept coming up. And you have to have more RAM in your products too. So for them to do this for a long time. Because it seems like for the last couple of years, this has kept coming up. And you have to have more RAM in your products too. So for them to do this sooner,

they would have had to put two gigs of RAM in the iPad Air 1. It would have to have made a much bigger jump than what they did in a much, much shorter period. So some of this is constrained by the technology. And it's not just Apple kind of not paying attention to productivity in iOS, although I think it is that too. But I think some of it is the devices just weren't powerful enough to do this stuff before. So the device itself is interesting to me. The stereo speakers, the accessory port, all of this stuff is like a – it feels like a departure from what we know an ios device to be

there's there is some stuff in the ipad pro which is like this is a definitely in between device now because they're like they're opening up in different ways they worked with logitech in the background and logitech have made a keyboard as well it's unclear to me whether that apple keyboard is actually made by Logitech. Well, they're saying that they're using those new keycaps, so it feels like an Apple one. I don't know. Or is it a collaboration?

I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. We may never know. But the fact that Logitech is there day one with their own bigger... It's like an actual plastic moving keyboard rather than the semi-membrane keyboard yeah fabric yeah basically is being used in that no it's uh i think it's a good question

about whether this is an oddball product that it's like only on the ipad pro or what seems to be i think more likely which is an ipad air 3 next year will come towards year would have that accessory port and would seem a little bit more, pick up some of these features of the top of the line iPad. I feel like what we're going to see now is in the way that the Air

trickles down to the Mini, the Pro will trickle down to the Air and then it just goes that way. So the Pro keeps moving forward, then the Air picks up some of those features. So in nine years, the iPad Mini will get it. But I think one of the things that we'll see now is that the iPads get revved every two years. I think that's right. I mean, the Mini is now caught up with the Air 2, but the Air 2 didn't get an update this year.

So it will be next year. Right. And if you look at, we've all talked about this right the ipad upgrade cycle problem where some people buy them every year but the vast majority of people go two three four years even i mean how many ipad 2s are still running around and so if you're apple why invest and put the r&d put the engineering in to upgrade every product every year, why not go to a more Mac-like schedule where something like an iMac or a MacBook Air

that they sell more of gets upgraded more frequently than a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro? It just makes sense to apply that sort of logic to the iPad at this point. Right. There will always be new iPads every year, but not all the iPads will be new. Right.

And I think that's fine. I mean, I think it's, if we're moving into a world iPads every year, but not all the iPads will be new. Right. And I think that's fine. I mean, I think it's, if we're moving into a world where the iPad is more of a general computing device, it's not something most people are going to upgrade every year. Clearly, that's already the case. Yeah, definitely not. And so why not adjust to that? I want to talk about my dream of the iPad pro. So lay down on the couch over there,

Mike, and I'll tell me about your dream before though. I want to talk about Linda.com. Excellent. They are helping bring this episode to you from Portland straight into your ears. Linda.com is the online learning platform that has over 3000 on demand video courses to help you strengthen your business,

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go ahead and visit lynda.com slash upgrade. That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash upgrade and sign up for your free 10-day trial. Thank you so much, lynda.com, for supporting this show and RelayFM. So I'm about a year in now to being full-time and using all of my own devices to do all my work right so right there with you yeah exactly so but i now feel like i am at a point where i know how i use my devices and i'm thinking about making some changes like i want sometimes when i throw my mac pro out the window so i'm thinking about when the imax get revved um i may be getting myself one of the new ones one of the Retina guys, because my kind of setup has changed to the point now

where I think that makes a little bit more sense for me. So what I have been finding recently is I'm now moving more to using the desktop machine at home. So previously, the Mac Pro was just a production machine, but I got a nice new monitor for it. I like having a really large monitor now, which is why I think the iMac might be a great addition. So now at home, when I'm working, I'm just using the Mac Pro. I'm using it for all recording, I'm using it for most of my work now.

So the MacBook that I have is basically only being used when I'm not at home. It's like when I'm here or when I kind of work somewhere. So I'm thinking about what could the iPad Pro bring to this setup. Could it be that I use an iMac and an iPad Pro? And then the MacBook is something that lives in a cupboard that only comes with me on trips if I need to edit a podcast or something like that. Or maybe there's a world in which someone will actually make a really good audio editor for the iPad. So what I'm doing most of the time when I take these trips is editing a show.

So if that sort of stuff could exist, I'm wondering, like, is this a potential product that could be really good for me? I think, you know, I am a pen guy pen guy i'm a pencil guy i like to take notes handwritten notes i'm really interested to see how the apple pencil not a good name uh they should have called it the apple pen i don't know why they thought pencil was better than pen uh it doesn't make sense to me it's too long it's too many syllables in my opinion apple pen could have been fine i don't know why it's an apple pencil uh. I mean, it's the shape of a pencil. Pencils and pens look the same.

Anyway. Hashtag Mike was wrong. Yeah, I don't... But that product is very interesting to me. I think Apple may have made some interesting decisions. Like, there isn't a way to store it in any way. Right. Like, that little case should have something

you can just slide it into. Or a little magnet place that it magically clips onto or something i don't know why it's just this thing that will float around and inevitably get lost my other issue with the ipad pro is the cost of the accessories and the fact that neither of them are included yeah i think that that is a frustrating thing welcome to being an Apple customer. But they're expensive as well. No, they are. I mean, even if you do the base iPad Pro,

you're spending, what is it, $99 for the pencil and $169 for the keyboard? I mean, you've laid out another good chunk of change. To be fair, the Microsoft Surface keyboard is $129. I just reviewed a bunch of third-party iPad Air keyboards, Microsoft Surface keyboard is $129. And third-party, I just reviewed a bunch of third-party iPad Air keyboards, and they all cost, say, $60 to $120. I agree. I mean, I know that this is how it always is,

but it's like because the iPad Pro is so expensive to begin with, it would be nice to have a keyboard. Right. It's like the cost of a laptop, but you don't have to buy the laptop keyboard extra. Exactly you don't pay for a trackpad i would love a trackpad okay give us an extra 50 and we'll put a trackpad on your macbook like that's not what happens and i feel like considering the amount that apple seemed to be like these go together we built a whole new port for it like come on just throw it in I do wonder, and I don't know if we'll ever see this data from Apple

or from people who look at this sort of thing professionally, but I do wonder what the adoption rate is going to be of the pencil and the keyboard. Are people going to buy an iPad Pro because it's a bigger iPad? Are they going to buy it with the pencil? My guess is that the pencil will be more uh more successful than the keyboard not only because of price but sort of what you could do with it you know you can't do what you can do with the pencil with anything else right but you can type on an ipad yeah or you can or you can and it's and it's full size yeah yeah and it's got bluetooth key you can do bluetooth

keyboards if you don't like the apple one. You can do something else. By the Logitech one, you can do lots of options. I mean, I use the Apple aluminum Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad. I have a little stand, and I pair it because I'm really fast on that keyboard. Something else about the pencil. Mike, you were talking about there's no place to store it and all that. One of the other interesting things that I noticed is that it doesn't have an eraser because instead the top

is the cap with the lightning under it, which is also a weird choice. It's a weird choice. Man, my understanding is it doesn't... I'm sure in the demo one of the people used the other end. Are you sure? That's where the cap is for the... They could still make that.

Because all it needs to do is just recognize it's a different... As a different shape. Maybe it does then. I don't know that. I know it's weird. My larger point was it's interesting that this is a device with a male lightning connector on it

because the good thing is it means you can just stick it into the female lightning port on the iPad Pro and it charges. And break it off. This is my problem. I don't think that that is a – I understand the reason that they're doing that because you can plug it in and it's always there. But how do you charge it long periods of time? Put your iPad down and then the pencil just sticks out the side? Yeah.

pencil just sticks out the side yeah that's the that's the mystery of that i have is you know is there a special charger for it or a special cable for it or something or are you just expected to just lay your ipad down and stick it in and if they had a little stand that had a you know female lightning port and you just sit it down on top of it like when you're done with the workday and who's waiting for you when you get back but if you're going to charge it overnight you can't charge the ipad and the pencil at the same time unless apple makes something else it just seems like an odd choice and it does seem to your point mike like i would be nervous about breaking that thing off that's gonna so many people are gonna end up with um lightning connectors stuck in like snapped off and stuck in there i looking at the site i don't think it does have an eraser i think you're right um but this is kind of what i was looking for

i need the pen take here pen users take well i mean so i don't have that the the key thing that apple have done which is exactly what we know anybody that's used this stuff and they we know they needed to do was to do something about the touch screen which is exactly what we know anybody that's used this stuff, and we know they needed to do, was to do something about the touchscreen, which is exactly what they've done. So they didn't add pressure sensitivity, but they increased the refresh, which means that it's very low latency. And then like all of these other iPad pen manufacturers, they put all the pressure sensitivity in the pen.

In the pen itself. Pencil. Because I think Wacom make one like this, where you put a receiver into the iPad currently, and it connects with Bluetooth, and it can do exactly what this does. But obviously Apple can build it in, and it's much more elegant. So I'm going to take the plunge with the ipad pro and my my plan is to go all they needed all they needed to do was was put a pen on it so i'm gonna put a pen on it that's what they say in portland

uh but i am still unconvinced if i will keep it that's my i because i don't know if this is the product that i want but i feel like considering the way that i am and like you know with the but especially with the pencil and the digital input like that i feel like i i really want to understand uh how this product could work for a non-artist this is so obvious for an artist but what is the use of this to the average consumer i'm the ipad pro is a really interesting product because it is heralding something that i don't think currently exists which is people doing a lot of work on the ip. There are outliers. We all know one of them. But it really isn't a device that's built for many people to do their work easily. Federico has got it to the point where he can do his work easily, but it took an incredible amount of work for him to get there.

And it's the difference between can you get work done on the iPad and will anybody want to put in the effort to get work done on the iPad? Or can it be effortless? Because his situation was he had no choice. Everybody knows the story. So he did it. And knowing him how I do and how he works, he couldn't do the type of stuff that he does on a Mac now. He couldn't do it in the same way.

And it would be more difficult for him because this is the product that he uses. So I wonder, like, I've started to use my ipad air a lot more these days and i wonder how much work could i get done on a product like this because i've looked at the surface for a long time and thought that is a form factor that is incredibly interesting to me this like it is a tablet but you can connect some stuff to it and the great thing about what microsoft does you know for their sins at times you can do everything on it yeah that this is i wrote a piece uh for the my my like explaining apple to windows it people column that i do on the windows super site um about this and and you know the knock on the surface and i think it's accurate is it is a compromised vision because it is both.

It's better now than it was with Windows 8. Windows 10 makes this better, but it's a tablet when it's a tablet, and it's a PC when it's not. And so if you want to bring a keyboard and a mouse, you can make it into a PC. And so it's neither. It's both. Apple went the other direction where it's like the Mac is the mac and the ipad is the ipad which is great um and so you can say the surface is kind of a compromised you know hybrid product at the same time if you need if you want to take an ipad but there's some things you you have to do on a mac the compromise there

is you have to bring both. That's still a compromise. It's just a different kind of compromise. And in the long run, I think Apple will be seen to have made the right decision to not retrofit Mac OS for a tablet. I agree with that. But in the short run, what it does is make us notice that iOS is not up to everything that probably it needs to be able to do yet. Because it's a young operating system. But it's still not there yet.

And not that it can't be coaxed and not that people like Federico, they can prove that work can be done there. But it's all a little too hard. And Apple hasn't helped. Until this year, Apple hasn't tried to make it any easier. They still did not show first-party software at this event. I was expecting a pro app that they have not given us. Yeah, well, it's interesting that they went to,

that the original iPad was launched with iWork. Yep. And here they brought Microsoft and Adobe on stage. Which was great. It's a victory lap in a sense, right? Which is, look who's here. We don't need to even in a sense, right? Which is, look who's here. We don't need to even make our own software now for this platform because look who's here.

Microsoft doing what they're doing with Office, it's like they're putting a nail in their own coffin. But this is new Microsoft, right? Because the surface is still struggling with Office. My understanding is the Windows 10 Office still isn't out yet, I think. I could be wrong with that. It's supposed to be out by the end of the year. struggling with office my understanding is like the windows 10 office still isn't out yet i think i could be wrong with that it's supposed to be out by the end of the year yeah yeah but these new versions of office on the ipad will be out in a couple of months well and office on the ipad

right now i wrote a huge chunk of my ios 9 review on an ipad air with an external keyboard apple bluetooth keyboard in microsoft word and it was really good. It is amazing. I mean, recently as well, Google Docs has gotten even better on the iOS. They've added this like a shortcut

bar above the keyboard, which is contextually aware. It's fantastic. But I still believe that Apple need to put their money where their mouth is and signal a change so there should have been like they showed imovie on this thing right but that is not that's not that's not it that's not the pro app right it's a watered down version of the consumer app the ipad pro has no apple pro app app and I'm a little disappointed that they didn't do anything because that was what I was expecting

I think other people were as well because the iPad had a real kind of coming of age moment with iLife you know, GarageBand on the iPad was like people like, I understand what this is all about now like this is amazing, it was like this big thing, but now we're in this scenario where I really, really wish they would have shown something, uh, which showed that why they believe this is a pro product themselves,

but they didn't know. Well, I mean, there, there may be time for something like that in November and they, they may sense this is not shipping. That's the other funny thing about this event. It's not happening. This stuff is way out there. November, way out there. So we may hear more about that.

But yeah, I have my doubts that we'll be seeing Logic or Final Cut for iPad Pro. But wouldn't that be something? It would be great. I mean, that's a big kind of stake. A lot of my functionality problems like you were talking about like pro level editing on uh audio editing on an ipad and i have uh i think it's aurea which is actually you can edit you can do what we do the big problem is it's slow because it's all the touch interface. And so with this keyboard, right, which is not guaranteed,

but it's often there, it makes me wonder if that's one of the solutions is, you know, don't just make an editor that's got a good touch interface. Make an editor that also becomes incredibly fast when you add a keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts.

And iOS 9 is so much ios 9 is so much better at keyboard shortcuts so there's hope there is all seriousness that the idea the thought of being able to use an audio editing program of a keyboard and the precision of the pencil to select areas it would be incredible and and my hope is someone will make it yeah wouldn't it be nice if that was apple but it doesn't have to be apple it doesn't have to be but it would have been nice if they did it well and i wonder too if if maybe this isn't apple's hang up but looking at third party developers i mean there is a ongoing concern about the race to the bottom and ipad software in general doesn't sell very well

compared to iPhone software. But I wonder as well, if you're, if you're going to make that, that podcast editing app and you're out there and you're thinking about doing it and you want to rely on things like the pencil and the keyboard being present, I don't believe there's how many, what's your audience? Well, well past that, I don't even think there's a way to target just the iPad Pro in the App Store you still have to deal with how do I get this out there

and how do I keep somebody with an iPad Mini 2 from buying this thing because Apple has not given developers the tools in the App Store at that layer

to even say to mark an app as this is a Pro app you're going to need this system requirements like you can on the Mac that may happen that may have to happen.

And I think, I think it does need to happen, but it's because I think there should be a class because what you said, it made immediately made me think there should be a class of apps that are, that really require an iPad pro and that cost a lot of money. Right. And that, and you say,

what's the market for that? And the answer is it doesn't need to be a big market. If you can get. And that, and you say, what's the market for that? And the answer is, it doesn't need to be a big market. If you can get an audience that, that like everybody in that industry knows that this is what you do. You buy an iPad pro and a pencil and that keyboard and this software and you have $300 and you have a mobile, whatever unit, audio editing,

video editing, whatever. I mean, that works on the Mac. I mean, you look at, I mean, any,

not only Adobe and Microsoft, but look at companies like panic who are make good OS 10 Mac. I mean, that works on the Mac. I mean, not only Adobe and Microsoft, but look at companies like Panic who make good OS X software. It's expensive compared to other stuff. They compete with even free apps in places. But if you need those tools, that's who you go to. And I mean, all those things that we just rattled off, it's a whole list of problems right now

for iPad development. It's all throughout the stack. It's the store. It's the audience. It's the tools they are given to build apps it seems like the hardware is just so far out in front and the software and the policies which i think is where apple lags behind i think the policies are the slowest to change this has got to catch up for this to be you know more successful than it could be without it i agree all right jason you mentioned november a moment ago yeah so i want to get your thoughts on that but before we do uh let me just take a moment to thank our second sponsor for this week's episode and that is our friends over at fracture you know fracture they make beautiful prints of your

favorite photos i have a couple of people sitting by my sides who also own fractures and i've seen gifts and and they're on the walls of their homes. Oh, yes. And that is because fracture will take your images and make absolutely stunning prints out of them. They take your photos. You upload them at fracture me dot com. You choose the size you want. They have a bunch of different selections in square and rectangle sizes.

Fracture will take it and they will print your photo directly onto a piece of glass. They have a great team in Gainesville, Florida who check and assemble these things by hand to make sure they look great. They package them up with all of the stuff that you're going to need to hang it on the wall or mount it. I have a little stand to put on your desk if you like and they package it all up and they will send it out to you and I have had these things sent to me from the other side of the world to England and they come these lovely pieces of glass uh all lovely packaged and not a mark or scratch on any of them they look fantastic i mean jason i know that you have a bunch of your podcast artwork and stuff like that i do john syracuse is putting me to shame he's got

his robot or not tractor now and i haven't ordered that one yet but but if you've got anything that you've got uh images that images that can be family images or perhaps this, I really like this marketing accomplishments thing. And for people like us or people like John and Marco, sometimes it's app icons or it's podcast art. But I like that.

It's almost like the march of time or recognition of work that's been done. And yeah, it's a little bit like giving yourself an award. But it's kind of nice like giving yourself an award, but you know, it's kind of nice to say, I made these things and here they are, they're on the wall. And that could be like things of your kids,

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you so much to fracture for supporting relay fm so november yeah november so we hope it rains i hope it rains i hope it rains remember remember i it rains. I hope it rains. Remember, remember. The rains of November. I have no idea what's happening anymore. So usually there's been an event in October time where they would unveil the new Macs, maybe the iPads, some other little bits and bobs. It seems like there will not be an event in October

to talk about El Capitan because it's coming out September 30th. Right. Which is the weirdest way to announce a product ship date is in an email on a screen, but it was funny. I liked it. It was funny. Good moment, a good way of doing it.

But Apple always do the, let's go back over the features again. But they didn't do that this week. Do you think there's going to be something else? They could do another event where they reassert the iPad Pro before November. My guess? They go back over the new Macs. My guess is no.

But I don't... If I was at Apple, I certainly would bring that up. Wait, do we want to do a restatement event? But I feel like they've done their big... There'd be nothing, really. Well, want to do like a restatement event but I feel like they they've done their big there'd be nothing really well it would be like a Mac thing and I don't think they want a Mac event with like iPad Pro is also shipping kind of thing restatement thing they they get a lot of stick actually in the press from when they like the Apple Watch event which was a replay in the spring a replay of last September's event right and people were like oh we already heard all of this

well yeah but now they but now they want people to pay attention again because they're shipping it. So, yeah, I think we'll see Apple launch some products using media, you know, using review embargoes and using publicity blitzes and interviews with executives and all the stuff

that they seem to be doing now as part of their marketing. As opposed to bringing the world's media into a room. Into town hall or something like that to do a quick kind of thing. Because we expect new Macs, right? It's rumored a 21-inch Retina. Yeah, there are absolutely going to be new Mac announcements. And yeah, the rumors are there will be a smaller Retina iMac.

And who knows, maybe some other stuff too. But yeah, not tied to El Capitan probably, I guess. I guess really. I mean, you know. Unless it is. El Capitan doesn't have a ton of stuff to show. It's not really a great demo. I mean, because they did a good job of showing it off at WBDC,

but I don't know if there's a lot really to go over. Whatever. Your cursor gets bigger. It's awesome. That's true. It does do that more than I wish it would. But, I mean, using El Capitan, I do like it a lot.

I like the split-screen stuff. It's really useful for me. I love the Notes app. So, you know, but I see, it seems maybe they won't do it. They're just going to push it all out, as you say, maybe get some reviews and stuff like that.

Yeah. It really does feel like reviews and stuff like that. Yeah. It really does feel like this is the event now. Yeah, I think so. All right, so pre-orders. iPhone pre-orders went up a day or so ago. You got to experience it. You both got to experience Pacific Time Apple ordering where it's actually midnight.

Yeah, it's usually 2 a.m. for me. It's usually 8 a.m. for Mike. It's not too bad for you. It's always great. I mean, I usually 2 a.m. for me. It's usually 8 a.m. for Mike. It's not too bad for you. It's always great. I mean, I remember when I would be on my way to work and I would jump off the train at a platform so I could pre-order my iPhone and then get back on the train to go off to work

so I didn't go underground. Stephen, did you pre-order? I did. So I currently am part of the Mike was right generation and have an iPhone 6 Plus I ordered. There's a lot of 6 plus converts I'm seeing. Yeah. So I ordered,

so I ordered the six S plus 64 Greg, 64 gig gray, same as I have now. Um, and I'm excited about it. I'm excited about the, uh, the 3d touch having spent a little time with it.

It's pretty nice and excited about the camera, especially I think that new 12 megapixel shooter is going to be pretty nice so uh so yeah i do it almost every year what about you mike i did i went 64 gigabyte plus i got the white one uh so i have many thoughts on this a little confession okay so i do want the white one but i ordered it by accident i didn't mean to press it but i did press it what's your what what what's the back color is it is it's oh it's it's silver yeah i didn't get like the rose gold or anything luckily but uh i because i wouldn't have wanted that it's a nice color but it's not for me i was intending to get the gray sure uh but i got the silver

instead but i i do like doing that I have done that in the past. And if I maybe wasn't, I was literally falling asleep as I was ordering it. I was very tired. But I've done this in the past and I quite like it. If you have a different color device, it feels like a new device. Because obviously there's not a massive amount. They don't look any different. So I have a white one and it maybe will feel a little bit more new.

I have had white iPhones in the past. I think i think they're fine yeah i moved away from them i used to do what you what you did this time of alternating the color so it does it's a trick for your brain uh it's a reward for spending too much money but um i really i really don't like the white glass around the screen as much as i used to especially when it's off it just looks kind of weird so um yeah so that went great. I'm going to see. It's only going to be a year. I actually did a, and I was pleased I could do this,

I did it in the app, a reserve for pickup at the App Store. I hate waiting at home all day for a device, especially because in the UK, so many people buy iPhones on day one because a lot of people upgrade because we have this very different system to you guys. And the delivery companies just cannot cope.

There have been times where I've ordered phones and it's come like four days later, even though they were on a van to ship on the release day. So I'm going to go to a store at like 9 a.m. in the morning and just pick up the phone while I'm there. So I'm happy about that. Jason, did you order one? I didn't. Why?

So I'm on the non-S upgrade cycle for my personal phone. But I also have to write about this stuff. So what I'm hoping is that I will get a review model from Apple that I'll be able to use in order to write about it.

And then at some point, I will get a review model from Apple that I'll be able to use in order to write about it. And then at some point, I will decide about how I want to manage it with my plan and my family. And if I want to buy, just buy an unlocked phone or whatever. But I'm hoping to not have to do that on day one, that I'll have access to a review unit, which lets me, unlike most people, but that lets me kind of delay my delay my thoughts a little bit so that's what i'm that's my current plan the last time uh two years ago that that's what i did yeah or yeah two years ago is i got the 5s um and it was uh it was gold i think that was the was that the first gold phone it was white the The white gold 5S? Goldie, we called it. I have thought about gold a couple of times, but I feel like I can't go there.

I liked it. I think it looks nice. And I used that for a while, because that was the Apple review unit, and they don't ask for it back like two weeks later. They give you some time with it. So I used that for a little while, but didn't ever buy a 5S.

I just waited and bought the 6 for myself. So we'll see how it goes this time. I don't know. give you some time with it so i used that for a little while um but didn't ever buy a 5s i just waited and bought the six for for myself so we'll see how it goes this time i don't know i i would have 64 gig space gray six is s is what it would be you would do uh if we get there gotcha i uh would like to be able to do the upgrade program it's not in the uk yet they said that they will be rolling out so probably next year i will do that because i'm buying off contract i think i've decided that i'm just going to buy unlocked phones from now on i'm i'm so fed up of uh but not even i don't even need to sell companies i feel like i don't need the financing i can because i although the financing is pretty close in price somebody did some math and uh selling your phone and buying a new phone every year unlocked is roughly the

same price for me i would i would do it just because it's easy yeah like you just you pay for it and it just you pay for every month you just get a new one every year and then you don't need to go for that right i'm gonna make sure i get 700 pounds together for this time like sure just so it's just the payment goes. And in that year, you can drop it twice and break it. Exactly, because I do buy AppleCare. But you put it in reminders, like, oh, you've got to break your phone? Well, it does cost you $100 or something like that.

Yeah, I went through it with the – before I went to the Plus, my regular 6 fell down a flight of concrete steps on a parking garage. It just jumped over. I was using it while navigating the stairs, and it was a terrible idea. fell down a flight of concrete steps on its own on a parking garage jumped over i was you know i was using it while navigating the stairs and it was a terrible idea but you know the the payment thing we're we're in a transition here in the u.s right where the major carriers are ending the two year thing and where you buy the phone outright and you are doing this payment plan i'm gonna look strongly at the apple one next time i still have about a year and a half on my Verizon contract and I would love to be able to be in a world where I can just pay the,

whatever it is a month and I have the freedom to switch carry right now. I want to switch away from Verizon to AT&T for coverage reasons. The ground has sort of shifted where I live as far as who has good coverage. And I can't, I mean I can't without paying a huge ETF and buying another phone unlocked. So I bought, I bought this phone full price from Apple for Verizon and I think next time

my family will move to that upgrade thing. Because the reality is I'm going to buy a new phone every year anyways and so why not do it in a way that's a little bit easier and where I still have the flexibility. Embrace it. Right.

My plan is up now. My two-year plan is up with EE, the company that with my with ee the the company that i'm with and at the moment about every pretty much every day every two days they're calling me to try and get me to go on a new plan we like you back please come back i have my phone on do not stir up constantly so all i ever see is these missed calls and then i've just blocked the numbers you know i'm just i don't want to do of it and so soon i'm going to start shopping around again because really i just want to i just want data plan i

just want give me a data plan that's what i want and i'm going to start looking around again to try and find a better deal in the uk because i pay way too much money for what i use these days um but i i'm kind of i'm just at the point where like i just don't want to be locked into deals with these companies anymore. The Apple thing is such a... I think it's a brilliant move. It's brilliant because we've been talking for a few weeks about what are they going to do. And everyone's been like, it's going to be the end of Apple.

The perception that these phones are expensive, which they are expensive, but they aren't perceived as that when it's just hidden in your phone bill and the fact is that the carriers know that too which is why they're not going from a subsidy to a you buy it outright. They're going from a subsidy to a two year installment plan.

It's an accounting change more than anything else. But Apple so then Apple can do that too and now they are and i find that fascinating because that that's you know who's your brand loyalty to if you're an iphone user it's to apple and not to your carrier so apple's basically taking over yet another part of the carrier relationship and making an apple relationship and now your phone is unlocked and you're a free agent and and it makes the carriers even more of a dumb pipe.

When you see something like this as well, you can see why these MVNO rumors are around. Yeah, and actually I read a nice piece by Ben Evans. Maybe we'll put that in the show notes. I linked to it on Six Colors, where he said this is actually probably why Apple squashed the MVNO rumors is you're already kind of digging into one part of your carrier partner's business. You might want to say, not that other part. We're not doing that.

No, no, no. Because I will be fascinated to see how carriers respond to this because you know the carriers could respond to this in a way that is good for consumers. The carriers could say, oh, well, we're going to make an even sweeter deal for you to use us for your subsidy instead of Apple, and we'll give you a discount. And if that happens,

then good. Then that's good, too, because then you can choose between Apple's deal or a deal with a carrier that's even sweeter. But right now, the way it looks is that Apple's deal is as good as the carrier's deal, at which point, why would you, I think, not give yourself the flexibility? That phone you get from Apple is unlocked too, so if you travel internationally you can pop a SIM card in it. You don't have any of this locking stuff that forces you into these expensive roaming charges when you go international. There are a lot of benefits to it.

There are a lot of benefits to it. I did have a theory about the MVNO thing, which is will Apple start its own network? And my theory was maybe that's for non-phone devices. And I don't know enough about the phone industry to know, and I want to ask somebody about this at some point. Because that was my thought there, is that maybe Apple would want,

if they put cellular into a laptop or an ipad pro let's say or ipads in general um would they want to take that off the board like we're just going to provide the the data and you were not gonna like what amazon did with the kindle i mean they were reselling behind the scenes i think it wasn't an mvmo mvno net technically but they were reselling behind the scenes. I think it wasn't an MVNO technically, but they were doing it behind the scenes. That strikes me as more plausible that Apple's got a sort of weird plan for making data available for its devices than replacing your carrier relationship entirely.

But who knows? It's fascinating. It's just I wasn't expecting it. Nobody expected this. It's a genius move. It makes perfect sense. It was exactly what they needed to do, but I don't think anybody expected it.

We did see that announcement that AT&T installment plans weren't going to be sold in Apple stores anymore. That came out a few months ago, and it's like, wow, what's that going to mean? And the answer is, it's going to mean nothing. The reason it's not being done anymore is because they don't want to do it themselves. Yeah, which is as Apple as it gets.

So it's an unexpected and fascinating story, and people are doing the math about what's a good deal, and I'm sure some of the carriers will respond, and that'll be interesting too. So yeah, I think it's a good time. It sounds like there has never been a better time to embrace the idea of buying a new phone every year, which so many of us are on the every two year thing and people have been like oh no the every two thing your thing is going to be disrupted but these new methods make it a one year thing i mean it's actually better than it was before because you used to have to take a huge hit in the in the alternate year

and you don't have to do that with these plans. That's great. Can we talk about Apple TV games for a little bit? Yeah. Cause so my complete, uh, interest in the Apple TV would only be for gaming. Right. So I just,

we spoke about before the, the, the entertainment stuff is just not a big thing. Right. Uh, I think Apple did exactly what i expected which was not the right stuff um there's no good controller right uh that it seems like that the input methods are very weird i'm interested to see how some of the games that are touted to be coming to the apple tv are going to work and there's you know it's a lot of stuff with like

oh you can play on the iPhone and on the iPad and you can come to the TV and it will sync your plays. But I go back to the fact that the touchscreen devices in the Apple TV have a vastly different

interaction method. Yes. But I can't see how many games would be able to just make that seamlessly work with the controller Apple's provided. So I'm interested to see how this sort of stuff happens.

But there's a lot of talk about something in regards to the 200 megabyte limit for apps. So apps have a limit of how much space they can have on Apple TV for reasons nobody can really understand. And what Apple is saying, and there's been a couple of articles about this, Serenity Caldwell wrote a great one about it on i'm more saying about how and like this is this is apple's line on this uh and it's the one that people are reporting on because it's what they're

saying about how people you know developers will be able to and they're being pushed to by apple to download levels and elements and assets as the game progresses. So, like on demand or something like that. I understand that this is what is being said is the thing that Apple are saying and why the 200 megabyte limit doesn't matter, right, is what people are saying with this. But this doesn't make sense to me as a way to have a game work. Because if you are on a okay internet connection, you are going to hit a scenario

where you are trying to progress to the next level and it won't be there. Well, I think the way they want to do this is that and Serenity's article actually talks about how it would work. It's not supposed to work that when you get to level 5

and it has a loaded level 5 and you sit there and you wait for it to load level 5. The idea is that it loads the first 10 levels and when you get to level 6 it dumps the first 4 and loads 11 through 15. I understand how that works. Right? And so that you should

have a huge buffer. The problem is, what if there's a shortcut to another level? Or what if you want to jump back to a level and play it again? Those are times you will absolutely hit this. But this is one of the fundamental things that shows Apple's misunderstanding of video games. Not all video games are levels. Well, that's true. Like, what about a game like Grand Theft Auto?

An open world simulation game. That one's a lot harder. You're going to load in parts of the city? It doesn't work. Right. These games, some of these games struggle on the consoles to try and load that data from the disks. So you see the world building itself in the background.

And this is reading from I.O. It's part of the console. Yeah. Like, this is just another step for me where i see a fundamental misunderstanding of how video games work and i don't disagree with you but i also don't think the apple tv is made for console games like great the daughter i mean i think i think they want i think i think this is sort of um two sides of a coin where the apple TV control scheme and the hardware is designed with super casual games in mind. And this is another part of that.

I'm not saying that it's the right way to go. I mean, I think if you're buying a console, you're not looking at the Apple TV. It's a different category. The question for me is, can this category even exist and be a good-sized business? Because so far, there really has never been a casual console, or something that plugs into your TV and you can play casual games on easily.

So I view it as sort of a new thing and not Apple trying to chase a console. I think that if that is how they are approaching this, that makes sense. But they do talk about their processes being like console standard yeah and and i think maybe that's just part of flexing you don't think that yeah that's i mean that's but it's because a casual game doesn't have to look bad right a casual game can look yep and should look good i mean look at some of our favorites over the years like monument valley which is like i could just put posters ofument Valley around my room and I'd be happy. So I agree with you, it's a little mixed messaging from Apple,

but I don't think they are gunning for the Xbox and the PlayStation with this thing. No, in fact, I mean, the difference between Apple and Nintendo is Nintendo has all that intellectual property but if you think about just the sort of like what was a cool thing about the wii it was the accessible casual games and you know that's something that maybe could be tapped into that they showed something they showed that game that rhythm-based game from harmonix that looked very much like a wii game where you've got a controller, it's got an accelerometer and a gyroscope.

You're waving it around in order to play the game. And that's a class of game. It's weird, though, because they had a demo of this racing game. Asphalt. Yeah, it was the one where you're going along like a Tron kind of world. Oh, yeah.

So it was not like a racetrack game. Gotcha. But the demo in the demo room was trackpad based or touchpad, whatever that thing is on the remote. So you have to touch on the left to turn left and touch on the right to turn right. And I thought, guys, there's a gyroscope in there. You should just be tilting it to drive

why did you do it that way and maybe the answer is it's not out yet and they you know they had they had two days i mean ios a lot of ios racing games have an option of like i have buttons i can turn my device i mean there's no telling yeah but uh so so it'll be interesting to see what they do with it but i like that they have uh you know it comes with a remote that has some of that that motion sensing stuff plus the trackpad because i i think it will be versatile enough ui for some casual gaming but there will be a limit to it yep most definitely and i think uh like harmonix making that game exclusively for the apple tv is a really weird thing. I can't imagine it's going to really be...

I mean, I don't know. How big is it going to be? My feeling there is that this is the equivalent of first-party games. I expected they went to them. Apple's not going to make their own games for this, which we talked about, like the poker iPad game and all of that, right?

That has Phil Schiller in it. This is the alternative to that, which is Apple's got money. Apple goes to partners and says, make us an exclusive for the Apple TV. And that's instead of having first party games, they have some exclusive titles that they have funded essentially.

I think that's what's happening. Some of the big stuff that I'm trying to, I want to get the full details on this, but like games like Disney Infinity. So what I've heard is, because currently you plug this reader into a console and you put the action figures down and they appear in the game. But I've heard that there's going to be an update to Disney Infinity

where there is a Bluetooth-enabled reader. And so stuff like that, that could be huge. These types of games, these games for younger kids with all of this stuff like Lego is about to do one called Dimensions. Yes. If Apple can convince these companies to put these games on here, like the new Guitar Hero. I mean, I don't know what they're going to do with Guitar Hero.

I can't imagine a guitar peripheral for the Apple TV. So I'm not, they have this there's like guitar heroes come in, but I haven't seen yet, like what do you use the little remote for guitar hero? Cause that's not fun. So if they can bring these sort of games in, make some sort of versions with them,

it could be interesting. But this again, it like mixes the message for me because these are traditional console games and that they want them on the Apple TV, but then they don't make controls for them. There is a class of casual game on iOS that does work with this control scheme. They show across the road and it's perfect.

Those are actually the ones that have the worst control schemes on the touch screen because they really want you to have a left right up down. Like Pac-Man 256. Does the button click? It does. It physically clicks. It's an actual physical click? I think it is. It's not one of button click it does it it physically clicks it's an actual physical i think it's one of these fake ones no i think it's a real one because i didn't

i couldn't tell if it clicked the fact that it clicks is good because that is an interesting way to make it work uh but yeah it just the it's just this mixed message thing that i just find so confusing but i can see why they're doing it they want to be in the gaming world but i think apple could still has a ways to go to maybe prove a little bit more legitimacy yeah all right should we take a break we should jason would you like to talk about stamps.com yes this episode of upgrade brought to you by stamps.com you know uh getting mailing and shipping done can seem like a no-win situation going to the post office it takes up time it's us you have to see people i don't want to see people like i'm i you know you guys are okay because you're right here and i i've met you before the people at the post office i rarely run

into you at my local post office is what i'm saying um also if you're a business and you mail a lot of stuff out you could lease a postage meter that'll work but those can be very expensive there are multi-year commitments and hidden fees with that but there is a better way and you mail a lot of stuff out, you could lease a postage meter. That'll work. But those can be very expensive. There are multi-year commitments and hidden fees with that. But there is a better way, stamps.com, which lets you buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter or package

and do it all right from your desk using your own computer and your own printer. And stamps.com is better and easier to use than a postage meter and costs a fraction of the price. You can save up to 80% with stamps.com compared to a postage meter. And you'll avoid all of those time-consuming trips to the post office where you'll see people that you don't want to see. It costs $15.99 a month.

That's it. You don't have to make a long-term contract. It's not like a cell phone provider that we were complaining about earlier. You don't have to make a multi-year commitment. And postage meters often require that. There are no markups on postage. In fact, you'll get some special postage discounts with stamps.com.

So it makes it a real no-brainer. I've mailed things with stamps.com. I've mailed letters. I've mailed packages. I print out the thing and tape it down and the letter carrier comes to my house and I hand them the box and they go away and then I don't have to see people it's

it's delightful so whilst I'm here a great company that we do some sponsorship with on the pen addict called Karis Customs are sending me a pen

they've done this before they want me to see this new pen so they're sending me one and I got a lovely little email from stamps.com I had the tracking number in I could check the tracking number put it in the deliveries app

simple and it was nice because it it was one of the first things I don't usually get stamps. I could check the tracking number, put it in a deliveries app. Simple. And it was nice because it was one of the first things I don't usually get. Stamps dot com emails because people, because I'm not in the US. But I like that, seeing that the tracking number was right there. I could take it and I could see where the package is. It's beautiful. Easy. You got to see it from the other

side. I like that. So special offer for Upgrade listeners. You can use our promo code Upgrade for a no risk trial and there's a $110 bonus offer which includes a digital scale and up to $55 in free postage. So don't wait. Go to stamps.com. Before you do anything else, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in UPGRADE.

That's stamps.com. Enter UPGRADE. Thank you so much to stamps.com for supporting this show, keeping me out of the post office, and sponsoring RelayFM. for supporting this show, keeping me out of the post office, and sponsoring RelayFM. So, Jason, we were leaving dinner yesterday, and you showed me an iMessage that you received from your daughter. Yes.

Could you explain to the listeners what's happened here? It was a text that said, what do I do? It's not a good way to start, really. I can hear her saying it, because this is this is her default i don't know what i've i've i even when she's very proud about being able to navigate the world and when she was younger she said this a lot more than she does now that she's 13 um almost 14 uh but she gets that moment she goes what do i do and she sent she texted me what do i do? And she texted me, what do I do? And I thought, uh-oh. And then an image came through, and it was a screenshot of her iPhone

with the alert saying, you don't have enough space to back up your iPhone. And I told her, don't worry about it, I'll take care of it when I get home. But I had just been talking about this, because David Smith wrote a piece on his blog about the bad user experience that comes with uh 16 gigabyte iphones because they run out of space and he

actually has some scary stats about people who use his apps and how much space that they've got available and it's not good the 16 gig models it's not good it's super tight and you get these you get these alerts that you're running out of space and it makes people uncomfortable. And maybe it would be better if that phone didn't exist because it makes the users not have a good experience. And, um, my response was to say, you know, the other thing that makes users have a bad experience is the fact that there's the five gigabyte iCloud thing. And these days, almost any iPhone will gen will hit that limit and, uh, any iPhone will hit that limit and tell you what my daughter got, the I can't back up alert, danger, I can't back up your phone, action is required, take action. And, you know, I complained about it and it was just funny, I was talking about it and

then it happened to my daughter and it's frustrating because I've got a 500 gig plan, which soon, if I keep it the way it is, soon will be a terabyte plan because i have no idea what mine is 9.99 the 9.99 a month i got it because i wrote that book about photos so i saved my entire photos library and i like having the whole photos library there um but uh my family sharing plan members don't have access to it which is insane if you have a terabyte as an individual you should be able to split that up amongst people that's a lot of space that's a lot of space well i mean we're talking about this earlier but family sharing is sort of half done like you can it works in certain circumstances but with this seems like such an obvious addition to that yeah where they

just haven't gotten around like the guy in charge of it hasn't gotten around to it. I don't know. And when I talk to people about it, I understand cloud storage isn't free, but this 5 Free is 5 Free for an Apple account. So if you have a phone and an iPad, you immediately run into the 5 Free, unless you create a dummy iCloud account name which so it strikes me first off perhaps every linked device to a

particular apple id should get five gigs first off it should probably be 10 gigs yeah and second there should probably be a an additional amount that you get for every additional device you link to that ID. If you buy, because you're buying the hardware, you're giving Apple cash for the hardware. So it's like, Oh,

you had an iPad. Your 10 is now 15 or whatever. And I feel like they, they did everything. They did a good job, not everything, right. But they did a good job in lowering the iCloud fees in general.

I'm disappointed. I'm on that 500 gig plan. It's gone now. If you want more than 200, which I do because of all the photos I've got, you have to go up to the terabyte now. So it doesn't actually save me any money right now. There's no middle ground.

You can still get the 500. Can you? Yeah, for the time being at least. I'm looking at it right now. Well, yeah, but those are the old rates. Yeah, that will go away. I think it's, my guess is it'd be on the 16th of the iOS update.

They usually kind of pair iCloud stuff with that. So they'll get rid of the 500. They'll keep the terabyte at the cost of what is now the 500. The 200 gets cheaper. That's great. I just, you know, it just feels to me like I don't want to say that Apple shouldn't try to make money on cloud services because I know they have a cost. on cloud services because I know they have a cost. However, below a certain point,

what you're talking about is how are your customers experiencing your products, the hardware that they buy? That's not a cloud services... That shouldn't be the job or the decision of the cloud services division of like, well, we got to make money. That's the people who make an iPhone. Like Jonathan Ive actually should care

that people who buy a 16 gig iPhone are going to run out of space and that's a people who make an iPhone. Like Jonathan, I've actually should care that people who buy a 16 gig iPhone are going to run out of space. And that's a user experience problem. And they should care that five gigabytes of backup is probably not suitable. And that the goal here is not to create something that is such a limited freebie that it's essentially useless in order to upsell people on storage. Ultimately, people need a lot of storage. They should pay for it.

But I feel like there's the line that you can draw where it's a reasonable amount. And if you want to use more, you should pay. And then there's a line you can draw that it's an unreasonable amount. And it's really just kind of a sleazy way to get more money out of somebody. And for Apple's products, they need to be on the right line there. They need to not be perceived as

constantly hitting you up for more money. And the 5 gig backup thing, they're not on the right side of the line. I've taken a look at mine because I have no idea. And I am on some weird legacy plan where I get 25 gigabytes for $7.99 a year. Oh my God.

Maybe it was.Mac because I've stuck around with the same account since then. You've made a horrible mistake. So I have a 25 gigabyte $7.99 a year. So you're going to be able to go up to $0.99 a year or $0.99 a month. Oh, you're in... I have not...

You're $7.99 a year. A year a month oh you're you're in i have not you're 7.99 a year a year so i basically it says here if you change this you're losing what you've got but i never have this problem i never i never have an issue where i'm out of space because i don't put all my i haven't got my photos in there yeah i don't plan on doing it i use i use my icloud storage purely for my backups even though currently nothing is backing up which is horrifying and that will be fixed within the next couple of days but like yeah it's funny i assume this is probably dot mac right that i'm on here but i've just looked at it now because i always hear people talk i'm like i don't think i pay every month for storage and that's why because i pay a minuscule eight pounds a year for my 25 gigabytes that is amazing i'm gonna try and

keep this for as long as possible you're in some like weird grandfather scheme that they don't even know that's like the great grandfather yeah plan it literally says once you upgrade you will not have the option to return to your legacy plan look at me look at that look at that but the backup i mean and i think that's what i'm really talking about here is bad user experience is apple has created a system level backup it's good people should probably back up their stuff and you can't like install a backup program on your iphone so it's a base part of the system uh people who are not doing unreasonable things should be able to just know that their phones are getting backed up without worrying about it.

And by having the level where it is, what ends up happening is people get frustrated because the UI for it is terrible. It's there. You can specify what to delete from the backup and what not to backup, but it's not very good. And so people like my daughter, I think, will just say,

unless they've got me to say, what do I do? They just are like, whatever. And then the phone is not backed up anymore. I remember Adina had this issue and she was like, I'll stop backing up my photos. And I was like,

but no, no, because it was the, because she was running out of space and it was the only thing she could do because it kept telling her every day. It's like, you got to do something. You got to do something,

which is, you know, my feeling with this is apple doesn't have to offer backup they don't have to do it but because they do yes they need to go all in yes i agree if you're going to give anything free it's got to be enough to help the person out you don't have to do it at all right for a reasonable person to back up their devices that they bought without again at a reasonable level and then if you're somebody who's backing up crazy stuff sure but you got to draw that line in the right place they drew the line at five gigs free like what three years ago four years ago and the line has moved they need to move they need to they need to they need to raise that number i don't know if i can make people talk about and i don't know if

they need to do the thing where they offer you the same amount of storage for the device that you have. Whilst that's an idea, I don't know if that's necessarily the best business move for monetary reasons, but it needs to be more than five gigabytes. Well, and the way the backups work, if you have a 64 gig phone

and you have 30 gigs of music, Apple's not backing up that music. Exactly. I mean, they're backing up some core stuff, backing up your settings, they're backing up. Really, it shouldn't be an amount. Right.

Oh, yeah, it should just say, your device is backed up. If you want to add photos on, you pay for it. But the data, except some media, it shouldn't be like, you have 16 gigabytes. You have 7 gigabytes. It's just taken care of. You could argue that if you're going to spend $100

for more storage on your phone, that that's one of the things you're spending for is some more, you know, your backup of that device too. So it's like why is it $100 more to get a 128 over a 64? And the answer is, well, it's not just the memory chips. It's also more cloud storage that we're giving you. But they're not doing that now. It's gross, and I agree with your assessment. It's the wrong side of the line.

If you tie it into family sharing, that would help because some people are on the family sharing stuff, But they're not doing that now. It's gross. And I agree with your assessment. It's the wrong side of the line. If you tie it into family sharing, that would help because some people are on the family sharing stuff. And that would be a way to do it. Because that's the other problem is if a husband and a wife have different Apple IDs and they both need some storage, right now they have to do two monthly plans with Apple, which also is stupid. And there should be one plan that covers the whole family. Agreed. Oh, well. Let's do some ask upgrade. Jason, can you tell our lovely listeners about find you i can so this uh as we record this in fact it is day one there are football games american football games because we're in america

american football american football is being played right now this is the first week of the uh of the football season uh as you hear this it will it will all be over except for a couple of Monday night games. So anyway, how did your fantasy team do? Did you do well? Did you not do well? I don't know because my fantasy team is still playing. But it's a fun pastime that a lot of people do where they get, sometimes it's more engaged in the sport

as they're watching it because they are more interested in games that they wouldn't otherwise be interested in because they have players on those teams that they care about. It's a lot of fun. I've been playing fantasy sports for a very long time. The difference with something like FanDuel is that they play one week fantasy football. So, for example, now that week one has passed, you'd say, darn it, I never got into a fantasy league this year.

I guess it's too late for me. And you don't have to do that with FanD duel because every week it's a new week the clean slate you play again you don't get behind and you're like my team is terrible this year i'm done and you don't say i didn't you know i didn't pay attention to the football uh schedule until week three so i'm done you can jump in at any point um there are more winners and payouts than any other site on fan duel they're going to have more than 75 million dollars a week during the football season it's completely insane uh building a team is pretty easy you get a salary cap and the players based on how big of a star they are

have a value and so you can pick some stars and some nobodies you can pick a bunch of people that are kind of in the middle that you think are going to do well it's an interesting exercise in trying to balance out and make the perfect roster. And then you sit back and watch for the week and see what happens. And you pay an entry fee to get into a league, and that's the money that comes back to the winners. They start at $1. It is a game of skill. You are using your knowledge and maybe your guts about football players in order to try and find what the ideal assemblage of a football roster is. It can be a lot of fun. Last year, a FanDuel player named Joe Watson from New York turned his $50 deposit into more than $30,000 in two weeks playing fantasy football.

He is a really good fantasy player, much better than me. Anyway, go to FanDuel.com, F-A-n-d-u-e-l.com click the microphone in the upper right hand corner use the code upgrade and sign up now new users also get access to a special offer for every dollar you deposit fanduel will match it up to 200 bucks it gets earned as you play so use code upgrade fanduel.com f-a-n-d-U-E-L.com, and then use the code upgrade. Every day is a new season at Fanduel. I would say play ball here, but that's baseball, so that's a mixed metaphor. I've been seeing a ton of Fanduel ads on American TV whilst I've been here. It's a really big deal.

It's a huge thing. Well, fantasy football is huge. And then somebody discovered at some point that, first off, used to be uh you like get the paper on monday and you'd write down the statistics i did this my first fantasy league was when i was in high school and you'd write down the statistics and you'd count and you put like you know who people's players were and maybe you had a spreadsheet on your computer but maybe you just did it by hand but you got it out of the newspaper and then over time you, the computers got better, and then all the stats were on the internet,

and suddenly you could have websites that would calculate that data. And so that was the next step, and they used the old-style kind of year-long leagues. The new innovation is this week-by-week thing where you can drop in and drop out, which is true, because it so often happens that people are like really, maybe they're into baseball, then the world series ends and they go oh yeah i never did fantasy football and with these kind of games you jump you can jump in you focus once and then

you're playing the game and you're not making a commitment to 18 weeks and you're not making a you know it's a clever idea so uh this is the new thing. Anywho, ask upgrade. So Rajiv asked, will the next version of the iPad have 3D Touch? I was surprised that they didn't put it in. I mean, I think that it's one of those things like... A roll-in thing. Like Touch ID, where it's going to start with the phone

and then migrate around. I do expect it to be everywhere. I do. It seems to be really useful. it's i do it seems to be really right now right it's really useful thing right and and the iphone is the flagship product it's the product that makes apple the most money they sell the most of them and so it i think it will come but i think it's fine that it's not there now so i've played a bit a little bit because there's some people here that have the devices yeah seems fine i think You don't have to press as hard as you do on the watch.

Oh, no. I think they did a really great job. I think it feels much nicer. The software, the sensors, whatever they're doing, they perfectly are measuring your intent. I never felt like, oh, no, I didn't mean to do that. It's like it knows when I want to peak and pop. I have my own theory about these.

I don't think it should be called peak and pop and then you because you guys are talking about it because it always pops i think it should be called pop and snap uh but dan provost the studio needs pop and lock he came up he said what about pop and lock because i think you know i think that's more fun but i like that i like that interaction i'm interested to see how it will work because i wonder what the actual real utility will be in that some of that stuff like the idea of peeking at the message like you might as well just tap the message and open the message but looking at like you know when we send urls to each other just looking at like the image without leaving the messages app that seems really useful right so like they did it with like a great bitly url perfect you some someone sent you a bitly url

what is this? You click it. You see what someone's sending you. Great. I know. And then you can either be like, I'll go get it later, or you can push through, and then you're there. It's like, okay, I'll buy into that. I think it's a really good metaphor.

And then out on the home screen, I think they did a very good job. And then out on the home screen, I think they did a very good job. I think you can get really used to the pushing on an app and then keeping your finger on the screen and sliding down to the action you want and letting go and having it quick link you in. I think that's really nice. It's like a really weird URL scheme thing. That's what it is.

It's like Launch Center Pro. So I think imagine an app like Workflow where you could just trigger an action by holding on the icon. This is, if you remember a few weeks ago, I was talking about action launcher. It's basically exactly like the idea of you being able to trigger certain actions just by touching the icons. I think it's pretty cool.

So I do think all the iPads are going to get this feature. I wonder, I do wonder technically if it's more difficult. I'm sure it's more difficult I wonder how much more difficult it is to sense pressure across a large screen a large sheet of glass it seems to be looking at their videos and how they explain that it's a layer under

the screen and you know I don't think they would do it on the iPhone if they didn't think they could have it on the iPad next year right but it might yes because right now I mean this is a new this is a new metaphor and you want it to be everywhere and it just makes sense that it would be on the ipad eventually so yeah i would i would assume so in fact i would say this feels far more cohesive as a metaphor i know there's two models there's the kind of right click modelclick model in the home screen, and then there's this peek-and-pop

everywhere else. But that peek-and-pop metaphor, it's good. It's consistent. And that's not something that I've seen with the Force Touch on the Mac.

On the MacBook. Or on the watch. Or on the watch. Or on the watch. Well, at least the watch, when you force touch it, usually it brings up a layer with a menu. It's almost like a right click. But on the Mac, it's this three-finger look up something kind of thing. So I look at this and think, next OS X version, or Mac OS perhaps.

I wonder... Nope. mac os perhaps uh i wonder nope i wonder if uh it feels like it needs a uh unifying metaphor for what a force touch does and this well i mean this hasn't so maybe the name well yeah 3d maybe maybe maybe os 11 will have 3d touch and it'll be pink and pop and it'll all make much more sense well my thought on that too is that on the watch force touch is just one thing right it is it is measuring sensitivity but there's only one action behind it we're on the on the phone there are now two and so it's almost like 3d touch is a step further than force touch it's yeah so i agree with you the naming is messy and i like that they have two names and neither of them are good. Yeah, they're both terrible names. But I do think the 3D Touch is sort of a step further down that road.

And I can see a world in which a feature version of the watch has another layer of depth to it in that touch. Yeah, for sure. We'll see. Where you can force touch on a certain element. Because the watch recognizes elements, but it doesn't where you can use force touch on a certain element right well the watch recognizes elements well it doesn't recognize it with the force well the the technology that they're using to sense touch on the watch is very different phone are very different but what i'm

saying is you you touch you you touch a little hard for something and you touch harder for something else like on the phone it very much feels like it's a a depth thing like that like my this macbook pro that's sitting right here has the four-step trackpad it's that trick of i'm pushing into it but i'm not really pushing into it and the phone seems more um precise in that than the watch does the watch i'm kind of like just slamming you know the bloodied end of my hand into my wrist but the the phone feels a little more precise yeah i'm still worried about all of our nerve endings but we'll address that but a few years' time. But it is very... I think if you haven't tried it...

It takes less pressure than the watch. It is not... It's more comfortable. All the worries that we had about like, oh, you know, you're going to be pressing really hard on this thing. It doesn't feel... You don't press hard, but you just press enough that it registers.

It knows that you're trying to activate that. Because obviously it has the taptic engine in there. Does that replace the vibrate motor is there a vibrant motor i have read that it does but i don't know all i can tell you is that the vibration motor feels pretty much the same to me so i imagine that it is the vibration motor too but it's all the haptic motor is just making a vibration well that that's it it. It's that it's... The old crummy vibrator is not there. The implication at the event was that this is just a better vibration engine because it can do smaller increments.

Yeah, because they were talking about how many revolutions it needs to get up to one vibration. But I think it can still do the full-on kind of thing in addition to the little... How was that? I was just hoping it would be quiet that's all i would like to see but we'll see uh tom would like to know given that they've changed the material so we had this new aluminium uh is the new iphone less slippery than last year did you notice any kind of difference in that it is it is it is less slippery i think i think it we'll see

how it lasts but it it it feels almost tacky huh okay and i don't know i assume that is an a side effect of the anodization process i don't know if they're also like spraying on something to make it yes some stick them that rhino line where people spray in trucks and i'm unclear about whether it means they um whether it'll it'll like wear off or whether it uh it's gonna stay but it is it feels much more uh tacky and less slippery than the six so i think there was at least an attempt made to make it less slippery so um dave would like to know how the rose gold iphone actually looks because in some of the photos it looks copper colored i mean my feeling i've seen them uh i've seen one of the watches as

well it's pink all right please yes thank you for answering that question because although i don't know although i can see many colors light pink casts on things i can't. My girlfriend in college had a pair of pink socks. Then I said, why don't you throw those socks away? They're so gray and faded. And she said, no, they're pink. So yeah, when I saw the rose gold iPhone and the Apple Watch version that's rose gold too, it looked old to me. I can't see it at all.

So thank you for providing some expert commentary it's pink it's pink they they if you give it you could give me one and i would never know i think the idea here was they wanted to make a pink iphone but not call it a pink iphone yeah all right i think they wanted to give it a fancier name christina warren has been referring to it as rose gold yeah which is a brilliant way of putting it because that's the color it's like that sorry like the reddy pinkish color of rose is is what this looks like because rose gold looks very different to that like if you want to see what rose gold looks like go look at the edition that's rose gold okay so uh josh would like to know if you want to see what space gray looks like go to space exactly it's very great i can tell you joshua like no with with 3d touch is the gesture for deleting apps still the same uh seems like there'll be some gesture collision i

can say yes that definitely happens uh because when uh adina tried to do it she couldn't get it to work and the icon started jiggling and we couldn't see it in the sun so she's pressing it nothing's happening because she was holding for too long ah there is then this is the exact issue that we were talking about weeks ago that i think will happen to people the phone will now do another thing which is unexpected by some my my guess is that over time long press will go away um i don't i don't know what they replace that with to remove the app maybe every app in the right click menu gets removed or maybe there's some other element to do it, but I agree. It's if you think that you are 3D touching, it's a terrible verb,

and you're not actually pushing hard enough, you are just actually long pressing because your thumb is just resting on the screen. And so I agree that right now it's a little messy and maybe they can do more software over time to detect the difference better. But I also think too that once you get used to it, you won't make that mistake. No, I agree completely with that.

Once you get used to what a force or 3D press, I've been saying push. I kind of like when you push an icon instead of tap. No, just push. Push the mic over? Yeah, do that. When you push on an icon, you get that menu. When you just lay your finger on it you tap it and hold you're not exerting pressure into it you're just tapping on it and

then it starts to dance but i think in the long run yeah it's just that thing i think you get used to it but i i always just go back to the people that don't pay attention to it who just don't care because it's not what they follow you do it while you're walking down the street not paying full attention even yeah and then you you nuke overcast instead of trying to play a new that's a new episode of that's right i think you'd almost want to put it ultimately in the force press menu a 3d push whatever uh menu yeah uh as a as an option or uh yeah and then and then it brings up a thing this is are you sure you want to delete this yeah. That gets my vote. And then it brings up a thing that says, are you sure you want to delete this? Right.

Yeah. That gets my vote. And final question today from Rajiv. Do you think that Apple will eventually make Siri operable without an internet connection? I feel like they definitely should. I don't, so much of Siri is, I mean, I think Apple is redefining Siri

as being internet-based data sources, though. I mean, you can do text-to-speech without an internet connection. Sure, but it can still give information that it knows about you, like it's intelligent assist and stuff. I agree. For things like, what's my next calendar item? And if you're in airplane mode, it still knows

what your next calendar item is, right? So your phone should be able to tell you that. The problem is, and I think what this question gets to, is that the voice recognition takes place on the cloud. So on the Mac it doesn't have to. Well, the Mac doesn't have Siri. That's dictation. On the Mac it downloads the dictation dictionary and it matches it.

But if you... The phone should be able to pause some of it. Speech-to-text is not Siri, though. Speech-to-text is speech-to-text. Right. And you can do that offline. Right. But the question about, is Siri going to be operable without an internet connection? They would have to offload

some sort of Siri logic to the devices. Yes. That's harder. That's harder, and my guess is it's a pretty big data set, and they're always evolving it, right?

I mean, Siri is sort of a growing learning system where they tweak it over time. It's a robot, or maybe it's not, but it is learning. And so I don over time. It's a robot or maybe it's not, but it is learning. And so I don't know. I agree with you that for stuff on device,

even if it's a limited set of commands, it would be nice, but I think that there's a lot of weirdness in there that I just want to avoid of, well, this works one time, it's not working another time or something like that. We'll see.

It's something I would like to see them do a little bit more with. I still think Siri is underpowered. I think Apple is redefining Siri as being an internet based, it's basically a search engine. And under that definition, my answer to Rajiv's

question would be no. Although I would like them to be able to do the Siri, take it home version of Siri where if it's offline, it can do some basic stuff. Like back in the day when you used to be able to tell your voice control, tell me a joke, knock, knock. But it would be like play music by whatever and it would do it, right? So something rudimentary like that where it was going to say, look, I can't tell you that unless I'm on the internet. But some basic set of features like your calendar or...

Or even fall back to that. That system was very short-lived. It was only the 3GS and the 4. I mean, even fall back to something like that where I can dial a phone number by voice. Yeah. Right. I think...

Or play music. I'm going to throw an Ask Upgrade at you guys. Live Ask Upgrade! This is never happening before. Never. So why has Siri not made it to the Mac? Good radio right here. The sound of crickets.

I don't think that there's a reason that makes any logical sense. I'm going to give you a better answer than Mike. Subtle. Subtle. It is there because the assistant stuff that they're adding, I feel like Siri is coming to the Mac in a different direction. There are all those data sources that they're adding to Spotlight. Right.

Those are the Siri data sources. The only thing that's not coming to the Mac is the text driven interaction with the spotlight window maybe they'll add that at some point but i feel like they could call it siri even if they don't add that because at some point siri is the search it's spotlight spotlight may just go away and it may be siri in in a mac os 11 i agree with that if they bring the voice commands to it because i think so many people think of siri is the thing i interact with my voice and it's already got speech and text right and it's already got the text all the parts are there and i'm a little surprised it hasn't happened but if you look at the new data sources that they're adding in el capitan it's a lot of the same stuff that they

put into siri so it's basically the same and with applebot being web-based i mean they can pull from that that information they can search within the app store they can do all these things yeah really from any platform i mean some of that's agnostic so i agree with you that it's um they're getting there and they're doing it in a very sort of behind the scenes way where spotlight keeps getting better and better more powerful more flexible um but i do think for them to call it siri with big air quotes that you can't see uh you still need to have a air quotes that you can't see, podcast listener. You still need to have a little voice that you can talk to. It's got to have the sassiness.

Yeah. The other thing that I think is out there for Siri in the future is cross-device integration, where if I've got an Apple TV, an iPad, an iPhone, and a Mac all on my home network, not to mention perhaps some smart home stuff, I would like to be able to do things from one device to another. And I know there are security issues and things, but if it's all on my network and it's with my Apple ID, I would really be able to use my Apple TV remote or my phone

to tell my Mac to play some music on iTunes. Right, or I'm in the kitchen and all I have is my phone. I can tell my Apple TV, start playing this movie or start playing this album. Right. You know, HomeKit sort of lays the foundation for that in a way. Again, I think you and I just spoke about it last week, Jason, that HomeKit is sort of like undead.

It's still there. They just didn't talk about it, but it's still there. It seems, at least publicly, sort of not the push right now. like undead. It's still, it's still there. They just didn't talk about it, but it's still there. It's very, it seemed at least publicly sort of not the push right now. Right. Which is funny because you're now you've got a Siri remote that you can talk to. So you can turn on, you can tell it to turn on the lights and it,

I think it will work. I think the new Apple TV is definitely a push in that, in that direction. They just didn't put it on stage. Right. So yeah, I agree with you. I think that'd be really,

really great to have sort of Siri take on some Jarvis like, uh, control or it's, yeah, I agree with you. I think that'd be really, really great to have sort of Siri take on some Jarvis like control or hey, I know about all these things. Right. Like you said, my iCloud account ties them all together. It just I want them to do more with that in the future. I think they'll get there, but we'll see. cool so I think that wraps it up for this week Stephen thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me it's a pleasure, always a pleasure Jason always lovely to record in person that's right this is our third I like it when we do this but thank you so much for listening

and also thanks to our sponsors again for this week lynda.com, fracture, stamps.com and fanduel they help support the show if you help support them that's really nice for us if you want to find Jason online, you can go over to sixcolors.com and he's at jsnell. On Twitter,

Steven is at ismh and he writes over at 512pixels.net and I am at imyke. I-M-Y-K-E. We have some show notes this week, which you can find over at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 54. But until then, we'll be back next time.

Bye-bye. Thus ends year one of Upgrade. Oh, look at that. Hooray! We did it.