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from relay this is upgrade episode 567 today's show is brought to you by open
case fit bod and century my name is Mike Hurley I'm joined by Jason snow hi Jason
hi Mike hello Papa how are you doing? I'm good.
I have a Snow Talk question for you.
Yes.
Where are you?
I am at Apple Park in the ring with a lot of people around.
And I am in one of their podcast studios here
with a WWDC logo behind me
and people watching the YouTube version will enjoy.
A man sitting in a white chair.
That's me.
We love to see it.
We love a white chair here at the Upgrade program.
We got a lot to cover today.
So much.
I wanna get into like an opening thoughts.
Okay.
Just because the WWDC keynote just ended,
like, I don't know, an hour ago.
Hour ago, yeah, exactly.
This is the WWDC I want.
Like I reflect how I felt this year and last year.
This is what I want.
I felt like we got meaningful big updates to the platforms,
let alone the new design.
Even if you take the design part away,
which obviously is an important part,
but even if you remove that part,
just the things they put into the systems, like fantastic.
I love it.
Apple intelligence now just there's like stuff,
but I'm not like mad at it.
You know, it's like, this is kind of what I'm looking for.
To me, this felt like a more complete,
more enjoyable, more what I want WWDC.
How do you feel kind of in that vein?
Yeah, I agree. I think that the, I think it's very funny that I am most excited about things from the Mac and iPad segments.
You know, you know, the iPhone is so dominant and we've spent so much time talking about Apple intelligence features and all of that.
And yet the huge iPad stuff and some really unexpectedly nice Mac stuff.
So yeah, I agree. It was nice to be reminded.
And I'm sure, you know, we're going to be reminded of all the things that didn't happen
and all the things they didn't do and all the things they didn't address.
And we're going to have people saying all the places that they're behind,
that they didn't talk about. Okay, that that is something to be
considered but I would say that I'm with you in saying I'm impressed with the it
felt kind of old-school of like oh look at a bunch of iPad features and a bunch
of Mac features that excite me and that's kind of a nice feeling to have.
Speaking of iPad I currently have a 13 inch iPad Pro preparing update.
So I'll give you some updates throughout the episode today
as to what happens to this iPad, a good luck iPad.
Let's very quickly as well talk about the draft results.
This one was an interesting one.
I feel like it kind of, we came down to the wire on it.
You were doing some crowdsourcing in the Discord.
I was asking our official adjudicator.
This one was close.
Yeah, I think you win regardless.
Okay.
I think I'm inclined to say seven, seven,
and then you went on the tie break.
Yeah, that is more where I lean.
Let's just give a very quick breakdown
of each person here,
shall we?
All right, so I said differently shaped icons,
didn't happen.
I said AI based power management
or battery management features, didn't happen.
Vision OS scrolling controlled by your eyes.
There's a little square in a slide that says I scroll,
I looked to scroll.
I was convinced you hadn't got that one,
but you did, cause yeah, it was an event though. I was convinced you hadn't got that one But you did because it was I pulled it
I pulled Dan Moore and pointed out and said look look to scroll a new Apple pencil related feature
Announced at the very end of the read calligraphy
Air read air pods live translate didn't happen. There's a lot of translation that happened
There was translate everywhere except air pods Except AirPods, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Oh, well, maybe there are new AirPods coming
that they'll talk about that feature instead.
Apple explicitly acknowledges falling short
in its AI promises.
There was a whole thing about it.
I know we promised this last year,
and we're still working on it.
It didn't meet our bar.
It's all the stuff they said before,
but they did say it in the video.
So I get that one.
Mark Gurman's favorite feature, captive Wi-Fi sync,
not mentioned.
Image playgrounds updated to create much improved images.
Well, we don't know if Apple's models improved,
but they improved it by putting chat GPT in there.
So, it counts.
And that's one way to do it, you know?
That is one way to do it.
At least one new first party Vision OS app shown
that was previously just an iPad app.
I didn't see any evidence that there's something that got promoted there.
So that's an X. App Intense mentioned, boy were they. Tim plugs Apple TV. Now this Apple
TV Plus, this is funny because he did plug Apple TV Plus in passing to say, look, people like our stuff.
And then there was the TV Plus trailer
that was not promoted by Tim,
but he did plug Apple TV Plus.
Oh, he absolutely did.
I mean, it was like, oh, look at this movie
and Apple TV Plus.
It was like the first thing they spoke about.
Yeah.
There was F1 and then separate,
there was like that thing that they've done
where it's like a Metacritic or something
of like the top streaming service
in terms of stuff people like or something, I don't know.
It was credited to some analysis firm.
It's like, all right.
Yeah, okay, whatever.
But it's like, look.
You found the firm that said it.
I mean, I agree.
But it's like, you found the firm that also agrees.
They should have just had us, like upgrade podcast says.
Yeah, sure. Tim likes customer sat, you're right. That was a good point. They should have just had us, like Upgrade Podcast says. Yeah, sure.
Tim likes customer sat.
You're right.
That was a good point.
A game developers heard from?
No, no game developers were heard from.
A new app focused on games is called Apple Games.
Now people say, well, they call the games.
The thing is that the Apple is always implied,
if it's just a generic term.
And somebody pointed out that in the press release,
they specifically call it Apple Games.
I think I get this.
We could litigate it, but like,
there are lots of apps that are called Apple Notes,
but it's called Notes, but it's Apple Notes 2.
They didn't call it Arcade.
Well, Apple TV is called what?
TV.
Yeah.
All right, it's fine.
It's fine, we don't need to argue.
It is.
I think it's, I think the point was that I picked
the name games and not Arc arcade or something else like that.
It was called games.
And an AI company representative
has heard from didn't happen.
So that's seven for me.
Do you wanna go through yours?
Yeah.
Apple renames OSes to the calendar year.
I got that.
New design sees floating tab bars in iPhone apps.
Oh, there's lots of them.
Developers get to use Apple's AI models in their apps. Ding. Got that. iPad desktop
mode with menu bar, a more Mac like design. I thought the menu bar part was going to screw
me. Yes. And I, again, in a more litigious climate, I could say, is that a mode? But
it's fine. They have it. You got it. Apple announces partnership with Google. That did
not happen. Nope. AI coaching feature touted in health or fitness app.
I don't think I got this.
You didn't get this because it's in the workout app.
Something that's arguably-
And it's also not what I was talking about anyway.
It's not what you were talking about.
I was gonna give it to you because they said it was AI,
even though it wasn't what you meant,
but it wasn't in the workout app.
So, yeah.
But like, it's just not what I'm,
it's just not what I was talking about. Even if it's in the workout I'm it's just not what I was talking about. Even what it was
I was talking about I know I know new features for gemmoji
That were lots of us new ways to customize your lock screen while there are lock screen changes
They are not user customizable. It seems right
Apple announces partnership with AI provider other than Google or open AI and no none of them
New hand gestures for controlling vision OS.
We didn't see any.
New design takes color cues from your wallpaper while in apps.
That does not seem to be the case.
Doesn't seem to be the case, no.
Shortcuts can be created with AI assistance.
Also doesn't seem to be the case.
No, it's the reverse instead.
But that's OK.
Yes.
We'll talk about it later.
iPad windows can be moved around freely, which they can,
and Vision OS supports VR hand controllers,
which it now does.
So that would bring us to 7.7.
The event was 90 minutes, basically,
in the middle of that song at the end,
which took over a tad.
So I went on the tie break.
You went on the tie break.
So I thought you would win by more than that,
but in the end, because I whiffed on a bunch early on, but in the end, yeah. So congratulations to you would win by more than that. But in the end, cause I, I whiffed on a bunch early on,
but in the end, yeah.
So congratulations to you.
Thank you.
Then we also need to adjudicate the California bear trophy.
Oh no, that will be an upgrade plus.
Oh, you're right.
So, so people should, that's my promotion.
Stay tuned to upgrade plus and join upgrade plus.
If you want to hear who wins the California bear trophy,
which is a different game that we play and can't guess the name of the OS because we
already had it spoiled that it was Tahoe.
So anyway, that'll come later.
I wanted to start by talking about the design.
I think that that might be just like talk about that top level.
Let's do it.
Universal design is what Apple called it.
And I think there are many ways in which
you could imagine that they would say such a thing and wouldn't do it. You know, like
you could say, Oh, it's coming to all of our platforms, but you know, maybe it's questionable
here or there. I think this feels pretty universal. I think the UI that seems to least change
is tvOS, but I just don't really think as much they could do that yeah um little
hints here and there but yeah overall it's everywhere yeah the first time this was rumored
i mean what i tried to say at the time was apple hasn't done a collective redesign of its operating
system since it's had all of these operating systems. So that's the real issue here is,
they were able to do this design and roll it out everywhere
as opposed to sort of like making tweaks here and there.
They rolled it out on all the devices,
which means they also got to think about
how it would be presented on all the devices.
And again, we'll see how it is in practice,
but the idea here is the implementation on the
Mac is something they consider for the Mac and on the iPad is something they
consider for the iPad and it's not we designed something for the iPhone and
then we shoved it everywhere else. That's not the idea here.
It very much focuses on liquid glass. That's what the that's that's the phrase
that they're using and they're going to use everywhere.
Liquid glass is essentially glass. Things are see-through, you can see through them,
and the liquid part kind of rifts on like the dynamic island of it and that like UI
moves and pops and flows and things like that.
Ripples and things like that. So, ripples and things like that.
So yeah, those are the two concepts.
One is they showed in the video a lot of piece,
like people moving pieces of glass, colored glass,
all of that, the idea of what happens,
how does something get distorted when glass is on top of it?
So they've added these kind of effects
so that there's color or hints of what's behind in the content moving through,
but they're also moving through in a very particular kind of distorted way,
based on, you know, as if they're being distorted through a glass object.
And they can do that now with, they mentioned it and I think it's true,
like they have so much GPU now. Apple Silicon allows them to do these dynamic effects and lighting
effects on the glass edges and all these things that give the impression that
it's a physical object. So I'm not gonna you know, well I am gonna say the word
skeuomorphism but I'm just saying it to say is that what this is? I don't think
it is but it's kind of like that where it's kind of blending reality and
physical objects with software in a different kind of way that, where it's kind of blending reality and physical objects with software
in a different kind of way.
And then the liquid part is, yes,
it's these kind of animations that
suggest something that goes beyond what would happen
in regular physics with glass, which
is that it flows and ripples and bubbles in ways
like how the dynamic island has some
of those whimsical animations.
I think to think of it skeuomorphically, I liked seeing the, like the design elements
that they will work with. They have physical pieces of glass with app icons on them and
stuff in the design lab.
Yeah, that was cute.
And they're like moving them around. I think this looks fantastic. Like, what I like about
this design, and I've been trying, I've been thinking about this in the last few days of like
What was I looking for with with a new OS design is I don't want to
I don't want to be left to feel like they're doing it for the sake of doing it and
I don't want to be left with a feeling that they decided that they were just gonna completely
Make iOS look completely different
because I just don't think that would be helpful and I think it would cause more problems than
it's worth. And I think what we're left with is a modern, refined design that doesn't look
like things that anybody else is doing. Like Google has a new material design in the new version of Android.
And it, while also is like leaning on material and texture,
physical elements, it's very colorful and vibrant and like in your face and
squiggly and like they also have animations, but they're,
they have completely different, they're like adding more tactility in ways where
this is like,
we are making whatever you're doing
the center of the thing, right?
Because we're trying to keep our UI out of the way
by letting you see through.
And that works to varying degrees.
Like I found it kind of funny when they're like,
look at tvOS, you can see through it.
Well, you can't see through it
because it's like by design you can't see through it.
So it's not getting in the way. There's nothing behind there.
It's still in the way. But I, I, I think that it looks fantastic. I think, and I'm really
keen to try the clear icons and widgets. I think that looks really cool. Uh, tinting
looks like it actually makes sense now, I think. Like, and the way that they showed
some of the things and they have new icons and that kind of stuff. I think in general, just from looking at imagery,
my iPad is currently in the update process. You'll be excited to know. Um, I, I am very,
I'm very enthused about this design. I think that this is a, a really good, uh, evolution
of iOS where iOS seven felt, I think, more shocking.
Yeah, yeah, this does feel less shocking than that did.
I did not get the sensory overload that I got from iOS 7.
I don't know if you noticed,
when they threw the presentation over to Alan Dye
to talk about this in detail,
he was preceded by a montage of shots of Apple Park.
And I thought the message there was clear,
which is, hey, we know glass
and live in glass all the time.
Everything Apple does is in these kind of like
giant curved glass buildings, right?
This is part of the sort of thought process of Apple
is thinking about things in this way.
It actually fits with where they're physically building
these and designing these products.
So I thought that was really interesting
and we'll see, you know,
it's all gonna be in the details,
but I like at the top level what they're trying to do here.
And right down to the fact that they're taking some things
that they've had in some form for a while
and kind of applying them to this.
So not only is it the graphics power
of the chips that they've got,
but it's all those sensors that allow them to do,
they're really leaning in on the effects of
if you move your physical device, things move and react.
And it's not taking the camera off the back
and lifting the image in your room or anything like that.
But it is like, if you turn it,
the little light highlights move.
And maybe your image moves because they have applied
what I think is one of the unsung brilliant features
of Vision OS, which is that ability to turn a 2D image into a 3D image
and taking it to like a whole new level
where they're processing all these things
and then using them in wallpapers and lock screens
and things like that.
So there, you know, a lot of it tied to the movement
of your device because unlike, honestly, you know,
unlike a Mac that's just sitting somewhere,
an iPad and iPhone especially are being held and moving and you get
This extra bit of tactile feedback by doing that the only part of the design that I'm
Unsure about in the stuff that I've seen like in the images on Apple's website
iOS 26
While I like it that number still just looks weird like's going to take some time to get used to. There's like a hero shot of a lock screen with some notifications on
them. And like the notification is completely see through. It's like, you know, it's like
slightly blurred and I'm not sure that you can really read the text. Like, uh, and so
I think maybe a little bit more frosting would be great there.
And these are the kinds of tweaks that I expect will occur over the next few months.
I think it is very much worth pointing out for all of the people that are upset by this
design for some reason or another, it is going to go through a lot of revision, I expect,
between now and whenever it ships.
I've also seen people comment on, they question the accessibility of this design
because a lot of people turn off a lot of things
in order to make things readable
because of different ways that they process information.
And I'll just say, Apple is going to show you
the most extreme, beautiful, crowd pleasing stuff
when they roll out a new design.
What they're not gonna do is show you
what it looks like when you turn it all off.
But I think I have enough respect
for Apple's track record and accessibility
to believe that they, you know, that has been thought of.
And if not being thought of now will be also continued
to be thought of over the summer.
But like, they're just not gonna show it to you now because they't want to show you what it's like when it's turned off.
That's not the point of this. The point is to show you and the mass audience what it looks like when it's at its fullest.
So my my iPad is updated.
And I'll let you know right now. Good luck. Don't install it.
Okay.
It's fine, but I wasn't going to.
It's, you know.
I will sacrifice an iPad to the cause, but not now.
It's understandably, I can already see there's some jank going on here.
There's a bunch of visual glitches.
Developer Beta 1 is not something that, like I do not encourage anybody to install Developer Beta 1.
I'm doing it on an iPad that is not like my daily iPad. something that I do not encourage anybody to install developer beta one. Unless you are a developer.
I mean, I'm doing it on an iPad that is not like my daily iPad.
Yeah.
And I'm doing it purely for the sense of what I'm
attempting to do right now, which is see how it runs.
And I have not seen this many visual glitches in an OS
for a while.
But it has just updated, so who knows?
Maybe it will settle down.
Maybe it's just going gonna get the bugs out,
shake them out the side.
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Let's dive into some of the more specific details
of the operating system.
So start with iOS 26.
I mean, it's an iPhone,
so let's start talking about the phone app.
You know?
Sure.
I thought this was great.
There were a bunch of updates for the phone app.
I feel like the engineers in charge of the phone app
were like, come on, just give us some time.
You know, we're always here.
We're always doing stuff.
And we've got some things to show you.
So we have the unified design.
So there's kind of like, you open the app now and you don't have to go between pages if you don't things to show you. So we have the unified design. So there's
kind of like you open the app now and you don't have to go between pages if you don't
want to show you all your missed calls or your incoming, outgoing and your favorites.
Call screening. So if an unknown number calls you, it will, you have the ability for the,
for basically your phone to answer it for you, get information from the person. It will
show you that on the screen so you can decide whether you want to answer or not.
And then my favorite feature was the ability
for the iPhone to just wait on hold for you,
and it will let you know when your time in the queue
has come up, that just sounds fantastic.
Yeah, and then the agent answers and your phone says,
please wait and we'll be with you shortly.
Please hold for the president.
Turns on the other way.
I'm a little skeptical about the unified layout
only because some of that information is not information
that I find valuable in the current phone app.
So I don't really know about that.
But I like the simplicity of it, but I'm skeptical
because like I get a lot of junk calls
that I don't need to see.
And I really mostly I'm just dialing out
to one of my favorites at that point.
But I guess if I pin my favorites at the top,
it doesn't matter about the rest of it.
Call screening seems very clever
because it's basically taking live voicemail
and applying it to another set of calls,
which are these calls from contacts that it that, that it doesn't know.
Because one of the problems with sending everything
to voicemail is then the person who's coming
to fix the glass in your windshield calls you.
And you're like, oh, I should have taken that one.
And then you turn off, send unknowns to voicemail
and then all the junk calls start.
Like you can't win.
So they're trying to find a little slot right in here
to take those things and not completely ignore them
and send them to voicemail, but instead prompt and say,
what's your message?
And we're screening.
And I'll be curious to see how that works
for the person calling.
Like, what do they hear?
And if this rolls out across all iPhones everywhere,
how does the phone calling culture change based on that?
I don't know, but I like that they're picking it up
and they're picking based on the transcript.
They're gonna, you know, they can actually choose
to push a notification that says that this person is,
this is an important one.
Like there's a lot of really interesting stuff
that's building on existing technology that they've stuck in there. So the the lock
screen got some some new features I guess it and it seems like at least from
where the app was showing they they kind of don't want you to use the widgets
anymore because they have this really cool new clock that expands to the image
that you have and they want that to happen. And it does
look really fun. I think that I think I could see myself maybe moving to a different type of
wallpaper here and maybe having one of the Photoshop or wallpapers. I mean, I love the Photoshop
on my watch or maybe I'll pick some images that you can scroll through that maybe will do some fun stuff to the clock but I think that looks very
dynamic very fun and you mentioned this the spatial scenes as they're calling
them where it takes like an image and 3difies it that I don't know about that
I'm a little bit like war freaks me out I think I don't know how that one will
make me feel yeah I don't I like my screen widgets, so and I'm not sure a really tall
clock. Big clock means you know the time will, you know, there's more time. We all need more
time. And now with a very tall clock, you can get more time. But I do like my, we'll
just have to see the details of how they've chosen that. Because I like, I like lock screen
widgets. I think they're, they're nice, but I think a lot of people
don't care and don't know, and this will just...
A lot of design on the iPhone has to be for defaults
and default users because people don't change a lot.
So if you can make that kind of delightful
and then say, yeah, and then you can add a widget
if you want to, that's fine.
One of my least favorite features of WhatsApp
is the backgrounds for messages.
This is in part because I don't think WhatsApp
provide any good looking message backgrounds
from what they provide.
And then I'm not ever really sure
what I would want to put there,
but that's coming to the messages app.
We can have backgrounds in our messages.
And if you're in a group chat, it will change
it. So here we go for Troll Town. We're back in Troll Town, everyone. And we're going to
be trolling each other constantly, which maybe is part of the fun, you know?
Generate your own backgrounds and image playground, which I think maybe was also a feature of the
invites app.
Maybe.
Well, you could make like a poster image for the event, right?
In Image Playgrounds and then open up and would kind of, I guess, blend into it.
But this is like full on the background and you've got the texts like popping up on top
of it.
We'll see.
I mean, I don't know if that's, I mean,
why not? Right? I mean, like, why not do it? But like to me, I'm just like, I don't know.
That's the thing that, that we need, but like, it's a, it's a thing that we'll have, but
I do like a group chat typing indicators, like, yeah, that's a big one. Indicators. That frustrates
me. Like, yeah, I want to see that.
And I like, you know, they're doing their own, several people are typing.
They're really, it's just like the little bubble, everybody.
And I think that's a fun feature.
And polls too, because you know why not, I suppose.
And then, oh, what do you think about the Photos app?
They made a tweak to the Photos app,'s the guy who wrote the book on Photos.
What did they tweak?
They now have Library and Collections.
Those two main tabs.
Whatever. I mean, we'll have to see it.
They put a tab, a couple of tabs back
so that people can toggle because they were trying to get...
I have no opinion about it because first off,
I didn't dislike the new change as much as a lot of people did.
I'm in the club of I enjoy it.
I think it looks good.
And I understand why they did it.
And so now it's gonna come down to how does this work?
And what does that look like?
And I'm unclear on what's gonna be
in those two different things and what appears by default and like I'm just unclear on that so.
I've never got the games app which for me is a bit of a letdown. I was hoping that this
would usher in something a little bit more significant. You know like where I
ended up landing is what I want them to do is split the app store and the game
store, essentially. That's what I was hoping that this could be. But essentially it's just
beefed up Game Center with Apple Arcade and all of the games that you've downloaded in
your game library. But it seems like you'll still get your games through the app store. And you know, there wasn't any kind of like, there's no streaming apps in here that are
integrations of any kind.
I don't, I don't understand it.
I don't know if I understand the reason for this existing with what they've shown right
now.
Well, it, I think the answer is it gives them a place
to point people to and say,
here's where all your games are,
and here's where all of your,
clearly they seem to have enhanced the friends,
they're adding essentially activity challenges
to what we have thought of as game center up to now,
and they put that in the center here and they, they've made it, you know, they,
it gives them a place to iterate from now and say, look, you can see your games.
You can see your friends.
You can see your friends games.
You can see your games, friends.
These are things you can see.
And then we, you know, we'll, they'll have to go from there, but it, I think it
has value just in being an app again,
because Game Center was an app for a while.
But this is more than that, because it's also listing
all your games that you've got and gives you a place to go.
Because I think it's weird to have game, like friend features
and challenges and stuff like that,
that are in a pop-up that can appear outside of your app,
but only from your, like, that's not the way you should do it.
It should be its own place that you could go.
And they pointed out you can control it with a controller,
which is, I think, interesting, right?
The idea that you're popping around.
And then they also have that on the Mac,
the overlay that'll come down that has a bunch of sort of
game related things in it.
So it seems like there's at least to a certain degree,
they're trying to think of ways to make this more game
friendly.
I don't think it's bad.
I just wanted more from it personally.
Like I was hoping for more from this because, you know,
I don't think people need an app which is the library of games on their devices
because what, people can't find their games? Like, everyone knows where their games are.
But I agree with you in the sense of like, oh okay, if we're gonna have challenges and leaderboards
and achievements, we should put them somewhere, right? And that you could actually like,
you haven't got to go to each individual game
to see your updates with your friends,
if that's the thing that you do, right?
Right, if games are,
and if they're literally nowhere in the system,
that's silly, right?
They should be somewhere.
They should have a place to go
that is the place you can find all that stuff.
Imagine if Steam didn't have its own app
and you would have to like look around,
like there's a point in having a central place to go.
It makes sense for it to be there.
It may not have all the features that you want in it,
but it does make sense for it to be there, I think.
As a start.
Yeah, for sure.
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Let's talk about iPadOS 26.
Oh man, let's do it.
I...
Let's do it.
This is exciting. This is exciting. Let's do it. Let's do it. This is exciting.
This is exciting.
Let's do it.
I...
All right.
Resizable overlapping windows.
So many windows.
You could just have all the windows.
I really appreciate the tone that Craig Fegatari had where he was like,
look everybody, all these things, they're blowing our minds.
And it's very much the implication there is where do we get these ideas?
It's like, oh yeah, because you can do it on the Mac and now you can do it on the iPad
too, which is great. And what I didn't have in my bingo list was the idea that they have
reconceptualized windowing to the point where everybody gets Windows now. It's not like,
I'm sorry, you don't have an M1, you don't get any Windows, you only get two Windows,
or whatever it is, right?
They're like, oh no, we rewrote the whole thing.
And it even works on the iPad mini,
which I can't wait to see what that's all about.
Right?
Now Jason, let me tell you, all right,
I've been saying, you know, I've been popping in
and saying, oh, I don't know, this looks a bit janky. Let me tell you what's incredible and
works immediately. I got like eight apps open right now and I'm moving them around. I'm
resizing them. And the resizing is really, it's basically vision OS like in that you
can just do whatever you want. Like it's not snapping to certain sizes. I'm making them
whatever size I want to make them. And'm making them whatever size I wanna make them.
And apps not from Apple seem to be just dealing with this.
No problem, any size.
I'm looking forward to hearing more about it.
Obviously we're recording this right after the keynote.
I'm gonna be talking to people from Apple later
this week about this.
And so I don't have anything to say
about technical details behind the scenes now
cause I don't know. But I will say details behind the scenes now because I don't know but I will say
The fact that it's re-architected the fact that it runs everywhere the fact that there are many windows that can be opened now
and not four
all
I'd say a little bit surprising and kind of huge the idea that they've embraced the the the Mac OS style traffic lights for window management.
We know how that works.
Let's just use it.
That expose is there.
That there is a double swipe gesture to get,
to basically say, no, I need you all to go away,
because I want to focus.
That they're doing these very familiar from the Mac side
things that work pretty well, and that you put them
in the iPad
and then they probably are gonna work pretty well
because that's, you know, they've been tested
and they work pretty well.
So, you know, flick to tile,
have the tile things like on the Mac underneath
if you tap and hold, like it's a lot of really,
flick to tile is pretty cool,
but like some things that are very familiar,
but done in, they're new to iPad.
And yeah, I'm looking forward to trying it out too.
I'm very excited by it.
Jason, it's incredible.
I can't believe how well this works.
It works really well.
This is really, really encouraging.
Yeah, I'm very excited about this. I is really, really encouraging. Yeah.
I'm very excited about this.
I'm very excited about this.
So I'll come back around with that beta that you installed.
Yeah, I mean, we're on a roller coaster here together.
So the menu bar happened.
I wrote a, why is there not a menu bar like three years ago?
It was like, you got all the,
they've had all the pieces in place and they finally did it
where if you mouse up to the top of the screen,
you get a menu bar that's got all the features in it, which they finally did it, where if you mouse up to the top of the screen, you get a menu bar that's
got all the features in it, which is, you know, sometimes
it's really nice to just be able to find
a feature in the menu bar on an iPad.
And don't forget the pointier pointier that they have now.
Yes, try and do it now.
Yeah, so here's the thing.
I really appreciated the way they
did the pointer, the little animated circular pointer
on the iPad, because they were trying to show you that the iPad software is sort of expecting
a finger.
And so they've got a little circle.
And what this triangular pointer suggests is that now they're suggesting
that you can be a lot more precise with your click.
That's what it is.
It's like the reason it's triangular
is it's going to a point that is a specific point,
not a general circular area.
And it's more Mac-like in that way,
but it's also, that's one of the things
that's going on there is it's more Mac-like in that way, but it's also, that's one of the things that's going on there,
is it's the implied precision of the pointer that wasn't implied before.
So, interesting.
The menu bar is a fascinating addition.
Like, it really just acts like the Mac, like menu items.
You know, like I've got Safari open here and I go to file
and I've got like 20 things. Like it really is, it's quite full. Um, and I, I don't know if they've
done more to add in here. Like if this is more than what was in the previous versions, like when
you'd press the command key and get all the shortcuts, like I don't, I don't know, but it looks and
feels very much like a Mac menu bar. And also in the menu bar, you get the little traffic lights when you
have an app in full screen. So you can then pop it down to a different size and do that
whole thing. And you can start doing your window management. Yeah. I'm really excited
about this, but that isn't all. I'm going to jump ahead to audio and video because I
kind of, I kind of can't, I kind of can't believe it. So okay, this is one of these things where
it's like every day we see is the thing that happens and you hear it and you're like, oh my
God, this is the thing we've been asking for. And then you use it and then you realize the limitations
of it. Like it still does what you want, but maybe not in the way you're expecting, right? Like there's always that kind of thing. So from what I can see here,
there is new like specific tools to change your input, your audio inputs. You can choose
different microphones, which is great. And then on those microphones, no matter what
they are, you can use things like voice isolation and stuff like that, which is really interesting.
But there's also a new local capture where you can have high quality recordings of your
audio and your video captured locally.
They have echo cancellation, which I think is very cool if you're not using, I mean,
if you're using any kind of professional setting and you're not using earbuds, I'm happy Apple's
here to protect you.
You should be wearing earphones, headphones, whatever.
And then once the recording's done, it will create a folder
that everybody can upload their audio to. And I don't know if that's automatic in
any way or whatever, but like that does that. I don't, I think it's a... see I just
took that as being it offers your file to you and then you can choose to put it
somewhere. Yeah, yeah. Which is... but all of that is like, okay, fantastic.
It now feels like you could record podcasts on an iPad.
Completely. Yeah, I think so. Like, this is the thing.
Or anything anybody's doing where they're using an iPad to do audio and video,
one of the problems has been that I can use Zoom to talk to people on a podcast,
but part of the workflow is that I also wanna record
my audio locally on my device,
and that hasn't been possible
unless the app specifically adds that feature,
which they don't.
So now the system, one of the solutions is
the system just does it.
So that's what's happening here is that you can specify
the microphone and then you choose local recording
and Zoom doesn't care that it's doing whatever it's doing
but your iPad is recording locally to you.
And that unlocks that whole thing about,
can I do a podcast on my iPad?
So I had Jeremy Burge, friend of the show,
previous video consultant, social media manager of Upgrade,
as well as the founder of Emojipedia.
And he was saying to me, like, what could they,
this was before, we had lunch before,
early dinner, I guess we'll call it before, keynote. And he was like, what could they this is before we had lunch before or early dinner? I guess we'll call it before the keynote
And he was like what could they do to iPad OS where you would?
leave your Mac
when you travel I
Didn't even bother saying this like this is the thing
But I didn't even bother saying it because it's like well, they're not gonna do it like they're never gonna do this
It's too niche and they not only did they do it, they specifically
said, for you, podcast.
Podcasters.
Yeah, for the 12 of us.
We got what we wanted.
It was funny, because this presentation was Stephen Tana,
who I have talked to a million times.
And I don't know if I've ever seen him.
We had Stephen on Connected once years ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So now, next time I see him, I'm going to be like, dude,
you did it.
You got to be the one who rolled that feature out.
Yeah, it is a big deal because it does mean that,
especially for us podcasters,
if we wanted to travel with just a microphone and an iPad,
it's fine, you could do it.
This is the sort of thing where Federico and I
were always like, well, you bring a microphone
and a compact flash recorder, and then you wire them all around.
And then, no, you don't have to do any of that anymore.
So that's, I'm very excited about that.
Good one.
It's a winner.
I'm enthused.
I'm enthused.
Like, it won't be in time.
I'm using my menu bar.
I'm using my pointer.
I'm moving windows around and I'm recording a podcast
and it's all just happening.
I'm really, really excited about this.
Like my next and only trip this year
will not be probably in time for this.
It will be going to Memphis at a podcast
that's like just before it ships.
We'll see.
We'll see how the betas are, you know what I mean?
Maybe, you know, this might also,
you know what this is probably also going to do.
I'm going to end up with a magic keyboard. I don't have one for the iPad.
Yeah. And now I'm like, Ooh, bring it on. Maybe now I'll do it.
Um, what do you think about the background tasks thing?
So I got this from Apple's website cause I'm a little bit confused about this.
Export or download large files and run other computationally heavy processes in the background
while you do other things.
Yeah, this is one of the really rough criticisms
that a lot of us had to give when they brought
Final Cut to the iPad.
It's like, thank you.
We're very glad to see Final Cut on the iPad.
But literally, you couldn't export a video
and then leave the app,
because the video export would fail.
And that is, that's like real
system seven level behavior, right?
Like that is, I can't remember the last time on the Mac
that I couldn't quit, I couldn't move away from an app
because it would fail to do its job if it was in the
background.
I cannot remember that.
But that used to happen, and it still happened when they rolled out Final Cut.
And that was their example, was you start an export in Final Cut and then you switch
away and there's a live activity that comes up that says, I'm exporting in the background,
which gives you as the user information that's something, the reason your iPad is behaving
the way it is, draining the battery,
getting hot, whatever it is,
is because something is happening in the background,
but it means that it'll still do it in the background,
which prior, what would happen is a runaway process,
a process that's using so much storage
and CPU and GPU or whatever,
the system just kills it, right?
Cause it's just like, I'm sorry, I'm a mobile device.
I'm an iPhone, essentially, I'm gonna kill it.
And now on the iPad, those apps can basically use an API
to say, we're gonna do this in the background.
And they said that for like rendering is another example
where you're starting a render going,
and then you wanna switch and check your email
while it's rendering, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do,
you will now be able to do that.
That app says, please let me run in the background,
the live activity comes up
and you are checking your email
while your video exports or your frame renders or whatever.
And that's great because that's a thing that computers can do and that the iPad couldn't
do.
We also got some potential improvements to the files app.
At least it looks different and there's some more UI going on in the files app.
I mean, we'll see what that ends up being like in practice.
I like that we finally have an open in as an option so you can choose what you want
a file to open in and set defaults for that.
That's a default. That's a huge, huge deal.
It's one of those things where you're like, oh yeah, I mean, really that should be there,
right?
That should be there. Yeah, that really should be there.
There's customization options available for your folders.
You can make them look colorful.
You put emojis on them, that's nice.
And you can also put folders in the dock like stacks.
And there's also a preview app now,
like full-on preview app where you can open PDFs.
You can sign them.
You can export images and PDFs into different formats.
It's like, yeah, I want that.
Like that's, I want that.
I use this, I'm like, oh man, you know, Jason,
are we back?
Are we so back?
I think we might be back.
We might be back.
I don't want to tell tales out of school,
but I'll just say that I walked past Federico afterward.
I think probably everyone walked past Federico.
And he said, so I'm using the iPad again?
With a question mark.
I'm like, I think you are, buddy.
I think that's what's happening now.
We are so back.
I'm really excited.
I'm really excited.
I feel like I'm gonna be putting a lot of time
into iPad OS 26 over the next few months and going forward.
Let's talk about Mac OS 26 Tahoe.
I think that's the way you say it.
Yep, I think so.
When they started out with continuity,
like I love what they do with continuity,
especially with the Mac,
but there was a thought of like, what's left?
What else?
How can you keep coming?
We've got two new features.
I'm like, what's left? What else? How can you keep coming? We've got two new features. I'm like, what have you got now?
And we have live activities and the phone app.
Yeah, so this is the live activities.
I think it's unclear.
The way they were suggesting it is you have live activities
on your iPhone that can appear in the menu bar,
and then you click, and you can bring up the iPhone mirroring.
I don't know, I would kind of
hope that Mac OS apps could also spawn live activities, but this is like the live activities that are on your phone.
So like I have a
live activity for when the Giants are playing and it shows the score and
I don't have anything like that on my Mac,
score. And I don't have anything like that on my Mac. But I think this means that if I wanted to, when the Giants are playing, a little score thing would just pop up into
my menu bar. That's kind of cool. Like if that's my choice, I kind of like that. That's
kind of fun. And there's other interesting stuff that happens in the in the in the live
activities on the iPhone. And I'm not looking at my iPhone. I'm looking at my Mac and I
could see it. That's great. Now, the phone app is this is the biggest activities on the iPhone, and I'm not looking at my iPhone, I'm looking at my Mac, and I could see it, that's great.
Now, the phone app is, this is the biggest year
for the phone app since Alexander Graham Bell, basically,
because there's a phone app on the Mac,
which is funny because there was already the FaceTime app,
which was kind of the phone app, which is kind of weird,
and you could take phone calls on the Mac,
but it wasn't quite the same,
and it feels like this is like an acceptance of the fact that it's a feature that probably
should exist everywhere and not in this weird space where like you could use the phone on the
Mac, but not quite. And so I don't anticipate placing or receiving a lot of phone calls on my Mac,
but I think it's a good thing to have.
And they said that it'll pick up all of those iOS features.
So call screening, things like that.
You'll be able to actually see those call screening things on your Mac,
and then you can choose what to do.
Great.
Jason, I'm very pleased to let you know the phone app is also on the iPad.
Yes, it is. That flew by in the iPad thing, but yes, it's phones for everyone.
So it's a big year for phone app.
Big year for phone app. Yeah, that's right. That's right. The biggest, biggest phone app.
The phone app is so back, Mike.
It is actually.
It's so, so bad.
And then they got onto Spotlight, which was, I think,
the most dizzying part of the keynote. I feel like I need to watch that back in full.
I will write, I will, Dan,
allow me to read to you what I wrote down.
Let's see if it, if it does what we need.
So I'm just gonna read verbatim.
Put relevant files or click away.
Apps are there too.
Can search and launch iPhone apps.
Launch actions, parentheses, app intense powered.
You can even add parameters
like sending messages, adding tasks.
Quick keys, which are customizable shortcut actions.
Can serve as menu items when in apps and clipboard history.
Yeah.
They just, I guess they just decided, you know what? There are a lot of these launches and you know what? Let's kill them. Let's kill them.
Let's kill them. Yeah, yeah. I yeah, a little text that came in from Stephen Hackett saying, Oh boy, this that's the end for Alfred. And I said, RIP launch bar too. I like, look, Apple, all those launches exist
because Spotlight wasn't very good back in the day.
And Spotlight has gotten a lot better.
It is a lot better.
Every time, I never use Spotlight, but when I do,
I'm like, yeah, okay.
They solve the problems.
It used to be, the reason I use Launch Bar
is because I can type a couple of letters
and hit return and app launches.
And it used to be you type a couple of letters in Spotlight
and then it would go spin, spin, spin, spin, give you a list of irrelevant things.
Maybe the app would come up and you could launch it.
So it's come a long way, but this is the kill shot.
It really is, right?
Like this is, like LaunchBar has the concept of actions.
I know a lot of different apps have this,
of these launcher apps, but the using the app intense,
the idea that you could literally send an email
from Spotlight with the body and who it's to
and the subject line.
And then you hit return and it just does it.
The idea that I wrote a piece,
I don't know if you remember this last year,
or it was like, what's left of like the table stakes
for Mac OS. And I said, it's left of like the table stakes for macOS?
And I said, it's the clipboard.
The clipboard, they've gone all this time
without doing a clipboard manager.
It's like the one thing that I feel like
should just be in there.
Well, apparently macOS has a clipboard manager now
and it's spotlight, I guess, which is,
it seems weird on one level, but on another level,
my clipboard manager is LaunchBar.
It is my launcher that is also a clipboard manager.
So we'll have to see the details, but like that's wild.
The other thing that LaunchBar really made its name for
and all these other apps used was the shortcut things
where you assign a couple of keystrokes to that app
or that action and
Shortcuts will let you do that now, too
It's just there's yeah, it's it's a lot and it's gonna take some time for us to figure out what you know
What all its limitations are and what its capabilities are but it I mean when they said it's the biggest updates a spotlight ever
They're not wrong. It looks huge because of App Intense and Quick Keys and Clipboard history. We're
talking about filling in kind of like the gaps and making it extensible in a way that
makes it incredibly powerful.
You know, Federico just did that preview of Sky, the app from the previous workflow team.
There are some things in here that Sky is doing, but obviously the difference that Sky
is underpinned by LLMs.
It kind of feels like you take one more, two more steps from this and you end up there, which is intriguing.
And I mean, you know, with the moment that they showed it off, there was a lot of conversation
of like, is Apple just going to buy them?
And now I've seen this, I'm like, is Apple just going to buy them?
Because it feels like Apple's gotten to the point of like all of these types of apps and
Sky is like, yeah, but what if we did all that stuff which it does and then also a bunch of other really powerful
incredible things on top and
I don't know. I mean I also see of like, you know, one of the things that sky does is integrates quite heavily with shortcuts
So like these new shortcuts actions will make that even more powerful and app right?
Yeah, like that, they use it.
That's the other thing that we have to talk about is huge
upgrade to shortcuts.
And while those of us who use the app
are wondering if the app is better,
because the app has been a real pain point, the big deal here,
first off, on the Mac, you couldn't really
automate shortcuts.
And now you'll be able to.
And they said it's like like you could do it by time
You could do it by when connecting to a device
When you take certain actions, which reminds me of like folder actions Apple script the idea that you put a file in a folder
And then a shortcut happens
That's all really great. But then the really big one here is
Intelligent actions where not only are they adding summarize text and create
image, all these things from Apple intelligence, which
they should do.
And if app developers can do it, social shortcuts.
And that's great.
App developers will be able to do it.
But shortcuts users will be able to do it too.
But at least on the Mac, I don't know
if anything is changing on iPad or iPhone,
but at least on the Mac, you will also
be able to feed queries in a shortcuts action
into a model of your choosing that could be an Apple on device
model.
It could be private cloud compute,
which I don't think even app developers
get the ability to do.
The app developer stuff is local, aren't we?
Is device only.
Yeah, we didn't talk about that.
We didn't talk about that.
I guess we might talk about that in a bit.
But yeah, so on shortcuts though,
you can do on-device or private cloud compute or chat GPT.
And my understanding is like, you know, you can pass like a dictionary of items to chat
GPT and say, I want you to do this with it and get me this thing back.
And then your short can continue.
So one of the things that Federico was talking about with Sky that was really interesting
is the idea of having a sort of non-deterministic portion of an automation.
So this is that. This is that same idea, which is you can pass data from a shortcut onto an LLM and
say, give me a response. And then the shortcut takes the response back and then acts upon it.
And that opens up huge additional capabilities for automation because now you
know, you are, you don't know what you're going to get. It could be anything and you
get that prompt and then LLMs are really good at giving you back a little JSON blob that
becomes a dictionary and shortcuts or an answer that you use somewhere. Or I mean, that demo
using spotlight was like, Hey, I need a, I need some blurbs and it suggests some blurbs
and then you pick one.
Like that's a good use of this kind of technology.
So that really could potentially empower shortcuts
all the more.
And the fact that you have access to chat GPT
or private cloud compute models or on-device models
and you can just pick what you want to use when you build your shortcut
That has a huge potential
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Let's dig a little more into Apple Intelligence. Let's actually kind of dovetail it from what we
were just talking about. So one of the things that developers can do is, I mean, this is pretty
heavily rumored, right, is to be able to access the models. So again, this is one of these things
that I'm sure by the time this episode
comes out, there'll be a lot more information about the state of the union. Of course, because
it's not entirely clear what a developer can actually do with them. Right? Like is it restricted
to certain actions, certain types of actions, et cetera, et cetera. But this to me, is like a very, very good use of Apple's work.
Because you are enabling developers
to be able to use some form of LLM
without them needing to do the immense amount of work
or pay the cost for it.
It's a classic thing, it's a thing we've seen before
and it's happened again, which is,
year one, Apple basically just got it out.
And in fact, in some cases didn't even get it out.
Year two, it's time to sort of spread it out.
And it's like the app store.
It's the same thing, right?
The iPhone comes out, everybody says, we want to do this.
And they're like, no, not yet.
We don't even know how to make apps for this thing yet.
Wait.
And then the next year, like, hey, we got an app store.
Well, that's kind of what's happening here.
And I don't want to draw that parallel too far,
but the idea here is they've got it at the point now
where they can have a strategy to hand the keys
to these models, at least some of these models,
to developers.
And the beauty of that is,
instead of it being this technology
that Apple is kind of hoarding for itself or building very specific
Features that other apps can use like writing tools, but it's like a feature as envisioned by Apple
This seems broader. This seems like I mean we literally we can't wait to see what you do with it kind of a thing
Yeah in a good way of like hey app developers
We built these models
and now we want to let you use them and this is a value of being on our platform as you
get access to these models. I think it's interesting that they're only on device and not private
cloud compute. I would imagine that that will come at some point. There's a lot of speculation.
I think we talked about it that maybe at that point it becomes like weather kit where, you
know, after you get above several thousand queries you know Apple does charge you
for using private cloud compute but it and you build it into your business
model because there is an actual cost to doing that stuff in the cloud but maybe
from a great start I could imagine percent of developers don't need that
because if they needed that they would have already had a solution right if
yeah I mean they needed that yeah it would have already had a solution, right? If they needed that.
Yeah, it may be, maybe, although maybe they'll be, they would feel more comfortable having
it be an Apple based solution that does not, you know, that is private and all of those
things too.
And it doesn't require like an API key because it just happens.
Is a great example, right?
From Apple's press release on this. They have a quote from
Paul Main of day one, automatic, the journaling app. And for them, they're able to use this
system with the on-device models to be able to take a look at your journaling entries
and give you prompts based on things that you've put in to encourage you to journal
more. So like, how did the pizza night go? Right? It's like a journaling prompt. And for them, which makes perfect sense, they don't want and they can't
have their journal content leave the device. Right? Because their customers would never accept it for
good reason. Right? So like, these are the kinds of things where I would expect that day one
wondered about this ages ago. Like, well, there's nothing we can do here. Like we can't do this.
We have to build our own LLM.
How on earth are we gonna do that?
Or, you know, we're gonna integrate DeepSeek,
the local DeepSeek, but if we say that,
will our customers trust us, right?
Like- It's just not worth it.
It's just not worth it.
But now Apple just provides that service.
It's fine, don't worry about it.
Like, cause Apple has that, right?
Like that is the thing that they have in the corner.
I think this is fantastic. I'm, when I read an Apple has that, right? Like that is the thing that they have in the corner. I think this is fantastic.
I'm, I, when I've read an example like that, I'm like, oh,
I, as you said, genuinely can't wait
to see what people do with it.
Got to, you know, got to see the details,
got to know the terms, lots of questions for this summer.
What are the limitations here?
And there may be some,
and there may be some legitimate criticism of that,
but what I would say is this is what Apple should be doing with this,
with this stuff and in general.
And I did notice, I don't know if you noticed this,
at several points they're like,
hey, here's this new feature that's great and there's an API for developers,
which I think I saw more of that than I've seen in some previous years
where it's not even we're waiting a year.
It's like we did this thing and you get to do it too.
And this is for the AI stuff.
This is one of the ways that Apple
helps their platform and makes their models relevant,
which is look, even if the on-device model
isn't the cutting edge of all models or even on device models right now,
the advantage is it's from Apple, it's in the system,
and it's essentially free for the app developers
to use as they see fit.
And that, like more like that and continue in that direction
as the models evolve because that enables better apps, smarter apps.
Because Apple shipping an LLM that only Apple can use
for very specific things,
and maybe you can use writing tools, but that's about it,
is okay, but that doesn't make the platform
that much better.
Letting any app on the platform use that tool makes the platform a much better. Letting any app on the platform use that tool makes the platform
a lot better. Absolutely it does. Absolutely it does. Going back into kind of the more
user focused features of Apple intelligence, there is they've kind of, I think they're
rebranding visual intelligence, like they're using that brand and it's a different thing
now. And it's now a tool in the screenshot UI.
So when you screenshot something, you can ask questions about what you're seeing.
You can, you know, if it has information in it, you could add that to a calendar or reminder,
that kind of stuff.
I thought this looked pretty cool.
And I have something I have been doing since chat GPT got added to Siri is sometimes I
will take a screenshot and I'm like, ask chat GPT, what am I looking at?
Like say I'm somebody posts something on Instagram, like an event,
and I don't know what it is, right? It's like,
there are some kind of like carnival I was like, what, what is this?
And I'm like, what is this? And it will upload it and tell me, well,
this is that, but like a proper good UI for
it in the system. Yeah. And so I think this is, uh, this is clever. And by the way, that,
that the presenter of this sport part had the best vibe. His vibe was so chill. This
guy, I would like him to do the whole thing in future. Okay. Cool Noted so I'll read here from the website says it builds on Apple intelligence
So you can search across your most used apps add an event to your calendar and ask questions
Let you do more with what's on your screen and apparently there is there's some kind of API's for this
So you can like tie your app into visual intelligence somehow again. I don't understand that
like tie your app into visual intelligence somehow. Again, I don't understand that
when I don't have the information, but they said it.
And so there's something going on there
which could be interesting.
Live translation looked really cool, right?
So there was tons of features in messages, in phone,
in FaceTime everywhere to do live translation.
I thought that looked good.
Live translation is always a part of every presentation for every company now and has
been for a long time, but these are look like a set of shipping things.
To me, the most compelling look like messages.
And I think that was really cool, but to do live translation and messages as someone in
a bilingual family, I'm gonna really enjoy this feature.
I will be able to talk to my mother-in-law
in Romanian via messages.
And that will be really helpful for me.
So I think that's fantastic.
It's great.
There were emoji mixing in gem,
like bunch of gem emoji stuff.
So there was kind of mixing of two emoji.
So you could give to Genmoji,
your prompts could be two emoji
and it will put them together.
Sure.
Obviously, right?
It's like, yeah, okay, you should do that.
And a bunch of other customization options
to change expressions and stuff like that.
And Image Playgrounds uses ChatGPT now.
It's a ChatGPT Styles and it just uses ChatGPT.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's really telling that Genmoji,
which is the better of those two features, got feature upgrades and, uh,
image playgrounds got sort of a, let's punt that to ChatGPT.
It's fine. That's fine.
And let's, uh, let's finish up by talking about Vision OS 26. Uh,
it got widgets and it got widgets in the way that we imagined it could have
widgets. When we first spoke about it, like their widgets exist, like, you know,
as widget kit in the system, they're persistent.
You can put little frames around them.
You can add depth to them to make them look like windows. This looks fantastic.
I think this looks wonderful. Really.
Yeah, it looks really good. Yeah, I agree. Looks really good. I was ticking off all the different
little Vision OS apps that are made obsolete by this. There's one called Windora that's literally
like you put a picture in a window and then it looks like there's a window there and they literally
said you put a picture in a window and it looks like a window. So, okay, all right, got it.
The fact that they're spatial and persistent
and that all windows, this is a thing we talked about
when Vision OS first came out, which is they need to make it
so that if you shut it down or a battery runs out
or you restart or whatever it is, that when you come back,
all the stuff is where it was when you left it.
And that is finally here in year three, they got there,
including the widgets, which is really fun
because yeah, you can stick those widgets
wherever you want in your house and they'll be there.
Which for all of the widgets and other utilities
in Vision OS that did stuff like this,
they were cute, but then they just are gone.
The next time you, you know, you bring the thing out and you put it on and like everything is back to zero,
which is kind of a bummer and makes you not want to do that stuff.
So that was really good. Let's see what else was in there.
Oh, the, the, the. Look really good, right?
This is one of these things where it's like,
huh, okay, but also, can it work with beards?
You know?
Well, that is a lot of people asking that question
in my audience row, I will say,
people asking about the beards.
I think it's funny, think about this, Mike.
Think of what they showed us for personas two years ago.
What I love is in the presentation, they did show those two, right?
Like this was the original and this is now.
Cause cause they made the personas better. They did much over time.
Much better. But, but this looks much better than that,
which is incredible because I think they currently look really, really good.
They do. They look really good. And so to take another leap in that, I am very, very keen.
I am not install Vision OS 26 beta one on my Vision OS, my Vision Pro kind of keen, but I am keen.
We'll see. If you have two people wearing a Vision Pro in the same place, they can now share
experiences. They show this in a private context, which didn't
make any sense, but they very quickly moved to an enterprise context where it doesn't
make more sense.
Yeah, all the jokes about $7,000 so that you and a friend can watch a movie together. But
this was on our list. One of the things that that Vision OS needs to do ultimately as prices come down, as these devices are in more
places, you do need to have the ability to share experiences
contextually in the same place. If two people are using
Vision OS in the same place, they should have the ability to
see the same things. It had to it's just, it had to happen.
There are not a lot of, I mean, yes,
Enterprise is actually a good example of this,
because, you know, yeah, you can play a board game,
you can play Battleship together in the same room
on your two $3,500 Vision Pros,
or you could just get Battleship and play it.
But there are, over time, having your virtual reality
hallucinations be consensual or contextual and shared
so that everybody is like, yes, I also see the thing
on the wall.
In the long run, you gotta have that.
You gotta have the ability to do that.
And then, for watching video, I mean,
they're kind of just using share play there, but like, sure.
It's a thing that needed to happen.
I don't know if it needed to happen now,
but it did need to happen.
So it's good to see.
Big one, I know there was the rumor about PSVR controllers,
Mark, I reported that a long time ago.
It happened today, it's an OS feature, but hand controllers,
and I know there's a, Logitech, there were all those rumors about the Apple Pencil And today, it's an OS feature, but hand controllers.
And I know there's a Logitech,
there were all those rumors about the Apple pencil
working in Vision OS, and it turns out there's a Logitech
pen for the Vision Pro, so you can sketch in space
and stuff, and that's cool, it's a cool idea.
It's a cool idea.
But I'm very excited about the controllers,
because that is, they actually literally showed,
it was a paddle ball app and not a ping pong app but it's the same idea is like
for some things you really do need precision hand control and so having the
ability to support precision hand controllers will allow games to come to
vision OS that can't currently come to visual S and be playable no it's great I
I'm really really really happy about this because there are experiences that
will be improved like undoubtedly there are experiences that will be improved. Like, undoubtedly there are experiences that will be improved by them adding the support.
It was very funny to me, the pen, because I want that product to exist, but it's like, oh,
the Apple Pencil, as advanced as that is, it ain't enough. You know, like you need a lot more going
on in something like this. I thought when they showed like the 360 cameras to have that
content work better in Vision Pro. Like they've partnered with a bunch of companies that do
this at GoPro. I think it's the 360 in Canon. It's like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
Like that content should be viewable in a good way here.
If you are a snowboarder or a mountain biker or something and you've got a 360 camera or
a 180 camera and you're taking these 360 camera or 180 camera on the,
and you're taking these spectacular things,
it would be nice to be able to watch that stuff
in Vision Pro straight up,
and it'd be very exciting to do that.
I also have a 360 camera.
I use it for people sitting in a room
and talking to each other or playing Dungeons and Dragons,
but it is, as somebody who had to do that,
it's hard to get that to work on Vision Pro right now.
You can do it, but like, it's hard,
and it needs to be easier,
because it is kind of amazing to be in that situation.
And are you excited to sit on one of the moons of Jupiter
and look at Jupiter?
Sure.
I wish there were more environments
and there were more announcements about environments.
One new environment is cool.
I think I was most intrigued by the fact
that you can control the time
Going on in the environment, which means that there's now an interface to control aspects of environments And I wonder if that will be reflected on other environments feels like you're gonna make that environment
You've got to kind of have a feature like that right like right, right?
She's gonna you got to put on the shoe
You're not gonna sit there for 20 hours watching Jupiter. So you got to speed it up make a a move. But yeah, that's good. It's a, again, they're pushing the ball
forward in a bunch of places. And this is with vision OS,
that's what you got to see is just are you advancing things,
you can put things in folders now in the home screen. Great.
Like it's it's stuff like that, where it's you know, you got to
the the fact that your, your data is tied to you. And so if
you use a vision pro, and then you. And so if you use a Vision Pro
and then you're in a guest mode on a Vision Pro,
it will be able to get your specs from your information.
It's all about making this process better
and this product better because when it shipped,
it was missing a bunch of pieces and they're kind of, I look at this list,
and I think they're addressing a bunch of the big holes
in Vision OS.
And the biggest challenges with Vision OS
are not Vision OS.
They're the hardware and the cost of the hardware
and third-party apps and things like that.
It was already a pretty interesting and good operating
system, but just like the iPad in the early days, and then operating system, but you know, with just
like the iPad in the early days, it's like, and then there's things where you go, oh,
we should probably do this.
And then you wait.
And a couple of years later, it does that that you need to keep pushing the ball forward.
And so they did.
What I was hoping for from WWDC this year was a bunch of stuff that was really interesting
that we'd be able to talk about for months and to have some fun
and talk about some fun stuff. And I just think that's what we've got here. And I'm super excited
to spend more time with us to be digging into this. There's more stuff than we even have time
to cover today. But as is always, we will be back next week and we'll be talking about everything
we found out in the week between you on the ground, me reading documentation and poking around at this beta one iPad a little bit more. It's exciting times over a day
and this iPad's doing some wild stuff. Good stuff. If you have any questions that you would like us
to answer on next week's episode, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send those in.
We'll try and do a big Ask Upgrade with your questions for as much as we're able to answer them.
Or if there's anything you want to hear us talk about in more detail go to upgradefeedback.com
thank you to our members who support us about upgrade plus go to getupgradeplus.com
to find out who won the second California bear trophy you can find
this show on YouTube by searching for upgrade podcast I would like to thank
our sponsors of this week's episode that is Sent Sentry, FitBod, and OpenCase. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to
SixColors.com and you can find his work there and you can find him on social
media. You can find me online too. I'll soft launch here and say you can go to
TheEnthusiast.net, Jason. That's right, you're a blogger now. Papa is a
blogger. Papa blogger. So people can go check that out if they want to. I'll talk about that more in the future.
Yes, and also thank you to everybody at Apple
who provided a place for me to sit and talk to you
right from Apple Park, right after the keynote.
Absolutely.
Yes, if you're listening to this episode
and you're like, oh man, I'm so happy they got it out quick,
then you should be sending your thanks to the team
who provided the Apple Podcast Studio,
because otherwise this probably would have come out on Wednesday or something.
I don't even know.
So we'll be back next week. Thanks so much for listening. Say goodbye, Jason Snell.
Goodbye, papa.