Upgrade - 66: Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good Apps?

Episode Date: December 7, 2015

Myke returns from his trip to New York to the bad news that Dropbox has killed Mailbox and that Sketch has abandoned the Mac App Store. But he’s cheered up by Jason’s news that he might be keeping the iPad Pro after all.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 66 today's show is brought to you by braintree audible and casper my name is mike hurley and i am joined as always by the lovely mr jason snell hi mike how's it going i'm very well sir, sir. How are you? I'm back. Yeah, welcome back. Welcome back. We had Merlin Mann to replace you last week. It was very nice of him. What a great guest. What a great co-host, I should say. Yeah, he was great.

It was a lot of fun. It is. I miss you when you're gone, but it is also fun to replace you with wacky, unexpected people who drop in for a week it was a lot of fun to talk about i don't talk to merlin about that stuff i hear him talking about stuff and we talk on incomparable sometimes about you know about movies and and stuff but we don't you know we don't do the the tech breakdown kind of thing so that was a lot of fun yeah it's always nice to him i don't talk about tech he has the the Dara Report now where he talks about that stuff more frequently. Right.

But it's always nice. Yeah, no, it was a lot of fun to get him. He just has a very different perspective. And we had a moment where I was like, let's not be negative. Which I thought it was actually a good moment because we've gotten that feedback too about sometimes that we're negative on the show. And the idea is that we're critical about things. And we don't want it to be unrelentingly bleak and awful and all of that. But we do want to view things kind of critically.

And that means sometimes saying that we're disappointed with something. And I like Merlin's approach to that, which I think is the same for all of us, but it's not always stated. And Merlin stated it, which is, look, we, we, we do love this stuff in general and we care about it. And the reason we complain about it is because we care about it and because we like it and because we're going to use it. And I, that, that is, you know, I've been using Apple products since I was in eighth grade and that was for me a long time ago. And that I'm going to keep using Apple products.

That's not, it's just not going to, they would have to do a lot for me to leave. But since I'm committed, that makes me care even more about what Apple and related subjects, uh, do. And if I see something that I don't like,

I do feel the need to talk about it, but that was really great that Merlin framed it in that way. Cause it's absolutely true. And, uh, that was a lot of fun of fun and we talked for like two hours which i apologize for the length of last week's episode but uh i just you know i couldn't i couldn't stop and he couldn't stop and so we just kept going yeah i i had to catch up it's always funny whenever i travel um because i end up with the amount of shows to listen to that everybody else does. And it always seems like a lot. So I appreciate people listening every week.

Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of podcasts out there. A lot of choices. So we appreciate you making Upgrade one of your podcast choices. Talking about choices and great podcasts. As of today, RelayFM now has a membership program. And we've been thinking about doing something like this for a while, mainly because since we began really just over a year ago, we've always had people saying to us, we want to give you money, we want to give you money.

And this is some people because they have already bought all of their websites and domains and mattresses. And there are just some people that just want to give us that little bit more because they love what we do. So we now have a membership program. You can I'll put a link in the show notes. You can go to relay.fm membership. We have three tiers on the membership. We have two monthly tiers, silver and gold. Silver is five dollars a month. Gold is ten dollars a month. Then we have an annual tier for one hundred dollars a year. Now, with that, all of those plans come with the same perks. So on our anniversary week in August, every year there'll be bonus episodes of every show.

We'll be doing some fun stuff and there'll be some episodes that will be exclusive for members. We're going to be doing a monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter that Stephen's going to be taking care of. And at our store, the RelayFM store, you can get 15% off anything. So this is t-shirts. We're going to have some new t-shirts coming soon, a 2016 design. We also have some buttons and stickers. You can get 15% off anything there just for members. And we're going to be adding more perks as the membership grows, and as time goes on and we think of other really cool things that we want to do. Now, we've got this broken down in a couple of different ways.

If you want to, if you love all of the great shows, you can donate to all of the great shows right you can become a member of all of them and give your money for those um but you can also give to your favorite shows all right so you can when you go to the page you'll see every show is there and of course on all the show pages so if you go to relay.fm upgrade you'll see the buttons there as well for you to be able to donate to your favorite shows and all of the money goes to the hosts, right, outside of fees. So we want to give as much money to the hosts as possible of all of the shows. So if you really love certain shows, you know, if there's a couple or one show that you really love, I would urge you to give money to that show because then the hosts of that show get more money. Because if you donate to all of the shows, it gets split amongst all of the hosts of that show get more money. Because if you donate to all of the shows,

it gets split amongst all of the hosts, obviously. Yeah, it's super diluted then, because it's every host on every show on the network, and they're a lot. And that's why we wanted to do this. I mean, it would have been really easy, and many other people do it this way, many other networks and stuff in the past have done it this way, that you just give to everything.

But we wanted to have it that you could also give to each show because the primary concern here for us as a business is to get more money to our hosts and for you to be able to support the shows that you really, really love. This isn't changing our business in a massively significant way. Like we're going to, we're still advertising supported um i expect that not to change at least for a long time um but this is just another way for some of our hosts and me and you who are self-employed to to kind of diversify their income a little bit and also lets you directly support the stuff that you really love and yeah we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago right that you're doing it now i think this is something you're going to get used to seeing a lot more of and you don't have to pay for everything, right? Pick the things that you love the most and pay for them. Absolutely. But

I think that over the next couple of years, this is going to become a way that people interact with stuff that they like. They give it money. Yeah. And the places will, I think everybody's going to expect that it's going to be the most enthusiastic people who give the money. So it's going to be the top whatever, 5%, 2%, that are going to be the ones. And that's fine. I think that's why these sorts of things exist. It's not – you get all the episodes of Upgrade whether you pay us or not. We'll do a bonus episode in August that will be for the people who support the show but um but otherwise otherwise uh it's not changing the show it's just another way with

six colors i had the same thing it's like i want to i want to support what you're doing so that you can keep doing it how do i do that because i'm not going to ever be a sponsor and when you have a medium that is entirely ad supported free ad support, you don't have that other mechanism. Back in the day with magazines and things, right, they had ads, but you also paid. And the web totally uncoupled that and paywalls don't really work. So that's not a way to solve this issue. So instead we have this, which is optional support. And what I like, so you and Stephen Hackett and I talked about this a lot in Indianapolis when we were there. We had a little relay meeting, which was really exciting because I don't get to go to meetings anymore. I used to hate meetings because I had a job and I

had lots of meetings. And now I don't get to have those meetings very often. But we had a great meeting in Indianapolis and we talked about this a lot. And one of the things that was very clear to me was the way you guys approached this was was this is about supporting the hosts of the shows. And that's why people can support a specific show. So if you really love Upgrade, and Upgrade is one of those podcasts you listen to every week, and you feel like this is the one, this is the one you want to support, you can do that, and your support will come to me and Mike. And if you love another show on Relay, you can support that show instead or in addition, and it will go to the host. It's not one of these things where it's all just sort of being absorbed by Relay as a company. The idea here is to directly support the host. So it's just another route. And if you don't,

if you like us, but you don't have the money, you don't have the time, you prioritize other things, you need to pay your mortgage, that's fine we'll still be here and other people will uh will chip in on the on the support side and we've got the advertising on that side and it's all good so it's just another option for people and uh i like that about it so yeah go check it out uh relay.fm membership or just go to the show page of any of your favorite shows and you can find all the buttons you're going to need there. And we'll be talking about this more, I'm sure, as time goes on. So you'll be able to find out more information.

Yeah. It's that time of year again, Jason. It's time where we ask for money? No. No. It is that time too. So last year I gave you a hard time because you were very excited about the first annual upgradies uh our awards for our favorite things of the year uh and i pointed out that nothing can be a first annual it's only annual when you do it for a second straight year

so i'm pleased to announce that we're going to do the second annual upgradies and that'll be our episode of December 28th. Yes. So it's going to be the last episode of the year. We will be doing the second annual Upgradee Awards. I'm so excited. And we want to have you guys get involved. So we did this last year a little bit,

but now everybody kind of has an understanding for what the Upgradees is. And if you haven't heard it, I will put a link in the show notes so you can go and listen to last year's Upgradee Awards. We would like your suggestions for categories. Now, I don't want to restrict this in any way. Suggest whatever you like. Whatever you think should be given an award to by me or Jason, then you should send out a tweet. We had silly award categories

and serious award categories. It's all good. Exactly. You want to send a tweet in the usual way, put the hashtag AskUpgrade. We will see them and we will collect them all up and we will be able to create

some fantastically fun categories for the upgradies as suggested by you. And that's going to be in a few weeks time. And we're hoping to extend the upgradies in an exciting and new way this year as well. Yeah, I'm hoping we'll get some other Relay hosts involved in some way. What I'd really like to do is have the Upgradees just steal all the awards brainpower from RelayFM and concentrate it in Upgrade so that my show has all the power. And then it becomes immortal

i don't know that's a real lofty goal you've got there buddy yeah yeah sure well because what i'm what i'm what i was thinking about why we should maybe try and get some other people involved is some of the categories probably our opinions may not have changed in so i want to get some extra voices in though i think that is the more practical reason is it would be fun to get some other people involved because it may be you and me going, yeah, it's fine. You know, same thing, same, same. And that's not, you know, hello, internet flop house. Yep. All right. Moving on. I think the flop house may make a, would make a return winner of the year. I think it's possible. We'll have some, uh, ask upgrade about that later. I oh excellent um i wanted to mention a fantastic piece of i don't even know what this type of follow would be up out in or

shake it all about or something but we have uh from unai and unai has created the follow chart in which he has attempted to diagram the different uses of follow up follow in follow out follow by which is a new one coined by merlin um so this if you have been confused about what we're talking about here and i has created an incredibly uh useful chart which i will put in the show notes that will confuse you uh further maybe i the an earlier version of this chart had uh had referred made me laugh out loud because it said not ever used for for uh follow forward or follow away or whatever um but now it's actually been used. Excellent. It is confusing. Follow out, follow in, follow by.

Yeah, follow by. It's like a drive-by. Lots of other words out there in the English language to put after follow, so stay tuned. You have a piece of follow-up here about scrubbing on the Apple TV. Oh, yeah. Marlon and I were talking about it, and this is one of those things where

you record it for a podcast and you know everybody's going to tell you the answer, and you're reluctant to even mention it, but you do, and then in this case, I was saying about how one of the problems with the Apple TV interface is that when you accidentally touch or, you know, you pick up

the remote and you touch the trackpad and it tries to scrub in the video and now you've got the scrubber interface up there. And I had that moment where I'm like suddenly trying to scrub back to where I was and match it up so I can let go. And like, and which,

and I said, I know that there's, there's a way to do this where you, you can just say, no, no, no, I didn't mean to do that.

And, and everybody told me after I had already actually that night, I immediately, when we were done, I went in and tried it. If you just press the menu button, the scrubber interface goes away and then you're okay. So it's still annoying that it is bringing up the interface and kind of intruding on your video watching because you accidentally touched the trackpad.

But all you have to do is press the menu button and it all just backs away. It doesn't matter where you scrubbed to. It just sort of like backs you out because the scrub doesn't, the scrubbing act doesn't change where you are until you click so scrubber follow-up yeah i've been uh been getting more and more frustrated with that as a thing that that with the fact you pick it up and like oh i've scrubbed scrubbed 10 minutes across. I'm confused. I mean, this is, um, we have to get Joe steel back. Uh, it's just what people want to hear.

Cause he'll be mad again. Um, a lot of the Apple TV interaction is inconsistent and, and I'm getting frustrated with it. Uh, and I think again, they'll, they'll put it all together,

but like, um, in the music playing, I can't figure out how to set, uh, an album or how to set a playlist to shuffle. I can't for the life of me figure that one out. In video playback, sometimes I feel like I can swipe down and get a bunch of controls at the top of the screen.

Other times I can't. When I'm in the music playback, I think, well, can I swipe down to get more information like I can when I'm watching some videos? But I can't because the UI is different. And these are apps from Apple. So I keep looking for some more consistency. And I think it's not surprising that in a brand new product with this brand new app platform that maybe there's a lack of consistency, although it's a little disappointing when it's from Apple. But I'm hoping that a language and a kind of common understanding of what certain gestures will do and where things will be kept in an app will build up over time. And then, yeah, the accidental trackpad swipes aren't my favorite. I mean, I'm using it more and more.

I've watched Master of None. Oh, yeah. We watched the whole series on the Apple TV, on the Netflix app. You know, it's pretty good, and I like that when I press the TV button it turns my TV on. I'm in the lucky few where that actually happens. We've actually hooked it up to the big TV

downstairs now. And I'm using it more for actually watching TV, but now I'm not playing any games on it. I don't know. But's, I don't know. But when I was, I was, we spent a lot of time, um, on my trip last week, um, at Marco and Tiff's house and we were playing a bunch of games on the Apple TV there. So I can see how different people use it differently. Um, but I'm, I don't know. I just don't really know where I stand on it.

My, my opinion just keep changing a bunch. And now all of the things that I was originally annoyed about, I'm not annoyed about so much anymore. But now I'm becoming annoyed about different things because I'm using it more. Well, the setup, you know, again, the pain of setup fades away after a while. I'll tell you one place where I'm using it a lot

is with the music app. I was doing that on the weekend. I was doing some work downstairs, and lot is with the music app. I was doing that on the weekend. I was doing some work downstairs and I opened up the music app and I put on Jonathan Cotten and John Wilkes' Christmas album. It's the only way I can play Apple Music stuff on my speakers in my house because my existing digital music system

doesn't support Apple Music. So I find myself turning on Apple TV just to play music, which is weird, but it's fine. And it works great. Other than like I get confused about, can I shuffle this playlist? And I'm not sure if I can. And the music app is a little more rudimentary, I think, than some of the other apps. And I don't think it has Siri support yet. You know, one funny thing that people have mentioned that I would like to note is that the Siri search index on Apple TV is slow.

And whether it's on the device or it's maybe up on the server. But what I've noticed is TV shows get added to iTunes and to the store. And they're not in the index. So, like, they posted The Expanse, this new sci-fi series that's coming out next week they posted the pilot for free on itunes and i went on the apple tv to go download it and i couldn't find it um and i ended up finding it in a featured icon in the tv app but siri couldn't find it even though it was there and it recognized the name i was searching for and it wouldn't it said i't know what that is. And then I went and navigated to it, and it was there. And I think I've seen that with a couple other types of content too, where it seems like there's

lag, like a day of lag where Siri doesn't know new stuff that's in the store. And that's weird and not a great experience. So it's a work in progress, but I do like things about it. And having access to the Apple Music stuff in my living room is, is nice because I am using that more. And, um, you know, the stuff that I listened to that's only on Apple music and that I don't own is not accessible on my squeeze box. So I have to use the Apple TV for that. Yeah. Really nice technology that will never be updated again because it's been discontinued. One of these days I'm going to have to commit to Sonos, I guess, which is very expensive, but good. When I get my own house, I'm going to get a Sonos.

I know a few people that have them, and they're awesome. Yeah, yeah. I like them. I think they've solved some of their UI problems that they used to be sort of featureless, like one button boxes, and they've got a little more complexity on the you can like pause and increase the volume and stuff on the on the hardware now. are out adding Apple TV or Apple music support. So that's going to be a big, a big win. And that's what,

that will probably push me over to the edge to at least buy the one that can go in my stereo and play through my big speakers because, uh, then I will have access to that in the living room. And that would be nice. Last piece of follow-up this week, you and Merlin mentioned mailbox. Oh man. Um,

unfortunately today, why do bad things happen to good people? Mike, Merlin mentioned Mailbox. Oh, man. Unfortunately, today Why do bad things happen to good people, Mike? I don't know. Unfortunately, today Dropbox announced, and they actually said this in their tweet, that they are sunsetting Oh, my God. Carousel and Mailbox. Carousel,

like, I don't even know why they began it in the first place, but Mailbox was a good app. It's a good product but they're killing it and they're killing it like dead dead it's not even like it was a good app until they killed it right i mean and then they killed it they they bought it and killed it i mean but it still works fine right like if you take it as it is right now like on an iphone for example it works flawlessly it the most, you know. Right.

They did a Mac version that was so promising and never got out of beta. Yeah. And I use the Mac version every day. I mean, and it works, right? I mean, like it works. It's fine. It has problems, but I use it on a daily basis. Like it does work.

But a lot of these sort of things, what happens is they get killed or they get bought and then killed. And then the apps kind of just fade away slowly over time. They just get old. Yeah, this seems to just be that they made a mistake. Dropbox just made a mistake. They shouldn't have bought Mailbox. And they bought it and they ruined it. Yeah, but what I mean is not so much about that.

box and they bought it and they ruined it yeah like what was what i mean you know there's not so much about that but like they're actually killing a lot of the good functionality on in february so like all of the snoozing and stuff like that that's just going to stop working and they i read it on their faq if you have anything snoozed at a certain date in february it's all just going to arrive in your inbox because all of that stuff is server side yeah right so they're killing it they're just on february 26th it's all just gonna fart into your mailbox basically i don't really know how else to say it so like they they're killing it like it's just and then it's all done um so i am re-evaluating and I'm still working out what I want to do. Oh, well, I mean, this is the story. This happens.

This happens. Companies buy apps and they think that they're going to do something with them. And it turns out that for better focus on their core business, they should then get rid of them or integrate them into their existing product. And it's too bad because Mailbox was a really great product. And with another owner or independent, maybe it could have been something better. Google Inbox is similar. And there are apps like Spark that are good at doing similar things. What Mailbox sort of suggested as a method of dealing with email, I think, is something that is spreading. But the big problem is until there's a standard by which all of the kind of scheduling and deferring and things could happen, the problem is that you really need to use the same system everywhere you look at email.

And that's my problem with it is Mailbox, at least, they had a Mac app, and they had the iOS app. But a lot of this stuff, I mean, I guess I could use Google Inbox, because I've got Gmail on my desktop, just in a browser window. But that's the problem is, you know, you can't say, well, I'll use this neat app on my iPhone, but on the desktop, I'll just use Apple Mail or something. It's just not ideal. So, oh, well, RIP mailbox. All right, let me take a quick break. And there's one other thing I want to touch on in regards to this mailbox thing, actually. There's from a question in the chat room, which is very interesting. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Braintree, code for easy online payments. If you're a mobile app developer, you should be checking out Braintree code for easy online payments. If you're a mobile app developer, you should be checking out Braintree.

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different payment methods. It will be with you and your customers across all platforms, with superior fraud protection, their fantastic customer service, and those important fast payouts. To learn more and for your first $50,000 in transactions fee-free, go to BraintreePayments.com slash upgrade. Thank you so much to Braintree for their support of this show. So Jonathan in the chat room asked the the question do you guys think dropbox might be

secretly starting to go under and you know or like you know to stretch this out a little bit more are things like this are um are they worrying like do you know jason do you look at this stuff and think oh maybe dropbox is in trouble here i don't. I actually look at this and think it shows some discipline that they lacked before. Yeah, I completely agree. I think what this shows is Dropbox for business has taken off. That's what I look at this and be like, that's the other thing that they're doing.

Then you look at the other thing that they've done recently, Paper, which is a collaboration work tool, which that suggests to me that they are going all in on business stuff, which is where the work tool, right? Which that suggests to me that they are going all in on business stuff, which is where the money is, right? The enterprise. And consumer facing tools like photo services and email clients, the money isn't there. Well, this is, it is about focus.

It is about asking what every business should, and possibly every person should ask themselves, which is what do I do better than anyone else? What is my thing that I do well? And businesses especially need to say, what are we about? What do we do better than anything else? That's what you should focus on. And when businesses get in trouble, it's because they lose track of that or they try to spread out into areas where they're not as good and they don't do as good a job. And those are very difficult areas to succeed in because there are other people out there who do it better. So Dropbox is saying what we do really well is connect, connect people who are working together and make their files available.

And, and yes, that, that includes maybe people who are working at home and the, you know, people who are spending for the personal version of Dropbox. I think that is part of what they do. It's like connecting files and things that you're working on

and potentially with coworkers or friends and collaboration. And I'm sure they've got their concept down to a sentence or two. But I think when they made these acquisitions, they maybe thought they were, either they thought they were someone else or they thought this was what they were about and then realized that it was too far afield from what they were about.

And so I see this as being disciplined. I'd be much more worried about a company that just started snapping up things that were totally unrelated to its core business. And you went, huh, why did they do that? Because that's what happened when Mailbox got bought by Dropbox. huh, why did they do that? Because that's what happened when mailbox got bought by Dropbox is everybody went, I guess, you know, it was, it was not super clear about what the, what the direct fit was. So I'd say that all those, this really stinks from a standpoint of somebody who liked mailbox. I think it's a sign of discipline and, uh, mail and Dropbox knowing what it wants to be and focusing on that. And that, I think that's good for Dropbox.

You never really know. Right. But I kind of look at it and be like, well, Dropbox is key service is the thing that they charge you for, which is the space. Right. And I can see why they went down the photos and email route. Cause it's another thing to put in the space that you pay for. But I think ultimately that will have made them some money,

but not as much money as a the business solutions could have made and i agree like if this isn't working for them now i prefer them for them to just do it now focus their business so dropbox doesn't struggle and go away in the future right because i i need dropbox more than i need mailboxbox. I agree. I agree with that. And there, well, the fact is there are other companies that are doing things like Mailbox and probably doing it better than Dropbox. So is that, you know, if you're, if you're Dropbox, do you look at this and say, look, Google is doing inbox.

Why are we even trying this? Because Google is going to, is going to be able to tie directly in with Gmail and all of its server stuff. is going to be able to tie directly in with Gmail and all of its server stuff. And, you know, some of this stuff is now in Outlook on iOS, right? I mean, it's just, do we really need to be here? So I think that's all good. If you look at what Slack has done,

and I saw somebody complaining on Twitter about this the other day, that, like, I wanted to, they said, I wanted to pay for Slack, and then I realized there's no way I'm going to pay for Slack because it's too expensive. Slack decided that it didn't even want an interim step. It was going to be very, Slack decided to be very generous with its free tier. Yep. And beyond that, it doesn't really want you to pay unless you're a big business. And if you're a big business, if you're a business with a budget,

who wants to pay for all the features that are of interest to business that they're building, then they want your money. But they don't want your money if you're going to be paying them $15 a month or $20 a month, because they don't want to maintain that audience and it doesn't make them enough money. They would rather give it away for free, get it in places where people can have their minds blown by how great it is, and then go to the CFO and say, we need this for our business and we need these other features. Or the IT person to say, we really should have this be official. Let's do that.

And that's their strategy. And I think it's probably a good one. In fact, I think if you were running Dropbox today, you might argue that what they should do is make the free tier much larger than it is now and then have business and and you know i'm as somebody who pays a hundred dollars a year or whatever for dropbox that would make me sad and i don't think they're actually going to do this but you could make the argument that they'd be better off doing that which is what slack does which is you know make it make it uh super great for almost everybody to use your service

and rely on it and then if any business wants to use it they pay you like with slack when i first started using slack when we first started using for relay we looked at the prices and we're like we're never going to pay for this like it's too expensive yeah you know looking at like for example you know how much our hosting costs or whatever, you know, we pay nearly as much in hosting for one show for upgrade, for example, a month as it costs to pay for one person in Slack for a month. Yeah. Right. The prices are very similar, actually, with what we pay for Ellipson. And then it got to the point where we were like, ah, Slack is so important to us now.

There's a few features that we really need. OK, we're just going to have to do it. And a few features that we really need okay we're just going to have to do it and by that time our business had grown in people that we need in the slack by like five times so that's how you grow a business like them like you know it's it's genius like get people in the door make them not be able to live without it and then they'll start pay you so i so the the short version of this is i think it's a good sign uh which is not to say that it's a guarantee that dropbox will be successful but i think this isn't this isn't a company that is cutting costs and that's why it's going away this is a company that's focusing

this is showing some discipline i think it's a good sign it's probably an engineering limit certainly that that's what i would look at this mostly i think as being they have limited engineering resource it's focus i i mean at this mostly i think as being they have limited engineering resource it's focus i i mean even if you say with somebody like apple it's not just about the resources it's about the focus is is do we really want to have engineers and work with engineers who are working on this product that has nothing to do with who we are or what we do now they could have chosen to spin it off to you you know, make it a wholly owned subsidiary or something like that. But my imagination or, I mean, my guess is that it's that the people aren't even don't even want to work on it.

You don't come to Dropbox and work on this app that's off in the corner, right? You don't want to go work at the app that's in the corner at Dropbox. So it makes, yeah, I get get it it's just sad but i get it yep all right let's uh let's talk about sketch in the mac app store so this this happened late last week right um sometime last week it's on december 1st so but on tuesday last week uh sketch posted a blog post on their site to basically saying that they were leaving the mac app store now uh i have the pleasure and you had the pleasure of seeing uh peter onvly as the guy behind sketch one of the guys behind sketch at release notes

and he had a real great talk at release notes about how he runs his business and stuff like that it was absolutely fantastic. And he spoke very briefly about the Mac App Store and some of the challenges of it. And when I saw this post come out, I was surprised that they were actually still on the Mac App Store. Yeah, after seeing Peter's talk at Release Notes, it was very clear to me that this is where they were going. And you're right. I had that same moment, which is, wow. Wow. So they were on the Mac App Store.

Interesting. Because he gave all sorts of reasons why he didn't want to do like an iPad version of Sketch and what all the problems were with the App Store. So clearly this was his thought process that was leading to this. It just, you know, the announcement wasn't in the presentation. I was also very surprised to find out that they were Mac App Store only previously, which is really interesting for a tool like this. Like it's a big professional tool. And they've obviously spotted that this is a problem in their business.

A company that's not them have too much control, right? So they've decided that they want out. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that's really interesting about this to me is the importance that Apple have put on sketch in the side of this happening

like not only are they an ada winner when the apple watch stuff came out and the designs the guidelines and came out for it they included assets for phot and for Sketch, right? Yeah. And that shows me that I would assume, looking at that, that the guys and girls over at Sketch have the ear of Apple. Or at least some part of Apple. At least some part of Apple. But high up enough, I would assume, that they could let all of these thoughts be known in advance. They could have a conversation with someone, because I'm sure they've had some things that

were frustrating to them that they have let out, right? That would be my assumption in just looking at this as a thing. And this has has still happened which really does suggest to me that the majority of things that they are looking for um and are not around the corner right yeah i think i think so um i'll put a link in the show notes i put it into our notes about um michael cy did a sort of a roundup um with links to a lot of different pieces uh john grouper mentioned in his piece he used the uh the the phrase the mac app store is rotting which i have to say he's right it's a real good ton of phrase for it it really is a good ton of phrase because it

feels like nothing has happened and they're not paying attention and and they're not listening and nobody seems to care and it's like why should anybody else care if apple doesn't seem to care about the mac app store for maybe for anything but like like games maybe and os updates yeah because uh because bare bones you know rich seagull spoke at singleton last october and talked about why they were pulling bb edit out of the out of the store there doesn't seem like there's anything uh i mean the the lack of attention michael says that one of his uh el capitan bug fix updates has been in review for 59 days i've heard from a lot of other developers who've said that they put they these updates. And I mean, even iOS app store updates often have long wait times,

but the Mac app store, it feels sometimes like there's just nobody there, literally like nobody minding the store. You know, so many people have dropped in on this. Manton Reese wrote a piece about it that was short but pretty good and makes a point that I've felt for a long time, which is what Manton says is, all this time Apple could have been iterating on the Mac App Store, improving sandboxing entitlements, improving review times, customer interaction,

yet they have not. And that is the rotting that John Gruber is referring to. It's sort of like, I kind of feel like Apple thought that why not bring this to the Mac? It would be just as successful as iOS. And whether that was faulty, because the Mac's not as big a platform and Mac apps are different or more complicated or something, or whether it's them not having any follow-up or a little bit of both. I think it's more of the latter, or more of the former, but a little bit of the latter too,

that it hasn't helped that Apple has not really... The people who did jump into the Mac App Store have seen that Apple's not really paying very close attention to it. So it's... I mean, the funny thing here is the solution is just don't use the Mac App Store. And because unlike iOS, the Mac App Store, you can just leave it and you can still sell apps. And that seems to be what's happening at this point. It makes me wonder if Apple's basically thinking to itself, look, this is all it's ever going to be. And if you don't want to follow the rules, just leave. We're okay with that. Just go. Because how else to explain that they're not either that or they feel like they can't make

changes to it that wouldn't impact the iOS app store. And that's the important one. So if they're going to make a policy, they want to make it universal. And they're making the right decisions, maybe for the iOS app store. So the Mac app store gets to deal with it. I don't know. It's not good. It's not good. Yeah. So as a Mac user, right, you are primarily a Mac user.

That is the platform that you are most attracted to. How often do you use the Mac app store? Not that often. i do use it sometimes i use it where it's um i'm i'm looking for uh an app that does something very specific a little utility and i'll think to myself well why don't i just go on the mac app store and search for a stopwatch what stopwatch? What stopwatches does the Mac App Store have? Because you just figured that's a real easy place to find this stuff,

because Googling could be a nightmare. Yeah, it's a small utility. It's probably in the Mac App Store. I don't see why it wouldn't be in the Mac App Store. Let's just search. Oh, there are five of them. One of them's free. Let's download that.

Oh, it's terrible. This one's $2. It looks pretty good. I'll buy that. $2 is fine. Done. Okay, yes, I'm going to use the stopwatch now. Stuff like that. Oh, it's terrible. This one's $2. It looks pretty good. I'll buy that $2. Fine. Done. Okay. Yes. I'm going to use the stopwatch now. Stuff like that. And, uh, and there's, there's some stuff that has to be in the Mac app store for various reasons. Um,

like, uh, uh, photos extensions have to be in the Mac app store, but, um, but mostly, mostly not. If somebody recommends something and it's only in the Mac App Store, I go to their website and they say, buy it in the Mac App Store, then I'll do that. But, you know, I don't, my, the App Store app, my most common tab is updates. Right? It's updates. I leave it in updates all the time. Not featured, not charts, not categories. Sometimes purchased if I want to go back and look and see, did I buy that?

But that's it. It's just not, yeah. I like the idea of a lot of the app store, right? Because, for example, I like that you just go back in when you get a new Mac and everything's there. Oh, I agree. As opposed to having to search through, like, was I smart enough to save this license key in one password,

or do I have to look through email for it? Right? And all that kind of stuff, and then having to just go to all the different websites and remember what you want to download rather than just going to one lovely list and just clicking all those things. I like that, you know,

one purchase gets you multiple licenses across multiple machines. just going to one lovely list and just clicking all those things um i like that you know one purchase gets you multiple licenses across multiple machines uh it's just nice to have that sort of stuff which makes it easy right then rather than having to think about like will i need to buy a multi-user license for this piece of software hmm i'm not sure could i you know like i just that all that i find all of that frustrating um And also not having to enter in my card information into a bunch of different websites and systems that I don't know, or I don't really know who's managing them.

Having it all in Apple and iTunes, in my iTunes account, it's just nice. I just like having it all there. It's easy to deal with. But then on the other side, when I'm buying things as a business, it makes it really difficult

because I can't use my business card or my iTunes account and I don't want to have multiple iTunes accounts. So there's other little bits of that on the flip side. But all of this is moot as long as Apple continues to not do anything with the App Store. It seems like nothing's happening.

Nothing has happened. It's been basically untouched since it was introduced. And I'm wondering, like if you think back to iOS 8, right? WWDC for iOS 8. There was a ton of stuff that was like,

oh, you're just, you know, you're doing all these amazing things and developers are so happy. You've done all these incredible things for iOS. And I and i wonder like is there a potential that they may do this stuff for the mac app store like could they introduce something like trials or changes to app review or sandboxing stuff could they say oh and we've been listening to you and done all of this, and then they get rounds of applause? They could.

Do you think they will, though? The question is, is it worth the amount of energy they're putting out for OS X? Is it worth it for them in terms of what they think that the platform will benefit? And at some point, you have to ask yourself, like, why even have Apple involved? You've detailed some of the reasons why there's a user convenience there. But I can see it from Apple's perspective. Like, why would we – people who want to sell outside the App Store can already do it. So why should we even worry about it?

Why should we even prioritize that? Whereas iOS is where we make our money on the App Store. I think one of the problems here is that it's using the same infrastructure. So they don't have Mac App Store engineers, as far as I can tell. They have App Store engineers. And they may have some people who are doing things about like app submissions on the Mac and all that, but it seems to be the same, exact same infrastructure for all of this stuff. So that's a challenge, right? Do you prioritize Mac App Store development over iOS App Store development? I wouldn't. Do you have the discipline to say certain amount of the stuff that we do is going to be on the Mac?

Because it's important for the Mac as a platform that we have this here. And if you really take out a bunch of these things on the Mac App Store, it would make it better. But is Apple going to accept that? Because, yeah, I could see a WWDC announcement where they say, look, let's tell you about the next version of macOS. And it is called macOS, just like iOS and tvOS and watchOS. It's Mac OS. Version 11. Here it is. New Mac App Store. Here's how it works. You have trials. You can do trials. You can do upgrade pricing. There are no sandbox limitations. App review is gone. All we're going to ask is that you submit a signed binary so that if your app turns into malware, we can turn it off. But otherwise, and we're going to

take 30% because we're sitting in the middle. Otherwise, just go to town, knock yourselves out. Okay. Would they do that? Hard to see, maybe, but they're giving up a lot of control. Maybe they'll do a little bit less than that. And then would people do it? At that point, you know, I guess you have the advantage of being in the storefront. But I don't think we've seen a lot of evidence that the storefront drives massive sales of Mac apps. And maybe that's the story of the Mac app store, ultimately, is the Mac App Store is for the kinds of things that people who only shop in the Mac App Store would buy. Maybe that's the story.

That if you are somebody who is a super novice user and all you want is to find a calculator or a calendar or a stopwatch that you will go there and search and you'll find it, or you're just looking for games or for your kid, whatever, then it's fine for that because then these limitations don't matter. And that anything else that Mac developers, any Mac developers got really excited about, like, oh, I can put my backup utility in there. Oh no, I can't. It's like Mac App Store is just not for that stuff. It's not for anything with any complexity at all. That certainly seems to be where we are, right? That seems to be the solution to this. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's just how it has to be. That the app store that we thought would be this thing that would bring iOS level excitement to app sales on the Mac is just not that. It's like something like,

what is it, Launchpad? That feature where all the giant apps are on a screen on your Mac? Maybe it's this relic of a time when the people in charge of Mac OS thought that it just needed to be iOS in all ways. It needed to have a simple launcher. It needed to have a simple app store. And that would be my vote. My vote would be that all of these features came from a time when Apple thought the Mac was going to be more and more and more like iOS and that that was the right direction for the Mac. And I'm not sure they feel that way anymore. And I think maybe it shows. And because like launch launchpad. That is just a waste. It was a waste. My apologies to somebody out there who uses launchpad.

Maybe there's somebody out there who uses launchpad, but to me, it seems like a waste of time. It's who's it for. Is anybody really using it? It's a waste, but it sort of looks like an iPad home screen. So it's got that going for it.

And Mac app store, maybe it's the same thing. Maybe Apple regrets the whole thing. Maybe they're like Dropbox buying mailbox, like, oops, but they put, put their whole software update infrastructure into it now so what you're gonna do when you said what you're gonna do just for some reason the word ghost busters just popped into my head that's not how it works and i don't know that's not how that works

but that's not that's all i got that's right that maybe they apple should call the ghost busters if if if the only thing left. It feels like it, though, right? Like there's just old stuff. Tumbleweed Busters. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's my, I like that theory.

I'm going to go with that. That this is a relic of an earlier time when, and we all remember it, when it seemed like the Mac was getting pushed closer and closer in so many ways to iOS. And that stopped roughly when Scott Forstall got fired. And then they made statements that, no, the Mac needs to be its own thing. That's the strategy. But we got the Mac App Store and Launchpad out of it. But we got the Mac App Store and Launchpad out of it.

I think that there isn't going to be a big announcement at WWDC, in all honesty, because can you imagine that they would put trials or change sandbox limitations or upgrade pricing or app review changes on iOS? No way. And they're not going to do it on the Mac, right? They're not going to do it on iOS. They're not going to do it on the Mac, right? They're not going to do it on iOS. They're not going to do it on the Mac. They're not going to mix those two things together, because if they do it on one, they'll have to do it on the other. So this is the solution, right? They're also not going to shut down the Mac App Store.

It seems unlikely because they have their whole infrastructure in there. It seems like they're not going to shut down the Mac App Store. So what will happen is it'll just go like this, and it will end up being a thing for super simple apps and Apple stuff. And that's it. I think that's the most likely solution. I kind of like them to just shut it down. But hey, if it works for some apps and it works for some people and it's working for Apple, then just, you can just keep it around, but let's all stop pretending that anybody's

going to use it for anything beyond the most basic software. Yep. anybody's going to use it for anything beyond the most basic software yep so that the the continued rotting of the mac app store seems to be the most likely scenario here i gotta say this week's episode is also brought to you by audible.com audible includes more than 180,000 audio programs from the leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, general publishers, and more. And Audible is offering a 30-day free trial membership to listeners of Upgrade. Just go to audible.com slash upgrade to take a look at their fantastic selection of audio programs. They also have an app that you can grab if you want to listen on the go.

I have the Audible app on my iPhone, and I have for many years. I have a bunch of audio books in there, and I wanted to recommend one that I love. And this is an audio book that I've probably listened to like three or four times, and it's called The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. It's written by Alan Deutschman, and it's narrated by a guy called Charles Stransky,

who does a fantastic job. This is my favorite Steve Jobs book. It was released in 2000, in the year 2000. So the story that it tells is the one that a lot of books skip over. It talks primarily about Steve's kind of early days and the Mac, and it talks about him being ousted, and it talks about Next and Pixar in a lot of detail. Then he returns to Apple, and the story ends.

And all of the really incredible things, the iPhone, the iPad, none of that is in this book because it wasn't done when the book was written. It's just under eight hours, the unabridged version, and I love it. It talks so much about Pixar. There's just great stories about like Toy Story and things like that in here. And it really goes into a lot of detail in those because that's all the book has to talk about. And I really like it. Have you ever read this book? I haven't. I really recommend this one.

I came across this not too long after it came out, I think, really. It was in the early 2000s. And I listened to a bunch of Steve Jobs books that were available at the time. And this one was by far and away my favorite. As I say, I've listened to it a few times. And I really, really recommend it because it kind of focuses on the man in a slightly different way, especially if you've read the've read uh the the isaacson book and the um the newer one what was that called oh the schlendler book oh becoming steve jobs

was that it i'm getting yeah becoming steve jobs there it is i've lost completely um uh there's so many seat job book now it's like one formed into one giant tome of Steve Jobs. And looking on Audible right now, like if you do want Steve Jobs books, they have them all, right? Like they're all here. Like there is the Becoming Steve Jobs book that is on there as well.

I actually listened to that as an audio book as well. And the audio book is very good. The Becoming Steve Jobs book. But I like the second coming of Steve Jobs. So I recommend that and you had a book you want to recommend as well jason yeah i've been there are a lot of books because i read a lot of books uh a lot of books that i could recommend here but i'm going to for timely reasons recommend um i mentioned the tv series the expanse which is coming from the

sci-fi next week um and i highly recommend that book series it is probably the best book series that i've read in the last five years uh there are five books that unlike uh your george rr martins who you know reappear with a new book every four or five years these guys super disciplined it's two guys who write it under a pen name super disciplined they've got a new novel every june i think so there's a new one every year. That also means that there are five to choose from now and read. And the first one is what the first season, at least, if not more, of The Expanse is going to be based on. It's called Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. And it is available unabridged on Audible. And it is a huge

amount of fun. It's set in the future in the solar system and there are people on Earth and Mars and people in the asteroid belt and the outer planets and it is an interesting combination of sort of sci-fi adventure with a kind of noir detective story and some surprising,

almost horror-esque elements that come on later in the story that when they come in it is uh quite a a fun uh change in tone of the plot uh so there's a lot of good stuff in there it's just it's great and the other books are also great so highly recommended and uh if you are thinking of watching that show i would say uh try the. It's a great book, Leviathan Wakes. So these are just some suggestions. You can select any book, any audiobooks at all when you start your trial. But these are just some suggestions that me and Jason have enjoyed. So go to audible.com slash upgrade to get started with your 30-day free trial and check out some books from Audible. Thank you so much to audible.com for their support of this show and relay fm so jason uh we're gonna go back to my favorite topic right now which is the ipad pro

we could take the ipad pro again because uh i read a little post that you wrote in your macworld column yeah um and i assumed this is you coming to the end of your time with your review unit i'm going to assume um and you you wrote a post on that quote of a wish list so would i be right in thinking that you're kind of coming to the end of your time with the unit you have yeah i need to check when i was supposed to send it back probably i already was supposed to send it back so i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to uh have to do that i'm gonna have to pack it up and and mail it back to apple but um i'm getting very close to deciding i'm gonna buy an ipad pro i i i really do i really do like it look at that i didn't expect that i i feel like when

we first spoke about this a few weeks ago that that wasn't yeah necessarily your take on this so you're right i mean we can get to your wish list in a moment but now this revelation this this bomb has been dropped so i want you to tell me what's happened bigger is better is my assumption i'm just mike was right um i i you know everything i've said still goes i i think it's more awkward in some situations and spectacularly great in others. And I think after using it for three plus weeks that I've decided I would rather it be awkward in those situations and have me manage it in order to get the greatness of it in the other situations, um, rather than go back to the smaller, it is true. The iPad air feels like an iPad mini now it is, it is so, it feels so small compared to the, to the pro. So, um, I, I, I'm going to be, if the pro so um i i i'm going to be if i buy one of

these i'm going to be one of those people who doesn't buy either the pencil or the smart keyboard because i have no i have no desire to have either of those products i have no need for the one and no desire for the other i would rather use an external blue a bluetooth keyboard that's better right then uh than that. I don't see, I'm not one of those people who needs to carry my keyboard around with me all the time. I can throw a keyboard in a bag when I'm traveling and pull the keyboard out when I want to type something. That works for me. I don't need more than that. But yeah, I mean, that's the bottom line is I feel like it is worth it to have that big screen. Uh, and I can deal with the

fact that it's, uh, it's, it's awkward in some places that said, I did do some thumb typing on the iPad air to the other day. And I thought, Oh, I can actually type while I'm holding this thing, which the iPad pro doesn't do. So there's still a chance that I will not. Um, I think what's going to happen is I'm going to send the Apple one back and then I'm going to see how i feel and if after a couple of weeks i realize that i'm really missing it then i'll buy one the thumb typing thing um is one of the trade-offs for me yeah it's like i like to be able to do that but now i just adjust the way that i use this thing and the way that i hold this thing and how i type with this thing and And if I need to be walking or moving or standing up and typing, well, I'm going to type slowly, holding it and typing with one finger. I just

have to accept that any message I want to send when walking around with my iPad Pro will be shorter and type more slowly because I love this thing completely. I love my iPad Pro. It is by far my favorite computing device right now. It's fantastic. I was doing some work over the weekend. Actually, it was setting up the membership stuff. So we use Memberful, which is a great platform, and it's the platform you use. We were creating all of the plans in Memberful, and each one creates a URL. We were creating all of the plans in Memberful, and each one creates a URL. We had to drop all of the URLs into RCMS to create the pages. So it was like 20-odd shows with three URLs each.

And so I was doing that. And if I would have done that on my Mac, it would have been nice and simple, like copy and paste the text. But I had Safari on one side, I had Chrome on the other, and it was so easy. I had the pencil in my hand. I would just, with my, I would have my thumb on the right side, like press down on URL, copy, then go click with a pencil on the other one, tap in the box, click the paste button. And I was just rattling through that so quickly. And for me, that was faster than i would have done it on the mac like just flat out it was faster and i'm sure that you would do it faster on the mac than i did it on the ipad but just like the way that i was doing it i just got into this rhythm and i'm

at the point now after using this thing where i really like it sounds so i already hate myself as i'm saying this because of what the phrase actually means i really like working with my hands uh in this way right my hands are on the screen it's kind of what like they originally spoke about with the ipad right like you manipulating the web and stuff like that but it feels way more with this device and just the pen input stuff i love i love using the apple pencil as like as pen input like so i use it so much on the ui of the device like i use it to tap things i use it to select things it really works for me um in a way that other ipads haven't and and i don't know why that is like obviously i'm a person that feels very very comfortable with a pen in my hand so maybe that helps me in more feel like feel like it's more

natural i don't know what it is but i really love using it that way um so i mean i'm very happy with it and i'm i'm pleased that you are as well so much in so much that you're thinking of of uh getting a new one but this isn't a perfect product right so to kind of wrap up and kind of round up your um wishes here you asked for more cases which i completely agree with there aren't many cases and i am also sad that i have a black smart cover and not like a green one yeah they come they're in like dark gray and white yeah it's yeah so there's there's the smart covers have no color options to speak of um there are there need to be more cases in general which it's it's going to just take time for that to happen. I want a keyboard thing like the old origami, where I want a thing where I can put a Bluetooth keyboard and have like a little,

I mean, again, the smart cover will sort of do this, but have like a little stand for the iPad Pro with a Bluetooth keyboard in front of it, because I don't really want to use the smart keyboard. And I don't need to, so why not and but i don't want it to be a case like the logitech create i want it to be a thing where you can you know set your ipad in it and use it and then pick up the ipad and walk away um i actually just today was able to order a smart keyboard um and it's not from apple it's from a a company here called curry's it's very much like a best buy and it will be arriving tomorrow oh that's exciting um and i just want to try this i probably think i will return this uh-huh but i yeah i think i'm gonna like it but i want to give

it a shot because i do want to i do want to use a keyboard with it in some instances um and i've been using this Logitech One and I keep meaning to get my magic keyboard out of the iMac box because I figure I don't use that. It actually might work really well for me to use that here because I always have a cable

to charge that keyboard wherever I am. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Also, if you try it and you like the key feel, then you can return it and when they come out with a UK keyboard, you could get that one.

Yeah. Because I think you're not going to want the US keyboard anyway. But I have a US software keyboard layout anyway. Yeah, all right. Like it's the UK keys, but they're all shaped incorrectly but i'm hoping that they'll fix that too at some point but maybe maybe not yeah from

my understanding of this though it seems like they're going to fix the software stuff but it doesn't seem like they're going to fix the hardware keyboard i don't think no the hardware keyboard they said they're going to do international keyboard layouts yeah oh good there will be international smart keyboards down the road, they said. Okay. So we'll see. I mean, again, it's a sort of peculiar rollout, but they only have the one. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's why don't they have any of the accessories in their stores, right? It's the other thing. Right, right. The, you know, a lot of my complaints i've written other articles about about uh multitasking like i want more apps to do picture in picture there's still a bunch of my apps my video apps that don't that don't do it yeah why is that is it like a drm thing like you know because so many different services implemented their own video players for like whatever reason dumb reasons like drm when i didn't want to airplay or whatever it's possible although i would i would think that you could still do it but i i don't know i mean i

don't know the technical details it's just bottom line as a user it frustrates me that i can't put netflix in a little video box and i can't put um my cable company has an app that has all the live channels that i've authenticated to be able to see and stuff that's on demand and it doesn't work with it, but ESPN does and Hulu does. So go figure. So more, more picture in picture apps, uh, the better we've talked about it before the better split view app picker thing. So I can, I can, um, more easily, uh, choose which app I want to have in slide over or split view. The stuff that I talked about about being able to sort of like pair up apps so that instead of

having to launch a new app and then changing the app that's in the split view, I could just have a way to set those so that it knows that when I use this app, I want this to be in the split view. Just more software development stuff, more keyboard shortcuts that just sort of system-wide the ability, like I said, to be able to search for an app and actually select it instead of having to reach up and touch the screen. And then third-party developers are a part of this, too. There's still way too many apps that are scaled up for the ipad pro because they haven't been updated to take advantage of the

screen size and they've got the weird keyboard because it's a scaled up ipad air keyboard that you're seeing and uh and then also they don't have as good uh keyboard support as they should and multitasking support as they should so you know it's it's it's little stuff but it's important stuff so i you know to echo some of those things in regards to cases i want a case that holds the pencil neatly and i've seen a few um sleeves that hold it but that doesn't work for me i have actually purchased a pen loop um and have stuck that pen loop onto my ipad like like with a sticker it is a sticker like it is a it's got a sticky back i mean i'm putting stickers on it anyway right all right on my ipad so like i don't really care so much um i'm not 100 convinced in it yet because it definitely works and it works pretty well

um but there are a couple of drawbacks like for example uh when i now put the smart cover around on the back the magnet the magnets don't fit together as strongly because there is something obstructing the case from touching the back of the iPad so easily. But it holds it mostly, but not completely. And also the kind of the stickiness is not holding on one edge, but the rest of it is so incredibly glued down that I think it might be OK. But what it is doing, which I love, is now my pencil is affixed to my iPad at all times. So it's really easy for me to just grab it and store it somewhere. That's nice.

So I got one of those and I've stuck it on. It's by a company called Leuchtturm 1917, which is a pen and paper manufacturer that I'm familiar with. And it's just a little pen loop. And I bought a couple of them and i've stuck it on the back of my ipad so when i was at twit yesterday uh leo was complaining about there's no place to stick the pencil on the ipad pro because i brought the ipad pro with me instead of a laptop um sidebar um there are no irc clients for ios that support multitasking

No IRC clients for iOS that support multitasking, which is such a shame. I realize the IRC is not a super popular format for most, but boy, all the chat rooms for all the podcasts that I'm on use it. So I would like that. That would have helped. But anyway, he was saying, oh, you know, I've got the pen here for the Surface Book because he has a Surface Book. And it just, you know, you just lay it on the side and it attaches magnetically and see this is so much better and then over the course of showing me this and right after he must have knocked that pen off by touching it and having it fall off like three times oh yeah a magnet on the side is not storage it is placement yeah and i had

that moment where i thought i thought this is why Apple didn't do that. It's because your pencil is just going to keep on getting knocked off and falling on the ground and breaking. And it's not, it's not, don't do that. So they didn't. Anybody that thinks that that is storage, like I actually watched into it and saw him do that and was like, like say, oh, it fixes to the side of a magnet.

Like, no, it doesn't. Like it does, it stays there, but you put that in and out of any bag or move it around, that thing is just flying off all over the place. This is why I want a case that it goes in, that I slide it into. So now I've seen these like sleeves by a couple of different companies.

I don't want a sleeve. I'll put links in the show notes to the sleeves that I've seen as well, in case people ask for them. I want a case. I want a case. I want a case that is like a smart cover that has a pen loop. I want it to have the magnets. I want it to be a stand.

I want all of that. And I haven't seen any of that as of yet. So I'm looking forward to seeing some of that sort of stuff, because I'm confident that there will be some people that make these things. The market's not going to be massive massive for them but for a lot of these types of companies big enough so i'm looking for i've been i've been looking on amazon and there's some stuff that exists but it's not things that i'm interested in like i've seen a couple of products on amazon like if you just

search for ipad pro case pencil on amazon you'll see like these leather cases that have all of the stuff that I'm asking for, but I just don't like the design of them. Whilst I do love the designs of both of these sleeves, I'm not, I don't think I want a sleeve. I want to, I want a case or, you know, a smart cover-y type thing to put this in. or, you know, a smart recovery type thing to put this in. I also have real-time follow-up. Our good friend Doug Beal in the chat room said the Colloquy, which I was using yesterday, actually does support split screen. And it does.

I have it working right here. So how did you miss that? Well, you know why I missed it? It's because I was trying to run it in picture-in-picture, and I didn't see it when I scrolled through the low-density list of things available or not picture in picture and slide over right um i didn't see it in the list there because that list is not organized in any reasonable way but yeah there it is okay well colloquy uh thumbs up man their website colloquy website, is showing iOS 6 screenshots. Yeah.

I'm assuming it doesn't look like that anymore. It doesn't look great, but it works. But it's not got an iOS 6 keyboard. Well, probably not. No, I mean, that's what it's showing on their website. I hope that's not the case. Yeah, so that's my main thing. And one other thing I'd like to see

like in the future I want to be able to do more with that home screen oh yeah I don't think I want widgets I'm not sure maybe if they can be done right but like I saw somebody mock up a view of

like somewhere on Twitter I saw this within the last week or so I saw somebody mock up a view of like somewhere on Twitter. I saw this within the last week or so. I saw people mock up a kind of iOS home screen with the notification center widgets on the home screen. And it looked really unattractive. But I feel like I just want there to be more on that space because it's kind of unused space. And I think they could do more there and i do genuinely believe in my heart of hearts that ios 10 will bring a new look to the home screen in general i agree it feels like if you're ever gonna do it 10's the one to do it

i suppose i figured they might do it well i figured they might do it for nine but as i've talked about before uh they're they were they had so much they had to do especially for productivity features that i can see why they may be prioritized split view picture in picture keyboard stuff and just said look we'll get to the home screen next time i figured they were going to do it every time for the last few releases right like even on iphone me too but then now i'm thinking like if i'm apple and like it comes to ios 8 and and they're like oh let's plan out our roadmap and they're like oh we want to do this new thing to the home screen i if i was

in that scenario i'd be like let's wait until 10. That is a number 10 massive feature, re-changing everything you know. If you're going to do it, do it now. I hope they are going to do it now so I don't look like a fool. Maybe this can be another one of those Mike was right scenarios, which is a cute holding on to this one until June. Maybe.

So that's my feeling. I mean, I love the iPad Pro. I'm very happy to hear that you will be buying one. Probably. The fact that you're speaking very happy to hear that you will be buying one. Probably. The fact that you're speaking about it the way that you are, whether you know it or not yet, you're going to be getting one. I'm very confident about that fact. Should we take our final break and do some Ask Upgrade?

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Thank you so much to Casper for supporting this show and all of RelayFM. Ask upgrade time. Ask Upgrade time. Lasers, lasers. I'm going to just say the word lasers now, not even make the sound. Look at that. Upgrading Diane would like to know,

Jason, you mentioned last week that you use Outlook for iOS. Are there any reasons you don't use Outlook on your Mac? Hi to Diane. Outlook for iOS is totally different. Outlook for Mac is based on the... Outlook for Mac. Well, it's based on the Entourage code base. I mean, it feels, honestly, it's gotten better, but it is this big app.

It feels really heavy. It's hard for me to explain it. It feels kind of old because I think there's a lot of stuff that has been in there since the entourage days. It's doing everything that Microsoft feels it must do to provide desktop support for its monolithic services and whatever. And Outlook for iOS is like a totally new take on it. So's uh so so yeah i have no desire to use outlook on the mac i've looked at it i don't like it i don't want to use it but on ios um uh it's pretty good so i'm

for now i'm using it there but it's just they're very different they have the same name but they're totally different because in case you don't in case anyone doesn't know microsoft bought an app called accompli on ios rebrand it, have done actually some of their own work to make the app better. But the code base is nowhere near the same. They were different things originally. And I hope that they are working on building a different Mac app,

but I'm not seeing any signs of that occurring. Gerard Rotina said that he's beginning to love the Up There Home beta and says it syncs really fast. Any thoughts on its future? Jason, could you explain to people what this is in case they haven't seen it before? Up There is a startup from a whole bunch of people who used to work at Apple,

including Bertrand Serlet, who was in charge of Apple software development for many years, OS development. He's the guy who would come on in the first session at WWDC after the keynote with his French accent and introduce what the details of the new features of OS X and iOS were. A whole bunch of other people there, including James Dempsey, if you have heard of James Dempsey and the Breakpoints, the nerd rock band. Chris Burton, who was at Apple for a long time a bunch of people and they are at this startup called up there which is a cloud uh they call it the cloud computer but they've got uh two apps that they released and one of them is basically storage and one of them is

basically uh photo management and it's all cloud syncing and they're in beta now and you can sign up at what is it uh up there.com and uh i don't have any opinion about about it though gerard uh i think it's an interesting thing from interesting people um who knows who knows it's a startup it's new you know i i i am hesitant to trust any startup for the long haul are they going to get bought are they going to um are for the long haul. Are they going to get bought? Are they going to, um, are they going to stay independent? Are they going to make it? Are they going to fail? I, I have no idea. Um, and, and to be honest, I've downloaded the stuff, but I haven't even had a chance

to use it yet. So I want to try it for myself and, and see, I think I used it maybe briefly and then I haven't gone back to it. So I need to, uh, I need to look into it, but it's a startup, you know, don't put all your stuff there and count on it lasting for 20 years because you never know. But a lot of smart people at that company. A lot of smart ex-Apple people there.

Maybe their plan is to build good cloud services and then have Apple come to them and buy them out because Apple needs good cloud services people. Maybe that's the plan. It's like next all over again. Rajiv would like to know, will the iPads eventually get low power mode like iPhones?

What do you think, Jason? Do you think that's something that Apple would do? I feel like maybe not because just the usage of an iPad and an iPhone is different. But I could see the value in getting to 20% or 10% battery and having it say hey, can I slow this down a little bit in order to keep you going?

I think the idea there is that your iPad is less likely to be far away from a power outlet, but it totally happens if you let it run down that way. When I was at Twit yesterday, I was at 1% when the show ended. So I would have probably gone along with that. There may be some issues there in terms of multitasking and things like that. Like, does it turn off multitasking on the iPhone? It doesn't have to worry about that stuff, but on the iPad, it would have to, um, I don't know. I think it's since that feature exists in iOS, I think it, I think it might very well come to iPad eventually, but I'm not sure Apple is, is falling over themselves,

obviously, because it's not in there now to add that feature. But I could see how it would have some use ultimately. But yeah, I don't know. I'm going to say yes, eventually on an infinite timescale. It's just the greatest get out. It really is fantastic. Well, he did say eventually. I mean, that gives me latitude. Well, he did say eventually. I mean, that gives me latitude. The next question comes from Ivan. Do you think the iPad Pro will ever get Xcode or will Xcode ever come to the App Store?

I, again, if we say ever, yes, I think something that will let you build apps will come to the iPad. iPad, iPad Pro, whatever. I do think that will happen. It may be limited in scope, especially at first. My guess is it won't have all the things that we know of in Xcode. Even if they call it Xcode, I think it'll be different.

But yeah, I think at some point in the next year or two, Apple will build something that is enough that you could develop software for the iPad on the iPad. I do think that will happen. I mean, I'm just, I have no information here, but I think, I feel like we're at the point where it will happen. The existence of the iPad Pro makes me believe it will happen. Maybe it'll only support Swift. know i don't know i mean maybe maybe it'll only support certain kinds of of of apps certain kinds of features at first at least but yeah i feel like it's gonna happen uh ben would like to know what podcast do you listen to that aren't part of the great relay fm network and i wanted to extend this and say all the incomparable oh fine right

and no letting you sneak in there with your promotion. Although, you know, people should listen to incomparable shows. I wanted to get a few others. So do you want to start? Or I have a small list. Yeah. Why don't you give me your list first? All right.

So I just selected a few shows that either are new or are just absolute favorites of mine. One of them is Control Walt Delete, which is a new show from The Verge. It's Nilay Patel and Walt Mossberg. And I really like this show because it's basically The Verge doing this type of show, which they haven't previously done. They either do stuff

that's really heavily produced or they're like big panel shows that have a different feel to them to the types of shows that we have here. But Control-Alt-Delete is Neely and Walt, and they just talk. And it feels just like this show feels. So I really like it

because it's two people that I really respect and enjoy the opinions of in a format that I love. So that is a big recommendation. I've got to say Flophouse and Hello Internet, obviously. Love those shows. Will do forever. My two favorite podcasts.

And I also wanted to mention Tomorrow with Joshua Topolsky. I don't listen to every episode. I kind of pick and choose based on guests. But every time I do listen to it, I always enjoy it. So there are a couple of shows I wanted to mention to my absolute two favorites and two that maybe you're not listening to that I think you would enjoy. Very nice. I listen to a bunch of nerdy TV podcasts. Chip Sutterth does the Two Minute Time Lord, which is a very short Doctor Who podcast, which I really like. And of course, there's Verity and Radio Free Scarra, which are longer

panel podcasts that are very good. And I also listened to the Audio Guide to Babylon 5, one of my favorite sci-fi TV series from the nineties. And they're watching every episode from the beginning once every two weeks. It's a lot of fun. And that's Chip and Erica, who I, uh, do podcasts with on The Incomparable. Um, the other ones I wanted to mention uh yeah the flop house is still my number one that's my that's my favorite um i'm you know i'm my must plays atp is a must play every week um beyond that i i would throw out uh i've mentioned it before i think the pause cast which is an irregular podcast with joe posnansky which is why it's p-o-s-c-a-s-t and mike sure it's a sports writer it's basically about sports but it's a sports writer joe posnanski and mike sure is the

creator of uh and or co-creator and co-executive producer of parks and recreation and um and brooklyn 99 and he's one he's an executive producer on master of none um and uh he used to do the great sports blog fire joe morgan and on that show they talk about sports and then they draft arbitrary things so that's why i love it they draft things drafts are great um and then beyond that i don't know there's a bunch of podcasts i've gotten here in overcast with like one episode of that i've that i've listened to i'm sure i'm leaving something out, but honestly, the, the two, you know, I will listen to the talk show, but it's, it's, they're so long and I don't have very much podcast listening time that I pick and choose the guests. That's just how I have to do it. Um, and, uh, yeah, so, so ATP and Flophouse are sort of my two

not affiliated with either network, either network must listens every week. I agree with ATP, obviously. And I've got Hello Internet, which I listen to now that you introduced me to it. But again, I can't listen to every episode because there are just too many podcasts. So I pick and choose there. I've got their flag special queued up on my playlist. That's so good. Yeah. So's so good. Next up, we have the last question today from

Veston. I'm not good at live photos. Is there a place to get other photos to use as my 3D Touch wallpaper? I haven't seen this anywhere, like a place you could download examples of 3D Touch wallpapers. But I feel like it should exist. You're right. How do you get them in there? I don't know.

Because you can send them to people, right? Yeah. can send them to each to people right yeah like i don't know if you know this but if you send a live photo to somebody without um without a 3d touch device they can still view the live photo they just long press on it yeah um but i haven't seen like a way you could download them from anything but i would like that yeah it's a nice idea but yeah I haven't seen it either maybe there's some app out there that will take an animated GIF and turn it into a save it to the camera roll as a live photo

or something like that I don't know if it can go the other way around I don't know I tell you what though after a big trip like to somewhere like New York boy do I love live photos yeah I still treasure that live photo I have where the flash went off and you were blinded

in Indianapolis. That was pretty funny. I don't know if I have the actual live photo of that. Oh, I should send you that. I'll send you that. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't joking last week when I said that you were, you know, you were taking headphones from Marco Arment

because you did visit them at their house. So, oh yeah. In case anybody's noticed, my audio sounds different. Uh, I spent a few days with Marco and have now bought new headphones and new headphone amp and new microphone. And I have a new boom arm on the way. Oh Mike, this is one of the most common, uh, you should have learned your lesson. Like don't spend too much common... You should have learned your lesson. Don't spend too much time with Marco. It's very expensive. Oh, no, I prepared for it financially.

I put a little bit of money aside. You're going to visit Marco, yeah. Because I knew this was going to happen. He's going to show you things. He's going to play things through headphones and you'll hear voices from microphones and you'll be forever changed i'm pretty sure one of the first things that happened when we arrived at their houses you

sat me down and put headphones on my head of course yeah i would expect nothing less so if in case in case anybody's wondering i'm using a microphone now called the neumann kms 105 or something like that it's called. Again, I will put a link to that in the show notes in case anybody is interested. Or I will link to Marco's review, his big podcast review, podcast microphone review. And I'll put a link to the microphone that I'm now using because it's all his fault, really.

Yep. And that wraps up this week's episode. Again, we'd really appreciate it if you love this show, that you would consider becoming a RelayFM member and choosing Upgrade as your show. Or if you love any show at RelayFM,

feel free to support that show. It would mean a lot to the hosts of any show that you do support. If you want to find us online, you can go to our show notes and get all the stuff we've spoken about today over at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 66. Jason is over at sixcolors.com and he is at

jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E Thanks again to our sponsors this week, the great people over at audible.com, Casper and Braintree and thank you most of all for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.

Goodbye everybody.