Upgrade - 75: You Are Terrible to Sick People

Episode Date: February 8, 2016

This week, with Myke on sick leave, Jason is joined by Stephen Hackett to talk about Apple's first-party apps, the future of the Mac and VR pizza.

from your friends at relay fm this is upgrade episode 75 this week's show is brought to you by casper fresh brooks and mail route my name is Stephen Hackett, and I'm joined by the man perched high above San Francisco, Mr. Jason Snow. That's not how my geography works. Hi, you're not Mike Hurley. What happened, Stephen Hackett? You're my co-host for the Liftoff podcast. Are we talking about space today, or are we talking about computers and stuff?

I think we're talking about computers and stuff. Mike Hurley is at home, sick in bed. Yeah, that's it. I think he's feeling a little bit better. But the problem is he sent me an email the other day. The problem is that he is a professional podcasters and he needs to use his voice for that. And we talked about this on a past show, this idea that you almost when you go to conferences and things, you almost need to protect your voice like you were a singer or something because you are a person who uses your voice to make a living. So although Mike is feeling better, his voice is not great. He did a recording session over the weekend. I mean, his voice isn't that great to begin with. Let's just be honest here.

Hi, Mike. But over the weekend, he did a Cortex with Gray. And he said by the end of it, his voice was really rough. And he knew that it would be a problem for today so we um we broke the glass on the emergency backup host and thank you for being here i appreciate you finally letting me out of that little um glass container you guys have kept me in for a year and a half it's oxygenated what is your problem you can breathe it's fine you and scott baio are in that's a that was a super bowl ad callback anyway um did you watch the super bowl no all right good talk good talk i'm glad i did on twitter it's it's fascinating during the sports stuff how people in our community are kind of nerdy computer community they're the people who are sports fans and the people who are not and

i definitely hear from a lot of them ones who are not who said who say um they are surprised because in their world they were the people were either sports fans or they were like nerds but they were not both and and uh you know the fact is lots of people i'm i'm all over the map i'm a mess i i like sports and i like computers and I like movies and TV shows. I like lots of things is what I'm saying. So don't try to pin me down. But this is not a sports podcast, so we will not talk about the superb owl. Other than to say that Mike, sick in bed though he was, was apparently up in the middle of the night in England watching the Super Bowl.

Because he likes to do that. Because I think he likes the spectacle of it. I think he does too. And that, there is a lot of spectacle. I did see something this morning, like a recap of the halftime show and it seems completely crazy, but I was at home, home working, not watching football. Yeah. You were helping put together the document for today. And then I went in, it's funny, you know, traditionally, I don't know about, I don't know about other people, but traditionally one eats dinner and perhaps if you like this sort of thing, has an adult beverage late in the evening. And that's the time when you stop, you know, you stop your working and you move on to relaxation and entertainment and other parts of your life.

And yesterday was super weird because being on the West Coast, especially the Super Bowl starts at like three in the afternoon. And we had people over, we had Phil Michaels and Lisa Schmeiser came over with their daughter and we took a little hike in the neighborhood and we're briefly high above San Francisco. And we came back and I cooked a lot of stuff. I made like a lot of food and it was weird. So, we had a lot of food and I had some beer and it was all sort of in the mid-afternoon, which is not traditional. And then when it was all said and done and they left and my wife's family called and she was talking to them on the phone and I came out here and I sat down and I worked for about an hour and I worked on like what we're going to talk about today and some other stuff. And it was just really funny that that's not

usually how it works, that you have lots of food and drink today and some other stuff. And it was just really funny that that's not usually how it works, that you have lots of food and drink beer and all of that. And then many hours later, you sit down and work for a while. But working at home, I guess that's how it works. Yeah, it's hard to set those boundaries sometimes. But that's enough about us. Let's talk about in the vein of sports. More about us.

Let's talk about the brain sports more and more about us no let's talk about uh the brain ball all-stars okay yeah so uh people have been asking for a long time including you about um doing upgrade merchandise uh because people have been listening to the show for more than a year and we have no upgrade merchandise and now we do so we are working. This is a this is I think a new one for relay. We're working although incomparable has done this for a while with Cotton Bureau. And we have two products available for people if they would like to buy them. I don't want to turn this into an ad read, but it is a little bit because we want you to know that they exist. And they're only going to be on sale until February 19. So you need to get your order in if you want one of these. And the first

one is the Brain Ball t-shirt. So our relay designer, Frank, did an amazing job at designing this shirt. It is a sports t-shirt, except it is for the sport of Brain Ball. It features an orange brain on it, very similar to the one that I have, I'm looking at right now on my desk. And it's labeled the Upgrade All-Stars Brain Ball Established 2014. And you can get that in a navy t-shirt in a couple of different styles, or you can get it in a raglan, which is that sort of, if you think of it as a sort of a softball shirt. It's got, it's two-toned. The sleeves are a different color and they're long sleeves or three-quarter sleeves. So it's pretty cool.

I was really happy with it. We were thinking for a long time of what we wanted to do because we didn't want to just do like an upgrade logo t-shirt. And the Brain Ball is a lot of, it's a fun t-shirt. I'm really looking forward to getting mine. I am ordering mine right now. Okay. All all right did you not know about it before no i did i just haven't done it my sales pitch really uh when you yeah you talked me into it so the other thing that one of the other concepts we had when mike and i were talking about this is um this idea of upgrade your wardrobe we wanted to do something special we wanted to do something that we hadn't done for any of the relay podcast

before and i haven't done for incomparable before and uh so we decided we were going to do something special. We wanted to do something that we hadn't done for any of the relay podcasts before. And I haven't done for incomparable before. And so we decided we were going to do it and it's expensive, but we wanted to do it because we thought it would be a lot of fun. And it's a hoodie. It's the upgrade your wardrobe hoodie. And that link will also be in the show notes. It is it is an independent trading company zip up hoodie. This is actually I actually went to the cotton bureau guys and said, can you get this hoodie? Because this is actually my favorite hoodie. This is going to be your endorsement portion. This is the hoodie I wear.

I have the light and heavy versions. This is the heavier version of it. It's a really great zip hoodie. It's got an embroidered upgrade logo, which is pretty awesome on the front. It's an embroidered patch with the upgrade logo. So you will look like either really in the know podcast listener or possibly a Star Trek character as you wear it. It's beautiful. I love it. And there is a secret design feature of this hoodie that we cannot reveal but those who have the hoodie will be inculcated into a secret society of upgradians who have the upgrade your wardrobe hoodie and uh and that

that is also courtesy of something that frank did that the cotton bureau people worked on us worked with us on it and it's awesome so it is really cool so that's all and that's all we're going to say about it and we know that it's uh we know that it's pricey and the shipping internationally is pricey too and we're sorry about that this is sort of uh this is what we were capable of doing for this round uh so if you would like some upgrade gear please check it out and you've got until february uh the 19th very cool so a little more traditional follow-up now uh over the weekend it looks like apple opened a repair extension program for the late 2013 mac pro upgrade listeners will be well aware that mike owned one of these and if you ever listened

live there were times where his computer would just stop working. And then Jason would be talking into the... I would monologue for a while. Yeah. Answer questions from the chat room while Mike rebooted. Yeah. Yeah. And we had always sort of thought that was a GPU issue.

And it looks like, according to this repair program, that it is. And so there's a whole list of things here. Basically, your computer, of course, has to fall into the manufacturer date. They usually do a serial number check, and you have to be experiencing some symptoms. So some of the ones listed are distorted video, no video, freezing, restarts, preventing the system from starting up, lots of like very power-related type issues. And it seems like Apple is going to take care of these. What's cool about this,

people may not know this about the repair extension program is that say that you don't buy the warranty with the machine. So you don't buy the Apple care. Apple will act as if you have for these specific issues. So say that you have, or you're experiencing this and your computer is out of warranty. Well, they're not going to come replace an SSD if an SSD fails. But if you have this failure and you fall within these parameters, the Apple store, the Genius Bar, AppleCare on the phone will take care of it, which is pretty cool. will take care of it, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, I think given that this has been a problem, obviously, since manufacturing for some of these models, that is the thing they have to do. They would get sued. I suspect they might anyway. I mean, they're always getting sued. But yeah, it's good. So if you've got a Trashcan Mac Pro, you should check it out because even if you are not noticing many problems, I think it's worth seeing if you are eligible for this because this is a problem that will affect – these things should last a long time.

And they cost a lot of money. And this is a physical problem. This is a hardware problem that Apple has taken responsibility for. So I believe Mike's, the owner, the new owner of Mike's Mac Pro will also probably take advantage of this program. But Mike sold it. He sold the Mac Pro. So he doesn't, he's got, he's got a 5K iMac now instead. So he doesn't have to worry about it. Yeah. So if you have thrown your Mac Pro in the trash can, go get it out, dust it off. And that might be a tight fit. Well, I don't know. I got a big trash can here. Oh, okay. All and that might be a tight fit well yeah i don't know i got a big

trash can okay all right a couple mac pros in there the uh the 5sc is in the news again this uh that's the room the rumored uh rumored new small uh replacement for the 5s uh with uh more iphone 6 technology in it um and this is it's funny because Mike and I talked about colored iPhones and colored Apple products, I think last week. And then there's this rumor, I hope we didn't start this rumor, but it's a rumor from, a story from MacRumors that is referencing a Japanese website. So it's,'s you know it's one of those rumor stories but still that there are uh other colors for the uh iphone 5se um including a pink shade that they say is different than the rose gold of it and you know who knows whether

this is real or not and whether it's just one color uh but i love the idea in general of apple as we said last week you know you were looking at you've got all the old hardware you look at those ipod nanos and i guess you get them mostly in in the blue but still they're all it's like it's a blue ipod nano and every time i looked in my drawer of like old ipods that i had at mac world um i was you know here's a pink one, I was, you know, here's a pink one, and here's a red one, and here's a blue one, and here's an orange one. And that gave them all personality. And when I look at my drawer of iPhones and things, you know, it's, oh, that one's silver, that one's darker, metallic, you know, it's just a, it's kind of boring. So I think it would be great if they put colors not just on the 5SE, but everywhere. Yeah, the Nano, I mean, you guys touched on it.

It really is like the example, right? Even though for the ones for my video, I bought all blue ones. Even the shades differ over time. And Apple really, you know, they were playful is the adjective that comes to mind with the iPod Nano. And I think it'd be fun to have that in the iPhone as well. And, you know, maybe this 5SE, I would only imagine, would be lower volume than the other ones. And so maybe it's a way to start doing that, you know,

without committing to a product like the iPhone 6S, which they've just sold. Well, we know that the 5C, right, came in colors. And although that didn't do as well as I think people expected it to, which, you know, in hindsight and although that didn't do as well as i think people expected it to which you know in hindsight is that surprising i mean it was it was i think that was like apple's lesson in um don't just make you know they changed the shell but in the sun and called it a different name but inside it was still the old phone and you know i feel like felt like an aberration for them from their usual thing which is just look, look, it's the old phone. That seems like a simpler conversation to have with people.

So the 5C, but the 5C did that. It had colors and the colorful back and all that. But I don't know. I think the iPod showed us. It was a lot of fun having those colorful things in it. You got to make a choice and for whatever reason choosing between red and blue and and orange and green is more exciting than choosing between you know these various shades of gray perhaps with a a gold tint right uh yeah it's less exciting i don't know i agree we heard from listener luca about this uh shutting off a Mac from an iOS device question.

Yeah, so we had a question on Ask Upgrade about turning off, I think it was turning off Plex on a Mac from an iOS device. And we got three pieces of feedback. So Luca wrote in and said Alfred Remote will do that, which is an iOS app that talks to the Alfred app that runs on the Mac that is an automation app. And so you can run Alfred Remote on that on that computer and turn off the Mac. I'm not sure you might be able to set up a script that turns off Plex and trigger it via Alfred Remote. And also, it's just an interesting idea that, you know, if you use Alfred, you may not even be aware that there's the iOS app that will trigger stuff from your iOS device. But I also heard from listener Simon, who had a very nerdy way of doing this that I thought was cool, which was you have an Apple script that says, you know, tell application Plex to quit.

You put that on the Mac. you put that on the mac um and then you use workflow the ios app and you create a workflow that um that ssh is into your computer and runs the script using the osa script command um and then you do the same thing you with a different script to launch plex i thought that was really uh really clever and I think that would totally work. And then listener David wrote in and said, you can also use similar to the Alfred recommendation, you can also use Keyboard Maestro Control, which is an app that can let you control Keyboard Maestro, another utility to call a QuitPlex macro that you create in Keyboard Maestro. So it sounds like those are all ways, whether you want to build it yourself or whether you want to use a third-party utility

and an app of turning off a Mac or quitting a specific app that's running on the Mac. So lots of options if you want to do that. So thank you to Luca and Simon and David because they all piled on with various ways you could do it. Or you could just use remote desktop using screens or iTeleport or something like that, which is what I usually do, but it's more fiddly for sure. Yeah, I've used the Alfred remote and it really is pretty handy. I have a Mac Mini

hooked up to our television and sometimes if I need, just need to do something quick to that instead of, you know, as good as screens is, especially on the iPad pro, sometimes it's quicker just to, to tell it, to do something as opposed to going and doing it yourself. And I think that's where these scripts and remote firing come in handy when you don't have access to the GUI or don't want to tap around your phone on a visualization of your Mac screen. So lots of good solutions here, I think, for people. Yeah. I think that's all the follow-up we have. I think so. Do you want to tell us about our first sponsor this week?

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So this week, or I guess now last week, there was this big article over on The Verge written by Walt Mossberg. I'm sure you've heard about it by now, so I'm not going to really dive into the article too much, I don't think. But basically, I think his sort of high level argument is that apple's first party apps so things like mail and safari and calendar the apps that apple builds that sort of sit on top of the operating system that those have really fallen down in quality over the last several years several releases both, both on the Mac and iOS, where they kind of meet each other in the service cloud layer. And it really took off. I mean, there's a lot of response to this,

all basically people kind of nodding their head in agreement. And for me, I thought it was an interesting thing to jump off from to talk about what we use, like what first-party apps are in our workflows and what do we rely on that Apple builds besides the OS itself? Yeah, I think the distinction between operating systems and the apps is interesting. And sometimes it's unfair because some of the apps really are part of the operating system process and others are less so. But I do think it's interesting to separate them out and say hey you know how many

of the problems that people have with apple are not the os uh but are there are the uh these first party apps or our services or some combination of both um because apple's doing a lot of jobs here right they're doing hardware and software but and services but the software is actually the os stuff that's more fundamental and then apps that come along with, some of which are kind of tied to fundamental parts of the operating system and others aren't. I'm not using any mail and calendar stuff from Apple at this point.

Are you? I am, actually. I use Mail.app both on the Mac and on iOS, but I feel like the time is coming to an end. And I use, so I use Gmail for my personal stuff and then I use Google apps for work and they work fine. You know, I think it was at Mavericks had like a lot of like really bad Gmail, uh, issues, but it works now fine, but you lose a lot of the sort of extra stuff that you can do on top of Gmail. And for me, those features are becoming more important than being able to use what's built in.

So I do use Mail, but maybe not for too much longer. Yeah, I think probably around the time that you're talking about with Mavericks sort of having very bad Gmail problems, I ended up using, trying a bunch of different apps. And I kept coming back to Mailplane, which is just some pretty stuff on top of the Gmail interface and just the web interface. And I thought that would be something that I, there's no way that I would stick with it. And yet I've stuck with it. And now when I go back to mail, I think, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's better than it was. It's actually mail in, in, uh, in El Capitan is much better than, than it was in some ways. Like it's much more efficient in checking mail than it ever used to be. But I've always had a love hate relationship with mail. Like mail is, you know, it's always been inefficient.

And it felt like something that was built for very, by very particular users for themselves. And that there are lots of ways people use mail outside of working at Apple that mail never really. I mean, the inefficiency was one of the big things is like, it was built for having as much data as you could possibly need. And it would just check IMAP mailboxes in the background and wouldn't prioritize you get new mail and you and you couldn't see it, because it was downloading other things. And it basically would make you wait to see what was in your inbox. And that's just that no mail program should ever do that. But mail mail did that that and it's actually better at that now than it used to be but i think it took apple employees uh working on airplane wi-fi to

discover at last that mail was inefficient at that and it's got you know it's got weird quirks and stuff and you're right if you use features of gmail then it's not um it's not uh fantastic and also a lot of you know people have been trying to reconceptualize mail for a long time. And recently, we've seen a lot of scheduling your mail and prioritizing it like a to-do list and stuff like that. And mail seems behind the curve on all of that as well. Yeah, it does. does and um the the thing about mail that that sort of sticks with me though is that it is so integrated and that with any of these app replacements especially on ios it's hard to um like really integrate a third-party app into all the system stuff the really the way that mail

is because mail's it comes with it and that's for me like all these apps are always going to be a little bit behind until apple if apple allows third-party apps to to swap in as the default like they do on the mac on the mac you can do that most of the time but not on ios yet yeah it's um i had actually had this last night where I mentioned we had Phil and Lisa over to watch the Super Bowl. And they asked for one of the recipes of one of the things that I made. And I wanted to email it to them. And it was on my iPad. And I had the Safari open.

And I thought, I had that moment of like, can I share this? And there are still times. And I was able to share that with Outlook, which I'm using right now and send it that way. But there are times even now where things come up where iOS still really wants to use Apple Mail to send something out. And it's a problem, right? I mean, it means that you always need, I feel like, depending on your settings, there are a lot of people, if you use a third party tool tool, you're basically double-loading everything. Because I think that unless you've got the settings right, you know, mail is still going to load your mail if you've got mail set up, even if you're using some other mail app.

And that's dumb and wasteful. But I think it's just, you know, it's not a drop-in replacement or anything like that. But I wouldn't go back to Apple Mail, I think, this point, because I do like some of those extra features. Even though I think Apple Mail on iOS, I have no problem with it. I think it's fine. I don't think it's burdened by the history of Apple Mail on the desktop. Yeah, one thing I would like to see these third party apps do better at though is multi account support. So I used to use Mailplane when I had a jobby job for my work email. And so everything was just in there and I used Gmail on iOS for that account. And so it was completely like firewalled off from personal email. But now that firewall doesn't really exist anymore. And I've got three accounts I need to check. And like even the Gmail app on iOS, which is pretty good, there's a lot of hoops you have to jump through to see a unified inbox, for instance, which I love on the Mac.

Yeah, unified inbox is... It's like the holy grail of third-party mail apps. Yeah, that would be a reason to not use a system that doesn't unify your inbox. And in fact, that's why when I was working at Macworld, I generally did use a mail app that was not Mailplane because I wanted a unified inbox. I wanted to see all my mail,

even though it was coming from different accounts and going back out through different accounts. I didn't want to, I wanted a list of what mail I needed to deal with. And then eventually the mail problems got so bad because of OS updates and also because of server updates that happened at IDG that I did end up with two separate windows for mail.

And, you know, it's another thing to check. So, I don't know. It's Apple Mail. It's funny that we're in this position where in some cases I really prefer the iOS counterpart of Mac apps. And we're going to talk about the Mac a little bit later, but this is, this is sort of one of those things about technical debt. I feel like where, you know, Apple mail is new, uh, on iOS and on the Mac it's, On iOS and on the Mac, it's based on Next Mail, I think. I mean, it's a much older app for sure.

And I feel this way about the Microsoft Office apps too. Like Office for iOS, I feel like it's such a fresh breath of air. And I don't feel that way about Office on the Mac. And it's kind of not fair because it's an older platform and they've got a lot of users to support who they've been using it for a long time. And it's a different game. But in the end, it's a disadvantage to those Mac apps that they have to support that, you know, that they have that history and they have to support that user base. And, you know, Apple has shown in the past that it is unafraid sometimes to make a big break from the past with something like iMovie or GarageBand. And I wonder if the solution to something like Mail or iTunes, which we should probably also talk about, is taking that kind of bold step with those apps and say, Mail's going to be really different than it's been before. Or iTunes is going to be really different, please, please, than it's been before. Because over, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, just junk builds up on

apps. And iOS really makes it clear because the iOS stuff hasn't had that much time for the junk to build up yet. It's only still building up. Right. What about web browsers? That's another common one, I think think that people swap out. So I use Safari on iOS, but on the Mac I've switched to Chrome full time and have for years now. What about you? I'm Safari all the way, honestly. I use Chrome. Chrome remains my Flash holding pin of, oh, this webpage wants to load a video using flash i will go open that in

chrome but i use um yeah i'm using safari everywhere and part of that is the is just the ecosystem thing right which is that if i have a browser window open uh on my ipad i can call it up on my mac and safari and vice versa because i can see that they're um that they're that they uh there's icCloud tabs. Right, right. So I have access to all that and I have access to the history from place to place. And Safari generally works well for me. There are those moments

where I get really frustrated with Safari, but even then I try Chrome and I get frustrated by it and I come back to Safari. Safari generally works for me, except there was that really sad moment. Was it last year when Google Apps stuff just basically broke in Safari for a while? Basically, I think almost the whole run of Yosemite's version of Safari, it just didn't work. And all the Twitter links don't work half the time in Safari now because of some, I don't know,

redirect problem that a t.co link will just not load. Yeah, I'm sure that's fine. Yeah, who needs Twitter links? Yeah. Yeah. And Chrome has gotten clever. So if you are using handoff and you have something open in Safari on iOS, you can hand it off to Chrome on the Mac and vice versa. But those iCloud tabs, right? So my iPad pro is at home today asleep, and I left tab open in it that I can't get to without using Safari. Safari uses that iCloud tab feature, but the handoff stuff, they've gotten pretty good at sort of pretending to be Safari, which I think is a clever way around it. Cause I don't want to use a third party browser on iOS. Why are you using Chrome? Why are you using chrome why are you using

chrome on mac uh part of it was the uh the yosemite thing google apps thing last year but a big part of it too is that i uh for a couple different things i need different profiles in chrome so chrome you can go in and say you know this this profile is logged into this google apps account and i have one separate for my YouTube creator account because that stuff is crazy and needs to be sandboxed. And so that is helpful in my sort of everyday work. But the big thing is I have found Safari to be, sort of have these weird little bugs with stuff that I need to use,

which was infuriating for a long time because they were both built on WebKit and now that's broken off and Google and Apple are no longer really working together on WebKit. Nope, they're not web buddies anymore. No, they broke up. So for me, I find Chrome to be faster and to sort of be a little more universally supported.

That said, there are problems. I mean, Chrome is very famously a complete energy hog on the mac i mean you can you can see a significant battery life increase if you switch from chrome back to safari but um most of the time it just seems to work better for me and hey it's nice to have nice to have options but um i will grant that it does not feel as native or as refined as Safari does at times. Yeah. So my wife uses Chrome and she prefers it.

And it's a lot of the reasons that you said. And I think that's totally reasonable. I just, it just doesn't seem necessary for me. So I don't do it. But it's purpose, it's a purpose use browser for me, I guess I would say. So like I said, I mean, I can say the video stuff, that's true. But if I ever have a hiccup in Google Apps, I just go to Chrome because it is, obviously, Google is building their apps to work in Chrome for the best experience.

And it is the best experience. They feel much more streamlined and less sluggish than they do on Safari. That's the fact. And yeah, every now and then there are features that Chrome has that Safari doesn't. So like those podcasts, I recorded last week's TV Talk Machine podcast with Tim Goodman. I don't have him record his end of the conversation like we do with most of our podcasts because it's just too much. It's too much he's not a particularly technical guy he's a really insightful tv critic but he's not a technical guy at all and um i've been using cast with him a little bit which is you know try cast t-r-y-c-a dot s-t which is a uh basically it's a podcast service where you

uh set up a podcast and send people a link and they click on the link in Chrome and you have the conversation and it's doing all of the recording and uploading in the background. So you don't have to be technical at all. As long as you've got a microphone, you can be part of the conversation and you get the highest audio quality at the end of it, which is great. But you cannot do that with Safari. Safari doesn't support those protocols yet. Hopefully it will at some point. but until it does, that's an example where it's just like, you got to use Chrome or I think Firefox or something, but I'm not going to use Firefox. I would use, so I use Chrome for some stuff, but I haven't, I haven't completely

switched. I think it's, I think part of it is just comfort and Safari and part of it is the ecosystem. Yeah. So kind of coming to this a little bit, what about mapping? I know for me here in Memphis, Apple Maps has basically always been fine. I've never had the sort of horror stories of it taking me to an abandoned warehouse when I was trying to go to the pediatrician's office. But you spend time in a much bigger city sometimes. How has Maps been for you? in a much bigger city sometimes. Um, how, how has maps been for you? Well, maps is, uh, I am fortunate to live in the area in which Apple, uh, is located. So the maps here are great. The Apple maps are great. Um, and I wrote, I mean, we talked about on the show with, with Mike before that, that I, I used Apple maps a lot on my, in the beta for iOS nine last summer on our road trip. And I thought it worked pretty great. But again, that was a West Coast road trip. And I've heard that in some parts of the US, and especially I've heard in other countries, the Maps data is still bad. But I think the Maps app

is good, and the data is good in some places, right? I think the app itself is not a problem. I think that's more of a a problem. I think that's more of a services problem. Every now and then I get frustrated by the Maps app. And I do try the Google Maps app from time to time, sometimes as a second opinion. And I do use that occasionally. It's a little bit like my Chrome experience where I try to use the Apple stuff, but I will also use the Google stuff from time to time. And I don't have a big problem with it the google stuff is good too i think google adding lane guidance has been really good and that's the place where apple is behind google's lane guidance isn't always reliable but it is i like the idea that it's trying to tell you what lane you need to get in on the freeway

because that can be um you know the the more information you get, the better when you're driving somewhere, especially if it's someplace unfamiliar. So I was in Phoenix the other week and driving on Interstate 10 through Phoenix. And there are a couple of places there where the old, and MAPS still does this, the old style, like in two miles, remain on the road. And you're like, why did you say that? And the answer is because in their map interface, there's an exit only lane. And the way the computer program translates that

is basically to tell you to stay on the road and not exit, which is kind of dumb because you're on the road. So why would you exit? But when you get lane guidance in, you can have a little more intelligence and you can say, you know, stay in the left three lanes. And that's more helpful. Or, you know, use the right two lanes to exit or something like that can be helpful. So when I use Google Maps maps i do recognize that they are uh they're ahead of apple in in uh in terms of data and it's not surprising right it's google google google has been ahead of everybody in terms of that kind of data for a long time what about uh what about notes notes

obviously got a big overhaul this past year i want an upgrade you know mike and i gave it an upgrade so it's true. Big news, big news. Still happy with it. Still waiting for Apple to put the upgrade-y on the notes page on the Apple website. Is there a notes page on the Apple website? I'm sure there is. Yeah.

I was just using it the other day. John Siracusa and I recorded an episode of Robot or Not, and I have a little note that is all of the things that I need to ask him about whether they're robots or not. Um, I've got all my notes of when I watch a movie for the incomparable, those are in there. And, uh, I've got, uh, we just did a, we did an episode of the incomparable where we did an album draft. Um, and I wrote down all the albums that I was thinking of drafting and that in notes. So I use notes as just a holding bin for stuff. And the biggest reason is because it's capable of doing everything I want and it syncs to all of my devices. And that's what I want.

You know, I don't want to use, I don't want to save things in a text file on my Mac if I know that I'm going to be using them on my iPad because then what I'm going to maybe go to Dropbox if I saved it in Dropbox. It's just not worth it. Just put it in notes and then it'll show up on my iPhone and my iPad because then what I'm going to maybe go to Dropbox if I saved it in Dropbox. It's just not worth it. Just put in notes and then it'll show up on my iPhone and my iPad. So that's I definitely use it. Do you do you use notes? I do for some stuff. I went real heavy into it when it first showed up this past year. And I've since reverted kind of back to where I

was where I have most of the stuff that I keep notes on live as plain text files on Dropbox. And I use NV alt on the Mac and one writer, which Federico turned me on to on iOS. And one road is a really great trick where it downloads the file locally. So if you're offline with your iOS device, you can edit the document that it syncs back with Dropbox when it comes online, which kind of solves that problem that you were talking about. It's like, well, it's on Dropbox or it's on the Mac. I don't know where it is. One writer does a good job of that. But notes is still definitely used. For example, you said that sort of like short burst stuff. Hey, I just need, you know, like I need to run to the store. This is what I need to get. Or if I'm just sort of stuck somewhere, I just need to get some thoughts out of my head

and just get something out of my brain into something else. Like just this past week, we had some concrete work done at our house and so I'm on the phone with the contractor and he's kind of telling me the line items and the prices and everything before he sends me over the document. And I'm just kind of just taking notes on our phone call.

And like, yeah, these are the questions I need to ask. This is what I need to look out for. This is the day that my kids can walk on the concrete without sinking into it. Just that little sort of stuff that doesn't have a home anywhere else. I found notes to be really, really good at. Yeah, notes. I think that's becoming the consensus is that this laughingstock kind of app is actually now pretty good. I also use Reminders, which I don't use a lot. It's not like my to-do. Well, I guess it is. I don't have a to-do system.

Let's put it that way. I don't have a to-do system, but I have Reminders lists. I have a Reminders list, especially I have a working list of, like, story ideas colors and uh in my macroll column um so i use it for that and then i use the integration with uh with siri to do any list uh shopping list stuff and that all goes through reminders but that's that's about that's about it for that but i do that that i don't use another to-do list so reminders is my to-do list i suppose that has given me heartburn thinking about not having a task management system well I don't use another to-do list. So reminders is my to-do list, I suppose. That has given me heartburn thinking about not having a task management system. Well, that is one of the ways where we are totally different people.

I have no task. I have tried all the task management systems. This is a topic Mike and I should talk about this. Maybe there should be an intervention or something. But I've tried all the task management systems, and I just can't get them. I can't get into them. I can't use them. I've tried them all, and systems and I just, I can't get them. I can't get into them. I can't use them. I've tried them all and it just doesn't, it just doesn't stick for me. So this is why I am a complete abject failure who never does anything.

Somehow I get it all done, but it's not through a system. So yeah, I'm sweating thinking about that. Yeah, I'm sure. I use OmniFocus for all that stuff, but I do use Reminders. They're shared, the shared list. So in Reminders, you can say, hey, I want to share this list with another iCloud email address. And that person can go in there, and you both have read-write access to the list. And so my wife and I keep one for the grocery store.

And then we kind of keep a second one for like like non-grocery store shopping so like Target or whatever and so if like just uh yesterday um coming home and she took the kids in uh to pick up something to eat at a restaurant to go and I went to the grocery store next door we didn't have to like sit in the car and be like oh do we have this do we need this um it was very much a, hey, I know it's in Reminders, so I can just pop into Kroger and buy these eight things and everyone's happy and everyone knows what's going on. So it's the shared functionality in Reminders is really what made it click for us. And I really hope that Notes gets that soon where you can say,

hey, you know what, this Note my wife and i share and we both have access to it i think that'd be a really logical place for notes to extend in the near future that makes that makes a lot of sense i realized that i could horrify and excite mike by telling him that my entire to-do system is just writing things down on scraps of paper because he would be horrified because that's not a system but i would have to use a pen it's uh you'd make his day and destroy his day all in one move all at once so we should we touch before we move on off this topic we should we touch the the third rail of uh of uh apps which is itunes and apple music on ios you just said the sobs of sadness well there you go so i mean i use itunes every day i'm not apple music subscriber listeners of connected will know that no streaming music service has

really entered my life in any meaningful way yet so i have a bunch of files on disc that itunes can play and i sync them uh to my iphone and my iPhone and my iPad and an iPod Nano I used to work out with and that sort of thing. And iTunes has gotten pretty bad, and anyone who has opened iTunes any time recently knows that, where things that used to be simple and things that used to be fast are neither simple nor fast anymore. neither simple nor fast anymore and they've it's become bloated in a way that like you said you know these apps pick up weight as they go they go along and they pick up features they don't need i mean i know this for a fact because i uh have a problem the current version of itunes you can restore an original ipod from 2001 in and like sync music to it like i love that it's collector but like that doesn't need to be there why is that still there i think it's really time for itunes

on the mac to either get broken up into different apps or to really see some of this stuff go away and i know from they need to do they need to do X on it, right? They need to do that Final Cut 10, that Logic 10, that GarageBand 10, whatever it is. It's that, hey, we still call it maybe this thing, but it's not this thing anymore. Or just change the name of it, too. Because although people are like, no, you can't change the name iTunes. iTunes is important. Well, there could be an iTunes app like is on ios that's just like the store and stuff um and and that would be fine but the itunes app i i think i mean everybody seems to

be in agreement about this it's just you gotta blow it up you gotta you gotta blow the thing up what is the line from aliens pull out nuke the site from orbit it's the only way to be sure i think that's what you got to do and they may be doing it i mean they may have spent the last two years trying to do this and it just hasn't happened yet. But iTunes, as a product, just can't stand. It cannot continue. It's been a disaster for years. And I use it every day.

And it's a mess. And it's doing 10 things at once. It doesn't make any sense. It's like an operating system unto itself. And it's got to go. They should make a very nice music player that is integrated super well with iCloud. And that'll be a great app. And they can make a syncing app for all their devices and device data. And you know, it's not like they have, you know, you control your syncing from the Photos app, which is another Apple app that I use all the time, you know, Photos isn't

built into iTunes. It's got a place in iTunes where you can sync your photos and it talks to Photos and it looks at the Photos database and lets you pick albums. So it's not like these apps have to live together and be the same app. They can talk to each other. So you make a syncing app and you make a music app and you make a store app and make them all good. They used to have a syncing app. They could just bring it back. iSync. iSync, they could bring it back. But it's just not, I mean, it's not good.

It's just a mess right now. Yeah, and I think this idea that apps gain new features over time and they become sort of something that they would never intend to be, I think that's what's happening to music.app on iOS, where it started out really simply. I can seek music from my computer over and I can listen to it. And then they added purchasing, which I think they did a pretty good job of, if memory serves me correctly, of being able to download new music from the iTunes store on your device and do what it's supposed to do. But Apple Music being bolted to the back of all of that, Joe Steele is in the chat room just jumping up and down, screaming about it.

It's really not gone well for a lot of people, and even someone who doesn't use it, it's annoying that it's there. And I've actually resorted to turning on parental controls on my device to get rid of some of it, so I don't have to see it. And I really think Apple Music

would be better served in its own app. But I feel like if they were going to do that, they would have done it. And they obviously spent time merging the two. And so I think that's what Apple views the best way to do it. I think so. Well, I think they could do a better job keeping them separate. I think one of the most disappointing things i use the music app and i think it's fine although it's overly complicated um i can use it i can get what i want out of it but um and we should put a link in the notes joe steel did write a piece uh it's a little bit ranty but that's okay he was he was in the mood to rant um about he tried using uh the amazon prime music app and it's a it's instructive in how it's trying to do a very similar thing to what Apple does and does it in a very different way and a more probably a better way than what Apple is doing. We'll put it that way. like Apple made decisions in the music app design to push everybody who uses their iPhone to listen

to music or their iPad or their iPod touch to push Apple music on them. That's the problem I have with it is I don't feel when I look at that app, I don't look at it and say, well, the reason that they did this this way is because it makes it easier on the customer. It makes it easier on the user. It feels to me like somebody said, do you realize the only way that this music service we're launching is going to succeed is if we get in the face of everybody who listens to music. So let's get in their faces at all times and make it really hard for them to use this without using Apple Music so that Apple Music will be something that people just get to, you know, because they're confused or, you know, and, you know, maybe nobody said, let's confuse them and make their lives hard. But it really feels like they're saying, let's push Apple Music. We need to push Apple Music.

This needs to be an app that is really pushing our service. This needs to be an app that is really pushing our service. And that's the thing that bothers me about it is that I think that I just get that feeling that these were not decisions made to make me happy as a user. Even as an Apple Music subscriber, they were made to get the eyeballs who use the app to be aware that Apple has a subscription music service and that's not it needs to not do that yeah it it feels very unapple like right you launch music for the first time and you get a full screen ad for the apple music service and our goofy that feels like a decision that was well done by business people and not people who were concerned with that user experience that apple says it prides itself on and even even as an apple music subscriber which i am the the prioritization of the tabs is ridiculous on itunes and on apple music where it's sort of like um an apple music music.app right it's it's uh it's like for you and new and in the corner is my library. You know, maybe that Apple, that's a major philosophical change to say, what's really important to you is our stuff

and not your stuff. And I just don't agree. I think that's a mistake. I think if I have music in my library, my library is important to me, and I should be able to play the music in my library. And as an iOS user, you don't have really another choice to play music unless you're using another streaming service. But if you have music that you want to load onto your device, you're probably going to use what used to be the iPod app back in the day. And instead you know, instead, it's kind of off in the corner of this subscription service app. And the integration between the two is nice, it could be better, actually, as a subscriber, I kind of want it to be better, because there are too many times when

I'm searching for something, and I have to decide where I want to search for it. But and then iTunes is in there too, which is even more confusing. And on on on the mac where you're you're in some context you're searching either your library or itunes and another context it's either your library or apple music um because there's three different sources of information the the purchases and the and the streaming i don't know it's it's a mess and i'm not saying that it's easy um to do i this is a hard problem but uh you know amazon took approach, and it's simpler, and it's – and their challenge is a little bit easier, but still. This is work that needs to be done, and I just can't help but feel like we have – the evidence we've got is that iTunes hasn't gotten any better. And that the music app is – feels kind of like an ad for Apple

Music. And this is a relationship that needs to be repaired, I guess is what I'm saying. It is. And, you know, in thinking about this whole discussion about Apple software quality, and then just the exercise you and I went through of, well, what do we use and what do we not use? quality, and then just the exercise you and I went through of, well, what do we use and what do we not use? The other angle that I can't help but think about is that I do think that conversational quality is, I think it's a real thing. I think it's something worth discussing. But it's also an angle where some of these apps and these tools just aren't meant for us, where where some of these apps and these tools just aren't meant for us, where you and I and people listening are to a degree, you know, some sort of power user somewhere on that spectrum of computer users and iOS users

and people, technology enthusiasts who do know and care about the differences between something like OmniFocus and Reminders or something like iCloud, Keychain, and 1Password, right? Like on the surface, they do sort of the same thing, but if you get into it and you care to get into it, you know that they're different. And I think that's sort of something to remain aware of in this conversation that just because Reminders, for instance, doesn't meet my needs doesn't mean it's a bad app necessarily. It just means that it's not for me. And that's totally fine. And I completely understand that Apple has to write their first party apps to aim for the masses.

And the masses don't know or care about snoozing your email. And there are a segment of people who do care about that. And they're, you know are the people that we talk to on Twitter and listen to the shows and are on the shows. But that's an important thing to remember that you and I might have problems with mail, but a lot of people don't. And they might run into software issues, and that's that other sort of rail to this conversation. But it's easy, I think, and it's tempting to sort of conflate those two things in this argument. And it's something that I try to be aware of, that just because something doesn't meet my needs doesn't mean that it's bad. Yeah, exactly right. It's something we should always keep in mind, right?

That's the constant challenge of – when I was talking about difficulty earlier, I mean, these aren't easy things. When I was talking about difficulty earlier, I mean, these aren't easy things. Apple has to build tools for the 99% of users, right? There is a small percentage of people who are going to want to do more. But we are a small percentage of people. And we are those people, right? Whether we're 1% or half a percent or 10% or 5%, whatever it is, Apple's responsibility is first to everybody. And keeping it simple is a part of that. Unfortunately, with something like Apple Music, it feels like, you know,

they're not keeping it simple, either. But I don't expect Apple Mail to ever transform into a superpower kind of feature. Although I do feel like Apple Mail to ever transform into a superpower kind of feature. Although I do feel like Apple Mail maybe could be a place where Apple could say, wouldn't it be nice if we told you about this email on Monday that you got over the weekend? They could try that, but they would have to be thinking, you know, who's their audience for that app? And then getting out of the way and letting the third parties, and they have, right? I mean, you don't have to use Apple Mail, so that's fine.

Yeah, I think there's always going to be that tension there, and that's not a uniquely Apple problem, but it's one that I feel is more sort of acutely felt by people who are on our side of it who do need or want more and then throw that in with the, oh, it's also sort of unreliely felt by people who are on our side of it, who do need or want more, and then throw that in with the, oh, it's also sort of unreliable at times. It's kind of a nasty one-two punch. Software, Jason, how does it work? How does it work? Well, so we're going to talk about the Mac a little bit more, but we should take a break first. You want to tell people about our next sponsor? I do. You know, on Upgrade, there's a lot of conversation about the way technology shapes our lives for the better. And we're super excited to welcome FreshBooks as our newest sponsor,

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trial to listeners of this show. No credit card required. So to go claim your 30 days of unrestricted use, go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and enter the offer code upgrade in the how you heard about it section. So FreshBooks know you came from us. Thank you so much to FreshBooks for sponsoring upgrade and all of RelayFM. Yay. The Mac. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to talk for a little bit. Not too long. We've been, we went on about software for a while, but I want to talk about the Mac. One reason is because you are here and you are a Mac aficionado and historian, I suppose,

at this point, and collector of old Mac things including uh most recently a 20th anniversary macintosh it's actually right i left it at the office it's actually like right here right next to me oh yeah yeah a guy in a tuxedo used to bring that to people when they paid seven thousand dollars in in uh what 1995 uh money 1996 money uh 98 1998 money i did not i did not pay that but i also did not did not come with a tuxedo so what can you do it wasn't it was 98 97 97 because it was we got we got ours at mac user when i was at mac user so it would have to have been like spring of uh of us 97 yeah there you go it's a weird computer um yes it is it's super weird um it's one of the weirdest macs ever made but but you know and you've got you've got a lot of old apple hardware

stuff but but i wanted to bring it up because you were on and also because dan moran wrote a piece on macworld last week that was really nice that phil schiller retweeted which i thought was um i thought that was really cool which was about the staying power of the Mac. And I just wanted, we talk a lot about like we've just done iOS stuff and all that. I thought it was worth taking a minute and talking about the not losing sight of the appeal of the Mac and the power of the Mac. I mean, you are a Mac user primarily, right? I mean, you're not doing your job on an iPad, are you? No, I're not doing your job on an iPad, are you?

No, I'm not. And that is the underlying tension of my show with Mike and Federico, that Federico has been iOS first for a long time, and Mike has turned that way recently with the iPad Pro. And for me, though, it's not that I can't do my work on the iPad, because for the most part, Mike and I's jobs are basically the same, you know, what, what he does on his iPad, I could do on my iPad, but I still find the Mac to be the place where I'm the most comfortable and the most efficient. And so for me, when it's time to, to sit down and get something done, I'm going to, I'm going to reach for my MacBook pro, uh, even over the, the new iPad Pro, which I like. Yeah, yeah. I've been trying to consider my Mac my work. And I'm gesturing now and nobody can see it

because that's really good bad podcasting. I use my Mac in my office. And what I'm not doing is bringing the laptop out into the house much the office is is separate i got the door closed i'm in here the rest of the house is out there and and that's that's what i'm trying to do but i you know that also means that although i can and do use the ipad pro for work And I will sometimes go into the house and write some stuff in there. And I usually use the iPad Pro for that. My work context is the Mac, and I do rely on the Mac for this stuff. And I can't really imagine working. I can work in short bursts, or maybe even on a vacation if I could get podcasting to work without bringing a laptop.

But I cannot envision at this point, as much as I am enjoying trying to imagine life where you only work on an iPad, I can't envision that as my life at this point, the the Mac allows me to be so, so productive, having this big screen, having the powerful computer, having all the software and scripting and all sorts of other things. And some of that is I'll acknowledge because I've been using the Mac since what 1990. A long time. But, but it's this is my, you know, this is my workplace, essentially, is the screen of this 5k iMac is my workplace. I think there's something to be said for that. And I have thought a lot about

that sort of approach. So I think we're talking about this March event be said for that. And I have thought a lot about that sort of approach. I think we're talking about this March event here in a second, but I currently use a current generation, so with the Force Touch trackpad, 15-inch MacBook Pro. And my thought was, hey, I'm going to use this thing as a laptop alone a bunch of the time because I had this vision when I went self-employed of I'm going to go work at a co-working space or go work at a coffee shop. And even here, I'm at my office now and I have a

display and a keyboard and a mouse in front of me and I dock the thing just like I do at home. And so I have been thinking about, well, I don't think the 15 inch fits me the way that I thought it would. I bought this over the summer right before I quit my job. Maybe, maybe I should do something different. Maybe I should go with an iMac and then maybe like the 13 inch pro or maybe even a loaded MacBook Air as my, when I need a notebook and then try the iPad pro to sort of fill that space that you were talking about where right now, if I'm going to do something sort of out in the that you were talking about where right now if i'm going to do something sort of out in the house to use your your language um it's going to be my macbook pro and it already has my work stuff on it so i'm just going to go do work like it because it's there

because that's the context in which i work and so i i really like that idea of using the ipad sort of as a not only a secondary, but a device for a different purpose and not for me for years, the frustration of iOS was I'm trying to recreate what I have on the Mac on this tablet or on this phone. And when it finally clicked for me, it was like, that's not the way I should approach this. I should approach this, that this is a very different device, different form factor, different UI, different class of applications. And I should maybe treat them differently in my approach. And when I sort of stumbled upon that, it really sort of changed the game for me a little bit.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. When I talk about context switching, it's a little bit of that. Like when I am writing on my iPad, it is because I want to be out of my office. And I will go to the bar in my kitchen and put the iPad there and stand up and right there. Or I will go sit on the couch and do something that is, you know, it's not, I'm using it as a change of pace and it works really well as that. I also feel like there's, you know, the iPad. I was talking over the weekend to a librarian at my local library. And she was saying how she asked me about when are they going to make the iPad more advanced so it's more like a computer. That's's literally what

she said. And I tried to explain to her that Microsoft is because they make PCs and they've sort of failed when it comes to the smartphone especially, but the tablet to a certain degree, that they're trying to now make PCs that are also tablets. The Surface is powered by Windows and the Surface Book, right, which is kind of a disaster in terms of being a tablet because it has very little battery life and has to have a second processor and all this stuff. But Microsoft is committed to convergence because their business makes them – the strength of their business is in PCs, so they want to converge them. Whereas Apple is still fighting it, right? Apple still wants to not make a toaster fridge. They want to have iOS devices and they want to have ios devices and and they

want to have macs and and so i started to wonder while i was talking to her um things like you know apple's stated philosophy is we want to keep those things separately what does it mean when the ipad sales are faltering like they are is that good for the mac because they they are making things like the macbook which is obviously inspired by the iPad, but it's a Mac. Or, you know, do we think that's good for the Mac? Or is that a concern that if the iPad is faltering, Apple might try to do something rash, like make a toaster fridge? It is a question. And I have a tendency to believe guys like Phil Schiller when they say we're going to keep these things separate. But at the same time, you guys spoke about it last week, that free fall the iPad bends us in. I can't help but think the iPad Pro to a degree was a reaction to that. I think the iPad Pro is a great product. I, like you and Mike, bought one and love it.

bought one and love it. And, um, but I can't help but think that maybe this was a, Hey, we need to try something new here. Let's go bigger. Let's put a keyboard on. Let's make it more of a professional tool. And, uh, as opposed to maybe how people are using them now. Uh, but all that aside for now, at least they are separate. And I think that the fact that the Mac has done so well for so long, it's what, 32 years? That's a heck of a run. And with OS X now being really 15 years old or so, kind of depending on how you count it, that's a good run as well. And it's in many ways a very stable platform and a very mature platform. You see all this churn in iOS still of doing a lot of new things and trying new things, adding things like extensions and redoing the interface a couple of years ago. You don't see that on the Mac as much now, right? The Mac has settled down.

Right. And I think that's good. I think it's for people like you and I who depend on them every day. I'm kind of glad that the Mac's wild days seem to be behind it. I don't want them to roll out a new version of OS X and all of a sudden I have major compatibility issues with a bunch of the software I use. And that wasn't always the case. It really wasn't the case when I first came to the Mac. There was a lot of churn. I came right during the 9 to 10 transition. I learned all the ins and outs of the classic Mac OS.

I'm like, oh, that's going away, by the way. I know you just learned how to debug Apple Talk nodes, but that doesn't really matter anymore. The first five years in any operating system are like the Wild West. We got to see that in the early days of OS X. That happened in iOS. Even on iOS, it's shaking out happened and in ios and it's sort of even on ios it's shaking out but in the mac it's sort of shaken out exactly so i mean so you've got a 5k iMac what do you hope to see from from apple with the mac of the next year or so well that's i'm curious about that i mean all these talk about like an ios event in march or an Apple event in March.

And I keep thinking, when are we going to see that story about when new Macs are coming? Like, I would like to know when new Macs are coming. And nobody's talking about it. And I started to wonder, would there be new Macs at that event in March? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. You know, does anybody care? Or is the iPhone the, you know, the iPhone and pushing

the iPad? Is that the focus and the Mac will happen on its own timeline? I mean, inside Apple, there's a Mac team. And there, you know, there's a Mac PR team, not just a Mac, like technical team, there's a Mac PR team. And there's an iPhone PR team. And there's a, you know, an iPad PR team. So it's not like they would have to work together on that or they can just go their own way and plan their own quieter Mac rollout. And maybe it's not even an event. It's press briefings or something like that. But I do wonder about that. Everybody keeps talking about how they need to turn over to the new Intel processor architecture. And they are, a lot of people are looking at Thunderbolt,

and Thunderbolt 3, which is pin compatible or port compatible, plug compatible with USB-C, right? So I think all of us kind of hope that that's the big story on the Mac in 2016, is this move to the USB-C plug, but it's actually Thunderbolt 3, so it kind of can do anything. usbc plug but it's actually thunderbolt 3 so it kind of can do anything um and i think that would be great uh i also am really curious to see what happens with the macbook and if they re refashion it in some way and uh upgrade it or if they just sort of let it ride and say it's nope it's still gonna be what it is maybe they make that a thunderbolt 3 port but, it's still going to be what it is. Maybe they make that a Thunderbolt 3 port, but otherwise it's just sort of like one port, that's it, sorry. It is what it is. Or if they go, okay, two ports.

Or if they just take the headphone jack away and laugh at us. I don't know. The MacBook, I think, is the most interesting one to look at. I'm with you. I really can't decide if this is going to be like that first MacBook Air. And then a couple years later they say, hey, you know what? We're going to keep the name and we're going to keep this idea of being thin and light. But we've rebuilt the entire thing from the board up.

The little drop-down door is gone. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. The iPod hard drive. I don't want to run a computer on an iPod hard drive. It's a terrible idea. So I think the MacBooks is one to watch, but I do think this storyline of Skylake and Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C, like that's an interesting

one. You know, for me having a current MacBook Pro, part of this too is like, well, I have a Thunderbolt display at home and I've got a Thunderbolt dock here at the office. Uh, is all that stuff going to work if I buy a new MacBook Pro? Am I going to be able to adapt down to what I have now? Am I going to spend even more money if they also release a Retina Thunderbolt display that works with the new machines? Like if they do that, I am just, I'm in trouble. So I think, I feel like the Mac is like on the edge of this like big upgrade that we see every three, four, or five years. I think we saw it when they went unibody.

I think we saw it when they went retina. I think we're going to see it again now where sort of the underlying technologies that we've had for a long time, for several years now, it's time to get those changed out. And I think that's exciting. I hope that they have some products ready in March. I think they probably will. But I do think the iOS is going to be the push. And maybe this will be a press release type thing.

I see some rumors, but they're like DigiTimes kind of rumors. So the batting average isn't fantastic. But there are rumors that we might see an announcement of the new MacBook and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Skylake and USB-C Thunderbolt 3 at the March event. But who knows? Who knows? Apple's going to calculate how they want to communicate that. And is that the best place to talk about the Mac? Or are they better off kind of targeting?

We've seen them. They roll products out in all sorts of ways now. They do briefings and make announcements with press releases and embargo drops. And sometimes they do events. So, you know, maybe they would mention something on stage in March or maybe they would

wait until April or something and then announce it in some other way. But if those rumors are accurate, then that would be really nice because then we're seeing the beginning of a wave of Skylake and Thunderbolt 3

Mac updates that would carry us for the rest of the year, which would be, that would be awesome. I think so. So I guess we'll see, you know. I might actually, that might be enough to make me think that the MacBook is a product I might buy someday,

even though I don't like the keyboard. That might be Thunderbolt, the Thunderbolt 3 and the ability to have that kind of connection speed and power would be intriguing, at least. I don't know. I think so. All right, we should do some Ask Upgrade.

We should. Even though Mike's not here. That's the first question is, where's Mike? And the answer is, in bed. Still gone. Still gone. He'll be back next week, probably. He's feeling better.

We need to get his voice better. Send him some honey and some lemon and some tea. Squirt the lemon in his eye, pour the honey on his face. And you're terrible. You're terrible to sick people. Splash the tea on his chest. I think that's how you do it.

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sponsoring hashtag ask upgrade all right that's the first try at lasers but i'll take it it was more like that was like a six gun that was like an old west shoot them out hey there partner it's time for the lasers i definitely was doing finger guns as i said it like i'm not ashamed to admit that to lots and lots of people those were six shooters not lasers i'm just letting you know so well reload them it's different here in the south jeff asks will apple release an ipad air 3 keyboard at launch um wow well if they've got a smart connector there's got to be something attached to it right why would they put a smart connector the rumor is that there'll be a smart connector on the ipad air 3 why would you do that and have no no accessories for it so i i'm gonna say yes um i wonder what that will be i wonder how you can do that because it can't be a full-sized keyboard for that. But maybe instead they'll do something, just thinking off the top of my head, maybe they'll

have a partner, something like the Logitech Create keyboard. Maybe they'll have a partner, perhaps even Logitech, that has a keyboard that you sort of snap into a case and it's a full-sized keyboard and you put the Air 3 in it, maybe a Create for ipad air three because the problem is if you do it as a cover um it's not going to be a full-size keyboard because the ipad air is smaller than the ipad pro so the keyboard has to be smaller um so that would be if i had to predict that's what my prediction would be is that they'll work with a partner instead yeah i tend to agree i think the

the the width issue is the only thing that really breaks this smaller smart keyboard down for me where the ipad pro smart keyboard is pretty nice to type on because you have the width of a regular yeah keyboard but by the time you put you know you put the keyboard in it you have all the stuff that goes around it and you got to fold it up and everything um it's going to be a little squished and uh apple made such a big deal about this is a full-size keyboard you know they always push that language i think it'd be weird for them to say oh this is almost what we usually sell but it's like 70 the size sorry again maybe they'll do it but my guess is that they they'll have some other sort of solution to get around it where the keyboard can be wider than the iPad itself.

Unless the keyboard unfolds or something. That'd be very exciting. But it seems unlikely. That's my feeling. But thanks, Jeff. Michael, not our Michael. Another Michael. Properly spelled Michael.

Are there any classic Mac slash apple devices you'd love to use again if stuffed with modern specs and features wow it's a good one it's a good question i would love even though the screen would be small i would love a uh i would love a an original iphone with modern specs. I think that would be amazing because I love the design of the original iPhone. It's got some issues. It's got some compromises, but I do love it. So that would be something I would try.

I do have a fourth generation iPod that I installed a flash drive in. So it's got, you know, huge capacity and doesn't make any, you know, spinning up noises and vibrations or anything like that because it's entirely solid state now and that's kind of fun because it's a big ipod but there's nothing in it it's super light um and in terms of other stuff i don't know i mean you know my real my real answer my non-fantasy answer is I'd really like my 11-inch MacBook Air to be Retina. Honestly. Yeah. Yeah. You'd like a current computer to be modern.

Yeah, I would like my 11-inch MacBook Air. I don't even need, you know, new ports and stuff in it. And it's got an i7 in it. It's a very powerful system. I would love a Retina screen in it like it is in the MacBook. That would be my dream because that would make it a much better system if it was just Retina. What about you, Stephen? For me, the hardware device that comes to mind almost immediately is the iMac G4.

So those playing along at home, it's not like the Bondi Blue iMac. It was a white, like a volleyball cut in half. Yeah, a sawed-off volleyball yeah exactly as and the arm uh there was a chrome arm and an lcd floated above it so you could you could have the display at any angle you want to I have one of these unfortunately the neck has sort of lost its rigidity so that it sort of droops but it's still a stunning design and the the beauty of it is you could do basically anything with it that was comfortable for you.

So people used it real down low and hunched over. Some people brought it all the way up and it was just really flexible. Someone could sit down next to you and you could basically just push the edge of the display away from you and it would pivot over. So you could show your desk mate or something, which you were working on. Huh? It was a really,

just a great, a great looking machine. And one that I think would be, um, I think it'd be would be fun to have a modern equivalent to it because the G4, not so modern anymore. No. I did have one other answer, though. I'm going to take the spirit of Michael's question and apply it to software. I think that HyperCard would be really great to bring back. And HyperCard did a bunch of things.

We'll put a Wikipedia link in the show notes so you can kind of read up on it. But HyperCard was the place that so many people first learned about programming. And not in the sense that you're sitting down and writing code, but in the way that I have this data and I need to manipulate it this way.

I need it to trigger something else over here and build this thing for me here. And the ability to link things together, um, was, was really revolutionary for a lot of people, I think. And it,

um, you know, automator has some of that spirit in it where you can get into automator, do some of this. Of course, Apple script has a lot of this in it as well, but the, the hypercard interface and the way that it was put together,

I think just really clicked with so many people who are admittedly older than I am, but made a big difference in a lot of people's computing experience. And I think got a lot of people hooked into sort of programming and making the computer work for them. especially iOS could benefit from something like this, where you could go in and create little programs and, and do a little bit of development work to solve a problem that only you have. But in a way that's not at all, I guess, intimidating, you know, if I think about learning how to how to write an app, it's really intimidating to think about and HyperCard sort of had a real low barrier to entry. I think that was a pretty unique combination of things. HyperCard sort of had a real low barrier to entry. I think that was a pretty unique combination of things.

Yeah, there have been a lot of attempts to create like a HyperCard for the web, or a cloud HyperCard, a HyperCard web app. And I don't know. I mean, it's interesting. The idea of something, you could argue in some ways that the web is kind of hypercardy but it's too complicated as it is so um yeah and if you search you can see lots of think pieces over the last five years saying the web needs a hypercard the ipad needs a hypercard but you know having there is power to having something that just comes on your on your device that lets you as especially if you're a kid, like create some really basic,

often kind of dumb stuff, the equivalent of what I did on my Apple II of 10 print, hello, 20, go to 10. Oh, look, it says hello a lot forever until you break the program. But you should have something like that. And so, yeah, that's a cool idea. That's definitely something that would be fun if you could could use your magic wand create a modern uh hypercard somewhere

justin asks how do the speakers on the ipad pro compared to the speakers in mac laptops uh yeah actually uh last night played a same the same song on my iPad Pro, and then I have the 15-inch MacBook Pro, but the speaker modules are basically the same. Oh, the 15-inches have a grill. Anyways, I digress. I will say the Mac speakers are still better, but not by much. The iPad Pro is worlds better, both in terms of volume and clarity,

than any other iOS device. Yes. They're really giving the laptops a run for their money and uh it's it's interesting the ipad pro if you're not familiar has speakers on both both ends of it so if you're in in landscape for instance like watching something on netflix uh the sound sort of comes from everywhere around you it's really pretty great and the stereo effect is really noticeable yeah yeah it's it's so much better than what we have now on ipads on other ipads but it was sort of funny sitting on the uh the couch of the night watching something on

netflix and my wife was like that's that seems loud i was like oh yeah because it generally like the way that i sat on the couch the speaker would fire towards the back of the couch like just the way i was holding my ipad the way i was sitting and now it kind of comes up from both sides and it was sort of just a funny little example of how the ipad pro speakers have changed but um it it's definitely a huge improvement and i would say if they're not already as good as the the notebooks uh the the macbook pros uh it's definitely neck and neck at this point, I think. And I only have MacBook Airs in this house and it's better than those. Yeah, the MacBook Air speaker is not very good.

No. I will say the MacBook, the little one, and my wife has one, the speakers in that thing are really good, especially considering the size. Better than the Air. You know, the Air speaker is actually like inside the aluminum case

and they like fire through the case and it's kind of strange. But anyways. Yeah, up through the keyboard or something it's weird yeah it's like it's so close to being a direct line but uh but not so much all right one last question yeah yeah chris wants to know uh what is your perfect pizza uh well mine my perfect pizza has gluten in it steven i'll tell you that and dairy and dairy sad sad question for me yeah ouch sorry to sorry to bring it up uh my perfect pizza i don't know uh i'll say homemade dough because i i make my own pizza dough and i i do like it um and i'd say my perfect pizza is uh oh joe steel is in the chat room i hope'd say my perfect pizza is, oh, Joe Steele is in the chat room, I hope, right now.

My favorite pizza is pepperoni and pineapple. And so that would be it. It would be pepperoni and pineapple pizza. I love it. And it's perfect. And that would really be it. That would be my perfect pizza. John Syracuse would, at this point, say that's not a pizza.

I don't care. That would be my perfect pizza. I miss pizza. Yeah. Yeah, and you can't. The thing is, you could get a gluten-free crust that would probably be okay. They're terrible. But then they're, well, the cheese would make it all better, but you can't have the dairy either.

It's true, uh vegan cheese is the worst yeah so i've not found a single one that is uh edible so i've just given it up yeah so your pizza is is one full of gluten and dairy that you can digest yeah exactly a dream pizza if you will yes uh if i had a different body then i could eat pizza again all right i don't oh well maybe virtual reality can help. I don't know how that would be. What are you looking forward to in VR? Faking eating pizza.

Yeah. Pretend virtual pizza. That's it. That's the answer. We solved it. That seems like a good place to end the show. I feel like it is. Thank you for filling in for Mike at the last minute.

We appreciate it. We both hoped that Mike would be better today. And he's better, but he's not good enough yet so thanks for thanks for being on it's always fun i will talk to you again um later because we're gonna do uh we're gonna do a lift off uh we do a podcast called lift off that also posts on mondays every other week and so uh if you're interested in space stuff uh you should listen to that podcast because it's pretty good and steven and i do it it's true and this next episode is going to be special uh yeah i'm going to go visit a nasa facility and then i will report back next week

about it so i'm going to be the reporter in the field yeah apparently so that's pretty exciting they're not shooting me into space or anything though i'm just going to go be on the ground keep my feet on the ground. You weren't copied on that email? No, no. Let's keep my mouth shut. Okay.

Wow. That's a really special episode then. All right. Well, so thanks to everybody out there for listening to upgrade. You can of course send us feedback at, on Twitter. We are underscore upgrade FM.

You can use the hashtag ask upgrade. I am Jay Snell on Twitter. Mike is I Mike. I M Y Knell on Twitter. Mike is imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Steven is I-S-M-H, so you can find him there. And you can, of course, read all about us at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 75 or in your podcast app of choice for the show notes. And that's about it. Thanks to our sponsors, Casper FreshBooks and MailRoute.

And we will see you next week. Say goodbye, Stephen Hackett. Adios. ... ... ... ...